CHAPEL END CHARLIE

He was a all time great for us, but Booby Moore gets my vote.

We are a bit of a mystery club aren't we ? We don't even really know for sure the name(s) of the people who own us beyond vague references to the Liebherr family. No one outside the club knows what our transfer budget is likely to be, but it seems to me that there is good reason to believe that a decent level of investment in the club is likely to continue - for the time being. So in the absence of a open dialog between the club and its fanbase then speculation is bound to flourish, and that level of fan & press speculation is the price our owners will have to pay for maintaining their (near) silence.

Capitalism may well be in crisis, but I don't think a return to the 1970's is in order just yet. Mind you, I was watching a programme about how Rolls Royce make their magnificent 'Trent' series jet engines the other day, and it must be said that RR would have disappeared had the state not stepped in and rescued it in the 70's. Given the much reduced state of our manufacturing industry I think we can all agree that that would had been a bad thing.

From reading some of the moaning on here you could be forgioven for thinking that HMG was planning to abolish state sector pensions alltogether ! Don't worry so much all you 'key' workers and associated pen pushers. The facts are that you'll certainly still be getting a much better deal than a great many others in the workforce can ever hope for. According to Hutton you are being asked to pay a mighty 3.2% more (on average) and some of you may even have to work as long as the rest of us will. How (not very) unfair.

I'm not sure if you mean that pensions are affordable for all of us, or merely a public sector elite. In any case that well know right wing radical Lord Hutton certainly doesn't agree it would seem: This is key - it is not just about today, the real question is whether the system is to be affordable in the future. Another good question is how on earth you justify treating one set of (state) workers far better than the private sector bods who must ultimately pay for everything in society.

I wonder how many were really offended by what Clarkson said and how many are just pretending to be offended ? Pretending offence seems to be becoming a popular pastime, if not a career option, in this increasingly po-faced nation that takes even the words of a licensed Court Jester such as Clarkson waaaay too seriously. My love for Paul Merton and Ian Hislop's work on 'HIGNFY' knows no limit, but it has to said that you can get away with leftish satire on the BBC far more readily than its right of centre equivalent can. Those who seek to cleanse our media of anything controversial fully deserve the utterly bland programming such a policy is bound to deliver. By far the funniest thing about that particular edition of 'The One Show' was not what Clarkson said, but rather the look of concealed panic you could see spreading behind the fixed grins of the two pretty, but irredeemably dull, nonentities that present it. Instead of banishing the Jeremy Clarkson's of this world from our screens we should grant them prime time shows and let them vent their spleen to their hearts content - I think I'll write to the BBC and invite them to commission a programme in which Bob Stanhope gets to offend absolutely everybody - now that really would be worth watching.

I would say the better player who replaced him last season - Alex Oxlade Chamberlain - is the lad we could really do with right now.

Lovers of lists might find this link interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Prime_Ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom Attlee and Churchill doing very well I see, and Brown, Eden and Major .... well lets just say not quite as well respected. How long would Lloyd George (and his unorthodox nightlife) have lasted with todays press I wonder ?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16021345

The table still shows we're the top team in this division, and when we're at our best you can quite see why. But football fans are greedy and it would be nice to see us place a real stamp of authority on this division by brushing aside lessor opposition such as Doncaster. Well the truth is that our patchy away form proves that we're not good enough to do that yet. The business end of this season could be a real nail biter ..... I can't wait.

Indeed, this kind of question is a thought crime and the OP should be taken out and shot in front of his family ..... oops

You mean John "we should understand less" Major, the original man promoted beyond his ability ? I'm sure he would have made a acceptable middle manager in a sweet factory, but as Prime Minister of a large trading nation .... I don't think so Edwina.

The competition for 'Worst British Prime Minister' is intense and I feel DC just hasn't done enough as yet. But in the best traditions of the Oscars - and the nominations are: Gordon Brown - He was once in love with a girl called Prudence, but dumped her for some reason and now we're all in the sh1t as a result. John Major - Utterly hopeless, he'd need the assistance of a map to find his own arse. Anthony Eden - He invaded Egypt, uninvaded Egypt, he then went mad and ran away screaming. Harold Wilson - A clever man who managed to achieve almost nothing except promote the Scilly Islands as a holiday destination. Winston Churchill (2nd term) - Suffered a stroke in office, decided not to tell us, and then spent the rest of his term asleep. Neville Chamberlain - Peace in our time with that Mr Hitler, I don't think so Nev. Sir Alex Douglas-Home - And you though Tim-Nice-But-Dim was a fictional character.

