Whitey Grandad

They are called 'tokes'.

Yes, 'on the whole', 'all things being equal', 'comparable jobs', all that sort of thing. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=285 'The percentage difference between the median level of full-time earnings in the public sector (£539 per week) and the private sector (£465 per week) widened over the year to April 2009, following annual increases of 3.1 per cent and 1.0 per cent respectively.' But then there is this one: http://opinion.publicfinance.co.uk/2010/01/public-vs-private-pay-no-comparison/ In reality, the days of the public sector being 'underpaid' but having better job security and pensions have passed. Now they are not underpaid.

That ceased to be the case some time ago. Public sector pay is higher than the private sector.

This is very poor commercial practice, in my opinion.

I salute all those who took part in such an audacious and heroic operation. I've not been much involved with these battlefields although I have crossed the Pegasus bridge many times, but here are just a couple of incidents: A couple of years ago I went over on the fast catamaran to Ouistreham and as I was going down the steps to the car deck a fellow who looked the same age as me looked out of the window and said 'Hmm, a bit different from the last time I was here'. He spent D-Day sitting in a LST that was stuck sitting on the beach waiting for the next tide. It was the first time that he had been back since the war. A fortnight later we took a day trip to Arromanches and the area on a Sunday and visited the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer. It was full of French families walking quietly amongst the graves and was very moving and gratifying.

Try going into the Megastore and asking for one of these kits:

Not after that sitter he missed at West Brom.

That's what I'm aiming at. If they've paid their taxes when they earned it then I'm happy for them to keep their net earnings.

The question should be 'how did they become billionaires without paying a lot of tax?'

You forgot to add the NI !

Are you advocating a 'wealth tax'?

No country ever got wealthy by charging high taxes, and no billionaire is going to hang around paying high taxes when they can live where they like.

Some people still don't get it. I was doing a football quiz the other day and someone said they thought it was unfair for the club to be punished with a points deduction after they had gone into administration. He said that they were being punished twice. I soon put him straight.

I don't think it does, as it is written. Are you sure you've got it right?

Isn't 'not voting' in effect the same as voting against? Doesn't the CVA have to be approved by 75% of the creditors in total, not just those who voted?

Or made to pay for 'bribing' their electorate, like Dame Shirley Porter.

Ta, every little helps.

Great goal, I don't think the keeper had a chance. he would have had to have been standing on his goal-line. He only had two seconds to get across and save it.

I've just skimmed through it because I'm off on holiday tomorrow, but it does have some twisted logic in places and often muddles the distinction between public employees' benefits and state hand-outs. You are right to point out that the current contributions are paying for current pensions so I'm sorry VFTT, your 6.5% is not going towards your own pension. The problem is not necessarily the size of the pensions but the quantity of them, and they are all 'unfunded'. My gripe is that when Brown raided the private pensions and brought the whole system crashing down, there was not an equivalent contribution from the public sector. I don't know where this retire at 65 comes from, I know lots of ex Local Authority people who have taken retirement earlier than that.

Oops, I almost forgot. There's one other big target and that is Public Sector pensions. Enormous sums have been taken from the private sector and maybe it's time to make the Public Sector employees start to contribute something towards theirs.

As a wise man once said, 'if I were you I wouldn't start from here'. I don't pretend to have the answers, but if we carry on like this we shall be spending all our income on interest payments before very long. Inflation is the obvious answer, but that wipes out savings.

That is the contentious part. The government has claimed that it is off balance but the liabilities are still there, as we saw with Railtrack.

From the cash flow p0int of view, at the moment it's something like £150,000,000,000 excess spending over receipts per year. Our interest payments at the moment are £43,000,000,000 per year. I don't think anybody has been proposing cuts of that order. From the balance sheet, there are also the PFI liabilities that should be included.

I think it's a very noble of Avram to sacrifice this wonderful job of his in order to save the club a few pennies.

It's good to see that someone is taking it seriously. (not)