Halo Stickman

To be honest, I had to look it up – it must have passed me by when I read The God Delusion. Mind you, I’ve been referring to the Premier League as the Premiership for the last 10 years, so perhaps I’m just slow on the uptake. Regarding MH370, as I’ve previously said, I normally go for simple solutions as opposed to complicated conspiracies; however, even I’m beginning to think that there may be more to this than the authorities are letting on.

Cheers pap. If the mystery of MH370 is never solved – I’m beginning to think it won’t be – at least you’ve added a phrase to my lexicon that I’m determined to casually slip into conversation at least once before I die.

You’re not telling me they’d not have paid out my £30,000 because I wrote Premiership instead of Premier League – if that’s the case then it’s a good job we didn’t win it.

At the beginning of last October, in a moment of supreme optimism – or, more likely, utter lunacy – I placed a bet with BetFred that Saints would win the Premiership. The wording on the betting slip is “Southampton FC to win English Premiership Title £20 @ 1500/1”. You’ll notice that it doesn’t state which year (although the slip itself is stamped with the 02/10/2013 date). My question is this: in the event of Saints winning the Premiership title any time in the future, would this betting slip still be valid?

Yes, I’m pleased with our start to the season – let’s hope I’m not tempting fate – and it was good to see Gatting making some runs in the first innings; every member of the team has contributed something or other to our performances so far.

Need a solid start to our second innings – you never know, there just might be a result for one team or other, although I agree the draw looks favourite, and I would be satisfied with that.

Yes, people need to look for a possible common denominator – not sure what that is, myself. All I can say about Torbay is that it has quite a high unemployment rate, and the jobs – especially for young people – are mainly seasonal and low-paid.

Interesting that Torbay – a location with both affluent and deprived areas – is the only other South Coast region with the same rate as Southampton and Portsea.

Whilst all this is undoubtedly true, I suggest there are also other historical factors at play. If we examine the last 400 years or so of our country’s history, we had religious wars in the 16th century, followed by maniacal Puritanism in the 17th century, followed by parson’s aligning themselves with squires and other members of the gentry in the 18th century – life as a clergyman was an established career path for younger sons of the aristocracy. Little wonder then, by the time of the educational enlightenment of the 19th century, vast numbers of ‘the common people’ had already become somewhat disenchanted and detached from ‘the state religion’. Yes, more people went to church back then, but for many, especially those who worked for the landed gentry, regular church attendance was obligatory. Undoubtedly, some found solace from their miserable existence, but I expect others were made even more miserable by having to spend their extremely limited free time listening to their pontificating ‘betters’. Of course, I’m generalising here, and I’m not denying that many religiously motivated people – of all persuasions – have done a great deal of good for their fellow humans; I’m simply suggesting that ‘the state religion’ hasn’t exactly helped its own cause over the last 400 years or so.

Mrs Stickman is the complete opposite – she insists on arriving at places hours before we need to. Last year, to my shame, she talked me in to arriving at Exeter airport at 11pm for a flight that wasn’t scheduled to take off until 6am the next morning!

Being a gentleman, I hesitate to air our dirty washing on a public forum, but I have to say that Mrs Stickman has ruined at least half a dozen of my favourite shirts by washing them with a bleach impregnated dishcloth, and she is also f*ucking useless at loading the dishwasher properly.

Jeez pap, this has the potential to rival the Pompey Saga thread! Now, let’s see, where to start…

If he's not then he really should be, you two can meet up - I reckon you'll hit it off like a house on fire

better

I miss the old skating rink – me and my girlfriend used to skate there like Orville and Bean.

Either of those two or Tony Blair for me.

My dad lived on the Isle of Wight all his life and supported all the Hampshire teams including Aldershot. Back in the 1960s he used to take me to watch Saints one week and Portsmouth the next. Quite a few Islanders did this. As I recall, things changed during the time in the early/mid 1970s when both teams were in Division 2.

Thanks for that, Weston. Good to see Ervine getting off to a flyer – what a great servant to the club he’s been over the years, still only early 30s as well!

Bowling-wise, I was hoping that Matt Coles would carry on in the same vein he ended last season. Anyway, early days - he might take a hatfull this afternoon.

I can top that. In the 1970s, I was attacked by a Portsmouth supporter who was working the Alum Bay chairlift! The bastard spotted the Saints’ badge on my denim jacket, waited for me and my new girlfriend to get hooked into the chairlift seats, then, as we travelled past him, punched me on the side of my head.

Yeah I suppose so, I’m not reading too much into the batting, but I was hoping to see a bit more from the bowlers. Anyone know what the wicket’s doing?

None too promising start to the season – I doubt that Worcs are one of Div 2’s stronger teams.

On reflection, I realise that some of the comments I made yesterday were rather flippant, and, as such, did a disservice to my former colleagues in Ditch Group, some of whom went on to spend their whole careers working hard to improve aircraft safety. For all I know, their efforts may have saved lives on the planes featured in the videos that were posted yesterday. Therefore, I would like to say the following, which will be my final comment on this particular aspect of MH370’s disappearance. Aircraft are subjected to five different forces: tension, compression, torsion, shear and bending. A fuselage is essentially a tube. Many people on here will know that a tube is excellent at resisting tension and compression, pretty good at resisting torsion, but less good at resisting shear and bending. Alongside establishing the optimum conditions and best method for crash-landing at sea, the purpose of Ditch Group was to identify those parts of the fuselage that were subjected to the greatest forces and, hence, stresses. These stresses varied with every aircraft; for instance, longer aircraft were usually subjected to greater bending stresses. Ditch Group would report these findings to the aircraft manufacturers, who, in conjunction with the aviation authorities, would then decide what action, if any, to take. Sometimes the airframe would be locally strengthened by adding trusses or bulkheads etc. However, it is important to acknowledge that aeronautical design – along with most other things in life – generally boils down to a series of compromises. At risk of being flippant again, commercial aircraft are designed to fly passengers through the air and land on the ground, not the sea. To design an aircraft, especially a large passenger aircraft, so that it could land safely on the sea, say, 75 percent of the time, would mean strengthening the airframe to such an extent that the extra weight would mean a vastly reduced passenger capacity. So, essentially, what Ditch Group did was to identify areas where safety factors could be increased by small margins – perhaps decrease the percentage chances of a plane breaking up on impact by a couple of percent. But, as we saw in those videos, sometimes small margins are all it takes to save lives, and this makes the hard efforts of my former colleagues well worth while. West Stand, many thanks for taking the time to share your first-hand knowledge – your expert analysis, along with that of Derry and others, is much appreciated by me and, I hope, everyone else on this forum. Ditch Group certainly recorded g forces of the value you mentioned in some of our tests.

Excellent post!

Just to clarify, when I said 'stupid suggestion' I was referring to Tim's suggestion that Whitey belly-flop onto concrete!