sadoldgit

You say a CB should have been our no 1 priority. How do you know it wasn’t? It is possible that the people identified either weren’t available or didn’t want to come. Would you have us sign someone just for the sake of it? God knows we have enough deadwood as it is. There doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of quick, technically gifted and young CB’s around at the moment - certainly not in our price range.

Yep. If only people pretending to be ITK would stop spreading rumours eh!

It is all very well Trump, the NRA and gun lobbyists saying that guns aren’t the problem, people are but they are deliberately ignoring the point that it is a lot easier to kill people with guns (as the Americans demonstrate with monotonous regularity). These shootings will not stop until they do something substantial about gun control. Trump had the temerity to have a pop at Kahn regarding knife crime in London the other day. Yes, we have a problem, but is nothing in comparison to the regular carnage in shopping malls and schools in the USA. Grow a pair Donald. Stop sucking up to the NRA and do something about your ridiculous obsession with gun ownership.

You’re quite right. It isn’t rocket science. Odd how some play down Trump’s part in the emboldening of the many psychopaths in the US. His rallies often feature violence directed at those who oppose his views and the “send them back” chants should chill anyone with a modicum of social awareness with fear.

Trump is quick to condemn Kahn for the knife crime in London (ignoring the same problem in the rest of the UK) but doesn't address the problem he has with heavily armed White Supremacists in his own country.

Agreed. Assuming he is a quality player surely it is better to have him on loan for a year than another duffer on the books for another 3 years or so. I assume that the club has struggled to find the right player at the right price. No harm in finding a short term solution but as has been said, this guy needs to be good enough to step in straight away. There is always the chance that we could end up buying him if he is any good and Barcelona want to sell eventually.

Agreed. Assuming he is a quality player surely it is better to have him on loan for a year than another duffer on the books for another 3 years or so. I assume that the club has struggled to find the right player at the right price. No harm in finding a short term solution but as has been said, this guy needs to be good enough to step in straight away.

Given that you gave the decision about the leader of the Conservative Party and our next PM a great deal of thought and decided to cast your vote for Boris Johnson, I think you have blown any vestige of credibility you may have had Duckie. In words you will understand, you and those like you have dumped on us a pony, 9 pinter PM. You must be very proud of yourself. More and more people seem to be waking up to the reality that they have been lied to. Johnson himself made a very successful career in publishing pony articles slagging off the EU. Even his recent stunt with the kipper was utter pony but just like the meatheads in the States swallowing Trumps bull**** hook line and sinker, so you swallow Johnson’s bull****. If you are so sure that you are right about Brexit why do you have a problem with another referendum? If it really what the country want surely they will vote for it again, unless of course they realise that they have been hoodwinked.

Little ray of sunshine, as ever.

Does it really matter where the news comes from? We find out a lot of things via the media before clubs make the news official.

“The fit Kendall bird.” What with your Retro language that even Jacob Rees Mogg would disprove of and your very public support of Boris Johnson for PM you are a real catch Duckie. You do realise that these “fit birds” wouldn’t touch you with one of Boris’s kippers?

I get £149 per week state pension. I have a few others as well but they don’t add up to what we need. The joys of being taken to the cleaners by my first wife in the divorce settlement. Any system should be means tested. This system isn’t. I know everyone assumes that people take the benefits system for a ride, but after our experience it is hard to see how anyway gets enough to support them. It has been a sobering experience going through this process. At no time have we felt supported. It is a soulless and almost faceless process which reduces you to a bunch of numbers in a computer system. I have sat and listened to a number of people who have come into the office and it really is a tick box exercise. At least my wife is employable and has been able to find another job, but you see people coming through the doors who look less able to find work and you have to wonder how their lives will be stuck in this dreadful system.

My wife is 53. She has always worked and wishes to continue to work. She has found another job but we are thousands of pounds in debt for the period when she was looking for work. I am retired but we cannot live on my pension alone and I am doing part time work to help pay the bills. We would have been entitled to £498 a month ( hardly a Kings ransom) but because it is income based and I have a pension we are not entitled to anything. Long gone are the days when you as a couple could live on one wage, but they don’t consider that. Nor are they interested in your mortgage repayments yet they will cover rent?

As if you would even get the opportunity.

Or TUI eh TCM?

