jonah

£3m cash, £1.1m properties, £1.3m fixed assets, £0.8m healthcare business = £6.2m. The cost to obtain a full stock market listing, which Secure also brought with them, would have been betweem £800k and £1.5m depending on whether we shopped at Aldi or Waitrose :-) It also saved about 1.5 years time-wise by going for a reverse-takeover as opposed to a full flotation. Firstly, I think you are wrong to refer to him as the chairman. His salary is as CEO. If Lowe wasn't paid his £200k pa in the Premiership we'd have paid at least that to others - just look at Wilde who had to bring in Hone, Hoos, Dulieu and Oldknow to do in the CCC what Lowe and Cowen did between them in the Prem! So I think, again, you are not being objective in your criticisms... why did everyone back Wilde's ridiculous plan and Director salaries? As for Lowe's "cabal" and the dividends, well I don't have an issue with when they were paid in the Prem - firstly, shareholders like Corbett, Lawrie, Wiseman, Hunt and Gordon were all free to decline the dividend (as were fans who held shares), but they didn't did they? I also still maintain divvies were necessary to maintain City interest which was necessary to hold the company's credit rating which affected the loan notes for the stadium. Lowe, Marland and Withers all bought the shares with their own cash - if you think it was a grand scheme to reward themselves with 1p dividends for tying up half a million cash then well, you're probably as financially-qualified as Alastair Darling ;-) Sorry but again that's nonsense. Outside of the Premiership which I hope we can all agree has gone mad, you only have to look at clubs like Preston - owned by Trevor Hemmings (billionaire). Did he pump his fortune into the club? Or Watford and Lord Ashcroft (another billionaire) - nope, no big investment there either. Or Madjeski - insisted that Reading were run self-sufficiently despite his personal fortune. But again, it's confusing Lowe's role as paid CEO with that of trophy chairman - our trophy chairman was, errrr, Wilde. Now who brought him into power?

Look at that, I've now had to spend £5 just to reply to your ridiculous nonsense Duncan. I have explained this to you many times but you clearly love to keep your head buried in the sand. I will point out a few things again in the hope that one day you shift that almighty chip and actually take on board some facts. Firstly, as you should know, writing "allegedly" doesn't protect you from a writ. As for lining his pockets and swindling people, let's examine the facts - Secure Retirement was a listed company. Lowe (and Cowen) bought shares in the company - that is their perogative isn't it? They saw value in the company - cash, a full listing, property and businesses. So they spent their own cash to buy up control of that company. That isn't swindling anyone, that's buying shares in a floated, listed company. The reverse flotation - ignoring the old debates about whether it was right or wrong - involved merging Secure with the unlisted company SFC to create a new SLH worth (very simplistically) the sum of its parts. Lowe's holding from Secure translated into an equivalent cash value in the new company - for example, if he owned 15% of Secure (15% of say £5m marketcap = £750k), he then owned 7.5% of SLH (7.5% of £10m marketcap = £750k) - those figures are approximates to make the point that there was no magical money made by Lowe there... hence he did not "line his pockets" then either, and if he did fair play to him for spotting a chance in the market place, that's the whole ethos of the stock markets isn't it? (The subsequent rise in price was mainly a result of a bubble in football stocks.) So having established Lowe didn't swindle people or line his pockets, let see who did: The reverse takeover meant placing a market value on SFC shares which were previously only worth a nominal £1 each. Now this is a contentious issue regarding the rights and wrongs of who should and shouldn't keep shares (prior to the reverse takoever) - ignoring the moral issue, the facts of the matter are that certain shares were bought at the nominal £1 value by existing SFC Directors. Of those Directors, the one who took *most* was Lawrie. That's not "allegedly", that's fact. So when you talk about "swindling people" by buying those shares for the nominal £1 prior to the takeover, those involved were Askham, Hunt, Gordon, Wiseman, Richards and McMenemy. Four of whom you actively backed and continue to back without question simply because they oppose Lowe. And the most guilty party, taking the largest slice of those "cheap shares", was Lawrie. Remember, fact, not conjecture or rumour. Now let's move onto who has lined their own pockets. Of those people who bought the shares "cheaply", only 1 of them sold up after we floated. Step forward one Lawrie McMenemy (again) who sold the majority of his shares. Fact, not conjecture, rumour or planted mischief-making from Crouch. Fact. Fast-forward 10 years to Wilde's incompetent "takeover" and who sold their shares? Hunt and Wiseman. Did they put the cash back into the club? No... so they are the ones, like Lawrie, who would be considered to have "lined their pockets" I presume? Looking a bit deeper at who has actually put cash into the club (ignoring the cash that Secure brought in on the deal), we have the Open Offer, or Rights Issue, to raise cash for the stadium. Who put in cash then? Lawrie, Wiseman, Hunt, Gordon, Crouch, Wilde or Trant? Of course not, not a penny. Those who underwrote the issue and ended up buying half the new shares were Lowe, Marland, Thompson and Withers. Obviously Lawrie had the right to buy up the new shares for his holding so he bought those... oh no, wait, he didn't even buy his own shares in the Open Offer, not a penny. So it's pretty clear, when looking at facts rather than myth, that those who swindled people were Lawrie and Co, and those who lined their pockets were Lawrie and Co. DUncan, please can you bookmark this post so you don't make the same claim every year for the next 20 years? My heroes are Jimmy Page and John Bonham. I think you are mistaking common sense and fact for some sort of personal allegiance to someone I've never met. One of us is barking mad and it isn't me. Ah yes, the ex-guardsman who played for Gateshead in the 50s. That's half a century ago. Again you are lacking objectivity and common sense, by all means pillory chairmen like Lowe, Dein, Glazier, Abramovich, Mandaric, Jordan, Hemmings, Lord Ashcroft and Delia Smith for running multi-million pound companies whilst not being footballers, but let's keep some perspective about the benefits of keeping a "swindling", "pocket-lining" McMenemy in the picture too. Sh!t, £5 for typing up a load of facts, what a rip off! :-(

