Verbal

The fall out from the granny tax gaff rolls on. Opinion polls indicate that Gormless George, all by his clever self, has caused an eight point gap to open up between Tories and Labour. And after today's revelation that the super-rich can buy access to Cameron and Osborne for a cool quarter of a million, followed quickly by the - no doubt connected - news that BAA have got the third runway at Heathrow back on the agenda, we can safely assume that corruption at the highest level in British politics is back with a vengeance.

Clearly your pride and joy.

Looks like no one from the club contributed to that, which may be their attempt to keep a lid on things and concentrate... (Good to see SRV pop up by the way.)

The cardiologist was interesting on this, suggesting that the fact that a very fit man was pushing the physical limits meant that he was in a kind of liminal state, with a physiology able to run on empty for much longer than would be possible normally. The drugs he was administered in the ambulance helped sustain this. And the hospital also cooled his core body temperature as soon as he arrived in ITU. I once met the head of trauma surgery at LA County Hospital, who pioneered this kind of approach, and had an amazing track record for saving lives beyond what many thought was possible. He was fascinating on how the American medics in the Vietnam War unintentionally but routinely killed their patients by intubating fluids and warming the bodies. The Falklands War was, he thought, something of a turning point, because soldiers with appalling injuries were surviving in much higher numbers - because of the cold. I don't pretend to understand the physiology of all this, and I do wonder whether there is any lasting brain or other damage as a result of the 78 minutes. It's part of what makes Muamba's case publicly fascinating.

You mean in the sense that Angelina Jolie looks better than Kathy Burke?

Yep, from my experience you'd need to be Saints fit to ride one of those damn bikes for more than a mile. Ergo Lee is ready for Donny.

It'll also be in colour.

Delldays is right though. RL's all-round game has come on in leaps and bounds since joining us. If he'd shown earlier what he is now, he'd be on a hefty sum in the prem. As for Sharp, it doesn't matter how many games any of us have seen, none of us have seen more than a few minutes of him. So who knows? Adkins has form, though, for getting the very best out of players, and integrating that within the team - all in a way which reminds me a tiny bit of way Clough/Taylor used to operate with supposedly lesser talents.

Quite so. But you have to make allowances for the usual suspects on here, who find what happened to Muamba, and the public responses to him, challenging to their own sense of masculinity. I've tried giving the hypo-turkish-delldays keyboard firm some advice for their self-esteem issues before, without much effect, so here's one last try: They should take themselves off to a day spa, get a cucumber and lemon-oil scrub, a deep-cleansing facial peel, scented-oil full-body massage, and a perfumed colonic irrigation. THEN, with their masculinity and self-esteem issues unravelled, they can come back on here and comment on Muamba's progress. I hope they take this in the generous spirit that's intended. I also hope Muamba makes a full and quick recovery, and that we see him in the Prem again. Not sure that we will, but as the last few days have shown, anything is possible.

Join the Huddle because Jos likes a cuddle.

I don't see how they could. It's not as if Rooney could legitimately claim that he goes off to do other 'contract' work as a footballer on the days he doesn't turn out for Man U. Their tax tricks (I don't know about Rooney himself) have to do with image rights and offshore trusts.

I think you've missed Hypo's point, such as it is. He's saying he wasn't wrong to be underwhelmed.

Only a linguistic contortionist could make sense of that.

Why do women talk to bears? WHY??!!

I'd still rather have a race for the top two be of the two-horse variety. Much better for the nerves, and I honestly don't care who else goes up.

If, this time next year, we're playing QPR, Wolves or Wigan, the thing you can't say won't have happened.

We use Sage. I can't comment much about it because others in the company use it - only that its reporting functions are superb.

'Alpine Threatens to Go Postal Over His Own Hopeless Logic' shock.

Sadly not. From what I hear, Turkish has drink and other psychological problems. Celebrating a potentially nasty injury suffered by one of the Saints' coaching staff merely confirms this.

Like we didn't know already.

Ah, damn - you're right. But still.

I count just one player in that team that wasn't a regular, or with us, in L1. Not bad going...

We should all just speak French for an entire match.

You misunderstand - I was being generous, Tristram. I think it's laudable that you wish to warn those dumber than you to avoid the charge. It just seems to be a rather small constituency. In any case, EHIC is a bit of a waste of space - and sometimes much worse. The best travel insurance I've ever had - speaking as someone who's put this severely to the test with bad accidents abroad - is Amex.

Pearson's attempt to turn Stanhope's attack on her into an attack on all women is preposterous. Clearly he found a particularly graphic way of expressing himself, but in the context of Pearson's extraordinarily crass comment, it seems well enough aimed. Her reaction is no doubt mirrored by that of Tony Nicklinson's reaction to her - so she now knows how it feels to be on the receiving end of her own hopeless insensitivity. For the record, here's what she said: "If Mr Nicklinson gets a serious infection, highly likely for someone in his condition, then, without antibiotics, he will soon get the merciful release he seeks. But that isn’t enough. He wants a landmark case."