Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

scrounger? .... hardly; i paid ..... no chips on shoulder or otherwise either

cynic
One for you.

I am sitting in a cafe with my tablet. I looked for WiFi points to connect with. The cafe has a very strong signal, so I used that. I did notice one that must have been set up by someone with a sense of humour. It was called

The Promised LAN

I don't have a problem with people who are good at what they do being paid big salaries, when you consider we have loads upon loads of very untalented footballers in this country being paid ridiculous amounts of money. Tiger Woods was paid £2.3million in appearance money to play in a golf tournament in Turkey recently and that was in addition to the healthy cheque he made for finishing second. Absolutely obscene in my view, especially considering the guy is a terrible role model for youngsters. I am well aware some of the money I give to charitable organisations in this country helps to pay salaries and people who think that all those who work for charitable orginisations should give their time for free live in cloud cuckoo land.

doodlebug4 I agree re footballers and golfers, in fact most sports these days have mega buck earners producing mediocre performances, and of course people working for charities have to be paid, (I've not seen a post here suggesting they shouldn't be paid). The point is the directors/CEO's of many charities are taking obscenely huge salaries at the expense of the very people those charities were set up to help.
2517

as far as i can see, very few golfers even within the world's top 50/100 make that much money in either the short or medium or long term ..... tiger woods is something of an exception due to his quite extraordinary talent .... his off course performance has however, cost him a very considerable fortune, though george best (inter alia) would have considered those misdemeanours piffling

as an almost relevant additional comment, professional golfers have an extraordinarily high degree of integrity and sportsmanship on the course, of which there are many examples ..... the same most assuredly cannot be said of professional soccer players!

cynic - I think both Tours need to address the problem of professional golfers spitting on the golf course - T Woods is the worst offender, followed by Keegan Bradley, Justin Johnston, Jim Furyk etc. There is absolutely no need for it. I think pro golfers within the top 100, either in America or Europe make a reasonable living. The bloke in 100th place on the European Tour earnings has made nearly E4,000,000, not bad for a journeyman pro. Plus his sponsorship deals, whatever they amount to.

It's not just the salaries!

Don't let's forget the 6* Expenses that goes with the 6* Salaried Remuneration Level.

By that I mean, e.g. "Trouble in the Philipines?" sorta kinda.....

.....and off go the top charity exec's in a chauffered limo to the airport to enjoy 5* seats/travel/food/drink all the way there, so that when they arrive, they are 'fresh and at their best', can have a peep at the troubles and tell someone else 'where' and 'what' to do and exactly 'how' to get their hands dirty.

A group of councillors who were kicked out of Ukip have vowed to continue - under the banner of 'Ukig'.

The men have named their group the 'UK Independence Group' - leading to Nigel Farage's party taking legal action.

The five members of Lincolnshire County Council were suspended from the party for following expelled group leader Chris Pain into a breakaway group in September.

A spokesman for Farage told Spalding Today: “We have taken legal advice and Ukip members cannot call themselves Ukig. A breakaway group would be a new party. It’s ridiculous and confusing to the electorate.”

Pain told HuffPost UK the name did not represent a political party, adding: "Nobody's ever contacted me about it... we just changed it last week.

"We could be the Mickey Mouse fan club... it's not a political party."

In September, police dropped an inquiry into Pain after alleged racist comments were posted on his Facebook page. Pain said he had been hacked.

He said he had been kicked out for "whistleblowing" on the party's selection process and for recording a phone conversation with a senior Ukip figure.

"They are trying to use this as a tool to take me out of the party," he added, saying he was taking legal action against his expulsion.

A Ukip spokeswoman confirmed Pain had been expelled from the party, "following a disciplinary procedure".