I have just finished 'Hitlers Armada' by Geoff Hewitt, which deals with Operation Sealion, the planned Nazi invasion of the UK in the summer of 1940. We all know the legend of that summer don't we - The Few, a handful of heroic pilots of the RAF's Fighter Command won the Battle of Britain in their Spitfires and Hurricanes and saved the nation from the threat of invasion after Dunkirk. Well it turns out that's far from being the full story. The real truth is that Sealion was never a feasible military operation in the first place because of the simple fact that to conduct any such large scale amphibious in the English Channel the Germans would first have had to secure command of the sea - and the Royal Navy might well have objected ! The German Navy that started WWII in September 1939 was a mere fraction of the size of our huge fleet, and even that modest force was significantly reduced by heavy losses in warships sunk and damaged during the invasion of Norway - in particular the 10 vital destroyers sunk at Narvik. In addition to this severe problem the Kriegsmarine had no specialized landing craft at hand or even practical experience in conducting operations of this type. So to mount Sealion, the Germans would have needed to transport large numbers of troops across the channel in a hastily assembled ragtag collection of rubber boats, coasters and hundreds of river barges converted into ad hoc landing craft towed by tugs. With little or no effective escort, slow moving convoys of these barges would have surely been effectively defenseless against attack by the swarms of destroyers and cruisers the RN had amassed to guard our shores. What about the Luftwaffe some might say ? Well, the record shows that although some ships had been lost to air attack, the Luftwaffe never actually did enough to stop the RN conducting operations, so the (daylight) prospects of the Luftwaffe effectively protecting the invasion fleet from attack were remote to say the least, and during the hours of darkness it would have been completely useless. How about long range artillery on the French coast shelling our ships ? Impressive to look at, but the record shows they never actually hit a single ship during the entire war. So even had the Luftwaffe somehow won the Battle of Britain, we would still have been safe from invasion as long as the Royal Navy still existed. A conclusion that may challenge a well entrenched nation myth and enrage fans of the RAF, but the author makes his case powerfully and to this lifelong student of WWII the conclusions drawn seem controversial but irrefutable.

Headlines generated, humourless trade unionists ruthlessly baited, and (most importantly) Xmas DVD sells through the roof - that would be mission accomplished methinks Mr Clarkson

Guly has done alright for us and he's well worth his place. However, should the rest of this season go as well as our start, then I fear that next season, against better/sharper opposition, we're going to get punished for all those misplaced passes and lazy tackels that to be fair are a part of his game. But that's a problem for another day.

Ha ! My first job on leaving school was to work for Poole Council - if only I knew then as a daft 16 year old what I know now as a knackered 48 year old then you can rest assured I'd have stayed there.

2008 - That would be before the sh1t really hit the fan when Lehman Brothers went t1ts up so of little relevance now. Again, as for those working in the wealth creating sector of society being far less important than those who are fortunet enough to work for the state .. well I'll be taking that as yet more evidence of the 'God given right' to better treatment that some/many state employees feel they're entitled to. Do try to comprehend, if you have the intellect, why so many ordinary working people find that find of unbarably smug attitude insufferable.

I asked our army of hard done by state workers on here while ago where our Government should find the money to maintain their comparatively generous pensions arraignments (in perpetuity presumably) should come from. While we still await a cogent reply to that request, let's look at some options: Do you lot think we should just abandon any attempt to reduce our spiraling national debt and borrow even more ? Perhaps you feel this nation (despite all the evidence to the contrary) is massively under taxed somehow and it's about time the rest of us to payed up ? Maybe we should complete the dismantling of our armed forces started in the last defence review and give the money to you instead ? Should we keep the armed forces and use them to invade Switzerland and raid their Banks ? The truth is that everyone is suffering, and believe it or not, there are plenty of low paid private sector workers who are much worse off than you are. Despite the cast iron sense of entitlement to superior treatment that obviously comes with a state employment contract, you really can't escape the economic whirlwind that is engulfing much of Europe I'm afraid, and any number of strike days is not going to change that one iota.

I would like to deposit something in the Pompey bucket - I won't say what it is, but it's not legal tender.

The chap who sits next to me constantly frets about our defending, even when we're 3 goals up with 85 minutes played. But instead of moaning about our moaners, I just accept that this kind of endless worrying is the normal state of mind for the average Saints fan. We don't go to football matches just to have fun and enjoy ourselves you know !

My friend, if we are to compare tales of hardship then I'm only just earning a tad above the legal minimum wage, I've got no workplace pension at all, and I've received 3 (small) pay rises in the last 9 years - and lets just say the prospects for the next 12 months don't exactly look too rosy either. I know there are plenty on here (but not you I trust) who view the poor as the authors of their own misfortunes, but it's been my life experience that a working man theses days just has to take what he can get. So the pain out there is universal, and although I can only agree with you that every working person should have a decent wage and retirement income, in reality that happy day seems further off than ever I'm afraid. In my view it's not sustainable for this county that the gap that already exists between low payed private sector workers and their better off public sector equivalents should just continue indefinitely. I say again, if we don't cut public spending then where else is the money coming from ?

I've no interest in defending the murkier practices of the financial industry as that would be an attempt to defend the indefensible, But it seems to me that the expansion of the state that we saw under the last government was, in large part, funded via the huge profits generated by the City of London. I don't remember very many public sector workers complaining about that at the time. But the 'blame game' gets us nowhere because we are where we are. If we're not to join the long list of Eurozone countries in economic crisis and burden our children's children with this mess we've made, then the truth is that government debt and current spending has to be brought under control. If we don't economize on public spending then where the hell else is the money going to come from ?

Of course dinner ladies .. etc aren't to blame for the recession, and neither are ordinary working people in the private sector for that matter. What is true however is that all the pain from our current situation just can't be carried on the overburdened shoulders of private enterprise yet again. Any decent economist will tell you that the public sector in this country has grown far too large for the good of the productive economy as a whole, and (as this thread amply demonstrates) many of the workers within it still see themselves as having some God given right to better treatment than other working people, people who (much like myself) are very often significantly worse off than they are. I don't blame people at all for striking in a attempt to protect their privileges as it is clearly in their self interest to do so, it is not however in the national interest that they should get their way. As Bod Dylan once said: the times they are a changing .......

This is a very good post, and as far as I'm aware the first time I've ever seen a public sector employee on here accept that a great number of low paid workers in private industry are even worse off than they will ever be. A situation that will no doubt continue long after this dispute is all done & dusted - whatever the outcome.