anothersaintinsouthsea

Which roughly translates as: Thanks for funding the purchase of the club and ground by the HNWs now please mind you own business.

Couple of points, skate: 1. Have you ever heard of Barcelona? 2. You only own a portion of the club, probably less than 40%.

Oh come on, the difference between the NHS in say 1995 to 2005 was huge - Massive cuts in waiting times, numbers of nurses, infrastructure etc

Trousers, surely this is enough to take your signed Cameron poster down from your bedroom wall?

Brilliant stuff.

Well County are nudging the play-off places at the moment but I can't see them making it out of the Championship I'm afraid.

No facepalm necessary - their new 45,000 seat Harbour/Underwater Dome will be full to the brim with their massive bestest fanbase....

Cue mad scramble as the HNWs look down the back of their sofas for the extras

eeerrrr, how can I put this.....

Yep, as is often the case someone's greatest strengths can also be their undoing. You could argue that her single mindedness was needed in spades early on to shake up the establishment and quash the unions but later she should have built more consensus and operated with less dogma and more pragmatism.

The govt quietly stock piled coal for years in preparation and many in the party wanted revenge for the turmoil created for Heath's administration in the early 70s by striking miners. Much of the country did want reduce power of the Unions but it's not fair to say they wanted a whole industry crushed in the manner it was. The miners strike was good old fashioned class warfare from the leaders of both sides.

The railways - you forget to mention that the recent massive investment in infrastructure has only really come about sinced Railtrack was effectively nationalised, they were an absolute joke of a company that continued to under-invest and made big profits for shareholders by simply selling off its property porfolio. Car industry comment - The UK care industry in the 70s was a joke and the Unions take a big part of the blame but Thatcher hardly encouraged the good industral relations you talk about in Germany. You also fail to mention the German state's role in positively shaping that industry - Lower Saxony still own around 50% of VW.

At what cost? Over-crowding on commuter trains is the norm and prices have gone up by huge amounts. And yet we still support the industry with public subsidies. Let's not forget that BR suffered from massive under-investment prior to privatisation. The whole privatisation scheme was flawed. We'd have been much better off following similar model to Germany where the state retained a significant % of ownership of a national company but sold off enough shares to raise capital for investment and promote a more efficient operation.

As ever the critique of Thatcher is superficial. There's little doubt that Thatcher wanted a set piece battle against the Unions and Scargill was arrogant and stupid enough to give her one despite the Govt getting well prepared for it. Coal mining was a declining industry but the Tories took a short sighted view of the value or lack thereof of the industry in the 80s and that was both motivated by their view of economics AND their desire to crush the unions. What the Tories didn't care to factor in was the social impact of wiping out employment for communities across the country, the economic cost of sticking 1000s permanently onto welfare and the future ever increasing cost of making the UK power industry reliant on imported Gas.

I'm sure Carol and Mark are really upset reading the comments on this thread.....

As opposed to trying to buy votes with tax cuts, cheap shares in undervalued privatised state monopolies, and cheap council houses? Minutes silence? Wonder how many Wiganers agreed with that prat.

He looked very tetchy Edit: I meant twitchy

Be careful using limited statistics. E.g. walcott - a lot of his crosses will be from counter attacks when maybe there are only one or two Arse players in the box. On the other hand Jarvis will more likely be crossing to a relatively crowded box with a fair few team mates all competing for a more lofted ball in.

blimey - the 657 aren't what they used to be

Def not a pen (although you do see them given) as Yoshi was marginally in front of Moses and the ball was in playing distance.

Yep, if he can stay fit and put a run of games together he'll score regularly. Don't see it as a Lambert vs Carroll debate really, very different players.

Saw a stat in one of the media previews - only 3 players in Europe's top leagues have created more chances from open play that SRL.

Great win, still only 4pts clear of relegation zone but now quite a few teams below us. Good form and confidence going into the home straight.

Can we tell who it is yet?

"Redknapp refuses to admit survival is beyond even he, but the eight-point gap between his side and 17th looks all but unassailable, even with N****wo Kanu brought in on a free transfer and £120,000 a week." lol