Turkish

Same as Reading. I worked in Reading back in 2009-13, the season they pipped us to the title. Barely spoke to a Reading fan for the first year or so but then when they were top of the championship suddenly everyone that had been Chelsea, Liverpool or Spurs were Reading fans. They were everywhere and took great delight in giving me heaps of shit when they beat us 3-1 at St Marys. After lots of excitement about being able to get Premier league season tickets for about 300 quid they all soon stopped talking about Reading again and went back to supporting their old teams

We moved to a much bigger house nearly 5 years ago. There was nothing wrong with our old house, 3 good sized bedrooms, semi detached with nice neighbours, okay area, drive, garage. The only small issue was as i work from home a lot i worked in the dining room so got quite busy when everyone was home. Had a relatively small mortgage and quite bit of equity on it which meant we had loads of disposable income at the time. Then when they built a new build estate and were offering great deals like stamp duty paid and upgraded packages we decided to move with a much bigger mortgage. Still affordable and and it's a lovely house in a nice area, but soon as we moved everything exploded, council tax, mortgage rates, inflation and general cost of living sky rocketed. In hindsight moving was a big mistake, obviously didn't know what was about to happen but had we stayed put we'd have only had a few years left on the mortgage at the old house and the mortgage rate increase impact would have been negligible, im just glad we didn't so what some people told us to do, which was go for the most expensive house you can afford, there was another 2-3 available which were 100k more and certain people were saying we should have gone for those ones, would have got the mortgage for it but if we'd done that i'd be fucked by now.

Its the younger ones i feel for. I'll be alright and find away, either cut back on other stuff or if the worst comes to it got a decent amount of equity so can sell up and downsize, there is always a way. The likes of your daughter who are just starting out are the ones who get clobbered by it, lower income, had to battle to just buy their first place and now getting squeezed ever further. When i was about 14 my dads mate who wasn't a wealthy man by any means told me and i never forgot it that if you can keep your mortgage payments at 25% of your income you'll always be able to afford it. Kids today have no chance of that whatsoever. It's a market that can very, very easily collapse and leave thousands of people in the shit and none of it is their fault.

Sounds perfect, when can we move there?

Our five year fixed ends in May. We got the deal just before rates started to rise so looking at a big hike in monthly payments. fully agree with your last point, increased borrowing, cuts, ever rising taxes, rising cost of living, rising inflation everyone being squeezed for every penny, it does feel like there is no end to it with it only going to get worse

No it won’t we need more tax, we’ve got black hole, climate change, the NHS, the list goes on. We can sort it but we all need to pay more tax, just pay more then it’ll all be okay. By the way did you know your mortgage payments are going to go up by at least 10% soon yes that’s right through no fault of yours you’ll pay loads more for the same thing, and if you want it to be warm in winter you need to pay 25% more. But pay more taxes and we can sort it for you. Honestly we can

I remember we were linked with Matt Jansen everyday for months. Each article claiming the deal was close but of course in true saints style he went to Blackburn instead. We still missed out on our targets when the internet was invented

LMFAO, that is hilarious and SO original. Oh hold on, what's that pain? Oh there goes another rib, brilliant.

Well it's monday to friday so a working week rather than a full one. Got a few advisory boards and meetings but should have an afternoon and couple of evenings free. Will do the Acropolis but for a city with so much history there doesnt appear to be a huge amount to see as opposed to the likes of Rome.

I’m off to Athens in October on BUSINESS. Going to be there for week. Anyone been? Anything worth seeing?

He's very underrated. Hard working but also got a bit about him. He's not a get you out of your seat player like Scienza is but he's effective can find a pass and a goal threat. Like him a lot, probably starts ahead of Fellows at the moment

I can! It was Teamtalk. A mate of mine was working for them at the time so he told me about it so looked on there. Shortly after someone at work told me about the old saintsforever site and here i am still posting bollocks and spending far too much time on it 27 or so years later FFS

ha, we had a similar thing when we watched it. My son said, what people used to have phones stuck on the wall? Like it was the most archaic thing he'd ever seen.

So that’s Larin and Matsuki both having very long flights right before the skates game 😫