Bad beat/Moan/Venting Thread - BBV Archive 1

[Raoul Duke III]

A tiny baby sprrow jumped into our hall when the door opened, must have fallen out of a nest. It was terrified, I wasn't sure what to do for it, got some tiny breadcrumbs and some water to feed it. It hopped onto the stairs, took a wee nibble of the tiny crumbs
and popped itself, then looked at me keeled over and died. FML I'm so scary looking the poor birdy died. and to think I was the last thing it saw. I'm not sure why but I'm mega pissed off it died . Damn you Mormon god .

not the first burd to pop her clogs from taking in your mug of a morning

[Emmet]

Surprisingly decent read from the Irish Times (Obviously because he's actually from the Financial Times)

Will it work? No. What can Ireland do? Remove the bank guarantee and default

WOLFGANG MÜNCHAU

Revoke the guarantee for the banking system and then convert senior and subordinate bondholders into equity holders

THE DEAL is done, but there is no joy. The agreement that was supposed to end the financial crisis gave rise to its next wave. We are now in the unique situation that financial markets are taking a longer term view than national governments.

The governments are saying: There is no liquidity crisis. Greece and Ireland are safe for the next few years.

The markets are saying: There is a solvency crisis; there is no way that Greece and Ireland will be able to prevent an explosion of their national debt.

The markets, for once, are correct. At an interest rate of 5.8 per cent, the loan from the European Financial Stability Facility will at best plug a temporary funding gap. It will not improve – and quite possibly worsen – Ireland’s underlying solvency position. The interest rate is very likely to be higher than Ireland’s nominal annual growth during the period of the loan. And that means that the real value of the debt will increase.

Solvency is not a legal concept. No court will ever declare you insolvent. Solvency is an analytical framework. You are insolvent if you are not able to service your debt in a sustainable way. Solvency depends on the absolute level of debt, of course, but also on your expected future level of income.

Reasonable people might disagree on what that might be. But it is unreasonable to assume that we will simply return to the pre-crisis game, as though this financial crisis was no more than an unwelcome disturbance of the party. The combination of rising market interest rates, rising money market rates, extreme fiscal austerity, a slowdown in the global economy, financial contagion to other parts of the euro zone and contagion to other parts of the financial markets, including the market for corporate bonds, all make it hard to see where a solvency-maintaining growth rate is coming from.

Yes, Ireland is a flexible economy that is extremely open. Unit labour costs in the export sector are falling. So in contrast to Greece, Spain and Portugal, Ireland is improving its competitive position. But we would be kidding ourselves if we believed that anybody, even the world’s most flexible small open economy, can pull itself out of this mess in the current economic climate. The Nordic countries managed to extricate themselves out of a milder financial disaster in the 1990s. But they devalued their exchange rate. And it all happened in a much more benign global environment. If you ignored all the toxic interactions that are currently taking place, you could make a reasonable assumption of continued solvency: A return to modest rates of growth, no further decline in house prices, a further but contained decline in commercial property prices, a government funding rate now capped at below 6 per cent. You impute this into your macroeconomic model, and it tells you that you are solvent.

But this model can never take account of the toxic interactions that go with the generalised loss of confidence we are experiencing now.

In the last few weeks, the toxic force of the debt crisis has become all too apparent. The financial markets push up interest rates, the economy slows, asset prices fall, the health of the banking sector deteriorates further, more recapitalisation is needed, the deficit increases further, interest rates move higher, contagion spreads horizontally to other European bond markets, and vertically to other parts of the domestic financial market.

Any stabilisation plan will have to work in such a mad world. An Irish economist recently accused me of triggering the crisis when I questioned Ireland’s insolvency in one of my columns in the Financial Times . Likewise, other people have been accusing Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, of triggering the crisis with her ill-timed proposals for a regime to bail in investors. The European Commission has been accused of triggering this week’s panic in Spain because of an ill-timed critical report about the country’s economy.

Irrespective of the substance of any such claims, you have got to ask yourself: can this really be a cause of a crisis? The bad timing of a report? Or a newspaper column?

You must be kidding. If the euro zone depended on a column, it would have no future. Any realistic recovery strategy would have to take account of the inconvenience that, forgive my language, s*** happens.

