st alex

Shaw and Lallana should get games at their respective clubs as well but they don't play anywhere near as much as they were before they moved.

I was thinking this. Green or McCarthy would both be available with QPR going down. My preference would be for McCarthy as he's a younger player likely to improve in quality and in value. Similar to Butland in that they've both have call ups to the England squad in the past and they're international careers could kick off with a stint of first team football in the premier league. Think we went in for Butland before Stoke signed him and nothing came of it. Not sure how Stoke have managed to keep 3 quality keepers happy in Begovic, Sorensen & Butland.

Wow Osvaldo and Mayuka still have a couple of years to run.

When our current government did eventually debate the food bank issue, the tories laughed their way through it and then left early. This is what I don't like about the party, that they won't even have a rational debate about issues like food banks and drug policy, preferring to pretend that the problems don't exist. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/iain-duncan-smith-leaves-commons-debate-on-food-banks-early-9013917.html Of course they've got better things to use their debating time for: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/11263673/Conservative-minister-says-ck-six-times-in-Parliament-for-smutty-Navy-bet.html There's more debate on here than there is from the tories in parliament (unless of course they're debating a matter of their own choosing).

I don't think so. Owen did it to Newcastle.

The Polish larger you get in Southampton is tonnes better than Carlsberg/Carling/Fosters, which all taste like ****e. Kronenbourg's alright when it comes to cheap mass produced largers as well. Would generally prefer not drink larger though and stick to ale. There are local breweries putting out half decent stuff: Flacks, Bowman's, Itchen Valley etc.

Whenever there's a 'sold out' game there's quite often a smattering of empty seats around St Marys, probably season ticket holders who couldn't make the game but quite frustrating for those who couldn't get tickets.

If it's a gap year before uni, I'd say it's a waste of time & money. If she ultimately plans to go to uni, then go, get the first easy year of uni out the way and then do an exchange in the second year, or apply to go to uni abroad. That way you emerse yourself much better in the culture of where you are as there's some point to you being there. I spent 6 months on exchange in Hong Kong in my second year at uni and had the time of my life there and learnt a huge amount. Travelling at that age (I'm making assumptions here, but I'm guessing late teens, early 20s) is the the best time to travel and will undoubtedly be a great experience. But I think the experience is wasted on many if it just entails going to Australia and working in bars or not working. If I had the opportunity to go travelling I'd want to try more unusual locations where there's more to be learnt. As Hamilton Saint said 6 months working in Greece (as long as it's not an English resort town) would probably be more beneficial and more of learning/growing experience than time spent in Australia / New Zealand / Thailand which must be packed with British 'travellers' by now. There was a time when travelling was seen as some kind of alternative, but it seems to be quite conformist now, with more people doing it and going to an increasingly narrow field of destinations. If a gap year is the model she's after I'd suggest doing a tefl course first and teaching abroad http://www.i-to-i.com/ or wwolfing http://www.wwoof.net/ but she's probably after a much easier experience. Although teaching abroad might be best done after uni.

I think he's a couple or years older than Shaw, but then he's a couple of years younger than Mason. Everybody seems to now be arguing that he's quite good, could be better, might get better, will never be world class but could be worse. Personally I don't think there's much between him and Davis (who has been poor in recent games).

The public sector picking up the slack? If the private sector can run what were public services and make healthy profits, then surely it would be better for the government to keep hold of those services and run them and make that money themselves? It just seems to be a form of asset stripping to me, selling public owned companies for a quick profit and a short term boost for the government's coffers. Of course the hedge funds and other financial big wigs that fund the tories don't stand to gain from any of this I'm sure. If theses sales don't go to them then they go abroad and get sold to foreign companies so then the profits don't even go back into the economy.

Describing a Tory as a modern thinker is very bizarre. Do you mean they're just not quite as old and posh? Conservatives by their very definition counter modern thinking and modern ideas in favour of preserving tradition (and their wealth) and continuity.

Caroline Noakes is awful. Whenever I've written to her she'll just reply with a party policy, which couldn't be further from my own principles.

It could also lead to trend where instead of having lots of so called average to mediocre non EU players in the English game we will just have a lot more average to mediocre EU players.

