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Reply | Jack Clarke
at 15:13 18 Sep 2025
Well it would seem that teams struggled to prepare for him a minimum of 24 times in his two seasons at Sunderland. Fulham didn’t prepare too well either when he ran the length of the field to hit the post and nearly kill the game earlier this year.
JC is a better player than a ‘one trick pony’. I also think his game, despite limited opportunities, has improved over the last year in the most difficult of circumstances. I.e. no midfield whatsoever and a mess of a team defending most of time.
He also, despite his languid appearance, has bottle. Taking that penalty knowing our heathy cadre of haters were queueing up to abuse him if he missed showed that.
Lastly, when I look at players like Kayden Jackson and Freddie L, they were great. They maxed their potential here. The ceiling for Clarke is a heck of a lot higher.
Supported, left to do his job and played in his best position - he will create mayhem in this division, as he’s done before, assuming the team settles down the way I think it might. |
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Reply | Keno's solution to the UK's problems
at 14:51 18 Sep 2025
The problem with wealth taxes is that while they morally might be the right thing to do (reason enough in my book), they don’t tend to bring in any money. |
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Reply | The state pension will rise by 4.7% next year.
at 14:48 18 Sep 2025
They certainly do make it ‘attractive’ to act without advice and to use pension savings for other things now. The bottom line is a pension is what it says on the tin. A means of keeping you out of the food banks or having to warm your hands with a candle in old age. It really shouldn’t be used as an investment vehicle or on a new monster truck.
The rules on pensions and how they are marketed should be tightened in my view. |
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Reply | The state pension will rise by 4.7% next year.
at 12:32 18 Sep 2025
Yes, check the rules. It’s some time since I’ve looked at this stuff. Whether or not you buy an annuity at 75 or any other age really depends on circumstances, size of the pot, other income etc. I’d have thought you’d get a decent annuity rate because the likelihood of pegging out before they have to pay out too much is that much greater! Harsh but true.
Your second paragraph sounds about right! |
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Reply | Keno's solution to the UK's problems
at 12:18 18 Sep 2025
End party politics and declare you Caesar. You get a free toga, a few leaves for the bonce and unlimited power to sort out the mess. You’d get my vote (or should it be tribute?)
I actually have no problem with your first a paragraph, as it goes.
Care with the Civil Service though. It is there to implement and challenge, not create policy. That’s for the HoC mugs to do.
Interesting that the wartime coalition worked pretty well and is actually a tribute to the strength of the war cabinet and their single minded aim to defeat the enemy. Not enough credit is given to the likes of Attlee in my view for the work they did.
Powerful people like Beaverbrook played their part which I am guessing is where your comment re industrialists and leading lights come from. |
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Reply | The state pension will rise by 4.7% next year.
at 12:02 18 Sep 2025
Defined benefits schemes are basically final salary or average schemes. Commonly you and your employer contribute to the the scheme but the risk of where the money is invested basically falls on the employers (eg banks during and after the financial crash)
Defined contributions or money purchase schemes work in a similar sort of way, but the money goes into a pension pot. Often the employer will bung some in and there are tax advantages in saving for retirement in this way. However, unlike final salary/average schemes, you bear the risk of a fund underperforming or the ups and downs of the market.
Money Purchase schemes are now flexible. You used to be confined to taking an annuity at whatever rate was available at the time (a policy that pays out a set amount till you pop your clogs). You could protect it by say index linking but you paid for that. The scheme also died with you unless you added that option and again reduced your actual income from it.
You now have the option of leaving your pension pot alone to I think 75, taking the lot in cash or putting the loot into drawdown where the money remains invested but you can take money where you need to.
The big problem with making pensions flexible is the tendency for those who forget what pension savings are for to take the cash and s0d tomorrow.
For people like me with other pensions and stuff, Stakeholder Pensions have proved a nice little investment from which you can take 25% tax free. Not what uncle Gordon the cheery Chancellor intended but hey ho. Happy days! |
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Reply | The state pension will rise by 4.7% next year.
at 10:49 18 Sep 2025
A very interesting article. Thanks for posting.
There are a lot of elements to this. In terms of solutions, the obvious ones are raise state pension age and remove triple lock replacing the latter with perhaps a mechanism linking to inflation or average earnings.
