SaintBobby

Can't tell you how much I disagree with this. Yes, there are crooks and there are sharks. Yes, we should never have got ourselves into the insane position whereby the taxpayer had to bail out the bankers. But, in a world of voluntary, free contracts (and most are), the profit motive is fantastic. I have to give people what they want in order to make money. If what I make or do is unwanted or crap, I go bust. This free market position doesn't guarantee utopia, but it is a much better of producing decent goods and services than some central committee or bureaucratic structure deciding how much milk or bread people need and at what price.

Nope, I don't follow that line of argument. I'm concerned about the absolute position of the poorest, but not the gap. If the poor are getting a bit richer and the rich are getting a lot richer, that should diminish need for welfare support even though inequality is rising. The poorest 10% in the UK today are much better off than the poorest 10% were in 1990. Yet welfare support has spiralled upwards. Something is going badly wrong.

The percentages are right, I'm sure. But if you look at total spending, it has more than doubled. Any shift from 23% to 46% of GDP would have been around about a quadrupling of spending... I don't quite understand your point on inequality. Surely, the welfare state is there to address poverty not inequality. For example, a society in which half of us earn £1m pa and half of us earn £100m pa is much less equal than today, but surely doesn't need a welfare state??? Even if you are concerned about inequality, rather than absolute poverty, the last Labour government more than doubled welfare spending, without any discernible effect on inequality. So, high welfare spending doesn't obviously narrow the income gap anyway....

The stats are accurate. 40% of GDP today is vastly more money than 40% in 1980. Amazingly, as the country gets richer and richer over the decades, the welfare state seems to need more and more money. Logically, the opposite should be true.

The Trust have the credibility - or even ability - to count to 1,000 and claim they are the difference? You disgrace yourself, sir! :-)

His article is wonderful. So funny. "Oh no...we're all turning in on ourselves". Embargo was broken in error as Saint Balram will be confirmed as new owner at 9am, so sad Neil filed copy and the techies put it up straight away. Bless. I wouldn't want to be applying for a press pass if I were him! So, so glorious.

I'm a low tax, low spend, applaud the wealth creators sort of chap. Here's my 2p worth (although I can probably afford more). 1. Most economists agree that squeezing 40% out of the economy is the absolute maximum that can be borne without reducing the overall size of the economy (people stop working at certain tax rates or emigrate or retire earlier etc). There are good arguments for government spending being much below 40% (the fastest growing economies tend to have a public sector of about 25% of GDP) 2. Most tax avoidance is widely misunderstood and is often just a matter of time-lags. For example, the reason Warren Buffet pays less tax (as % of his income) then his cleaner is that he has wrapped up a collosal proportion of his income into unrealised shares on his balance sheet. When he cashes these in, he will face an enormous capital gains tax bill. People think there are rules in the tax code saying "if you're rich and don't want to pay, that's fine". This is a massive oversimplification. 3. The government often actively encourages tax avoidance. One reason taxes are high on tobacco and low on fruit is to encourage you to become a tax avoider by cutting back on cigarettes and eating more apples. 4. A government in a relatively affluent society should be able to achieve its objectives by spending only about 25% of national income. If this isn't enough to relieve poverty, defend the realm etc, then the government is doing something very badly wrong with the money. UK expenditure is presently about 46% of GDP (government spending having roughly doubled under the last Labour government to a bewildering lack of effect) 5. The tax rules in the UK are absurdly complex, stretching to something like 15,000 pages. This is the longest tax code of any country on Earth. The rules should be laid out in no more than 15 pages and should adopt the principles of being (a) low (b) proportionate © easy to understand.

If the goal under discussion is the first Saints goal at Leyton away, the assist WAS Harding, not Dickson.

I voted Boruc, but hadn't appreciated he has not played since April. So, I guess I'd go for Gazzanigga.

