Buddist Monk

Ach, well f**k it then, maybe everyone is right. I'll not bother posting here then. I'll always have St Mirren at heart, always have. Let's hope for a good season.

Seriously... I thought I was doing a "good thing" by giving information about how he played for Southend and the wages the guy was picking up. Why is that a "bad thing"?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45519676 Now, what seems like a pretty simple case of Vote Leave breaking the law, if anything this is a massive boost for them. They now have the "get out of jail free" card of saying that ever law or rule they broke can be put into question because the governing body is giving out incorrect information.

And here was me trying to defend myself from Northbank's claim! I read a forum post it was drink driving, posted that, found a link but never checked what the BBC said about it. Thanks for pointing that out, I'll amend it. The interesting thing is not so much the charge but the wages he claims he was picking up. Those seem eminently coverable at the Premiership level.

So in an attempt to "give something back", I've gone on a little hunting mission regarding Ferdinand. For a start he was done for speeding last year, which fair enough is a bit naughty but the interesting thing is that according to court papers he was being paid £690 per week while at Southend. That doesn't take into consideration any bonuses or initial singing on fee of course. It's reported several places but here's the BBC.. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-41172265 Going by the consensus of posts on their forum https://www.shrimperzone.com/forums it would seem that he was excellent in the first season, and was given an extension on his contract based on that, however suffered injury at the start of last season and had some personal issues, both of these things apparently kept him out of the team (although Soccerbase doesn't really show a gap: http://www.soccerbase.com/players/player.sd?player_id=34292&season_id=150) and when he did return the general comments were that he was not the player they saw the season before. Phil Brown, yeah that Phil Brown, took him to Southend but he was placed on gardening leave at the start of this year. Here is a statement from the club: https://www.southendunited.co.uk/news/2018/january/club-statement-regarding-phil-brown and Steve Powell took over with Ferdinand featuring in 9 of the 14 games left. He was still under contract with Southend, but the club agreed to mutually terminate his contract after no-one came in to buy him during the recent transfer window. Here is the official club tweet: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1035524626821070848

(Edit: I shat the bed by being inaccurate in the very next post. You simply couldn't make it up! That said I'd still contend I'm not the _most_ inaccurate! ) And for the rest of you, not that I should need to but I can happily confirm that I am not an alias or anyone who posts on B&WA. I've had my account on here for years!

Remember that little exchange we had on the other thread where you accused people of victimhood?

I know that Colbert is not to everyone's tastes, I can take or leave him and find he drops to personal digs just a little too easily but he did a piece on O'Rourke... ...and then had him on as a guest...

That has been annoying the f**k out of the loony right wingers in Texas. It's not just that it's tweets about Cruz but because of who is behind the campaign.... https://www.newsweek.com/david-hogg-ted-cruz-trump-billboard-beto-orourke-senate-texas-stadium-1101369 The old, "you are not entitled to have an opinion on gun control if you've been shot at", trope being thrown out by any number of idiots.

Ah, right the VSG. The one thing I would say is that the VSG only take a small sample of people then extrapolate that to a national level. As you can imagine any minor irregularity in the source data of just 8,000 people is massively increased in weight when you apply it to 130,000,000 voters. The data has a 2.2% margin of error, and the data itself is from a survey and we all know how unreliable surveys are - especially considering the way Trump has acted you can expect a certain percentage will roll back on admitting to vote Trump. Now to be fair to VSG they are not intentionally biased by nature, and I'm not suggesting that. There is quite a lot of data, albeit they seem to be making a few assumptions based on the sampling size, so I'll need a little time to work through it.

Right, so these figures you've seen, are you willing to share that source. This isn't a honey trap, I have studied the results in a bit of detail so I'd be interested to know where you are getting your numbers. btw, 9% is massive in a two party state. Considering that's a 4.5% swing that equates to roughly 6 million votes. Now it can't quite be worked out as simply as that due to the EC, but for comparison Clinton won the popular vote by a margin of 2.1%.

I would like to see the statistics that show that.

As opposed to an irregular election? I don't think anyone is suggesting that the election was any different, except maybe Trump himself who continually claimed it was rigged - until he won of course, then it was only rigged where he lost a seat. The reason this election is a problem for most is how it was fought and who won it, not the process.

I think that is a little unfair as much as it's untrue. You also complain I post to much, but then name me in your post. Surely you are only contributing to the problem you claim exists.

While your point has some merit you are guilty of using far too broad brush an approach. White working class males certainly flipped to Trump, it's not true though that all whites who did not vote democrat in 2016 therefore voted for Trump. Again, way too broad brush an approach. For example there was a massive uptake in shy voters for Trump, it wasn't just a case that those who voted for Obama and didn't vote for Clinton are the sole reason Trump won. There is far far more granularity to it.