What should be done now? My ideal solution – from the perspective of the euro zone – would be a common bond to cover all sovereign debt to be followed by the establishment of a small fiscal union; furthermore, banks should be taken out of the hands of national governments and put under the wings of the European Financial Stability Facility. That would clearly solve the problem.

If this is not going to happen, what can Ireland do unilaterally now? Is its game over?

I would advise the following course of action.

First, Ireland should revoke the full guarantee of the banking system, and convert senior and subordinate bondholders into equity holders.

I am aware that this would create second-level problems, in pension funds, in other banks, but it would be less costly, and more equitable, to deal with those specific problems on a case by case basis, than to dump the entire cost on the taxpayer.

The Government should then assess its own solvency position on the basis of an estimate of nominal growth of no more than 1 per cent per year for the rest of the decade. That may well be too pessimistic an assumption, but at this juncture it would be more prudent to err on the side of caution than optimism. Given the scale of the financial crisis, and its direct impact on growth, and everything we know from the history of financial crises, the case for a cautious forecast is overwhelming.

Without the load of the banking sector, such an analysis may well conclude that the Irish State is solvent. The result would depend to a very large extent on the success and extent of any bail-in programme, and the ability to contain any fall-out from such action.

If the analysis concludes that Ireland is insolvent, the Government should waste no time, and restructure the debt. Massive pressure from the EU will be brought on Ireland not to do so. But the right answer to insolvency is default – not liquidity support. Let the German government pay for the German banks, and for the recapitalisation of the European Central Bank, which may need to be refinanced under such a scenario as well.

A default would cause havoc, no doubt, and would cut Ireland off from the capital markets for a while. But I would suspect that the shock would only be temporary. With a more sustainable level of debt, and the benefit of a real devaluation, Ireland should be able to pull through this. Once the market recognises that solvency is assured, I would bet international investors would once again be willing to lend. Even Argentina was able to gain funding from investors a few years after its default.

The big question in such a scenario is: Should Ireland stay in the euro zone? I would say, yes it should. Ireland has a sufficiently flexible economy to be able to manage the necessary real adjustment. In a monetary union, you can no longer devalue. The only chance is what economists call a real devaluation – through lower wages and prices.

Germany can do this. Ireland can do this. Portugal, Spain and Greece, even Italy cannot do this. It is an unpleasant adjustment. But as long as it is politically supported, it can be done, and it can succeed.

From an Irish perspective, the best option, of course, would be a leap towards a fiscal union, agreed by all euro zone member states. In the absence of such a leap, the second best option would be a default – banking debt first, public debt possibly later. The smart choice is to default inside the euro zone. It is going happen, sooner or later.

[Lord Sir Banter]

Jeez,bit of nastiness during the night.Why can't we all just get along.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sByyd...eature=related

shut your hole

Yea,well,stick it up your gash so.

Puff daddy said it best:

[Raoul Duke III]

now THAT's snow

Bing Crosby where are ya?

[Solskjaer]

not the first burd to pop her clogs from taking in your mug of a morning

typical FG reaction to a crises

[Lord Sir Banter]

now THAT's snow

Bing Crosby where are ya?

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjvbZT9wcOs[/ame]

[Zod]

now THAT's snow

Bing Crosby where are ya?

Dreaming of beating his kids, probably.

[Guest]

El Dukeman,

Is that coffee machine you posted yesterday decent? I've been rocking a Saeco bean-to-cup machine the past couple of years and it just ain't getting the job done. Pretty annoying how poor the quality is considering how freaking dear it was.

[Denny Crane]

I guess that chinese taxi driver that told me this was going to be the worst winter evar was right.

I suppose as a profession they were due.

[Solskjaer]

the mama bird flies overhead looking for it's baby as I head to the bin with the black sack
feeling strangley guilty about the contents. I shall leave out some extra bread today.
Hopefully little Mos death will save some lives.

[Megatron]

Puff daddy said it best:

Is that not Kanye West?

[bohsman]

Was just going to ask if my money would be safer in a Swedish bank as I already have an account. Came across this, seems safe enough -

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/business/worldbusiness/23krona.html

Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way


By CARTER DOUGHERTY
Published: September 22, 2008

A banking system in crisis after the collapse of a housing bubble. An economy hemorrhaging jobs. A market-oriented government struggling to stem the panic. Sound familiar?

