Davey Boy 2.0

i don't know what you mean by 'fail miserably' i think people will get enjoyment out of this, adn that alone is enough reason to do it 50 000 votes is, in theory, enough to balance out the ollies and dinghys (no offence guys). i guess the question is what type of people have signed on? in my experience most limeys you talk fitba with have a pretty balanced view of things, on the whole. that said, i wouldn't want to try this with 50 000 leafs fans though and as for accountability when things are going awry- that's what message boards are for

whatever, we'll see anyway i don't see this as a way to necessarily build a colossal dynasty of a club, seems more fun than anything to me say for instance you voted to select a certain striker to start the game and he pots the winner, wouldn't that be extra satisfying? I wouldn't want to be the guy that sets up the voting for every single decision but that's his problem.

i think it's brilliant, if only for the fact that the increased level of involvement would make watching games so much more interesting

Football is the people's game. Even now. Even in the face of American billionaire take-overs, far eastern politician scandals, and vaguely dopy, dazed looking Russians. Football is not an elitist sport. It appeals to all ages and income groups. It's watched by men, women and children. Clubs accept anyone through their doors. You don't have to be dressed in any particular way to get in - you can even take most of your clothes off if you so wish, even if you are a 25-stone beer-monster. You don't need a blazer or a double-barrelled name. You don't need to know the club secretary or buy expensive equipment or have a wife in a Laura Ashley dress who can make lemonade and potted meat sandwiches. And it's played absolutely everywhere. No matter where you live in the land you are close to a football club of some sort. It is inescapable. Clubs at all levels are to greater or lesser extents the focus of their local communities. They are a historic and vital part of our civic and cultural make-up. Football, quite simply, rules. So it's a surprise that no one has come up with the idea of a group of fans collectively owning and running a club before now. It has been tried with small cabals of people before, and it exists in some way at some Spanish clubs. But what has not been tried before is the idea of having 50,000 stakeholders in a club all of whom actually run the club, voting on all decisions. Yes, in a real way, actually running the club. And you don't have to be rich to take part. Your share costs just £35. Sounds impossibly idealistic doesn't it, but that's what is happening at www.myfootballclub.co.uk and it's about to be put to the test. Set up by a Fulham fan, Will Brooks, the idea is to get 50,000 people to cough up £35, and use £1.4million raised to buy a club. Once done, all decisions will be made by the membership. You'd vote on everything from transfers, to kit sponsorship, to youth development strategy. You could scout a player, put it to the board that he be signed and then it'd be voted on by the membership. There'd be no manager, just a head coach. All decisions a manager would normally make will be made by the membership. This will include team selection! Made by the membership submitting a preferred 11 based on the coach's pre-match report, the most popular choices will make it into the team. How great is that? You also get to vote on tactics, to test out all those theories you've always had about playing a new 3-1-3-1-1-1 system if you can get enough to support your crazed theories. It sounds like a lot fun already doesn't it and approx 48,000 agree and have signed up. So if you want to take part in this revolutionary, democratic idea, then you've only got about a week or two to sign up and take part in the launch of this unique and exciting project. A really interesting aspect of this is how it runs totally against the prevailing trend of big money buy outs. At a time when football at the highest levels is under-going a cultural and financial revolution that is taking it further away from the people whom it is played for, here is an idea that turns that notion totally on its head. Not only will the club play for the people it will be owned and run by them. I'm no communist loony but the idea of 50,000 people making decisions about a club is irresistible. It would be the ultimate test of whether all the crap we spout routinely from the terraces or in front of the TV is of any merit at all. Do we know what we are talking about or are we blow-hard gobsh*tes who have never had to have our pontificating and grand ideas tested out on the pitch? It will need the membership to act responsibly and a board will be in place to prevent the membership bankrupting the club. In other words it will be better run than Leeds United. But with an initial base of 50,000 and with that expanding after the purchase of the club, the mad fringe of members who want to sign one-legged strikers and put LSD in the water will be diluted by the majority of less whacked-out people. My instincts are that while some fans are stupid, fickle and gutless, most are not and many have seen a lot of football. I calculate that I've spent one and half years of the last 35 just watching football. Put together 50,000 people and you will get a lot of football wisdom that will, in all probability, largely agree on most things. Normally I'd say you can't run anything by committee as anyone who has ever sat on any committee will tell you, you need a leader to get things done, not endless debates. But this will be a bit different. The majority opinion will rule, plain and simple. One member, one vote. Absolute democracy for better or worse. Can you imagine if it works and the club is successful? It could revolutionize how sporting clubs are run at all levels. Imagine if, as we've always suspected, the people really do know more about football than the current crop of owners, chairman and managers. It's a lovely thought. Apparantly there has been interest from Conference and lower league sides in being bought out. Leeds United is the current if unrealistic favourite to buy but perhaps a more reasonable choice would be Accrington or Morecambe. Considering we all only have £35 to lose, this is an experiment well worth supporting. In an era when some of the people who are in control of football we suspect to be corrupt, morally bankrupt, actually evil or simply ego-maniacs, this is an audacious attempt to do things differently. Football really is the people's game, so maybe now is the time for the people to take charge. Now, who's in favour of naked women selling foot long hot dogs at the ground? So that's unanimous then!

