SaintBobby

I'm pretty decisively pro-human on these matters. The environment and the planet are ours to exploit, alter, drill and adapt to our own needs and desires. Putting aside a small, residual concern for other sentient life forms, I would only measure ecological damage in terms of how it impacts on us. Pollution, deforestation, leaded petrol etc don't trouble me per se - they trouble me only in so far as they impact on humanity (which can be a considerable, negative impact, obviously).

In fairness, disposable income today is about the same as it was in 2005. (we are still some way from getting back to pre-crash 2008 levels). So, I'd say this amounts to pretty impressive sales. Also, being in the top flight for 20+ years generates more year-on-year publicity (and presumably sales) than having climbed out of 3rd division after a 7 year absence.

What's the price difference (taking account of inflation?) I'd have thought the club should set the prices to try and sell about 23,000 season tickets given current capacity, and they seem to have done that pretty well.

Am surprised club hasn't made more of the fact if we've sold 22K+ season tickets.

My (pretty limited) understanding of the scientific debate is that there has been a pretty substantial backtracking/revision of the more catastrophic predictions. For example, the IPCC have quietly ditched the "hockey stick" graph (which forecasts accelerating, apocalyptic results). Similarly, the scientific papers are usually much more qualified/conditional/moderate than the accompanying headlines which render the science too simple, too apocalyptic and too eye-catching. For example, I doubt there are many leading scientists who would still endorse Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" without a very long list of qualifications (they might consider it useful in PR terms to draw public attention to the purported problem, but computer generated images of e.g. Manhattan 20 feet under water are shock tactics not science). A fair number of posters on this thread seem to embrace the precautionary principle (i.e. "even if there's only a 30% chance of this being true and a 10% chance of it being really catastrophic, we'd be wise to take some pretty dramatic steps to try and prevent it happening. If these steps turn out to be have been unnecessary, well that's just part of the uncertainty of life"). I'm not persuaded of this approach. It at least needs to build in the potential unintended consequences of making carbon-based energy much more expensive. This is too often caricatured as simply involving rich Westerners insulating their lofts or installing catalytic convertors in their cars. The impact on those in the poorer parts of the world are much less trivial and could often literally be a matter of life and death. A horrific example of the precautionary principle being applied was the ban on DDT use following the publication of "Silent Spring", which argued DDT was potentially damaging to wildlife. The consequence of this well-intentioned, but ill-considered, policy has been the entirely avoidable deaths of thousands upon thousands of people from malaria. My scepticism is further underscored by the fact that climate change follows in a long line of apocalyptic scare stories which have turned out to be utter nonsense despite overwhelming scientific evidence being claimed for these theories at the time. This doesn't mean climate change isn't a problem. But it does mean that we should at least raise an eyebrow before taking some of the claims on board. For more on this, I recommend http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/upldbook440pdf.pdf This addresses your point about ignoring scientists being like the mayor of Amity Island refusing to close the beach.... I'm not sure we should just take scientists' pronouncements hook, line and sinker about risk and simply roll them out as public policy. Jaws would have been a very different (and enormously less exciting) movie if the mayor had been right. There was no shark, or not much chance of the shark posing much of an ongoing danger, but the beach is closed as a precaution, large numbers of local businesses go under, lifeguards lose their jobs, a high proportion of the local population sink into economic and mental depression, some even become suicidal. The purpose of Jaws was to frighten its audience with a wholly unrealistic narrative about the behaviour of a great white shark. Not to provide a sensible, mature overview of balancing safety and leisure in high density tourist areas with potentially lethal indigenous wildlife. I often feel like a lot of stories emanating from the "green lobby" are too much like the former (Jaws) and not enough like the latter (a calm, collected, more boring view of what we should actually do).

I suppose there's a 6th specifically UK-question as well. Given that the UK accounts for 1% of the world's population and, I think, about 2% of greenhouse emissions, to what extent are we confident that it is wise to lead by example? Even if we were able to reduce our carbon emissions to zero, the impact will be derisory if the powerhouses of China, India and Brazil are hugely increasing their emissions. This might, I suppose, make apocalypse inevitable - but the UK's policy wouldn't seem to have much rationale other than perhaps giving British taxpayers a better argument to deploy when we finally get to the pearly gates.

Are they really keen on signing a player whose name is pronounced "Must have a dumb buyer"?

Furthermore, if global warming is happening AND net beneficial, we should subsidise carbon emissions, not tax them. But that aside, if solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear power, tangerine juice or humans running around inside our own enormous hamster wheels become cheaper than carbon-based energy production, well fine. But that has nothing to do with climate change. Just technological advancement. If insulating your loft saves a fortune on domestic fuel bills (and thus also adds to the value of the property), this will be provided by the market.

