Gloucester Saint

The issues are as much about staffing levels and timetables. I use Cross Country regularly to travel Midlands/SW/Wales and even when the strikes aren’t on, the holidays or sickness absence soon force trains to be cancelled, stuffing up travel plans for work or leisure because the drivers aren’t sufficient and the whole system is far too reliant on overtime. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj9le7vdw91o The previous government did initiate a positive change - lowering the minimum age for drivers to qualify. The unions were calling for it as were the ATOCs. It’ll take 2-3 years to filter through, but it should alleviate shortages and need for constant overtone which is a major source of the industrial tensions, and it’s a good career option for younger people. The training centres and exams will still be hard to pass. So a pay deal is a bridging measure to that.

The club decided against signing him as heard he is a bit of a wanker and quite flash(ing). Mara potentially going is great news, fingers crossed on ABK, should see some activity. Not sure about Archer, too similar to what we already have.

I’ll name a few more that were either paid off, given away or contracts run down - Boufal, Djenepo, Ely, Vestergaard, Hoedt (£17m - the club’s drinking culture really had got out of control at that point or someone was on the fiddle. He wasn’t worth £1.7m), Bazanu, Gunn, Alcaraz is borderline. Stewart was literally burning £11m away (with the play off win payment to Sunderland) and jury out on Charles, one of the most expensive Champ players ever at £15m. My second list comes in at around a total of £150m just in fees, your first list I make £90m. So £240m just in fees and how many genuinely PL players have you got there? Lemina when he could be bothered and sorted his head out at Wolves. And I’m struggling after that…Charly on a good day. Jury out on Charles but the manager doesn’t seem to think that much. Bazanu and Gunn - that’s one first choice international keeper with a decent nation (not RoI or Scotland) for £30m instead. Simple. Just one that claims crosses and saves mostly where they should. Instead, the club spent the same sum on two of the worst Championship keepers in recent memory boosting the wealthiest club in the world. The club was in the PL when it signed both. You don’t have to be Paul Mitchell to know that’s moronic. And that’s without Alex’s and Fraser’s mental contract extensions. Between us we’ve listed 16 players. Too much volume, no quality and a total absence of strategy eg key attributes for certain positions and in relation to systems/playing style, almost all of which the above list of shame lack. At least the club are signing some decent pros this summer even if the past mistakes of a Lidl transfer approach are weighing us down.

I respect everybody mate, whether they empty the bins, cancer scientist or cabinet minister. Whatever their education is or none. Respect whoever they vote for. But him and GM don’t respect anyone and they don’t debate or discuss their views. They’re abusive trolls. Hence they vanish when they get a bit back. PS - if it’s not a cult, why are Trump’s followers wearing nappies and patches over their ears? Tory members didn’t all shave their heads when Hague was their leader, Corbyn got a bit too close to being one, but nowhere near as dangerous.

Let’s see - graduated at a top research intensive when few working class secondary school pupils from Southampton achieved that, went onto to be postgraduate qualified. Senior figure of my profession since. So if I’m thick, you must either be the bloke Whitey Grandad has as his avatar, or you’ve got an IQ of 3 and look like one of the boneheads getting sentenced in the riots. Hmmm, I wonder? Frankly, calling anyone thick with the appalling lack of literacy you post with is someone who lives in the Crystal Palace throwing metorites at my windows. Grammar to you is the old person you clumsily finger at Hilsea Lido (Rallyboy, the PTS thread 2014 or so). You support a racist, facist, and multiple convicted felon who tried to overturn a democractic election in 2020. My grandfathers successfully fought the dictators of the 1930s in France, Italy, Africa and the Far East. Just so you can support Trump, Farage, Musk and others enabling Putin, today’s equivalent. Pity that you weren’t set a better example by your own family or you might have educated yourself better so you don’t support facism.

