LondonLax

He looks a lot better when he doesn't have to defend as a left back...

The first goal was a Warnock through ball wasn't it? We don't only score from crosses?

Apparently Clegg had done a bit of a flip flop on the nuclear front, if anyone cares. He was all for it in 2007. Now he's not. Purely down to the cost now or is it a cynical vote grabber?

I have never understood this idea that a politician is not allowed to change their mind. Just because someone says something a few years back shouldn't really mean they are then bound to that for life but the newspapers seize on it as some sort of gaff.

Doesn't really make sense to me cause I change my mind all the time

People are moaning about us making too many crosses yet if we were playing down the middle you would be moaning that we didn't make enough crosses. Just to remind you our second goal was from a cross.

People enjoy moaning at the moment.

It is because we faltered and Spurs have hit form so they are taking their frustrations out on the forum. Refusing to acknowledge any positives is a bit much though...

We dominated that game and should have won by 4 or 5, James was on fire as usual against us and the ref decided he’d only give us 1 of the 4 penalty shouts. Still we came away with 3 points against a side who beat the mighty Spurs in their last match.

Roll on Wednesday...

The Chemical Brothers new track http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GqRsmffeVI.

It's another cracker from them, I am gutted they are not playing at Glastonbury as rumoured

Having a group of friends that all smoke is **** annoying. You go out and spend most of your time either watching peoples glasses/chairs/the table while they go for a fag, or you go and freeze your arse off with them while they have a fag outside.

Just start drinking their beers whilst they are gone, call it a "minders tax" or something...

I have never really seen the point.

It seems to be all negatives without any positive pay off.

I understand that once you are addicted they start feeling good but I don't know why you would pay money and force your lungs to get used to the smoke to get to that point in the first place.

I have watched a football demo video in 3D and was totally unimpressed, it very quickly gave me a headache. Also, it seemed almost like one of those pop out books where the players/ball were in the forground and the crowd was in the background but both were still 2D if that makes any sense. It wasn't a true depth.

Perhaps they just need to work on it some more.

Usual Guff

only 2 league titles.....ever

Huddersfield Town have won more

Nuff said

Have Spurs really only won the league twice?!?

That's crazy, how can they call themselves a "big club" if that is the case??

In The Big Lebowski, the only time Donny fails to make a strike in the movie is just before he dies at the end.

And ‘the dude’ never actually bowls a ball.

Do we still have the best defence in the league?

Ahhh frustrating.

We played well and had enough chances to win by 2 or 3.

Without Gabby we are not as good in front of goal, the Delfonuso looked lively but he's not going to power in and score one.

Bah, I hope we can get something from chelsea...

C'mon Villa, lets do the business. We have bossed this game, 70% possession and lots of chances.

Young has been on fire and Carew and the fonze have looked great, put them to the sword second half!

I personally just believe in the integrity of the game in this country.

Why on earth would you do that?

Thats true but Europe does have twice as many countries entering than all the other continent.

Yes Europe should make up 2 of the 4 semi places by default. Only really Brazil and Argentina are proper competition for the other 2 places.

Spain were under-achievers until they won the Euros. They now know they can win and they have a team crammed full of club winners.

Exactly, the idea that Spain are bottlers no longer holds water. This group of spanish players knows nothing but winning tournaments. They will remember 2008 rather than the failed tournaments of the players who went before them.

No of course not. There is however a strong bias to teams like Manchester United from referees. The comments from Sky commentators about not getting penalties at Old Trafford sum it up for me; it's as if its a given you will do very well to get a decision in your favour there. Which is what football really shouldn't be about, except the entire media 'big 4' circus means decisions will always favour those teams.

A big reason why you don't get many penalties at old trafford as the away side is because you hardly have the ball and even less do you have the ball whilst dribbling in Man Us penalty area.

He will probably spend 10-15 mill on a controversial lesser name who will turn out to be an inspired bit of business al la Collins, Young, Dunne Milner etc etc

I think people are overstating what 4 place would mean.

Even if we did finish 4th and even if we did qualify for the group stages it doesn't mean we would suddenly be a great title chllanging side.

We would still have battle to qualify again the season after with Spurs, Man City, Liverpool, Everton all in the mix again.

It would be much better to take the garenteed silverware option (the very thing we support the team for) and be back in the hunt for 4th again next year (as we would be even if we'd finished 4th this time around)

hehehe I voted Milner

BA was always going to struggle though because they pay one of the highest wages of any airline and they have enormous pensions for their employees (by industry standards). With the rise of the budget airline the model was looking shaky and with the financial crash the pension plans are now unsustainable. Although I think BA's model was always going to struggle, Walsh seems to have made things worse by being belligerent with the union..

You also need to take into account the Middle Eastern and Asian airlines which have had huge sums of money thrown into them as well, some by state cash and some by other means.

I bet you if you look at the top 10 now I bet you most of them are from Asia. But they are also pretty expensive too and obviously don't pay any of their staff anywhere near the likes of BA.

