Panto_Villan

This has been a pretty mental half of football.

This is amazing. Ramsey is amazing. Coutinho is amazing.

Despite not signing a DM, I think I'd rate our most recent transfer window a success. An 11/10 success.

Brilliant goal!

He placed that so perfectly in the corner - which he always seems to do. He's amazing.

What a great finish!

Yeah, but I was responding to a post asking if there was widespread support, which I think there is. I'm not claiming that Boris is here to save the day re: climate change, but I am saying that there's a real chance the next Tory leader could be appreciably worse on the environmental front compared to Boris. I don't think Boris would be making net zero pledges if he was actually about climate change denial on behalf of the banks, because there's plenty of other stances he could easily have taken (and other future leaders might take) that would more effectively enable that position.

Yeah. I'd agree with that. And there certainly needs to be some focus on grid resiliency as we convert over to renewable power to stop this sort of thing happening so much, because it can backfire and erode support for environmental action. But what I was referring to is someone who is intentionally going to sandbag progress in the future (who wants a permanent pause, not just for the next year or so) using the current energy crisis as a way to get into power. I think there's pretty widespread support for it, tbh. BBC article here quotes 58% wanting ambitious targets and 34% gradual, and only 7% saying no action should be taken.

Sure. But a large majority of voters and his wife both want more action on climate change, so in this specific case that's beneficial.

That's not really a building being demolished, unless the building is a metaphor for political standards.

I don't really want Boris to go. The first and most obvious reason is that he's rubbish and the longer he stays, the less likely the Tories are to win the next election imo. The second is the rumblings I've been seeing recently in the Guardian that the Brexity (and anti-lockdown) Tories are re-forming as an anti-climate change faction within the Tories. And say what you like about Boris (and possibly more relevently Carrie in this case) but he's certainly on the more pro-environment side of the Tory party. I'd rather not have a new leader come in who is more aligned with the anti-environment faction.

Sometimes that just makes you feel stupid rather than old. For example: making some bad choices about a garden office.

I might actually have misremembered it, having done some further investigation. It appears he did indeed eat too many potatoes, then ran over his own head as a result of trying to lean out of the car and throw up. The full story is here, although I'm not going to provide an excerpt as is customary on the site because the actual accident sounds pretty horrifying and much more serious / less funny than has previously been made out. Maybe don't read it - he actually got quite badly hurt. Conveniently, a funny joke turning out to be an incredibly grim and depressing story seems an appropriate metaphor in a thread about Newcastle and Saudi Arabia.

That’s one of my favourite stories of all time. Although, to be fair, he didn’t eat too many potatoes - he was carrying a potato and dropped it while getting into his car, then leaned out and under the car to pick it up and ended up falling out and running over his own head. The physics makes sense, but literally nothing else about the story does!

Yeah, good luck to him. Seems like a good bloke.

Yeah, I think in practice this is all moot. I think if he does well here he'll want to stay here - because why wouldn't he? He's alreay had a "big" move that turned into a nightmare for him.

Out of interest, do you think a loan with an obligation to buy works the same way? That at the end of the season we'd be obliged to buy Coutinhho - unless he decided that he'd rather stay at Barcelona on much higher wages? Clearly the selling club would never agree to an obligation to buy that worked like that, and similarly I just can't believe a selling club would agree to an option to buy on a player that left a massive open question mark about whether they can actually exercise that right. In the same way we wouldn't sign a player but say "Actually, in six months you can demand a massive pay rise and leave on a free if you don't get it" EDIT: although apparently that's not how it works in Football Manager, and since that's effectively the bible for any armchair football expert like myself, I just don't know what to think any more!

It really surprises me that anyone thinks we have a loan with an option to buy, but that the purchase terms haven't been agreed with the player in advance. It would entirely negate the point of the option to buy if the player could just demand a massive wage or derail the move entirely if they wanted. Especially when a player was coming towards the end of their contract, as they'd just kill any negotiations and then leave on a free and go to the same place (or somewhere else) with much higher wages. I can't imagine any club would be dumb enough to sign up for that, let alone us.

Yeah - or, alternatively, you could point out the fact he's better than Pele.

I really hope his good season continues. I think the best plan is give him another season on loan in the championship or maybe even a newly promoted PL team if one want him, because he needs game time more than anything. His career has been wasted sat on our bench. Give him a chance to play regularly and he might prove himself good enough for us. If not I think he’ll have a lot of suitors.

Not sure what point you’re trying to make here?

Fair enough. Yes, you’re actually right, at least in the technical sense - they will likely report record profits this quarter. What I should have said (and didn’t in the interests of brevity) is that the profit figures are misleading due to hedging and are effectively illusory. The big energy companies are currently paying prices that they locked in 6-12 months ago and selling it at much higher prices. Monster profits! But they’re also locking in current prices which they’ll pay 6-12 months from now, even if prices have dropped. It just means there is a time lag for the rising prices to hit them. Think about it - we’re in a position where gas prices and electricity prices are high. Who actually benefits from that? People who dig gas out the ground (Shell) and anyone that generates electricity using something other than gas (i.e. nuclear, wind). The energy companies are just middlemen.

Having to pay the £40 levy even if you don’t get the £200 is madness. I guess they’re doing it for the sake of simplicity, but it feels deeply wrong. I guess if you hate your energy company you should stick with them this year, then change to one of the good ones next year.

They really won’t. The reason that so many of them have gone out of business is because they have to buy electricity at wholesale rates higher than they can sell them to us at, due to the price cap. Any company that is actually generating energy will be making a tidy profit (provided they don’t own gas-fired power plants) but they’re not the ones this money is going to.

I don’t think so. They’d get the same amount of money whether they charge it to us directly, or whether the government give it to them on our behalf, no? Its just an attempt to cushion the blow of price rises on consumers. But a rather limited one, and one we have to pay back. Even if we didn’t actually get given it.