It does to Sweden. The country was so far in the hole in 1992 — after years of imprudent regulation, short-sighted economic policy and the end of its property boom — that its banking system was, for all practical purposes, insolvent.

But Sweden took a different course than the one now being proposed by the United States Treasury. And Swedish officials say there are lessons from their own nightmare that Washington may be missing.

Sweden did not just bail out its financial institutions by having the government take over the bad debts. It extracted pounds of flesh from bank shareholders before writing checks. Banks had to write down losses and issue warrants to the government.

That strategy held banks responsible and turned the government into an owner. When distressed assets were sold, the profits flowed to taxpayers, and the government was able to recoup more money later by selling its shares in the companies as well.

“If I go into a bank,” said Bo Lundgren, who was Sweden’s minister for fiscal and financial affairs at the time, “I’d rather get equity so that there is some upside for the taxpayer.”

Sweden spent 4 percent of its gross domestic product, or 65 billion kronor, the equivalent of $11.7 billion at the time, or $18.3 billion in today’s dollars, to rescue ailing banks. That is slightly less, proportionate to the national economy, than the $700 billion, or roughly 5 percent of gross domestic product, that the Bush administration estimates its own move will cost in the United States.

But the final cost to Sweden ended up being less than 2 percent of its G.D.P. Some officials say they believe it was closer to zero, depending on how certain rates of return are calculated.

The tumultuous events of the last few weeks have produced a lot of tight-lipped nods in Stockholm. Mr. Lundgren even made the rounds in New York in early September, explaining what the country did in the early 1990s.

A few American commentators have proposed that the United States government extract equity from banks as a price for their rescue. But it does not seem to be under serious consideration yet in the Bush administration or Congress.

The reason is not quite clear. The government has already swapped its sovereign guarantee for equity in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance institutions, and the American International Group, the global insurance giant.

Putting taxpayers on the hook without anything in return could be a mistake, said Urban Backstrom, a senior Swedish finance ministry official at the time. “The public will not support a plan if you leave the former shareholders with anything,” he said.

The Swedish crisis had strikingly similar origins to the American one, and its neighbors, Norway and Finland, were hobbled to the point of needing a government bailout to escape the morass as well.

Financial deregulation in the 1980s fed a frenzy of real estate lending by Sweden’s banks, which did not worry enough about whether the value of their collateral might evaporate in tougher times.

Property prices imploded. The bubble deflated fast in 1991 and 1992. A vain effort to defend Sweden’s currency, the krona, caused overnight interest rates to spike at one point to 500 percent. The Swedish economy contracted for two consecutive years after a long expansion, and unemployment, at 3 percent in 1990, quadrupled in three years.

After a series of bank failures and ad hoc solutions, the moment of truth arrived in September 1992, when the government of Prime Minister Carl Bildt decided it was time to clear the decks.

Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the opposition center-left, Mr. Bildt’s conservative government announced that the Swedish state would guarantee all bank deposits and creditors of the nation’s 114 banks. Sweden formed a new agency to supervise institutions that needed recapitalization, and another that sold off the assets, mainly real estate, that the banks held as collateral.

Sweden told its banks to write down their losses promptly before coming to the state for recapitalization. Facing its own problem later in the decade, Japan made the mistake of dragging this process out, delaying a solution for years.

Then came the imperative to bleed shareholders first. Mr. Lundgren recalls a conversation with Peter Wallenberg, at the time chairman of SEB, Sweden’s largest bank. Mr. Wallenberg, the scion of the country’s most famous family and steward of large chunks of its economy, heard that there would be no sacred cows.

The Wallenbergs turned around and arranged a recapitalization on their own, obviating the need for a bailout. SEB turned a profit the following year, 1993.

“For every krona we put into the bank, we wanted the same influence,” Mr. Lundgren said. “That ensured that we did not have to go into certain banks at all.”

By the end of the crisis, the Swedish government had seized a vast portion of the banking sector, and the agency had mostly fulfilled its hard-nosed mandate to drain share capital before injecting cash. When markets stabilized, the Swedish state then reaped the benefits by taking the banks public again.

More money may yet come into official coffers. The government still owns 19.9 percent of Nordea, a Stockholm bank that was fully nationalized and is now a highly regarded giant in Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea region.

The politics of Sweden’s crisis management were similarly tough-minded, though much quieter.

