Inter Milan coach Jose Mourinho has stoked the fire ahead of his side"s Champions League last 16 clash with Chelsea by claiming a "strong" team would not have dropped the number of points the Blues have this season.
Carlo Ancelotti"s side head into Wednesday"s first leg at the San Siro sitting pretty at the top of the Barclays Premier League, four points clear of champions Manchester United with 11 games remaining.
But Mourinho believes his former team are far from invincible, having drawn four and lost four of their 27 league matches under Ancelotti.
Chinks in the armour: Inter coach Jose Mourinho (below) believes Chelsea are not as strong as many give them credit for, despite Didier Drogba"s two goals against Wolves (above) sending them four points clear at the top of the Premier League
Quoted in several national newspapers, the Portuguese said: "The Premier League is never easy - every game normally is difficult.
"But when a team is strong, strong, strong, strong, strong, it doesn"t lose so many matches, so many points."
Mourinho, who led Porto to Champions League glory in 2004 and Chelsea to consecutive Premier League titles in 2005 and 2006, is relishing the clash with his old club.
But he is hoping his former players will not take any extra delight in beating his team, should they manage to do so over two legs.
"If a Chelsea player is happier to beat me than to beat another manager I will be very sad," he said. "I just don"t understand that. I can"t think there would be any special pleasure from that.
"Just as if I am happier to beat them than to beat another team, then I think they have a reason to be very unhappy with me.
"We"re all professionals. I want to win, they want to win. Somebody will win, somebody will lose - this we know, this we accept. But there should be nothing more."
More...EXCLUSIVE: D-Day for Cole! Roman fury could see Ashley axed over scandalsWolves 0 Chelsea 2: Petr Cech ready to go toe-to-toe with Inter Milan Wenger will be on Real Madrid"s radar if Mourinho turns down Spanish giantsCHELSEA FC NEWS FROM ACROSS THE WEB
President Barack Obama says Tiger Woods will still be a "terrific" golfer despite his personal issues.
Woodsannounced this week that he will end more than four months of seclusionafter revelations of his extramarital affairs by returning toprofessional competition at the Masters golf tournament in three weeks.
Obamasaid in an interview Wednesday with Fox News Channel that Woods hasacknowledged betraying his family and that he has to work out thosepersonal issues. But Obama said he"s sure Woods is still going to be aterrific golfer.
Woods announced in December that he was taking an indefinite break from golf. He made a public apology last month.
More...Tiger Woods will beat my majors record, insists Jack NicklausKirsty Gallacher denies online rumours that she had an affair with Tiger WoodsCaddie out, spin doctor in? Tiger Woods stays silent on comeback trailStand aside Obama, Woods is roaring back! Tiger reveals Masters return
HELSINKI Sat February 20, 2010 4:51am EST Related News HIGHLIGHTS-EU finmins plead mercantile predicament in GreeceTue, February sixteen 2010Eurozone gives Greece thirty days to show great on deficitTue, February sixteen 2010Eurozone gives Greece thirty days to show great on deficitMon, February fifteen 2010HIGHLIGHTS-EU sustains vigour on Greece to cut deficitMon, February fifteen 2010Finnish FinMin-Greece contingency go to marketplace for fundingMon, February fifteen 2010
HELSINKI (Reuters) - Greece"s monetary problems have frightened alternative supervision in to receiving movement to make firm their finances, and any speak of a "chain reaction" inspiring alternative countries should be avoided, Finland pronounced on Saturday.
Crisis in Credit
"Greece has been such a tough lesson," Finnish Finance Minister Jyrki Katainen told inhabitant broadcaster YLE in an interview. "It has frightened made at home preference makers in to receiving ... extensive actions."
Concern over Athens" capability to pay off the debt has jarred certainty in the euro and stirred European Union leaders to oath they will take concurrent action, if needed, to safety the fortitude of the singular currency.
The Greek supervision has pronounced it plans to condense the open necessity from 12.7 percent of sum made at home product to less than 3 percent by 2012.
Katainen pronounced it was critical not to couple the problems in Greece with alternative European countries.
"There has been a conform in new days to contend that Spain, Portugal and Italy are subsequent in line since they are southern European countries and they have mercantile worries," Katainen said.
"It is really dangerous to link, around rumors, these countries, who by their own actions can really well get their economies in to shape," he said. "This conjecture ... has to be avoided."
On Spain, Katainen said: "The marketplace believes that Spain can redeem when it takes extensive actions, large bill cuts, and I hold that this is still possible."
She could be any immature mom at the propagandize gate, were it not for the pencil dress and red, white and blue cravat underneath her coat. Her dim hair scraped in to a bun and with a peep of mascara, Julie Parks has come in uniform. She greets her daughter with a cuddle prior to dropping her off at home and stability the expostulate by the suburbs to Heathrow.