Guess who wrote this: Pornography is not what it used to be. In my youth, porn was mostly photos or films of people in a state of undress, doing 'it' or just sitting there in splendid nakedness. You could purchase under-the-counter specialist magazines for those with rarer tastes but your mainstream porn was by today's standards, fairly innocent stuff. All the men seemed to have beards and were very hairy, as indeed were the women. This was long before the days of waxing and shaving. Pubic hair was seen as exciting, thrilling even; a forbidden forest of delights. And it was quite normal to see women with substantially hairy armpits in Euro porn. We didn't feel cheated or disgusted sitting in the local Classic cinema watching Emmanuelle films aged 15 just because the participants hadn't had all their bodily hair removed. We were just glad to cop some nudity. It wasn't uncommon to see people laughing and smiling in 70s porn. The idea was that it was pleasurable. The only muscle on the men was the one which had inspired an Alice Cooper album; the Muscle of Love, and the idea of men looking like body builders with no hair whatsoever would have been considered ridiculous and comical. Part of the attraction of it, as a teenager, was that they looked like relatively real people, albeit in extraordinary circumstances. The chances of being trapped in a harem of nymphomaniacs somewhere east of Java were very unlikely for a Teesside lad, but it did seem possible that you too, at some point in your life, might also get to have some sort of sexual contact with another human. Well, it'd make a change from the sheep and the shampoo bottles. Today, porno is typically more like a gynaecological doctor's examination. Does anyone really want to see inside other humans? It's not nice in there. If you're getting off on it, how on earth do you pass by the butchers' window without having to bash one out? Hair of any kind has now been apparantly outlawed as obnoxious and the sex itself seems part of some kind of vicious, mechanical, aerobics exercise routine performed by people who look like steroid-enhanced freaks. And as for those ludicrous silicon-bloated breasts, does anyone really like them? As you may know, they feel a bit funny as well: like massaging a bag of hard-boiled eggs. Any tit that sticks up in the air when she lies down instead of flopping nicely to one side is not a proper tit in my plain brown wrapper-covered book. Today, porn is everywhere and has never been more freely available, you come across it (stop sniggering at the back) without even trying. So to attract a paying customer it has become more and more extreme, pandering to ever-more obscure and rare perversions or creating entirely new ones. Nothing is left to the imagination, everything is literally laid bare. Before you jump to conclusions, no I'm not saying the Premier League is like modern porn - not on the pitch at least. Obviously, in your local five-star hotel after an away win, it may well be different. However, the football powers-that-be could learn something from the cultural shift in pornography from an occasional and entertaining Friday night dalliance to an omnipresent industry of flesh and fluids. This season we will have more live football on TV than ever before, if you buy the Setanta and Sky deals, which I suspect we all will. Most weekends there will not be less than four live games and sometimes more. Sky are showing 92 live games - a record number. Here's my question; how much live football on television can we actually take until we become totally jaded and it loses its appeal? Maybe we've reached that point already. The porno industry has shown what happens when something becomes so readily available. People grow tired of seeing the same old thing. That which used to be special no longer excites. Bill Hicks, a major consumer of pornography in his time, once talked about spending all day masturbating to porno films until 'only air came out'. You can do something too much. Even watching football. But unlike the porn industry, football can't introduce a horse and insert it into someone's bum in order to show something new or more extreme to attract the numb (and blistered) viewer. Well I suppose it could but the sight of some of our top Premiership stars undergoing equine anal violation would, I'm guessing, not be a ratings winner - or have I misjudged the public mood? As eager beavers as we are now for the new season to start, it is an eagerness brought on by deprivation from football. How long will it be before we are slumped in front of the fourth live game of the day wondering if Birmingham v Wigan will get our football rocks off; unable to look away but too satiated, and so over-exposed to the game to get really excited about it. Clearly, the TV people think we will happily consume a vast amount of football and that's why it's such a valuable asset to them and why they pay so much money for it. But can it really go on like this forever? Our summer lust for football is a product of not having seen any domestic football for the best part of three months. It won't last all year will it? Of course, you can choose to just walk away from TV football, turn off your television and go and do something more interesting instead. But all the TV and radio channels think we won't. They think we can keep on taking it even though by doing so, they may devalue the very product that they paid so much money for in the first place. But will I be sitting in front of the TV lapping up Sunderland v Spurs, the first Premiership live game of the season? Yes of course I will. The lust, like The Dude, abides.