Soon after the plan was announced, the Swedish government found that international confidence returned more quickly than expected, easing pressure on its currency and bringing money back into the country. The center-left opposition, while wary that the government might yet let the banks off the hook, made its points about penalizing shareholders privately.

“The only thing that held back an avalanche was the hope that the system was holding,” said Leif Pagrotzky, a senior member of the opposition at the time. “In public we stuck together 100 percent, but we fought behind the scenes.”

[Lord Sir Banter]

Is that not Kanye West?

No.

[6starpool]

would anyone find the following statement offensive if it was adressed to them

"You're not as much of a cunt as i used to think you were " ??

I used that earlier on (yes, to a woman) , although she is a cunt in fairness. (not as much as she used to be , in fairness)

I said to a girl years ago that I used to think she was a bitch, but she is really only a bit of a silly bitch, which was meant to be a peace offering on my part as it is clearly much less bad, but she didn't seem at all happy. Silly bitch.

El Dukeman.

It's El Raoul Stuntduke III

[Megatron]

No.

Yes

[Raoul Duke III]

El Dukeman,

Is that coffee machine you posted yesterday decent? I've been rocking a Saeco bean-to-cup machine the past couple of years and it just ain't getting the job done. Pretty annoying how poor the quality is considering how freaking dear it was.

yeah, it's 5 or 6 years old and still churning out quality espresso

obv. buy a grinder with it if you haven't got one already

[Denny Crane]

interesting ol' read.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/26/secret-agent-crippled-irans-nuclear-ambitions/

Mystery Surrounds Cyber Missile That Crippled Iran's Nuclear Weapons Ambitions

[Megatron]

Kanye:



Puff:

[Emmet]

Obama


Snoop Dog


so?

[Solskjaer]

Kanye:



Puff:

they look the same to me. (all )

[Denny Crane]

Kanye:



Puff:

i'm guessing they keep different types of facial hair to let people be able to tell them apart?

[Lord Sir Banter]

Nice try tbh.

[pgodkin]

Where's the best place to buy a Wii + Wii Fit?

a girls shop???

[Raoul Duke III]

the MoU for the bailout is here

worth a read imo

[pgodkin]

Terry Rogers Shop Closures

you know the countries in a bad way when the bookies are closing there doors! to shop closure's for the above by the end of this month

[Megatron]

Obama


Snoop Dog


so?

Meh I was just being anal about R+b stars

[Emmet]

a girls shop???

Wow, so wrong!

The Wii is a surprisingly male orientated console! Wii fit for the wimmens obviously, but the Wii has provided serious fun when drinking with a group of lads.

Wii Sports tennis/boxing et all, simple, but ruthlessly competitive and addictive after a few brews.

Rockband - speaks for itself

We have a Wii and PS3 at home, and when everyone's over, before we head out, its always the wii, having to stand up and actually do things as opposed to the occasional jump off the couch for a great finish in PES really adds sparks.

The noise level grows at an exponential rate!

[Lord Sir Banter]

Meh I was just being anal about R+b stars

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ImZTwYwCug[/ame]

[Emmet]

the MoU for the bailout is here

worth a read imo

tl;dr

• Cliffs please
• In bullet point
• Typeset Times New Roman, Font Size 12
• 1.5 line spacing
• Not to exceed 300 words.

10% of the marks will go to overall presentation, sloppiness will be penalised heavily.

[Solskjaer]

Wow, so wrong!

The Wii is a surprisingly male orientated console! Wii fit for the wimmens obviously, but the Wii has provided serious fun when drinking with a group of lads.

Wii Sports tennis/boxing et all, simple, but ruthlessly competitive and addictive after a few brews.

Rockband - speaks for itself

We have a Wii and PS3 at home, and when everyone's over, before we head out, its always the wii, having to stand up and actually do things as opposed to the occasional jump off the couch for a great finish in PES really adds sparks.

The noise level grows at an exponential rate!

Weeps for the future,

go out and play, throw snowballs at Smurph for some decent excercise.

[Lord Sir Banter]

tl;dr

• Cliffs please
• In bullet point
• Typeset Times New Roman, Font Size 12
• 1.5 line spacing
• Not to exceed 300 words.

10% of the marks will go to overall presentation, sloppiness will be penalised heavily.

Here:



That's us.

[Guest]

For anyone with iphones, Trainyard is a class game. Kinda slow to get going but ridic addictive.

