Gloucester Saint

Quite, far more effective in the 6 role than Smallbone, who is more of a natural 8.

Public debt as a proportion of GDP was 89.2% in 2015 straight after austerity https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicspending/bulletins/ukgovernmentdebtanddeficitforeurostatmaast/octtodec2015 As for the energy crisis, we are paying for it - straight in to the public pension funds of mainland European neighbours who own our energy firms. Public sector pensions - as I understand it most reduced to average earnings at best and few final salary schemes remaining at all, if any. WFH - what does that cost anybody apart from maybe the railways? And they were already the most expensive in Europe pre-Covid for the worst reliability. Civil service has actually recouped selling buildings and land off. It’s only the Mail that grizzles about WFH because without the advert revenue in the free papers through the major London terminals they nearly went pop. As for benefits - we had 3m unemployed in the 1980s - ‘unemployment is a price worth paying’. Can’t remember whether Howe or Lawson said it. As for COVID, I refer you to the £37bn VIP lane, most were Tory donors and a lot of the PPE didn’t work. In 2010, we had more comprehensive public services, not perfect by any means but different league to now, and much lower public debt to GDP. Its the modern day Tories and Brexit we can’t afford.

An excellent OP and subsequent comments. I don’t work in local government but have held high level non-party political civic positions where I’ve seen the fall-out of the last 13 years and a bit beyond where Labour was starting to re-distribute funds from some LAs SE England in the late 2000s. Most LAs now are reduced to education, social services and if they’ve brought them back in-house, refuse. There’s some small technical expertise left on planning and legal, but it’s a pale shadow of what it was, which is dreadful for local democracy as unwanted schemes get pushed through. So yes, WSS, LAs are totally hollowed out. Pre-Brexit, at least the NHS, FE, HE could all help blunt some of the impact but they are now screwed by people shortages created by a National Front/BNP-type obsession on all net migration (not just asylum seekers) and funding issues of their own operating in a higher inflation environment. That’s why millions can’t afford the dentist anymore. I’ve spent out more than any tax cuts on new suspension bushes wearing out early on our developing country roads. Not as if national debt as a proportion of GDP has dropped either - 74% in 2010, which apparently was a national disgrace, now 96.5% as of January 2024 and has been over 100%. And with public services hollowed out and/or disappearing across the board. The Tories and their shady donors have asset stripped the UK. Not sure how Starmer and Reeves are going to recover the damage to any great extent.

Why doesn’t James Bagge do a Go Fund me for his campaign against Liz Truss? If the other parties can be persuaded to not stand in her seat, and he gets enough finance to sustain a decent campaign plus all of the other papers bar the DT and Mail pile in on Truss, Tufton St’s filthy lucre would take the ultimate bloody nose. It would beat the best moments of 1997 - Martin Bell beating Neil Hamilton, Mellor getting beaten - by a mile. Probably won’t happen but with all-in effort it could happen. I’d donate if he did, my duty as a British citizen to beat the plastic Trumpite https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liz-truss-turnip-taliban-trump-us-b2502705.html With Tufton St, Telegraph and Mail in her corner, that would level the playing field a little bit to have the rest of the country behind James Bagge.

They really are imploding now https://news.sky.com/story/tory-mp-paul-scully-criticised-for-claiming-london-and-birmingham-have-no-go-muslim-areas-13081675 Andy Street and Jess Phillips calling it out. After the carnage the Daily Mail reader from JDW Mansfield just caused and the billowing smoke trail from Truss platforming with the American far racist right, you’d think the other Tory MPs might show some judgement? Not a bit of it. Brexit has already failed on a policy level but it’s failed politically too because the Tories are fracturing and leaking towards Reform UK/UKIP/BNP/EDL or whatever they are today regardless. Further evidence of it https://news.sky.com/story/tory-mps-believe-lee-anderson-suspension-was-a-mistake-leaked-whatsapps-reveal-13081164 Very rare for me to agree with the IEA on anything but even their broken clock tells the time correctly here with some very clear analysis https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/26/the-tories-have-lost-the-red-wall/

She’s got to leave British politics, let alone the Tory party. Once you’ve called for a convicted felon like Bannon, with a jail sentence hanging over him to come and ‘sort out Britain’, someone who has been trying to organise far right groups across Europe and is an open racist and anti-Semite, you’ve got no future in this country. https://www.thenational.scot/news/24141610.liz-truss-silent-tommy-robinson-called-hero-steve-bannon-podcast/ I think she wants out anyway, loonies abound over there in the various think tanks. If she takes that cunt Matthew Sinclair and her little puppy Alasdair Heath on the ✈️ with her I’d be grateful. Sunak is too much of a weak dick, he’s dealt with Anderson but doesn’t want to upset the funny money in an election year with Tufton St and Truss, even as Liz humiliates him, and most of all herself yet again. He’d get some respect if he expelled her.

