Lord Duckhunter

Fantastic to see the great man getting a bit of publicity, thanks to that old queen Elton( who personally I cant stand).How on earth the Rock and Roll Hall of fame can continue to ignore him is unbelieveable. Since seeing his performance of Jumping Jack Flash in The Concert for Bangladesh I've been a great fan of Leon's and he's spent too many years in the wilderness. The hippy looking Father Christmas you may have seen lately played with Ike and Tina Turner, Joe Co cker, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Jerry Lee Lewis, BB King,The Beach Boys, george Harrison,Herb Albert and Frank Sinatra amongst others. His songs covered by many many artists, "Song for you" can still be heard on prime time TV. He also wrote Delta Lady, Superstar,Hummingbird,This Masquerade and countless other hits for other artists to perform.He was also a great performer in his own right. If you get a chance check out his performances on stage in the Mad Dogs and Englishmen film (although he does look a bit like that TCWTB) with Joe Coc ker and a band of world class musicans. He's not very trendy , I realise I'm a bit of an old dinosaur, and this is a bit of indulgence on my part, but I feel a tribute to Leon is in order before he passes away. Forget the old man you may see with Elton, this is Leon in his prime.The quality of the pics isn't great, but the quality of the band and performance is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjy7RAu8TJ4&feature=related

Dont bother with Consumer Direct, just take legal advise from the off. I had dealings with them and after 4 months of their advise,I got nowhere and they said they said I should speak to a solicitor. They said they had a list of local Solicitors who specilaised in the field I was in dispute about. Gave me the name of one, really local to Poole, Newport. I said that's the IOW, miles away, to which the lady replied Newport South Wales. They were a complete shambles. Pay a Solicitor for an intial interview, it'll be worth it in the long run.

Did anyone hear Duffin on Talksport this morning. If I was a Skate I'd be worried about what he had to say. He said that Chanari was now out looking for finance, but also that he (Duffin) understands that next season's parachute money has already been spent on running the club this season.

If anyone has any doubts about Trade Unionism nowadays, ask yourself why London Fireman are going on strike on Nov 5th. That tells you all you need to know about the Trade Unions.

Yes, to commercial radio. Good point Why should I pay a poll tax regardless of whether I watch their programmes or listen to their radio stations?

Ask him why I have to pay a poll tax , whether I want to watch his programmes or not?

Jim Steele

I was at the England V Argie friendly in 1980 where a young Diego Maradona showed a glimpse of what was to come. Dalglish was proberly the best player season in season out I saw. He had such a high standard every game. One of the best performances I can remember was Gunter Netzer against England in about '72/'73.

Funny how he's devoloped into a better player under Dinosaur Redknapp than Walcott has under Prof Wenger.

The Govt are only reducing spending back to 2006 levels,this is still way way too high.Browns talk of reforming welfare was just a con designed to apease the floating voter. The time to reform welfare was during the good times and the Labour Govt had no intention of ever doing it.The Govt spent too much of our money and taxed us too much during the boom years.

One player who never gets a mention because he didn't really play too many games was Trond Soltvedt. Must have been around the end of the 90's. Never rated him at Cov, but he really surprised me when he turned up at The Dell.Mickey Evans was another one who I liked but didn't stay around too long.

70's and 80's we were a different class to the 90's. That said I enjoyed a lot about the 90's. Obviously their was Le Tiss, but I enjoyed the rest in a funny sort of way. We had players who gave their all and really cared for the club. Even the Branfoot era had some great memories, from Barry Horne's strikes against Bolton, to Le Tiss against Newcastle. The best time of the 90's was Bally's 18 months in charge, winning at Newcastle, his first home game in the snow,and obviously Le Tiss in his prime.West Ham away last game of the season was one of the best games I've been to and then the following season we played some pretty decent stuff.

Forget about Healy, he hasn't played enough lately and is pretty one paced. There's obviously something wrong about Healy, even when banging them in for NI, he couldn't get a game at Leeds and has struggled to find a team willing to pick hm up. He's even stopped scoring for NI lately. We're not going to pick up a ready made League One striker on loan unless its a club trying to offload his wages. Premiership fringe players are going to be picked up by Championship clubs as the gulf is getting wider and wider.Perhaps there's someone out of favour somewhere like Puncheon was at Plymouth and hopefully our scouting network will be aware and working on it. On paper Lambert,Barnard, Guly and Connely look ok, but the reality is Lambert has been poor, Connelly is injury prone, Guly untried and Barnard has this issue hanging over him.Personally I'm not convinced Lambert's form is a blip, I hope I'm wrong, but I just have a gut feeling we've had the best out of him.Certainly we need someone in a similar mould to put pressure on him so he cant take his place in the side for granted.Where we are going to get him from I dont know, but NA's and the scouts should, that's what their paid for.

