sadoldgit

We have no divine right to be in any division and are currently a Div 1 (3) club - hopefully soonish to be a CCC club again. So long as the club give it their best shot we shouldn't complain where we are and just be thankful there is still a club to support. If and when we get to the Premiership the plastic fans will come out of the woodwork again..oh joy...

Another excellent result and all credit to Pardew and the lads. No doubt he will still have people calling for his head when we lose again though.

The Bank?

Certainly they don't seem to understand anything about football and are only happy with the revoling door mentality with managers. They seem to have forgotten that a change of manager can make things worse just as it could make things better (JP and Woote for example). By any standards we have had a decent season after what has gone before, but there is no pleasing some people. I bet if we are 2nd for most of next season the Usual Suspects will be calling for Pardew's head because we are not top. Steve Bruce found the same with a bunch of morons at Birmingham. What is really worrying is that Cortese might well have the Alpine mentality and ditch Pardew if we don't win every single game next season. Someone needs to sit down with him over the Summer and explain how football works.

I know you get off on failure and sacking people, but where exactly by sticking with a manager show lack of ambition? If that was the case then surely the Board should have sacked McMenemy when, not only did he take us down but he failed to get us back up for 3 seasons. We have won a cup and without the -10 we would be in the play off places...no ambition? Utter b*ll*cks. Pardew has show plenty of ambition and if given time will get us promoted. Sacking him next Christmas unless there has been a complete disaster would be stupid. Anyway, given eh season we have had why are we even talking about sacking him FFS??? Oh yes, I remember, we beat Charlton yesterday - another "top" club we have turned over, so lets talk about getting shot of Pardew. You couldn't make this up.

One of the few I have respected over the years was David Owen. Vey level headed and spoke a lot of sense. He belived that cabinets should be formed of thebest people for the job i.e. perhaps a Chancellor from the Lib Dems, Home Sectretary from the Tories etc. Adverserial politics is very destructive. Once the country has voted all parties should pull together for the good of the country. WE also nedd to chaneg the voting system so that the Parliament respesents votes caste.

Did he really shake up the music industry? Maybe for about 5 minutes and then it was business as usual. I think he took on awful lot of credit for things that happened around him and there was a very good piece in the Times yesterday about what a poor manager he was. Still, a very colourful character all the same. RIP.

The book I mentioned earlier (The Only Planet of Choice) is supposed to have benn "channelled" from a highre being over a period of time. It talks about how some forms with different vibrational speeds have learnt to travel without craft. It could be a load of old tosh but it does address all of the questions you can think of and more about why we are here, what is going on in the Universe etc. Some of the concepts are quite difficult to grasp from our current viewpoint and that is why you need to suspend disbelief and go with it. As as been said earlier, this tells us that they are indeed already here and did come in the past to interact with humans. As I say, could be a load of tosh but it does make fascinating reading and does open your mind up to new possibilities.

WE are definately still very tribal and I agree that it would take something huge to pull us all togther, like coming into contact with another extra terristial life form. To an advanced life form I think we would be very scray as we are still quite primitive in the way that we organise our lives. We are still very warlike, despite the catastrophes of the 1st and 2nd WWs there has been armed conflict somewhere on the planet ever since. Can you imagine if we sent a probe to a planet and saw the population killinmg and raping each other on a regular basis...would we be keen to make contact? Perhaps, if they are out there, they are waiting for us to get our act together before making full on contact?

Sorry I don't understand you. I am pro immigratation but controlled immigration. There is a huge racist issue going on in the immigartion debate and that is what I am against. How is that either mental or mad - unless you hate "Johnny Foreigners"?

Surely you will only know if your vote counts for anything once all the votes have been counted? Bit like the X Factor. If you don't vote, you have NO chance of making your voice heard.

If they have been observing us for any length of time they will know that we are a very dangerous race and are probably very wise to keep their distance! Having said that, some aliens (Greys I think) are supposed to be living and working with the Americans so who knows... There are some fasinating books on this whole thing...my favourite being "The Only Planet Of Choice" by Phyllis Schlemmer. It talks about Alien interaction with humans and is a good read. You would need to keep an open mind whn reading it.

Interesting debate about jobs and "immigrants". Did you see the programme on a while ago where the Brits were workshy and the "immigrants" got on with what they needed to do? By the way, we are all techically "immigrants". The USA, Australia, the UK, we all became what we are through immigration. We opened the doors to mass immiration in the 50's and brought in people who were prepared to do the jobs that the Brits didn't fancy. Pretty much the same is happening now with Eastern Europenas doing what the West Indians did. By the way, the incoming figures need to be balance with the outgoing. Plenty of people emmigate too. There is a debate to be had on immigration control, but a sensible debate based on facts and not the racist scare mongering that the BNP perpetrate. Okay, so the major parties have not covered themselves in glory, but to give your vote to a racists outfit on that basis is chilling. Apart from what they will do with immigration (deportation?) can you imagine them let loose on the economy and other major issues? God help us.