The bloke in 100th place on the European Tour earnings has made nearly E4,000,000
do your homework properly .... it was actually € 275,000 for 100th and € 2,379,195 for the top guy
NTB were you!!!

from that, the 100th guy will have a lot of other expenses, including paying his caddy, though of course he will have at least some sponsorship - free clubs and golf balls! - but certainly nothing very exciting

as for appearance money, i think you'll find that very few get paid any at all, so that pretty much goes out of the window too

with regard to spitting, i'll be quite surprised if the PGA don't stamp on that very soon and pretty hard (yuk!), as i agree, it's unsightly at best, but at least not AT anyone, unlike those yobbish footballers

=============

on a final note, it is only the top 115 in Europe who even get to stay on the main tour ..... below that, they go back to the challenge tour where the earnings are paltry

trust me (or not!), it's a truly tough and difficult way to make a living, as any follower of golf will tell you

":-))
on return from a long and biz-successful lunch,"

and

"trust me (or not!), it's a truly tough and difficult way to make a living,"

Yeeeeah right... I think we all now know just how much we can trust you Andy -):

the lunch certainly wasn't tough though very productive, but making a decent living from professional golf assuredly is (not me, for sure; i'ld be living under waterloo arches)

I thought you did.

Must have been Hays whose hat I put a tenner in.

8-)



The B__r didn't give me any change.

Exec Line, I alluded to their expenses in an earlier post, you put it most succinctly.
2517

Employed? my rear end! No Stan maybe would Fred like to

cynic - post 32789, actually it's you who needs to do your homework properly and all the stats are on the European Tour website if you would like to check it out. You are actually quoting the points on the Race to Dubai.

100

Mark FOSTER

ENG

€3,839,359

Just a tip for Manuel!

Immigration: Britain’s doors are wide open, and we can’t even talk about it

A wave of Romanians and Bulgarians is heading our way, thanks to the EU’s lack of democracy



A Roma landworker in Bulgaria: the Roma have every incentive to escape from Eastern Europe, where they have been persecuted and are often viewed as criminals Photo: ALAMY


By Peter Oborne

8:18PM GMT 13 Nov 2013

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/10446890/Immigration-Britains-doors-are-wide-open-and-we-cant-even-talk-about-it.html



Few decent people would question the nobility of the original European idea. Almost all of us value free trade, international cooperation and mutual goodwill. None of us wants to return to the bloodshed of earlier centuries.


In recent years, however, Europe has fallen under the control of a new ruling class that has obtained powers which it has no democratic right to exercise.


Think of it like this: the European Union has abolished politics. Highly susceptible to lobby groups and large corporations, it is now out of reach to political parties and national politicians. This is far more dangerous than has yet been realised. Again and again national leaders are finding themselves accountable for decisions they haven’t made and can’t alter.


Let’s take the example of the single currency, which seemed such a good idea to EU bosses. The abolition of national currencies means that states can no longer manage their own economies, and are governed instead by international bankers, in cooperation with Brussels commissioners. This is the cause of social and political collapse in Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal.


Another case in point has been freedom of movement, in essence such a wonderful idea, which makes perfect sense between convergent economies such as Britain, France, the Netherlands and Germany.


But freedom of movement between advanced economies such as Britain and underdeveloped countries causes grotesque distortions. On January 1 transitional controls are to be lifted, meaning that migrants from Bulgaria and Romania will be free to move around the rest of the European Union.

The facts are eloquent: the average wage in Britain is about £20,000 a year, compared with just over £3,000 in Bulgaria and £4,000 in Romania. This means that the vast majority of Bulgarians are living far below what we in Britain are privileged to regard as the poverty line. The average earnings in these deprived Eastern European states are considerably less than half our minimum wage.

This enormous disparity means that it would be economic madness for Bulgarians and Romanians not to take advantage of the freedoms they are suddenly being offered. A large number of them are certain to travel to Britain (and other EU states) next year. Exactly how many it is difficult to say. Ten years ago, when transitional controls were lifted for Poles, Labour ministers said that no more than 13,000 would enter Britain every year. In the event around one million came.

There are reasons to doubt that the influx will be so large this time. Sir Andrew Green of MigrationWatch (disgracefully treated by the BBC as a Right-wing alarmist 10 years ago) has provided more accurate, responsible and truthful predictions than anyone else. He guesses that around 250,000 additional migrants will travel to Britain over the next five years.