[pgodkin]

Wow, so wrong!

The Wii is a surprisingly male orientated console! Wii fit for the wimmens obviously, but the Wii has provided serious fun when drinking with a group of lads.

Wii Sports tennis/boxing et all, simple, but ruthlessly competitive and addictive after a few brews.

Rockband - speaks for itselfWe have a Wii and PS3 at home, and when everyone's over, before we head out, its always the wii, having to stand up and actually do things as opposed to the occasional jump off the couch for a great finish in PES really adds sparks.

The noise level grows at an exponential rate!

People will do a lot of things they wonuldn't normally do when there drinking, bet Iracus has or wants one so bad he'd hire llyod to kill me!

[Strewelpeter]

El Dukeman,

Is that coffee machine you posted yesterday decent? I've been rocking a Saeco bean-to-cup machine the past couple of years and it just ain't getting the job done. Pretty annoying how poor the quality is considering how freaking dear it was.

How dear was it, I see Go Harvey Go have one for <500

[Emmet]

Weeps for the future,

go out and play, throw snowballs at Smurph for some decent excercise.

Tough to do so while drinking!

That whole post was based on the typical situation of 6/7 friends over to "input" cans before heading to a nightclub.

Not day to day!

(actually, you feel like a right spare wheel playing it sober and on your own)

[Guest]

How dear was it, I see Go Harvey Go have one for <500

Twas this one.

[ame]http://www.amazon.com/Saeco-S-TRP-ST-Automatic-Espresso-Machine/dp/B000P6I6S2[/ame]

I've had 3 bean to cup machines over the years and can't really recommend it as a way of making coffee tbh.

[Raoul Duke III]

tl;dr

• Cliffs please
• In bullet point
• Typeset Times New Roman, Font Size 12
• 1.5 line spacing
• Not to exceed 300 words.

10% of the marks will go to overall presentation, sloppiness will be penalised heavily.

[ ] could be arsed

nothing that will be too surprising and a lack of firm detail, basically it's fairly aspirational stuff and can\will be tweaked as we meet\fail quarterly targets

cliffs from my POV as follows:

• intensification of NAMAisation, banks will be shrunk back to the absolute minimum. Continued failed strategy will results in tens of billions more euro being incincerated.
• Croke Park deal is gonzo, expect PS pay cuts late next year\early the year after. PS unions still in fantasyland mode as per Horan and Doran's muppet show on RTE this morning. They will be duly crushed.
• PAYE workers to be whacked up the jacksie in next week's budget via band widening.
• SW recipients to take cuts and also find number of available payments substantially decreased. I expect average SW 'incomes' to be pared back by a third or more over the 4 years.
• New bankruptcy legislation. Could be interesting.
• Medical, pharamacy and legal professions to be opened up. About time.
• All of the semistates will be flogged off.

[RichieM]

also, more detail on the bailout is emerging

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/imf-names-its-price-2444805.html

Public Sector workers should be concerned by the following:



Croke Park Agreement will be gone by this time next year

That is some of the best news I have heard in ages. Proper PS pay cuts are now well over 2 years late but it will finally happen. Plus the Croke Park agreement sickened me unbelivable when it was "negotiated".

[Mike]

For anyone with iphones, Trainyard is a class game. Kinda slow to get going but ridic addictive.

enjoyed it but got stuck at nova scotia, balsam

havent played it in a while, might give it another shot.

[ArmaniJeans]

A bus drivers perspective on yesterday.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=69329819&postcount=46

Interesting afternoon indeed .....almost total collapse of communication system following a lightning strike on the Three Rock Mountain radio mast.
This was compounded by the overall situation in the City Centre which essentially was a collapse of whatever Roads and Traffic systems were there.
Parnell Square was effectively blocked from 1400 to 1800 by a succession of buses unable to get traction on the uphill gradient.
One driver got stranded broadside at the Granby Row end and set in motion a chain reaction which fed back as far as Christchurch.

It was a carbon copy of the events of earlier this year in the exact same location which if nothing proves our rather spectacular reluctance to learn from past mistakes.
Provision of a plastic container of salt at this and other strategic locations would have allowed the initial problem to be dealt with speedily,but twas not to be.
What is of greater importance is the complete collapse in communication between Head Office and the Front Line.
Controllers advising drivers that they had to exercise their discretion as to whether to operate or not is most assuredly NOT a sign of a Company which has confidence in it`s own systems.

