Craig Murray is a genius.

This is brilliant.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/index.html

Craig Murray - I salute you

more fantasy

A new day dawns

Good day to you all.

As a lifelong Newcastle United fan I have decided that enough is enough. Having inherited the funds to buy the club I have made a tender offer to buy Newcastle United Football Club plc of £400million. This bid has been accepted by Mr Ashley this morning and as of midnight tonight Newcastle United will be owned wholly by myself and my family.

There will be changes at the club you know and love:-

Dennis Wise has been removed as Director of Football with immediate effect – He was summoned to St.James’ Park for the ownership meeting to make his case for staying in the job and refused to travel up from London – This is unacceptable to me, and as such I have dismissed him from the payroll – he will not be getting his contract paid up. In fact - he will be fired out of a cannon into the sun.

Derek Liambas has been removed as Managing Director with immediate effect.

Richard Money will stay on as Academy head until at least the end of his contract.

I would like to thank Joe Kinnear for giving us a chance at staying up in the EPL, but with his heart problems we have paid him to the end of the mooted contract extension and are in the market for a new manager – Offers have been made to a few choices.

My plans for the club are to put Newcastle back near to the top 4 where we belong –As a club with history and tradition we should be up near the top rather than where we are at present. In order to get there painful decisions lie ahead. If we get relegated this season then a lot of our established players will wish to leave – the economics of relegation and the realities of international football dictate that players will wish to leave. However the plans are to get Newcastle back to the top 10 and work our way back up from there, rather than spending millions on marquee players whilst ignoring the areas of the team that need strengthening – this is the way that Fat Freddie Shepherd and D.Hall started the rot in the first place.

At this stage I would like to extend an invitation to the operators of NUFC.com & True Faith (web and magazine) to visit St. James’ park to discuss the future of the club and go over the way that the club communicates with fans. I would also like to extend an invitation to the NUSC for a face-to-face meeting at St. James’ Park this Sunday after the game.

I want Newcastle to be at the forefront of the global game and would ideally like to start recruiting players from around the world who are world class. I want Geordie kids to aim for playing for Newcastle and will make changes to the academy structure because far too many local kids aren’t being picked up as footballers.

With the above in mind there are changes afoot.

The board will be composed of:-

Myself (infrequently due to other commitments)

Chairman

Chief Executive Officer

Managing Director

Director of Football

Fans representative x 2

Scouting Director

The roles above have been filed on a short-term basis by people I know and trust. While their business acumen isn’t well known they are people who have the club’s interests at heart.

Chairman – This position has been offered to Mr Chris Mort – he did a very good job here first time and I would like him to return, but if my offer is not heeded then I would like to approach xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx.

CEO – This position has been offered to XXXXXXXXXXXXX.

Managing Director – XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Director of Football – Offered to Alan Shearer.

Fans Representative – Two fans will be appointed on a one-year tenure – this tenure will include payment for attending meetings and a small stipend to supplement their income if required to attend meetings out of hours – if you wish to put yourself forward for this then please contact the club.

The Scouting Director position is to be filled by XXXXXXXXXXX– The job will be to liaise with the academy director to try to unearth promising talent, to liaise with the Director of Football, Manager and Board to identify suitable targets and to work closely with the scouting networks around the globe on viewing targets.

The scouting networks are in dire need of updating. As such we are in the process of hiring scouts to work in Western Europe, Northern and Western Africa, South America and the UK & Ireland – Other scouts will be deployed as the roles are filled.

Club Shares.

10% of the club’s worth in shares will be awarded to be held in trust to the fans of Newcastle United. This will give the fans a chance to vote on club matters.

Business.

In order to make sure that United have the ability to climb the league, I have committed the following resources to the club.

Transfer Fees – to the manager’s/DOF’s discretion.

Players Wages – Thanks to the ineptitude of some of the previous regimes’ the spending of massive wages on stars past their prime has to stop. We will pay competitive wages to players but will stop short of paying stupid money on players who haven’t performed in years.

Season Tickets – In these times of financial uncertainty I am announcing that all season ticket prices will be halved for the next two seasons and the projected loss will be paid by me – and an amount equalling this budget will be given to Sir Bobby Robson’s cancer charity to make sure that a legendary son of the North East keeps making lives better. I want St. James’ Park to be full every week, and would like the fans to support the club they love.

