Hargreaves out, Rooney in

For tomorrow nights champions league opener in Lisbon. I don't think anybody really expected Neville to be fit, but i was expecting Hargreaves to play as this was what we really bought him for. I hope this injury is not going to drag on and on until finally he has to have an operation.
http://www.manutd.com/default.sps?pagegid={B4CEE8FA-9A47-47BC-B069-3F7A2F35DB70}&newsid=471935

Crooks bearing roubles threatens The Arsenal
This is starting to look a bit ominous for Arsenal, and English football for that matter.
http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,2171745,00.html

One of the comments on the comment is free section of the guardian was having a go at the BBC for helping to produce the crisis around northern rock last week and then helping it to spread to the sell off of shares of other firms including the Alliance and Leicester. As far as i am concerned if anything they have erred on the side of caution, always pointing out establishment view that there is no need to panic, when the truth is no one really knows how bad things really are or how bad they might get. I think this piece in the Indie is a lot more on the money than having a pop at the beeb.
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/comment/article2973601.ece
Though i wouldn't mind a bit more regulation myself, he obviously thinks the big bang in the 80's was a good thing.

David Lloyd George


There was piece by Roy Hattersley about politicians writing their memoirs in the hope of salvaging their reputations yesterday.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2170745,00.html
I agreed with the general thrust, that they don't and that sometimes they can make it worse. But in it he mentioned his admiration for the great David Lloyd George. Having read his great war memoirs, i have to agree.I read every thing i can about the man who was as Hattersley says of him, one of the great radicals of British history. But for me what makes him stick out is, he was a radical who got things done. Churchill is regarded as the greatest politician/prime minister by most, but it would have to be Lloyd George for me. Where as Churchill inspired and represented us, as we wanted to see ourselves, heroically fighting to the last man, Lloyd George was the man who led, innovated and made things happen. Churchill would have been just another failed politician but for the second world war,he had one brief successful period in the great liberal government of Asquith. Where as Lloyd George, as chancellor brought in old age pensions, the first health insurance bill and of course put before parliament the great peoples budget that eventually led to the lords losing any veto over financial bills, helping to curb the power of the aristocracy. Then during the terrible first world war, first as chancellor he helped to stave off a financial crisis. Then as minister of munitions he helped us modernise our artillery, and helped us to start producing the munitions to fight a modern industrial war, putting us into an almost total war economy. His final great innovative act of that war was to force the navy to start the convoy system. Which went a big way to staving off the U - Boat threat, that was threatening to lose us the war.
All these innovations would be picked up again in the second world war, but they were all instigated originally by Lloyd George. After the war he partially solved the Irish problem ( not for the Irish themselves unfortunately, for whom it led to civil war ), surrounded by unionist Tories he did as much as he could. He helped start the construction of reasonable housing for ordinary people. As usual when the depression came he was prepared to think out of the loop and embraced what would become Keynes ideas, and who knows if we had had proportional representation, even though he didn't really have a party by then, the liberals having imploded, maybe he would have found his way back into a progressive government to help implement them. Instead we got MacDonald panicking, running back into the establishments arm and a national coalition that was just a front for the orthodox establishment. And hence a lot of poverty and misery for millions of people with no end in sight.
We have not had a politician who the Tories and the establishment were as scared of since. And where was he born?
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRgeorge.htm

Putin

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2171416,00.html