SuperMikey

Can't be true, he's not Dutch.

+1 I would sleep sounder at night having paid more tax if I knew that essential services were properly funded and people weren't being shafted out of disability benefits for the privilege.

Think Miliband came out of that interview pretty well - it's clear that there were holes in what Brand was talking about but he captured the feeling of a lot of young people like myself in terms of thinking that your vote won't really count, that there won't be systematic change in favour of the people as opposed to the powerful and that some things are beyond the grasp of politicians to address. Miliband added a dose of realism to everything which I found pretty refreshing tbh. Have to say, i'm not going to vote Labour but I am coming round more to the idea of them being in the driving seat after the election - especially if they're backed by either a coalition of parties or a voting bloc with the likes of the Greens, SNP & Lib Dems.

+1 Good move by Miliband to address some of the points that will be raised by Brand (corporate power, tax avoidance etc) because they aren't fashionable things to talk about in debates but they are issues that young people and disenfranchised voters worry about and want to hear their politicians speaking about.

That's ultimately what it comes down to - regardless of your view on what happened she went missing because of their negligence. I know obviously they will have to live with that for the rest of their lives but honestly it erodes my sympathy for them. Might sound like a heartless thing to say but that's life.

I'm not sure we'd have to pay up his contract as such if he signed a new one, unless we owed him any kind of cash bonus that hadn't been paid in full on signing of the contract. Then again, i'm not an expert in contract law so I may be completely wrong. I think that would negate the fact that if he signed a 4 year deal he'd pretty much automatically be a £20-25m player as opposed to the £10-15m player he is going into the last year on his current deal.

I thought that as well - the headline and the tag underneath it saying we won't accept any offers doesn't actually square up with the quote from Les underneath - "It wouldn't be our intention to sell any of our players this summer". The intention is that we won't sell players but if somebody comes in with an offer that we can't refuse then we'll accept it! Bit misleading. Also they must have stuck a work experience kid on to write this article, it contains the phrases "There success means there is likely to be interest" and "Jordan Turnball". Bad grammar and a lack of research! Double whammy!

It may be the case that he'll sign a bumper deal with a nice sell-on clause, stay with us for another year to get European experience and then he'll leave in Summer 16. Would certainly put us in a stronger bargaining position if we had him tied to a longer deal.

Dragovic would be a great signing imo, don't think he's on quite the same level as Toby but he's not been tested playing in the Swiss and Ukrainian leagues so he could surprise people. From the little i've seen of him (mostly playing for Austria) he looks very solid and would be a good partner for Fonte. Van der Wiel is an interesting one though, he's on big wages at PSG but as WC said he's not nailed down a starting place with Aurier and Marquinhos pushing him. Wouldn't be a bad replacement for Clyne..

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/general-election-2015-mhairi-black-the-20yearold-who-could-become-the-youngest-mp-since-1667-10202932.html You could read her words and the words of the people that will be voting in the constituency to find out why they're voting against Alexander rather than tarring them all with the same brush. The key word is representation, something that Scottish Labour voters feel they lacked when they voted for them in the past. The general consensus is that if a vote for the SNP gets Scotland's voice heard loudly in Westminster, it's a vote worth casting. More than an adequate reason to kick out a capable MP in most people's eyes.

Plus in the trajectory of Sigurdsson's career, we would be a sideways step. The natural progression for him is to end up somewhere like Arsenal or Man Utd.

He was playing in a not particularly good Sheffield Wednesday team, and he was always one of their better players. For me he could provide a lot of what Shane Long already provides from wide areas - a strong, direct runner with pace to pressure a full-back. That would mean Shane would be freed up to play a more central striker role, although if Jay Rod stays with us over the summer and comes back to fitness, he may find his chances limited there.

Good comparison tbf, Bolasie is a real terror to full backs because of his strength and Antonio certainly has that. I'd take him for sure.

The 1000 richest people in Britain have increased their wealth from £335bn to £547bn since 2010. Not sure they would've been able to grow their wealth so much without facilitation from the top brass at No 10.

Which equals more money into the coffers of private industry rather than it going into the state where the money is actually needed. Fantastic. I would happily pay more tax on my earnings to offset more government spending in the areas it's needed, but the Tories seem to think that tax is intrinsically bad and is something that people should pay less of when the government is desperately short of spending money. Doesn't square up to me.

