Ken Tone

There's some lovely countryside in Lancashire within easy driving distance of Wigan, and you'd get a lot more house for your money there than you would in Hampshire. Or if you are a stereotypical footballer you could live in central Manchester or its Cheshire suburbs, and mix it in the high life with the big boys from United and City. All nearly always, it will be the wages that really matter in any transfer bid, much more than the fee. Our best chance of signing a really good, established, player this January is that, if we are still top or thereabouts, we may negotiate a contract that guarantees a wage rise if/when we go up.

Nice cartoon on there

It will be very cost ineffective and probably even less safe than using your unserviced boiler. I hope you've got a carbon monoxide alarm!

That argument is on par with people who say "I know someone who smoked 20 a day and lived till they were 90, so smoking can't be dangerous." The science is pretty conclusive that global warming/climate change is happening. In fact global warming may well actually cause our Uk climate to become more exteme both ways -- hotter summers and colder winters --especially if the Gulf Stream/Atlantic Drift is affected. It is that that keeps our climate so temperate compared with other places that are just as close or far from the poles and equator. What is still open to debate is the extent to which mankind's actions are causing this. That is where the vested interests come into play, from both sides. However, regardless of what you believe is the underlying cause of it, our actions can accelerate or slow it ... and there are even plans around that would have beeen silly science fiction only a few years back that could actually stop it -- from thousands of tiny mirror satellites to cloud seeding, etc.

Please explain. Surely a verdict is public information?

But I thought you were a UKIP supporter Dune? Are you paid to spout this stuff? It seems to be pretty much all you do, all day.

Ditto. 96.1 received well North of Winchester. Hampshire DAB - no chance.

He defnitely said 'record' , nothing to do with 'season', and he also definitely said 32,150, which isn't a record! But that had miraculously become 32,152 later, which is a record by 1.

And Solent as we drove home seemed to be saying 32,352 ...several times!

Given how ridiculously biased fans usually are, I thought this report on a West Ham forum was surpisingly fair. http://kumb.com/story.php?id=125757

I agree. Silly time to announce it last night, and why have they stopped announcing it routinely at the end of each game as they used to?

I think if you lose a loved family member it is a natural reaction to want to know exactly how and why. As a I understand it ,all the familes want is to see all the details. I do not believe they are seeking any financial gain, ut they might want to see certain individuals accept blame if they were at fault and that was covered up. Wouldn't you feel the same? Thee have been pages and pages of analysis and speculation over this tragedy. The consensus view eventually came to be that -- a) Lots of Liverpool fans turned up late because of road works on the route, and therefore lots were trying to get into the gound in a rush as the game kicked off. b) Ironically the police decided the situation outside the ground was therefore dangerous, with a risk of crushing, so opened the turnstiles/gates. c) However those entering the ground were all funnelled into a couple of pens in the middle of the stand, so although the numbers were below the capacity of the stand, many were squashed together in a few cages. d) As the tragedy unfolded the police response was still to treat it as a crowd control problem didn't open any gates in the fences and indeed may even have prevented some fans from climbing out to safety. This to menay epole is the main area in which the police were to blame -- treating victims as hooligans. There is no evidence as far as I am aware, that large numbers of Liverpool fans were there without tickets, any more than happens at any other game, nor that large numbers were drunk, any more than at any other game. In any event as I say the number inside the ground was below capacity. Those of you who are too young, will not realise the extent to which many grounds were a series of cages. It was not just a matter of perimeter fences. There were also fences running down the stands, diving the stand up into smaller pens.

Actually that's a self-fuliflling prophecy. I no longer go to away games because I got fed up with boorish fans standing , often on the seats, in front of me and my children. So, it;s hardly a surpris that the majority of away fans now want to stand . Those of us that don't want to, stop going. It's fine at St. Mary's of course. you can choose where to buy your 'seat'. Away... you're stuck with luck of the draw.

if you allow any legality in Argentina's claim to the Falklands based on the then pope giving all the western hemisphere to Spain and Portugal in 1480 something, then there are fair few other countries that owe Spain and Portugal a few bob. But since I suspect there's only you and me on here that give a damn, I think we'd better just agree to differ. The UN has ruled on this after all.

Unless of course one of them, and I'm not making this up, has a pet cat.

