Verbal

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.

This is actually wrong. The awfulness that is the north starts at the northern fringes of Regents Park, and the acceptable parts of Britain are mostly in a band between the park and the River Thames. Anything south of that is also dark and horrible - Southampton and Bonchurch excepted. This means our only real competitors are Chelsea (QPR, West Ham and Brentford being quarantined islands of crap.).

These bits are especially good: "Sacha Gaydamak's sale to Sulaiman Al Fahim, more front than Harrods but as much substance as an empty can of Coke, was the catalyst of the looming disaster, especially as the Russian still owns all the land around Fratton Park - and is owed more than half the total £60m debt. That Al Fahim was, in effect, a fraud - his claims simply not backed up and not a single bill paid during his short-lived spell at the helm - is now abundantly clear, although successor Ali Al Faraj does not have the cash required either." It's like they're living through our nightmare - the only difference being that whereas our flakes - like tommac, lifelongnit and HMR - never actually got their hands on the club, theirs did! History is repeated, first time as tragedy (because it really mattered), second time as farce.

And the owner is a certain Walter Mitty. That thing is ridiculous on so many levels.

You'll owe me £20 if you're wrong (which you will be, let's face it.)

The latter. No question!

And then be bought by lifelongskate.

Very likely, I'd have thought - at least as a 'hope'. The problem is, the PL will have to back up their hope with tens of millions of pounds to enable Pompey to trade their way to relegation.

"I want a change of air." Can't argue with that.

Well written.

How predictable. As I've said before, I would love to be convinced that the climate change scientific orthodoxy is wrong. However, every time some detractor is put up, it turns out he (and it's always a he) has no scientific credibility in the field, or is hopelessly corrupted by accepting the generous hand-outs from the oil industry...or, as in most cases, both. The carnival of cretins paraded on here and elsewhere as 'experts' do more to strengthen the orthodoxy than anything else.

This is acceptable.

Given the choice of reading one of your books or being imprisoned in an Iranian jail, I'd think about it.

These days, the charge of 'anti-Americanism' often comes from the least expected places. This, from the Huffington Post, is fairly representative of many comments on newspaper sites in the US: 'After this I would have to think long and hard before sending any child of mine abroad for study, scholarships or no scholarships. Regardless of guilt or innocence this entire trial has been nothing but a media circus. I can't help but thinking that this verdict was heavily influenced not by the evidence but by simmering anti-American sentiment.' And the evidence for this is – what exactly? But it isn't by any means a one-way street. Quite a few comments on the Fox News site (of all places!) take a more balanced view. Here's a pretty good one: 'This young woman had a year long trial. She had two top notch attorneys. If anything, this trial had more scrutiny than hundreds of others ever do. She lied repeatedly, accused an innocent man, her blood was found mixed with Meredith Kercher's in the bathroom sink. She has never apologized for her lies. Although she says the Italian police were mean, she had no bruises or cuts and scrapes. She certainly wasn't even interrogated for very long before she started making up stories. Knox was convicted of a crime - she is now a convicted murderer. Saying she was innocent doesn't make it so. No one could fathom the cruelty of a woman drowning her children to keep a boyfriend but it happened. Unless you were on the jury or watched the trial every day for the last 12 months, I cannot fathom how so many people can say this was a travesty of justice. Clinton's comments were impartial in that she would look it over, and she didn't commit to anything more than that.' The really weird thing is that it's in the more traditionally liberal media that the 'anti-American' charges are made the most stridently - especially in papers like the New York Times. And the term is used as a sort of equivalent of 'anti-Semitism', almost always when talking about Europeans. The idea that 'anti-Americanism' is always and everywhere an irrational knee-jerk expression of pure hatred, rather than a reasoned objection, has taken hold so strongly in papers like the NYT that it was inevitable that the Knox trial would be characterised in this way. Calls for mass boycotts of Italy and Italian goods have already started, and it'll probably get worse. How has Europe come to be seen as a threat by liberal elites in the US - and as a source of seething hatred towards the Land of the Free? I really have no idea. Maybe Borat’s the blame.