Verbal

Okay, you've got to stop doing this. Calling social democratic principles like redistribution 'trickle down' is like calling the Red Cross the Final Solution.

Good grief Andy - where to start? No it wasn't 'the theory'. Trickle down is part of the hard-right, supply-side economics adopted by Reagan and Thatcher. You really think New Lab is Reaganite?! And as for the claim that 'New Labour is meant to be "Modern Socialism", I imagine Blair is spinning in multi-storey London palace. And who, exactly, are 'some like me'? There was nothing 'soft' about Blair's or this coalition's neoliberalism. The marketisation of everything has ruined lives far too numerous to count.

Just did. Now go and watch the footie.

An opinion IS a thought (unless your thoughts are somehow dug up from the garden). An opionion, on the other hand, is clearly the absence of thought.

I assure you they didn't call it trickle down Andy. And no, the basis of modern socialism is many things - but not something dreamed up by right-wing economists.

Yep.

You don't know much about television, do you.

Ages since I've heard that phrase: 'trickle down'. The truth is that in the last thirty or more years since that phrase emerge out of the Chicago School, there have been VAST increases in wealth hoarded by spectacularly corrupt plutocrats, bailed-out billionaire bankers, hedge funders, Ponzi scammers like Stanford and Madoff, and others. When you combine it with their almost universal 'talent' for tax evasion that reduces their ACTUAL tax bills in many cases to almost zero, it's not so much 'trickle down' as 'flood up'.

Better to think of this with real money. Suppose you're one of those CEO's of an outsourcing company. You've just been awarded a contract by a government department and your first thoughts naturally turn to your fee, the going-rate for which now seems to be about £3m per annum. Assuming no Jimmy-Carrisms, you're take-home will still be some way north of £1.5m. Your second thought will have turned to how you can depress your workers' wages to pay for this within the terms of the contract. Even generous outsourcing employment contracts run to about £11-14,000 pa, from which the take-home will be about £7-8,000 pa. So: £1.5m free spending money, no matter how useless or corrupt you are (see the recent scandals for example concerning employment outsourcing), as against £8,000 a year no matter how hard you work.

Personalities - usual stuff. Imagine a group of people all like CB Fry. Doesn't detract from its popularity though (although not my cup of tea).

It's a very unhappy production.

You get the impression there's a LOT of bad feeling directed at PFC by local small-business creditors (and creditors with now busted businesses) in particular - the very same ones, unfortunately, who are deeply reluctant to go public for fear of provoking a backlash from some not-too-bright fans. PFC and the administrators could be seen to be silently condoning this threat precisely because it suits them to keep those with such legitimate grievances quiet. So the local small-business and charity creditors are victims twice over (not to mention being third-time losers with the impending 'CVA'). But once the floodgates open...

The Michu rumour is from Pilchards. He's been pretty reliable in the past.

And rather well too. It also brings to mind why parachute payments exist in the first place - largely to cushion clubs against the otherwise crippling effects of premier league wages in the lower leagues. So when PFC administrators resort to exerting public pressure on players to walk away from contracts intended to be underwritten by the parachute-payment system, it beggars belief that the football authorities and the PFA allow this to go on without even the hint of a reprimand.

Still, everyone's in for a treat with Tom Petty headlining. Saw him at the Albert Hall on Monday - an absolutely brilliant concert.

Bit-part player at Fulham before Rangers.

It will come to an end soon. PFC are trying and failing to dig themselves out of gigantic financial hole just as the whole of Europe teeters from recession to full-blown depression. They haven't got a chance in hell.

Still think there are green shoots, as Europe teeters on the edge, between recession and depression?

A very good new word. I must remember that.

Technicolor yawning in Sauchiehall Street. What happened to you?

Yes there is something to stop it. For a company that employs you to do as you suggest, you cannot be an employee, but would have to have a service company into which the money can be paid. You would then be employe by that company and it would lend your services to your de facto employer. In fact, this was the means by which, among other civil servants, the head of student finance was paid. It's only SUPPOSED to work if you have a range of such contracts - ie it's demonstrable that you are not just an employee of one paymaster. The remarkable thing is that some civil servants were able to essentially pull a scam, because they WERE sole employees of the civil service.

That's mine. Sorry. I'll move it in a min.

The Letterman Show isn't in Times Square. It's on Broadway in midtown (around 53rd) - in the Ed Sullivan Theater, where The Beatles made their legendary first appearance on US television. Don't forget the Oyster Bar in the now stunningly restored Grand Central.

But claims for unemployment benefit claims rise. How many times must I slap you down on this green shoots piffle?

I see no snub.