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from slugger o toole

http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/rumour-mill-talk-about-resignation/

This one, as ever comes with a health warning... Rumour is not news... But Slugger hears from a Nationalist source that Ian Paisley Junior may tender his resignation as Junior Minister tomorrow... If it proved to be accurate, it could be indicative of a substantive shift in the internal balance of power inside the party. It would almost certainly be of some relief to his ministerial colleague Arlene Foster, who Mark Devenport has conjectured may use to tomorrow to pull permission (that she was previously minded to grant) to Seymour Sweeney for a privately funded Visitors Centre for the Giant's Causeway.

If both events turn up tomorrow, then it is suggestive of a party set piece: planned and orchestrated, perhaps with a few quiet deals lurking surreptitiously in the background. The downgrading of Ian Junior may buy Senior some time and space to take unhurried leave of the leadership of a party that is growing frustrated with his unwillingness or incapacity to play an increasingly subtle and nuanced game, now they are in a politically tricky partnership with Sinn Fein.

As he nears his eighty second birthday, his once almost faultless command of the semiotics of Unionism appears to be failing him. And having lent, as Tom Kelly hints in the Irish News today, (and Alex Kane outlined last Thursday) his imprimatur to the St Andrews Agreement, and his considerable powers as a totem for Ulster Loyalism greatly diminished by his Chuckle Brothers double act with Martin McGuinness, Ian Paisley Senior now has little of any value with which to barter with his party.

Whether tomorrow brings a resignation or not, it seems the power within the party has long since passed out of Paisley family hands.

I do not understand how anyne from a nationalist background can represent the IFA side but I respect those who do

No you don't Tony- thats a flat out lie, not only do you not respect them but you give them crap at any given opportunity- witness how you start the thread on Gerry Armstrong. If you're going to start a thread like this at least have the courage of your convictions, if you don't respect them; that's fine its your opinion and you're entitled to it, but don't make it out to be about respect for someone's opinion that's different to your because thats a load of crap and you know it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/magazine/27world-t.html

I really didn't know where to put this. Its a great piece written speculating on where the world will be at the end of the next US president's second term. It speaks of the rising power of the EU and China and the slow decline of the US...
I happen to think Khanna (the author) is not that far out, however I feel his timelines are off, and he's missed the classic black swan. i.e. what big event is going to accelerate this process. Love to hear your comments.

Obama vs McCain with a Bloomberg thrown in the ring to muddle it up? could yet be an interesting race
Surely Edwards must soon drop out of the democratic race, and I will be pleased to see the final nail going into Giuliani's coffin.
Obama still isn't close to being clear of Clinton yet though there's a few more weeks before we se how that goes..
I think McCain has the Republican nomination in the bag.

I went with an iPhone, loving it so far, only thing that annoys me is battery life, it needs charged every night, but maybe thats because I'm a heavy user, or maybe it's because I use the phone a lot...

if silicon valley is the barometer of trends then mac is winning for development, in 90% of startups macs are the weapon of choice for hard core dev work.

Stew,
I respectfully disagree, Eli is playing some fantastic stuff at the minute and their O-Line is fit and playing very well. Look at the game last Sunday for example Eli had a hell of a game, and there were 4-5 dropped passes plus another 3-4 that weren't viewed as dropped but really should have been caught. Manning doesnt panic- he's too laid back, and I feel since Shockey has left the huddle the team is looking to Eli as the leader and they have now responded to his civil, calm methodical approach, rather than Shockey's blood and thunder approach.
If the Pats start going after Manning from the get go, Jacobs will start plugging those holes very quickly. and dont forget Bradshaw hasn't been seen by the Pats D yet.