I'm lovin' it. (copyright McDonalds....which might well be built on their dead ground in a few months time)

Gotta love the Pompey Trust. Great value. Had their moment in the sun. And now have to admit they have no plan, no serious cash and this is because they have virtually no support. Just joyous stuff.

Ooo Gaston Ramirez. That is all.

I've had a chat tonight with the woman trying to set up a phoenix club. She is a friend of a friend of a friend. Hilarious. She has nearly £500k ready to go on a phoenix club, she says. (mainly from 8 or 9 pledges) She backs the Trust bid but explained that "anyone remotely serious describes them as a hard-working but totally lamentable group of innumerate fruitcakes"

It's been quiet on this thread. So, can I ask a few questions to try and get things going in the run-up to Birch's deadline day? 1. The council have effectively withdrawn their £1.45m loan to the trust bid, right? 2. The trust haven't collected in any of their £1K pledges yet - so their bid would still be on a wing and a prayer, with some vague hope of 75-90% collection rate? 3. Portpin will ensure that they can outbid the Trust by £1 or more? 4. Birch will have to liquidate the club on Friday or transfer it to Portpin unless the Trust pull a huge rabbit out of a tiny hat?

Seems to me a logistical problem. There were plenty of people outside seeking to buy tickets. I'm sure we could have sold many, many thousands more. But for reasons which partly escape me - there seem to be a few hundred seats that just didn't make it to market.

Gees. Very Saints related....

Result!!! (only 3....?)

If Bournemouth will send him back to us, we should give them Ramirez and/or Rodriguez for the rest of the season. Alpine will back me on this, surely?

Alpine, I've never accussed you of trolling before....but this is just too absurd....:-)

Sigh. MLT broke the technical rules...and was singled out from what I can tell.... If so, it's juvenile behaviour from NC and the board....

Grrrr....does show how weak we are in depth. I quite rate Fox btw...but.....

If we do sign him, maybe we could offer Nottingham Forest loans for Ramirez, Rodriguez and Del Piero if they will send us Billy Sharp back? What do you reckon, Alpine?

The point is that even if our transfer+wage budget is say, £60m, it's not obvious that you can do a deal for a LB which is actually worth it. Of the, say, 20 under consideration, you might conclude that 10 are no better than Fox, 6 don't want to come here and 4 are just too expensive in terms of fees/wages. It seems to me that something very much like this has happened to us here. The challenge for any club is that, say, we rate our centre backs at 6/10. We can't afford 8/10. But is it worth spending £xm to get to 6.5/10 or 7/10. Sometimes, the answer will be "no". Of course, such assumed cool-headed logic is often buffeted by real world events (we get gazzumped, the player's dad wants a slice of £, the wage demands suddenly increase by 100% as we near completing the signing, the player gets badly injured a week before we want to sign him etc etc). I agree with you that we don't have great quality at CB. I think the "depth" issue is a risk, but not as big a risk as you imply. On balance, we are likely to be able to field any 2 of Fonte, Hoovield and Yoshida between now and January. If one gets injured (which is not "highly likely"), Seaborne and/or Stephens gets promoted to the bench. I only break into a sweat when one of those two actually need to take to the pitch. But, the odds are they probably won't have to (at least in League games).

The two scanners in corporate do flash up your name. Not sure if this is where MLT's ST is though (but wld have thought so...)

1. The problem is you have to put a cash value on it. I guess relegation costs us a few tens of millions (depending on whether/when we get promoted back up). So, spending £150m to stay up is probably bad business. 2. Hard to say after 3 games - to my mind, the Wigan game is the most worrying. Yoshida - impossible to say yet. If he's sh1t hot, that makes a big difference. I don't think the defence has been as poor as some are saying. 3. I think it most unlikely that we will be that far adrift by Xmas. 4. It's a mend and make do. IMHO, a positive way of looking at it is that we are really pretty strong in all but two positions. Not sure that's true of many smaller Prem teams. 5. I would have a guess that the big gameplan would mean that - if we continue to progress - our next big marque signing would be a defender, not a creative South American winner.