Delivered confidently and effectively, and sent a clear message to the markets and the ratings agencies. And that message was “we’ve seen what’s happened to Greece and Spain, and we’re taking decisive steps to make sure it doesn’t happen here
Well that’s how I saw it. How about you ?
England’s 30-man provisional squad for the World Cup finals:
Goalkeepers: Joe Hart, David James, Robert Green.
Defenders: Leighton Baines, Jamie Carragher, Ashley Cole, Michael Dawson, Rio Ferdinand, Glen Johnson, Ledley King, John Terry, Matthew Upson, Stephen Warnock.
Midfielders: Gareth Barry, Michael Carrick, Joe Cole, Steven Gerrard, Tom Huddlestone, Adam Johnson, Frank Lampard, Aaron Lennon, James Milner, Scott Parker, Theo Walcott, Shaun Wright-Phillips.
Forwards: Darren Bent, Peter Crouch, Jermain Defoe, Emile Heskey, Wayne Rooney.
Gordon Brown : Complete failure. Discuss.
England – Conservatives 297 seats, Labour 191, Lib Dems 43
Scotland - Labour 41 seats, Lib Dems 11, SNP 6, Conservatives 1
Wales – Labour 26 seats, Conservative 8 seats, Lib Dems 3, Plaid Cymru 3
Has the United Kingdom ever been less united ?
Very interesting article on the BBC today on the impact of the bailout of Greece and how it will spread beyond Greece’s shores
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8603206.stm
Sovereign debt is the biggest economic theme of this year. But I believe it will become an even bigger theme in 2011 and 2012 when the risks of default become even bigger, and countries start having to pay more to borrow money.
So with that in mind, the question of the day is who will be the first to default ?
Greece - will put up with austerity measures for now, but will find it increasingly harder and more expensive to roll over debt and the population is getting restless.
Spain – in a similar position to Greece, but arguably with more chance of growing their way out of the problem
Portugal – also in a similar position to Greece
UK - hasn’t needed to go to the bond markets as quantitative easing has bought up $200bn of governement bonds – what happens when we need to go back
US – debt the likes of which hasn’t been seen before (billions have become trillions), with states like California effectively bankrupt
Dubai – broke ?
My money is on Greece first, first rescheduling and then defaulting and others not far behind ….
At what point does it stop being the fellas fault?
Ashley Cole better hope theres a number six….
Pot 1 (seeds): South Africa, Brazil, Spain, Holland, Italy, Germany, Argentina, England
Pot 2 (Asia, Oceania and North/Central America): Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Mexico, Honduras
Pot 3 (Africa and South America): Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Algeria, Paraguay, Chile, Uruguay
Pot 4 (Europe): France, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland, Greece, Serbia, Denmark, Slovakia
Don’t know why we are seeded and France and Portugal aren’t. But what’s the betting we get Mexico, Ivory Coast and Portugal ?!!
Best outcome might be North Korea, Uruguay and Slovakia
Well, we got one good discussion going, see if we can get another one.
I loved this article.
Now you’ve read it, what are your thoughts. Is this a geezer who has played the field and then settled down ? Or is there a bit of an addict in all of us ?
Some people get free passes on the train and tubes. Whether they should or not is for the comments, but lets assume there’s a lot of them. Everyone else pays money.
This year the price for those who pay is going up by 20%. The price for those that dont pay is staying at 0. So tfl announces price rises of 12%. You see they average the total fairs paid by the total of journeys made and so all those free people drag down the average. Lies, damned lies and statistics?
Transport? F*ck london!