Other solutions: euthanasia for those not working. The useless mouths. It’s been done before in certain times and places. The benefits are granny's wealth can be distributed to the hard working tax payer, no state pension necessary, freer NHS, more housing available, emptier buses and no need for bus passes, cheap London travel, Christmas £10 or fuel allowances. Everyone’s a winner, including the government that sees pensioners as tory voters and granny who’s probably a bit miserable anyway.
Another solution is to reduce the age people can work so increasing the number of hard working tax payers. Given voting age is going to 16 how about getting people into work at 14? Most people’s schooling ended then back in the day including my mum and it did her no harm (well not much anyway😃). Those with aptitude can stay on to 16, 18 and further education. Makes sense to me.
That’d get my vote apart from the fact that I’d either have to work or face the cold hillside solution myself.
On a serious note, it is noticeable that with pension freedom, plenty of people are not setting money aside for their retirement. That was obvious from the day pension freedom was announced. Other priorities, waste of money, not interested, only for coffin dodgers.
When people were allowed to choose what they did with their pension pot, many including a friend of mine cashed it in. His view was f it. The state can provide for me and besides I want the money now. Good luck living in the south east on £12k a year, assuming you can get the max. £1000 a month is not a lot when you take into account rocketing living costs. Aya Napa here we don’t come, methinks.
Saving for retirement should be compulsory from the day you start work. It insulates the individual against potential poverty and the state against costs. Can’t afford it? Well it’s a question of priorities. Maybe link saving for retirement directly to state pension in that if you opt out of the former you won’t get the latter and had better polish up the begging bowl.
Your stat re cost of state provision being 5% is interesting. 19% are aged over 65 and 70% of those are no longer in paid work, though I suspect many are engaged in voluntary work, child caring etc. |
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Reply | This place is fooking awful at the moment
at 08:50 18 Sep 2025
I’d imagine watching the Teletubbies and Lego benefits you intellectually. Only joking! Actually I used to like Lego.
Good summary of social media.
I rarely venture on to any of it these days, but Reddit is certainly the most informative. I actually joined Facebook in its early days but soon realised how numbingly pointless it was. Instagram and TikTok - desperate.
Twitter/X is interesting in that I think it a total waste of time. Full of fantasists, weirds and people with nothing better to do.
Mrs C likes it and spends a lot of time on it, mostly for cat stuff and crafting. She likes to show me stuff on her tablet and I of course lie and say ‘that’s interesting’ whilst praying for the moment to end. Not sure she’d be happy with the response in my head that goes ‘look, if I was that interested I’d be looking at it in the first place!’. |
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Reply | Why we didn't
at 08:29 18 Sep 2025
Agree with that. I can fully understand why he wanted regular first team football, especially with his international career. He is in his late 20s now. He knows his career is finite and shining his @rse on the car seats clearly isn’t for him. Same for Chaplin, who is a terrific player. I wanted both to stay.
However, players come and go. All part of the cycle of life and very few players hold the same attachment to a football club as supporters, however many times they kiss the badge.
I was simply pleased to see him score those goals last night. A game for him to remember. As it goes, whilst he was great in the air I didn’t think his general defending was at its best. He was lucky with the offside - he’d have been sent off otherwise. Lucky Forest were wasteful too. They could have easily won that at a canter.
Had they done so the opportunity to rubbish Greaves (is he being promoted up the hate target list order after Philogene’s performance last week?) wouldn’t have happened.
Is Greaves a better player? In my view, and clearly McKenna’s, yes. McKenna’s playing him over Burgess has nothing to do with his fee (a reported £15m + add ons). To imply that, as one or two have, is to suggest McKenna is weak or that somebody else is picking the team. Neither is correct. Let’s face it, McKenna didn’t hang around binning Muric once his confidence collapsed.
Is he £18m better than Burgess is an interesting question. Going on the reported initial figure of £15m it makes him 20 times better than Burgess whose fee was £750k in 2021 (bargain!). Of course he isn’t so that makes Greaves a waste of money. Or does it?
Times have changed in four years and so has this club and the pond it’s fishing in. Buying from Accrington Stanley as a L1 club is not the same as where we were a year ago and neither is the market. For example, look at what Birmingham lobbed out last season and many a non-Premier League club this.
