Lord Duckhunter

Pap ,surely loads of art has people not credited. Im sure George Martin had a massive part in the Beatles sucsess, you only have to look at the albums Phil Spector ruined to see that. Maybe these writers just tweaked jokes or added lines rather than wrote the whole joke. My favourite band The Band had this , Robbie Robertson wrote most of the stuff but the others added riffs, lines, words ECT. It did create a lot of bad feeling that he got credits and they didn't. But the songs were his, they just added the cream on top. How much they contribued and what credit they deserve, is as old as music itself. Its not just black and white.

Interesting conversation on this weeks The Game Times Podcast. The English journo loved MM , the 2 Europeans pointing out that they out spent everyone in championship and are something like 4th highest spenders this season. Marcoti who has championed our own MP's ability from day one pointed out that without Tams' money MM would be a run of the mill championship manager. I tend to agree with that. One thing for sure, he didn't inspire Much effort from his players when his job was on the line. Another Owen Coyle if you ask me.

Jo Brand is not funny, end of.

Elvis may not have written his own stuff Pap, but he was a fantastic singer that influenced some of the greats that did. Lieber and stoller may have written it, but its the performance and the voice that sold it to a generation. Elvis was actually let down by the crap the colonel got him to sing. When he insisted on picking his own stuff pre army and then around '68 there was nobody to touch him. Same with comedians, Eric Morecambe, Tommy Cooper had writers, but the genius was in their delivery. Shame Jo brand and other unfunny comedians don't use better writers. So rather than bemoan stand ups using professional writers, you should wish more did. As an aside George martin wanted the Beatles second single to be "how do you do it", but Lennon hated it. "Write something better and I'll record it" replied martin. So John and Paul came back with please please me. Shame somebody didn't encourage Elvis to give it a serious go.

Fits our system perfectly. Class, good first touch,rarely gives the ball away and works damn hard. Great bit of business from whoever nicked him from rangers. Far better player than I ever thought he was.

Load of nonsense, you can't go round applying 21st century values on the past. There are countless people who committed acts that were criminal when committed by are not crimes now. Are we going to pardon all of them, or just famous people, or crimes connected to homosexuality. Our kings and queens have imprisoned, killed and impoverished millions over the years, not to mention stole a **** load of land. Perhaps the welfare tourists from Germany should start apologising. What's the difference between a pair of knackers and a head?

Would have helped playing away today because by and large our travelling support is more supportive than at SMS. He was shiete , but some of the moaning then ironic cheers against spurs was pretty bad form. I thought he looked slightly better today, but still doesn't quite look the part yet. Young keepers tend to make errors, but they're mental, positional or judgemental errors, whilst making some good saves and being a good shot stopper. What worries me is he doesn't appear to even be a particular good shot stopper and has a worrying trait of going wth the "wrong" hand. The offside effort today and John Terrys goal highlighted this. Not saying much, but today was his best game this season, hopefully he can build on it at Everton . Its another away game and this season they dont bomb it into the box as much as they used to. I just hope that this rough spell is the making of the guy , rather than the ruin of him. But, I'm going to take quite a bit of convincing before thinking he'll get a chance again. It would be interesting to know MP real thoughts on the guy and how well he does in training.

As I posted a few pages ago my Journo mate reckons they're concentrating on stars that were attracted to youngsters because they were young. That's why there has not been loads of rock stars prosecuted. If you read Bill Graham's book about promoting The Stones,The Who, Grateful Dead, Led Zep ect ect, they certainly did not ask for any form of id. I guess in the Wyman case, he was attracted to Mandy Smith because she was fit. He was not attracted to young girls as a matter of course. And for clarity, this is not an excuse, the guy should face questioning IMO. I'm just passing on something I was told by a member of the gutter press. They may well come back and get him later, or one of the others, but they're after the ones who targeted young girls solely on the basis of their age.

I thought Foxy did ok yesterday, not great but ok. When you come through the leagues as quick as we did, you're going to end up with championship players as back Ups. You strengthen the starting 11 and you're left with reserves who are on decent championship money, but not good enough for premiership. Established premiership clubs will have premiership players as reserves. Which premiership left backs are going to come and understudy Shaw. On the general point of scapegoats, why do blokes doing their best , but not good enough, get clog, yet good players playing poorly get away with it.Lambert was poor yesterday, has been pretty poor most of the season. JRod was poor, Gaston is a monumental waste of money, Osvaldo is hit and miss. Fox, Jos and Gazza are poor, **** poor, but they are doing their best.

Gollywogs are clearly some sort of caricature of black blokes , and the word wog is clearly inappropriate in this day and age. There isn't somebody who sits around deciding what is or isn't appropriate, or a body whose job it is to decide what is or isn't offensive, its just over a number of years the culture of a country changes. It wasn't that gollywogs were deemed offensive by some sort of law , just that most people thought we're better off consigning them to the past. Personally im glad they are, as there's no place for them in a modern country in public. If somebody wants to put one on a fridge magnet, or on their bed, that's up to them, but personally i would be uncomfortable explaing to my children why i had one. If one of my mates came up the alehouse with a golly badge on , id think he was a tw at rather than a racist, but would really wonder what the point was. As for diversity training, the ones I've done have always struck me as a company covering their backside. There was nothing in it thst anyone needed re educating about, anyone with half a brain would know what was appropriate and what wasn't. Companies just do it to ensure compliance if they need to sack someone imo.

