One senior figure in Welsh academia describes the current situation as "a total mess".

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"This whole situation is a total mess and places the British community in a particularly vulnerable situation, " he said.

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"Domestic football was a total mess, " explains Alex Bellos, author of "Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life" as well as the ghost writer of Pele's 2006 autobiography.

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But there is a way around this kind of mess: a new arrangement called a total return unitrust.

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The prevailing wisdom was that Europe would be a mess but would not succumb to a Lehman-esque total meltdown, especially given the haircuts that bondholders had finally, grudgingly agreed to just last week.

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