The realities of football mean that while we are one of the better supported clubs in the league there may come a time when we will have to think about either relocating to a new stadium or redeveloping the existing one in order to get a possible stadium capacity of around 80-90 thousand.

New players.

There are players I would love to see wearing the Black and White. Unfortunately due to our league position we cannot guarantee that these players will want to come to St. James’ Park. I have given a list of players to scout (after discussion with the manager and scouting director) and we will do our best in delivering good football back to Newcastle fans.

I want United to play free-flowing attacking football at all levels of the club. To look into this I have approached Ajax Amsterdam and Boca Juniors so I can take a look at their infrastructures so Newcastle can copy this coaching model.

I ask the fans to help me taking the club forward – Onwards and Upwards.

Haway the lads.

Regards

*If only*

Oh just FUCK OFF!

Right, I am getting more and more pissed by the minute so I'll keep it brief.

Jade Goody dies - tragedy, taken before her time, etc, etc.

This isn't news.
every newspaper has something
Radio 5 did a programme dedicated to her (hosted by the contemptible Stephen Nolan).
The internet is awash with stories.
I've heard that people are laying wreaths at her house. These would probably be the same people who laid flowers for Princess Di. How about a suggestion - We get to euthenise all of the people who read Hello and OK?

I don't care - she is dead, she wasn't famous for anything real. Just fucking leave it alone and leave it off the fucking radio/tv.

thanks

*don't get me started on the following*
Gordon Brown/NuLabour
Newcastle United
The economy

thanks

ps - I'll qualify all of this - In the last two months I've lost my Grandmother(old age) and my Aunt (cancer). Both of these extraordinary women had done their utmost to raise children in the correct way, to be polite and courteous to others and to work hard, pay tax and keep the country running - What the hell did the Goody woman ever do for this country?

a reasoned response

A large shout out to CIF poster NORTH. Good work.

There is a blog on the Grauniad's Comment is free website from Tariq Ali.
This might be one of the best responses I've read on CIF for a long time.


Pakistan has been a disaster waiting to happen right from the establishment of the state. BTW Freyaloki, the British never were that keen on setting up 'The Land of the Pure" (What a joke that name is) as it greatly complicated our exit from the old Indian empire. The UK would have been far happier to leave a unified Indian state. Pakistan happened because Jinnah and the Muslim League made it happen.
The trouble with Pakistan was/is that there were no other unifying factors other than Islam.Culturally and ethnically Pakistan is split in innumerable ways. Scindis v Punjabis. Baluchis v central government, Pashtun speakers and other 'tribal' peoples v the more settled peoples of the Indus valley, Sunni v Shiah etc. etc.. In addition the state has been cursed with an upper class of almost unparalleled greed and irresponsibility. They pay hardly any tax and are amongst the most corrupt people on this planet.
As a result of all this the state has been run by military governments for about half its history. The present civilian government probably won't last long. The present upsurge in violent Islamism was encouraged by the late, unlamented Zia Al Huq, in association with various feudal landowners, as a way of opposing the equally corrupt but popular Zufilkar Ali Bhutto ,before Al Huq killed him. The ISI are up to their armpits in Islamic extremism and were almost certainly mixed up in the recent Mumbai bombings.The Taliban were never created by the West (the mujahedeen were). The Taliban were always the Pakistani military's bitch, created to extend Pakistani influence as a part of Pakistan's endless and pointless rivalry with India. Pointless, because India is now so far ahead of Pakistan in terms of military power and development potential.
Now the bitch is biting its creator. The cultural and linguistic similarities between Afghanistan and the Tribal Areas of Pakistan means that the jihadist ideology of the Taliban has crossed back into Pakistan. In addition the fact that several generations of young Pakistanis have been educated in Saudi financed madrassahs means there was a large and receptive audience for the Taliban message. Add on the final point, that large sections of the Pakistani military's officer corps was heavily Islamicised from the 70s onward and many officers and senior NCO's actually sympathise with the Islamist ideology and it really isn't surprising that Pakistan is gradually dissolving into chaos. Under such circumstances it is also not surprising that the US is starting to take matters into its own hands to combat Pakistan based groups which are crossing over into Afghanistan to kill US troops.
Stop press. The latest Pakistani excuses are 1) Its all the fault of the Americans because of their drones and even more ludicrously a Pakistani minister has accused India of being behind this latest attack.
In the long run I expect India will 'take care' of Pakistan. We should be getting much closer to India.




Good post.