moonraker

I have Radical soloution to the Football Creditors Rule - How about the FL set up Debtors League, one where teams that default on football debts are placed and they play each other. Any prize money from competitions is controlled by the FL and only when they have cleared all debts are they allowed back into society! And then intoat best L2 additionally no trophies would be awarded for winning the Debtors League, this would prevent adding to your fraudulently aquired a glorious history!

The tender did not make it clear that it would be an offshore procurement only that an offshore procurement was possible.

I have a little bit of ITK about this contract. The ships are required to meet international legislation by 2018/19, the UK shipbuilding capacity could not meet this requirement due to T45 and QEC contracts, no British tenders were submitted, the Koreans have a track record of delivering on time to budget unlike BAE. The price is not £800 m it is £465m of which £150 will be spent in Britain additionally the special military fits and through life support will be British a sum likely to be at least double the ship build costs. The competition was started by the Labour Government whose 2005 Defence White Paper stated that commercially designed ships for the RFA and RN could be built abroad. The 3 tenders received were 2 from South Korea and 1 from Italy. The Wave class were years late and massively over budget. This is a British Design and the IPR remains British with export opportunities for upwards of 30 similar ships based on normal design fees this equates to a potential in excess of £150m of exports into the UK economy for design rights alone, on top of that there will be a lot of British equipment/systems e.g. RR, Hamworthy BAE.

Pretty sure Sh**ty City have Rovers and Cardiff

+ 1 A mature and civilised response to the immature an uncivilised OP

Balmoral was purcahsed by Queen Victoria and Sandrigham by George VI, and yes Windsor and Buck House are a bit like Tied cottages as is No 10 and 11, Chequers and whole host of other residences provided for public servants / politicians. The upkeep of Windsor and Buck House comes from Grants-in-Aid for upkeep of Royal Palaces and for Royal travel, however it is irrelevant in the argument of repulic or monarchy as in both cases we would still have a state funded Head of State requireing official residences. Indeed if we changed the HoS every 4 /5 yeasr the cost would be greater as the incoming HoS or their partner would surly want to redocorate I bet HM only does so when the existing decor is beyond economic repair.

Corpy you make the unstated assumption that if the Libherrs's decided to sell a new owner would not cover the debt. NC's links to football and very rich people gives us a head start on finding a new owner with the finnacial clout to at the very least maintain stabilty. The history of SFC is one of good finnacial mangement, our single failure finnacaially like many before and many to come was because of the gulf in incomes between the preimieship and the rest, unlike PFC who all but the most blinkered of you can see that your problems are self inflicted due to decades of inprudent finnacial management, youve got more winidng up orders in your trophy cabinet than trophies. If historically SFC are the club that existed (and will continue to exist) PFC are the club that never paid its way.

You will be very disappointed if you believe all that would follow the abolition of the monarchy. Land held by the Crown Estate on behalf of members of the royal family would simply become Government Estate and liable to be flogged of at the first opportunity by a struggling government to any who have the where with all to purchase it, not a lot of chance of it reverting to us serfs to graze our stock on, or wander freely over! The majority of the Royal Collections are the private property of the Queen and other members pf the Royal Family so unless you are advocating a Russian / French style revolution they would retain ownership and their would be far less chance of them being loaned to museums and galleries. The Royals are only too aware of their duty wrt to their collections and rarely sell anything of significance unlike many private collectors. When a private collector sells a significant item there is often a mad panic while some public body tries to raise the capital to keep it in the country. There are plenty of big houses for tourists to see as there are plenty of big historically significant private house not open t the public, are we to commandeer all of these. Balmorel and Sandringham are private property, Windsor, historically and visually the most interesting Royal Residence is 80% open to the public about the same as the majority of National Trust / English Heritage properties. The one thing the British Empire was not was a military dictatorship, it may be construed as a Civil Service Dictatorship never military the average size of the Army during Vics reign was 110,000 they must have been pretty good to support a military dictatorship to a quarter of worlds population. The old written constitution nugget, please explain how this would improve my life, would I have more freedoms, would I have better access to justice, would I get paid more……………………

The Sandringham and Balmoral are the private property of the Queen whilst Buck House and Windsor are Crown Estae property.

In the eyes of many foreign governments one of the reasons "we still count ourselves as a first-world nation "is because of the Royal Family not in spite of it. If we had an unheard of Head of State aka Germany / Ireland how would that help us on the modern international stage? The important thing in a democracy is that the executive is elected, (tick) that the judiciary is independent (tick) of the executive and law enforcement is independent of both (tick) the only thing we are missing is a fair voting system, so we can hardly be judged akin to a dictatorship, silly comparison, imho.

Tonights BBC 1 programme 'The Diamond Queen' was very useful to understand how our monarchy works. Andrew Marr presented and he made a very compelling case for our constitutional monarchy over a republican presidency not by promoting it but by presenting it in an informative way that in my opinion demonstrated that we would be a poorer nation culturally and influentially without it. There are 2 more episodes.

once you go back beyond the 18th century we are all related to each other

He may have invented a correction fluid I doubt it was tipex which was launched by a german company in 1965. If he is your twice great granddad even assuming you are young he would in all likely hood have been very old in the 1960's my twice great granddad would have been over 150 in the 60's.

