Verbal

Um pahars? Sorry to hear about the stutter benjii.

When you're right, you're right. Finger on the trigger as always, TDD.

I think the question of how long he's out is vaguely relevant in some small way. Shouldn't that be known by now - at least as a guess? In any case, the point is, he'll be missed - so sooner he's back the better.

Certainly easier to invade. Submarine access not so good though.

I somehow summoned the energy to look - but was clearly too lazy to find it says how long he's out. I think a 'FFS' is called for here.

Before the woohoo'ing gets out of hand, where was this find exactly? The UK? Or somewhere pleasant like Yemen? With oil, sadly, price isn't related to the world's available reserves. It's related to things like political stability in Russia and the ludicrous potentates in Saudi, as well as Iraq and Nigeria - or the extent to which any of them are turning the taps on or off.

I assume you mean Ted Nugent, because we have no chance of getting David, Poopyfied as he may be.

Impressed.

A double positive is a negative. Sorry Alps, I know you tried.

Why is there no official news on Murty? Or have I missed it?

At least he didn't go for your dots. We are all relieved.

Hasn't Mellis played at full back? I just can't quite see Thomas skipping daintily down the byline and putting over a cross that humans can reach.

I think you're having a Spinal Tap moment there.

You're going to look really silly on Monday morning when that happens.

Patience...

Not really. It's on the slide from ITK champ to ITK chump that the competition gets fierce.

Two more words. No chance.

V good impression of the paranoid android. Well done!

Please no. I don't think I could stand all the Wham jokes. Wake me up when we sign someone.

The best and most exciting teams to watch don't have or need dedicated wingers because they have pace and power throughout. Watch Arsenal on the break - or, it pains me to say it, Chelsea, when they're rampaging through the weaker sides in the Prem.

This is all, of course, quite funny - but also a bit like two bald men fighting over a comb.

Very Dave Brent.

But just imagine what a run of good results will do to attendances. It should become a virtuous circle: good attendances = a financially healthier club = more funds available from our cautious but calculating owner = more success. Just need a win to start it, of course! And norm, the word you're looking for is 'harumph!' (For best effect, you need to say it while wearing pipe and slippers, brandishing a lemon shandy in the snug). Anyone who doesn't take a certain degree of pleasure in P*mpey's troubles is lacking that essential human quality of schadenfreude.

That's settled then. Thanks.

This is a bit like the NHS thread. Murdoch's slimy, self-serving assault (hardly the first, by no means the last) shouldn't hide the fact that there is a lot wrong with the BBC. As someone who's made programmes for it fairly regularly, it always amazes me how little of the £1.6 billion trickles down to actually making shows. The reasons are not hard to find. Walk into White City, for example, and you will see more 'HR' officers, middle managers, 'compliance' managers, technical support, department heads (and their various assistants), property managers etc., than people actually making programmes. And the status accorded to programme makers is just as plain. I recall finding myself sat near a producer called Deborah Cadbury. She was bang next to a large photocopier, at a desk in an open hallway. Yet she's a BAFTA and Emmy Award winner writer and producer. The hallway she sat in was filled with spacious offices occupied by those useless HRs, property managers, etc. The whole culture at the BBC is civil-service-like - and is, as Greg Dyke said not too long ago, 'hideously white'. Actually it's worse than that. It's dominated by public-school, Oxbridge-educated whites who have learned the arts of climbing the greasy career ladder and all the bullying, intimidation and brown-nosing that goes with it. Here's an example. I once attended a meeting with Michael Jackson, then the controller of BBC2. Trailing in his wake was this character doing a more than passable impression of Uriah Heep - 'ever so 'umble'. His name was Mark Thompson - now the director-general of the BBC. He's regarded by many as the worst D-G the BBC has ever had, and has presided over a series of scandals, including Queengate. He's also grossly mishandled dealings with the government on a whole range of issues, which is widely seen as having compromised the BBC's independence. Whenever the BBC has a financial crisis - which is often, despite the billions pouring into it - the cuts fall first and usually exclusively on the production staff and freelancers, the people at the sharp end out there making things. For example, when a 'black hole' was discovered in the accounts about three years ago, the result was a swingeing cut of production staff, notably at the Natural History Unit, the people who make all the Attenborough series, and one of the jewels in the crown. The result was that some of those talented people left the industry. If you want a graphic demonstration of waste, take a look at the BBC Birmingham headquarters at the appropriately named 'Mailbox'. A few years back, BBC Birmingham was based a Pebble Mill, an ageing but expansive piece of real estate, with plenty of studio space, etc. As a result of mismanaged property deals that ought, in my view, be considered a scandal, Pebble Mill was sold for peanuts, and the Mailbox taken on at sky-high (no pun intended) rents. how did the BBC present this? Well, because they'd wasted millions in the mismanagement of the whole affair, they put out press releases trumpeting the 'extra investment' pumped into the regions. If you go into the Mailbox now, it is a cramped, overcrowded, unpleasant place wholly unsuited to its purpose. It will no doubt eventually close. Despite appearances, perhaps, I'm actually a defender of the BBC. But it needs serious and drastic reform to re-focus on its core activities, and to remind itself that it's there to make seriously good programmes. Its current output, given the resources, is truly pitiful. But even that is preferable to a world in which the likes of that irritating nepotist James Murdoch dominate even more in deciding what we watch.