The absolute worst element is the non-availibility of definite information.
Putting a large sign in the Head Office window advising the public of a Suspension of Service would at least have allowed people to make alternative arrangements.
Instead,people were fed ambiguous and even quite obviously incorrect information in some misbegotten attempt to prove to the National Transport Authority that everything is great,boss,just great ...no problems at all...well there surely were problems today and great BIG ones too,but very few of them within Dublin Bus`s remit to solve.
It should also be noted that in those four hours only two Gardai arrived towards the end of the situation to cast a withering gaze over the chaos and ask a private coach driver why he had "Parked" his coach skewways ....that was one mighty lucky Garda that did`nt find himself flat on his ass with his cap in his gob!!!!!

At 1720,the City Council put in an appearance with a Gritter which did much to get the place untangled,but by then it was far too little,far too late.
I did hear however that the Government Emergency Committee managed to get themselves into gear this evening to discuss how well the emergency response plan was going.....I suspect we will see a expert review group set up to expertly review stuff.
Something is wrong here,very wrong.

I fully accept that these weather conditions are harsh,although well and accurately predicted for over a week now.
I am sick of hearing of the 55,000 tonnes of treatment stockpiled,but yet I have the very strong suspicion that Local authorities are reluctant to pay the overtime rates to get staff out early and late and as a result the gritting is being carried out in the thick of traffic by only a few good men !
Dublin Bus`s and Dublin City`s situation rather reflected the state of the country in general...Nobody Willing to Take a Decision....plenty of executives,but all very busy at other stuff.

I`m happy enough that I did my best,as did most of my colleagues today,however there has to be a cut-off point at which the risk outweighs the benefit of continued operation without the support systems in place and that point arrived this afternoon.

[ionapaul]

Won a UKIPT Galway ticket in the live super sat last night Was fairly short early doors, quadrupled up with the mighty K9s at one stage and was felted in a cooler with 70 or so remaining, but fought back and was cruising from about 40 out, it was quite enjoyable to be honest! Really looking forward to the main event tomorrow, might even play the €10,000 freeroll this afternoon. I will probably look to sell 20% of my action, if so will throw up a thread in an hour or so.

[V for Vendetta]

[ ] could be arsed

nothing that will be too surprising and a lack of firm detail, basically it's fairly aspirational stuff and can\will be tweaked as we meet\fail quarterly targets

cliffs from my POV as follows:

• intensification of NAMAisation, banks will be shrunk back to the absolute minimum. Continued failed strategy will results in tens of billions more euro being incincerated.
• Croke Park deal is gonzo, expect PS pay cuts late next year\early the year after. PS unions still in fantasyland mode as per Horan and Doran's muppet show on RTE this morning. They will be duly crushed.
• PAYE workers to be whacked up the jacksie in next week's budget via band widening.
• SW recipients to take cuts and also find number of available payments substantially decreased. I expect average SW 'incomes' to be pared back by a third or more over the 4 years.
• New bankruptcy legislation. Could be interesting.
• Medical, pharamacy and legal professions to be opened up. About time.
• All of the semistates will be flogged off.

F**k you Blair Horan and Liam Doran. That cold chill running down your spine is you finally realising that it is everyone's business how much your members get paid.

It'll be very interesting to see how the opening up of the professions works out. The vested interests will be quietly squealing over that one but the forms of resistance are much more subtle and effective by those groups....

[Line Us]

Won a UKIPT Galway ticket in the live super sat last night Was fairly short early doors, quadrupled up with the mighty K9s at one stage and was felted in a cooler with 70 or so remaining, but fought back and was cruising from about 40 out, it was quite enjoyable to be honest! Really looking forward to the main event tomorrow, might even play the €10,000 freeroll this afternoon. I will probably look to sell 20% of my action, if so will throw up a thread in an hour or so.

Wd, I'll take 10% if ya decide to sell, can ship later on ppp, stars or tilt. Or I could sort ya out in cash above if ya prefer, be heading up later this evening.