I don’t have any political hero’s as I don’t follow cults like you with the Orange MAGA moron. There are some politicians I admire or admired e.g. Ashdown, Kennedy, Heseltine, Clarke, Mowlam, Cook, Davey, Streeting - but well aware they all have flaws. Mine are sporting e.g. Botham, Danny Wallace, Steve Moran, Eric Bristow, Freddie Flintoff, Ben Stokes, Michael Vaughan, Graham Thorpe (RIP), James Anderson, Shane Warne, and Lambert and MLT, even with their nutty views.

I hop you are right

Your hero doesn’t tend to answer questions very truthfully and isn’t big on accuracy https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0jpn2q76n1o

That’s not the reason it’s a problem. UK higher education educational provision and R&D is one of our few remaining globally successful and recognised industries. Or it was until the last set of plastic MAGA politicians in the previous government dragged it into the culture wars. The issue is two-fold: 1) Soft power around the world. It’s a key leverage in trade negotiations, and politically having access to train future world leaders means that we are less likely to have Putins and Trumps, and they have a relationship with us. Secondly, it means governance can improve in their nations of origin which reduces illegal migration which we don‘t need or want. As America has found out the hard way, isolationism doesn’t mean you can close the curtains on what’s outside or be immune from its impacts. Better to engaged and shaping things. 2) Domestic, regional and civic economics. Just on the raw figures from the HoL, you are talking 768k FT jobs, £71bn gross value added and £116bn overall economic output. So the latter is all of the SMEs who rely on long-term service contracts with their local university, hundreds and thousands of them. With home fees stagnant for a decade, most of the sector is bankrupt without overseas students. They should never have been in net migration figures in the first place and their accommodation is not an issue capacity-wise, and again landlords are reliant on that income in a lot of towns and cities. Housing capacity plus all of the new halls of residences built during the years of low interest rates means that’s not an issue and most don’t stay beyond their period of study so it’s not a constantly escalating figure either. We just need to be better at using CPOs as an ‘shit or get of off the potty’ and saying to owners ‘use it, renovate it or put it as an auction log within 18 months of notice for truly derelict properties’. The longer they are derelict the more expensive to return to use https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4ngzq91323o If you want less overseas students, fine, but that will cost you circa £10bn extra taxes to close the gap because no government is going to make a fee hike for a while. Universities thought they had the ability to act as a true market but the Tories post-Cameron and Osborne didn’t understand what that was. And that’s with mergers and probably some closures in a slimmed down sector. Expensive business Brexit. Given we don’t make cars in the same numbers post-Brexit, and manufacturing isn’t recovering at scale, probably a sound idea not to destroy one of the new global industries we have left.

Barry Bannan is a good little player, but mid-30s now, and operates in certain midfield space. Even Martin managed to flood the midfield twice last season and stop that. Rooney names him as a threat but then plays a two man CM. I wish him well because I like Plymouth as a club but that performance today was as bad as anything Saints produced in Ralph’s later 2021/22, Pellegrino, Nathan Jones. Sturrock opening day at Villa was probably the easiest comparison in terms of how wide open midfield was and the low energy levels. The lack of organisation on the pitch was frightening.

He is, but Plymouth are not set up right here at all. Wide open in midfield, getting caught in possession in their own half, and the front players are not in the game. Whittaker, a player Saints are rumoured to be tracking has had 5 touches of the ball tops. Wendies already singing ‘sacked in the morning’ to Rooney. Its so bad, Weds could and should have scored three more and Adam Forshaw has ‘Foreshaw’ on the back of his shirt.

Lewis Payne has made both Cheltenham goals and best player on the pitch so far. Good start for Michael Flynn v Newport, his long-time club. Away end full, they’ve travelled over the border in good numbers. Then I posted the above and jinxed it. Lewis gave the ball away and further into the Newport move brought down his opposite number quite needlessly conceding a penalty. 2-2 at HT

This is a tannoy announcement Saintswebbers. Calling Soggy to the Lounge. The batshit crazy GM has started a new thread entitled ‘Tommy Robinson Appreciation Thread’ and it wouldn’t be the same without your contributions and the characters of Maidstone. 😂😂😂