Duncan, you spend your whole time telling tales and stories to help bring down the club. The only aspect of this which I take "personally" is that you do all this to the known detriment of the club which I support. Why would you do that? Can't you put your personal grudge to one side for the betterment of the club? Even when you try to criticise the football side you cannot help but lay all the blame on Lowe (PLC) rather than Wilde (SFC) - that sums up the lack of objectivity. For every criticism you lay, there is usually a corresponding one with Wilde, Crouch, Corbett, McMenemy which you completely ignore and dismiss. You have deliberately chosen not to address any of the points above which is very telling, the question is what did you think you would achieve by spreading this rumour on here and treating it as fact? I don't see anything spiteful in my replies - I have pretty much typed an identical message to yours, only instead of questioning (aka "making up a story about") Lowe I have simply turned it around to ask the same questions about Lawrie/Pearson - what's wrong with that? I have questioned why Swansea fans don't appear to be gripped with demo fever after their disastrous draw on Saturday - what's wrong with that? And I've pointed out the obvious that Wotte does have a free hand in picking who he wants - what's wrong with that? My conclusion is that all that is wrong is that it disagrees with your rumour (I say "your", can't be sure whose idea it was). I have never met any of the major shareholders, but I am quite capable of drawing my own conclusions as to their relative strengths and weaknesses - I think the destructive elements in our fanbase are those people who cannot do that, and therefore cannot see the flaws in the people they back whilst only seeing the weaknesses in those they dislike (often for personal reasons). That's why Wilde rode into town unchallenged, and why you and others will continue your campaign of hatred until we go into administration. I hope you enjoy the 2nd division more than I will. Sorry to tack you on the end slickmick but 3 posts are up ;-) Good question - maybe that's why NP with LM's guidance nearly took us down, but on his own he can reach the heights of the 1st division! Seriously though, I think most managers with Oakley (Premier League quality), Fryatt and Howard (top CCC quality) would have an easy time in that division. All hypothetical and IMO unhelpful speculation - I imagine NP fans would have liked to have someone like Tony Adams here too, and look how badly he's doing in a tougher league. Or maybe, just maybe, their fans don't enjoy the blame game more than football games?

