Whitey Grandad

And when you sell you will only get a refund of whole months but when you buy a new one you have to pay the full amount.

And mis-hit the ball into the goal, I suppose? Edit: does this swear filter need hyphens in everything? What's wrong with mi****?

You're ignoring the number of contributors who don't live long enough to collect their pension. My wife's sister at 54, my business partner at 64, my colleague at 63, my dentist at 55, I could go on and on... The life expectancies you quote are for different sets of people. The contributions that they made when they started work at 16 (15 in some cases)weere sufficient at the time. The confusion now is that there are different classes of pensioners, those who contributed all their lives and have never lived off the state, those who have never contributed anything yet still get a pension and a whole range of people in between.

It is to do with you if you vote for the wrong party.

Yes, we've been through all this before. Going back over half a century these payments were 'earned' by NI contributions and the amount you received was dependent on these. Then successive governments have gradually tried to integrate them into the general welfare budget and people like Pillock Brown made things even worse by intoducing credits. The fact remains that when contributions began they were not classed as welfare. If only these contributions had been properly invested instead of being raided to pay current government spending then the older generation might have a better living standard. As far stealing from pension funds goes there's no difference between the government and Robert Maxwell.

He wasn't talking to you

State pensions are not welfare. In most cases they have been paid for by contributions. Successive governments have tried to lump them together but that only applies for those who have never contributed over their working life.

Government spending is determined several years in advance. Borrowing was always going to rise no matter who was on power. It would have risen a lot more under Labour and less if we didn't have a coalition.

It's a different world, completely different. Nation states are a relatively modern invention and are now being superceded by supra-national companies.

Very sad.

Well said.

Yep. Yellow card unless it prevents a goal scoring opportunity. In this case he didn't because the ball ended in the net so it should have been a goal and a yellow card. I haven't actually seen the incident so a reference would be useful.

Indeed. All we can hope for is that we get those who do the least damage.

The design and layout must have been approved at an early stage and there are regular inspections. It would need an,almighty balls up but not impossible.

As I always say, you can't generalise...

Indeed he did, at the Dell against Leeds, I think. I was there

A wink is not necessarily a smile.

He'll drop it.

No, but it's offensive to little people.

Me too.

Me too. It means I have to entertain the missus

Despite what we may think of referees they are not that easily conned. There is usually a little shirt tug or arm grab that is not easy for us to see from the stands. Having said that, these professionals spend hours on the training ground practising how to go to ground and make it look like they have been fouled.

That may not have been tactical, maybe Tadic was feeling some tightness, or something.

You'd think he would have learned to run without falling over by now

I appreciate what you're saying, but there is a danger that we can over-analyse things. In my opinion six games are too few to be significant (in the statistical sense). In games won by an odd goal you only need a couple of instances of hitting the woodwork instead of scoring or a penalty not given and you're looking at a swing of a few points.