This is true but SR still allowed a child with Excel to spunk all of that money with only Lavia really being the part. They’ve got to own it. Last season was mildly better and getting the Tella fee worked well for all parties. Decent business so far tbf, but they’ve dug themselves a hole with Bazanu and McCarthy, SR just need to suck up the wages on a decent keeper loan and loan Gavin out in L1/L2 when he’s fit for a couple of seasons. Even if it’s £100k p/w. Prior to them, Les pissed all of the VVD £85m away bar Stu and Jan. He must have dyscalculia as Lazio probably thought they were getting £1.7m for Hoedt (about right for a Serie A reserve player). £17m for Moi and more for Vesty….not keen on players with any pace then…but Carrillo topped it off. It will take a few years of up/down with the parachute payments to sort out the incompetence. Feel a bit sorry for Russell Martin in a way, as I did with Ralph. Not sure Ipswich have invested wisely either in the spine of their team as we did in 2012 but we will see.

You’ve won nothing, the only winner from your crass post earlier today about ‘socialist’ governments spending other people’s money was CB Fry who rubbed your nose in it by pointing out the unarguable figures that the national debt to GDP nearly doubled from 2010 to 2019 let alone since then. And it was far fucking lower than even 2010 before the global credit crunch. Tony Blair a socialist 😂- stay off the morning drinkies John Labour has managed the economy better since 1997. No amount of cut and pasted from the DT is going to change that. We’ll see what Starmer and Reeves do but right now I’d quit whilst you’re behind because you already come across like a pissed old fart. And this from a Lib Dem voter (in a seat overturning a 20k plus Tory majority so I know what winning looks like) who has little care for Labour. Your inability to grasp basic economics goes alongside all of the other topics you’ve been 😆 wrong about: Brexit and Deutsche Bank UK GE last month being a 1992 like Tory surprise victory Source of Grenfell Tower fire The riots 2020 US election and about to be wrong on 2024 Supporting Rupert Lowe as SFC owner (probably too left wing for you in the end although supported your beloved Brexit) Just the ones I could think of 😂😂😂 We don’t need to resort to abuse, you just run from thread to thread humiliated. And two of them YOU started! Please predict a Newcastle 5-0 win and it’s a certainty we’ll cause an upset.

Despite all the talk of trouble in Southampton, the night’s most notable disturbances, and they’re mild compared with the last few days, were down the eastern end of the M27, where around 200 idiots (BBC) blocked the M275 (you could argue that stopping people going into Portsmouth is a social good…) https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/crime/anti-immigration-protestors-block-m275-portsmouth-4733688 A bit of counter chanting and police separating the two sides in Aldershot, and briefly 100 lads in Blackpool which quickly fizzled out but doesn’t sound like the Aldershot situation will escalate. The only area of concern remaining is Chatham https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy4e9r8qjwo

Actually I think the reverse will happen, the EFL getting underway will draw away anyone who was thinking about getting involved as they’ll want to see their team, meet up with friends, usual pub pre-match. Plus the sentences coming through now are a deterrent to the more casual troublemaker. I’ve not seen the weather forecast but a bit of rain might help too.

It’s simple, the GMP is still seeking further evidence so it can confirm and press the charges in relation to what actually happened on 24 July in three distinct phases as a far more complex case https://www.gmp.police.uk/news/greater-manchester/news/news/2024/july/gmp-opens-public-portal-in-appeal-for-further-information-about-events-leading-up-to-footage-filmed-in-manchester-airport-terminal-two/ If the Southport ‘protestor’ can get 3 years for assaulting a copper, with the sheer violence of what was captured on camera at the airport against particularly a female copper and any potentially racially aggravated elements in those prior phases either on the plane, luggage terminal or cafe (the police have to be certain what happened when and where in the chain of events at the trial), the sentences if guilty in the Manchester case could exceed that threshold and more, contingent on any prior track-record as well. They will almost certainly be incarcerated for the violence against the coppers, I know from experience of working with them many years ago that the cops will want/expect that and the judge won’t accept any grandstanding from their new lawyer. No doubt he will make the most of the stamp in an attempt to reduce the sentence. The job of confirming the charges has just become more difficult with the original plank of a brief (under investigation for malpractice himself) who posted the stamp video without the rest of the context in the first place being replaced with Aamer Anwar. Not a pleasant character either but in legal terms this is Bashley’s manager being replaced with someone in the Premier League, so the case has to be watertight. The cases are totally different in their complexity, especially as we don’t really know yet when the motive was behind the Manchester Airport events, hence trying to get witnesses going back to the flight. Whereas the Southport offence’s motivations aren’t hard to figure. Those lads are looking at a jail term though, Anwar will make the most of the stamp and try to claim media coverage compromises a fair trial, all the usual tricks of the criminal law trade in high profile cases. Reality is that the first lawyer, Yakoob, was a huge part of the reason for that. He’s had his 5 more minutes of fame. You asked a reasonable question, but spoiled it with the pathetic hashtag.