I am getting the impression that Crouch is still picking which bits of rumour and gossip he'd like to have spread amongst Saints fans. And I'm very impressed at Rupert running the team given the outrage on here that he was out of the country. Well he's changed the formation, criticised JP's lack of adaptability, brought back Wotton, signed another centre-half and he stands on the touch-line shouting at the players during the match. I'm going out on a limb here, but my answer to that one would be "yes". I wonder whether Pearson had a free-hand after Lawrie's son brought him into the club? Given Lawrie spent so much time down the training ground after he arrived you'd think it unlikely, no? Objectivity anyone? I expect Swansea supporters are busy organising demonstrations and demanding changes at board level following them "failing to muster 3 points against 10 men when already in front, against the worst home team in the league". Or maybe, just maybe, they don't have a fan-base full of drama-queens and revolutionaries? I agree that this post is about ego, politics and self-justification, but I'm not sure it's about Lowe! I really do question the lack of objectivity and motivation for some of the posts in the last couple of months... even if someone seriously thought a change at boardroom level would affect anything (and there are 6 million reasons why not for starters), how the hell can any of this be in the club's interest *now*? It's not. The transfer window has closed, we are where we are now. We have 15 games left to save ourselves - it's a shame we appear to be running out of supporters who want to cheer the team on, but prefer to play political football. By all means spread the rumours and lies in May, have fun holding little rallies in June, but why not concentrate efforts on keeping the club in business - if we go down, it's administration, and not the kind of trivial inconvenience some so-called fans on here think it will entail.

I agree with Ron that the Rule 9 offer is only relevant to prices paid within the last 12 months, so the 65p price is old hat now and irrelevant. As for the rules about 3% shareholdings etc (Companies Act 1985 I think), you basically have to include spouse and children under 18. You also have to include beneficial holdings, CFDs and spread bets. And holdings by companies in which you have a controlling interest and any proxies of course. [Hence Lowe doesn't include his father's holdings, but Wilde had to include Merlion's and the proxies from McMenemy, Corbett, etc]. But you wouldn't have to notify selling down from say 3.9% to 3.1% as that doesn't cross a threshhold. I did metion in a post last week that some CFD/spreadbet companies were changing margins significantly which could cause people to close open positions - if this were the case then those trades could just be people closing their long positions.

I was there with 2 others too in the Gallogate end (one was studying in Newcastle at the time and had queued up to get tickets)... very hard to remain silent when the free-kick went in! It was funny to hear the players celebrating in a completely silent ground, they all sounded more squeaky than Alan Ball :-) Great set of questions!

That's just the point though isn't it Duncan - football chairmanship in the 70s was about as tricky as tying your boot laces. You could indeed have ex-teachers working part-time to do the job, and you could afford to have country types who spent a lot of time on their Scottish estates. And no, fans didn't care (or usually know) what the chairman was up to because they supported the 11 blokes kicking the ball. The fact is that those some laissez-faire part-timers are the ones who actually drove us to the point of financial obscurity - a decrepid old stadium and no revenue. Cue the cheap-shots about an empty SMS and no money now either, but the club was wallowing in the past, and a lot of fans are keeping that going. It's very sad that your emotions over the club can be so dramatically swayed by the non-employment of a part-time chairman of a PLC. I think you should try to re-think your priorities and whether you are supporting a PLC or a football club here. As for thinking Pearson would "do the same", that would have been for us to scrape along at the bottom wouldn't it? We had a weaker squad and less money, are you suggesting that is irrelevant and he would have blown the division apart when he barely scraped us through back in May with better players? I think that is just wishful thinking. Well finally we share some common ground, but this is what then concerns me: That's just making exactly the same mistake that happened with Wilde - if Crouch is not good enough then he's NOT the answer is he. The answer is to get someone else running the club. By trying to back someone who is clearly not fit for purpose you are simply making matters worse. If you think Lowe needs to go that's fine, but for God's sake don't bring back another failure with a different set of flaws. You sound like Arthur Bl**dy Scargill - radical solutions?! This is a game of football. Instead of rousing the rabble and driving a stake through the heart of the club (quite literally if it all kicks off and the stadium gets shut down), have you thought about what you are going to achieve now the transfer window is as good as shut and we only have 17 games to go?

Comparing market caps at the current time is a bit pointless, they are dozens of companies whose prices have dropped 90% on no news. But if you're going to do it then it would be worth commenting that Watford and Preston have had 2 of the wealthiest owners in English football in recent years and (I think) a hell of a lot less debt. Only they didn't list at £1, they listed at 46p. The current share price is barely lower than when we beat Spurs 4-0 and started our road to Cardiff and 8th place in the league - hard to believe given our fall to the bottom of the CCC and a mountain of debt. Are you trying to imply there is normally a positive Beta correlation between the Saints share price and the FTSE100? Or were you just trying to start more rumours? The share price movement is absolutely meaningless and irrelevant to anything other the opportunity for certain types of fans to spread daft rumours - shares like Saints can appear to move 10% without a trade even changing hands. As it happens, several spread betting companies have changed their margins again this week so it's possible some punters are having to close their long positions - this will have a general affect on small caps (possibly why AIM All Share is lower than the FTSE100 in relative terms this week). A complete non-event.

