Panto_Villan

Depends on the colour! That's racist... Nah, black sports cars are the least likely to be stopped by the police...

City looked a bit toothless against us tbh. They had a lot of possession but they certainly did not look deadly.

I'd be very surprised if Mitchell had called the police plebs. I imagine he said something pretty rude to them, but that he didn't call them plebs - and that once he'd given the policemen in question a tongue-lashing (probably an unwarranted one), the decision was made either by him or by his associates to spice it up by adding the word "pleb", because a minister calling a policemen a rocket polisher is hardly going to make news but calling him a "pleb" would be understandably incendiary and would allow them to get their own back. I really can't see Mitchell choosing to call a policeman a pleb, and if he had I really couldn't see him fighting so hard to clear his name that the case around him would start to unravel. Mitchell was a whip and from everything I've read was not overly popular in the Tory party, and a week after he'd lost his job I'd imagine that even his former allies were wishing he'd just shut up about the matter so it'd stop damaging the Tory party. So for him to keep on going on and on and on about it, and the subsequent revelations that some of the evidence was fabricated, strongly makes me think that he didn't call the policeman a pleb and that the Tories aren't spinning anything about Mitchell being innocent. In fact I imagine the Tory leadership still wish the man would shut up and go away, rather than closing ranks around him.

It is concerning, isn't it? We've got an excellent police force in world terms, but corruption really does need to be punished heavily. Mitchell kept complaining about this for months and months, long after everyone had lost patience with the whole matter - and he turned out to be right. It makes you wonder how much of it goes unseen because the victims either give up or are not high-profile enough to get the same level of investigation as Mitchell did.

Fair enough. I think you're doing it a disservice but you're obviously entitled to your opinion on what is a subjective matter. That's a good example. The discussion point is the best way of cutting benefits; the perspective is that benefit cuts are taken as given. Recent articles call for more subsidy for business, and abandoning towns like Hull while doing away with the green belt around London. Let market forces determine things. I find the perspective pretty much that of large parts of the tory party, but I don't think they're coming from a very ideological place - they just see the world like that, though in what seems an uncritical way, as though it's natural. If the target audience is businesspeople, that's understandable. What I took issue with was the notion that it's "intellectually challenging". I don't find it so. People like Wolf and Oborne, for example, offer quite a bit more insight and reflection. Yeah, I see the point you're making. It's true - the views of the Economist and the Tory party line up in terms of free market economics even if they are coming from slightly different ideological places. But I'd place them further to the left of the Tories due to being more socially liberal and very pro-immigration. It sounds like you would too, so it's just a question of where you think the political centre starts. The previous poster mentioned that the Economist was intellectually challenging with regards to the population as a whole. The highest circulation newspaper in Britain is still the Sun afaik; I'm pretty sure his point was that people would be better informed if they read the Economist rather than that. You may not find it particularly intellectually challenging, but then I think you're better informed than the type of person the comment was aimed at...I mean, the difference between a fine wine and one that is merely good is likely to be lost on someone who has never tasted wine before.

Why watch then? I have absolutely no interest in jabbing forks in my eyes, but I don't feel the need to tell everyone that...

I wonder why you're so keen on the Economist. (It's not a newspaper, by the way). It's always struck me as rather dull, plodding, and prone to repeat uncritically the false certainties of the establishment. You get more diversity and more intellectual challenge in the Torygraph or the FT, if reading right-wing papers is your thing. It is a newspaper. What in the world do you think a newspaper is if not a publication that reports news? As the above poster has pointed out it is non-partisan politically and is very critical of the government of the day. It's fairly obvious from your response you don't read it regularly (if you've ever read it at all) which makes your assumption-laden response a curious mix of sad and amusing. The FT is more intellectually challenging no doubt and hence less accessible. I occasionally encourage people to read the Economist because it really is very accessible and as a fairly succinct weekly publication not particularly time-consuming. I struggle to see why anyone working outside of financial services would read the FT regularly. It's a magazine. It doesn't do news reporting, but publishes features, comment, and some summary of what newspapers have already covered. It's been described as Readers' Digest for corporate America, which seems about right. Like "Hello", applied to politics and business. Panto Villan is broadly right to describe it as economic and social liberalism; I would say that's also a good description of David Cameron - support big business, but no need to be beastly to gay people along the way, because some of our chums are gay. Sod the scroungers, though. If you see that as "centrist", well, I don't. Plenty of people outside finance read (parts of) the FT (few people still confine their reading to one or two print sources which they buy every day or week). They do so for the quality of some of the writing, like Wolf and some of the Alphaville stuff, not the share prices and press releases. It is a magazine in the most literal sense of the word, in that it is released weekly and is glossy rather than matt. It covers topics in detail that most daily newspapers don't cover in any great detail, and I would imagine the reason why it covers those topics is because they are news rather than because newspapers have covered them. Their analysis is generally more in-depth than most daily publications, though of course specialist publications like the FT also cover things in detail too. But there's no need to demean the Economist because the FT may cover things in slightly more detail - the previous poster said he wished people would read more stimulating things and frankly both the Economist and the FT are a cut above most news publications when it comes to financial and political coverage. Also, you're right to describe David Cameron as not being centrist, though more socially liberal than his party. You're not right to say the Economist holds that position - to reply to your specific point of complaint, it has written numerous articles pointing out that further benefit cuts are not overly helpful given it represents a tiny % of welfare spending, and rather it would be far more effective to target spending on pensioners which makes up something like 40% of all welfare spending. Means-testing the Winter Fuel Allowance, for instance. So yes, I'd still say it was centrist. But more importantly, it tends to make decisions based on hard financial data rather than political realism. We need more of that - the Tories target scroungers because it wins votes, and don't target old people because they vote more than other age groups. The country is worse off for it, but until people use figures to put the "issues" in financial context then the issue is more about emotion than reality.

