HanoiVillan

I know this is a bit nit-picky, but the European Convention on Human Rights doesn't actually come from the EU.

This is clearly a speech issue. People should be free to protest the Israeli government's actions if they want to, there's no good reason to stop them. If people don't like them doing so, that should be a matter for voters to debate and resolve through votes, not policemen and lawyers through courtrooms. It's always worth asking yourself, when the government proposes to throw somebody in jail for something - can we actually identify a victim here?

You know you're old when: You're SO much more interested in the Vietnamese generals discussion than the hip hop one. Tran Hung Dao is a great shout. Speaking of defeating the Mongols, maybe a shout-out for Baron von Ungern-Sternberg? Not one of the greatest generals, but surely one of the most interesting: 'Roman von Ungern-Sternberg was a Baltic German who fought on the Russian side in World War One, later transferring his homicidal skills to the White Russian armies. At length, he led a detachment of guerilla cavalry, raiding to and fro across Siberia; looting here, torturing there, killing his foes and frightening his friends. Already a fanatical Tsarist and anti-semite, Ungern-Stalberg also came to absorb some of the locally available mysticism. At length, he… ...was struck with a revelation. He later compared this blast of insight with satori, the enlightenment experienced by Buddha. This noble divulgence was as follows: by slaying people he was doing them a favour. If they were unable to protect themselves, it meant they were feeble and living under poor Karma. By dying in a state of innocence, they improved their position on the rungs of the cosmos. The answer was simple---he would ride into Mongolia, destroy the Chinese administration and set up a personal kingdom. Then he would forge a Pan-Asiatic empire, including Manchuria and Tibet. He managed to enlist over three hundred devotees, he baptised them in vodka and hashish and gave them a name : the Order of Military Buddhists. The Order of Military Buddhists dazedly entered Mongolia in 1920, partly chased out of Russia by the Bolsheviks. In February 1921, they reached Urga [now Ulanbataar]. Mongolian winters are incredibly severe: temperatures of minus 40 are not uncommon. Unable to launch his attack without astrological guidance, Ungern-Sternberg set up camp outside the gates, awaiting a benificial alignment of the stars. Eager to taste the heated delights of the city, his soldiers whiled away the hours by debating the virtues of necrophilia.' more at the link - http://bloodandtreasure.typepad.com/blood_treasure/2006/01/the_mad_baron_o.html

Hipster-hopster.

That's the worst excuse since Lescott's.

I remember that game, Erik Edman's performance for Wigan that day is how far back you have to go to find a worse PL performance than Bacuna turned in at the weekend.

Great reply, agreed with almost all of it. The thing that irritates me about these discussions, when they turn to recruitment, is that the blame seems to quickly be attached to those new signings who are actually in the team on merit, and not the time-wasters who have already left because they were so shite (Ilori, Crespo) or the players who nobody wants back in the team (Sinclair) or the people who brought in the players (Fox, Reilly, Sherwood). It is always ignored in these discussions that the squad was threadbare last summer because the previous summer our total incomings were Cole, Senderos and Richardson for less than a million pounds, two of whom have already left the club with the other leaving in June. Still, that would require analysing the situation and dealing with the direction of the club over many years. Far easy to blame it all on a few Frenchmen in their early twenties in their first year in the league.

Sorry, who's been botching it for years? The players we signed in the summer? Or Tom Fox et al?

His tackling was much better the week before, but that tackle was disgusting and definitely should have received a red card. If that's how he intends to prove he's 'not a bottler', then frankly I'd rather he didn't.

You were absolutely right to doubt it, because it was totally wrong! The actual figure is per week, not per year 'The economy has also been a rich seam for InFacts. We took Daniel Hannan, the Tory MEP, to task for saying that Britain sends £350 million a week to Brussels. The actual figure last year was £250 million. What’s more, our farmers, scientists, regional development projects and the like get millions back. When you net all that off — as well as our share of what Brussels spends on international aid and which we count towards our own target of helping poorer countries — the EU costs us £120 million a week. That’s less than £2 per person. Incidentally, that is almost exactly what Norwegians pay for their access to the EU’s single market while not being a member of the bloc. The difference is that we get to vote on the club’s rules, while Norway doesn’t.' http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/hugo-dixon-nailing-the-eu-lies-on-both-sides-of-the-brexit-divide-a3180631.html In my defence . . . nah, not much defence, that was really stupid, sorry!

Still turning out for Hungary in baggy trousers, incredibly enough.