Put his hand in his pocket? Only to check how big his d!ck is. Let's just remind ourselves how much Crouch paid into the club from his own pocket when *he* was chairman last season. Errr, that will be the square root of f*** all then, so he's in no position to demand the current chairmen put their cash in is he? In fact, he preferred to send Rasiak and Skacel out on loan to cut costs rather than put his own cash in. So given he had very little faith in sticking cash in when he was in charge (a rare moment of clarity of thought to be fair, given we plunged down the league with his "English manager"), it's just more pointless posturing from Crouch. He still won't put a penny in despite all his claims. Ahh yes, I wonder who Chris McMenemy is representing this season? Quite how you think we could afford to bring in Lawrie I don't understand - simply from a financial perspective this is someone who charged the club £75k pa to be an "ambassador" and did nothing but bad-mouth the club either-side of his paid employment. How much will he charge for a "real" position? For anyone who hasn't noticed, the transfer window will end this weekend. From now until the end of season what difference will it make to the team's survival to change the boardroom again? The answer is "nothing", which is why Corbett and Crouch are acting more in their own interests than those of the club or fans in trying to cause further disruptions now. If they want to try to force change (again), why not wait until May? Even Wilde managed to realise it was in everyone's interests to make changes out of season.

By suggesting I am behind the current "set up", you are presumably changing the tack from a discussion about fan ownership and board structure to a direct dig at the current board? Calling it an mitigated (sic) disaster may be your blinkered view of the SFC world from behind that mighty chip, but to anyone else we have just *had* 2 years of unmitigated disaster and that has out of necessity been followed by 6 months of tough decisions. I would like a straight answer to a straight question - given we survived last season by 20 minutes with a team of more experienced and expensive players, what position did you think we would find ourselves in come January? Top 6? And given the parlous state of our finances and the incredible collapse of banking what exactly did you think would happen with regards to finance at the club? Did you think we could just close our eyes and hope the big bad Barclays monster would go away (like the previous board did)? Once you've answered that Duncan, I would *love it* (and I mean *love it* in a Kevin Keegan way) if you could ask MC and LM what their answers are - I've already seen Crouch's and haven't yet stopped laughing :-) Back to the subject of fan ownership, and without recourse to calling someone "ignorant" for holding a different opinion, I broadly agree with CB Fry - you cannot make any comparison between SFC and Spanish clubs. It's massively cultural and political over there, for a start clubs like Barcelona and Real are indefinitely financed by the banks. It's a pointless comparison. Which then brings us back to clubs where fans have tried to take control via Supporters Trusts - Rushden & Diamond are amongst the best examples, their Trust was bequethed an excellent setup by their former benefactor Max Briggs, plus £750,000 and 22 acres of land, yet the Trust couldn't even run the club at breakeven and they were relegated (2006). Well done those fans. And closer to home the Ted Bates statue is an excellent example because it was run with a formal board of 5 (?) fans, 4 of whom were also on the Saints Trust board (surprise surprise). When the shambolic statue was finally revealed, did they do what the Saints Trust had demanded Lowe did and resign for their incompetence and failure to deliver? No, they wanted a chance to put it right. And this was all just over a poxy £30k statue, not a multi-million pound listed football club. Can you just imagine the damage they would have caused to a proper company? And if you don't have the fans involved as UP now seems to be trying to suggest (whatever happened to the Fan On The Board idea then?), well you're just talking about fans owning shares aren't you? Which is what we already have. The only difference being that when the majority elect Lowe/Wilde to run the board it's not accepted as a majority decision.. ie. the fans won't respect the majority opinion. So even if we changed the club's AoA to restrict any given shareholder to 5% say (thus reducing one person's influence), it still wouldn't make much difference because at the end of the day even if you say the fans aren't involved at board level, they won't accept the majority decision by other fans who hold shares. Where will we ever get without that democracy?