Now does all this add up to a Giants win- I don't think so, but the spread is coming down, 9 is offered most places today and thats down from 14 on Sunday. I'm actually looking forward to the Superbowl for the game rather than the ads for the first time in years. New York is buzzing there is a sense of possibility, the week 17 game was a belter, NE had a lot on the line and won, the Giants playing for nothing scared them. You would expect that Belichick learned more than Coughlan, however the most interesting guy may actually be Steve Spagnuolo the Giants Defence coach. He has really brought that team along well over the last 6-7 weeks and could have learned his lesson. Based on last weeks games, Manning played a better more measured game than Brady, and he has stepped up against all the big names in the last 4 weeks, I think that the Giants will fall down based on receivers. Plaxico even if he has a game like last week is not enough to match up against Moss, Stallworth and Welker. The weak spot in the Giants D is the middle of the D 8-9 yards behind the line, Welker's specialty area.
My brain says Patriots by 6, hoping for a Giants 3 pointer in OT...

ROI passports are Bi-lingual so why cant NI ones,

First up there is no such thing as an NI passport, or even a British passport. The passport is issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

What sort of 'NI Nationalist' would be holding a British passport anyway?

I'm not sure what an NI Nationalist is? If you mean someone from the North carrying a UK passport, then I'd have to say there are a lot in my experience. If you mean someone who believes there should be an independent northern Ireland then I think you'd have to ask them.

Interesting piece in the Guardian:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/01/23/prospectors_for_gold_leave_liv.html

A couple of years into the Premier League's brave new billionaire owners adventure and we have now seen the most surreal protest movement ever: Liverpool fans so rooted in tradition that their rallying call is Reclaim The Kop, chanting for their club to be taken over by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, dynastic ruler of Dubai.

Yet while the Anfield mood was summarised gruffly by some on the great former terrace this week as: "Get the Yanks out, get the Arabs in," Liverpool's current owners and their proposed bankers are adamant they are not departing the gold rush just yet.

Sources close to the refinancing which Tom Hicks and George Gillett have been negotiating with Royal Bank of Scotland and the US bank Wachovia insisted yesterday that the £350m loan remains on track and they expect to complete it by the end of this week. Similar deadlines have been cited and missed before but Hicks has persistently said, despite the fan protests and re-emergence of Dubai International Capital as a potential buyer, that he has no intention of selling the club. The figures, from Liverpool's present and future earnings, are said to have been inspected and, from the banks' point of view, show that Liverpool will be good for repayment of the hefty interest on that new loan.

Liverpool fans should perhaps have been a little more questioning 11 months ago when Hicks and Gillett gazumped DIC to buy the prize club, then talked seductively about upholding Liverpool's "cherished traditions" and "enhancing its reputation." There was remarkably little Scouse scepticism then about the men wearing scarves; the pair were presented as billionaires who would take Liverpool into their new stadium, girdled by all the banqueting required to finance competing with Manchester United, Arsenal and Roman Abramovich.

The fact that Hicks and Gillett had not spent one cent of their own money buying the club, but had borrowed fully £298m to do so, was there in the black and white of their official offer document, but few pointed it out as the men were embraced.

The document itemised how the loan was split: £174.1m to buy the club itself, at £5,000 per share - top dollar - which meant David Moores, for selling his 51.5% shareholding, was paid almost £90m. A further £11m was borrowed to pay banks and other advisers their fees. The loan also absorbed Liverpool's own debt, then £44.8m. The rest, £70m, was borrowed to keep the stadium project alive and "provide working capital".

That means money for the club to spend, so last summer, when Hicks and Gillett were again praised for "putting their hands in their pockets" to back Rafael Benítez with £26.5m to buy Fernando Torres and £11.5m for Ryan Babel, that was, in fact, also borrowed money. Interest was payable at 1.5% above banks' standard rate, which has been over 5%, and the £185m to buy the club and pay the fees is formally repayable by February 5, a week on Tuesday.

Hence the moves to replace the 12-month £298m with a new loan, of up to £350m, with interest and additional money for the stadium. Arguments began within Anfield about whether Hicks and Gillett were about to "do a Glazer" and load that debt, their own, on to the club itself. In their offer document, Hicks and Gillett said they had personally guaranteed the loan, and payment of the interest "will not depend to any significant extent on the business of Liverpool."