[RichieM]

Good to see that there is a lot of common sense ideas going to get put into place. Hopefully we can get a good deal for our semistates and not get mugged due to our epic brokeness. Cash injection aswell as dropping some expenditure will help balance our books somewhat. I would love to know the break down for the PS cuts. I hope its an all or nothing situation and most departments will make the savings, become more efficient but some guy in the dept of fisheries orders 10,000 staplers at the last minuite and they just miss the target. Efficiencies + pay cuts = half viable public service. I really dont think just one is enough.

[ArmaniJeans]

Qatar 8/15 for 2022, could it beat the might of Australia and USA?

[ionapaul]

Jeez,bit of nastiness during the night.Why can't we all just get along.

@ Zombie fans.If you have an Xbox,you MUST get Left4Dead 2.Superbly atmospheric and freaky,with a funky soundtrack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sByyd...eature=related

I play a good lot of L4D2 on the PC...it is the business! Damnit, I hate zombies, take a chainsaw to the head muthafunka!

[The Situation]

Qatar 8/15 for 2022, could it beat the might of Australia and USA?

Qatar and Aus would be horrible. I'm rooting for the yanks!

[NewApproach]

Qatar 8/15 for 2022, could it beat the might of Australia and USA?

Seriously? Must have done a serious presentation, as they were reported at 11/2 in the paper this morning!

England have come in for support after apparently a good presentation, now odds on, they were 3/1 yesterday morning when I looked.

[ArmaniJeans]

Qatar and Aus would be horrible. I'm rooting for the yanks!

Qatar might not be too bad, its GMT+3 so its only an hour worse than the South African WC just gone.

The country is marginally smaller than Leinster, so if you made the effort to travel there you'd be able to take in a load of matches at little or no further cost, unlike Aus or USA where you might have to travel 500 miles to take in an extra match.

Weather is a bit warm for fans admittedly.

@NewApp 4/6 best price at moment.
http://www.oddschecker.com/football/internationals/world-cup/2022-host

[eoghan104]

Is the 1500 GT still on the Thursday game in The Emporium?

[AKQJ10]

Add me if you want a game tylerdurden944



What the hell is that all about?

its my mates xbox although id say il get one soon

[The Situation]

Qatar might not be too bad, its GMT+3 so its only an hour worse than the South African WC just gone.

The country is marginally smaller than Leinster, so if you made the effort to travel there you'd be able to take in a load of matches at little or no further cost, unlike Aus or USA where you might have to travel 500 miles to take in an extra match.

Weather is a bit warm for fans admittedly.

@NewApp 4/6 best price at moment.
http://www.oddschecker.com/football/internationals/world-cup/2022-host

I always feel sporting events in the likes of Qatar are souless, but the facilities are obv unbelievable.

[NewApproach]

Qatar might not be too bad, its GMT+3 so its only an hour worse than the South African WC just gone.

The country is marginally smaller than Leinster, so if you made the effort to travel there you'd be able to take in a load of matches at little or no further cost, unlike Aus or USA where you might have to travel 500 miles to take in an extra match.

Weather is a bit warm for fans admittedly.

@NewApp 4/6 best price at moment.
http://www.oddschecker.com/football/internationals/world-cup/2022-host

Ah sorry I misread it earlier! It's the USA who were 11/2...

[Raoul Duke III]

Is the 1500 GT still on the Thursday game in The Emporium?

yes

could be a massive overlay alright! chop?

[coillcam]

One for the NFL fans:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZcSEE7TuGU[/ame]

[tylerdurden94]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub8NeH_eQ8k[/ame]

[Sledgejammer]

England having Milton Keyens as one of it's stadiums seems so wrong to me...Beyond that, anyone but Russia for 2018, England or Spain/portugal will both be awesome for travel, fans, stadiums and timezones. I'm still not entirely sure why Spain bothered bringing Portugal in with them, as something to counter their relatively recent hosting of the tournament is all I can think of

[DeadParrot]

gas explosion in O'Connell street

[Raoul Duke III]

England having Milton Keyens as one of it's stadiums seems so wrong to me...Beyond that, anyone but Russia for 2018, England or Spain/portugal will both be awesome for travel, fans, stadiums and timezones. I'm still not entirely sure why Spain bothered bringing Portugal in with them, as something to counter their relatively recent hosting of the tournament is all I can think of

only disadvantage for Spain\Portugal will be ridiculous temperatures at some grounds

ever been to Seville or Madrid in July? yuck

[a-k-47]

gas explosion in O'Connell street

anyone injured?