Seaford Saint

I can't wait to vote for some one I believe is worth voting for:) Is there really any difference between Tories and Labour as it currently exists? I listened to Corbyn this morning and agreed with everything he said.....we privatise the nuclear industry and we pay for clean up....we build and maintain the railways and someone else runs it....same goes for the power industry. I would love for all those to be re-nationalised. Same for Royal Mail.....he talked about manufacturing and how we needed to bring it back. I found nothing I disagreed with.....he was asked if he wanted to have a higher tax regime and he said no he would rather we got institutions to pay the tax they owed....gets my vote I will join the Labour party and vote for him.

I was not aware that that was the case.....I also expected to be able to buy tickets for the away game.

My son and I have season tickets and I pay for them both. So in the drop down menu it has my membership id and my son's.......i chose 1 for me and booked it and booked another ticket using Matthew's membership number.

Having read your message again....I had been on the website for a while and tried to book tickets before logging on, but I was logged on and trying to buy tickets without success.....never mind I have seats....

Yes I was logged on both times and you are right logging in brings up the favourite seats by default

Booked my tickets for Vitesse at home...after a 25 minute time elapse to even start to use the website I found I could not book my favourite seat no matter how I tried....(hopefully this will mean something to the ticket office). In the end I bought 2 different seats for my son and I. So I logged on after another 15 minute time elapse wait to find I could book my favourite seats (our normal season ticket seats).... I thought I would call the ticket office and explain the same to them but I gave up up waiting after 10 minutes We are premier league and this is not good enough. When exactly are the Vitesse away tickets going on sale? Saints website says soon....well, how soon?

Palast a fruitcake? You must elaborate......I am keen to understand how Greece has arrived at the position they are in...any info is gratefully received. Ho did the EU approve Greece's membership, I had read elsewhere that Goldman Sachs cooked the books to enable Greek membership. Greg Palast goes into some detail. Is he wrong?

From Greg Palast...... In 2002, Goldman Sachs secretly bought up €2.3 billion in Greek government debt, converted it all into yen and dollars, then immediately sold it back to Greece. Goldman took a huge loss on the trade. Is Goldman that stupid? Goldman is stupid—like a fox. The deal was a con, with Goldman making up a phony-baloney exchange rate for the transaction. Why? Goldman had cut a secret deal with the Greek government in power then. Their game: to conceal a massive budget deficit. Goldman's fake loss was the Greek government's fake gain. Goldman would get repayment of its “loss” from the government at loan-shark rates. The point is, through this crazy and costly legerdemain, Greece's right-wing free-market government was able to pretend its deficits never exceeded 3 percent of GDP. Cool. Fraudulent but cool. But flim-flam isn’t cheap these days: On top of murderous interest payments, Goldman charged the Greeks over a quarter billion dollars in fees. When the new Socialist government of George Papandreou came into office, they opened up the books and Goldman's bats flew out. Investors' went berserk, demanding monster interest rates to lend more money to roll over this debt. Greece's panicked bondholders rushed to buy insurance against the nation going bankrupt. The price of the bond-bust insurance, called a credit default swap (or CDS), also shot through the roof. Who made a big pile selling the CDS insurance? Goldman. And those rotting bags of CDS's sold by Goldman and others? Didn't they know they were handing their customers gold-painted turds? That's Goldman's specialty. In 2007, at the same time banks were selling suspect CDS's and CDOs (packaged sub-prime mortgage securities), Goldman held a “net short” position against these securities. That is, Goldman was betting their financial "products" would end up in the toilet. Goldman picked up another half a billion dollars on their "net short" scam. But, instead of cuffing Goldman's CEO Lloyd Blankfein and parading him in a cage through the streets of Athens, we have the victims of the frauds, the Greek people, blamed. Blamed and soaked for the cost of it. The "spread" on Greek bonds (the term used for the risk premium paid on Greece's corrupted debt) has now risen to — get ready for this––$14,000 per family per year.

To turn £1.2 million into around £25 million in 6 years is fantastic. You have to credit Rupert for that!!!

His comments seem eminently sensible, what is it that you don't like?

Downing's goal always sticks in my mind as my son burst into tears aged 6 when it went in......fair play he stood by Saints through all the bad times and is enjoying our success.

Not sure it is just the politicians from Greece who are culpable......I actually think that the name of the game here is control and that an audited entry into the EU was never part of the plan as the ultimate aim is control of countries economies and assets.