:-):-):-):-):-):-):-) If one thing has summed up why Saints fans should be kept 1000 miles away from the boardroom, the Saints Trust was it. A complete lack of integrity from day one, the false membership renewal numbers, all the way through to their collusion with Wilde and Crouch and lying about share proxies. There is not one prominent "fan" I would want anywhere near the running of the club. The way for fans to get the club back on an even keel is to support it, not to deliberately disrupt it from on high (and down low on here).

Hallo Duncan, you're very fortunate to always have little snippets of conversation like these that prove your side of these debates. I was actually talking about MC (and her family) proxying their shares to Wilde rather than the appointments of Hone et al. However, since you want me to check my facts I thought I would copy the quote she gave to the Echo regarding this: So basically we have a woman who (a) pledges support and proxies shares to Wilde without checking him or his claims out, thus implicitly supporting his public statements regarding a new board, (b) then privately raises a concern over appointments without doing any due diligence there either, © continues to proxy shares to Wilde despite these reservations [or more likely she just accepted Wilde's opinion as fact], (d) oversees 2 years of disastrous financial performance together with footballing "highlights" like Gorman & Dodd and escaping relegation by 20 minutes, and (e) finally after 2 years of this decides to speak out in public because she doesn't want RL back. You think that's a good contribution? I'm sure MC is a lovely woman. I'm sure she also cares passionately about Saints. My Nan is also a lovely woman who cares deeply about Southampton - she is as mad as a hat though and there is no way I'd want her having a say in how the club is run just because she inherited shares. I can live with RL, LC and MW being involved as they all paid for their right to an opinion. The same with Withers. The rest can pretty much all go away as far as I'm concerned - what would be interesting about administration (although it's obviously silly to wish for it), is that when it came back down to it most of the Directors/ex-Directors wouldn't spend 1p to buy shares back in the club - do you think McMenemy, Corbett, Richards, Askham, Wiseman or Trant would buy shares? Nope. Hang on, I'm confused, which one is the puppet? Is that Wilde, the man you, Mary and all the other "passionate" Saints fans fell in love with and brought to power? Thank God for your objectivity eh! Duncan, instead of harping on at Lowe about relegation (again) at the AGM, why didn't you use the AGM to question the shambolic state of affairs the club had been left in and the part MC, LM and LC had in that period of the club? What a wasted opportunity. Do you not think it is better to look to the future than always look at the past? The fact remains that last season we escaped relegation by 20 minutes. This season we have lost most of our most experienced players and are doing about the same (in fact quite a bit better given we were mid-table before Crouch came in as chairman). What did you and others expect this season? Promotion? Some people need a reailty check, this season has gone exactly as I would have expected (if not hoped).

It's not amnesia, it's the fact that where blame is appropriate (as opposed to the 90% which is just petty name calling) I think it should be based up fact and not stuff you've just made up. Lowe has made plenty of mistakes and the last big issue I had with him was about Wigley's appointment. That contributed to the relegation, but I still place Redknapp way way above him on the list of responsibility there. I'm sure there were some others, but not many outside of the "lunatic fringe" category really - stadium, stability, Cup Final, Europe. So yes, mistakes were made 4 years ago. Now let's try looking at the present shall we? The current financial situation was brought about my those in charge over the last 2 years. Lowe wasn't one of them. Corbett, McMenemy and Crouch were. If you think Lowe should be turfed out now for what he did 4 years ago, isn't it rather hypocritical not to castigate those who have caused far more damage to the club far more recently? As far as I'm aware Cowen is paid £25k and Lowe nothing (happy to be corrected). Let's not forget McMenemy was one of those taking the cash as we racked up the debts, £75k to be an "ambassador"?! Not bad for someone who has gotten through managers faster than Lowe. And Crouch who continually states he will make a "significant financial contribution" without putting in a penny (to the club), and acts like a demented schoolkid at the club's AGM when he should have shown some contrition for the mess that occurred under his watch (thanks for Gorman and Dodd!). They all have their faults, let's try to criticise for real ones - what is RL's crime since relegation?