Actually it costs the nation around £120 million per year - roughly £2 per head.

What you've done there is isolate the difference between his position in theory and his position in practice. The key point is this: how bad would the deal have to be for him to join the leave camp? Pretty bad, because we know he doesn't want to leave. And who would have negotiated that deal? Well, that's Mr D. Cameron. Admitting he got a bad deal is tantamount to resigning, which he would be obliged to do. The negotiations after a leave vote will be unbelievably important, affecting the country for decades and centuries to come. We could be locked out of the Common Market, lose our influence with America, see our balance of payments destroyed, see the manufacturing industry collapse. They're going to be really important, there's no way Tory backbenchers go into battle with a guy whose record reads 'Played 1 Lost 1'. No, the deal he comes up with is Cameron's ship, and he's already said it's going in to battle, so he either captains it to victory or he sinks to the ocean floor, there's no middle ground. Your second paragraph is more on the money. He'll inevitably announce any deal as a 'success', whatever it contains.

Okay, thanks, that's a bit clearer.

No argument from me.

So we're not going to get a 'clean break' and a 'new era'.

We're not going to buy 25 new players in the summer.

Tony's right (for once ) - education is the only possible answer. The genie's certainly not going back in the box.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but we absolutely already have that power, and in extremely rare cases where we don't (eg, being unable to repatriate asylum seekers from Zimbabwe) it has nothing to do with the EU.

STAY for a panoply of reasons, several of them personal (because what's the point in denying): Recently, my fiancee and I decided to work and live in the UK. We teach English as a second language. Language schools around the country live and die by migration: I anticipate that a leave vote will crush the industry. Probably it would be reduced in size by 50% or more, and I would be returning to Hanoi to live. I have an attachment to the idea of an outward-looking, confident Britain. I'm not a particularly patriotic person (at all) but one of the things that does make me happy to be British is that it is a country that accepts people from all around the world. I don't dislike hearing different languages, eating different foods, meeting people from different countries. I'd rather live in a world of Polski Sklep than Love Thy Neighbour. I think a leave vote will turn the country in on itself; we'll become unsure, conservative, inward-looking. I want to live in a fairer, more equal society. Some people on the left seem to believe that leaving the EU will somehow lead to that, as if handing the right wing of the Tory party their biggest political victory for thirty years at a time of Tory-majority government is somehow going to lead to Jerusalem. Give me a break. There will be serious knock-on effects to the British economy, especially in the West Midlands. Manufacturing wants to stay for a reason; we face losing access to the Common Market, and even if we were to regain it it would inevitably be under worse terms (see below). We know what future negotiations will look like. War-gaming of post-leave vote negotiations with former heads of state (mentioned in the TTIP thread) showed that after a leave vote there will be no goodwill for the UK amongst any of the countries of Europe. Even those who agree with us on most issues (the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, some of the eastern Bloc) will be furious with us for abandoning them. There will be a strong incentive to punish the UK by setting punitive terms for entry to the Common Market, in order to deter further countries from leaving. There will be reason for Paris and Frankfurt to encourage banks and larger companies to leave London, and there will be a strong attempt to remove London's status as the financial capital of Europe. Advocates of a leave vote are expecting a significant leap of faith. They tell us - vociferously - that David Cameron won't be able to get a good deal out of the EU before the referendum, but that of course he (or more likely someone else, because whatever he says he will almost certainly have to resign if he loses the referendum) will be able to get a great deal afterwards. This stretches credulity, to put it mildly. There are others, but this post is already long enough. Doubtless I'll be adding more to this thread as the year goes by. EDIT: I should probably add, I thoroughly expect to lose this referendum. I'm very pessimistic, I don't think there's much chance of a stay vote at all.

Rowett might not be a terrible suggestion, but I can't see the club employing anyone from SHA after the last debacle (and to be honest, while there might be cosy conformity on this forum that he'd be decent, I'm willing to bet there'd be plenty of protests in the real world).

To be honest, I don't even think it's a question. He's way above where we are currently. He certainly doesn't need to be managing in the Championship, and that's the only place we're going. The rest of your analysis I agree with.

David Moyes could have his pick of jobs in the bottom half of the Premier League, and maybe some of the top half as well. You're absolutely dreaming if you think he fancies a 46-game season in the Championship next year.

This is exactly what I'm afraid of, that we'll decide to solve the 'problem' by purchasing the likes of Karl Henry, Clint Hill and Marvin Sordell, and getting 'Arry to manage them.

Like all good things, it's done best in moderation.