Lord Duckhunter

I'm all for people leaving early, if more of you did it I wouldn't have to wait so long to get out at the end.

I have 35 Saints tattoo's. I wear a stupid red and white top hat and clowns feet. I am covered in badges and die my hair red and white. I only bath once a year and arrive at the game 10 mins into the match as I'm getting ****ed in the pub. I'm so focused on the game that I p**s myself where I stand if the games on. Not only am I the bestest Saints fan, but I am the bestest in the world.

Firstly, well done to the Murdoch press for exposing this. Secondly, donations have bought influence in the past, Bernie Ecclestone will tell you that. But, perhaps in this case cameron is a "pretty stright kind of guy" and it was just a meal. Thirdly, They're all at it, whether it's cash for Questions during Major's time, cash for honours during New Labours or now this. Because all political parties get greedy and cant seem to behave themselves why does that mean the taxpayer has to fund them even more ( I believe they get some funding now)?

John Lowe .

Last time we were promoted into top flight, we finished 2nd and Spurs 3rd. We stayed up for 27 years and Spurs have been up there ever since. Bolton won the league and lasted 1 season before being relegated. I'm sure they'd have swapped their "league win" for 27 years.

Yesterday and at Millwall, in fact the only games I've missed in the last 10 were Hull & Ipswich. Not that that's got anything to do with anything. I still dont understand why you feel that having a Season ticket should guarantee your mate priority over other non season ticket holders. It wasn't as if there was any loyalty system in place for Cov tickets. It was on the web site, buy Barnsley or/and Ipswich and get Cov one at the same time. Some of us did this and have Cov tickets, the rest go on general sale.

But there are already laws in place that are nor being enforced. It is an offense to serve someone who is drunk, there are anti social behaviour laws which cover drunk and disorderly. I would even bring in laws regarding public consumption like some states in America have. If drink is so bad that we have to raise the price, why can we buy and drink it around the clock? Extending the licencing laws causes as many issues as cheap supermarket drink. If we wnat to encourage people into bars, then lower the tax on pub's that close at 12.

An interesting article here. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15265317 I tend to agree with most of what she says. As I've got older I've had a more European approach to drink. I've always loved drink and in my younger days I would go out with the sole intention of getting drunk. Now I go out to have a drink and sometimes drink too much.There is a subtle difference, and I also try to act as sober as possible whilst half cut. It was strange but when you're younger there is some sort of badge of honour with being drunk. At 21 if someone had said "I saw you staggering down the road last night", I would have felt quite proud, now at 48 I would be a bit ashamed. I've always tried to bring my children up with drink around. One of them hardly touches a drop and another gets hammered every weekend, so there has to be more to it than the family enviorment. Alcopops dont help, when I was young you drank a few pints and were then sick. These drinks means youngsters can go on and on drinking. I used to drink in pubs where the landlords would keep an eye on you. They knew we were underage but would step in if we'd had enough, same with the older locals, they would tell us to go home once we'd had our fill. Try doing that nowadays and you'ld end up in a scrap. Putting the price up is a bizzare policy, when every other policy has been about relaxing the laws. The message seems to be "drink is so bad for you, that we've set a minimum price, but provided you can pay it, you can drink all night". Surely the long openning hours have as much bearing on behaviours as the price?

But tax take also doubled once the highest rate was lowered, proving that it was more of 1, than 2. The emotion should be taken out of tax rates, they should not be used for hammering the rich, no matter how much people want to. It should all be about how much money they bring in. If lowering the top tax rate to 30% brings in rich people from abroad, stops people like David Milliband & Ken Livingstone avioding it (with perfectly legal income shifting schemes) and raises more money for the State, then surely we should do that. Setting tax rates based on anything other than what £'s it generates is stupid. Labour bought the 50% rate in for the last 57 days of their 13 years in charge. It was a purely political trap they hoped the Torys would fall in to. Is that any sort of way to set our tax rates.

Bercows wife is an old trout if you ask me, but Gordon clearly wants to do to her, what he did to our economy............

So your mate should get priority over everyone else, just because you have a Season Ticket?

Interseting watching This Week last night. During his annihilation of some young lefty Andrew Neil brought up this fact; When the top tax rate was 98% the richest 1% of the population paid 5% of all income tax raised. When Lawson dropped it to 40% the richest 1% paid 30% of the income tax collected. (It is now 27%.) He also said that tax take doubled and in some years trebled once rates were lowered. Lawson's lowering the tax rate led to the richest paying more into the state, yet the Labour party kicked up such a fuss that the commons sitting announcing it had to be suspended.

Cable said that the 50% rate was "largely symbolic" and as Dune said earlier was mainly used by Brown/Darling to box the Torys into a corner. The dropping of the rate to 45% is the Torys doing exactly the same thing. It is symbolic and designed to nod towards lower taxes. Labour for all their protests will not go into an election promising to raise income tax. Even for the rich, tax rises are electrol suicide. Osborne has been quite clever in delaying it for a year. Some people will defer wages or bonus to pay at 45%, and this will boost the take next year and reduce it this year. He can then come out and show figures which will show 45% brought more in than 50%. I fully expect it to be reduced back to 40% within 2 years. The whole tax arguement is looking at things from the wrong way round in my opinion. The rates for everyone would be a lot lower if Govt's stopped wasting our money.Everyday in our lives we look for value for money, yet we hand money over to the state and it wastes it over and over again. We seem to have political classes that look at tax from the point of view of "how much can we get away with taking off people, and still get elected". The rule of thumb should be, "what's the minimum we need to fund the things a state needs to do?".

What my wife cant get her head round is the timing, when she needs to go she goes. I dont know if it's just me, but I like to try before going to work, and before going out just in case I get called short.

