Verbal

If FM says stewards were issued with photos to ID Echo staff, I'd be inclined to believe him, given his inside knowledge. But as you say, a search like this would hardly be foolproof. The larger issue is that the longer there isn't an explanation from the club, the more your position just seems like an attempt to close down the argument. In any case, I'd expect some kind of statement from the club tomorrow - any smart media management would dictate that. The club will have to address what seems on the face of it a bit of problem. The embargo appears to have been applied only to the Echo - and, worse, seems to have been imposed only after the Echo approached the club for comment on the plans. This isn't how embargoes work. They are applied at some point before the point at which information is released - in this case, either when the planning application is made, or when the council nominates the time and day that it makes the application public. You certainly don't announce embargoes after other media - including the BBC and even TSW - have covered the story extensively. If it turns out that the club did exactly this, and placed the embargo only for the BBC, etc., to break it, then fine - except that there still has to be an explanation as to why the Echo was singled out for sanctions and not the Beeb - and us! Either way, this is all an unhealthy situation, and both the club and the paper should move quickly to resolve it. It's all very well for a selfish few on here to say f**k the Echo, but there are people out there for whom it is their means of following the club. And it does hurt people. The photographers, for example, by following the club's apparent diktat (if this was the case) that they couldn't sell their pictures to the Echo would have lost income. Plus there's the issue of how the sponsors might feel about it, etc, etc. Everyone loses in the end. Expect it all to be resolved within the next week.

Just curious. Did you know FF was a Saints supporter?

Best antivirus? A mac. Never had antivirus on any of my Apples and never had a problem.

See above.

Leeds. For all the reasons brought up again by The Damned United. I keep trying to block out that crushing but horribly, nastily arrogant demolition of Saints by Bremner's ugly team.

How about both sides of this argument agree that the sooner the ban is lifted the better?

How strange that the swear filter didn't catch that.

You really wouldn't want your football club to fall into the ownership of a property company called, 'Reduce', would you?

But do you not see the smallest irony in the club banning the Echo then not talking to the press about why one of them is banned? Cortese has media advice, and I'm sure this will be sorted out quickly. I doubt very much that there is a 'smoking gun' - some huge offence for which the Echo is responsible beyond the perceived sleight of failing to honour a post-dated embargo. But we'll see... The reality is that everyone loses with the banning - the club, sponsors, supporters, and of course the paper. Clearly, we can't have a situation where Southampton, uniquely, is a city where football reporting by the main newspaper is verboten. That's just silly.

So England drew the 1966 World Cup Final then?

The ever-reliable Ben Goldacre has a very perceptive deconstruction of the psychological profile of a climate denier in today's Guardian. Goldacre - the author of 'Bad Science' - is no friend of flabby, poorly constructed scientific claims. So if anyone was going to provide a popular account of how the climate change orthodoxy is wrong, it would be him. Far from it. I'd advise St George not to read. It'll put a serious dent in his day. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/12/bad-science-goldacre-climate-change

It'll be there.

Amazed that you think they can't - and it's not 'immaterial' that other media outlets had covered the story. As trivial and local as this all is, it wouldn't be much of a banner for press freedom if it read: 'If someone says a newspaper can't print a story, then it can't.' Follow that all the way up the food chain to the nationals, and you'd have a situation where a government spin doctor gets uppity (as they always do) because a story is broken early or not told in the 'approved' manner - and the spin doctor has some sort of moral right to get his or her way. Of course, there are probably some decent reasons for the club wanting to be careful about this. There are local sensitivities to consider - not least the objectors, one of whom had her legal rights (under the Data Protection Action) trampled on by the local council. This is, in other words, the kind of thing that can blow up in your face. And however ineptly the Echo has handled its response to the banning, it could equally be argued that the club should have anticipated this by pulling any announcement up to around the time of the submission to the council. Either way, it's still a pretty trivial thing - and I'd expect differences to be buried in a week or so.

We're not 'divided' - don't be over-dramatic. It's just a difference of opinion being argued sensibly. And why the abuse? 19C surely has a point - it's just not the same as yours.

It's a pretty clear implication from that article that Storrie is only there because they can't afford severance package. They're hoping he walks. What a wonderland that place must be right now.

'If I gave customers what they wanted, I'd have given them faster horses.' Henry Ford.

Mr God, you're taking this way too seriously. Embargoes are part of a perennial battle between organisations and media to set the agenda. We had a good example of this yesterday and this morning. Film critics from the nationals were all invited to a press screening of Avatar yesterday afternoon, by the Murdoch-owned 20th Century Fox. As they went in, the critics all had to sign an agreement that they wouldn't publish a review until Monday. And yet the embargo was broken almost immediately - by The Times, another Murdoch possession. All the others followed suit - with The Guardian actually detailing the terms and conditions of the embargo they broke! Lesson? It happens. It really doesn't matter a whole lot. Even good people get worked up, but then quickly calm down.

I do wonder whether climate sceptics aren't their own worst enemies. Why do they all have to be such hopeless buffoons? http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/dec/11/monckton-calls-activists-hitler-youth

So assuming they're all cashed in/absent/released, could you name a first team? Could you even HAVE a first team? ('You' not being you, obviously!)

Dead right. It seems every time Pompey send out a cheque, however small, it's accompanied by a press release celebrating the fact. (although I wonder if they're being issued on their Barclays account...)

The Notts County crisis deepens. This could turn into a huge scandal that will damage the reputations of the FL and Mawhinney, who have failed to respond to a litany of national newspaper headlines warning that Qadbak was about as suspicious an offshore company as it's possible to be. The supporters' trust no doubt feel foolish that they were duped, but they could have done with a bit of judicious advice from the FL. Instead, they rubber-stamped a takeover that amounted, it seems, to a straightforward act of deception that robbed Notts Co supporters of the entire value of their shareholding - and, remarkably, got them to pay off club debts ahead of the takeover! http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/dec/11/notts-county-john-armstrong-holmes

Nicola - a word of perhaps unwanted advice. You have your job to do - and I don't know anyone who thinks other that you're doing it brilliantly. The Echo, for all its faults, has its job to do too. Sometimes that will annoy you. But when this happens, isn't it best to take a deep breath, count to ten, say you're unhappy, even - then move on?

And so it goes on... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1234911/Sell-bust-Manager-Avram-Grant-unload-star-players-January-save-Portsmouth-administration.html So if Pompey are going to have to sell players in January, as well as lose a fifth of their first team to the Africa Cup of Nations, who the hell is going to turn up in the Prem, apart from James?

Notts County could well be the next club to hit the buffers, or fall into the hands of a yet another cynical profiteer, thanks to the appalling FL attitude to 'fit and proper' tests and its own regulatory framework. Sven is walking amidst suspicions that he was duped - promised shares in a mining company said to be worth almost 100 billion, but actually worth £60,000. (My heart bleeds.) Meanwhile, Munto (or the offshore company Qadbak), look like walking away with £3 million, made from shares they were literally given by the supporters' trust just a few months ago, on what they thought were cast-iron guarantees to transform the club into a premiership contender. It is, it seems to me at least, an appalling act of theft carried out under the noses of a willfully blind FL. £3mill is not a bad return from an investment in nothing much more than a few months' worth of malign promises. Thanks heavens for Markus. And thanks heavens Mawhinney is leaving the FL. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/football_league/article6952537.ece

I know this may confuse you and your mini-me, but this does not actually have anything whatsoever to do with atmospheric chemistry.