Ken Tone

A series about photocopiers? Lots of repeats presumably?

As Rallyboy reminds us out in his inimitable style, Pritchard, representing Portco ,claimed last week that they had already bought the land , and had to backtrack when the administrators said that was not true, and indeed that they received no offers at that stage.

All very true, but it begs the question of what is a nation? How big or small a unit are you giving the right to self-determine? Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland are all pretty clearly nations of some sort of other, but what about the residents of Cornwall for example? There are those who'd claim independence for Cornwall too. And you say " a group of people seeking independence from a larger nation". What about East Anglia? Wessex? Where do you draw the line? Individual counties, towns, villages? It is not simple.

Not an expert but my father had a few books published, including a short story in achildren's anthology, and a I know a few part-time semi-hobby/semi-serious, authors, none of whom has ever earnt much from their writing by the way. It is incredibly difficult to get any book published, unless you go for 'vanity publishing' where you pay for it yourself, or nowadays put in in e-book form only. It is extremely unlikely that any publisher will agree to meet someone pitching a book idea unless they already know/publish them , or they are a celebrity. So apart from the 'vanity' route, you have to produce a synopsis of your idea, and a sample chapter or section, and send that to anyone you can think of, including literary agents as well as poubluishers, because one of them might pick up on you and sell it for you, using their much better contacts. There is of course also a danger in doing this, because it is not unknown for ideas to be nicked, so you might want to keep a very clear record of what you have sent to whom, when. And also, most books aimed at that age range are of course largely picture-based. Have you thought about the ilustrations? Doing them yourself, or what? They will be at least as important as the story. if you want any inspiration about how to aim books to different age ranges, look at the wide range of books by Alan and Janet Ahlberg.

I don't know about everyone else, but whilst I have never spread negative rumours, let alone started them, I confess to being far too ready to believe the ones I read on here. I suspect it is quite simply that things have gone so well lately after the crap we went through before, that it seems unreal -- just all feels too good to be true! I still pinch myself occasionally to make sure I'm not dreaming. Frightened I might wake up to find us actually languishing in mid-table L1.

Well to be frank, anyone who wants to take over a club in the state they are in, must be at least slightly mad, so by definition cannot be a suitable fit and proper person!

"It's also clear that, as things currently stand, an independent Scotland would continue to use the pound, at least initially, as its currency. Mr Salmond would like to join the Euro, subject to a referendum and the right economic conditions - but that's not exactly an attractive prospect at the moment." BBC website If the Scots continue to use the pound ,but as an independent country they will have no say whatsoever in the economic policies that determine the international value of that pound. That would be worse than now for them. and why should we English agree to that anyway? Would we be expected to accept Scottish pounds as legal tender in England & Wales? If so, why? And if not, think of the extra expense to the Scots in dealing with the costs of exchange etc? What effect would that have on the economy of such a small country? That's just one detail --- currency. Similar sorts of issues will arise over virtually every aspect of the life of a country, and the likely 'sod you then' backlash from the rest of Britain will not give them much slack.

So, if the rumours are right, Birch has been sidelined for going native, the rest of PKF had decided that Portpin's bid was the better of the two even vaguely credible ones, but the FL have been persuaded by the Trust's (and Micah Hall's) arguments that Chainrai is not whatever they now call a fit and proper person. That leaves PKF going back to the Trust to see if they can go ahead, otherwise it is liquidation. The Trust however do not have a'charge' on Fratton Park ... Chainrai does. If, as seems likely, Chainrai decides to fight to the bitter end, he will refuse the Trust's offer of c £2.5 million for that charge. That means deadlock and again possible liquidation, unless someone goes to court to force Chainrai to accept an objective third party valuation. That would cost big money and take weeks, if not months. Who will pay for that? And who will have the guts to do that? The Trust can't afford to. If PKF do, they'll be spending more of the creditors' money. They are already sailing close to the wind as a result of not liquidating when there was £4 million in the bank account ..it must be below £2 million by now. Still, look on the bright side eh, pompey fans, there is still Al Fahim in the picture.

Apparently Arsene Wenger isn't sure he did actually dive, because he didn't see it.

Whilst I share the view that the scottish 'giants', are not really all that big, I do think a European super league will happen one day. The clubs won't really care about fans travelling. Increasingly it is beginning to feel like the only reason to have fans at all is to give some atmosphere for the TV audience to hear. The champions league is a halfway house, and the use of the word league was very signficant. Top 4 to 6 from the EPL-- 3 or 4 from each of Italy, Spain, Germany, and you have a proper league. Not sure Celtic or rangers would get in. What is more it wouldnt worry me one jot. Let them bugger off and leave the rest, real football clubs playing in front of local crowds.

