Verbal

We should start a buddy system. For every Saintsweb public sector striker, someone from the private sector on here should do a double shift. Windows in the city will be gleaming, even if the rubbish hasn't been taken out.

Or is it? I don't believe the FA has ever failed anyone as a FAPP.

Damn, that old Daily Mail horror story. I thought this was about a cleaned-up Father Ted.

In 1959, Fleming wanted Hitchcock to direct Dr No with Richard Burton as Bond. Fortunately, Hitchcock went off to make Psycho instead, and changed the course of cinema rather than wasting his time on formulaic prequels to Johnny English. The only things good about Bond movies were the Aston Martin DB5, Ken Adam's sets, Maurice Binder's titles and Monty Norman's theme, arranged to sound 'surf' (en vogue at the time) by John Barry. The rest, including Connery, were all disposable.

I did wonder. But I also suspected he was too scared to ask so used your post to spell it out that his blonde bombshell fantasy ain't all that.

All of them were Thatcher decisions.

I wouldn't take it too seriously. Remember, this thread was started by a self-confessed racist scumbag who thinks it's okay to admit publicly that he reads the Express - and then okay to troll his own thread. That he's tolerated on here encourages him to think his 'views' are anything more than wasted carbon dioxide. On topic, which newspaper you read tells you practically nothing very interesting about who you are.

I'm just curious. Do you support: The building of the Channel Tunnel. Moves towards monetary union with Europe. Increasing public spending.

No one is calling for anything 'miraculous' - merely that the manufacturing that is out there, and has a great product to make and sell, can actually secure the kind of investment that brings a recovery about. And that means reforming a City that has grown greedy and yet obscenely dependent on taxpayers for its decisions to profit from now-toxic 'assets'. As I say, go and read Alan Posen on this - he does actually know what he's talking about! - and then see if it changes your view.

If you spout less and research more, you'll find that even major figures within the City and the regulators of it realise the immense damage done by the city's lamentable failure to invest in UK manufacturing. (Go and look at any number of statements on this by Adam Posen, for example) And note that, as elsewhere in Europe with a FAR stronger manufacturing base than the UK (Germany, France, Scandinavia, for example) workers are NOT on poverty-level wages for precisely the reason that the kind of manufacturing done there is more often high-tech, and therefore calls for highly highly skilled workers. Of course there are much better immediate returns on derivatives...or were. Because now, all these - in your view - brilliant investments languish as toxic stock in 'bad banks' pinned upright by taxpayers.

The Socialist has better sport.

Largely irrelevant. 1987 was a quarter of a century ago. In that time, manufacturing could have been transformed. (Germany rebuilt its manufacturing base much more quickly after the war, as did Japan - and the new manufacturing giants like India and China have emerged in less time). You can't simply dismiss the dismal fact that manufacturers here, who are crying out for investment, just aren't getting it from banks who devote a whopping 3% of their activity to manufacturing investment. THAT is what has pushed the decline.

It's the latter, sadly. The decline of manufacturing in the UK has most of all to do with investment - and most of that is governed by the City banking sector, which Thatcher de-regulated with the 'Big Bang' in 1987. It set off a chain reaction that resulted in Britain's suffering the worst effects of the credit crunch. In some ways worse than that, though, her legacy was the stranglehold that British banks took on manufacturing here. Today, the City's investment in UK manufacturing accounts for a miniscule 3% of its activity. Which is why the manufacturing sector is constantly complaining about being driven out of business by the banks! The rest of the City's portfolio is in 'asset investment' (much of it commercial property), bonds, etc, and the clever financial instruments, like derivatives, that got us into this mess in the first place.

If you had been like Thatcher you'd have INCREASED public spending. Read a book once in while.

If you take goal difference as a predictor of form, then outside the top two it's Cardiff.

I doubt it. Mandaric has a face for artists who can't do faces.

Oh great, yet another thread for our resident scumbag closet racists to talk puerile rubbish.

Can't imagine any of the LE wanting to be in 'environmental health'.

You are honestly dumb enough to think that the international nature of PB's workplace is down to political correctness?

Where Rio has led, everyone else - including government ministers and Beckham - have followed, it seems.

I doubt it'll be you and the other window cleaner bob-a-jobs on here who imagine they're multinational corporate execs. So relax.

You wished on a piece of space junk. That's somehow appropriate.

Of course our wonderful entrepreneurs are also part of the dependency culture. The Guardian reported earlier this week how state-subsidised apprenticeships in private firms were being offered to 60 year olds, and how state-subsidised apprenticeships are being used to replace what had previously been full-paying jobs. So much of the private sector is now utterly dependent on (and is running/profiteering from) the public sector that the corporate dependency culture, pushing wages ever lower, is just getting out of hand. All of which contributes to the drive to hire people prepared to work for ever lower pay and conditions. Aka foreigners.

It might be more sensible for you to hold off a while, in the hope that those whom you sartorially admire so much might have less convincing witnesses against them, and their 'what, what n*gger' chant, than Duwayne Brooks. Actually the more I think about that comment of yours the sicker it sounds.

Surely this is the result of free enterprise.