Ah the very person who kicked off all the instability and helped bring Wilde to power, yet admits she didn't bother spending 5 minutes checking into his claims and credentials, is now kicking off about it again and wants to get him removed? Shouldn't she have worried a bit more about it 2 years ago when she voted Wilde in? Or during the past 2 years when the people she brought in wrecked the club's finances? Where is her own accountability? She has gone from disagreeing with Crouch and backing Wilde (like Crouch himself bizarrely), to now disagreeing with Wilde and backing Crouch. She needs to learn to think for herself and not keep joining the bandwagon - what is different now from 2 years ago, except her own actions have helped to nearly bankrupt the club? She is on a different planet sometimes (assuming she's not up in the Scottish estate). Good to see she's being supportive of the team and Mark Wotte when we need it most... A question for MC to Mull over before she starts up more rallies - when exactly did you withdraw your 1.4m share proxies from Wilde?

Ahhh GM, you know more about CDS's than 90% of the people I work with and that's our area! Well with Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain on credit watch they are unsurprisingly high. What will be interesting is to see if any of them get downgraded below A- rating by S&P (temporarily lowered to BBB-) which would exclude their sovereign debt from acceptance by the ECB (oh dear). Meanwhile a good round of redundancies will do the City no harm, there is a lot of dross at the moment and these culls clear a lot of it out. Ah well again I would disagree with you there, you cannot keep grouping the UK in with the less risky sovereigns. Markit shows the latest G7 spreads and the UK is twice as expensive to insure against as the US, Germany or France and three times as costly as Japan: http://www.markit.com/information/news/commentary/cds.html And we're deteriorating at the same pace as Italy which can never be a good sign. In fact, UK Ltd is considered more risky and therefore more expensive to insure against than corporates now... good article here: http://uk.mobile.reuters.com/mobile/m/FullArticle/eUK/CSASUK/nStocksNews_uUKLNE4B805Y20081209?kw=qa?sym=.N225 ...and a more tabloid version explaining Gordon Brown is riskier than Ronald McDonald here: http://www.ifaonline.co.uk/public/showPage.html?page=ifa2006_articleimport&tempPageName=833976

Sorry for the delay replying GM, I had used up my 3 posts ;-) Well the figures I had were from an internal memo, but I can't give you a link to that so used the Citibank ref you found on the Spectator. Yes that's true to an extent as I'm sure there are offsetting maturing liabilities, and in fact the devaluing of the pound had raised their value too. But this is ignoring 3 very important issues IMO: 1. Gearing - yes we do have foreign assets for offsetting, but we are highly geared [trailing only Monaco, Switzerland and Ireland relative to GDP]. Like Northern Rock was highly geared, as were the Icelandic banks. And as we know, small movements in asset valuations can have a significant effect. Ordinarily not a problem for the financial centres, but these are not ordinary times. I'm not sure just what quality (or liquidity) those foreign assets will have, or how much they will net off given we run a trade deficit - we certainly don't have much gold left ;-) 2. What brought down Northern Rock, and could be our biggest headache in the next 12 months, is the disproportional amount of short term debt which needs rolling over. With UK CDS spreads high, that short-term debt is very expensive still - given the leverage pointed out in 1. that has a significant effect. 3. A large proportion of that gross external debt belongs to the banks - and who is having to bail out the banks? The government - so a large amount of that external debt is in the process of being transferred from corporate to government. Ordinarily this is probably a good thing given the government is less likely to struggle to re-finance or default, however the credit crisis is not restricted to corporates... how easily can we sell our national debt in devaluing sterling? But this is all just arguing the severity of our situation - the original point was whether we are better or worse off than France... I still think we are worse off, maybe I've just been brainwashed by all the French people I work with.

Well that's a bit better, but you're still choosing to ignore the gross debt position which the IMF have clearly defined whilst choosing to believe the government's own numbers. You'll be telling me that the CPI figures are a fair relflection of inflation next ;-) Sorry, the dog ate my economic forecasts. I dunno, the big cheeses at the banks take a vast swathe of their pay in shares and options - thousands of bankers at Lehmans saw share savings and pensions go up in smoke... some senior execs close to retirement saw millions in their pension funds reduced to nothing, they literally lost everything. They like many others saw banks as impregnable. We have had 20% rate cuts at my bank, 10% redundancies, 50 traders kicked out in my area on the spot a few weeks back. And there are a hell of a lot of people who put all their bonuses into BTL property - as prices and rents start to fall they are all really in the sh!t too. As for the politicians, NuLabour were brought to power by housing developers and senior Labour ranks are all heavily invested in BTL - that is why the government has gone to extreme lengths to keep the housing bubble inflated at the cost of the economy and the country's financial future. All we can hope is that they don't start printing money to inflate away the debts of the greedy and further penalise the prudent!