My view - forget what players used to cost. It’s irrelevant. I do think we paid top dollar for him for the reason you give. However, that’s not his fault and I believe he will prove worthy of that in a settled side that wins games (god willing) and grows. [Post edited 18 Sep 8:30]
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Reply | Cameron Burgess wow what a finish.
at 22:23 17 Sep 2025
Perhaps it would have been nicer to leave it at giving Burgess credit for what he did rather than using it to have a dig at Greaves. Each to their own. |
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Reply | Cameron Burgess wow what a finish.
at 22:07 17 Sep 2025
Only saw the last 25 mins. Well done Swansea- reward for keeping going. Clearly a club on the up. Well done Burgess too. Mind you, he was a fraction from being sent off and 3-1 then moments late - hero! That is what makes football the great game it is.
Didn’t see much of Hutchinson in the bit I saw, but I see he got an assist.
Great support, even when they were struggling. |
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Reply | Pancreatic cancer...
at 12:46 17 Sep 2025
I’m afraid I cannot offer advice on pancreatic cancer, unlike other posters on here who have direct experience of it.
I do know what it’s like to see more than one person die of other forms cancer and Mrs C got through it last year and despite a recent biopsy scare is fine. Like any serious illness, it’s a hard old road. The only advice I can give is to filter out the noise, listen to what the wonderful people treating her say and above all what she wants to say and do.
For me, dealing with this stuff it’s day at a time. What needs to be done, do and make sure you look after yourself and others. |
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Reply | The state pension will rise by 4.7% next year.
at 12:34 17 Sep 2025
That depends on the definition of ‘ended’. Nobody could join a final salary scheme after 2007. The existing schemes (classic, classic plus, Premium) continued for existing members until 2015 and to retirement if scheme retirement age 60 was imminent.
The existing schemes were essentially closed though accrued benefits calculated to final salary up to 2022. The rest of their contributions beyond 2015 were bunged into Alpha average scheme that paid out on state retirement age, not 60 as the old schemes did.
When Civil Service pension schemes were reviewed in the 2000s Lord Hutton warned against the government engaging in a race to the bottom. A bit like public enquiry recommendations for WASPI women and state pensions, of which Mrs C is one, that went in the bin.
Thanks politicians you have done your work well. [Post edited 17 Sep 13:40]
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Reply | This place is fooking awful at the moment
at 11:27 17 Sep 2025
That’s my stance too. I think if people lightened up a little it might help a bit. It’s not as if we as individuals can do anything about anything beyond voting so there is nothing in realty to bicker about.
It’s hard not to get sucked in on certain issues and I do understand the opening poster’s view. |
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Reply | The state pension will rise by 4.7% next year.
at 11:07 17 Sep 2025
So what you are saying is that per capita this is the poorest country in Europe and cannot afford to pay even a meagre state pension to people who have contributed and worked in many cases all their lives. Fair enough.
Attached is a short summary on state provision. It’s a little out of date but it captures basic differences between countries.
https://www.ii.co.uk/analysis-commentary/uk-state-pension-really-worst-europe-ii
As for civil servants unfunded pension liabilities, that’s a choice a previous governments made. It took people’s contributions there and then and spent them. Jam today, s0d tomorrow because we won’t be in power anyway was basically what they did. They could have invested those contributions into pension funds.
In a sense, the hard working taxpayer had their money up front, some of it from people who never lived to get a penny out of their pension so the government and the people got a good deal. If the taxpayer (including me) has to pay now, so be it.
Since the govt have ended final salary schemes and replaced them with rubbish average ones payable at state retirement age or money purchase schemes, the ‘problem’ is literally dying away anyway.
Lastly, I don’t see £7bn as peanuts given it is the equivalent of 1p a in the £1 income tax raise or 25% raise in social care spending. |
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Reply | If there was an election today, who would get your vote?
at 10:41 17 Sep 2025
If Count Binface puts up a candidate here, he/she will get my vote. His 2024 manifesto:
1 all Water bosses to take a dip in british rivers, to see how they like it
2 national service to be introduced for all former prime ministers
3 wifi on trains that works
4 trains that work
5 the reintroduction of ceefax
6 children in need to finally get round to fixing pudsey’s eye
7 traffic on northallerton high street to be fixed by a new space bridge, bypassing both level crossings
8 european countries to be invited to join the uk, creating a new ‘union of europe’, if you will
9 wallace and gromit to be knighted, for services to wensleydale
10 I pledge to build at least one affordable house
11 croissants to be price-capped at £1.10, and 99 flakes to cost 99p
12 national yorkshire pudding day to be a bank holiday (except for banks)
13 loud snacks to be banned from cinemas and theatres
14 pensions to be double-locked, but with a little extra chain on the side
15 claudia winkleman’s fringe to be grade 1-listed
16 new series of gladiators to feature ’90s gladiators against age-appropriate contenders
17 minsters’ pay to be tied to that of nurses for the next 100 years
18 shops that play christmas music before december to be closed down and turned into public libraries
19 to combat the uk’s increasingly wet climate, all british citizens to be offered stilts
20 a ban on speakerphones on public transport. offenders to be forced to live with matt hancock for a year
21 the mini golf course at richmond swimming pool to host the open championship
22 mps to live in the area they wish to serve for 4 years before election, to improve local representation
23 the hand dryer in the gents’ urinals at the crown & treaty, uxbridge to be moved to a more sensible position.