Are the Portsmouth cases already underway in the courts? That’s quick from the CPS

Run their club properly, with full focus on scouting, the first team and academy without any gimmicks. It’s what Saints used to do 2009-16 before Les Reed et al and then Semmens, onto Rasmus, thought they were cleverer than everyone else.

I see Aamer Anwar has taken over the case, a high profile grifter replacing a genuinely vile cunt in Yakoob (look up his remarks on women). Yakoob helped stir up a lot of the current, equally as much as Robinson’s misinformation about the Southport killings, disorders with that gross distorted video without the full context. The authorities cannot give Anwar an inch, get the evidence collected on those two lads behaviour, charges in and stack them up like fillings in a Subway sandwich. There needs to be as equally a strong deterrent in the Manchester case with the verdict as there is with the far right violence. No doubt there will be trouble in Rochdale afterwards and more work for the courts but we’ve got to debilitate the extremists on both sides. That would stop all of this two tier bollocks morons like Musk keep coming out with. He clearly followed apartheid closely in his native South Africa https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/01/musk-south-africa-apartheid-chant-malema/# If nothing else, football banning orders are working well, trouble is that the ex-England Travel Club, EDL and Combat 18 boneheads were banned from smashing up Germany’s town and cities this summer at the Euros so they smash up their own instead. Genius.

Immigration was clearly a big driver behind the referendum but even more so was the economic argument of taking back control via levelling up and the promise of moving emphasis away from a multicultural capital. Neither has happened, largely because the Brexit vote was promising things that were very hard to deliver, let alone quickly. The 2019 GE then reinforced that, because as the Conservative pundit Daniel Finkenstein says. Boris was promising big state, levelling up interventionalism in the midlands and north, and small state conservatism in the south, which was already cross about Brexit as it has hit the sectors where their skilled jobs are. Somebody wasn’t going to get what they want, and in the end it was no-one. The only people who did were educated English nats who obsessed about treaties and English exceptionalism. But working people as Phillip Hammond said, didn’t vote to be poorer or for their health service to fall through the floor. History tells us it’s easier to blame someone different to you. And it’s a similar story in a lot of areas in the midlands and north with higher Islamic populations. Young lads getting angry about lack of prospects and not having the manufacturing jobs their grandfathers and in some cases parents had, with austerity then stripping core public services away after the industrial decline 1970s onwards. If immigration fuels the far right, Gaza is fuelling Islamist activists. However, whilst I find them equally as revolting as Robinson’s boneheads, they did get organised and give Labour a few blows on the chin in the GE, taking one likely cabinet ministers’ seat, nearly taking Streeting’s and another, plus Phillips. Their intimidating behaviour was widely condemned and onerous. I’m not keen on TUs but pre-1979 it was a way of collectively organising and giving working people a voice, and it left a long-term void. I’ve seen plenty of comments on here about different treatment, two tier policing which is nonsense. The cops struggled equally in Harehills and post-Southport, as most forces would. Both have been widely condemned cross-party. Harehills was no better, social workers are entitled to go about their duties without violence and intimidation. There will be some stiff sentences arising. On the Manchester thing, which has provided some of the fuel, the GMP are waiting on more information before confirming the exact charges. As with Harehills, if you hit or attack a copper seriously, the sentence is going to punitive. Always has, always will. Finally, people forget the emotions swirling around a tragedy like Southport. It makes all of our hearts cry, it’s just appalling. The parents of the victims need time to put their children to rest now with their lives never the same again, without morons following a far right leader sunning himself in Cyprus grinning as he tweets more misinformation, or masked Islamists in Bolton shouting Allu Akbar. Fuck extremists of all types. But if working class communities want core public services back, want thriving economies again, get organised and put pressure on the main parties to prioritise what’s important. I’m sure the fact more austerity is coming won’t have helped. But don’t think Reform are the answer, becuase their economic strategy was x10 worse than Truss’s as a radical free market clusterfuck.