Couldn't agree more. He is a typical bully and can't deal with it when he gets played at his own game! It would have been sweeter if Robben had scored in 6 minutes of added on Fergie time but I am still a happy this morning and please some "new" teams are invloved.

I used to spend time with a spiritual healer who had lots of interesting theories about our past. I know a lot of people will scoff at the legend of Atlantis but there is a fascinating theory that they were much further advanced than we are and used more ecologicaly sound forms of energy. She also talked about the early Eygptian pharohs as coming from the stars (one had an elongated head like many pics of aliens) and that the pyrmaids of Giza point to the point in the constellation of Orion where these beings came from. Shame we don't have a real Tardis yet!

Pardew is an experienced manager. He knows what he needs to do and is quite obvioulsy getting there. sadly not as fast as some would like, or is probably possible given the way that transfer windows work. I don't buy this "distracted by cups" line. Many teams have good cup runs when they are also fighting to win their leagues and you don't hear them complaining. Personally I think the more successful your are in more competitions the better for all involved in the club. I just hope that Pardew doesn't read these threads. I don't think that any reasonable fan can complain at the overall job he has done whilst here. We are competitive again, have actually won something at Wembley and I have no doubt that we shall be one of the teams to beat next year. TP spend time judging him on next season before we have finsished this is a bit harsh isn't it? After the manager merry go rounds we have had I find it very odd that some now have decided he should go at some point next season before his team have kicked a ball if we aren't home and dry by Christmas. Surely from what he has done so far he deserves better than that?

There is also an arguement that we ourselves are "aliens" and that life started here having hitched a ride from elsewhere in the Universe on a lumps of rock.

It would seem incredible to me that there would not be more advanced and less advanced life forms out there. If I was a more advanced life form and I had been observing this planet for any length of time I would be very wary of humans and would probably want to study a few in a lab! Thing is, quite reasonably, we tend to think in terms of what we would do in any given situation. How could we possibly imagine what another life form, espcially one that had worked out how to traverse the huge distances in space in a vastly superior way to ours, would make of us?

It is a thorny issue...where does someone human rights start and anothers end? Whilst I agree that people who perpetrate "uncivilised" acts on others do needed to be treated differently. I also still believe that in a civilised society they should still be afforded "civilised" capitivity. As for extemists of any persuasion (and in the Middle East some would see "The West" as being Extemists) the you could argue that those people of that persuasion ate intolerant. I know it comes down to who is doing the defining (such as pon ema's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter) but all we can do as individuals is deal with what is on our doorstep and elect a Government to deal with the bigger issues. I do believe in freedom of speech and as long as people do not break the law then it is fine for them to say what they like. It was good that the BNP had a platform on Qurstion Time because, if there was any doubt what is really going on there, hopefully it was dispelled. After what the world went through in the last century though I find it hard to believe that some "rational" people think it is a good idea to give them their vote. But that is just what I think. I am happy that I live in what is most is mostly tolerant society and that etremists of any persuasion are in the minority. I hope that situation does not change and I hope the BNP do not manage to pull the wool over the eyes of decent, tolerant people.

Who gets to decide whether people "deserve" them or not??? Sounds chilling like something from the 1930's!!! As for the BNP and rights, I don't think that should apply to parties who want to deny others rights. Hasn't history taught us that? We did pick and chose when it came to the Nazis, the the Facists in Italy etc.

We did tolerate them until they violated Poland, it is true. There is always a point at which you make a stand. For some it will be too soon, for others too late. As with the Middle East, at what point is it "right" to interfere with another sovereign state? We have the luxury of hindsight of course, but there we many who could see the evil of the Nazi Party as it was growing within its own boundaries and who left Germany for more tolerant societies. As for the buffer, yep, Churchill was not fan of Stalin's either but considered him the lesser of two evils - some choice eh?

I don't think it matters about your maths, what ever figure we put on it will be a guess. And that is only in our own dimension. As someone said the other day, the thought that we are the only life forms in the Universe is just as amazing as there being many others.

You are right, and there is a huge difference between our divison and the Premiership. They would be buying a player of potential who is far from the finished aricle and someone, who like Surman, might find the Premiership a step too far right now - he may never make it at that level.

I think you are probably right, but it is sad that the disaffected don't give their vote to something like the Green Party rather than a bunch of ignorant racists. A lot of disaffected Germans gave their vote to Hitler and probably lived to regret it.

Probably not but there is a huge difference between tolerance and not tolerating the behaviour of people of a certain belief. Should we have tolerated the Nazis for example? I don't think it is unreasonable to say that every human being ought to have the same rights on this planet. Just because you were born in a certain place doesn't give you a right to dictate what other people's rights are. Why should any one tolerate intolerance?