And presbmably at least somoeon at PKF feels that too, which is why Birch has ben sidelined for 'going native'.

I've met quite a few government ministers and listened to a large number of speeches. The one I referred to by Boris Johnson's was by far the most ignorant, in the literal sense. He simply knew virtually nothing about the topic he was speaking on, and had apparently done no research whatsoever. "Loose cannon" doesn't cover it

Townshend has been, almost universally, exonerated since that one occasion in 2003, with most people accepting his defence that he was researching for his book -- writing about his own experience as a victim of child abuse. I'm not aware of any other allegations against him. Are you?

Perhaps it was simply the old chestnut of Appy assuming his budget was after tax and others assuming (reasonably enough ) that it was to include tax? Now that Portsmouth are actually paying tax ( I presume?!) this difference does actually matter, unlike before. Remember, the habit in football is to quote their obscenely high salaries as weekly take-home wages. So at the normal rate of tax if the club hasn't found ways of paying via an off-shore dog, a wage of 'only' £5,000 is actually a salary before tax etc of around £500,000 a year. If the Sun quote from yestrerday was correct and McLeod is on £4000 a week, he would be on the equivalent of an annual salary of c£400,000 a year -- not bad for a journeyman, lower division striker, whose very dodgy past and criminal record would probably have ruined his career in most other fields of work.

Putting aside party poitical allegiances, it is fascinating that a man who makes a thing of projecting a persona as a bit of a buffoon has developed such a strong following. He has good academic qulaficatins and use to edit a major serious magazine, so is presumably intelligent, yet seems actually to try to appear daft at times. The only time I've ever come across him 'live' was when he gave a speech to a fairly small group I was part of. He talked in a very charming manner but with content that was frankly absolute rubbish, displaying a frightening level of factual ignorance of his topic, as opposed to stupidity, yet many in the audience just chuckled and said ... "well that's Boris". He is forgiven things that no other politician could get away with.

I can't see any other explanation. My interpretation is that Birch 'went native' and favoured the trust bid for the sake of the club, over the creditors, even though it does not really add up, and when chainrai threatened legal action, the rest of PKF said 'what the hell is going on?' and moved him to one side.

Re their current wages..... The budget they have for a squad of 25+ players is currently being spent on 20, or less, players, meaning they can pay more per head. Similarly they are paying monthly, which means no commitment to pay for the summer. In effect they can pay 12 months worth of wages over the 9 (?) months of the season. So in the short term thay can pay players some 50% more than they could with a full squad full year, without increasing their annual budget. I suspect that PKF understand this, but clearly Appleton does not. When he whinges about not being allowed to sign more than 20 players, or to sign on a normal contract, he does not grasp that to do so would mean paying less per player and therefore losing most of his current well-paid squad, in order to achieve for the first time ever, quantity over quality.

thanks . Was hoping for an URL, so I could post it on, and i can't find it on line. Presumably not in internet version

got a link for that Sun story please?

ITV is contractually limited to fewer minutes of advert per hour than the satellite channels are. Sky etc are even worse. Like many things many people in this country slag off -- NHS, state education, etc --- the BBC is actually bloody brilliant by international standards. To have no adverts at all is just so much better.

Any attempt to answert this will be jumped on by the usual suspect posters, but I'll stick my neck out...... There is no one single reason. There are lots of little reasons, each of which in isolation seems trivial, but together add up, and no one at saints seems to be very good at customer relations. The success of the GB cycling team this year was attributed to attention to detail, lots of small, detailed improvements. We could do with a simlar attitude at saints

What the OP says actually is that this person has left their ST in Brighton, so presumably they either need to get it from there (which is the help she's asking for, perfectly reasonably) or pay for a duplicate (ie a permanent replacement) , which is indeed £25.

Thank God! I was getting really worried about that old dear on her mobility scooter in the picture ... where would she ride if the land was sold?

Who is this Pritchard bloke? He represents Portco doesn't he? Are they serious bidders? Do they have pot to **** in ? And what is their motive? Answers on a postcard please ,to ....

Tough one isn't it? If they are sure he did it and sure he knows where the poor kid is, and it's not just that he has some sort of record so is an obvious first choice suspect , with no other proof. Seems very odd that they've released this bloke's name and picture so ealry in the process. If he turns out to be innocent, like that weird landlord bloke in the Clifton/Bristol murder case, his life will have been ruined anyway. I'm not saying the family are to blame, please note. No family should have to plan their lives around preventing a possible abduction. It's the bastard who has abducted the child that is to solely and wholly to blame .. and for whom I would break my usual principles and bring back the death penalty if guilt is beyond doubt... but I do wonder why this 5 year old child, with cerebral palsy what is more, was playing on her bike some 250 m from her house, out of sight of the family, after sunset, with no adult supervision.