Johnny Bognor

Ahem http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/forum/showpost.php?p=518451&postcount=2

Off the record, I hear that Avram Grant is going to be featured in this sunday's NOTW - anyone else heard this rumour????

Do the players have a Union? For once in my life, I would actually support strike action

Maybe the football cookie is crumbling. Palace failed to pay their players today.

We are now nearer the top half (4 points) than the bottom place (5 points). As said previously, top half the next target. COYR

WTF is a hands free doing in that Lambo :mad::mad: You don't need a phone in a car like that, it gets in the way of the symphony produced by that V10. Sacriledge if you ask me.

One of my favourite Top Gear reviews....Clarkson vs Tiff

But money is not made in making things, it is in creating and selling things. I agree with minimum wage and employee legislation, but recognise that it severely impacts our ability to produce labour intensive products. As for my last paragraph, it might make me sound like a ****, but there is a valid point in there. You want your cheap products as a consumer and to make these affordable, they have to be manufactured overseas. If they were manufactured here, they would be too expensive for you to buy them and too expensive to export them. In this scenario, we wouldn't be manufacturing them for very long.

In a global economy, all businesses have to be competitive - we are not competitive unless it is highly specialised manufacturing (where specific expertise is required). Assembling vacuum cleaners is at best semi-skilled. If Dyson is to compete in global markets, manufacturing has to go where it costs significantly less - if it doesn't, then someone else will come in and take the market. Being a global market leader means that 1200 people are still employed in design, marketing, finance and administration functions whilst the profits of such endeavours still flow into UK PLC, helping to prop up the welfare state. There is still a place for highly skilled manufacturing, but unskilled labour-intensive manufacturing is dead and buried - the minimum wage and employment legislation are the final nails in the coffin. If you take a look at the masters of manufacturing - the Germans - Mercedes are now built in South Africa and Bosch products are all made in Poland. These are just the famous examples as there are many more and many of the components in German 'assembled' products are made in China. Therefore, the future for us is in the design and creation of new technologies and products, because without this, there isn't much left outside the services sector. A government of either persuasion should be focusing on educating and creating highly skilled workforce and ditching courses such as Flower Arranging in Roman Britain. As for sweatshops of the far east, have you checked the labels of your clothing? Or are you a real socialist who makes his own clothing out of dried grass and leaves?

The country was virtually bankrupt and tough action was the only way out. This did mean unemployment, but we have rising unemployment now(which could reach 3 million) without any tough action. My point is that all the major economies went into recession in the early and late 80's and there would have been major unemployment anyway. How many times do I have to post the fact that manufacturings share of GDP fell at a lower rate than before her 'reign' and since she went. In addition to this, every single major western economy (Including USA, Germany and France) has seen mass de-industrialisation since the early 70's. This cannot be pinned on MT alone. It is because of de-industrialisation that the minimum wage was possible. If we had any industry of note, there is absolutely no way we could have introduced the minimum wage as we would have handed our competitive advantage straight to China, where they get paid less in a day than a min wager earns in an hour. The simple fact of the matter is that the Chinese and Asians can make things for much less than we can due to our labour costs and legislation. There is no money to be made in making things anymore (unless it is highly specialist) The only way forward is to invest in IP. We need to nurture designers, inventors and entrepreneurs. Look at Dyson, he has revolutionised vacuum cleaning which has created immense wealth for UK PLC. So lets scrap tuition fees on any degree course that can be of use to UK PLC (design, engineering and the like) and create a nation of inventors. I doubt many Chinese would be doing courses on Outer Mongolian Jazz in the 16th Century

Indeed. He has re-invented "taking the p-i-s-s"

For me, it has to be Tony Blair. He managed make an unelectable party electable, con an entire nation and be the first prime minister in a long time who didn't get booted out by his own party or the electorate. He was so good, in fact, that even those who were conned by him would rather slag off the traditional enemy (MT) rather than the man that took them for a ride and made them look like complete mugs. Don't like what he stood for, but anyone has to admit that as a politician he was a bloody genius.

May doesn't have enough motoring cred IMO (I could beat him driving a Veyron round a track in a bloody milk float). As for his journalistic credentials, he was sacked from Autocar for this: ) Even Clarkson wouldn't be that unprofessional. Tiff has enough personality and the driving credibility to front any car show. Agree with the comment about Brundle earlier.

