shurlock

The evidence is that though things didn't get significantly better, they didn't get a whole lot worse under Labour. Had the Major government’s policies been maintained, child and pensioner poverty rates as well as inequality would have been much higher - see the work of the Joseph Rowntree foundation. Obviously, slowing the rot is hardly a ringing endorsement but Labour did make a difference, even if, ultimately, it was nothing like enough of a difference.

a decent shout

He's better in the hole - just that a ton of our other players -Lambert, Guly- think the same as well. I quite like the idea of a Xmas tree formation with two behind the striker - unfortunately, we don't have a big man who can lead the line (good though he is, Lambert's too prone to drop deep)

Pass on all of these - quantity rather than quality, and some are totally unrealistic. On the whole, they don't add much to a squad which after all featured five players in the L1 team of the season. Baldock? a cracking busy little striker? Technically excellent? Looks pretty lightweight to me. Peltier's OK but no way worth £1. I would expect more than just pace and power for a RB and someone who knows how to defend before they go on the attack (has lacked composure on the ball whenever I've seen him play and believes in the Lloyd James philosophy of crossing ball from everywhere and anywhere + he dives in too much) Ledsma - would just be another body in the building - we have enough players who can play upfront or in the hole e.g. Lallana, Guly, Lambert etc. And guess what they're all better. Pearce is OK, though Bompey were hardly noted for their defensive meanness, always vulnerable to the long ball and setpiece. Certainly Pearce was one of their more resilient defenders; but remember the object of the exercise which is to bring in somebody with Jaidi-like qualitie. We already have Seaborne and Martin who tick the young CB box; CB is definitely one position where experience is worth something. Danns - as I've said before, I don't understand why people have latched onto him as some kind of magic, missing part (is it the hair, with people picturing him as some kind of livewire, english version edgar davids? who the f**k knows). I wouldn't say no; but I've seen him a number of times and he's a case of perspiration rather than inspiration; busy without being hugely productive. There are a number of midfielders who CDAJFU and have more years in front of them. Jennings - not seen enough of the kid to form an opinion; but him joinging us is no more realistic than some of prem players that some have fantasised about. In our dreams. After adding up fees etc for this list, I'd rather have 2-3 quality NPC players.

Really like Kraken's design, though it would be great if we could do something with 'forever a saint'. It occupies three lines and clutters space; worse, the 'a' occupies pride of the place in the centre, even though its the least important part of the flag and consequently the eye gets distracted by it. Ideally the forever a saint would be on two lines or alternatively we would use something else e.g. 'never forgotten'.

Columbia is heads and shoulders above most of what they've done. Not a huge fan but thought Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (Roll it Over etc) was one of their best, if overlooked albums.

Sing Coping The Universal (the B side of The Great Escape is also v.good but overshadowed by some dodgy singles) Beetlebum Black Book Caramel Trimm Trabb (13 is a generally under-rated album) Me, White Noise (prefer it to Parklife which also featured Phil Daniels)

The government wanted to introduce a pay cap in the public sector, limiting the pay of senior managers to 20 times that of the bottom of the organisation on the grounds of the research you're citing; but curiously, it fell silent on whether something similar should be extended to the private sector. Saying that I dont think people are natural-born egalitarians. They are more hardheaded and willing to support inequalities where they believe they are deserved, where wealth is the product of talent, initiative and effort rather than luck, rigged markets and the contributions of others.

Think the grammar school system is shot and no longer a vehicle for social mobility (I went to one years ago in bompey fwiw). It works best when there is a genuinely level playing field among 11 year olds and personal and family experiences are roughly similar. That might have been true in the past when the divide between richer and poorer families was easier to bridge; but today your sharp-elbowed middle class family invests far more financially and culturally in their kids than poorer familes that by the age of 11, test scores have less to do with pure ability than the cumulative impact of those differential investments. Under these circumstances, so far from expanding the opportunities of children from poorer backgrounds, the grammar school system simply becomes another closed-shop and bastion of privilege. Its no coincidence that where grammar schools still exist, only 2 per cent of children at them are on free school meals, even though low income children account for 12 per cent of the school population in their areas. Regards the alleged dumbing down of exams, its easy to overstate the problem. In theory, school and employment systems will self-correct by finding an alternative basis on which to identify the cream. Whether its attaching greater weight to the subject students take, the exam board responsible for the GCSE, the number of GCSEs obtained at A* or something else entirely, the system will just raise the bar to adjust for inflation. And students have every incentive to follow suits. After all, the competition for top university places and jobs is dog-eat-dog with a fixed quota on positions and prizes, requiring students to find ways to distinguish themselves from the pack among whom five A*-Cs is par for the course. As View From the Top says, the real issue is how to get kids to think rigorously and critically (parallels can be found in football and whether youngsters should be proving themselves in competitive matches or be given space to learn and experiment). For a ton of reasons -some rational, some not- exams aren't going disappear anytime soon; but equally they are not always the best way to support critical thinking: they are easy to manipulate; they are better at capturing simpler, more objective forms of performance and provide incentives to teach to the test etc. Reconciling the demand for testing with the need to impart proper skills seems a far more pressing challenge than the sideshow of dumbing down, even if the latter makes very good politics.

Like this one alot: has him waving with the scarf which is pretty iconic, though would be nicer in a darker red (as used by the other designs) and a higher res and could probably drop the liebherr and just keep 'forever a saint' in larger type.