GM, those CIA figures are 1 or 2 years out of date, mine were from last month and the gross figures do take account of pension liabilities which is why France is 2nd behind the UK but still nowhere near as bad as us. Whilst you state that those additional figures "can't be construed as national debt at this stage", I'm going by the IMF definition of gross external debt which I think is the recognised definition in the City. And the fact remains that the UK has more debt payable in the next 12 months than France owes in its entirety. Both are stuffed on pensions, and both need massive public sector culls and pension reductions - a big problem trying to agree that with the unions here, an even bigger one in France... but if the IMF come in their policy is to savagely cut public sector jobs without compensation. None of which means France isn't up sh!t-creek, it's just not as far up it as the UK.

43% my arse, you've fallen for the usual NuLabour spin there GM! When Gordon Brown gives his "43% of GDP" (£645 billion) soundbite to today's dumb journos, he conveniently forgets to include: * Public Pensions Liability = £1,000 billion * Bank bail-outs = £500 billion and counting * Bradford & Bingley bail-out = £30 billion * Private Finance Initiatives = £100 billion * Network Rail liability = £20 billion Not to mention our personal debt which now stands at a staggering £1,500 billion. That gives a total debt of nearly £4,000 billion, not £645 billion that Brown claims - that's £155,000 per household, how will we ever pay that back? But then you also need to add on another £2,300 billion in corporate debt for a true "external debt" figure (as defined by the IMF) to give a gross debt of over 400% of GDP: http://www.spectator.co.uk/article_images/articledir_6156/3078296/1_fullsize.bmp France is in second place and not looking too hot, but UK PLC is far far more screwed. And the reason we're totally screwed is because unlike the French the vast majority of that is short-term debt: http://www.spectator.co.uk/article_images/articledir_6156/3078296/2_fullsize.bmp Who wants to buy that debt with sterling plummeting? We will end up either paying exhorbitant rates to the Arabs/Chinese and a timeless indebtedness, or there will have to be an IMF bail-out - apocalypse now. There's never been a worse time for Saints to be in financial trouble.

Duh yes, I posted about that last year (maybe on saintslist?) - I have a memory like a sieve!

Just to be clear, the reason I'd like a wages cap (plural, ie. the whole club not per-player) is to protect the smaller clubs who run themselves out of existence by gambling their futures - unfortunately it is the big clubs who would stop this, although perhaps the Football League would be able to adopt different rules to the Premier League. I won't give a toss if Chelski go bust when Abramovich gets bored, or Arsenal go bust when they fail to qualify for the CL (won't that be funny), but I'd be sad to see the smaller, lower league clubs going bust simply because they get run by greedy short-term gamblers. The reason I think wages are more important to address than transfer fees is that they are future payments - OK, I know transfer fees are typically 12 month payments but wages are typically 3-5 years of financial commitment. That is what cripples clubs, whether through collapsed leverage like Leeds or through relegation like Saints which makes 5 year financial commitments impossible to guarantee. Transfer fees are simple - if they have the cash then they can spend £100m on Kaka if they want... how about an FA tax on transfer fees (implemeted as a registration tax) which gets evenly distributed between all league clubs? Say 20% - that means that if Kaka signs for Al-Manc FC for £100m then clubs like Rochdale and Northampton will get £200k each... what a difference that would make to ensuring the future of those clubs. Good point, this was the initial point of de-stabilisation. Does anyone know how this works in the other major European leagues?

