Verbal

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.

Tell him I agree with this.

Can you please supply the peer-reviewed scientific references to back up this assertion?

This thread fails the high standards of the Lounge. It and the addressees look more Muppet to me.

What does this mean and how is it relevant?

Are you saying that it's routine ('all the time') that players are induced to walk away from their contracts while their clubs are in administration and attempting to put together a CVA? Can you give an example?

The government's move on house prices may seem odd, given the generally agreed over-valuation of property. But property collapses have been at the heart of all the major triggers of economic recession (and possibly depression) since 2008. The US property collapse in 2008 exposed massive over-lending to people who couldn't afford it (and the use of derivatives to conceal this problem), and when they all defaulted, the banking system was exposed as a ruin in in need of 100s of billions of dollars of federal guarantees. Exactly the same has happened in Spain (other debt levels are actually much lower there) and Ireland. Both countries are now littered with abandoned houses and incomplete housing-estate ghost towns. The government no doubt wouldn't mind gentle falls in house prices, but any collapse would put yet more pressure on British banks. Of course, the way Osborne has gone about it may only stoke the bubble.

Historically, an awful lot of debt simply isn't paid back. It is just the way the world works. For example, the Canadian railway system was built on unpaid debt. More recently, the fibre-optic networks in the US were financed by the dotcom bubble, and loans turned bad. And I repeat: you can't think of national debt like family debt. Governments can print money. You can't (or can you?).

It would be amazing if the Football League, having won in court the right to retain the Football Creditors' Rule, then allowed a member club to subvert it so blatantly.

You're drifting as ever off the point. Read Dune's original little gem - my response was to that: the idea that you can't have fiscal union without political union, and that means 'dominance from a centralised base'. The US has fiscal union with constitutional checks and balances between federal and state governments, and there are constant tensions between the two (hence the immigration controversy, to give a present-day example). The whole Tea Party movement is about states' rights over the feds.

My point being, Ducky, that the US is riven by the same kinds of tensions as the EU. ''States' Rights" has been a hot-button legal issue since the American Civil War, and states in the South especially still fiercely guard their distance from the Federal government.

The entire world economy has always been, is and always will be in debt. It doesn't work like a family household, and it would be disastrous if it did. If all personal, corporate and sovereign debt were to be cancelled overnight it really would be the end.

You've never heard of the United States then.

Calm down, calm down. This is a Dog thread, remember.

This does not make sense. You can only 'commit a serious crime' if you are convicted. You need to read some Orwell.

I thought you were one.

Isn't this from next year?

Stripes can also make you look HUGELY fat. Just ask Alpine.

You can't out-god god.

That article makes no sense whatsoever.

Here's one from The Times today, under the headline 'Saints March Together': 'The second youngest player at Euro 2012 and the second oldest outfield player...are both former Southampton players who could meet on Friday.'