But the definition of home grown players also changes. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/32024808 They'd need to be trained (presumably at a uk club) from the age of 15, down from 18. Which makes it far more likely to be English, or British. So unless there's some agreement in place for Irish players I wouldn't have though Shane Long would count currently or in the new rules. Spiderman wouldn't be included in the new definition either. Even players like Fabregas wouldn't count as he came to England when he was 16? Meaning that unless the top teams are going to register small squads and pad them out with youth team players who may not be good enough then they'd be even more inclined, forced even to sign the much better English players from the likes of Southampton, West Ham, West Brom etc. I know we already sell our top players, but it might just execrate the process and make it that bit harder to replace them because we can't go out and sign some unknown player from Trinidad or wherever.

I hadn't seen what the rules were at the time. Although if they'd missed the required quota of international appearances because of injury then that could hamper a move to England in favour of one to a league with fewer restrictions? However since we're not in the market for world class players this does have the potential to have a detrimental effect on saints regardless. Some of the best foreign players we have signed in recent years were not internationals when we bought them, far from it. The likes of Fonte, Spiderman & Pelle were all uncapped and relatively unsought after. Saints have a history of making these under the radar type signings. Although the three mentioned players were from the EU, what if our scouts spotted someone who wasn't? What if we wanted to sign say a young Latvian striker before they'd had any international recognition? Signing established internationals quite often doesn't work out for Saints.

Any idea what the new rules will actually be? Thought a player already had to be a regular international to sign if they were a non EU? We've never signed many non EU players and currently I'd have thought it would only be Yoshida, Wanyama, Mane and Mayuka that are on our books who are non EU. Hopefully this won't affect the visa statuses of current players. Will this mean that world class South Americans & Africans etc will go to La Liga / Serie A / Bundesliga instead of the Premier League?

Easiest way to beat the traffic is to cycle past it. (This is where everyone claims they can't cycle because they've come from Salisbury or Andover or Lymington in which case just get a train). Southampton has a problem with high car dependancy, granted public here isn't particularly good but it cripples the city whenever cruise ships arrive or football matches are on or schools start start or finish.

Can usually hear them from the Kingsland. The Northam has been pretty quite this season, maybe better quality football is distracting.

By that logic there would never be a Saints player called up. In that case why is Baines in the squad since Everton are languishing near the bottom of the league? It's supposed to be based on how good the players are, not on how well their teams are performing. Where Baines is regarded as a decent player in an under performing Everton team, Gibbs is generally thought to be a fairly average player in an in form Arsenal team.

Since much of our team have had awful spells of form this season (Mane, Pelle, Tadic, Davis etc) and even last season Wanyama, Boruc & Yoshida often looked suspect I think it's a bit unfair to rule him out as not being premier league quality. I to be honest, he's not as good as good as I hoped he might be at this stage in his career. But he's not bad. We didn't waste big money on him. And for those asking what he's contributed lately. He set up the winner against Palace last match and made a goal line clearance today, both matches he came on as a late substitute.

Why shouldn't people be free to take drugs if they'd like to? My only choice of drug is alcohol but I'm not using it at the moment. I might have a moderate amount at the weekend. You probably assume that everybody who takes drugs is likely to keel over and die immediately and that drugs being illegal as they current are stops people from taking them? And that the black market created by their illegality hasn't led to thousands of deaths in an illegal drugs trade. I imagine most deaths from drug consumption comes from taking impure drugs or from overdosing, yet if drugs were manufactured and distributed legally then they'd be cut straight and come with dosage instructions. It's their illegality that's the problem. Besides if the country's finance are such a priority for you, there's a whole industry there avoiding tax. Capitalism works on supply and demand. Because of longer life expectancy and high birth rates our population is on the increase whether we have inward migration or not. Various studies have proved that immigration contributes far more to the economy than it takes out. In which case I can see heavy flaws in your single argument. As that would suggest that services aren't being swamped by immigrants as they're paying their way. And for all the wealth they generate I think they also enrich our society culturally. You're using immigrants as scapegoats just as generations have done for hundreds of years. As for Sour Mash's question - I don't know. I think currently levels seem fine, we could take a few more, we could take a few less. In the grand scheme of things I don't see it making very much difference. I'm not an expert in immigration policy and I won't pretend to be, as I've said I don't see it to be a problem. Again you're using usual UKIP's sensational rhetoric 'every square yard' isn't going to 'get concreted over' is it? We're a million years from that happening. Ironic that you keep citing Australia as the country to follow immigration policy. Australia is over-run with immigrants, it's run by them, so much so that the native population are heavily marginalised socially and economically. So what's the optimum size of the UK? because as ever it's population is growing just like in almost every country in the world. You'll need to get rid of much more than just immigrants if you want a population size comparable to Australia, New Zealand or Canada. The wealth gap has nothing to do with immigration. Do you seriously believe that heavily reducing inward migration will mean that more houses get built (good luck doing that without a unskilled migrant workforce), that the NHS will stop being mismanaged and underfunded (hospitals aren't full of immigrants - except for the doctors, nurses, cleaners and people that work there - they're full of old people), that bankers will continue to get huge untaxed bonuses, that education will somehow improve, that energy production will become greener, that train fares will become cheaper, that roads won't be choked with parents on school runs and that the UK will be able to find enough willing workers to do menial jobs. You've dodged the question on what your ideal world would be, yet you're happy to criticise mine.