We should cut the overseas aid budget by 50% at least.

I didn't know they still had the charts, surely its a bit pointless without TOTP's.

I never really warmed to the bloke,but you have to acknowledge his achievements at the Club. Saying he got lucky is too simplistic are we therefore saying Stewart Grey got "unlucky".He took us to a cup final, the top 10 of the Premiership and made us very hard to beat. He signed some duds, but so did Lawrie and Ted. Svensson and Claus were the best centre half pairing we had for 20 odd years, Chris Marsden played out of his skin and Antti was the best keeper bar Shilts I've watched at the club. These people were coached, were set up to play, it's not just a case of throwing the team out there. Yes, he had his faults, too negitive in the cup final, the manner of his leaving, being two. However, I'd only put Lawrie, Ted and Chris Nicholl above him in my time of watching the club.

Popular music is a miss match of all sorts of styles which came together is a mass creative explosion in the 60's. The great thing about it was the diversity and mix of races, from Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn backing black soul singers to Johnny Cash championing The Staples singers and other black artists on his prime time show. Even in the deep south the musicans were mixing and playing together at a time when the rest of that society was in deep conflict. British bands took this up with the Stones, Beatles ect playing both black and "white" Country music. Anyway here's a great song for Dune, I'm sure he'll agree with the sentiment expressed. http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=27505807

I find it strange that the Lefties keep going on about getting the poorest into uni and giving them a chance to better themselves and move up the social scale, when they abolished the biggest tool for doing so, Grammar schools.We are lucky in Poole that we still have them, and many working class friends of my older sons have had great educations because of them.

I just looked up the head brewer from my favourite tipple Tanglefoot, so an apoligy to all budding brewers is in order. http://www.beerreviews.co.uk/beer/meet-the-brewer-toby-heasman-hall-and-woodhousebadger-brewery/ Seems he went to Heriot-Watt University,the taxpayer should be paying for his education, without his knowledge and know how I wouldn't have met my Mrs..

I've been looking into it, and a couple of degrees have caught my eye. Surf Science and Technology at Plymouth Stand-up Comedy at Kent and Salford Brewing & Distilling at Heriot-Watt University Golf Management Studies at Birmingham and finally Stained Glass Window Studies at Swansea Institute If I could spend a couple of years lounging around doing one of the above, and the tax payer picks up the tab, think of the contribution I could make to Society.

My Mrs went back to uni as a mature student to become a midwife. Her degree was paid for by the NHS (us), but following qualifing you have to work for the trust for 2 years at roughly half wages to pay some back. It varies from trust to trust , some are 1 year. It seems like an entirely sensible arrangement and in my Mrs case she felt if was right that she contributed in this way.

If the goal had been chalked off, then it may have ended 1-1. We would have then gone out on Pens.

The Observer, fair and balanced towards a Tory policy,dont make me laugh.If you want "fair and balanced" what about the IMF, or do they not count on the basis that they backed George's running of the ecomony.

Well he hasn't made a very good start so far, writing exclusively for the News of the World (isn't it funny how they hate the Murdoch press, but go running to them as soon as they want their "message" out-hypercrites)that the planned Govt cuts were worse than Mrs Thatchers. As Andrew Neil pointed out of the Andrew Marr show this morning, Alister Darling had already said the same about the cuts Labour was proposing. All the guests agreed that it was a gaff and that he should have spent the weekend reading up on his brief and kept his mouth shut.

It is just given to families regardless of need. If it was abolished and then different tax rates applied to the number of children you have. Your tax code would be different depending on the number of children you had. That way the money could be really targetted at the people who really need it, if it was paid at a % rate then the more you earn the less of it you get. If you're on benefits you get the child benefit element added to your benefits.As benefits are means tested, then at a stroke and for no extra cost, child benefit becomes means tested.For tax payers it is based on salary, which like all tax rates is a form of means testing.It was easy enough to have a married mans allowence in the past, what I'm proposing is the same, only with children.