mother mcree's uptown jug band!

still very pissed about this. not at all sure what to do

try taking that yashin hockey card out of your spokes

:thumbup:

from the SCTV episode guide (i love this skit): 19 Garth and Gord and Fiona and Alice 143 Garth and Gord (surgeon and lawyer) drive to Toronto from the Maritimes in search of lawyering and doctoring jobs. They pick up Fiona, a nuclear physicist, in Quebec, and run over a woodchuck being filmed for Hinterland Who's Who. They arrive in Toronto full of hope, but Garth's pal says things are slow and there are no jobs after all. They go to Yonge Street, where they meet Alice. Fiona finds a job setting up pins in a bowling alley. Gord gets Alice pregnant. They go to Yonge Street to think. Alice leaves Gord. They decide head out to Alberta. Music by Stompin' Tom Conners ('To It and At It'), Gordon Lightfoot ('Alberta Bound') and Paul Flaherty does a hard-rockin' cover version of 'To It and At It' (apparently as a parody of David Clayton Thomas). Garth - Candy; Gord - Flaherty; Fiona Cournoyer - Martin; Alice - Jayne Eastwood; Hinterland director - Levy; irate hospital patient, staff - extra; CBC crew - extras; citizens of Toronto - themselves, eh?

intriguing

meet the losers in the best bars meet the winners in the dives

that was indeed AWESOME

you're blowing my mind dude

seems like a matter of perspective

#252. Songs by Bands Whose Band Names Were Inspired by the Titles of Other Songs* *Obviously, you can't use the same band on this list twice. That would just be stupid. 1. The Pretenders - Brass In Pocket ("The Great Pretender") 2. moe. - Shoot First ("Five Guys Named Moe" by Louis Jordan And His Timpany 5) 3. Eric's Trip - Universal Dawn ("Eric's Trip" by Sonic Youth) 4. Radiohead - Fake Plastic Trees ("Radio Head" by Talking Heads) 5. Judas Priest - ("The Ballad Of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" by Bob Dylan) 6. Deep Purple - Bird Has Flown ("Deep Purple" by Bing Crosby) 7. The Wallflowers "Empire of my Mind" - (Wallflower - Dylan) 8. The Rolling Stones - Loving Cup - ("Like A Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan) 9. Dixie Chicks - Traveling Soldier ("Dixie Chicken" by Little Feat) 10. Jimmy Swift Band - Dreams (PF Station, "A Night In The Life of Fly Jimmy Swift") 11. 12

only if you're in a position to get your op-ed writers fired

in other news, william reads the Sun

exactly william she's no friend of the Illuminati!

quintessential Sun writer self righteous, judgemental, with a hint of condescension

oh shit, i'm going to have to cancel, something came up

count me in for some poker action

rampant

BAM!