No 2 to Maybush

There's that "mistake" excuse again! Let's just get it straight one more time. He knowingly got into his car in the early hours of the morning after having too much to drink, drove down a motorway and crashed into another car. Where's the mistake? He disregarded advice from a friend about pursuing this course of action? Picking up his car keys? Using Facebook? Where? Where is the mistake?

I think you'll find that old monobrow is pushing north of 40% on the public borrowing at the moment BTF, with the MSM (main stream media) prepping the peeps to expect borrowing to be 90 -100 billion quid this year. As to your comment about renting buildings and MRI scanners, can't you see how wrong that is, in terms of setting up the infrastructure of the country? How long do these rental agreements run for? I've read 40 years, and the assets are still not ours at the end of that time. So what happens to all our new hospitals then (except they won't be new)? We will have to renegotiate rents on these assets. Meanwhile the Private firms will have recouped their outlay many, many times over. Sounds like a complete waste of money to me - it's like taking out an interest-only mortgage. With regards Saints in Exile comment: I don't believe that dropping Fractional Reserve Banking on our own can possibly work it would need the buy-in of all the major worldwide economies and I just can't see that happening.... There are already talking heads putting forth the proposal of a World Bank as a "fix" to the current problems, and an end to paper money. One bank, electronic credits against you , accessed via retina scan or fingerprint.... the potential for abuse of such a system is enormous. Freedom would be out the door as you would be forever dependent upon the benign munificence of the bank to keep you in the matrix. I read yesterday that someone staying at a Premier Inn tried to pay their bill in cash and was told it would only be accepted if they could provide proof of identity, ie Passport or driving licence. Go figure!

Definite Deja-vu, Saint in Exile. There is a Republican nominee in the US, Ron Paul, who put himself forward for the Presidential election, but got frozen out by the MSM (main stream media), who just didn't report his campaign. He predicted this situation 2 years ago, and yesterday tabled a Bill in Congress for the abolition of the Federal Reserve Bank. In his view, the only way out is to drop Fractional Reserve Banking and go back to a system similar to the Gold Standard. I would recommend you google him or look him up on Youtube. He talks a lot of sense, but is a voice in the wilderness of American politics. What is encouraging though, is that there was a groundswell rebellion against the Paulson proposal in the US, orchestrated on the internet, where ordinary citizens bombarded their representatives to reject the Bill, and it worked! Shame we don't have quite the same level of democracy over here. And if anybody thinks the Paulson plan was the way to go, I would suggest they review the Bill, which stated that Paulson would have had COMPLETE CONTROL with NO OVERSIGHT and NO RECOURSE IN A COURT OF LAW to his actions. The Bill also stated that he could draw $700 billion AT ANY ONE TIME to aid the recovery, ie a blank cheque. The exposure in the US runs to Trillions of dollars. Given that China has stopped lending to the US, where is the money coming from except from the Federal Reserve running the printing machines on overtime? I expect to see a lot of football clubs going under in the next year, especially those with a lot of debt, and I don't just mean Saints. There are a number of Premier clubs that are seriously overleveraged who will find it hard to make it to the end of the season IMHO. Still, you've got to smile, hey? The sky hasn't fallen (yet) :-)

That's because they would have to come clean with the amount of debt they are holding. Look, the only reason why we have this "freeze" in the money markets is because the banks are playing "chicken" with each other. They all need to borrow money in the short term to pay the interest in the previous short term loan they took out to pay the interest in the previous short term loan, etc, etc, etc. Its been going on for years, except that now they are all hopelessly overleveraged to the tune of 40:1 debt to equity. Its a house of cards, and the ones with the biggest exposure (ie largest debt) are the most likely to fold, like B&B. Its a death spiral really, that can only be resolved if the debt is purged from the system, which gets me back to my original question: how much debt should you, as a taxpayer, and your children, and your children's children, be expected to take on in order to resolve this situation? If the whole shebang goes t i t s up then the debt will have to be wiped and we can start again. Otherwise we are at the mercy of the central banks and their heinous use of Compound Interest on their loans, which will take forever to pay off. The latter seems to be the way Our Glorious Leader wishes to take us.

At what point would you call "enough" to Government intervention though BTF? "Privatise the profits and socialise the losses" doesn't appear to be a very sensible approach to managing the country's economy to me. Just how much debt has the individual taxpayer got to become responsible for through these nationalisations before we question the strategy? UK PLC is up to its neck in debt. Are you happy for your children, and your children's children to have this debt burden on their shoulders? Because that's the situation we are in. The off-balance sheet PFI debt we have is horrendous and that is just one component of the off-balance sheet debt this country has. Don't believe the figures given out the government regarding our debt - they only give the current account deficit that is on the books, not what is hidden. Visit the website of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS - the bankers bank) and look up the total owed by UK PLC. It's frightening. The root cause of this situation, irrespective of the profligate chancers who have creamed money off the top, is fractional reserve banking. As long as the Bank of England and the other commercial banks are allowed to create money out of thin air at a rate of 10:1 new money to deposits, then you have a never ending spiral of both inflation (increased money supply) and devaluation. End fractional reserve banking and we might be able to start again with a currency that actually has some value attributed to it. On that basis I welcome this crash in the hope that we will hit bottom and be able to start again.