24 count binface to represent the uk at eurovision
These are far more realistic policies than the main parties’ dysentery of lies. |
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Reply | The state pension will rise by 4.7% next year.
at 10:28 17 Sep 2025
The economy is £3.5tn. We can afford it. U.K. state pension provision is about the worst of all western countries, by a large margin with most of them. They can afford it, why can’t we? I believe it’s more to do with how the government view pensioners, especially ones that have paid in all their lives.
This government sees pensioners as useless mouths that largely don’t vote for them so they, like farmers and certain other sections of our society are fair game - wring out the old codgers - they are a drain on ‘the hard working tax payer’, cluttering hospital beds and surgeries. Just look at Reeves’ spiteful winter fuel nonsense. It was never going to save much money. All it was going to do was create further hardship amongst the poorest. It certainly told us all we needed to know about how they saw pensioners.
But pensioners spend money in the economy. Take that out and it’s hardly going to help anyone. Many, like myself, pay taxes too. A lot of it.
We had best pension provision in the world back in the late 80s. It was a mix of final salary schemes, money purchase schemes, savings, assets and state provision. It broadly worked. Since then successive governments starting with the tories ‘pension holidays’ but especially Blair’s and his numbskull successors has seen pensions as a larder to raid. Pension provision now is a mess.
The triple lock? It was brought in to try and address the pathetic level of state pension provision and in that it’s been largely successful.
The idea ‘I’ve got other priorities. Kids, daily living’ doesn’t wash with me. I know what it’s like to be in my 20s and 30s. I didn’t give a stuff about pensions. Not interested. That was for old crusties. I needed the money now and in any case I’d never get old like the coffin dodgers. Then I reached mid/late 30s and was between jobs and it suddenly dawned on me I might have to rely on state crumbs. So I took provision seriously from then.
I sacrificed spending then for sufficient money now. I do not see why I should be penalised for that by means testing or any other dopey idea. I paid in (I’m guessing more than the majority I’m guessing) so it’s only right that I should get something out. ‘It doesn’t work like that’? I think it does and should. Otherwise they should make paying NI voluntary. Watch the NI £££ collapse then! Alternatively, pay me back all my contributions adjusted to today’s values and me and the govt can call it quits.
Solutions?
I’d end triple lock but link to inflation. Bin Christmas £10 and winter fuel and adjust state pension to the equivalent.
I’d make pension provision compulsory from working age. 16 - if the government says people can vote at that age, they can start saving for a pension. This includes self employed. How? Ive ideas but not thought them through.
First and foremost I’d end this nonsense about not being able to afford it. The government finds money when it needs to, whether it’s £7bn and rising on illegal migration without a peep about the cost by HMG or £billions found by the last shower lining the pockets of their mates during Covid with dodgy contracts and shaky schemes. |
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Reply | Remembering The Beat and Bolan.
at 21:44 16 Sep 2025
I was lucky enough to see him play on plenty of occasions throughout his career. I can’t choose one performance. As has been said elsewhere there were just too many.
I’ve seen very few players, especially defenders, make a crowd draw breath, home or away. Kevin Beattie could do that. He had the lot. It was my privilege to see the great man play. |
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Reply | Conor Chaplin speaking about his move to Pompey
at 15:17 16 Sep 2025
It reads like it was done amicably. Chaplin wanted to play regularly. While McKenna wanted him here, he couldn’t guarantee that so did not stand in the way of the player’s desire to return to Portsmouth. Well done the clubs and Conor Chaplin.
A terrific player and person. At 28 he is rightly putting his career first. He was a key figure at the club and I wish him well. I’d have loved him to have stayed, but it’s clear the direction the direction the club is trying to take.
As it goes I watched a bit of the Southampton game and he was one of Portsmouth’s more impressive players and had a lot more impact on the game than Dozzell or Downes |
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