JackFrost

If the buy out happened my guess is they'd turn it into a tournament where they'd have the top 16 players from the PDC order of merit drawn against the top 16 players who don't play on the professional tour (amateur rankings or something similar) I'd have thought Hearn would have wanted familiar Lakeside faces and the best of the PDC there. (although both Ted Hankey and Martin Adams would quit darts if that happened i expect) It's all academic as any attempt from Hearn to buy out the BDO will be met with an "over my dead body" response from Olly Croft. I think what's more likely is that now Hearn has a foot in the door of the BBC, being on the world snooker board, he'll try and get a couple of PDC tournaments on the BBC.

Briatore's ban won't be lifted until the FIA have exhausted all their options of appealing.

Conservative Muslims would certainly tell you Islam4UK's interpretation of Islam is extremely right-wing

Both the Porto strikers Hulk and Falcao are pure class

had over a foot of snow overnight where I am just north of skatesmouth. People don't have to careful on the roads round this area cos their impassable. Most people wouldn't be able to get their cars out of their driveways anyway

On SSN I believe they said that the FIA were still saying that his lifetime ban still stood :confused: EDIT: Apparently a French court overturned the ban but the FIA say that this decision is not enforceable

Oh PDC definitely, The two codes are opposites of each other. The PDC caters for the elite and does very little for the up and coming darts players (although they are doing something about it after recently opening up one of many darts academies in Stockport), whereas the BDO has an excellent grass roots system but treats it's best players with utter contempt. Eric Bristow openly said the head of the BDO Olly Croft, tried to destroy the careers of himself, Phil Taylor, Dennis Priestley, and the 13 others who broke away in the early 90s. I really hope Hearn does buy the BDO out although I can't see it happening until Croft is in his coffin. The BDO is so outdated and amateurish on the BBC now it's an embarrassment and only a few days ago, one of the BDO players came on to the stage for his first round match almost certainly drunk. (There's a link on the other darts thread if you wanna see it) All the BDO now is now is a training academy where the best players graduate to the PDC. The BBC have a contract to broadcast the BDO 'World' Championship until 2013 and I can see the beeb having serious discussions on renewing their contract after that, especially when Barry Hearn has just been voted on to the World Snooker board and has been given a foothold in the BBC. . . . .

I'm just north of Skatesmouth and we're under at least a foot of snow here. Can't get into work and just had to clear a load of snow off the greenhouse to stop the roof collapsing under the weight of it

It's about my level also;) The very poor/mediocre games happen at the last 32 stage at the BDO, where with the PDC it's the last 64 or in the PDC Prelims. Worst game I ever saw was last year at the PDC World's, they had Akihiro Nakagawa from Japan and Warren French from New Zealand competing in the prelim round and they both averaged 54 in a first to 5 leg match (Fleet averaged 65 the other night) Both players had a complete nightmare, Nakagawa (for cultural reasons I suspect) couldn't cope with the crowd and it got worse when they started heckling, and French had double trouble, his scoring was ok but he missed something like 15-18 darts at a double in the first leg alone. It's common when one player to be so bad for the other to follow, but it was so poor Sky didn't even show the second half of the match. A different Japanese player called Haruki Muramatsu qualified this year, convincingly beat his prelim opponent and was unlucky not to take more than one leg off an on form Ronnie Baxter in the last 64. Muramatsu averaged 84 against Baxter which matched a lot of the English players who qualify for the PDC world championship, never mind BDO. They got some half decent players in far east Asia/Oceania

When it's icy it's amazing how slow a speed you can drift. I went round a corner at 7mph near my house and the back end stepped out. 'Powersliding' in slow motion.

He's played in major tournaments before and on big stages before, he actually played in the 2007 PDC World's, and was nowhere near as bad as that. He was either drunk or was having a very prolonged panic attack

Agreed, it's lack of driving talent that is the biggest killer. Speed is safe when controlled in the right circumstances.

I can't tell u how many times I've got stuck behind people doing 40 in a 60mph zone, the speed limit has gone down to 30 and the person has continued going along at the same speed of 40mph. One of which went straight through a red light and ploughed into the side of a bus right in front of my eyes. Of course there are plenty of mindless idiots who regularly exceed the speed limits but there are also plenty of people driving cars who passed their test decades ago and have very little or no sense of speed, distance or potential danger on today's roads. Of course it is always better to be cautious than aggressive, but some drivers are far too cautious and are anxious about going quicker than 40-45mph on any road, and in some situations being this cautious can be as dangerous as driving too aggressively.

Fleet was ****ed out of his skull. The BDO should never have been let him on the stage. It was a disgrace, the match was the 'Not the Nine O'Clock News' sketch part 2

Yeah and his dastardly plan to destroy Southampton FC for ever and ever, was thwarted once and for all FYI: Lowe ****ing up Stoneham and having to be bailed out by Southampton City Council was one of my many criticisms Dear me you really do have a vendetta against the man don't you? Of course I far prefer Liebherr and Cortese (thus far) to Lowe, I am a big critic of Lowe and have been for a very long time. But to imply the club's failings in the last 10 years is all down to Lowe and he was "all bad" is very delusional. Michael "we got our club back" Wilde did more damage to this club than Lowe. But no, not one mention of Wilde, Crouch, Askham etc.etc. It's all Lowe's fault, I bet you blamed Lowe last time you burnt your dinner in the oven.