It's not at all like that, though. We were basically saying if rUK refuse to give us the assets we were due then we can't be expected to take our share of the debt incurred in our name. Raab, etc al, is saying that they will withhold payment for stuff they had already agreed to pay for in the future. Nobody in the EU is denying the UK the assets held by the EU, such as buildings. Thing about this recent petty gamesmanship is that it comes directly after Barnier was setting a conciliatory tone. It just shows that the comments from Raab are meant to appease their own base and not a true reflection of the negotiations. A side note on the Irish border issue. The idea that a country should rely on a neighbour creating currently unavailable tech and implementing it in an impossible time scale is just daft. Pie in the sky, unicorns and pots of gold at the end of the rainbow stuff. If the shoe was on the other foot do you think the government would trust the French to implement a system of which there is no precedent for and failure to do so would leave Britain with a completely open border? Of course they wouldn't. So to expect the EU to do the same is daft. The idea that the CTA can be retained and that no border is needed because there isn't one now is equally daft. That relies on the UK mandating who enters and leave Eire. Would the UK accept that if the roles were reversed? Of course not. It has to be said there are UK customs officers based in Ireland, in France and in Belgium as a way to facilitate travel between EU countries that are not all in Schengen, but when Britain leave the EU those will need to be removed back to UK soil. Either that or a large payment will be made to these countries in order to retain some sort of pre-border control.

I get that the line is in jest, but after listening to the recent interview I think that if the player even considered it a possible move (rather than just raising his profile for other clubs) Kearney should be able to convince him to sign for us rather than other clubs of a similar stature. Not sure how much weight there is to this, but considering he'll not be getting a king's ransom surely his motivation is to be playing first team football and making a difference. With the way our defence is now, you could argue that ours is the most "appealing".

Oh, I don't know, I don't think you are at that point yet. Tell you what, let's move this on, I'm sure we will all approve of that. Do you think that St Mirren can look to the achievements made by St Johnstone and feel that we are capable of achieving the same? That was the main point I was making before being sidetracked by this circus. It's obvious it would be a stretch for us to match clubs like Hibs/Hearts/Aberdeen and the OF, but top 6 I believe is eminently achievable.

After agreeing to retract the phrase you then replied.... So, you know, maybe just accept that someone has dropped the phrase. Move on. To be fair, I made a point, corrected it, and focussed on the main point that if one club can achieve it so can we. I can't help if someone continues to rake over coals purely for the benefit of an argument, can I? Yeah, well that isn't true, I specifically retracted the phrase so I'm not really sure what basis in truth that has. Perhaps it suits your agenda to be the case? Who knows, you seem to enjoy having random digs at me.

So even after I have agreed to retract the term you are still arguing about it? I think you have too much time on your hands. The irony of claiming you don't understand the relevancy of a point, then go on to explain the relevancy of the point will not be lost to most.

My point is that the level of funding available to St Johnstone goes well above the actual football revenue generated. I don't think there is any dispute in that, and why you are taking umbrage is somewhat odd. It's a pretty accepted fact amongst the St Johnstone support, or at least it used to be. In many ways you should take it as a compliment not an insult. Still, it doesn't impact on fact that if a club the size of St Johnstone can such success then so can other clubs.

So, as I said, the club is funded through other avenues. Would it help if I removed the Sugar Daddy tag that seems to have annoyed you so much and replace it with Brown allowing non-footballing revenues to be used to sustain the club when he could have kept that money for himself (or his business). Oh, now County _do_ have a sugar daddy. If you speak with McGregor he's not bothered at all by that tag though.

Problem is that already has but he has tweaked subsidies in order for it not to be immediately noticeable. The damage he has done will not be reflected until the next president or the one after that. At which point it's the classic, look what he's done he's brought our economy to it's knees time to go back to Trump's policies. In introducing tax cuts and hiking tariffs what he has done is supercharge the domestic economy. An economy that was already on it's way back to stability, in a sustainable and manageable way. He inherited an economy that if he had just left it would be returning increased GDP, reduced unemployment and reduced inequity. However his ego wouldn't allow him to do that because it would be seen as Obama's legacy - he is of course happy for the crash to be seen as Obama's legacy, just not the success in turning it around. Many on the right have lambasted Obama for supporting the banks with a bailout. Now actually I think most people accept that the banks effectively had a gun at our metaphorical heads because of the way the capitalist/consumerist economy works, however if he (and other countries) didn't then these same people railing on Obama are the same people who would have been chucked out on the street if the banks folded. Myopia at it's finest.

I posted this earlier although I fully understand why people would miss it amongst what, in hindsight, have been some seriously overly verbose posts I've made...