This is highly, highly contested. See, for example, Matt Sinclair's "Let Them Eat Carbon"

I think - simply for PR reasons - if I was Kanu's agent or TBH's agent, I'd say "We are aware that the club will close if we demand payment now. However, a further £11m of parachute payments are available if the club survives. It is unclear why this money should be used as a windfall bonus for any potential new owners. In consequence, we are willing to defer any claims under the football creditors rule until these payments arrive and are happy to do so at an interest rate of 0%".

Genuine question: why don't the departing senior players just peg their demands to the arrival of the next parachute payment?

My take on it is that I'm sceptical about the green policies, but not a denier on the science. Seems there are quite a few hurdles for the green lobby to leap - and not much research to show they can leap all of them. 1. Is climate change actually happening? 2. If so, is much of the impact anthropogenic? 3. In any event, is warming a bad thing? (why would we assume the current, prevailing global temperature is optimal, perhaps a global 1 degree increase would be good for mankind overall?) 4. Even if it is a bad thing and caused in substantial part by human activity, might we be better to simply live with the consequences? (to give a simplified example, if the consequence in the UK is that Norfolk and Cornwall will be uninhabitable by 2030, maybe we would be better off - on balance - to continue to emit carbon as we are and plan to relocate those living in these two counties rather than make it crushingly expensive to drive a car or keep warm in winter?) 5. Even if the consequences are very bad, largely man made and extremely severe, are we better to mitigate the consequences or try and prevent it happening? (e.g. perhaps we should focus most effort on building very substantial flood defences rather than on encouraging solar panels etc?) To embrace the current green agenda, you need to be able to be very sure of your position on all 5 of these questions - not just the first two.

Not a great idea, I'd suggest. Tesco's security staff take a dim view of that sort of behaviour...

Glad we're giving a lick of paint to the stadium. Doubt we will expand the stadium for 2+ years at least. Ecstatic about the red felt. I nearly didn't renew my ST due to the crappy felt at St Marys :-)

Genius. Can someone forward this to Cortese and Adkins, please? It's so simple, yet so amazingly compelling. They need to hear it.

If I was TBH, I might offer the fans a "meet me halfway" deal. If you bring me 18K a week in cash, I'll waive the rest of my contract. If between the lot of you, you can't raise 18K per week in cash, it's pretty obvious no one out there cares much about the club either.

Thanks for the info. Still seems possible to me that if Portsmouth liquidate, the PL could shrug their shoulders and keep the final parachute payments for themselves rather than use them to guarantee TBH and Kanu a better pension?

Can someone just clarify that the parachute payments would be used, in the event of liquidation, to pay football creditors. What's the source for this and the rebuttal of the line that "if the club gets liquidated, the players get nothing anyway"?

Niemi. I thought Jones was perfectly good. Niemi, however, turned out to be amazing.

Am I nearly alone in not being wowed by Ward-Prowse yet? Don't get me wrong - he looks pretty good and I have high hopes, but he's nowhere near my starting XI at the moment. I do genuinely believe in the wisdom of crowds though - so I might have missed something? Schneiderlin, Davies, Cork, (even) Hammond are all ahead of him in my mind

I'm kinda with CB Fry on this. I don't know why they don't confirm it in a one liner the second the ink is dry and say "...full interview to follow in 2 hours/this afternoon/whatever" The club do seem to think they can keep things under wraps more than they actually can (especially in the spotlight of the Prem....many more media hungry for any scrap of info and much more willing to pay for it). I basically approve of the club doing things in a discrete, quiet, methodical fashion. But - blimey - in an era of 24/7 news at least announce "job done" as soon as it has been. Also, if I remember rightly - wasn't the thing to stuff the Echo a news story entirely in the club's hands - new kit or something? To release that at 11.30pm, when you could do so at noon, just looks petty and vindictive. If a player really does sign a contract at 11.30pm for some strange reason or other , well, that's just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

"Quite" a lot? I'd say we need to start from scratch. Lallana might just cope in the Prem - the rest of them are strictly Championship players.

At 4/7, the bookies' prediction is that we will have about a 65% chance of staying up. I hope they're right.

Excellent. To be simply told my bill is going up would be annoying. To be told three different ways my bill might go up makes me feel like I have options. Nice.

It's worse than that. Not yellow - amber or red. One untried player in for a huge £7m and one (blocked) N Irish midfielder wrapped up in legals. We need August to come around very slowly if we are to have even a fighting chance now, I'd say.