It depends on whether having Skacel in the side would guarantee another 160 bums on seats to cover his appearance money. If you could guarantee another 500 attendees at each home game should he play, then of course that has to be attractive. I would guess that the budget has been based on a home gate of 15K ( if Rupes and Cowen are as financially astute as rumoured they would certainly work off a low mean) without including Rudi in the equation, as it was anticipated that he would leave. If he is on 4K appearance fee, thats 184k per season if he plays all games. I would imagine thats the annual salary of one of the young guns. The premise of the thread is that selling "stars" (who singularly FAILED to produce the goods last season) is a false economy. If they had not been sold, I doubt the club would have been able to start the season. Glad to see the diehard Lowe bashers are still in evidence on this board. Ever wonder if the persistent grizzling and moaning on this singular topic (ie Lowe) might have something to do with the dramatic drop in people using this board?

Travelzoo.com or dealchecker.co.uk HTH.

I got knocked out heading one of those when I was about 13. Scored though!

Did you hear the quote? If not, you're relying on 3rd party reporting. And there's no need to swear, thanks very much.

And of course, Wiki is completely neutral with no input allowed from 3rd party individuals. It is inevitable he would want to backtrack on his statement. After all, he is a sportsman in the "entertainment" business, and the last thing you want to do is alienate punters, isn't it? Too late for me and a lot of others I'm afraid. He also looks patently ridiculous when he opens his gob.

You are joking, right? When are we going to be treated to this "good skill" malarky? If JP thought he was worthy of a starting place in the first team, he would be in. He isn't. Nuff said.

Pretty much as I saw it. I didn't really hear any booing at the end as I was getting out of my seat - selective use of microphones maybe?

That's how I saw his performance too. He should have come down hard on the timewasting and shown a few cards IMO. And when their players got "cramp" they should have been encouraged to get off the pitch so that the game could continue.

Mills on for Gillet, moves to LB and Surman into midfield. Tatters - "I don't know what the Dutchman's doing, it's all double dutch to me" ROFL.

In light of the fact that we have a whole season ahead of us, I wish the negative posters would just slash their wrists now and get it over with? The thought of a whole season with the negative's lashing out at everything from the pies to Lowe and everything in between really doesn't bear thinking of. As for me, I will support the team.

As a matter of interest, has anyone seen Crouch at any of the Pre-season friendlies, or at Cardiff?

Although I sympathise with your sentiment, the Chairman is still firefighting to keep the club afloat as a going concern. We have sold a few players, released a few players, signed some (cheaper) players, yet still have around half a dozen players on the books who we are having to pay top dollar to. I would guess the situation is still untenable and Rupert will be desperate to get rid of at least another 3 high wage earners before the end of August. We are still broke Alpine. The last 3 months have seen the club desperately trying to reduce its overheads. JP has been given a brief to assemble a team for the season, and, as has been posted previously, been told which of the high wage earners we are looking to move on. It is unrealistic therefore, to expect JP to include these players in his plans. He will be looking at starting the season with as settled a squad as possible, in order to minimise dispruption and create a focus. As to results, we have played 1 competitive game. It is hypothesis on your part that playing any of the older pros on our books will provide improved results. Our current stats are 0/1. Let's wait a few more league games before we start the self immolation, eh? :cool:

Now that this has been finally established as the rational approach to the team and the coaches, does this mean the b itchfest can now be drawn to a close? Jeez, this site is a real downer when all you log in for is to find out how the players did in their first competitive game.

I would have agreed with your statement up until 2 months ago when I started looking into the banking system. Where do you think the "money" they "loan" you comes form? The banks create it out of thin air based on your signature. They take your loan agreement that you signed and brand it an "asset" on their books. Say the loan was for 20K. Using the agreement with your signature on it as an asset, they are therefore allowed to lend a further 180k against the asset. Its called FIAT banking. So in this scenario you have sold your signature to the bank for 20k, whereas in fact it is worth 200k to the bank as it has allowed them to create money to make further loans to AN Other. ANd with each new loan they make, the scenario is repeated. This is one facet of the credit crunch that gets hidden by the statement "overleveraged". The banks have been doing this for years and are all seriously overleveraged. So I have come to the conclusion that we, the people, owe the banks NOTHING. They have used the money they have created against your signature to enrich themselves for many, many years. If you can get out of a loan agreement because they have messed up the wording on the agreement, then it's tough on them.