But then, in an interview with Lawrence Donegan for this newspaper last May, Hicks said for the first time that the pair would indeed use the profits made by the club itself - from the fans, essentially - to pay their interest.

"Hopefully the club will have extra cash flow so they can pay us a dividend to do that," Hicks said. "If they don't, then it will come from our pockets. But the club will have to have profits sufficient to pay those dividends."

As negotiations began with Royal Bank of Scotland and Wachovia, Gillett and Hicks are understood to have intended the full new £350m loan, to fall on the club. The chief executive, Rick Parry, and Moores, the former majority shareholder, argued vehemently that it should not.

Hicks and Gillett are understood to have agreed with that finally, and the proposed new deal will see the cost of buying the club and the fees, £185m, secured on the holding company. Called Kop Investment, with a nod to the tradition Hicks has so lauded, the company is registered in the US State of Delaware, and owns the great football club via another Kop company, registered in the tax haven of the Cayman Islands.

The banks sent accountants in to inspect Liverpool's projected future earnings from tickets at 45,362 capacity Anfield, from the Premier League's bulging TV deal which so attracted Hicks in the first place, Champions League revenue, sponsorship and merchandising - and the banks are understood to have been satisfied the club will make enough to service a £350m loan. So despite the furore inflamed by Hicks' glaring admission that he and Gillett talked to Jürgen Klinsmann about the not-vacant manager's job, and DIC's interest in taking the club over, the banks and Hicks are maintaining that the refinancing will happen.

Gillett and Hicks are believed to have committed to putting in around £40m cash between them - their first actual spending on buying Liverpool - and providing substantial personal guarantees to secure the lending. But the fact that the £185m will be secured on their Kop group does not mean the club itself will not pay the interest. It could still be required to pay a dividend out of its profits as Manchester United are to the Glazers' holding company to service £525m of debt taken on to buy the club.

Hicks is, as he has stressed, a businessman, and it has seemed inconceivable that he would willingly sell now to DIC without a huge profit, which the Sheikh's private equity investment corporation is not prepared to pay. If the refinancing does go through, Liverpool will walk on, to a further £400m it will cost to build the dream new home on Stanley Park. A large proportion of that, possibly £300m, will need to be borrowed, secured on naming rights, sponsorship, Emirates-style entertaining and keenly judged ticket price increases, added to the £350m already loaned. That all adds up to a lot of debt, to finance an ambitious future.

Everton, meanwhile, are planning their move to a new stadium in Kirkby part-financed by Tesco, a cut-price deal which was backed by a majority of fans, but about which nobody seems overjoyed. Liverpool City Council would like all this instability to open up renewed discussions about a shared stadium, for which the costs could be divided up, but in bloody-minded L4, that remains way out of the question.

Such are football's mad loyalties in the 21st century, with Liverpool fans calling on Dubai International Capital, about whose plans little is known, to buy their club, but who would not countenance sharing a ground with their grand old neighbours from across the park.

Reds in the red

£298m Borrowed by the US businessmen George Gillett and Tom Hicks to buy Liverpool last year

£89.6m Paid out of that sum to David Moores for his 51.5% shareholding

£350m Due to be borrowed to refinance that loan

7% Approximate interest payable on the original loan

£300m Projected further loan to build Liverpool's new stadium

Should a Taoiseach be tax compliant?

No, anyone dumb enough to pay all their taxes is too stupid to run a country. And he's not a Taoiseach he's an Taoiseach. Fair play Bertie, keep 'er lit.

some ive seen recently are quite good, bucket list, mr brooks (v good) and run fat boy run which i really did not expect to like but ended up pissing myself at...

I flew out of heathrow Friday night and as we taxied past the massive cranes at the crash site I was pleased to be in an Airbus. There were a lot of uncomfortable looking people I can tell you...

the Brady picture has the press going mad here- some speculation that its a grab the headlines ploy to make the Giants complacent. He did have an off day Sunday, but whether it was down to injury is anyones guess

gravel
paul
kucinich

Is now the time to buy, and hope for recession alleviation upside??!

The recession will alleviate?