Smalling admires Rio

Chris Smalling is enjoying playing with Rio and admits he couldn't wish for a better pair of central defenders than Rio and Vidic to learn the ropes from. Let's hope he is a good learner, i like the way he talks about learning positional sense from Ferdinand, that is what we want to see.
Alan Hansen uses his Telegraph column to tell Ferdinand if he wants to prolong his career, it's time to end his international career. I can't see that happening, i have always thought he was another Becks who puts England above United.

Ferguson puts Berbatov's outstanding form to down renewed self belief and confidence. He also let on that he thinks Scholes, Giggs and maybe Van Der Sar may still have one more season in them. 
Valencia has been a big loss Ferguson admits, he settled in really quickly as the club didn't expect him to show the quality he has for at least two seasons. At least with Nani in good form the loss has been negated to a certain extent. I don't deny Nani has done reasonably well but we have missed Valencia badly with a lack of real quality on the other flank especially after Giggs got injured.

The MEN seems to have been to sampling something that's probably illegal as they suggest United and City will go head to head for the signature of Fernando Torres. Where do you start taking apart such a crock of shit.

A Sunday Times interview with 60's United man John Fitzpatrick.

I wouldn't generally put anything from Sky on here but this was interesting. Custis pretty much sums the Glazer's up.

Rooney joins the chorus of figures in the football world calling for a winter break in the premier league.
Richie De Laet seems to be impressing in his loan stint at Bramhall lane.

It seems as if the IMF have joined the ranks of Keynsian liberal left social democrats as they warn the global downturn risks generating a lost generation that could threaten democracy itself.
Jeremy Warner thinks the IMF was complascent to think it had won the battle to stop the global economy sinking into 30's style slump. There is still a whole long way to go and even more critical problems to solve.
William Keegan talks of the lessons of history which the coalition seem to be as ignorant of as their new labour predecessors.

Chinese premier Wen Jiabo that Chinese progress will lead to democracy and freedom, though he did say there was disagreement about the topic within the party. It would be nice to think that it would, but is there any great demand for it at the moment within the country itself.
If we are entering a preiod of currency wars Reuters correspondent James Salt thinks the Chinese are running rings around the competition.

The tories are still in anguish over last weeks child benefit cuts, as two different Torygraph writers come to two very different conclusions with Janet Daley complaining of the middle class being under attack and Matthew D'ancona, correctly in my view,  calling them a just another group of vested interests who thought they would be "looked after".

Henry Porter describes the unholy alliance that is now grouping together to try to stop Murdoch's attempt to acquire complete control of BSkyB. 

Johann Hari reports on the dark side of Dubai as the hard times arrive after the losses incurred during the credit crunch. I had just read about Dubai and Abu Dhabi in John Kampfner's excellent book, How we made money and lost our freedom so not much of that came as a surprise. The worst aspect of the article for me was the expats behaving like the worst kind of colonolialist scum.


Restrepo opens in this country this week and looks well worth a watch. I watched the dispatches episode last week that followed Bravo's deadly mission, it was a pretty good summing up for the reasons for not being there. The best line was right at the end when one of the US private's said " they're not like Americans that's for sure" and described the mission as a mindfuck. The best reposte to the neocon mission i could think off.
As to whether this could be the best war documentary ever, i always think looking back at things from a distance leads to a better perspective on events. But i haven't seen it yet, so we shall see.

Tmothy Garton Ash asks us to try the real Facebook test: restoring your privacy.