Verbal

There's a wonderful irony in the Football League's position that it can't act against Briatore yet because he is appealing the FIA's decision in the French High Court. That would be the very same kind of appeal that we should have had, if we'd wanted it. If the notoriously dictatorial FIA can accept that it is still subject to legal constraints, why couldn't the FL? What really ******es off a number of fans - in my opinion, DD! - was not that the penalty was right or wrong, but that the FL felt it had the leverage in our case to deny us the right of appeal that natural justice demands. The FL decided that it could not only make the decision, based on what it admitted at the time was an 'interpretation' of the rules, but that it could decide, unilaterally, that it did not have to defend or justify that decision in any way. It made itself, literally, above the law. And it did this by holding the club over a barrel about participation in the FL this season. That was outrageous - but typical of Mawhinney. When Bernie moves over, the FIA have a natural successor.

So it's my 'opinion' that Bates isn't the owner of Leeds United? That Briatore is in breach of the FL's rules about being banned from another sport? That Notts Co's ownership is concealed behind Qadbak, an offshore company - and this somehow passes the 'fit and proper test'? Again, why simply ignore what I wrote? And by the way, I made no comment on whether the penalty was deserved or not. I was making the case for Mawhinney being the same old manipulative schemer he was when he was a politician. If rules are rules, they should be applied consistently. He has signally failed to that.

So you're just ignoring the points I've made then?

But he still had to widen the scope of the rules to make it stick - and insist on denying Southampton the right of appeal. Hardly natural justice, is it? And if something is 'deserved', then surely that implies that Mawhinney be consistent. In which case, Bates would not still be at Leeds (for 'misremembering' that he's not actually the owner, despite claiming he was); Briatore would not still be at QPR (it seems an open-and-shut case under the FL's own rules that he should be banned from part-ownership of a FL club); and Notts County wouldn't still be getting away with the claim that their ownership is transparent, when in fact it's lost in a fog of tax-haven companies whose personnel were photographed last week doing deals in North Korea.) Mawhinney has been a disaster. Good riddance.

Quite.

A tricky problem for physics, Mr Smirk, until someone came up with this reasoning. If time traveller came back from the future to alter an event in some way, everything from that moment on would split off into a universe of its own. That universe alone - not ours - would include the altered event. Which is why, incidentally, we haven't met anyone from the future. Read Michio Kaku on parallel universes for the best explanation - but it's all down to the paradoxes of the quantum world we live in (or not)... Question is: is it possible to traverse these parallel universes in some way? That may be an explanation for the repeated failures at LHC. Confused? you will be.

Is he from the eleventh dimension?

At goalkeeping?

'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life'. This should be our national anthem. 'Life's a piece of sh!t When you look at it...' Always brings a tear to my eyes.

It was Leeds United away in my flash-forward. So you can take that as gospel.

No, he's definitely British - but left for New Orleans knowing that it would never suffer from anything remotely connected with climate change. And if it did, his mate George W would sort everything out.

Can we get back on topic please? We've reached the 'STFU' phase and I need to know the outcome.

Are you PFC's accountant?

I've been there too - while the LHC was under construction. While I was down in one of the caverns the Spanish constructors managed to tip over a three-storey crane. Someone or something really doesn't want that thing to fire up!

You're going to poke someone's eye out with that pointy head of yours.

Don't bring your hippy trippy stuff into this. This is a thread for real men in plaid shirts who tear up to a Welsh choir singing the Times crossword.

Yes, Bexy, that's exactly what happened.

More randyoldgit then? I always find the stress worse while listening to a game on the radio than actually being there. But yes, it's good to feel smug...

Are we just keeping this thread going to embarrass Eric?

They're searching for, among other things, the Higg's Bosun, a particle that only ever existed at or very near the beginning of time. Worries about what would happen if it were in effect re-produced led, for example, to the book version of Flashforward. Just a piece of clever science fiction of course - but some scientists seem spooked enough to have considered it to have some basis in science-reality.

While my mind is truly boggled by your lecture on posting etiquette, I don't see any problem with Matt-Le-Non-Existent-Deity's lists. You can, after all, pick and choose...

So every month we're going to have a 'guess whether the players get paid' competition? And someone, surely, is joking about the name of the solicitors, Fuglers - it just sounds like a name designed to avoid the swear filter.

How long is your nose right now?

They will thank you for wishing them well.

I think it's a false dichotomy. Any properly thought-through atheism does not depend on proving or disproving the existence of a god. 'Proof' is a scientific concept. You can't apply science to faith. (Not that it hasn't been tried, as the creationists and their close relatives, the intelligent designers attest.) The idea of a god is simply - to an atheist - uninteresting.