I've emailed the ticket office for clarification, but I'm not expecting a response.

Ditto. Does this mean there has been a batch sent out that should have included STs and didn't or have they remembered half way through that they said we should keep hold of our existing cards ?

I didn't realise until I saw the stage show on Saturday, but the fantastic "The Internet Is For Porn" song used in that clip is actually taken from the truely muppet-tastic stage show "Avenue Q" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenue_Q Next time you're in London I massively recommended it (despite the muppets, it's not for kids ... oh no sireee. teenagers yes, kids no).

Probably, but given we are forever promoting just how good the Jackman book is and the fact it's out of print and if it wasn't we could happily shift dozens of them, I'm hoping the publisher won't mind a short excerpt detailing just how bloody good a book it is. IF ANYBODY HAS A COPY THEY ARE WILLING TO PART WITH, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I CAN'T GET HOLD OF ONE FOR LOVE NOR MONEY.

Cheques are another bugbear. They invlove massive amounts of manual processing (compared to a debit card), so why should I, as somebody who hasn't used a personal cheque in years, be forced to subsidse those people who are unwilling to use a debit and/or ATM card ? I've yet for find a First Direct customer who ISN'T a big fan. It seems odd the First Direct have such a good rep and HSBC have such a bad one :S

My argument with bank charges vs bank profits is that if traditional high street banks make so much money then surely there must be enough profit margin for someone to operate an online only* bank that can offer me a better rate of intrest becuase they don't have to pay for high street permises, counter services etc. It would seem not. * HSBC, Smile, Egg etc don't count because they are all simply fronts for bricks and mortar establishments and don't seem to offer me anything the high streets don't.

OK, Long rant coming that is going to upset a lot of people. WHY THE HELL SHOULD PEOPLE WHO CAN READ, UNDERSTAND AND FOLLOW THE RULES THE AGREE TO END UP SUBSIDISING THOSE WHO CAN'T ? I don't sign a contract and I don't understand and when I break the terms of that contract I expect to get the penalties it lays out. If I think they are unacceptable or "unfair" I won't sign, simple as. So why the hell should people who either haven't understood what they have signed, or simply don't care, get refunded fees because they are unhappy with them ? And when they do, who makes up the shortfall in the bank's bottom line ? Is it shareholders (which for includes the staff at most banks) or is it the poor saps who actually choose to manage their account in the way they have agreed ? That's not to say I don't incur charges, I do and when I do I pay them. Also I'm not saying bank shouldn't quickly jump to it and refund any charges (and further charges resulting from those charges) when THEY are the source of the problem, which happens worryingly often it seems. Is everyone happy to pay more on the highstreet to subsidise shoplifters ? Is that still the shops fault or the shoplifters ? I also don't see why I have to subsidise those people who use counter services, but that's another rant for another day.

A big Thank You to Scotty for the following Both pre and post match discussion for the game can be found here. SAS' pictures from the game can be found here

I think next time we need a 14yr old to try this text commentary thing, my ancient digits can't text quick enough.

I've got The Beatles - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Kraftwerk - Trans-Europe Express NWA - Straight Outta Compton The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds The Clash - London Calling Prince and the Revolution - Purple Rain Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath The Ramones - The Ramones The Who - My Generation Massive Attack - Blue Lines Radiohead - The Bends Michael Jackson - Thriller Run DMC - Run DMC* The Smiths - The Smiths Primal Scream - Screamadelica Nirvana - Nevermind De La Soul - 3 Feet High and Rising Although, I think only Stone Rose, Nevermind and Raising Hell* would make it onto my desert island disks list. (* Run DMC - Run DMC ? WTF ! I'm sure they must mean Raising Hell, that was Run DMCs BIG breakthough album).

Late this afternoon a vulnerability in the forum software was exploited by a hacker in Russia. The hacker then used the forum's mass mail function to send a link to a trojan file to our users and also modified the forum itself to attempt to download the same file to visitors. Within minutes, with the help of the owner of the server we are on, we'd stopped the mails being sent, denied the hacker further access and taken the forum offline. The file it's was trying to get you to run is know as Downloader.Harnig and has been around since 2004 so any half decent anti-virus program will have caught and removed it. We've now re-secured the forum , but we are going to be performing further upgrades over the next few days that may mean the forum will be taken offline at short notice. We'd like to take this opertunity to aplogize for any inconvience this has caused and rest assured we are doing everything possible to stop things like the happening in the future. PS. For those of you who did follow the link and don't have anti-virus software, we will no doubt be offering further info on removal via the forums.