If you had a wholly elected house of lords, then you would have a challange to the ultimate authority of the commons. At the moment the will of the commons has to prevail as the government can force legislation through eventually. A fully elected house of lords will have a legitimacy that could end up blocking government business. All you will do is create another layer of professional politicians. The principle of a revising chamber filled with experts and noble citizens is sound, its the professional politicians from the commons that abuse it by filling it with supporters,donors, cronies and ex mps bribed to give up their safe seats.

Franco Baldini is Technical Director

Didn't Jol play for WBA?

Heart says no, but bald head says yes. If Fat Sam is desperate and will pay over the odds and Nicola invests the money in a younger forward , why would anyone object. Bill Shankly used to get rid when players had tipped slightly over the top of the hill. There's no place for sentiment in the board room or dug out, sentiment is for supporters only. Looks to me like sentiment cost us a decent back up keeper. If MP and Nicola think its worth doing the deal,then they need to do it.

So it's the mail's fault is it Pap, is there anything wrong with todays society that has nothing to do with the daily mail, because a lot of people waste a lot of time blaming it. America have thanksgiving yet are racially divided in many areas. There is a massive gap between rich and poor. I worked with southerners who hated Yankees with as much passion as any skate/saints hatred. I regularly met and worked with people who hated "wet backs" , blacks, whites, hicks , French, and numerous other races, religions and states. So your arguement is clearly a flawed one. If a nation as divided as the US can have a day like thanksgiving, then the UK could.easily have a national day.

I thought he was a bit of a ****** before he became our manager and I think he's a bit of a ****** now. I suspended my ****** ism towards him while he was our manager, but never really warmed to him. He did an OK job at saints, nothing more nothing less. If anything we should have made play offs first season, and there's not one league one manager that wouldn't have signed Rickie or José.

Years ago when the train used to have a bar area, we used to sit down and have a drink on the way home and got talking to a guy who used to take his mum. We saw him every game and his mum , who was about 65 was pretty clueless. One of her gems was "I dont know why they rave about that young Giggs, he didn't do a thing all game" this was after we'd played Liverpool . But one journey home yer mans sat there shaking his head "mums surpassed herself this time" he said ( he knew she was clueless). He proceeded to tell us how the conversation went. "Who is that new black boy on the wing?" she asked "what". "that black boy, he looks quick", mateys looking confused " who". "Over the far wing, that new black boy, who is he ?" Peering to the far touchline the son replied "that's the linesman mum" .

Thread of the year-Bazza Sanchez's "Danny Fox is a witch".

Basically George had sweet FA to do with England, so I dont really see why we even have a patron saint, load of old pony if you ask me. May 1st is too leftie for me. I'd get rid of it and replace it with a memorial day on 11/11.

Spot on. Regardless of history, size of club at present or honours won a state of the art modern 40,000 seated stadium with all the coporate mod cons , in the premiership and in that part of London is viable. It may end up being a noddy club, with more people "watching " rather than traditional supporters supporting, but with decent marketing and facilities they'll sell 40k no worries. London is the key, its why the NFL will end up with a franchise there. Premiership football in a decent stadium, in a decent london area and they'll coin it in.

In the op you mention having a day off on our patron saints day specifically. Now you're posting that it doesn't matter, make your mind up Baz.

National day, not for me. It'll be a ****ing nightmare. Having to listen to that dirge of a national anthem with a load of plums displaying that stupid union flag, and I bet those welfare scrounging Germans we all look up to , will be getting in on the act. The BBC will be dumbing down by interviewing some transgender British Muslim and banging on about how tolerant we are as a nation and how "nobody does pomp and ceremony" like the good old Brits. Load of pony, it would be embarrassing. For such a brash and jingoistic country, surprisingly America has the best national "celebration" a simple thanksgiving , where families, friends and neighbours come together. I would be for something like that, not based on religion or race, but everybody in England (and the taffs and jocks if we have to) give thanks for living in a free and pretty wealthy country in an age of peace and harmony (compared to other ages). Perhaps 11/11, wander down to memorials and parades, quick couple of pints in the local then back home for roast dinner and watch the "memorial day " live sky match.

Bazza, you are letting your preconceived opinions of mp's get in the way of reason. Just because there maybe lazy mp's or mp's taking the Michael does not mean there cant be a way of paying them fairly and without emotions. There are only really 2 options, parliament sets the pay, or an independent body does. That is the bottom line. Had the independent body called for a 20K pay cut I've no doubt that you would have been happy with that, but it doesn't alter the fact that somebody other than mp's or the public or your goodself set that salary. Whether mp's are any good or not is irrelevant, unless you have performance related pay (and god knows how you'd appraise that). If enough people agree with your assessment of their mp, or are unhappy with him/her, they'll lose their seat. In exactly the same way Bob Crow is elected by his membership its not for a Tory or media to dictate what he should earn or where he should live. If his voters think he's taking the Mick, they'll get rid.

That only works if the MP's pay was set at the right level in the first place. It lagged behind other public sector comparable pay for many years. This was because it was political suicide for them to be voting through pay increases. The way they found round it was to keep pay down, but expenses up. This nod and a wink policy went on for years until the daily telegraph exposed it. The cry was then for a transparent independent body to regulate pay. All of a sudden because people don't like what this independent body recommended, they want it both ways. If IPSA recommended a pay freeze people would think it wonderful. All this BBC questioning of "will you take it" is doing nobody any good. You can not run a political system and constituency based elections based on whether people will take the pay, or how much they donate to charity. You'll end up with the rich being able to promise down their salary , and also discourage people like doctors, head teachers and businessmen from standing. What better way is there for MP's salaries to be decided than an independent body setting it after a long period of research? An x factor type phone in? Voting for it themselves? Having rich party leaders decide?