Corcaigh

I rather the Cyprus way to the Irish way. Here the working and lower middle classes are being bled dry slowly over a period of years/decades through never ending tax increases & draconian cuts in public services to pay for 'our' bailout.

Thankfully however the "wealth creators" and their bank accounts have been left untouched, our bankers maintain their massive salaries and the politicians & civil servants who landed us in the shit have only had minor cuts to to their salaries, perks & fat pensions. Even the property developers whose massive failed financial gambles have been taken on by Irish taxpayer are getting fat salaries paid for by the taxpayer through NAMA. 

Whilst our gilded elite continue to enjoy the high life and its business as usual as far as they are concerned, we have an economy stuck in the mud, record unemployment (~14%), record emigration (most of my peeps are gone overseas) and little prospect of our economy rebounding in the short to medium term. And thats with some of the terms of our bailout being made a little less severe then what it was, we're still goosed.

So yeah, the Cypriots are going about it the right way. Let the wealthy speculators take the hit.

phew

**** Linesman and Ref being words removed

Great game, pleasantly surprised by how good it was. Wish Rockstar would port it to PC!

Commy Nazi

I can see why the VT masses are too scared to sign up and play, they know their money shall ultimately be mine 

The Wii mini is a seriously gimped piece of hardware. I've been intending to pick up a Wii for a longtime, not so much to play crappy Wii games with the useless controller/magic wand, but to take advantage of Nintendo's estore so I can get my hands on the classics from yesteryear, so what did Nintendo do with the mini? why strip out the WIFI of course, as well as take way the Wii's gamecube backwards compatibility. 

What a load of crap.

Much love for the classics mentioned here - old skool Champ manager (00-01 was my edition that got serious playtime), Goldeneye (which hasn't aged well at all), Super Mario World, Zelda 64 etc. - but for me my favourite videogame has gotta be:

Epic stuff indeed, it was the first game I played that felt like you were in a movie. Just picked it up again at the weekend on the Playstation store and am playing through it, its held up well enough I must say although it would've been nice if Konami had optimised it to use the analogue sticks.

Yeah i'm still up for it

I'm the same as Mr. Messy, can play any evening after 7 bar Friday nights. Tuesday the 5th sounds good to me!

I knew my luck was in once I started getting cards giving me 3/4OAK and straights every other hand

Cheers again for organising the game Stevo985 & the lads who were playing, it was a good 'un. Will play again if its happening.

My body is ready for some poker

Can't wait to take your money guys 

Said it before he joined, during his first season here and irregularly thereafter in the previous SI threads on here, this guy is damaged goods who is still riffing off one decent season in the company of superstars 4/5 years ago. He's never going to hit those highs at Villa or at anywhere else for that matter as he's not the kind of guy who seems to care about anything more then picking up the salary. IF we stay up this year Ireland needs to be sent on his merry way asap.

I'd like to play, pokerstars name is walkdoglater.

Let's just keep it at 2-1 lads, nice one

Sham-****-bolic

In reality, if a petition like this did actually gather any meaningful momentum, the only tangible thing it would achieve would be to make any Irish person that little bit less welcome in Birmingham to those locals who are of a mind to act upon a prejudice.

So the achievement would IMO only be a negative one. As those above have pointed out. Those in power don't want to re-open old political wounds. So the only ones left are social wounds; and there's always a healthy number of Daily Mail readers ready to re-open those at the drop of a hat.

I'd disagree. In the same manner as the people of Derry had the right to know who did what on Bloody Sunday, or the ongoing campaign for finding out the truth in the Dublin/Monaghan bombings, I would think it only fair that the perpetrators of various PIRA bomb attacks in the UK are revealed. Perhaps not prosecuted, given the GFA, but definitely revealed.

Perhaps with the ongoing controversy over the 'Boston College tapes', the truth of what happened may come out a lot sooner then people realise.

A relative of mine worked on the case and he said he would bet on the life of his children they had the right people.

Interesting, what went wrong then that the B6 were released?

Not actually a bad team to pick at all except for Ward & JOS, I must say I've been quite impressed by Brady from his previous cameo's in the green shirt, much more so then McClean.

Although still raw, hopefully Enda Stevens will be coming into the squad sooner rather then later after a few more Villa starts to make that LB slot his own. Can't be any worse then what's there at present.

I watched this game in the company of a Glaswegian who got rather emotional as the game went on, culminating in me getting a bearhug when Watt scored their second. Of course I was cursing my luck at the end having put money on a 2-2 result. Still though, fairplay Celtic.

Have money on Mitt Rimjob winning various states where the polls are tight. Surely he'll win a few of 'em!

My money is on Unionist Labour spearheading a successful NO campaign, with vague promises of more devolution measures when they're back in power, as a prelude to them wiping out the Scottish Lib Dems in the 2015 UK GE.

Horror result V Germany aside, I still think we're more then capable of getting out of this group under Trappatoni.

So, as an Englishman who has always had a soft spot for the Irish (mostly because there has always been a fairly strong Villa connection) I have to ask what you guys deem to be success?

If you say the population of the place from a sporting point of view is about 7m (4.5m in the Republic, 2.5m split between the North and those eligible through family connections) then it puts you below pretty much every country bar Uruguay who regularly qualify for the world cup. I know that Gaelic Football & Hurling are popular over there, as is Rugby Union but I'm not sure as to what extent they take players from the football team. Is Ireland a football country in the way that, say England and Italy are, or just a country where football is popular? Is the country's sporting success largely dictated by how well the football team are doing or do more people care about the indigenous sports?

So to answer my own question, I would presume you guys would regularly want to qualify for the World Cup and the Euros like you did under Jack Charlton and you see that as the norm rather than how the last ten years have been?

Is Ireland a football country? most certainly yes. In terms of numbers playing, football is more popular then both GAA sports combined and far and away more popular then Rugby Union.

In terms of support, I would say as a whole, British football clubs Liverpool, Man. Utd and perhaps Celtic, along with the national team, are more popular then even the most well supported Rugby and GAA teams. The negative of course is that domestic football clubs are poorly supported.

What is success? qualification for the major tournaments. Bar the Staunton era, Ireland have been there or thereabouts for the last few decades.I'd expect this to continue with the expansion of the Euro's, but its not looking good for WC qualification this time out.

I love the Ireland football team, but I've still betted on a draw tonight. Sad times.

I think we'll still beat the Faroes and 6 from 9pts is pretty much as expected from our opening games. Still doesn't take away from last nights horror show though. but tbf Germany are probably the best non-Spanish team in the world.

O'Shea, O'Dea, Oh dear.