Lord Duckhunter

I think Ringo would go down well at Festivals. A little help from my friends, indeed.In 10 versions of his all star band, he's has some seriously great musicans. His first band was Joe Walsh Nils Lofgren Dr. John Billy Preston Rick Danko Levon Helm Jim Keltner Clarence Clemons Would have given my right arm to see that line up.

Labour have been sucking up to RM, since Kinnock lost the 92 election. They're as bad as the Torys when it comes to News International.

I can't believe the lack of ambition at the club and amongst our supporters. Surely we should be signing loads of players on high paying long term contracts, after all it worked before with Rasiak, Skacel,II and Saganowski. Talking of Saganowski, do you remember how we spent some long summer days urging the board to make his signing permanent, to show some ambition and sign him? What about Skacel, how many pages did his transfer take up, but luckily we got him in the end..................

I'ts always been in the British people's hands to ruin Murdoch. Nobody marches people at gun point to buy the Sun, NOTW or Times, Sky does not collect it's money under threat of being sent to jail. I've never understood how such rags as TOTW and The Sun are are best selling papers. Surely we should be ashamed as a nation that they are. This should be the tipping point, the moment that people refuse to buy these papers anymore, but it wont be. Thousends of chavs will pop up the shops Sunday morning for their fill of gossip and t1ts.

My old man knew a builder who took out a £17,000 mortgage in 1970. My old man always tells the story, that all his mates thought he was mad, all shook their head wondering how on earth he was going to pay it all back. 25 years later in 1995, £17,000 was peanuts in terms of mortgage repayments.

I read once that in the 70's it cost the same to go to football as visit the cinema. Now it costs £8 for cinema and god knows what for football.

The only Conspiracy about 9/11 that I believe is the one involving the plane that the "passengers" crashed. I'm convinced that the US Govt blew it out of the sky to prevent it crashing into 3 mile island or wherever, and they then invented this passenger revolt story. I base this theory on no fact whatsoever but I'm hoping the BBC will commission me to make a programme about it.

Mortgages were pretty tough to get for my Fathers generation. You had to have an account with the Building Society and had to go cap in hand to be interviewed by the Manager.People genuinely went without stuff to save a deposit, which was still high even in those days. There was also issues around remortgaging, you had to provide estimates and receipts to prove it was for house improvements. There was not the easy credit around that there has been the past 25 years. However there was an upside once you got on the ladder.House prices exploded, inflation and some massive % pay increases through the 70's meant that when my father came to pay off his mortgage, it was not a great deal of money in real terms.They also had many years of MIRAS,and theere used to be tax relief on endowments as well. There was also the extra money a lot of them got from their endowments. Also when he reached the age that he had some money to invest or save, along came Thatcher's privatisations. All in all he is now better off than I will be in 26 years time, when I reach his age. Therefore in purely ecomonic terms I would say that the BB's, did have the best times, provided they owned their own house, had an endowment mortgage and a company pension.

I saw Neil Diamond on a BBC 4 prgramme and was surprised how humble a bloke he appeared to be . I had heard that Billy Joel gave a good show. The best I've seen were Paul Simon, Paul McCartney and Johnny Cash, but Ringo was up there in terms of having a good night out. The worst was chuck Berry, did half an hour then ****ed off with no encore.

I would think that his agent is advising him. He's more than likely touting him round to see if he can get a "better" deal somewhere else.

John Lennon once said that although there were a few hip people in the 60's, most of the country was still stuck in the 1950's and full of squares. Blokes went to work with bowler hats on, and women stayed at home to look after the kids. Free love and the swinging sixties missed my Father as he was too busy trying to feed 3 children and save for a house. If you were normal, wealthy and well eductated then the baby boomers did have a great time growing up. However, if you were gay, a single mother, black or poor then things weren't exactly a bed of roses. A few good tunes hardly make uop for some of the **** you had to put up with.

The only decent boy band was The Monkees.

Roofing, that is real men's work. I think I would last about 3 hours nowadays before dropping dead. I did it for a few years about 22 years ago and glad I got out. Nowadays there seems to be a lot more H&S around it, but it wasn't always like that. Fell off a roof once, the feeling of slidding down the tiles, unable to stop myself flying off the edge, is one of the most frightening things I've ever felt.I was lucky, broken wrist and a load of bumps and brusies.

You try and tell a 23 year old that he's an idiot for not planning for 2058, it's not an easy thing to get through to them.

That's only applicable if people are already saving for a pension. How do we make people save in the first place? My oldest has quite a decent job at Sunseekers, but he cant see the point in saving towards his retirement. He has bought his own place and is pretty switched on, but does not save a penny towards his retirement. In 50 years time, it's his kids who will be paying for that.