Making immigrants scapegoats for everything and then claiming that limiting immigration would solve all those problems is naive in my opinion. Limiting immigration and leaving the EU are the only UKIP mantras I've ever heard. Whether their thinking goes any deeper I don't know. For me immigration is not a problem. It doesn't need solving. There might be few mores Poles and Spaniards here, I don't really care. Reducing immigration does nothing to help the UK meet environmental targets (except that perhaps emissions would drop by the tiniest of margins). It doesn't help the nhs, in fact it's more likely to damage it if it becomes increasingly difficult for foreign workers to come here). Perhaps Australia does have a good model, I don't don't really know, as I've said it's non issue for me as it won't solve much. You say we're too crowded, what's the optimum population size for the UK? At point are we 'full up'? Our population's been increasing for hundreds of years. What country isn't too crowded? The housing market is ****ed. This isn't because of immigrants. It's more likely because not enough houses are being built. Housing stock is treated as investments now instead of as homes. An unregulated housing market based on a mountain of debt, means that generally only large companies can build housing, yet it's in their interests to self regulate how much they build to keep demand high and prices even higher. The Sainsbury's development in Portswood for example achieved planning permission with the promise of dozens of affordable houses, yet they just sit on the land and let it's value increase instead. As I said I think financial security and a strong economy are just part of improving people's quality of life, and I don't think that's naive at all, quite the opposite. I think there's more to life than just money, and that you can't simply buy a good life, there are numerous factors that contribute to ones daily happiness and wellbeing other than their bank balance. And if the country's economy is strong that ought to be reflected in people's happiness. I think in an idealish real world there wouldn't be a hugely disproportionate ever-increasing gap in wealth between the rich and the poor. I think people should be put before profits. I think we should get along with our neighbours and not worry about what accent they might speak in and ostracise them for it. I think we could live in a freer society (freedom of movement, better public transport, freedom to have the choice to take drugs). I think we should have the security to live in homes without being profiteered from. And those that do profiteer should be paying the tax they owe. I think we'd get more time off from work and there'd be leisure centres, playing fields, parks, galleries, museums, pubs (decent pubs mind), cafes, restaurants and other things to do.

The same goes for Jimmy Saville. Best to just let Clarkson say and act however he pleases because a large demographic find him entertaining. Very surprised people a re so ready to defend him with his history. Meanwhile Clarkson and his friends and family continue to make light of the situation and joke about it on twitter. The same kind of leniency wasn't made to the likes of Ron Atkinson or Glen Hoddle. Who had to rebuild a career after just one controversial comment. He's been let off the hook numerous times and by the sounds of it this is his worst offence, but he's of the attitude that he can do what whatever he likes because he's backed by an army of morons (or adoring fans).

I've never seen a UKIP policy which is based on any logic. Why don't you name a UKIP policy that does makes logical sense? one that's solving an actual problem using actual sense. Anything I've heard them say is reactionary stuff related to exaggerated issues. Their strongest argument is that the EU budget is too big. But to be honest the UK government is perfectly capable of ****ing away taxpayer's money anyway, whether it's done in London or Brussels makes no difference to me. Why issues like immigration are high up on anyone's agenda is beyond me. I couldn't care less where my neighbours, friends or colleagues were born. I'd much rather see a government tackle housing, the environment, nhs & healthcare and most importantly to improve the standard of living (for everyone). As always in politics too much emphasis is on money and the economy. This shouldn't be the leading issue, it should be focused on improving the quality of life for the population and financial security should be just one of the key components of this. Just because the real world isn't an ideal world that doesn't mean that we can't make it as close to an ideal world as possible.

Except that you've just made up half of those, and they still sound more logical then any UKIP policies. Legalising recreational drugs and reducing the number of cars on the roads are difficult to argue against. I've often wondered, what does a utopia or an ideal world look like to a right winger? Compared to someone with liberal values. I think one of those worlds would be a great deal nicer than the other.