Among them will be an unknown number of Roma, a wandering people who are thought by some scholars to have come to Europe after a long migration from the modern Indian state of Rajastan. They have every incentive to escape from Eastern Europe, where they have been cruelly persecuted and are often viewed as criminals. Whether they receive a warm welcome in Britain remains to be seen. Earlier this week, David Blunkett, a former Labour home secretary, warned that their arrival might spark riots.

I wonder whether Mr Blunkett, who was speaking out on the basis of problems with Roma in his Sheffield constituency, was wise to make his inflammatory remarks. Yet, he is a politician. He surely has a duty to speak up for his voters. Nobody in Britain – or any other European country – has voted for this fresh wave of immigration. Nobody asked for it, and almost nobody wants it.

This is the trouble with the European Union. Decisions are made, no one knows where, which have enormous consequences for the lives of ordinary people, and local politicians are helpless.

The new migrants will be hungry for jobs, and are bound to price some British workers out of the market. They will have the right to use our schools and NHS, which are already creaking. They will need housing, and welfare benefits.

This is not a selfish Right-wing cause, as some still assert. The British Labour Party, backed by the trade union movement, fought a great, honourable battle in the last century for dignity of labour and fair pay. This is all being lost, thanks in part to the arrival of waves of cheap labour from the east. Big business benefits hugely, and the affluent middle classes get access to cheap domestic help. But there is a cost to the social fabric, and it is always the poor and powerless who pay the highest price.

The decision will be enforced by anonymous officials and jurists. Without intending to, the European Union is turning into the enemy of democracy.

David Cameron is reduced to the role of a spectator in a country that he has been elected to govern. Ed Miliband may be Labour leader, but he is an observer as well. Neither politician has tried to defend the influx of migrant workers, which is understandable because it wasn’t their decision. But they can’t attack it either. As a result, an important issue that is likely viscerally to affect the lives of many British citizens has been sucked out of public discourse and the democratic arena. Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative are united in impotence and uselessness.

There is no way out. Free movement of people is one of the core principles of the European Union. The relevant directive gives limited scope to exclude individuals on grounds of “public policy, public security or public health” but no scope at all to impede the kind of large-scale migration which may occur next year.

This is madness. It brings politics into grave disrepute, and thus grants legitimacy to extremists. This makes me wonder whether Mr Cameron, after all, might be right to attempt some sort of action. It would probably have to be unilateral, and it would certainly mean taking a huge risk.

It is open to the Prime Minister to introduce primary legislation declaring that Bulgarians and Romanians will not be allowed into Britain until suitable arrangements have been made to smooth their arrival.

Mr Cameron should also seek the support of fellow European leaders, almost all of whom have just as much reason to fear further migration. He could urge them to hold an emergency Intergovernmental Conference, which could extend the transitional period by a few years.

The moral case for such drastic action is very strong. Despite tentative signs of recovery, Britain still faces an economic emergency. Nearly one million young people, almost 20 per cent of the labour force under 25, are out of work. Some of their jobs would surely go to the new Eastern European migrants. Mr Cameron should argue that this is a situation no civilised government can tolerate.

The Commission would take Britain to court, and we would lose. But I guess Mr Cameron would enjoy great sympathy among his fellow European national leaders. They too are victims of the European crisis of democracy. If the Prime Minister does not act, only Ukip will be left speaking in a language that makes any kind of sense to ordinary voters.

DD4 - no idea from where you gleaned your number ..... mine is from the european tour site (race to dubai) ...... indeed, even looking at mark foster's own bio on there, it shows his lifetime tour winnings at only € 4,365,000 at that's cumulative since 2002

MK - a very good, well thought out and balanced editorial

Morning chummies.

My mate the billionaire had this to say a little earlier today on twitter.....

jim mellon ‏@jimmhk 12 Nov
quiet day.. but watch market exhaustion as i keep on saying...PEs are v extended and markets look ripe for fall ..when it happens brutal