And Farage said he would have continued to fight for Brexit if the referendum had gone the other way. EU membership is clearly something a issue which has divided the nation and goes way beyond the democratic vote process. Whatever the outcome people will either want to stay or leave and they aren’t going to suck it up if they don’t get their own way.

Helpful. Hardly free if you have been paying NI contributions all of your life.

It comes to something when Jeremy Hunt is the best option out if a choice of two. We now have two ****s in the most powerful positions in the world. God help us.

Feck! Found out today that my wife is entitled to £0. They don’t take into account your outgoings including mortgage repayments. They only help with rent payments. WTF? No one called us to explain we just found out through the online journal. What is the point of NI payments when you can’t get anything back when you need it? I get a pension but it is not enough to cover the mortgage and the bills. UC is a f***ing disgrace.

Thank you. We did consider it briefly but decided it was best to put it behind us and move on. My wife had a nasty accident a couple of months ago which left her with a bad case of concussion which has only just sorted itself out so didn’t want any extra grief. The situation was made worse by the fact that there were only two other people in the business and they were in a relationship together. They also use our local and we have a number of mutual friends so it’s all been a bit messy. I took what is hopefully the last bit of paperwork into the office yesterday. The lady I saw was very helpful and sympathetic but once again was a barrier between us and my wife’s caseworker who works in another office miles away and who we can only communicate with via our online journal page. I know we hear lots of stories about people abusing the benefits system but given our experience so far it seems a miracle if anyone gets anything out of UC. I do have sympathy for those who have to deal with the public face to face though. Whilst most people have been well behaved during our visits to the UC office there have been a few who have kicked off. There are always two or three burly guys wondering around the office just in case, which makes for a slightly oppressive atmosphere. Hopefully we are nearly done now!

And yet when you posted the same info on TUI you showed the tweet and it said £32.5m? Losing your grip Cabbage?

I have just renewed my passport online and it worked brilliantly. I received a number of updates by text and it arrived exactly when they said it would. Mind you, for £75 you expect a good service, but they clearly have got this and as you say, others things right too. We are still getting nowhere fast. I am still receiving messages to log onto my page and look at messages in my “journal” even though I am not applying. Why they can’t ask my wife to provide any info they need about me I don’t know. If I don’t comply we are told that it could affect the outcome. They are doubling the amount of bureaucracy in all cases where one of the claimants is in a relationship. Fortunately my wife has now found another job but we had 5 months without a second income (she left her previous job during sick leave after being bullied by her boss and being advised to get out by her doctor) and during that time we have racked up a lot of debt. It seems the quickest you can get some money is 5 weeks. We have been waiting much longer. I don’t know how one parent families cope. The people in the centre are pleasant and try to be helpful, but the caseworkers are in other offices and you can’t get to communicate with them other than through your journal online. And what does Universal Credit even mean? At least Jobseekers Allowance did what it said on the tin.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I thought I had stumbled in to Kafkaesque world but it is helpful to know that we are not the only ones struggling with the system. The film I, Daniel Blake was spot on!

Has anyone been through this process successfully? My wife applied for credit at the beginning of May and we are still trying to get her payments sorted. It has been the most unbelievable bureaucratic phaff so far. I am not claiming myself but keep getting called in to meetings. They have all my income details but still I get asked for more documents. They won’t let me email stuff to them. They seem to make it as difficult as possible in the hope that we will just give up. My wife has to keep an online journal of everything she does, which showed she applied for 80 jobs, but still we are waiting. We don’t even know how much we are likely to get. I have to log on to my own page too even though I am not claiming. As she was in college we were given a £490 loan to help out but the bills are racking up and my pension doesn’t go anywhere near covering them. The system sucks. God knows how people cope who don’t have internet access. I’d be interested to know if anyone has been able to navigate the system successfully.

I don’t think he has been treated badly. He clearly doesn’t fit in with the current regime and it is obvious that a move is in the best interests of both parties. He is still being paid (handsomely). He is within his rights to see out his contract but at his age and experience you would think he would rather go somewhere where he will get a game every week. If he is struggling to find a Premier club to take him now it will be more of a struggle next year. We aren’t asking for a Kings Ransom for him. Where we have gone wrong is to pay him a massive wage. What bastards eh?