TopGun

Paterson is much bigger than Brett. Will be a real centre forward when he fills out in the Shearer mould.

Huzzah... well played the lads! Shame about other results though.

I oce paid Portillo £500 to write an article for a magazine I was editing. The rate was about double the standard rate but he said he needed the money!! And then he sent the bloody piece in handwritten in fountain pen on about 30 notelet pages. I thought he might have managed to get the piece typed up with some of the £500.

The most common shady dealing comes when somebody runs two or more teams simultaneously and spends £500000 on a crock of crap from the other team thus raising funds for the team he wants to actually use. It's pretty obvious when it happens though and dodgy transfers can be reported. Then the person involved is banned and the teams become bots.

I got 53 MPG between Kent and Manchester.

I drove a Prius last week for the first time. Very strange sensation as it has no gears to shift up and down, just an electric motor supplemented by petrol. Felt like a hovercraft might to drive. Not keen on the accelerator either, very spongy. I have to say I wouldn't buy an electric car until it feels better to drive than the Prius. Very well appointed though.

I just worked out who Jack Tweed is. Personally I don't give a shyte as none of the upcoming moronic tabloid stuff will affect me. Neither do I buy Hello or OK. I could be on a submarine really. If it somehow does something for cancer research, then Goody has done something worthwhile, eventually.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7903172.stm Virgin Group boss Sir Richard Branson has backed state bail-outs for failing banks but said similar rescues should not be offered to other industries. He said the government should make sure banks kept small businesses afloat to prevent the recession having a "horrendous knock-on effect". But "companies need to stand on their own two feet, and the weak ones need to go to the wall", Sir Richard said. He said the downturn could be the worst in Virgin Atlantic's 25 years. Sir Richard told BBC News that there had been four major downturns in the airline's lifetime, adding: "I suspect this is the worst downturn that we have seen." "Britain is one of the worst-affected countries in the world," he said. "I think that the government are right in trying to make sure that the banks are secure. "And they have got to actually go even further to make sure that those banks keep middle-sized and small companies afloat, so that it [the recession] doesn't have a horrendous knock-on effect. "I think they are doing the best to do that." The government has pumped billions of pounds into failing UK banks. But Sir Richard said he did not think there should be similar rescues for other industries. "I don't think they [the government] should go further. "I think other companies need to stand on their own two feet, and the weak ones need to go to the wall." Totally right.

I had a long but fascinating Friday. Up at 6am in Manchester to travel to Kent for a meeting at the Scottish Power owned Dam Head Creek gas-fired 800MW power station at 11am. Good look about that power station. Observations: Quite quiet even though it is air cooled rather than water (think old VW beetles). Adjacent Kingsnorth power station nicks all the allowable water that can be taken and returned to the Medway. Had a look about land alongside where Scottish Power want to build a second station of 1,000MW. Observations: It has a good chance of consent as there are few insurmountables in the planning process. Bird life to be considered though. Visuals from all surrounding villages no more than current (I drove around the area villages for miles around). You should see how tall the Kingsnorth stack is! Anything else close is really insignificant. And gas stacks are about 1/3 the height and width of coal stacks as a rule. And half emissions for an equivalent output. Wandered over the road (literally) to the controversial E-On coal fired Kingsnorth power station site and had a chat with them. Observation: They are trickling down the life of the current power station as they a) have to conform with EU regs to limit coal station power hours from 2015 and b) recognise climate change philosophy. Obviously they want to build a new coal power plant alongside with possible CCS ability (unproven at scale and hence the hassle). Government competition underway for a demo. Kingsnorth are in the running. Fascinating day overall. Makes me laugh at George and Stanley even more though having chatted with so many practical scientists today at the sites who are fore square behind the dangers of CO2 emissions to the planet. The argument they put forward is energy security is also important. I discussed it over canteen sandwiches with them! No denial of Al Gore though.

Not right. At times Denmark has so much windpower going on it actually exports much of the power to its neighbours. There was a similar instance in Spain last week when fairly high winds swept across the country for a few days. Why would power usage suddenly increase because there is more capacity available? People still have to pay for it, no matter what its source is. All that happens is powerstations become no longer 100% baseload but drop their output so that they supplement wind output rather than being the primary source. The only way that TDD could be conceivably right (and I doubt it is the case) is if Denmark and Germany had an agreement. Germany would switch off its worst coal polluters and buy Danish wind. Denmark would continue to use its less polluting gas fired plants. But that sounds too complicated.

Exactly. I can't be arsed to argue with George or Stanley on this any more! Off to view a field in Kent tomorrow that may become a 1,000MW gas-fired power plant! No doubt George is off to study some more crackpot navel gazers :-)

Swifts or Swallows.

Anyway Saint George, you were previously blundering on about how Obama woudn't be eligible for president as he was not natural born to the USA etc... And you call me a "wackjob"? Once again your spelling lets your ridiculous contentions down and makes you look wholly foolish. What's new?

But it is inevitable in the long run. Countries like Cuba have not benefited from state control overall. And in any case scams occur. It's arguable that places in the middle east are actually vaguely socialist as the people get a form of equality if not voting rights. Like Orwell. But they have oil cash to back it up. Venezuala is obviously the most interesting socialist state currently being oil rich and in the US back yard.

A pilot.

The fish and chip ones just taste like scampi fries. Which is good as I can't find scampi fries anywhere and I need to breathe on someone.

In my experience Bristol manages to kick off on its own at closing time. Despite obvious CCTV in the centre.

If you had paid attention previously George you would know that I work with energy interests. Not all windmills as you put it either. I'm surprised anything dawns on you George. From the pinko Beeb http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7890988.stm I don't know about this fellow btw but thought it would give you denial rabbits more to chew on. The severity of global warming over the next century will be much worse than previously believed, a leading climate scientist has warned. Professor Chris Field, an author of a 2007 landmark report on climate change, said future temperatures "will be beyond anything" predicted. Prof Field said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report had underestimated the rate of change. He said warming is likely to cause more environmental damage than forecast. Speaking at the American Science conference in Chicago, Prof Field said fresh data showed greenhouse gas emissions between 2000 and 2007 increased far more rapidly than expected. "We are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything that we've considered seriously in climate policy," he said. Prof Field said the 2007 report, which predicted temperature rises between 1.1C and 6.4C over the next century, seriously underestimated the scale of the problem. He said the increases in carbon dioxide have been caused, principally, by the burning of coal for electric power in India and China. Wildfires Prof Field said the impact on temperatures is as yet unknown, but warming is likely to accelerate at a much faster pace and cause more environmental damage than had been predicted. Prof Field says that a warming planet will dry out forests in tropical areas making them much more likely to suffer from wildfires. The rising temperatures could also speed up the melting of the permafrost, vastly increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

I agree it's better than communism. And we do live in a capitalist system no matter how people try and call Labour socialist.

Sport page ticker

Peter Storrie has been re-arrested as part of an investigation into corruption in football. Breaking news on BBC.

Mad as a box of frogs.

I was an egg chasing Trojan.

They're prob crap too. Like pub landlords and other gossipers!