To be honest he's not actually played particularly well in the league this season in the few games he has played. So in a theoretical situation where he doesn't get injured again and plays all our games, but scores say a total of 12 league goals...looks decent but not as good as he did last season...how would everyone see that panning out? If he's not amazing this season we're not going to be able to get £30m for him, which means we may well not want to sell him - but we've probably already agreed he can go. I wonder what would happen then? Would it pan out well for Villa?

Incidentally, at what point does a player stop being a "prospect"? The article and manager describes Bacuna as a prospect despite being 22. I'd say he's very much at the upper bounds of being a prospect by then unless he's been showing remarkable game-on-game improvement, no?

It's true that writing players off early is not confined to VT and any club will have fans that do it. However, that doesn't mean that it's a desirable behavior or we should not aspire to be fair-minded when evaluating our players.

I wonder why you're so keen on the Economist. (It's not a newspaper, by the way). It's always struck me as rather dull, plodding, and prone to repeat uncritically the false certainties of the establishment. You get more diversity and more intellectual challenge in the Torygraph or the FT, if reading right-wing papers is your thing. The Economist reminds me of a student magazine that is written by Economics undergrads. Every now and then there's a good, interesting article, but most of the time it's old hat 'micro 101' and rather tedious... The 'Schumpeter' column is particularly hilarious and clearly written by someone who has never read Schumpeter before. You're absolutely right that the FT is more diverse and intellectually challenging. The Economist isn't so financially focused as the FT - it's more of a current affairs paper with a business and economics section, while the FT really is the Financial Times. It's also not inherently right wing, rather it's liberal in the literal sense of the word - supporting free market economics like the Tories do, but supporting social liberalism like Labour and the Lib Dems do. I'd say that makes it relatively centrist. The columns are named for economists who contributed to economics, rather than because that particular columnist agrees with their views or is some way obliged to communicate them in the column.

Writing him off before he really had a chance? Thank god we're so much better to him, eh chaps?

I thought his previous team thought he was crap and we were idiots for buying him? Maybe they sold him so they could spend the money on an ACM?

Meh. Houllier was condemned for some ill-chosen words about Liverpool, and McLeish was damned for his methods more than his results. It's not *just* results and actions that count. Obviously nobody can tell the future but the signs so far have been good with Lambert. Also, to be fair to the community, I haven't seen much moaning about Lambert since we avoided relegation last season so I think you're being a tad harsh about the 'hardcore moaners'.

It's quite the improvement, especially when you consider he was even dire in the pre-season games against fairly poor opposition.

Maybe Benteke could tap him up on international duty? More likely he would tap up Benteke on international duty. Always wanted to do that

Maybe Benteke could tap him up on international duty?

I'd be gutted if we sold Guzan, properly gutted. Villa having a brilliant keeper in goal reduces my heart attack risk by approximately 400%.

I agree with Morpheus entirely. He did something similar to Clark and it's like someone has flipped a lever in his head.

But that just makes him a worse version of Emile Heskey, which is one of the meanest things you could ever say about anybody.

I find him utterly uninspiring. I was thinking earlier that I don't think I could name a worse player in our squad (bomb squad remnants aside). He's not hair-tearingly useless, but he just doesn't seem to have any flair or excitement about him at all. Does anyone else think there is a worse player in our squad? I can see Bennett getting a few votes but tbh if we had to give one away I'd rather it were Bowery.

I agree. It's the thing I like most about Villa. At the end of the day we're not a good side and we won't really win anything until we have our very own Arab. But at least, unlike those who DO have their very own Arab, we have kept some of the important aspects that are disappearing from football like love for the club, passion, effort, professionalism and a real desire to do well for each other. Just look at them all at the end of the Man City game. Who didn't feel like they wanted to run onto the pitch and go mental with them?? But then again, that might all be clichéd nonsense. Maybe I'm just drawn in by the beard also. Isn't KEA our very own Arab?

Yup, but Belgium stole him from the parking lot and resprayed him. EDIT - vaguely related to stealing and respraying players, "Speaking with Roy in the office there is a possibility Januzaj could qualify to play for England from 2015."

Adnan Januzaj. Guess where he's from?

It's better to have loved and lost, then never loved at all. There's no shame in getting excited that Villa might make it back to the big time, even if it didn't / doesn't ultimately pan out.