I’m a Lib Dem voter but even I know your penultimate sentence is incorrect about Harehills and I don’t think a huge amount of Labour https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/yvette-cooper-condemns-leeds-riot/ If disaffected white blokes - which they mostly are - think Robinson has a grain of truth to him, then they’re even thicker than I thought. This whole thing has been driven by his lies and misinformation about the Southport murders and more over the weekend. Look at his criminal record, the guy can’t even lie in bed straight. The Tory right pushed for the referendum - didn’t deliver on any of it because it couldn’t be without many, many years to do it. Didn’t deliver on levelling up bar some marginal seats which they all lost last month anyway. It’s not a fucking accident that these riots - bar the central London ones - have happened in Brexit dominated areas. They wanted immigration to stop straight away but to re-pivot an economy, a society, one with an ageing population, wasn’t a short-term job. An in/out referendum wasn’t going to help. The new government has boxed itself in - £22bn black hole but as Private Eye says, a £40bn pa black hole from Boris and Frost’s ‘deal’ which they forgot to switch the oven for. Brexit and the premise was snake oil. If you think Reform will help, have a closer look at their economic plans and the IFS’s assessment. Lunacy and far worse than Truss’s even. Guaranteed to fuck over white working communities to new levels and depths.

The fan who put that banner over the lower east saying ‘Mr Blobby In, Branfoot Out’ has finally gotten the first part of their wish, even if it has taken three decades and a new stadium

One person’s perspective. And yes, it shows a significant minority of people can switch ideologies quickly based on exposure to cultural issues. The 2019 election showed that the TU movement of the 1970s and 80s was culturally conservative. James Callaghan was. But the crowds are chanting for Robinson, and it ain’t Derek. Tommy is as far right as Griffin and Tyndall were. People are fed up with lack of access to GPs, key services, lack of pay rises, cost of items every day. 99% of this site will be. But the overwhelming majority aren’t smashing up town centres, community facilities, looting shops, and ignoring the pleas of the Southport victims’ families in response based on deliberate racist misinformation. It’s not much different to the riots around the country of the early 00s where a paediatrician’s got vandalised in Paulsgrove as part of tabloid hysteria about a nonce around every corner after the Soham, Whiting and other cases. Red Army - used up my 3 posts - so responding here. If the ANL were looting and rioting, they’d be called lefties. And understandably so. When it happens during G20 summits, it’s unwashed anarchists. The rioters are being described as far right amongst all mainstream media outlets all around the globe https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/01/uk/southport-attack-disinformation-far-right-riots-intl-gbr/index.html The police forces are describing known ‘faces’ popping up who the football intelligence officers track where they are on England travel club bans and domestic match bans. As for Reeves comments in 2016, she’s on the pulse then. But it’s about a sensible debate about what immigration we need, where domestic skills can improved to reduce need for lower skilled migration and the flow of illegal immigration we don’t want or need. But having an obsession with numbers doesn’t help and Reform’s net zero is bonkers with an ageing population. Duck - immigration, especially illegal immigration, needs dealing with urgently. And we know a key driver behind the referendum result was concern about immigration. But these riots are do with misinformation by far right sources because a UK citizen is black and extremists really want it to be a Muslim to prove a point. Public disorder also tends to ferment after crimes against younger kids, understandable in some ways because they’re innocent and it hits us all hard. I hate what’s happened and the lad should never see freedom again. The priority ought to be supporting the families of the Southport victims not the far right hijacking it against the families express wishes.