Dunno about that; but think the Tories would have done exactly the same with the banks - you'll find tons of juicy quotes right up until the eve of the financial sh*tstorm of Osborne actually criticising Labour for not being light-touch enough on the banks while maintaining they would match Labours spending plans. All the major political parties got caught up in the bubble - after all, it seemed to offer the Holy Grail: economic growth, healthy tax revenues, public largese and redistribution without the need to soak the rich and ask akward questions about the distribution of wealth and income in the country.

So many holes in this its difficult to know where to begin. Just a few quickies: -Economies that invest more in education, health and other public goods perform better - where does our skilled human capital or cutting edge R&D come from? who secures property rights and ensures that markets are competitive and open for entrepreneur and your other heroic wealth creators? Of course, some public goods could be delivered by the private sector; but the idea it will always and necessarily do a better job than the public sector is not true - each has advantages and disadvantages and choices will depend on context; but often the public sector is a better provider of the infrastructure and institutions the private sector then piggy-backs off. -Likewise where does demand for private sector goods and services come from? Large swathes of the private sector rely on the direct procurement of goods from the public sector or benefit from consumption spending of public sector employees. Public procurement is especially important for entrepreneurs/start-ups where markets maybe weak or altogether absent. How do you think the web started? -Even parts of the private sector that appear to stand far apart from the state may enjoy some form of support- for instance, the policy decision to treat debt more favourably for tax purposes was a massive boon/subsidy for the City and private equity. -As well as the benefits that the private sector brings, you have to consider/calculate the costs of any activity - hard to think of many parts of the public sector that can bring the economy to its knees like the financial sector has.

Turkish is the claire raynor of the forum, the agony aunt with the mostest.

I wonder what would happen if you played around with alwightmush's pics - think they strike athe best balance between capturing Markus familiar wave and not having too much superfluous or distracting detail i.e. the jacket. That picture also has the advantage of including the scarf which has the badge, so there wouldn't be a need to put another on the right, perhaps freeing space for more text on the left (think your font is v.good). But the less text and the more prominent the pic of ML, the better.

To repeat, great work Mike having to juggle so many balls (financial, artistic etc) and reflect as many peoples preferences/ideas as possible.

If you do Che, think the photo needs to be cropped and more emphasis given to his face - like alot of the avatars do on here already. Otherwise, it mighe be hard to distinguish ML through the silhouette. Like the scouse flags, ML should be in the centre of the shot, not on the side and as others have suggested, the font needs to be bolder (and if necessary shorter and terser -again like the scousers 'success has many fathers'), running perhaps at the top and the bottom of the flag (a bit like sfc uk fan's mock up but with the spell-check firmly on )

Got to extend it to under-65s now

Much better than I thought it would be (...and not a beret in sight!).

That would certainly soften it, though if you're going for the silhouette of Markus, probably better to capture more of his face -and less of his jacket etc.

Do you know of any footy flags that actually feature a person? I reckon they're pretty rare. I agree about the black silhouette - the fewer and simpler the colours, the better. On the other hand, you risk ML looking like Che bloody Guevara and going down that whole revolutionary iconography route (which is tacky). The silhouette would have to be done tastefully and not just look like the Michellin Man.

Not a bad idea, though wouldn't black and white picture of Markus get lost in the white half of the flag?

I think a white background with red trim running at the top and bottom would bring the picture and the text (in black) into sharper focus....also the text occupies way too much space. The picture of Markus should be brought in a little bit - seems a lttle bit meek where he currently is.

Have worked in the area ond there are myths on both sides - as always, a good place to start is with the evidence http://www.statistics.gov.uk/elmr/09_10/downloads/ELMR_Sep10_Levy.pdf The headline observations are pretty clear: Total reward for full-time employees is higher in the public sector than the private sector if employees who do not belong to employer pension schemes (with zero pension contributions) are included in the analysis. Th is is because those without pensions (57 per cent of full-time employees in the private sector compared with 10 per cent in the public sector) reduce the private sector average figures more than those of the public sector. A comparison of total reward on a like-for-like basis, comparing full-time employees with pensions in both sectors, produces a different result. On this basis, total reward is higher in the private sector than the public sector – even more so after excluding employees in schemes that are not contracted out of the State Second Pension. Distributional analysis shows that the gap between private and public sector employees is particularly marked at the top end of the distribution. There are a few exceptions to the general rule that, for those with pensions, the private sector provides better overall remuneration. The main exception is those on low pay, especially women, who have higher levels of total reward in the public sector than in the private sector. Young employees (aged 16 to 24), those in some occupations such as sales and customer services, and people employed in small organisations and certain industrial sectors were also found to be better rewarded in the public sector than in the private sector. However in general, for full-time employees who are members of employer pension schemes, total reward is greatest in the private sector. Public sector workers are and will always be an easy target; shame the intransigent conceit of some unions ends up gifting the lazier and breathtakingly ignorant parts of the right-wing press.

I think the OP has to dust off his finest sergio tacchini, fila and fiorucci clobber, shine a light through the darkness of painted faces and sh*t cortese chants and lead the way.... If so, i think he'll need a statue too...where to erect it?

Agree with this - the siren call of the big clubs is falling on deaf ears. Even if he's 'kept against his wishes', Oxo has evey incentive to do well for us as he is still an unknown quantity and must prove himself. (maybe that's what his dad is scared of? of course, there is the risk of injury etc) After all, the idea that the CCC would harm someone's development is total boll*cks: a number of the current U-21 team (and quite a few are over 21) are plying their trade in th NPC or recently played there -and they were arguably further advanced in their careers than Oxo is right now.