How many of those people would have opposed the war anyway? A fair proportion I would say. What facts did all these people check out? Hans Blick (SP) asked for more time, and at the time I thought that Hans should have been given more time, but the sexed up dossier and labour & media spin added an urgency to it all. The most I could have been accused of was being naive enough to buy the lie along with the other 58 million people in the country who didn't march. As I said earlier, had Blair said "let's go to war without 'moral' justification just to keep the yanks happy", then my opinion would have been very different. So the lie definately had an affect on me along with many many others. At the end of the day it is easy to say what you did with the benefit of hindsight. Wade, I totally agree with you on this. It stops people getting too big for their boots. I would go further to add that there should be fixed term parliaments. At the moment the governent of the day chooses the time to go to the people that mosts suits them. This puts the opposition at a disadvantage and allows for unpopular governments to carry on regardless of the will of the people. Take Brown for instance, he said in the summer that he would not call an election until 2010 because he wanted to clean up politics with regards to the expenses scandals. Then in the Queens speech, there was no legislation to cover this "promise". Had an election been called in the summer, he would have been mullered as he will do next summer, so why not get it out of the way? He loves playing at the PM and wants to cling on as long as possible. How is this good for the nation? So, in short, fixed term parliaments (or at least maximum term parliaments of 4 years) and maximum two term for a premier would make for a better system.

Nerdy But you are more of a nerd than me

Oh no, wait till Nineteen Canteen gets hold of this. You've gone and done it now

To be fair, I've been called worse

Hey, that's my gag on the stats for the playoff thread!

Call me a pedant, but I make it 1.892857 ;);)

Nice spread of goal scorers from all over the park. Lambert = 8 Lallana = 7 Connolly = 5 Wiago = 3 Hammond = 2 Thomas = 1 Antonio = 1 Trottman = 1

Only 1 point from safety and 7 points from the top half. I would be happy to be in the top half by 1st Jan. We can push on and see where we go from there.

GTFI!!!! OK Saints, shut up shop now as I need 10 points in the prediction league.

OK, we've got some common ground. But heavy industry was already in decline, again reflected in all other major economies in the West. I posted some analysis on another thread that shows that manufacturing's share of GDP fell faster before 1979, than it did between 1979 and 1990. After 1990, this accelerated again and continued to do so under New Labour. Therefore the facts show that industrial decline was less during her tenure than before or after. Based on the facts, I have to disagree with you here. Some say that this was her strength and enabled her to tell the yanks to F-off when required (unlike Blair who turned round, dropped his trousers, bent over and took one up the special relationship). Having said this, it was this approach which was her downfall and she was removed by her own. I personally would have preferred for her to go much earlier to be replaced by someone like Heseltine who was a proven business success and was considered to be more 'balanced'. This I do agree with, but remember that this was long before the media manipulators and spin doctors of today. Perhaps if her presentation had been better, the clear hatred for her would not have been so vitriolic. I don't think anyone really truly 'loves' her. She was not a likeable person. I personally viewed that she was a necessary evil for the prevailing conditions at the time. It is funny that people go on about the personalities in politics and what a load of ******** it is, but it seems that it was as important then as it is now.

So by saying that it was the wrong medicine, you are at least implying that you recognise that the patient was ill. The only way to fight inflation is to control the money supply. You do this by reducing public spending, raising interest rates and putting up tax. The current govt are fighting the recession by pumping billions into the economy to prop it up (which although is good in the short term, it is storing up massive problems for the future.). Anyway, this wasn't an option in 1980 for two simple reasons. Firstly, no one in their right mind would lend money to a virtually bankrupt country. Secondly, pumping money into the economy would have fueled inflation further. She may have gone too far with her doses, but the medicine was nevertheless the right medicine. The UK was not the only economy to go into recession, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1980s_recession and the parallels with the UK are uncanny. France and Germany were also in recession, so the UK would have entered recession anyway and therefore losing your job could have been a formality. Pray tell me, what would you have done different with the benefit of hindsight?

TB transformed Old Labour from a socialist party into a Social Democrat party in order to get them elected - essentially due to the fact that socialism was dead and the falling of the Berlin Wall encapsulated this. Having said this, New Labour are still the representative party of your average socialist as it is the closest they will ever get to to governing the country. So Tony blair is not a socialist per se, but that did not stop the socialists celebrating in May 1997, toasting his name and driving around with "things can only get better" from their car stereos. TB was a socialist hero in 1997. Therefore, my jibes of New Labour being socialists is entirely relevant.