This was one of my main concerns when Wilde wafted into the club, and one of my questions which the Saints Trust got the new board to answer - they replied that "as a "rule of thumb", the directors will endeavour to ensure that labour costs remain around 50% of turnover. Short–medium term variations (in the pay-turnover ratio) in the range 40 – 60% will be regarded as acceptable provided that corrective actions are planned to restore the ratio to the 50% norm." By the following summer I was still concerned this wasn't being addressed and contacted the club directly, to which they then replied "64% is still slightly on the high side... We have made considerable wage savings since relegation... a major challenge the Board faces is to maintain a team capable of challenging for promotion whilst not over committing the Company in terms of player wages relative to the reduced turnover levels in the Championship." I guess they didn't bother! I know a year or two ago the Deloitte report into wages cited CCC clubs running at nearly 90% of turnover compared to just under 60% in the Premiership. Clubs like Fulham run high at around 80% as they are independently bankrolled (over £120m to date) like other clubs are now too - and of course we have Jack Walker to thank for that particular "business model" - he bought Blackburn's title by running their wage bill at 125%. I know around the time we were relegated Charlton were running their wage bill up around 70% of turnover, way too high - they made nearly £20m profit on player trading one year but still had no cash as their model was unsustainable. When Norwich came up to the Prem they ran their wage bill at just £11m compared to Saints at £25m. That meant that when they went back down, they only had to adjust it down by £2m to stay under 60% of turnover. But no doubt their board was castigated for the lack of ambition right? IMO wages are the root of all evil in football - Spurs nearly went bust in the 80s until Sugar capped their wages, Arsenal were done for tax avoidance over trying to pay their astronomical player wages and hit with a £12m tax bill, Leeds went bust due to the excessive wages, Bradford, etc etc. There needs to be some sort of cap, but I don't know how it can be done in practical terms without the big clubs finding ways to circumvent it - eg. loaning players out to other clubs and paying part of the wages. I like the idea of UEFA imposing capital structure rules on clubs, but again the big clubs will never fit the bill and there's no way they will risk the Champions League money cow to force it through.

Hey GM, don't forget that whilst drawing twice his gross profit in divvies he also increased Merlion's debt by borrowing an additional £1.2m and then £1.5m either side of his divvies - straight from the bank into his pocket! After mentioning this on W4E, I mean S4E, Wilde changed Merlion from being a plc to a private listed company - in fact, he did it the day after the AGM. This change meant: o he was no longer restricted in only making dividend payments when net assets exceed called up share capital and undistributable reserves o he could delay publishing Merlion's next accounts by a further 3 months o he no longer needed to present Merlion's own Profit and Loss Account As for the many Legg classics how about:

Sorry Duncan, but that's the lamest excuse ever. Some of us had warned about Wilde for months and months... it wasn't like a bolt from the blue exactly, you and others made the conscious decision to ignore the warnings as addressing them didn't suit your ultimate aim. Obviously Legg tried to stop it on S4E too including having IP addresses traced and personal/work details posted. In fact, for people who wanted something so badly, it's even more inexcusable not to do the job properly - and, ironically, by not doing that job properly you've all let him back in. So the man who spent £1.6m on shares, paid legal and PR teams, didn't spend £3 and 5 minutes to check out the man he was backing? It's just so ridiculous it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The same of course can be said for others like Mary Corbett. The same lack of diligence continued with Dulieu and Hone whilst a deliberate blind eye was taken when it came to the lies of Crouch, Wilde and the Saints Trust about share proxies. Or the lies about not being able to invest due to closed periods / Takeover Panel / phase of the moon which were propagated by Jim Hone. Not to mention the lies about investment from Wilde and Trant, and the ongoing bravado from Crouch that he will invest "if others do" (since November 2006!). Just how difficult would it have been to have investigated these people a little from public information and demanded guarantees over investment before backing them? The sad thing is, you just know that all the same mistakes will be made again as soon as the opportunity arises...

Yes I know that, but we are hardly going to be defaulting on HMRC payments if we are paying the stadium loan - that would obviously be fatal, I was talking about the far less clear-cut case where the loan issuer calls in the loan, either through missed payments or just to recoup the cash. I think you're thinking too much, I had nothing more in mind than an alternative overdraft facility. Although to be fair, Lowe helped bring in £6.2m from Secure, £3.1m from the open offer, sorted the £17m stadium financing, and re-financed to £25m to free up £8m cash and reduced our annual loan payments. Wilde, errrr, made £6.50 with his "Let's Go Wilde!" tshirts. You sound like you were (are) probably in one of UP's classes so that doesn't surprise me, it's probably some sort of schoolteacher crush. FYI the stadium loan payments are made annually, not monthly, so yes it is entirely possible to currently be making a loss yet able to pay off parts of the overdraft - understand? Besides which, I don't recall saying we were currently losing money month by month anywhere - but you just make it up if you feel better for it! :-) Hi alpine, made it to a game yet this season? The answer to your question is that Lowe has personally put in about £130k in the open offer. Wilde has put in zero. I wasn't suggesting Lowe/Wilde are generous benefactors at all, why does this matter to Crouch if he has the cash to help? Does he want to help the club or score points against Lowe and Wilde?