My old man always used to go into the toilet with the paper, same time every day. I think it was the only peace and quiet he ever got. After about 25 mins he would emerge from the toilet and with the rest of the family sat around eating breakfast would say, "anyone want a read". Nobody ever did and it put me off reading the paper for years. As soon as I was old enough I used to buy my own paper.

Wow, I hardly think £83 per year is going to dent their retirement plans too much. Most of their "earnt money" will be equity as their homes shot up in value, and their endowments gave them a windfall. Some of them got rich, not on the back of their hard work, but of buying a house at the right time.Coupled with their final salary pensions, it is a generation that is richer than the one it followed and certainly richer than the ones that will follow. The bastards also had the best music, surely that's worth £83 alone. Why should someone who has benefitted from all the booms and all the above, benefit from better tax arrangements than a working man of 35 with 2 kids? These 65 year olds are not the 65 year olds from my youth. They are not old Granny's burning their furniture to stay warm, and rocking in their chairs waiting for the end.

I wouldn't cry too much over this "Granny Tax" either. Paul Johnson head of the IFS says that "poor pensioners will not be affected", and it is "a relatively modest tax increase on a group hitherto well sheltered from tax and benefit changes." This is a group of people that saw massive increases in their property values, final salary pensions and massive surpluss' from their endowments. I'm sure they could afford a £90 a year tax rise, perhaps some of them could even start paying bus fares.

All the stuff the Torys are bringing in during this tough times, should have been done by Labour during the "boom" years. Welfare cap, Family benefit taken off the rich, icreasing the rate we start paying tax, a push to get people off the sick and back into work,and more importantly stopping people's benefit for those who refuse to work. There were jobs about, I had to employ Polish to do my minimum wage jobs. There are sections of our society that refuse to work and there are sections who think that we owe them a living. There are young people who seem to think that hard menial work is beneath them, that unless they are given the job that they want, they will not work.Sir Terry Leahy used to stack shelves in Tesco, but that's now beneath some of the Xfactor generation. Labour should have sorted these people out when there were jobs available, but that's just not the Labour way. The pattern of my working life has always been the same. Labour spend too much and run out of money, the Tories clear up the mess, becoming unpopular in the process.From the response to every money saving measure, and their continued call for "investment" it appears the party are still stuck in their ways and the circle will continue for our next generation.

She's a nutter

I can't believe that anyone could fail to be moved after listening to the guy who ran onto the pitch. I dont really believe in miracles, but this is pretty close. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/17460781

Here we go, exactly what I wrote earlier. Rachel Reeves was asked if Labour would reverse the 5% cut at the next election. Reeves- "we wouldn't have cut it", Interviwer- "but would you reverse it", Reeves-"we wouldn't have cut it" Interviewer-"I asked you if you will reverse it" Reeves- " if the elction was tomorrow, we would". Interviewer-"But you know the election isn't tomorrow, will you reverse it at the next election". Reeves " I can't comment on future tax plans". Just heard on PM that the IFS have said Osborne was right about cutting the rate. They're just playing politics with it.

They see the tax system as a way to punish people, not maximise revenue.They still want the pips to squeak. Labour put NI up for everyone, why didn't they increase the top rate of tax instead? Because they know full well that just increasing tax does not bring in more money. By the next election we will know how much revenue the top rate will bring in. Peoploe can then vote accordingly, my betting is that Labour will queitly drop their oppostition to this and will not go into the next election promising to increase tax.

Like every budget it will take a few days for the full impact to be known. The top rate of tax coming down is a step in the right direction, but I think 45% is still too high. I am a great believer in the Laffer curve and that lower tax rates generate more tax revenue. Thatcher brought taxes down and the revenue ended up with more money. I thought this particular arguement was won in the 90's, when Labour kept tax rates at Tory levels, but politics being politics, Milliband is trying to distort the arguement.If he believed that a 50% rate would bring in more money, why did Labour increase NI contributions for everyone, instead of increasing the top rate? Hopefully by the election we will have figures that will show how much the 50% bought in and how much the 45% is bringing in. Will Labour go into the next election promising to raise it back, bearing in mind they said it was temporary. Child benefit should not be paid to people on large incomes IMO. Raising of tax thresholds is a good thing, although I see Osborne has caught Gordon Brown's fiscal drag bug. Great to see a statement being sent to everyone showing where our tax goes. I would like to see tax and NI combined, so people can really see the amount Govt takes from us. Interesting to note the the OBR say that the richest 1%, account for 27% of total tax revenues. No doubt the BBC are lining up nurses, dinner ladies and lollipop men to moan on about how poor the Tory's are making them. And the lead item on the 6 o clock news will be the 5% cut, which the OBR estimates will cost 100 million, chicken feed in terms of GDP and will be cost neutral when the other measures are taken into account.

My mate works for the press and he told me a while back that we are "difficult" to deal with, and that Cortese was awkard. I didn't really want to get into it with him, as despite (or maybe because of ) being friends for nearly 40 years, we do tend to ***** at each other a bit. I wasn't sure whether he was saying it just to prompt a reaction from me, as after a few beers I tend to have nothing said against my team. Being a typical press guy he does tend to think that he has a right to know everything and that people should fawn over him and answer anything he asks, so it could be a question of Cortese just not wanting to know the press and not playing the "game".

It's great to travel to games in expectation rather than hope, but the Premiership is the place to be. I've enjoyed this season, but my nipper cant remember the Premiership days,so would love it for him and other nippers. It would be great for people like Lambert, Lallana, and not forgetting Kelvin who turned down West Ham to stay with us. Would be great for all involved with the takeover as well, NC and ML's family.