Ex Lion Tamer

Pension benefits weren't good enough

No we don't

He's a journalist, it's his job to get clicks on a website, which he has no doubt achieved. It's not specifically his job to worry about whether the story added to your understanding of the club, though he no doubt would include more detail if he had it.

There are two big reasons why the welfare bill is getting bigger (there may be more): 1) People are living longer so are placing a bigger burden on the NHS 2) We're in one of the worst downturns in decades which has meant unemployment is huge right now, so lots of people on jobseekers (believe it or not, most of them wish they had a job and are not scroungers) Regarding your other point, inequality is actually still important. You should read 'The Spirit Level' for an idea of how more equal societies score better on a whole range of indicators eg life expectancy, murder rate, educational performance etc: http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why

My point was about innate intelligence, it was Whitey who started talking about working hard at school. Of course you can do badly at school but because you are intelligent (even if only moderately) still be able to become a success. Furthermore, going to a good school clearly gives you an advantage, you only have to look at the proportions of people in the country's top jobs who went to public school to see that. Obviously some people can buck the trend but the odds are against them. I don't like people cheating the benefit system but benefit fraud is roughly £1 billion a year while 2000 Britons in the offshore enclave of Monaco alone are costing the UK economy £1 billion a year in lost tax revenue. Yet everyone focuses on the 'scroungers', I guess because they are more visible in daily life. You make the statement that we shouldn't take extra off the rich because they have already paid a fair amount, but that is what I am disputing. Why is it fair that they have that amount of money? I don't believe they work 10 times as hard as a school teacher or are 10 times as talented.

So someone with a learning disability just needs to work harder at school? Ultimately, no matter how hard everyone works, there is only going to be so many people who can make it to the top. Why should those who do make it have such vast amounts of wealth when others are struggling to put food on the table? PS you ignored the point about him having a wealthy friend to give him his start in business. Its all very well saying people don't take risks but its a lot less of a risk when you've got £38,000 in your pocket.

Can you really blame people for choosing to take benefits in preference to doing some utterly tedious job for very little money for the rest of their lives? Or should they work harder and then one day they can become a millionaire? I know that life isn't fair but shouldn't we strive for a world which is at least more fair? I've said that there are practical reasons to not raise taxes on the rich to too high a level, but there is no moral basis for a relatively small number of lucky people to to hold so much money when people further down the chain are struggling. Furthermore, capitalism doesn't work if the rich get too rich as people don't have the money to buy the goods and services their companies offer.

Freddie Laker, who was lucky enough to be born in one of the richest countries in the world, who was lucky enough to be born with the intelligence to get into a top grammar school, and who was lucky enough to have a wealthy friend to lend him £38,000 to start his first business. The rich always like to attribute their success to their own genius but actually it has as much to do with circumstantial factors

Right wingers assume that the rich have earned their money, and many of them do work hard, but so do a lot of people further down the chain who have no hope of rising to the top. Actually the most important factor in whether you become a high earner is luck, whether that be who you are born to, the characteristics you are born with or simply stumbling across a great business venture. Obviously the problem is that the tax system has to be practical and if rich people are going to take their money overseas then we have to be careful about raising taxes to keep them here, and there also needs to be an incentive to innovate and work hard. But morally there is no justification for the income inequality we are seeing in the country and which is getting worse.

Is it really fair that one person should have 10+ times as much money as another person simply because they were born with intelligence, had parents who could afford to give them a better education, or simply inherited a **** load of money?

Brilliant. Yoshida deserves credit for holding us together in the first half, he was excellent

I think the government has said it would avoid the mistakes of 3g, where the bidding process for licenses pushed prices too high for any of the operators to afford to put a proper network in place

When Richard Wright came in on loan a couple of years back he was a huge improvement over Kelv. And it's questionable whether he's premier league class himself. I'm fond of Kelvin but his kicking ends up giving the ball away, he's not very agile any more and his positioning is suspect

Lambert had stopped running, there was one point where it went towards the corner and just didn't bother. if only we had someone on the bench who could bring down high balls. Amazed puncheon came off however, possibly our best player. The problem was we tried to sit back and defend the lead but we don't have good enough defenders

Classic saints. Oh well, good effort

Amazing tackle by Clyne

Haha brilliant

I never tire of seeing man u fail to convince against the saints, wonderful stuff!

Should be a lot of goals at both ends this season

Apart from set up the goal with a great cross obviously

Valencia getting all the time and space in the world

Great to see Lallana in the front three, with Puncheon that means 2 proper wingers

I'd like to see Craig Gordon come in

Watch this video all the way through and tell me he can't play wide:

Watching the 10 min clip on YouTube this guy seems comfortable on the left wing, an area where we aren't strong. He also looks bloody amazing, you can't really turn down talent like that even if you need defenders