Rayvin

You're not wrong in truth, but the Newcastle of a month back would have lost miserably on all occasions. We have improved.

Sweet Jesus, I don't understand this team... Great result - well done all, even Pardew. What the actual fuck is happening?

He's gonna get sent off isn't he...

At least Aarons is in good form as well, but I agree that this sucks for Obertan...

Liverpool certainly dominating at the moment, but I suppose that plays to our counterattacking plan.

I cant bear the commentary on Liverpool games... Also, this has to be the weakest looking Liverpool side for some time. Without Suarez and with an aging Gerrard, they do look rather ordinary... Sterling aside.

Liverpool are poor right now, and we have some confidence about us. I'm going to go for 0-2 instead of the usual 0-4. I know it's optimistic, but I'm really starting to think Pardew has turned things around...

It's nice that we're even in a position where we can grumble about the draw to be honest... Liverpool, Chelsea and Spurs have other commitments and won't be so arsed about this. Southampton are the ones to worry about...(if we're going to actually take this seriously)

At least it wasn't Chelsea away. Obviously we can beat Spurs, based on last weekend. Hopefully they'll continue to be worn down by the UEFA cup.

Fair enough.

Again find that I just can't justify criticising Pardew as a result of this... he won, secured a morale boost for the weekend, and managed to rest a collection of first teamers. It's hard to imagine how this could have gone any better.

Bloody hell...

That combined with hoping City remain disinterested. To be honest, I was expecting our utter destruction here, so even a modest loss at this point won't bother me too much...nice as it'd be to reach the quarters for a change...

What the fuck happens in October/November at this club, how do we suddenly start smacking around the big teams like this??

Given how rarely we win, let alone win away, I'm going to hold off saying anything critical about Pardew today. Fair play to him. Nice to see a good performance in the second half for a change. And a win from behind no less.

What the fuck? An away win??

If you've raised it with senior management already, I would just aim to move teams. I would only get HR involved if you can't do that. At the end of the day, it's not your job to keep on top of your manager, it's the job of the people you're complaining to. It sounds to me as though the management structure/culture in the organisation is one that doesn't operate well with conflict. All I'd say is that as long as you're not being directly blamed for things that are going wrong, it's not really *your* problem, as annoying as it may be. Might be worth detailing jobs that are going wrong though - so if you can see something beginning to fall apart, try to do something about it (i.e. raising it with management) and just note when and how you did this. That way, for any eventual investigations, you'll have demonstrable proof that everything you did was correct.

As I said, it's because it's caught between two systems at present. My original post said we either need more federalism, or less - I do acknowledge that what we have isn't working.

Could just be about the profit. Rangers are going to end up back in the SPL eventually, and who knows, he might even push for them to enter the EPL one day. Buy low, sell high. Extrapolation of that would suggest that he's doing the same with us.

I guess we'll agree to disagree on this one. My main concern if we go it alone, is that we'll see something akin to the relationship that Tesco has with it's smaller suppliers - the small guys have no negotiating power, and are steamrollered every time. That will be Britain when faced, in 10-20 years time, with countries like China, India, possibly Brazil and Russia. It arguably already is in some of the deals that go on. I agree that it's unlikely to federalise without external pressure (in reference to your comment about Germany), but I think that pressure is coming, certainly based on what we're starting to see in the Ukraine. If we're in it should this happen, then we're better off than being outside of it. Plus Britain actually makes it much, much stronger - when we aren't squabbling on the sidelines about immigrants.

Erm, my point in the economic crisis was around the fact that a central bank with real power could have devalued the currency across the board and prevented certain countries from struggling. Of course they couldn't as things stand because too many countries, like Germany, wouldn't have condoned doing so. If the bank had the same authority as the Bank of England though, it could have done it. Of course it wasn't possible in the current state of affairs, because the level of political unity required to pull it off just isn't there - as such, it's a halfway house. Much as I said. And by federal, I mean the US standard - as in Europe is a country made up of states and identifies as such. It'd take time, but that has to be the end goal for the Union. What we have now is held back by petty national issues. I fully agree that there'd be a lack of transparency, corruption and high levels of administration and bureaucracy, but how is that different to anywhere in the world currently? You seem to think that by being separate, we will have greater autonomy - laughable. Greater autonomy to sign away our corporations to foreign powers. Politics isn't where the power is, and all we'd be getting is some faux political independence. Economics is where the power is, and the EU would give us a much better platform for surviving in the modern world than just Britain - a country trying to go it alone on the basis of historical nostalgia. Without it, we'd be even more beholden to the whims of our trading partners than we already are.

I still think the problem is that the EU is a halfway house of a political system. Either fully federalise Europe or wind things back, the current status quo doesn't function correctly - as could be seen by the shambolic response to the economic crisis. A fully empowered EU central bank and a universal single currency could have headed off the worst of that for a lot of countries. My personal view is that we'll become utterly irrelevant without Europe, making trading alliances more difficult, and meaning greater acceptance of the Chinese buying up all of our businesses. The EU, as a federation, would be a global power on par with, and possibly in excess of, the United States. GDP, population, even military capability, would be stronger than the US - except with European liberal values. Failure to do this, in my opinion, will lead to the rise of the BRICs economies and the continued downfall of Western civilisation. Of course, actually doing it might well bring about a return to fascism for all I know, it would certainly be a very European response... There you go, nothing like a bit of scaremongering on a Saturday morning. I'd vote in and to federalise though.

I don't know about the argument that internment is worse than the death penalty - I mean, it probably is, but that's not a justification to use it instead of capital punishment, that's just something we're saying to make it easier for capital punishment advocates to swallow. Has nothing to do with the ethics of the matter. As PL said, the state has no right to take anyone's life. That's the start and end of my thinking with it. It's a slippery slope otherwise. As Fish said as well mind, capital punishment is just revenge. In the States they have the victims family in the room while the kill people, how bloody minded is that? Cold blooded (normally years after the event) state sanctioned murder with an audience willing it to happen. Disgusting... As for this guy - 48 years of his life man, that's basically his whole fucking life. He's too old to be dangerous and he won't have a clue what to do in life on the outside. He isn't going to recognise the world, I would think release at this point would be utterly harrowing.

I'm in no way a keen gardener, but my neighbour when I was a kid used to do this to his tree regularly, and it seemed to just grow back. It's apparently a fairly common thing, I remember asking about it. Either that or he was just crackers and was replacing the tree at fairly regular intervals. I think it depends how much they took - from memory they end up looking rounder at the top than they once did - his turned into more of a tall bush, but assuming it survived the process (infections can apparently damage trees) then it should resume growing upwards again. I understand that you can pull one of the stronger branches into an upwards position in order to take the place of the lost trunk, but I don't know how you would select it per se.

What if Pardew stays until January - Ashley is forced to spend £30m to try and keep us up, and then things still don't turn around. We get a new and hopefully more competent manager with a squad £30m better off. This season would be a write off, and obviously there's the risk that we go down, but we'd actually (you would hope) have a reasonably decent squad for the extra spending. A new manager now might turn things around more quickly, and Ashley might refuse to spend in January. I appreciate that my thinking here is highly optimistic while also trying to make the best of a bad situation, but it could happen...