Something like this through BRISA did go through my head, but there simply wasn't time to sort it. Talking of banners, does anyone in the family stand (as that's one of the few good places to hang banners from) want custody of the BRFCS.COM flag for the day ? We'll need it straight back after the game because I imagine it's going to the world cup (and then the UEFA cup).

(Super) Famicom ((S)NES) Genesis (MegaDrive) But yesterdays announcement did imply that Nintendo where calling it wii worldwide.

We're working on a new version of the site and this which has a major impact on this (we'll explain more later), but it hasn't been forgotten and developments are afoot.

However, it would seem I've fallen into the trap of believing what others tell me rather than checking out the facts myself. I was told that Bolton's scheme was just £5 and they'd stiffed non-members (i.e. away fans) for an extra £15 last time we went. However a few minutes reserach has shown that memberships are in fact £30. I'lll reserach the other clubs later.

Bolton have done it for a few seasons now and I've been told that both Man Utd and City do it.

With regard to unbalanced charging due to membership schemes, I'm waiting for the next club to do this to us a I intend to obtain a membership for the club in question and then attempt to purchase a subsidized ticket in the away end with it. I'm expecting the clubs to make it as hard as possible, but hopefully documenting and publicizing the anticipated objections will bring this underhand tactic more to peoples attention. The balanced pricing rules was brought in for a reason (Bates didn't want ANY visiting fans at the bridge so threatend to price them out), I think it would be very wrong for Rovers to abuse the same loophole (and I'll have no qualms encouraging visiting fans to become members at Ewood).

I could probably manage a PS2 tourney (although I'd get my ass kicked, I suck at PES).

Mine plays World Of Warcraft (the most CPU/GPU/Ram intensive game I play) at a comparable speed to my desktop, even with a crappy on board video card. Screen refresh speeds are no longer a problem. The only problem I had was the finger-pointey-mouse-pad-thing was rubbish, but when I connect a real mouse it now seems every bit as good as my desktop.

Isn't the biggest type of benefit fraud undeclared earnings (aka cash-in-hand payments) ? Surely the number of people using someone elses NI number is far less than those using none what so ever ? Unless of course you started making cash an unviable alternative to electronic payments and started linking the National Database into Bank and retail systems. Banks and retail of course could already be tied into the system because they'll need access to the info for "fraud prevention" reasons. Thus making it possible to track every monetry transaction in the country. OK, so that's a little far fetched ..... but only a little. I'll get my coat tin foil hat.

Nah, I'm sure they've been here for every game where we've given the Darwen end away for.

Oddly enough. I don't actually mind this. The important thing is I have the choice NOT to have a loyalty card and the choice to shop elsewhere. It looks like I won't have a choice about wether I have to have an ID card and I won't have a choice of how it is secured (short of amputating my finger and gounging out my eyes).

That was only a tiny part. The IT press has been screaming about Swanick since the mid nineties. 6 Years Overdue ! 1 year to fix 1400 known bugs ! Cost was £600m, more than double the initial buget ! ... and that's a tiny project compared to a national records database. And I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned this weeks hot topic of the CRB failing to difereniate between someone cautioned for looking "non-UK-legal-porn" (i.e. against the OPA, but "acceptable" in the vast majority of countries) and a convicted kiddie-fiddler, along with the fact that the "human" secondary check made on this info is left to a politician rather than an expert. Now, if the LSE has updated it's esimate from £300 to £500, you can bet the "charge" for a card will be around the £35 mark. So is the short fall going to come from a tax increase or by selling access to the database to 3rd parties. Oddly enough, I'm not in favour of either.

I know I keep harping on about this, but to me the point of the exercise isn't to acuse the club of not doing enough and offer dozens of ideas to do better. The point is to make public answers to questions several of us has been told privately (something the club shouldn't need out intervention to do). Sure, if the club finds a single idea that could improve things, then that's a major added bonus, but to me the real value of this is that for the first time we can publically explain WHY some of the ideas in that document haven't been possible and even some that have, but nobody knows about.