The last time Avram met Fergie, Moscow 2008:

GETS better and better and better every time you see it!!

I would’ve loved it, really loved it, if Terry had said after his miss:

“Go into exile I must ... failed I have.”

Speaking of which, I reckon dear old Avram looks a lot more like Quasimodo than he does Yoda:

    

I’ll leave you with some more pearls of wisdom that pointy-eared little Jedi Master once said:

“Around the survivors penalty area, a perimeter create.”

Avram, heed the Grand Master’s advice, and from today’s game emerge with a win you might!

• The Sun: Avram, Yoda - seperated at birth

The Taxpayers’ All-Lie-Ance unmasked

Surprise, bloody surprise! The Taxpayers’ Alliance have been at it again, peddling lies about the European Union - this time in a cinema ad.

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We’ve torn it to shreds over on Left Foot Forward, everything from their 13,333 per cent mark-up on the cost of membership and their blatant fabrications about the costs of the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies, to their implausible assertions on the cost of each MEP, which is the point I’d like to delve a little deeper into here.

Their figure of £1.8 million, which they get from some highly dubious Open Europe research, is about £1.5 million more than the actual annual cost, albeit having failed to include travel expenses and attendance allowances - which could never in a million years amount to £1,476,000; unless...

Each MEP was compensated for a combination of the following:

5,507 days’ attendance (in one year!) at official meetings of the Parliament bodies on which the Member serves that are held within the European Community at €298 (£268) a day;

3,354,545 km of car journeys claimed back on expenses at 49 cents (44p) a km;

11,015 days’ at meetings held outside the European Community at €149 (£134) a day;

3,332 return flights from London to Brussels at £443 a trip;

3,432 return Eurostar journeys from London to Brussels at £430 a trip.Plausible? Only if your name’s Kilroy, Hannan or Iain Duncan-Smith; Eurosceptics: the gifts that keep on giving!

• T’Other Taxpayers’ Alliance: Holding the fantasists to account
* Journeys are business class, fully flexible, 25th-29th January 2009
† Conversions carried out at the rate €1 = 90p

Would you trust this man?

I MEAN, I’ve heard of dreadlocks...

Juuuuust kidding! M. Henry’s still a class act, one moment of unsportsmanship will never erase all the good he’s done.

And in any case, who among us, who among us, could honestly say, honestly say, they wouldn’t have done the same?!

• France 1-1 Ireland (Feat. comedy German commentary!)

The Rhyme Minister

This. Is. PRICELESS!

Best line (1:22):

♫ These players fiddle their expenses, I’m a safe pair of hands, I’ll get your vote, I’ve got no moat, ’cos I’m a son of a Manse; Vince Cable, he’s not able, to chair the G20 table, you’ve got to trust your achiever to keep the markets stable ♪

Keep ’em coming, Culshaw, keep ’em coming! You are de man, mofo, you are de maannnnn!!!

• Hat tip: Guido

Goldman $tats

HAVING dug through the
Sunday Times interview with Sachs tsar Lloyd Blankfein - from which all the juiciest quotes can be found over on Left Foot Forward - here are
the figures that leap out; prepare to screeeaaam!!

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Worldwide:

Assets total $1 trillion.

$164.2 billion held in cash or cash equivalents.

Worth $95 billion by market capitalisation.

Profits of $3.2 billion in the last quarter alone.

$164.2 billion in cash or cash equivalents.

Average pay for 30,000 staff is a record $700,000.

Top earners earn tens of millions - several hundred thousand times more than a cleaner at the firm.

Good investment banking partner will make $3.5m a year.

Good trading partner: $7-10m.

Management committee member: $15-25m.

$20 billion paid out in salaries and bonuses.

Some 953 employees got bonuses of at least $1m in 2008.

Received $10 billion from the US Government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp).

Losses in the mortgage sector: $1.7 billion - lower than any other big investment bank.Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein:

Paid himself $68m in 2007 alone, an all-time record for any Wall Street CEO.

He owns more than $500 million of Goldman stock.

Owns $30m apartment on Central Park West.

Owns 6,500-square-foot home in the Hamptons - the summer playground of New York’s elite.In the City:

5,500 people work in Sachs’s Fleet Street office.

Profits per employee averaged £181,000 a year between 2000 and 2008.

Average pay this year is expected to be £458,000.What a bunch of bankers.

• Goldman $achs: Robbing from the poor to give to the rich

Never mind 50 cent, check out 50 paisa

Once more from the top my homies dadas:-

♫ Amra, amra, amra downtown do takhe eh, eh

Amra downtown re takhe eh, eh

Amra downtown takhe eh, eh

Amra downtown do takhe eh, eh

Amra downtown o’ takhe eh, eh ♪

Finally, a Sylheti who’s decided to do something different! We take our toupis off to you!!

• Lal Miah’s MySpace page

Tory members are revolting

BEHOLD this screenshot taken and cropped from Tim Montgomerie’s Facebook page.

Can you feel the love, well, can you?!

This is cheese-eating surrender monkey Europhile Shamik Das signing off...