Gringo

GABBY SUPERSTAR

Beauty DB

Leveling it up after that peno decision

ref is a clearing in the woods

Not Ash's fault - from that replay you can see their was still a direct threat on his side of the goal and he stayed to defend the line - once that was blocked he moved out.

I don't think he moved out fast enough and he should have been aware of Keane's position. Saying that, the back four should have been too.

ash had full view of play and ran out (too late) in the opposite direction of where the immediate danger was

he shouldve just stepped off the pitch

Kapl said the goal was "100% correct, without any doubt", quoting article 11.4.1. of the refereeing code that states "an opposing player cannot be offside when one of the last two defenders has left the field of play" - as in the case of Panucci.

Not Ash's fault - from that replay you can see their was still a direct threat on his side of the goal and he stayed to defend the line - once that was blocked he moved out.

cider boys all out for 210 (less than half way to the follow on mark) and and now 7 for 4 off 4 overs. The return of 3 day cricket.

A repeat of the first game of the season, 3-0 to the Villa.

Good substitution

Gabby off for NRC and stick J2M up behind Bent

Anyone else think walkers been caught out a few times already?!

Yes the time before where Collins lookedat fault it was walker really

No, just because Walker wasn't in position that doesn't mean it's okay for Collins to wander away from their only threat at that time and allow him to get a shot in. He should have stayed with him, he ignored him, his fault.

Big Ginge

We're dominating. Nothing crap there

bloomberg"]Gates Holds Talks With Saudi King on Iran Threat, Region Tumult

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in the Saudi capital of Riyadh today to meet with King Abdullah on the upheaval in the region, the threat from Iran and a $60 billion U.S. arms package for Saudi Arabia, the Associated Press reported.

It is Gates’s third trip to the region in the past month. The regional turmoil has included troops from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states entering Bahrain to help quell protests in that Persian Gulf nation. The incursion occurred within days of a March visit by Gates to Bahrain’s capital, Manama.

Bahrain’s crackdown and the Saudi military intervention “could turn a mass movement for democratic reform into an armed conflict while regionalizing a genuinely internal political struggle,” according to an analysis published today by the International Crisis Group. The Brussels-based organization advocates for policies to prevent conflicts.

The U.S. defense chief, like other Obama administration officials, has urged Arab governments to respond quickly to peaceful protesters’ demands for reform.

Gates probably won’t raise Saudi Arabia’s own internal political tensions during the visit, the AP reported, citing a U.S. defense official traveling with the secretary. Relations with Saudi Arabia have been strained because the kingdom’s rulers saw the U.S. as abandoning a long-time ally, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, when demonstrators there successfully called for his ouster, the AP said.

Indeed, we shouldn't let these terrorists get away with it.

Oborne

Recently, I asked a well-placed minister what plans had been put in place in case the eurozone started to unravel. He just looked at me blankly: “That’s not going to happen. There is too much political will behind the euro for them to let it go.” In other words, the Cameron Government shares the same complacent analysis as the European political class: this is not a real problem, we’ll muddle through somehow, it’s all the fault of the speculators, etc etc.

This is denial. The simple truth is that Greece, Ireland and Portugal are all bankrupt. Perhaps it is worth spelling out exactly what this means: however hard these countries try, and whatever austerities they impose, they will never, ever be able to pay off their debts.

In itself, this is not much of a problem – Greece and Portugal (though not Ireland) have gone bankrupt many times before, and always recovered. The tried and tested response is to default, then reschedule debts by reducing coupons (ie interest payments) and extending maturities, while allowing the national currency to depreciate so that the economy can once again become competitive.

Their membership of the eurozone, however, means that none of this can happen. There has, until recently, been an absolute determination in Frankfurt and Brussels that no European country should default. The reason for this is sobering: many leading European banks have massive exposure to the sovereign debt of these troubled countries.

The most troubling by far concerns the European Central Bank. Headquartered in Frankfurt, the German financial capital, the ECB was created by the Maastricht Treaty and is constitutionally obliged to be a sober financial institution that issues euros and banknotes, and regulates the monetary policy of the eurozone’s 17 member states.