Still jet-lagged from her prior flight, she outlayed the night in her childs bottom berth so as not to arise her husband. Tonight she is off again, on a long-haul British Airways moody to Asia. The stewardess will work by the night catering, cleaning lavatories, on condition that party and presumably treating ill passengers. She loves her job, wears her unvaried with pride, but is rebuilt to set upon if negotiations this week fail.
If her fears and those of the 7,500 alternative cabin organisation who voted in foster of set upon movement infer to be well founded, Ms Parks is piece of a a failing breed. Even the association admits, in private, that it wants to see veterans similar to her leave the airline, to be transposed by younger, cheaper recruits hired on less tasteful conditions and reduce pensions. When the airline hauls itself out of the loss-making spiral, it plans to sinecure a new swift of cabin organisation who will progressively take over from the rarely unionised old guard.
The perfect scale of BAs monetary trouble is suggested by the prophecy that the income competence tumble by as majority as 1 billion this year. The airline is approaching to have a jot down loss of 600 million as it struggles with rising fuel prices and the exile staff budget.
Times Archive, 1981: British Airways faces set upon by cabin staff
The airline is asking them to give passengers a higher customary of make use of with fewer attendants on board
Related LinksUnion fears BA arch wants staff to strikeBA flies spook planes to sight strike-breaking crewsPassenger arrested after moody reeling
Since no specific protest was listed on the list paper, majority passengers competence consternation because the best-paid cabin organisation in the nation would be peaceful to stick on a set upon that could ravage BA and hurt the transport plans of hundreds of thousands. The answer seems to be that the crew, similar to their kinship and the airline itself, feel they are in a quarrel for survival. It is obviously about violation the union, pronounced Ms Parks, whose name has been altered to strengthen her from government threats to pouch any one who speaks to the media. I conclude that they need to save income and move forward, but this is fundamentally long-term helpful dismissal. They wish to emanate a utterly new airline and run it to one side us.
It is possibly this no-future unfolding where we usually distortion down and accept the fate, where we will not have a job, or we set upon and have a bit of negotiating energy to plead usually what we are going to lose. We are not going to gain, but we wish to have a contend in what we do lose.
Few workers would appear less approaching to stick on a sour industrial dispute. The accessible mom of dual is posterior her lifelong mental condition of aviation. She has outlayed thirteen years catering to the needs of BA passengers and has invested so majority personal collateral that BA has turn piece of her life. Yet she is dynamic to have a last mount opposite the low changes approaching to brush by the airline.
I caring enormously about the peculiarity of make use of we provide. It is a big understanding for us to go on strike, she said. We are not militant. People similar to to put us in to the same box as the miners, but we do not wish to be you do this. All we wish is to come to work and do the job. But you cant usually design us to accept carrying to find a new pursuit in dual or 3 years but putting up a bit of a fight. I will go on strike, if talks fail, with a complicated heart. I see it as the usually thing we have to use.
For the jovial immature lady with a grade and a craving to transport the world, fasten BA seemed a healthy calling. I have regularly longed for to fly. It is one of those things that you usually appear drawn to. It is not an easy pursuit to get into. It is utterly lonely. You are afar from friends and family, you miss parties, weddings and birthdays. But you get in to it. It breaks you down and afterwards builds you at the back of up. That is because we are so unapproachable to work for British Airways we are BA, it has turn the lives. You are vital with your colleagues. When you put that unvaried on you are so proud. That is because I feel it is so wrong, what is function to the company.
BA unions have been criticised for receiving movement to urge what by some-more aged with alternative airlines are really inexhaustible terms. According to the total from the Civil Aviation Authority, the usually industry-wide data, normal output per piece of of cabin organisation by BA is 29,900 compared with 20,200 at easyJet and 14,400 at Virgin. However, BA staff point out that in the past the association has prided itself on charity the staff a some-more secure and long-term career than alternative airlines.
With simple compensate of 19,000 a year, Ms Parks can design to take home 2,000 a month once allowances for overnight stays and eremitic hours are taken in to account. She typically flies 4 trips a month, on any long-haul route, and can be afar from home for up to 9 days at a stretch.
She was hired after the last BA cabin organisation set upon in 1997, when the kinship unsuccessful to hindrance the key of contracts charity reduce compensate and conditions. Her salary is far higher than the 11,000 simple compensate approaching underneath the new contracts, a figure that will be bolstered by an hourly wage. However, she insists that once assorted allowances are taken in to comment she and her colleagues are not majority improved off than their counterparts in alternative airlines.