I just received my Benefit statement 2011 from my pension scheme and it's depressing reading. Even though I have a final salary one (which most of the private sector dont), a lot of my pay is made up with bonus and allowences for shift work. Neither is deemed pensionable ( I dont know if that's law, or my schemes rules), it means my pension is hardly worth a ****. I dread to think what some of the lower paid with stakeholder or DC pensions are going to do.We'll get by because Mrs Duck has an NHS pension and her father is quite wealthy, but millions of others wont be so fortunate. There is going to be a full blown pension crisis when my age group start to retire. My Father had a decent pension, and also an endowment that after paying off the mortgage gave him a £17,000 surplus. Mine wont even pay off my mortgage, the best case senerio is a £14,000 decifit.Of course that's not the Govt's problem and I understood the risks when I took it out, but just highlighting that previous generations benefitted from decent pensions, endowments that grew and grew and unbelievable house price rises.What is our generation going to rely on, Govt handouts? Having read through this thread and many things on TV, I'm convinced that we need to address this issue, whether Private or public sector. The Govt needs to "bribe" people to save for their future. Whether it's tax breaks or some sort of "save a £1 and the Govt will match it" sort of scheme for the low paid, but in the long term the less money pensioners have, the more future generations will have to contribute, and we'll have this debate over and over again.

Well they had Nick Griffin on, so anythings possible.

Come on, even you would surely? You could get her to cry "no,no,no" and bang her handbag on your headboard during sex.............

Last week my mate dragged me along to see the legend that is Ringo Starr. Although a big Beatles fan, I was slightly apprehensive about what sort of show it would be. After all he never had the best voice, was now 72, and hadn't had a hit for 40 years. Having seen Paul McCartney before I just went along basically because of who he was, and to share a few drinks with an old mate. However, he gave a fantastic show. He had a great band with him, including Edgar Winter & Rick Derringer and some guy from Mr Mister. After a few jars we were up singing along to "songs from that other group I was in", as well as his early solo stuff. He must be the only bloke alive who can get away with a Yellow Submarine sing song at a rock and roll concert. I came away not only having seen a living legend, but having seen a bloody good show (which at £60 was hardly a cheap night out) Has anyone else been to see a "name" and been surprised how good they were,or even someone you've been looking forward to seeing, but ended up dissapointed. In these days of tribute bands, is it better to see the real thing, or not bother and leave them in your memory bank.

Perhaps he could combine the two. Go out and get smashed Thurs afternoon and then try and pick up some leftie student bird from the audience (some of them look fit). Either that or try and bang one of the guests. That misearble old cow Polly Toynbee looks like she could do with a good ****ing. Or he may get lucky and Caroline Flint might be on the panel, she's well worth a go.........

Great point. As a country we look too "central" for our solutions to problems. It's all about "what are the Govt doing about this or that". Having lived in the States and seen local politics at its best (granted sometimes they go OTT, with some of the propositions), it's something I strongly believe we should move towards.The problem is that the council's will always blame Local Government Finance Settlement's for cuts, bad service or all manner of other woes.It ends up with local councils looking like Administrator's rather than policy makers, and therefore there's no point in people voting. If real power was devolved down to local people, not only would you get a higher calibre of councillors, but local people's vote would really make a difference. It's been travelling the wrong way for years, but was speeded up under Thatcher.A whole raft of measures were put in place to try and curb left wing councils and people like Derek Hatton. My view is that if the people of Liverpool want Hatton and the ilk running them, that's up to them, not some Tory sat in Whitehall. I would give local councils tax raising powers and more control over spending. At the moment we're just tinkering around the edges, because none of the 3 main parties want to give up any oppurtunity to "shape" our lives. Local people should run more of our lives with central Govt just running the stuff that needs joining together.

Having seen some of the scruffy barstewards marching I shudder to think what sort of education these people are giving our kids. It's hardly Goodbye Mr Chips............ I just hope Cameron and Clegg have the balls to stand up and be counted. Grocer Heath shied away from confronting the unions and I have a feeling Cameron will do the same. I find it that strange that Red Ed, aligned himself with the anti cuts march, but wont do the same for the teachers. Perhaps this goes to show how out of touch these teachers are over this issue...

Exactly. The Brothers will be wondering why they parachuted Ed in above the heads of the MP's, who wanted David.

But according to some on here, the public support these strikes. We are not talking about miners or British Leyland here, we are talking about Teachers, and yet the leader of the Labour movement can't bring himself to back them. He knows, what most of us know, that these strikes are unpopular with the British public and that it is people protecting their own generous pension benefits.It's not a just and reasonable reason to strike.