Chindie

House of Cards needs a bounce back after a weak third series. Early word suggests it does, thankfully, although a greater focus on Claire Underwood concerns me. She's a deeply unlikable character, unlike Frank who you end up rooting for despite how evil he is, she is just this hateful presence through the whole show.

He was the technical director of the French national team for a bit. That isn't being a CEO. He might work as a true DoF, if we want to go down that route. Unfortunately I imagine he's pretty well paid doing a similar, higher level less hands on thing for the entirety of Red Bull Football.

Ha. I'm glad we had the same reaction though. Looks dreadful and desperate. The callbacks only serve to remind you how good the original was. I'm convinced there's only 1 funny person in it, Wiig, and she's not a home run. Even the logo, which they've barely changed, is somehow shit.

Remember Ghostbusters? Best watch it again before this travesty makes you forget how good it was.

What does Gerard Houllier know about running a business? Let alone running a business with international reach, in the sports sector, whilst also being in a distressed state? CEOs don't need to be the mythic 'football person'. Exceptionally few of them are. They need to be good businessmen.

That's a very very good choice. I'm hoping the casting can maintain that kind of quality because if there's even one bum choice this show will wobble and potentially collapse IMO. It's a fantastic, fantastic story, but heavily weighted on how great the characters are. Even the minor ones. Ian McShane though... That's a great bit of casting for that character.

They form a triumvirate

Pearson also spent a considerable amount of the season being a complete tosser with the conduct of an angry drunk.

He was a Democrat for years as a younger man, switched to the Republicans for a while, went back Democrats, and now he's Republican again. He has no political convictions beyond what's good for him at that moment. There's no chance he'd have cross senate support for anything other than the policies you could have a donkey as president and there'd be agreement on. I doubt he'd be a lesson to the nation either. Political affiliation is so ingrained in some states he could set the White House on fire in tribute to our efforts at crushing the Yanks and voting patterns wouldn't change. It's terrifying that the only candidate in the race that isn't horrifying as an outsider looking in is Sanders, and he's got absolutely no chance.

Perhaps. As said I think ultimately this comes down to money. I don't think the owner will be bothered at all by fans choosing to leave early. A few thousand walking out, having paid their money, and a few chants and banners, will be worth far less to him than the money he's holding out for over the mythical lower price we'd like him to take. I'm not Randy Lerner obviously, but put me in his shoes and for arguments sake give me 10k people walking out early and a few embarrassing banners every match, or losing £XXm on my property, and I'm taking the name calling and walk outs until the end of time. However, force my property to keep costing me more and more money versus the return I get on it and I'll want shot of it less it become the millstone round my neck even more. I think you can do that without a full boycott if enough people choose to boycott enough revenue streams for the club. It's a difficult sell to the fans though and probably won't happen, but it's the only way the fans can be anything other than an impotent actor in real terms for me. And again I don't want to criticise the current efforts. It's something and it makes the disquiet real for the wider game. I just don't think it's going to do much in real terms, unfortunately. But it's something.

He was a Democrat, until he wasn't. Donald Trump will do what's good for Donald Trump, which basically means everything that comes out of his mouth is completely intellectually bankrupt because all he's doing is saying what the immediate audience want to hear. He'd be an absolutely atrocious President.

It's too easy to bend and spin in other directions that are unsavoury, and it's always immediately linked to more violent and unpleasant types of protest. No good comes of that, IMO. You can use the same symbolism though with more nuance. The lion being lead to the gallows by Lerner, etc.

Israel enter it, so I don't see why not.