It is from 2 sources and some original thoughts of my own. It could be argued that the Greeks were stitched up as were the Irish and ourselves in 2008. The question is whether what I have cut and pasted is a true and accurate account. I am not learning anything from the mainstream media. Odious debt is a possibility for the Greeks. Then there is the oil and gas reserves around the waters of Greece. I know the US had a warship in Corfu a few years ago with some sort of surveys going on.

The Greek financial trouble started decades ago when government after government increased the size of the country’s payroll. A “you scratch my back…” system rewarded supporters of the two biggest political parties with government jobs. This practice eventually led to a Greece where one in five citizens of working age held a government job. At one point politicians stopped offering so many government jobs and instead began handing out raises to those already working for the government. This, coupled with notoriously poor tax collection enforcement, had Greece scrambling to keep the money flowing. The country turned to its neighbors and began to borrow. The lenders offered money with little question, because as a member of the European Union, Greece was required to adhere to strict financial restrictions including not allowing its national budget deficit to exceed 3 percent of its economic output. Greece’s debt soared, but no one was concerned because the Greek government continued to report a national deficit of 3.4 percent. The final blow was struck with the election of a new government that discovered the country’s financial books had been “cooked” for years. The 3.4 percent deficit was a lie, and Greece was really operating on a national deficit of just over 15 percent. This revelation, coupled with the demise of Lehman Brothers Holdings—a New York City-based investment bank—in 2008 and the worldwide economic crisis that followed, led Greece’s lenders to enact stricter borrowing rules. The country’s borrowing costs skyrocketed, and in an instant, it became impossible for Greece to repay its debt without taking further loans. European Union countries and the International Monetary Fund stepped up in 2010 with a 110-billion-euro bailout (a euro equals about 1.33 U.S. dollars). The money was given with the condition that Greece implement severe “austerity” measures including deep government spending cuts and wage lowering. These measures led to a dangerously sluggish Greek economy. A second bailout of 130 billion euros has been agreed to, with 30 billion going to the country’s private debtors and 40 billion going to the Greek banks, which are expected to report massive losses. Despite all of the austerity measures and bailouts, experts estimate that Greece may not reach financial stability until the year 2020 or later. Pensions have already been cut by close to 50% to an unlivable level especially for the poor – the troika requires more cuts. Already now most of public services and assets have been privatized, hospitals and schools closed – they want more. The public administration has already been reduced to a minimum, causing huge unemployment - they want more. They also want additional taxes which further affect the poor. The Greek govt that cooked the books had help from Goldman Sachs allegedly, their expertise enabled Greece to be able to join the EU giving the corrupt Greek govt access to funds. Where was the EU's due diligence in this application? I strongly suspect that Greece as a country was set up. The lenders who have already received lots of monies etc from bail outs...again how much of the money owed is debt interest?

It would be great to have a time frame of events and when they occurred...As far as I can figure out....Greece ordered 2 warships and other military equipment from Germany but could not afford to pay.....the Greek entry into the EU and the Euro was fudged with little or no due diligence on the EU side. This did not matter to the creditors as they were allegedly guaranteed to get their money back. The Greek bailouts did not go to Greece but to the creditors.....more and more debt interest was heaped onto the Greeks. How much of what Greece is said to owe is debt interest payments? There is an expression called odious debt where the borrowers know the lenders cannot afford to repay and this might be the case here.It is apparently illegal to loan under such conditions. Whilst I acknowledge that the Greeks have corrupt govt and endemic tax avoidance I have a feeling that the real criminals were rewarded for their efforts. I bet Goldman Sachs are involved somewhere.....

Keep posting MLG, I enjoy the information and observations you convey.

CB Fry do you have to be so rude.....?

I have just moved to a house with asbestos in the roofline.....I also found some asbestos rain water pipes dumped in the garden. You can get someone to remove the asbestos for you and they double bag it and take it to a re-cyclng depot and the depot will take it as bonded asbestos.

Thanks doctor on call, this is appreciated......

It would stop me wasting a lot of time....and others no doubt.

That's harsh Hamilton....a yellow surely.

Fantastic season and something to celebrate.

Big hero of mine saw him a few times....great loss but he lived a longer and fruitful life......RIP

*****

I thought I was on my own......Labour have done so badly.....Ed has to go.