Bananas

Any chance you could find it ?

I just realised it must be Marinakis fault. Olympiakos are in disarray and he needs more time for the squad to gel. Ah, the world makes sense again. ;)

Holebas is definitely a much more complete player. In simple terms, Holebas is a man, and Stafylidis is still a boy. Stafylidis is still young at 22, and he's playing at a decent level as well. Importantly, he plays regularly ie. he's not a bench warmer. Hopefully he develops over the next few seasons.

Because it's technically difficult. With the price of natural resources fluctuating fairly wildly as well, it's not a game for the fainthearted. It's also a long term investment. Building some of these facilities can easily take more than 10 years. Greece just doesn't have the technical expertise to do any of this. Our best bet would be to have a foreign company come in and do it. The fact that they haven't tells me that their are better opportunities ie. cheaper to extract, elsewhere.

You know, I still don't know what it is that everybody wants. EPO just wants everything to stay the same. PAOK wants different referees. Good luck with that one. Incidentally how much do referees get paid in Greece ? Kontonis wants what exactly ? No more violence ? Maybe try cameras and laws that are actually enforced.

Once upon a time, 5000 or so years ago, there was a man who was mentally ill. He believed that his particular invisible best friend informed him that he should remove the skin on the end of his ding dong. Now that is not so surprising. Genetics and biology being what they are, throw up all sorts of variations in nature. And mental illness is part of that unfortunately. What is surprising is that people chose to believe this man, and also chose to cut off the skin on their penis. Now I don't have a problem with what grown men choose to do. If you want a circumcision, or to cut off a toe, or the end of your ear, go for it. More power to you. But when you do it to a baby who has no choice in the matter, I can't agree with that idea. It's frankly a primitive concept. You can choose to believe it's good, but I can also choose to believe it's primitive. Trying to justify this on religious grounds is equally primitive. I don't really care what your invisible friend told the mentally ill man 5000 years ago, that he then chose to put on a scroll or a clay tablet, and to then preach. You can choose to believe, and I can choose to respectfully not. I don't believe health is the main reason why people choose to circumcise their male children. They may say that, but I believe it's either because of a strong religious belief, or more likely just the perpetuation of a tradition, or even more likely just because well heck, I'm circumcised so I want my son to be circumcised. The fact that there is some evidence (and I'm not entirely convinced of this) to indicate that circumcised men have less health issues than uncircumcised men is just something that makes them feel better about their choice. There is also quite a bit of evidence that these days there is no real benefit to being circumcised. Sure, if you live a life where you only bathe once a year or so, and don't have access to soap, maybe then being circumcised is better, but then again, if you live in such an environment maybe that is the least of your problems.

I've never found one. The video game "Football Manager" has player wages, but I've never really looked into how accurate the figures are.

Sounds like the percentage of voters who vote for the major parties is similar. If anything, it may be a little higher in the U.S. based on what you've said. I think another key difference is that in Australia voting is compulsory. If this is a good or a bad thing is an interesting question. The "donkey vote" percentage in Australia was 5% at the last election a few months ago and 6% at the one before that. Note that a donkey vote means a vote which has been deliberately not filled in correctly. Maybe it was left blank, or graffitied, but regardless it's not counted.

Do independents play much of a role in the U.S. ? In Australia, voting for the two non-major parties has decreased at every election from 1983 onwards. In 1983 approximately 92.5% of people voted for the major parties. And since then it has gradually but consistently decreased. At our most recent election a few months ago the two major parties accounted for 77% of the vote and "other" parties 23% of the vote. This trend is only going to continue as the younger generation fail to identify with the traditional parties and identify more with say the Green Party. My point being, yes, your vote does count. Even if one single vote statistically makes no difference. What people fail to grasp is it's not about changing the result today, with your single vote. It's about momentum, and that takes years if not decades to develop.

He is definitely an intriguing person. What motivates him and what does he really want ?

It will be interesting to see how Canas plays. We haven't had a proper "shield" in front of the defense since Garcia. Cimirot does the job quite well, but I'm not sure he can do it adequately against good opposition. Tziolis, Charisis, Kace they aren't the sort of players to play this role, and I believe, it's 50% of the reason why we've conceded so many cheap goals in recent years. The other 50% is not having a solid CB so I'm hoping that Canas and Varela can finally stabilise the defensive part of our game.

Boston you cynic you. The papers have to write something for the suckers!

You know, I finally worked out who Girtzikis reminds me of. He reminds me of Davros from Dr. Who. If things don't work for him at EPO, maybe he can do the circuit as a Davros look alike.

Can anyone explain what exactly Kontonis, Savvidis, Melissanidis and Alafouzos want ? Do they expect EPO to find a whole bunch of new referees in such a short amount of time ?

As long as we don't put a dumb sell-clause of 1.5 million like we did with Pelkas.

Could it be this guy ?

Sigh. And the circus starts again.

How did Varela look ? I realise it was a fairly easy game, so it's hard to tell for sure, but how did his fitness look ? And his composure ? I'm really hoping we've finally signed a solid CB.

Ha ha! I must have subconsciously erased the memory. Of interest, his current club is FC Augsburg, where Stafylidis plays.

Well I remember reading that one of the reforms that had to be legislated a few months back was that ELSTAT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenic_Statistical_Authority) was to be politically neutral. What a joke. If Greece needs the EU to force such basic changes, maybe we do need to stay in the EU.

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Would be great if this happens. The question is though, who is out there that is a clear upgrade on Klaus that we can realistically get ?

Are you an imposter ? The real skinny never posts more than one sentence.

1789, I'm getting a bit off topic, but it's really tricky to try and work out if "socializing" medicine is in the common interest or not. I agree with you 100% that the vast majority of medical breakthroughs have been from the U.S., and the profit motive is key to this. But I think you need a balance. There is definitely a point at which spending X amount of dollars benefits the country. For example say immunisation. Even if it costs now, the country benefits more in the long run. The tricky question though is how far do you take it ? I remember reading a story years ago about someone in the U.S. that had severed their thumb while working in their garage, and when he went to the hospital, he didn't have insurance or something, and out of frustration he went to walk out of the hospital and on the way out threw the thumb in the bin! The doctors feeling guilty ended up doing the procedure. Or so I remember the story. It was a long time ago that I read it. In "socialized" countries, that would never happen! And that's a good thing. This person, say he was a manual worker, if he can't work he's now a drain on the country. But if he's working, he's earning, contributing to the economy, paying taxes etc. Again, the question of "is it worth it" is not simple to answer. In Australia every worker pays 1.5% "Medicare". I don't see any harm in having some sort of basic health care system. I actually think it's beneficial in economic "capitalist" terms.