The only protest that will make any difference is a full boycott. No match attendance, no ticket sales, no shirt sales, no merchandise shifting in any way. This will attack the pocket of the owner to an even greater degree than the club already does and potentially makes the club even more poisonous as a brand for wider commercial revenue avenues in the long run. This does have a few downsides though. Firstly, if the club is haemorrhagging cash more than it already does, the cutbacks are going to become truly awful before anything gets better, which could be catastrophic. Secondly, if/when Lerner's hand is forced, you exponentially increase the risk of us being sold to anyone with the cash that makes it worthwhile Lerner selling, meaning the club could end up being sold to the next Venkys or that chancer in Blackpool. Moreover, you have the issue of the clubs brand being potentially rancid at that point, making a turn around more difficult in terms of making money, and again you question the kind of person prepared to purchase a severely distressed enterprise in a market that rarely really makes much money in real terms for owners. The current protest, admirable as it is, is just a gesture that shows anger from the fan base. It might put some pressure on Lerner, that outweighs the pressure of his bank account, maybe, to either change his tack or sell more readily. I'd say the odds are against that, especially as his most recent moves have been designed to further remove himself from the club and also to instill a cost saving regime. It's most successful in being a vent for displeasure and a flag to the wider game the fans aren't happy, IMO, and I won't criticise it for that. The bank account wins this fight IMO. Either we wait until someone pays the money Lerner wants, whatever that is, and hope they're good eggs with deep pockets, or the long game, potentially suicidal, to force a sale by reducing revenue further and forcing the market value to drop and encouraging a sale. A full boycott is impossible of course though.

Edge of Tomorrow is great. In large part because Emily Blunt is fantastic in it. And also because She may be perfect.

Absolutely nailed on.

It'll go that way eventually, everything will, but I think we're a couple of generations from that yet. The infrastructure isn't there, and people aren't ready to go full digital purchase on everything. The next gen of consoles will nudge it further, and so on, and eventually you'll have the full about face in mindset from the consumer that makes it inevitable. The next Nintendo console is a decent bet for a full digital console experiment.

In fairness that's probably about my annual spend on Amazon in comics films and music, seems a bargain.

Of course Paddy Reilly was 'heavily involved' in recruitment. It's his job. Apparently he's pretty well respected in the field too.

I'm deeply unsure how Microsoft plan to take the millions of Xbox Ones they've already produced, and upgrade the hardware on them. I'd go so far as to say they can't. They'd need to produce a new edition of the console that was closer to a PC that let consumers easily upgrade their console. Which immediately and fundamentally splits the user base over night. And causes issues with developers, because no matter how much they witter on about making games more scalable for console audiences, you're immediately asking the developer to do more work and make a call about exactly where their sweet spot is for performance - do you just settle for the big user base who doesn't give a shit about upgrades, and therefore make the benefits of upgrading fit the game rather fringe, or do you openly admit that the standard user base gets a weaker product? They can only really do this with a new console, unless they're keen to shoot themselves in the foot. Again.

That spoiler is also revealed by some other toy lines so best avoid anything Civil War if don't want one of the movie's big moments spoiled.

I've had a number of people say over the years they think I might suffer from some sort of depression, and I'm convinced myself I suffer with something approaching anxiety, but I've never gone to a GP about it and never will. There's something that just makes me not want to broach that subject and whenever it becomes a problem just deal with it myself and get on with things. Saying that, recently I've had a few times where I can feel things just start to get on top of me and getting the feeling that my grip is tumbing away and that's been the hardest I can remember things beingwhere I've had to fight to keep a lid on it all. But still I'll just assure myself there's nothing wrong and I'm over thinking things and crack on.

Right. He's appointed 2. 1 I wouldn't have touched with a bargepole but arguably just about succeeded last season and was given the opportunity to carry on this year where the wheels fell off. I'll let Fox have that. And then we all know the story with Garde. I think he could potentially be successful for us but so far he's had the deck stacked heavily against him. The transfer policy... Shrug. Our best players this year have been the result of that policy. Equally it didn't plug holes we clearly had and the team as a whole hasn't, for whatever reason, worked out (largely because we're incredibly brittle, and can't score). I dunno. I dunno what he does all day. His background is commercial deals. Apparently he's been doing a lot of that as we're a mess in that respect. But I dunno.

I genuinely couldn't tell you what he does all day. I'm surprised so many people know.

It's his club. He could bulldoze the Holte tomorrow and nobody could stop him. So no, there's no way to remove him. The only thing that can is if someone offers him enough money for it that he's happy to flog it. I'm somewhat concerned that when that eventually happens, it's going to the first bidder to offer what he wants, and with no thought to who they are or their intentions.