Eurofiz or Lager is not for true Englishmen

Having read through the thread I offer a couple of observations. The OP compared Hester to a Public Sector worker or Civil Servant, as part of the Gov cuts civil servants have had their bonuses scrapped together with a wage freeze, this is not related to their performance purely a Gov imposed change to their terms of employment. I know of a recent Gov programme where the Civil Servant responsible delivered the programme ahead of schedule and £2m under budget, he got no additional bonus or pay rise for saving the exchequer what was effectively 30 times his own salary. Also the notion that bankers will emigrate, the biggest bluff of all time, we should call it. PS I am not a public sector worker.

The good things in life are worth the wait, welcome Billy.

How can he do that, he cant write?

On the surface an hereditary Head of State (monarchy) seems totally archaic however when I look at other possible models none imo would be an improvement. Having a non political world respected and loved HoS is much preferable to a non-entity unknown non-executive president. In the absence of wikipedia today how many can name Germanys Head of State. The persistent myth that the monarchy is to costly is just that a myth, in fact it as at least comparable to or cheaper than a system where the HoS is elected. I know that the republican minded amongst us are looking forward to the day when Charles ascends the throne as they hope this will lead to the end of the Monarchy, I wouldn’t count your chickens just yet, The Barons, Cromwell, Monmouth and others have tried very hard to destroy the Monarchy but it is a very robust institution and I believe the majority of the British people if asked if it was time to abandon it would vote to keep it. Australia who one would think would have a far stronger republican support decided when push came to shuff to keep the Monarchy.

The Debt burden should in part be linked to those banks that caused the greatest damage i.e. RBS and HBOS - now in which country are they? Before the crash Salmond was championing these failures as virtues of Scottish success and enterprise, haven't heard much mention of them as part of his great economic plan lately. He is a nothing if not a great opportunist who has capitalised on the Scots understandable dissatisfaction with both the Tory and Labour Governments.

There are to many graet bands to single one out but having seen Madness 6 times they are a real favourite but my favorite all time live gig was the Who in 1972, it was memorable for Keith Moon (RIP) alone.

Something that has not been discusssed. If Scotland becomes and indpendent nation then it will not be a Member of the EU (Dune you might think about moving along with rest of UKIP), curerent membership is for the UK or Westminster led Governament/Nation. So is their a scenario where good old Pie Face becomes the first supreme leader, applies for membership to the EU and gets told to go away until he can demonstrate that he is in charge of a stable, finnacially responsible and healthy nation, meanwhile the hadrians wall is rebuilt, passport contol and immigration checks imposed and scotish born benefits dependents and criminals returend to their homeland. Even when they have demonstrated they are of suitable status to join the EU a Westminster PM (Tory) uses his veto. There is also the irony that they object to be governed by Whitehall but are totally happy with being (partially) governed by Brussels.

Ireland might provide a useful comparator for the size of Armed Forces the Scots might need and could afford. Full time personnel (three services) circa 12,000 Navy equipment 8 Patrol Vessels Air Capability is a mixture of rotary and fixed wing totalling about 30 airframes, no combat aircraft, they also provide rotary wing support to the Police. Army Equipments only one modern AFV the Mowag Piranha Armoured personnel carriers, they also have some scorpions. The current Armed Forces of the United Kingdom are disproportionally represented by Scots circa 15% in some specialisations it much higher, this equates to 30,000 personnel so that’s another 18000 Scots out of work when they are replaced in the “Westminster” armed forces by Welsh, English and Northern Irish citizens. This may be a very minor point in the great scheme of things but it does illustrate that opting for independence is not a simple solution that will suddenly free Scotland to achieve ever greater things. Additionally currently Salmond is supported by a broad church seeking independence. He may of seen off the Westminster Tories but if independence is achieved the SNP as it is currently constituted will implode and at least 2 new parties will be formed one holding to current left wing manifesto and a second more centralist if not right of centre party. There may not be many Tory MP’s in Scotland but there is a great deal of conservatism.

Top Gear is exactly what it is designed to be great entertainment. The best for me was the Andes challenge. However I think it is getting a little tired and Clarkson is the weak link now where once he was the star. My son used to work in corporate events providing very high tech simulators, eg £150k F1 game, he says Clarkson was the most obnoxious arrogant celeb he ever met, completely ignored all of the "peasants" as if they didn't exist.

Hardly overwhelming with 40% conservative plus say 4% from others makes 44% or 56% are not right wing.

You really do take the biscuit, Saintandy has debated with more maturity and knowledge than I have ever seen from you. This thread was going well with reasoned and informed debate then you come along. An to cap it all that ever so infofrmaed globe trotter DD pipes up with more I am better than you beacuse I have travelled the world in a black pig c**p. In most ports in Scotland if you go on a run ashore its not being English they dislike they have the same attitude to matelots as our non Jock fishy freinds down the road.