Sorry to intrude in the argument which is really about Iran and Israel, but you brought up the Falklands, and you can't just write stuff that over-simpified and have it go unchallenged. The only real 'legal' claim Argentina has to the Falklands is effectively based on the Pope 'giving' all of South America to Spain in the 15th century , when he divided up the entire western hemisphere between Spain and Portugal. The River Plate province was a Spanish colony and when it gained independence it claimed the Islands, because supposedly they were part of the Spanish Papal declaration, though not named as such, because they hadn't even been discovered by then! First settlement on the Islands is disputed. There are also claims of much earlier English landings. Any selling of the Islands by France to Spain has no legal basis; France did not have sovereignity to sell. Most histories imply more that the few French settlers were frightened off by Spain. The River Plate settlers were there only intermittently (coming after both French and British settlers) and the last lot were finally expelled for piracy on their seal/whaling ships by the Americans in 1820 something. (Bear in mind that America was NOT an ally of Britain then. In fact we'd been at war with America from 1812-1814) English settlers have lived there continuously from 1833, with earlier settlements dating back to before anyone from the Province of the River Plate had even claimed the Islands. All this took place before the country of Argentina even existed. Modern Argentina does include parts of the old United Province of the River Plate, but then so do Uruguay and Bolivia. The wikipedia entry is surprisingly good, and relatively unbiased if you want a potted history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Falkland_Islands I imagine Argentinians and current Islanders have changed it back and forth so many times, that it has reached an uneasy compromise statis.

The question is, if he doesn't get thje job, who will he blame for that? "Well I thought I stormed the interview in the first half, blew the opposition away, but -- and I know I'll get in trouble for saying this -- the chairman just gave it away for me, with his crazy decisions in the second half. What do I have to do to get a fair job offer?"

Rationally of course that's right. The concern with somewhere like Iran is that rationality goes out of the window when religious fanatacism comes in. If you really believe that if you die in a holy war you will go to heaven, why would you care about retaliation for a nuclear strike? The 'rules' that have made the nuclear deterrent remain a deterrent and not a used weapon for the last 50 years or so, do not apply to Al Quaeda etc.

Sorry mate, but that bit in bold and underlined is simply wrong. It was the cuts that she had announced in 1981 that were the problem. I know you're in the Navy and the cuts are a sore point for you, and I know too that Mrs Thatcher has taken on an almost saintly image in the Forces since 1982, but actually it was her government that decided to make the cuts just before the Falkands war. It was also on her watch that the retirement of HMS Endurance was confirmed in spite of appeals and warnings that this was a dangerous thing to do, and it was also then that the Argentinan's increasingly martial noises in the UN etc were ignored ... and as I said the Nationality Act was passed, which basically said to Argentinian ears, "we don't really want the Falklands any more". She had been in power for some 3 years before the Argentine invasion remember. Any u-turn on funding for the forces (from the lady who was not for turning) was as a result of the Falklands war, making her change the decisions she had made. Several military commentators have said that only a year later, as the cuts bit, we would not have been able to react to the invasion. Even as it was, it was pretty close run thing. See for example http://dalyhistory.wordpress.com/2010/09/12/the-john-nott-1981-defence-cuts-revisited/ (my bold type in the extracts below) "In 1982 the Secretary of State for Defence had just implemented a Defence Review the previous year. It was conducted in the context of economic problems, a Thatcher-led desire to slash budgets, and a Soviet build-up during the era of ‘reaganomics’. Nott’s solution was to concentrate almost solely on Britain’s role in NATO. The purchase of Trident was confirmed. The British Army of the Rhine, although the centrepiece of British defence within NATO, was to be limited to 55,000 men. The Royal Navy was to lose one fifth of its 60 Destroyers and Frigates. .... The upshot of the Falklands War was that almost everything that had been offered up as savings was rescued at the eleventh hour."

Actually, a common view at the time was that a major trigger for the Argentinian invasion was the reduction in British defence forces by Thatcher, and in particular the removal of HMS Endurance from the Islands. The Argentinians took this as a sign that Britain had stoped caring and wouldn't defend the islands. Thatcher's goverment also passed the Nationality Act in 1981 which removed full British citizenship from the Islanders. You may recall that Lord Carrington resigned over these issues, effectively taking the fall for Thatcher.

No. In fact that's a major part of the point of the test IMO. It's in English (or Gaelic!) only. Immigrants seeking citizenship have to study the facts in English, and have to have a reasonable level of proficiency in the language to be able to pass..... which even someone like me (whom Dune no doubt considers a lilly-livered, wishy-washy, leftie liberal) thinks is a good idea. "Is the test only available in English? The test is offered routinely in English. However, if you are taking the test in a centre based in Wales you may request to take a test in the Welsh language, or if taking the test in Scotland you may request to take the test in Scottish Gaelic. "

Send them back?!

Yeah, right. We all believe you. How far back does your family history go then Dune? Pre Norman invasion? Any Irish or Hugenot blood? No ancestor ever married 'out'? No great-uncle you've forgotten? Because if not, you are just about the only true Englishman here. Oh no, hang on, what about those pesky foreign Romans, Saxons and Vikings? Or are you pure Celt? All Angle? It's a very rare person indeed who has no immigrant/foreign blood anywhere in the past few generations of their family .. the only real variation is how recent.

Why don't you stop pussy-footing around and tell us what you really think?

That's the real point isn't it? Don't really care if Fox is promiscuous, gay, bi-, or a celibate, but what all this does show is that he has really poor judgement, and do we really want a man with poor judgement in charge of our nation's defence?