They're costed, only by using tax revenue that they're not sure they'll actually get from the Mansion tax (don't want to start that whole debate again though..) On the other hand, the Conservative manifesto has a £30bn black hole in it. Think I might side with the ones with the optimistic tax revenue forecasts rather than the ones that'll just take more funding out of perilous welfare spending to abide by their pledges..

I'm reading Owen Jones' excellent book "The Establishment" at the moment and there's a very interesting chapter on the media and how they help to shape the political landscape just by reflecting the views of those in charge at the paper. During an election the headlines you read in most of the papers will all be shaped to fit a certain political agenda (no surprise there) and things like the Telegraph's front page there will have been stockpiled to use to give the Tories a boost if they were flagging or it's a slow news day. Interesting though that it appears to be a similar tactic to what the Better Together campaign did in the Scottish Independence referendum, phoning in support from businesses to try and sway the electorate with prophetic tales of what chaos could be wrought with a vote for 'the other side'. Realistically though, I can't see too much of a difference economically between Labour and Conservative apart from a slight change in tact by Labour with regards to spending increases as to more cuts. Personally I don't see how our services can sustain more cuts, especially not £30bn worth. Read an interesting piece by Henry Marsh in The Indy today as well talking about cuts and the NHS - he made the point that if there were more easy cuts to make then we would've made them already (albeit he was referring specifically to the NHS, but the point stands across the board I think).

Ah well, I still managed to crack one off to the story despite the lack of journalistic integrity.

That's because the article is probably made up or they've just used a picture of an inter-generational couple to get hits. The writer has spelled the word 'disgusting' incorrectly 2 different ways in the article as well, so props for that at least!

I think a lot of people don't contextualise why the defecit was so high in the first place though, in 2008 we were just about to see the back of a very costly and controversial war in Iraq and were mid-way through a military intervention in Afghanistan too. I'm not saying that these were the sole causes for the defecit but the increase in military spending definitely contributed to it being run up by Labour. Of course there were overspends and irresponsible financial actions taken by successive governments, but the political climate at the time called for vast amounts of spending which had to come back to bite us at some point - unluckily for Labour it happened to be exacerbated by the global financial crash which was in turn also caused by a failure of many global governments to properly regulate the banks. It's easy to point at Labour and say that they singlehandedly caused the defecit to be as high as it was, but you do have to take into account that there were a number of extraneous circumstances that contributed to it and also the small ideological gap between early 2000s Conservatives and Blair-era Labour meant that the Tories probably would've gone along a similar path with regards to spending as well.

Tbh as pleased as I am with the draw it does feel like 2 points dropped considering the position we were in during the game of having taken the lead twice. Their first goal shouldn't have stood but had Steven Davis put even one of those chances in it would've changed the dynamic of the game completely with us being able to take control of the game and frustrate them, rather than leaving ourselves a bit open for them to equalise after we went 2-1 up. Still though a very encouraging performance and if we continue to play like that we should finish 6th considering Spurs still have some tough games left.

Pelle is a Championship level striker, pure shyt.

I grew up near Fleet and managed to get some decent agency work before I went to Uni, worth contacting Manpower in Basingstoke to see if they have anything. Call Centre work sounds incredibly dull (and it is) but it generally pays pretty well and they'll be used to a high turnover of staff so I don't think they'd be too upset if you decided to pack it in after a couple of months.

I think given the cash that will be soon coming into the league from the 16/17 TV deal, we could afford to take a hit on Vic's transfer fee in return for having him in the squad next season. If we get Europa League next season is going to be difficult and we'll need to try to keep our best players - Morgan and Clyne will be off and I don't think there's much we can do about that, but keeping the likes of Vic and even Jay Rod could be crucial for us next year. A strong performance in the Europa League will be very important as a foundation for the club going forward - being able to cement a place in the Top 6/7 and getting ourselves in the running for Europe each season will allow us to attract better players, it'll bring more money into the club and allow us to build on that success for the future as well. It'd also be a good thing for the younger players at the club as well, because we'll need to rotate the squad more to cope with the busier schedule and that could pave the way for the likes of Reed, JWP etc to cement their places in the first team by being given the opportunities that they need.

Watched it tonight, very good indeed! Was surprised about how funny it was as well given that the film was promoted as being pretty dark. I really don't like Captain America but I am actually looking forward to Civil War now, should be a good'un - especially if they get Mr Parker involved too..