Verbal

Tommac wasn't a 'potential owner', just some jackass who thought he could snooker Paul Allen into buying the club after meeting two of his lawyers on 'his' plane. McLoughlin was a local manager (on an industrial estate in Fulham, not the Mayfair office he claimed to occupy) of a Florida-based aircraft-leasing business. His shenanigans ramped the share price way beyond anything any 'sensible' (these things are relative) potential owner would consider, thus helping to drive the club to the wall. He was a complete Walter Mitty, who unfortunately took in a few of the more august posters on saintsforever.

That would be the Durell Arms?

I think that's right. Galloway strikes me as a dreadful narcissist. Politics-wise, I'm amazed that a party in as much evident disarray as Labour can still push the serially useless coalition in the polls. The last poll I saw (this week) had a hobbled, almost mute Labour Party eight points ahead. After yet another week of fiascos, incompetence and self-serving 'policy-making', I imagine Labour will be even further ahead. If Labour are the Marie Celeste (still afloat, not much else), the coalition are the Titanic.

I have to admit I fell about laughing at this. What an hysteric! I particularly love the bit where you admit your hopeless ignorance about Iranians not being Arabs, and then turn it into (in your mind only) a triumphantly brilliant point. If you really think that Israeli government officials and politicians are so dazzled by 'paranoia', and 'don't rationalise very well', to the point where the lack of a collective noun that incorporates Iranians and Arabs throws them into the sort of confusion you idiotically suggest, then the very outcome you deny - bombing Jordan - is entirely likely. Undone by your own disordered reasoning. You strike me as someone who spend so much time gaining your 'wisdom' from a keyboard that you have difficulty managing your body mass. For your own sake, I'd strongly suggest you go out into the world and se how it really works, rather than look to see your odd little prejudices and preconceptions confirmed by selective googling. Your posts on this thread are just plain stupid, and betray character flaws that you should really get sorted out (those that you can...). Try, perhaps, re-reading the thread. There's an interesting and well-informed discussion much earlier on Ahmadinejad's speech (to which I notice you managed to contribute not one sensible word). It's worth adding to that that it is not official Iranian policy to 'wipe Israel off the map'; he was however expressing a version of Arab sentiment that actually IS expressed in many Arab states, including Jordan (the majority of whose population IS Palestinian), Egypt (often, until Mubarak's fall, in official newspaper editorials that are so stridently anti-Israeli that American politicians like John Kerry have made almost a career out of complaining about them), and, above all, Saudi Arabia. Iran and it's nuclear ambitions are, in any case, a side show. What's happening in Syria will have far more lasting consequences. As someone who has spent time in Homs, Der'aa, Latakia, Hama, Aleppo and Damascus, I'd suggest that this revolt has been a long time coming. The eventual outcome will change the geo-political balance of the Middle East in ways far more profound than Iran's toying with nuclear triggers.

Seems like (a) a successful public interest defence; and (b) the judge was unimpressed with the prosecution.

Quite so. One hedge fund is bad enough - but a 'consortium' of hedge funds?! Let's hope this is all ********.

Correct. The joys of being a private company...

Calm down.

The sad thing is that you are so far off the mark (which is putting it as kindly as I can) that you are being a kind of accidental anti-semite. 'All Israel sees is the greater Jewish family being attacked by Arabs' assumes a level of stupidity among Jews that would defy description. Firstly, Iranians are not Arabs. Secondly, if Israel really were that stupid, they'd bomb Jordan, or Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, or any Arab state that proclaims an official pro-Palestinian stance. Thirdly, Merah was not Palestinian. (You really don't even seem to read the newspapers from your characterisation of him). The only evidence of someone in 'the rampant throes of paranoia', as you put it, is the rather foolish individual who thinks he's Wall-E.

Corruption is a two-way street, though. A vast amount of business-to-government dealing is handled in essentially corrupt ways: ex-civil servants mysteriously turning up on the boards of companies that have just won a huge contract from his/her department; politicians being paid 'consultancies' or put on company boards where those politicians have a 'special interest'; companies making large donations to political parties and coincidentally winning large multi-milliuon pound contracts; companies threatening the wellbeing of politicians, police and civil servants who don't toe the line (eg News Corp); criminal enterprises bribing police to look the other way; etc., ad nauseum. The point about public funding is that it comes with a proviso that all these corrupt practices must end, and that there is a very tight cap (of just a few hundred pounds) on donations to political parties, all of which are publicly registered.

Nope - I have this down as an easy WHU win unfortunately.

Union leaderships, following conference resolutions, decide where the money goes, and some goes on Parliamentary lobbying for workers' rights rather than to the Labour Party. I can't quite see Cameron's (tax the poor/give to the rich) Tories being a particularly attractive proposition right now.

Could we have one with a bearskin strung out and turned into a rug? That would be useful, especially for the Film Studies School of TSW.

It's presumably news to you that (a) the murdered Jewish family were in France; and (b) Merah is or claims to be Al Qaeda - the sworn enemies of Iran. Honestly, your dumbness could suck the air out of a vacuum.

Correct, BTF.

Certainly corrupt. He's already been caught out over the expenses scandal, although in a relatively small way. The larger issue at the moment is that it is simply not remotely credible that Cruddas's corrupt behaviour occurred without Cameron's knowledge or consent.

So you're appalled by Cameron, et al's corruption, right?

Trousers, you do this often - deflect a serious Tory transgression and subversion of democratic principles with a Labour one. It gives the strong impression that you actually approve of corruption, so long as the 'other side' also do it. Is that the case?

And so the evidence mounts that News Corp is a colossal venture in organised crime. This has implications for football, of course, since the collapse of OnDigital also meant the collapse of a lucrative rights package with non-Premiership clubs, and threw many into financial turmoil (or even more than they'd normally be in). If I were them, it would probably be worth considering a class action damages suit against Murdoch's mafia.

So far this season, SEVEN West Ham strikers combined have scored eight goals less than Rickie. If Sam is setting targets, getting one of his forwards into double figures is probably a step too far. http://www.kumb.com/story.php?id=126116

Or maybe Jupiter, rather than Mercury - definitely Venus. I think.

Venus, Mercury

So why is Pogrebnyak at Fulham on 0 yellow cards instead of 5? I just wonder what the rule actually says.

Are you sure? Living next door to Craven Cottage, I can't help notice that their new striker Pogrebnyak is fond of a cuddle with Fulham fans when he scores. Not been booked once.

I'd suggest that with a poll that puts Tories 8 points behind a barely functioning opposition, Osborne is also a specularly useless undertaker.