Yes, i suppose it's no different to the football world. Without a suger daddy you have to operate within your means.

At least Mr Brown has now come out and admitted what he said at the enquiry was not true.

Gordon Brown admits evidence at Iraq inquiry was wrong

Gordon Brown has been forced into a humiliating retreat in his battle against the retired generals who accuse him of giving disingenuous evidence on military funding to the Iraq inquiry.

The Prime Minister told the House of Commons that he now accepted that his evidence had been wrong. He admitted that defence spending “did not rise in real terms” in every year under the Labour government and said he had written to Sir John Chilcot to clarify his mistake.

“I do accept that in one or two years defence expenditure did not rise in real terms,” Mr Brown told MPs at Prime Minister's Questions.

In fact, it fell in three separate years, according to figures compiled by the House of Commons library — four years if 1997/98 is included, although the financial year had already started when Labour came to power.

Throughout his testimony before inquiry, Mr Brown repeatedly insisted that military spending had increased in every year since 1997 and claimed that all urgent operational requests were met immediately.

His claims were greeted by incredulity amongst ex-servicemen including General Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, the former Chief of Defence Staff and Admiral Lord Boyce, the former defence chief. They accused him of giving deliberately misleading evidence to the inquiry.

Mr Brown's admission follows the publication of figures in the Commons Library that directly contradict his claims.

Mr Brown admitted that his evidence was incorrect in a response to Tony Baldry, the Conservative MP for Banbury.

“Yes. I am already writing to Sir John Chilcot about this issue,” he told the House.

David Cameron congratulated Mr Baldry for extracting an admission from Mr Brown.

"In three years of asking the Prime Minister Questions I don't think I've ever heard him making a correction or retraction,” he said. “Perhaps, on the day when he has to admit that he can't get his own figures right we shouldn't have to put up with him talking about Conservative policy."

Former military commanders had accused Mr Brown of misleading the inquiry when he appeared to blame the military for failing to equip the Armed Forces properly.

Admiral Lord Boyce said: “He’s dissembling, he’s being disingenuous. It’s just not the case that the Ministry of Defence was given everything it needed.”

As the bitter row over equipment and funding escalated, Labour backbenchers appeared to suggest that remarks by retired military officials criticising Mr Brown were motivated by party political affiliations.

Asked how Mr Brown, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer for a decade, could have got the figures wrong, his spokesman said today: “Budgets are pretty complex.

“One has to accept that the broad direction and the increase in defence spending has been absolutely clear and significant over the last 13 years.”

The spokesman insisted that Mr Brown had “taken the first opportunity” to tell MPs about his mistake - but repeatedly refused to say when the PM first became aware of it.

He had not done so at Prime Minister's Questions last week because he was not asked “the kind of direct question” posed today by Mr Baldry, he explained. “I don’t think the Prime Minister has ever had anything to hide on this.”

A research note prepared by the House of Commons Library in October last year showed defence expenditure had fallen in real terms in four financial years since Labour came to power in 1997: 1997/98 (-2.2 per cent); 1999/2000 (-0.4 per cent); 2004/5 (-0.7 per cent); and 2006/7 (-0.1 per cent).

The average annual increase between 1997 and 2009 was 2.7 per cent, it said, but noted that “this figure is likely to have been distorted by current operations”.

Liam Fox, the Shadow Defence Secretary, said the Prime Minister had repeatedly mislead Parliament over the issue.

“This is a humiliating climbdown for Gordon Brown as his attempt to rewrite history has failed and his fantasy figures have been exposed.

“He has made repeated and fundamentally false claims, misleading Parliament, the public and, worst of all, the armed forces and their families.

“I was pleased that Sir John Chilcot did not rule out calling Gordon Brown back in front of the Iraq Inquiry and it is now crystal clear that the Prime Minister has some serious explaining to do.”

It would have been better if he had been truthful from the start though.

BA was always going to struggle though because they pay one of the highest wages of any airline and they have enormous pensions for their employees (by industry standards). With the rise of the budget airline the model was looking shaky and with the financial crash the pension plans are now unsustainable. Although I think BA's model was always going to struggle, Walsh seems to have made things worse by being belligerent with the union..

I think illegal migrants are a bigger cause of wage suppression to be concerned about.

Perhaps at the moment, yes, but I'd say an influx of an additional 80,000 legal workers at negligible cost would probably have a more direct and effective negative impact upon the wages of the least skilled (or, probably more true, the current and long term employment prospects for them).

Yes that is definitely true but then you can't really do anything about a worker who is here legally and is willing and able to work for less, apart from continually raising the minimum wage to increasingly uncompetitive levels.

I think I may have wandered off topic a bit...

get something done in the process

Yep, suppression of wages for unskilled (and low skilled) labour would be the first thing.

We already have community service orders. I've seen them round the neighbourhood painting fences etc with the guard officer looking on.

I don't think they suppress wages because they are not in the free market competing for jobs. They are given tasks to do which the government has otherwise not offered a job for.

I think illegal migrants are a bigger cause of wage suppression to be concerned about.