JackFrost

I think his best reason for why the 2013 Budget couldn't be trusted was because Osborne travelled on a train with the wrong ticket. He's a total waste of space.

I spoke to a couple of friends today, one's Lithuanian and the other is Russian. They largely confirmed my suspicions of the situation. Both were delighted at the results of the Crimean referendum and both can't believe how the story is being reported over here. You've got MPs from all sides of the UK Parliament claiming the referendum is illegal/illegitimate and done "in the shadow of Russian guns" whilst European MEPs and the international observers who observed the referendum are saying it was free, fair and within international law. The whole thing boils down to Putin demonstrating that Russia is a world power, and showing the US/UK/EU are completely powerless to stop or police them. The sanctions we imposed recently were absolutely pathetic (Rifkind all but said so himself in Parliament a couple of days ago) and apparently half of the individuals whose overseas assets we've supposedly frozen. . . don't actually have any assets overseas or anywhere where we can freeze them. Putin's f**ked the western world off and we're actually spending our entire time obsessing about spewing meaningless rhetoric and making it look like we're doing something, whilst doing precisely nothing. If Putin saw the Ukraine debate in the UK parliament the other day, it must have been the funniest thing he's seen in years

LOL at you trying to get a bite.

LOL at you trying to get a bite. Anyway back to the subject, 52 is certainly no age - he was younger than me.

As far as trolls go, you are an unusual one

Vietnamese planes have apparently spotted two large oil slicks, thought to be from the missing plane

Anyone see that "I'm not a racist, but" bloke on Question Time last night? He said he was homeless, jobless and applied for over 100 jobs and got nowhere. He then made an issue of an immigrant at some official office or other telling him (as an indigenous Brit) that he had nowhere to live. After he finished he put his coat on and walked out, I don't know whether security chucked him out or he left voluntarily. It was one of those moments that was almost amusing and depressing at the same time. A guy moaning about how hard it was to get a job, how no-one he was applying to were even bothering to reply and how all the immigrants had taken the jobs, whilst being completely oblivious that he was demonstrating why he's totally unemployable at the same time.

. . .and the usual trolls take over the thread

In your opinion. You are obviously someone who'll patronise anyone who doesn't support neo-con U.S Presidents to try and provoke a reaction then

Because it's their job. You don't honestly think they'd enjoy doing it, or being associated with those two do you?

Because even c***s have human rights. That's not a very intelligent comment. You seem to have this strange idea the defence lawyers are defending these two because they condone their actions or share their beliefs or something similar. LOL if anything I feel sorry for the poor sods who got lumbered trying to defend those two. Their entitled lawyers by British law and that's not decided by anyone's personal feelings of them, and history has repeatedly shown thank **** that is the case. Why? That's exactly what they'd want. They'd consider themselves martyrs for their cause and the news coverage would be used for extremist propaganda. Having to rot in jail for the rest of their lives is probably the best outcome.

That would ring alarm bells with me. When you have the situation when numerous people fall out with the same boss independently, the problem is usually the boss and not all the former department heads/team leaders as individuals, in the individual situations they've had. I've come across a few bosses that are a complete waste of time to work for, the killer combination is when their terrible at their job and genuinely think they are never wrong.

Then they would play each other. In a neutral country it'd be far easier to keep rival fans separate with a large police presence. That would create an absolutely ludicrous precedent. For example Israel would switch to the Asian qualifying zone and qualify for the world cup each time by barely playing a match, considering practically none of the neighbouring Arab countries recognise Israel as a sovereign state.

FIFA are strictly neutral when it comes to individual countries' politics Because they might be at war (Russia/Georgia in previous years), the two countries might not recognise each other as countries (North/South Korea) or the people might hate each other due to historical events (I think Armenia and Azerbaijan have been kept apart since the Soviet Union collapsed) They made the mistake of letting Bosnia and Serbia compete in the same qualifying group a while back and the crowds spent most of both games hurling flares and other missiles at each other.

So what? We're out the cup, get used to it

I've seen quite a bit of it surprisingly. Found the ice hockey good to watch, the snowboarding and the skeleton/luge From what I saw this morning the curling is worth watching just to see the Russian ladies team. . .

His last few PL games prove you wrong. The whole team was disinterested today from the manager down. No way anyone can be wholly judged on today's shambles.

Got exactly what we deserved from the line-up. For whatever we clearly were never interested in this tournament

Yoshida's been our best CB since Lovren has been out. If anything I'd have been more worried if it had been Fonte & Hooiveld. That's nothing against Jose, it's just Maya has at least played with Hooiveld more. Jos is League 1 standard at best and him being in the starting line-up in any game for us is a massive risk

This morning I had the pleasure of reading this write up of the Pompey 0-1 Torquay game in the Portsmouth University newspaper. http://www.galleonnews.com/2014/02/portsmouth-0-torquay-1-portsmouth-come-up-short-in-relegation-battle-against-torquay/ I did wonder if "Jayden Stockely" and "Ben Chorely" were players they'd signed in the last couple of days, but the funniest bit I thought was near the end "Boss rang out around Fratton Park at the final whistle, with Pompey now only three points above the relegation zone having played a game more than many of their relegation rivals" No that isn't a typo, we all know they never boo their own players

Think he deserves a thread of his own. Another very solid performance tonight and has shown himself to be a more than capable backup for Lovren in the last few games. Since he's come in we've conceded 4 goals in 5 games in all competitions, which isn't bad considering many on here were putting him in the same category as Hooiveld. In the last 2-3 games it's arguable that he's been our best CB. How Jos was continously being preferred to him earlier in the season god only knows.

One day someone will have to go through the entirety of this thread and put a compilation of your best posts in a book

I considered Maya to be a far better player than Hooiveld soon after he joined the club 18 months ago. When it comes to the PL overall Maya is a solid jobber where Jos is completely out of his depth unless he's at the very top of his game. I was very surprised when Hooiveld was our first-choice backup earlier in the season. I'm baffled now.

Why we persisted with Hooiveld as backup CB for so long is beyond me. There were quite a few including me who considered Maya a far better player, once he had match practice

Taken from the BBC "Southampton's purchase of Dani Osvaldo hasn't exactly gone to plan, but at least they are not losing money on the volatile Italian. Juventus have confirmed that the loan deal "also includes the option, to be exercised before 13 May, for the purchase of the player's full registration rights at a price of 19 million euros, to be paid over the course of three years". That deal would be worth £15.6m to Southampton and the reigning Serie A champions will pay his wages in full during the loan. That is good business, you have to say..."