chrisp65

@villaglint What was the criteria? Was it simply closest first, with a couple of exceptions for siblings already in the school? Or was there some other thing they threw in the mix? We had to move house* to get further away from the worst school in town, which to state the obvious, has cost us thousands over the years. I only had to move a couple of blocks, but it put me the other side of a line on a map. Even then, the closest school tried to tell us we wouldn't get an automatic place as there was a 'waiting list'. I had to point out that we live 200 metres away. and I was giving them 12 months notice. Yet once we were in that school I'd say I failed to recognise about 90% of the drivers coming in from far and wide to drop off their little darlings. Gone are the days of most of the kids walking to the school down the road. * yep, I became part of the problem.

You should have seen the first draft!

I was confusing you with awol again, my apologies. Well, you only really get one chance to press a nuclear bomb detonator, I'm not sure that's a good enough reason to press it.

I was being light hearted having Tony as a neutral. Without putting words in to his mouth he's previously said something along the lines of: I para phrase, but that's how I recall it.

I think I might have found a third way. I think I decided last night that unless I hear some solid nugget of advantage to voting one way or the other, I'm not going to vote. Now, that's going to be a little tricky, my wife is quite militant about making people vote and it's my nipper's first vote and I've lectured on how important it is. So right now I'm going to be marching in to the polling station, standing around for a bit and then leaving. Potentially, whilst I'm there, I'll vote remain, but it isn't a done deal. But yeah, I know what you mean Tony, other than yourself and me there are very few neutrals in this thread.

@blandyI haven't been to a single game this season. That's the first time that's happened in like, forever. I've had years where I've only managed 2 or 3 games and have gone specifically so as not to have missed a whole season. But I've never been totally absent. I used to spend my modest little marketing budget taking people to the footy, be it just the game, or various levels of corporate. I've gone from spending on 6 people dining at the game, to just having a Villa scarf or keyring off my mum at Christmas. But Villa is still my team and they still have the capacity to make me angry on a Saturday afternoon and influence my TV viewing on a Saturday evening. I still haven't binned my little collection of free flags yet.

celebrity couple set themselves up as a happy content thoroughly modern family unit and talk about the kids on chat shows turns out there's been some fairly mundane extra marital shagging going on so the press want to 'out' them as hypocrites, although for some reason I don't know, I think the Sun has always had a bit of a downer on the one guy involved truth is, it's only the secrecy that's interesting, the actual story is a bit dull

If you take the emotion out of it, it makes no sense. Without emotion, you are paying £35 to watch other people kick a ball around a field, badly. You can withdraw your matchday spending as a weapon or a tool to exert pressure. But surely, once you 'step back' emotionally what would be the point of re engaging later. What criteria would you be using to return? I don't know, maybe it's me, but I have to care. If I didn't care then I could go along and watch Cardiff City who are geographically closer, win sometimes and entry costs less. If I didn't care I guess I could get in to women's football and not have to worry about booking history. I don't think we are far apart in this, really. I'd just offer a little caution in being too laid back about letting an owner do whatever they like without putting up a bit of resistance and giving them a little feedback. Not least, when that owner has turned up and given us his 'word' and tried to chime in with people's emotions. He said he'd leave if he turned out to be a poor custodian. He got his little tattoo to show his emotion. He has disappeared, refusing communication. That would appear to me, for lack of evidence to the contrary, to make him as a person, incompetent at best and a fraud at worst. If we are bought by a faceless Chinese Corporation, I can accept that they are in this for the business profile, the shirt sales, the gambling spin offs and the ego. That's not what Randolph told us. He said he was a fan. Well he **** isn't.

I think that might be the achilles heal in your argument. You are right of course, if it's legally owned by someone else they can do whatever they lawfully like with it. He can close it if he wants to. He can change the badge and he can change the kit colour to brown. But rightly or wrongly, people have invested emotion in going to the football. Those that haven't, now watch Chelsea, or just go shopping, or have got good at computer games. If we don't invest emotionally, then he only has a failing entertainment franchise that is, frankly, shit. He'd better hope we do keep it emotional.

Will the BBC never learn? Hope you've got proof of these shenanigans.

fwiw my guess would be the problem was a lack of response to key questions Lerner won't have been so direct or competent as to have given a high budget, or a low budget, or an idea he would be gone on June 20th or anything else in any way useful. He will have been asked some basic questions, budget and timescale. There will have been no timely response. Which is where the Board is then thoroughly undermined.

again with the Eggs and next Monday they are in town and tickets are £8.50 Note 'new' head shell acquired as another freebie, drilled out and sprayed white to be funky and give me another quick needle change. What a ball ache. If it's a different weight then you have to re set the balance of the arm. Duhh. I shall probably sellotape a penny to it now....

In his defence, he was probably inhaling it from balloons to try and weigh less.

Michael Gove accusing the government 'remainers' of being patronising! In other news, Flabby Gabby accuses team mates of being thick and lazy. Michael Gove, the man who as Education Minister wanted all schools to be above average in numeracy.

Whereas I'm surprised they still manage 'nil'. They've had a whole season to figure out how to get a negative number. But clearly that was too much like hard work.

Well, I just sat through a Newsnight that was a panel about the economic aspects of in / out. The debate went something like this: Person A: 'if we remain / leave then we will / won't be able to do x' Person B: 'no we won't' Person A: 'yes we will' Person B:'no we won't' Evan Davis: blah blah blah, new proposition... Person A: 'it will be worse' Person B: 'it will be better' A: 'worse worse worse' B: 'better better better' It was really just a script run through for an episode of Brass Eye or The Thick Of It. I've learnt nothing. I need to find out what Randy Lerner would do if he had a vote....(other than lose it, pay a student in Australia to look for it and accidentally set fire to his own arse, obviously)

What age is the cut off for finally picking what football team you support? I'm hoping it's a bigger number than I've always presumed.

I'm confident that once their exams are out of the way our Management Recruitment Specialists currently studying at Loughborough Tech will be all over which potential manager could do the best job for us. Just sit tight folks, the decision will be in safe competent hands.

When there's plenty, we develop preferences. It's a first world thing innit, even our pets can be fussy eaters food is so plentiful. Plus of course, your aversion to fruit could one day mean you avoid the great fruit poisoning event that wipes out 99.9% of us, leaving you and a small bunch of banana haters to repopulate the world. But mainly, I guess you just grew up at just the right time in the right place, when you could afford to be fussy. Perhaps 100 years ago you'd have eaten any old stuff you could get your hands on. To twist an old cliche, I doubt there are too many starving in refugee camps that are fussy about their fruit intake or whether there are onions in the soup.

As an example of this excellent debate, we've had everyone's favourite alien, John Redwood on the radio this morning. He went the full conspiracy theory this morning on Radio 4. There is a government and EU wide conspiracy and all of George Osbourne's figures are fake. So, we have two sides of the current conservative party, both currently sitting MP's squabbling over fake figures and conspiracy theories. That should help me decide rationally how I'm going to vote. Do I believe John Redwood or George Osbourne.

A control freak with a record of unmitigated incompetence, dogged by bad luck, that has lost interest in the project, but is racked by indecision on whether to sell up or not. **** magic.

We may have just worked out why it's been bleeding, the poor little thing.

Has there been an actual fact spouted by either side that can't be disproven or contradicted by the other side yet? Disgracefully poor performance from both sides, it really is just seeing who has the longest list of celebrities.

Please tell me you didn't eat the **** Lemur, Ruge?