Jon the Hat

Haha. I liked Obama a lot, but he made a number of mistakes on the international stage particularly in Syria which we are still dealing with the repercussions of.

I suspect you are overestimating the amount of joined up thinking going on.

You leave Romania out of this! Yeah it is pretty crazy.

Who do we back if Iran and Pakistan start a war? My head hurts! Seriously though, Iran seems to think it can act with impunity, so perhaps they should be the adult and stop it.

I'm feeling a little dizzy just thinking about it.

Its tragic that a kid can be reliant for their survival on whether one overworked person in a hurry to make their next appointment thinks "something is up here, I am going to call the police" and hangs around for an hour or more. Where the hell are the family, friends, Neighbours?

Or possibly the complete opposite, nobody ****ing knows, and that scares the shit out of the opposition. Especially vs Obama who could be guaranteed to do completely the wrong thing at every opportunity.

Tough gig in Finland where it is dark most of the bloody year.

The economy did well under Trump too, wages > inflation, low interest rates etc. and without the massive economic stimulus. He also clamped down on immigration which Biden has let run riot - very popular with the majority of Americans. A lot of people still want to drain the swamp! And they don't give a shit about him personally - and they can see the hypocrisy of the Democrats who said F all about Bill Clintons indiscretions. I dont think it is that hard to see his appeal - and the Democratic left have left themselves wide open with their overly liberal attitudes imo. Its a shame but I think he will be back as President this time next year.

The problem it seems to me with the US presidential system right now is the man the people want is (Strong! so Strong!) seems unable to appoint competent people to do the actual work as he falls out with them every 5 minutes, while he man in the job they think is not up to it (old, weak, cant speak properly) is actually a political master at surrounding himself with competent people who are doing the actual work as they are in some sort of effective consensus. This is what happens when you have thousands of appointed leaders in all arms of government, instead of a competent professional civil service.

What is this the 1930's?

Oooh suits you sir.

I don't think the funds are the issue per se, they seem to have deep pockets. The issue is more getting the fund through the P&S / FFP rules. If you buy a player for peanuts, develop and sell them, you get to bank nearly 100% of their fee as profit in the year. Say you do that with 5-10 young players and generate $50M. You can then spend $250M that year on players, because their value is amortized over 5 years. If you happen to be willing to sell a home grown first team player for $50M as well you can spend $500M. They have done exactly that. Also worth noting the player academy / development costs is not in the FFP as far as i know..

This is exactly the issue. We were not in a position to sell players at a significant loss, and the combination of higher wages and high fees makes it essentially better to keep them on board even if they are not playing.

They know how to balance the books with the help of their prolific youth system (mostly buying developing and selling) then using that to pay large transfer sums. I guess it won't last forever. Was year 1 of the 3 also the transfer embargo under Lampard? Whether they can make a success of those players on the pitch is another matter.

I wonder if the democrats spend much time thinking about why a ****wit like Trump can win there so easily.

I don't think you can really blame him for that, MON was a very hard act to follow and he was out of his depth for sure, but the players we had were very hard to replace. I think you can forget how fortunate we were with Heskey, Izzet and Lennon in particular.

As I said before, I think there must have been a culture of believing there was a lot of fraud for them to almost gleefully prosecute so many. They thought they finally had the evidence to catch the bastards! I am sure there were some genuine cases in their as well, bound to be with that many people, but to use this as a basis to effectively imply thy should not all have their prosecutions quashed and have to start again is pretty horrendous.

They all happily ignored it until they couldn't.

It was inevitable I guess, they can't let Iran act with impunity forever or things just keep getting worse. Lets hope the bloody nose does the trick.

The CEO's wealth is in his share of the business I guess? No doubt some has been taken out in dividends, but a 3rd year of loss making usually means if you want to keep investing your financial backers whether banks or investors will demand some actions to improve profitability. 1.75M is not peanuts when you are losing money, and that is not a one time thing, that is every year forever, with inflation. I am not saying it is the right thing necessarily, but it is a lot more complicated than CEO is rich so they shouldn't do it. I am sure those employees if they feel they can earn more elsewhere will leave.

Poor bloke, I reckon he has lived a cracking life. and I hope he can enjoy what's left of it. I wish him all the best.

I've got a pic somewhere of me behind the bar on an A380 mixing a cocktail. This is a better memory than the endless hangover in the 6 hour stopover in Dubai.

Much better presumably if they fold and everyone loses their jobs in a cost of living crisis? Of course the senior management should also be on a pay freeze, and there would not be any bonuses with a loss like that. Sometimes everyone has to chip in for a business to survive, especially when competitors don;t pay that living wage. Hopefully they can get through it and return to profit and give pay rises next year.

If they were in court stating that the IT system was not capable of error at a point when it can be proven they knew that it was then I agree that would be contempt of court.