I'm not optimistic about this happening here. if this got enforced the price of a new car would go down 5% and we slowly put up and the road tax would go down and then be hiked up slowly again to match what it was. It'll just turn into another stealth tax.

Mark Bright does irritate me, he almost isn't a commentator he seems to think he's a teacher teaching the players how to play the game.

Yeah so useless he appointed Strachan and kept us in the PL for as long as he did off the TV money. I am a million miles from being a Lowe Luvvie, as I recognise that the bloke's pure arrogance and appauling decisons at crucial times more than undid some of the good work he did ove the years. To say he was all bad is very delusional. Wilde did more damage to this club than Lowe.

Last night's was pretty good, back to the conventional stuff. I don't know about anything else but the two main moans I have about current TG is that it seems to be very bad at 'parodying', the Renault Twingo test when they pointlessly smashed it up what's the point???? and also there's too much staged slapstick humour. I really enjoy some of their "cheap car challenges" and IMO it's the contrasting personalities of the 3 presenters which makes the genuinely funny humour. It's when the beeb try and artificially add to it and take it to far when it just gets annoying. There's been far too much of it in later series.

The split in darts (see wikipedia) is a good piece to read In the PDC I believe by an large the top 40 are all full time professionals and earn over 40k annually before costs , in the BDO I don't believe there are any. (except Trina Gulliver who plays in the segregated women's tournament) Basically the BDO is run by old farts who are stuck in the 80s, the commentator Tony Green (the worst commentator ever who makes a gaffe every 5 mins literally) and Martin Fitzmaurice (the old fat bloke who shouts 'Let's play darts') are two of the top officials and the top man Olly Croft himself has said himself he doesn't own any player a professional living out of darts. How they can call the BDO World Championships a 'professional' tournament is hilarious. Also this year in the 'world' championships there are 32 players as always, 6 players from Cheshire, 20 are English and only 6 players are from outside the UK and one of them is from Republic of Ireland. However the standard by and large between the two codes isn't generally the gulf in class you might think. The PDC is the higher quality but it's a 10-15% gap, although it's getting greater every year. There are are a few world class players in the BDO, Adams, O'Shea, Fitton etc. but they either won't move to the PDC because they are prejudiced 80s relics and/or have no respect for the PDC (Adams and Hankey) or they can't afford to. (O'Shea, Fitton) The BDO coverage is so dated it's embarrasing and with the standard getting poorer every year it's thought that eventually the PDC chairman Barry Hearn will buy them out. (He's already made one attempt.) It's thought that it costs around 15k a year to do the full PDC Pro Tour and to enter PDC tournaments can cost 10 times higher than the BDO. Although obviously there is far more money to be won in the PDC. Taylor who has totally dominated 2009 has won £1.1 million pounds in prize money. Since the split in darts there has been an almighty exodus to the PDC of all the world's best players and this has never been stronger than now. The Sky PR will tell you the BDO is the "amateur tour" and the PDC is the "professional tour", and this is getting increasingly justified with the poorer quality the BDO World's. The BDO only have 32 players in their tournament where the PDC have 64, plus prelim games between players from places like Japan, Guyana etc.etc Being a sad statistician :wink: the 3 dart average for the BDO last 32 is 84.13, in the PDC last 32 it's 91.38. Not a gulf in class but an ever widening gap. As for the Premier League, it's the top 6 in the PDC order of merit (Taylor, Barney, Wade, Jenkins, Baxter and King) and I have inside knowledge that the two wildcards are almost certainly Gary Anderson and Simon Whitlock. EDIT: Whitlock is confirmed http://www.pdc.tv/page/PremierLeagueDetail/0,,10180~1923073,00.html

He'll be gone soon if he hasn't gone already, Pardew doesn't rate him

Yet another loan to pay the player's wages. The only this can get better is if Carol Vorderman knocks on the boardroom door and recommends someone to help them out

and what are they exactly supposed to do even if they do know? It takes many years to make an extremist willing to murder innocent civilians and many more years to have a hope in hell of "re-educating" them. As long as we're invading and having a military presence in Muslim dominated countries, the production line of poison fed extremist "Muslims" will go on and on.

What a ridiculous post. In the 80s a lot of football stadiums were outdated (Hillsborough was considered to one of the most modern in those days) back then and needed a massive face lift due to the explosion of popularity of football and increasing attendances during the previous decade. The problem was exacerbated when the FA brought in ill-informed quick fix 'solutions' to deal with repeated pitch invasions, measures which were on-the-whole either unworkable in practise or in the case of Hillsborough, severely compromised the safety of the stadia. It was a disgusting scandal and an utter tragedy that it took football fans being killed for the authorities to stop trying to use sticking plasters to fix a potential and as we know subsequent, preverbial nuclear meltdown. It was a nationwide debate in '85 when around 60 fans got killed at Valley Parade when a cigarette got dropped and not put out properly. The Hillsborough Disaster was the last of many straws. The stadiums today like St Mary's are centuries ahead in terms of safety from when Hillsborough happened. As tragic as the Hillsborough disaster was, there's no doubt the measures taken because of it have avoided god knows how many deaths and injuries over the years when things have got hairy in a crowded stadium. Comparing totally non-important inconveniences i modern stadia with Hillsborough '89 is disgusting

Absolute rubbish. Ironic that the BNP and Extremist Muslims use almost identical methods to get their points across.