But afterwards this brawl was never about wages, at slightest on the surface. The evident means was the removal in Nov of at slightest one cabin organisation piece of from all BA flights. The association says that the move will assistance it to secure annual cost assets of 140 million and sentinel off a third uninterrupted year of multimillion-pound losses.
Unite, the greatest kinship in Britain, insists that the changes contingency be repealed and a negotiated understanding struck. Union insiders confess that BAs new swift proposals are a dark force at the back of the set upon threat. But a blocking called opposite destiny association plans would be illegal.
BA refuses to speak publicly about the probable vital shift. But, as a comparison senior manager told The Times, the brawl could be summed up as: You wouldnt fool around your piece in shortening the cost base? OK, we will move in someone who will. It is, insiders say, seeking to partisan prepared immature workers for short durations on salary far next those of experienced crew. The multiplication in between prolonged and short-haul crews will go and new pointless rosters be adopted. Existing organisation will be offering intentional excess or leave by healthy wastage. These workers fright that over time the busiest and majority essential routes will be eliminated to the new recruits, withdrawal them redundant.
Any review with BA cabin organisation fast turns to the arch executive, Willie Walsh, and the stroke that his cost-cutting expostulate has on spirit and customary of service. I conclude there are a lot of jobs that take it out of you. We are happy to concede for the love of the pursuit and the rewards we get out of it. I love my pursuit and I think majority of us do, and that is because we feel so sexually that BA is being led in the wrong direction, pronounced Ms Parks. Willie Walsh doesnt know if he wants to be low-cost or premium. He wants low-cost organisation but he expects people to compensate reward prices. Quality has already come down.
Many kinship members goal that the hazard of a drawn-out brawl will lead to a deal. If not, Ms Parks will be swapping the propagandize embankment for the white picket line by Easter.
A week in the hold up of a long-haul stewardess
Monday 6am Wake with young kids
8.45 Drop young kids off at school. Drive to Heathrow
12.00 Report for mandatory reserve and track briefings
Nick Clegg has distanced his celebration from Tory plans for low cuts in open spending. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod
The Liberal Democrats have distanced themselves from the Conservatives by notice they would not await plans to cut open spending as well early in the subsequent parliament.
The party"s leader, Nick Clegg, pronounced early low cuts would be "economic masochism". It came as the Lib Dem book spokesman, Vince Cable, strike out at the Tories" mercantile plans. In his debate at the party"s open discussion in Birmingham, Cable indicted the Conservatives of enchanting in a "phoney fight over cuts" that would affect millions of lives. He additionally strike out at George Osborne, the shade chancellor.
Cable pronounced the Tories were perplexing to benefaction their mercantile group as ""Slasher" Osborne and the Hard Men". But, he added, they appeared to have taken cuts true after the choosing off the list – at slightest for now. "Or at slightest that"s what I think they said. I"d love to try a critique of the Tories" bill plans, but I have no thought what they are. I think the benefaction line on the bill is: "Trust us and we"ll plead it you after the election"," he told entertaining delegates.
He added: "People are unfortunate to see the behind of this Labour government. But they don"t wish the same old Tories. And have no inapplicable designation they are just the same."
He additionally claimed that David Cameron"s celebration and the "cronies" were perplexing to emanate monetary be scared to dismay people in to choosing by casting votes for them. "Playing fast and lax with the monetary fortitude of this nation for domestic benefit – destabilising the markets – is dangerous, insane and wrong," pronounced Cable.
He did not extent his critique to the Conservatives. Cable, carrying famously compared Gordon Brown to Mr Bean, this time done representatives giggle when he pronounced the budding apportion sounded similar to the Chelsea footballer Ashley Cole, pleading: "Give me an additional chance."
The Lib Dems had identified £15bn value of reductions in open spending that would cut the deficit, he said. The celebration has come underneath an augmenting turn of inspection as the polls narrow. Observers are examination for any signs to indicate either the Lib Dems would be rebuilt to have a agreement with Labour or the Conservatives in the eventuality of a hung parliament. That is the unfolding referred to by dual polls expelled today.
YouGov investigate for the Sunday Times finds that the Tories" lead has narrowed from five points to 4 over the past week. An ICM check for the Sundayplaces Cameron"s celebration 7 points forward – not sufficient for a majority. The same investigate suggests that the LibDems have strengthened their on all sides and are right away on twenty-one points.
Clegg will plead a hung council when he addresses MPs today. "People mostly ask me what the Liberal Democrats will do after the ubiquitous election. Some days I review we"re formulation a understanding with Labour, a little days that we"re formulation a understanding with the Conservatives, alternative days that we"ll exclude to speak to any one at all," he is reported as formulation to say.
Times Archive, 1981: British Airways faces set upon by cabin staff 