The reality is different. The ECB conducts itself more recklessly than the most incontinent hedge fund. Its urgent task is the salvation of the eurozone, and it has chosen to do this by purchasing truly staggering amounts of government and bank debt, issued by the most endangered eurozone countries. Were it not for these so-called “market operations”, Greece, Portugal and Ireland would have defaulted months ago.

Yet the ECB has been paying what is effectively a false price, and, as a result, is daily taking unsustainable losses. Let’s look specifically at the case of Greece, as analysed last week in a devastating piece of research by the US investment bank JP Morgan. It suggested that the ECB may now be exposed, through various means, to approximately 200 billion euros (more than £150 billion) of Greek debt. Of course, this is not worth anything like what the ECB has paid for it. JP Morgan estimates that the ECB is facing losses of around 40 billion euros on its Greek investment, though my instinct is that the true figure is considerably higher.

It's the why?

Bahrain, Yemen, Syria (getting really bad by all accounts) are simply beyond our capability and diplomatic clout to deal with, imo.

Bahrain could be captured within days with the amount of ships that NATO have nearby. If you wanted to turn the saud's noses up. Yemen nasty, Syria - interesting - I didn't mention Syria, I said Yemen, but also very nasty,

My point is not the capaility, it is the will.

Why Libya?

Why Syria - poses a threat to Isreal - why else is it important.

Libya wasn't the only option, nor the easy option, as apparently the current no lie zone isn't working.

Either stay out of it or it becomes a part of the false war of terror that the west has been pursuing for 10 years now. Are there extremists? Yes? Does invading more arab territory reduce or increase the threat from extremists?

8 weeks ago, Libya and Gadaffi was our friend. From a strategic point how do these actions help reduce the threat from extremists?

Reacting to the third north African uprising and ignoring the fourth and the fifth?

It's the why?

What's funny is that US has barely even posted in the thread

Yes there is oil which is important, but a wounded Gaddafi (with long experience in projecting terrorism either by his own resources or by proxy) clinging to power is not in the UK national interest.

Moving on

Libya was very different from the other uprisings.

The idea that 100,000s would die is western media speak. Because there was no popular uprising in Libya as there was in other countries.

Libya is very different.

When tunisians revolted the french foreign minister offered to send military support to the govt. Democracy Hey! When Egypt errupted the us vice president said that mubarak was not a dictator and that internal issues would be dealt internally.

The libyan rebellion was very different - instead of weeks, the west were there straight away. And willing to deploy.

The moves here are not about the false war of terror, it's about securing a position in the new north africa. If egypt can be turned, so can libya, and the middle east can carry on their inhumanity with impunity.

On a nationalistic scale, nothing you have said can be argued against, but on a personal level the lives of each nationality are equivalent. Yet history seems to tell us that we only fight the fights that keep the green high up on the leaderboard. The disinformation coming out of Libya since the start of the conflict is a constant in the west's wars of recent years.

As DaveCam said "we can't intervene on humanitarian grounds everywhere" but we do where it serves our purpose, not the greater humanitarian need.

Engaging in Libya is increasingly looking like a mistake. Civil war, partition, and a rogue leader with foreign supplied arms looks like the future for that country.

with milfner on this one. Cut your wrist off first.

That would be the war of terror then I guess?

*Was* one of the most powerful

Anyway, even I know this stuff

On any measure, from the UN, to NATO, to economic output, to military capability it still is one of the most powerful.

I thought technically the country was United Kingdom, and England, Wales etc were technically principalities?

That's what we were always taught in geography anyway

My understanding is it works like this:

The country is officially called "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"

Northern Ireland speaks for itself, Great Britain is the large island which England, Wales and Scotland are located on.

England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are countries in their own right, but its more for administrative reasons than anything else. Each individual country has very little power internationally, but the combined union is one of the most powerful nations on Earth. I guess if you were trying to explain it to an American, then you would compare the countries here to individual states over there. It's not an exact fit, but its close enough.

Take down the Union Jack, it clashes with the sunset

And put it in the attic with the emperors old clothes

When did it fall apart? Sometime in the 80s

When the Great and the Good gave way to the greedy and the mean

Britain isn’t cool you know, its really not that great

It's not a proper country, it doesn’t even have a patron saint

It's just an economic union that’s passed its sell-by date