Charles at 6 - solid 2-0 win at WBA. Lightweight Smallbone at 6 - losing despite 85% possession, they are cutting us apart on the counter. Funnily enough the same happened before Flynn Downes was fit and since injured again. Even you should be able to work that out. Then again, maybe not. Smallbone is a good 8 but not a 6. Downes (injured) and Charles are 6s. Surprising the manager can’t figure that out.

As well as the crazy conspiracy theories about she lost office in the time it takes a lettuce to go off, she also stayed silent on a panel when Steve Bannon called Tommy Robinson a hero https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68388579 Soggy is going to have fun with that one 😂 Here’s the highlights of loony Yankee Liz’s nutty speech https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68376802 or if you can stand it, the full thing and the largely empty arena. How about a bazooka with a one way ticket to the USA of A with enough room for Rees Mogg on it as well. Us Brits might get some peace that way. I’d love to see her fuck off there if she thinks it’s so great, leach off their think tanks which is clearly her intention after the GE. Meanwhile, the Daily Mail reader in Mansfield JDW has been at it again. He can smell the dodgy non-Dom TV cash. This MP business is too much like hard work. Cant remember them imploding this badly in 1997?

Barbados been to a couple of times, once for the Test match in 2004. Amazing place, lots to do. West coast has the best beaches, closely followed by South. North coast beautiful eg Bathsheba in a more wild way. Grenada truly the spice island, some great beaches, not as developed as Barbados BVI gorgeous, Virgin Gourda and the Baths amazing for snorkelling. Nevis and St Kitts good for that too. Dominica a good example of an unspoilt island, beaches are more volcano-like eg Canaries, stunning rainforest walking and such friendly people Aruba has great beaches, very Americanised though. Curacao more unspoilt, Les’s beach but the Dutch influences more obvious there.

I don’t know why anyone would want to get at the centre of such a huge shit show. Yeah, huge £££ too at a huge club but these guys are already on ££ compared to most industries anyway. Tapping on goes on all of the time, including plenty of people on here in their industries, but this is so cack-handed from Utd. Ashworth would be advised to wait until the Glazers have gone wholesale, although you’d expect a bit more savvy from Ratcliffe and Brailsford.

Example A here https://fanbanter.co.uk/under-fire-michael-beale-defends-his-accent-and-demands-more-respect-from-sunderland-fans/ He forgot about his QPR spell when referring to not working in London for 10 years - whoops. The Sunderland equivalent of Adam Blackmore wasn’t too impressed.

That’s a horrific challenge - more than a hint of Gascoigne on Gary Charles in the 1991 FA Cup Final. High, wild and out of control.

Spot on Whelk, they are following the Lynton Crosby and Steve Bannon scripts because they haven’t got anything else. Great article in the FT recently about why hardly anybody u45 votes for the Tories and the u55s who are normally Tories by now are staying away - it’s down to social mobility and faith (lack of) that they’ll have a better quality of life than their parents and grandparents. Whereas in other western countries where more people vote for centre right and far right parties there is less suppression of opportunities. Brexit has been a key watershed in this, another example of the Tories just focusing on the over-60s, as has austerity and the huge scale corruption of the PPE VIP lane of our money. The level of lying has been astonishing and people can see Truss’s trade deals already coming apart (even the farmers now) let alone the month-long PM spell which made Clough at Leeds look a roaring success. Add in the constant factions and civil wars and they really could go the way of the Liberals post WW1. Their forte used to be that economically they were more sound than the other parties but they’ve blown that totally in the last 13 years with public debt as a proportion of GDP what it was in 2010 under Labour. And that was much lower for most of the 2000s with the post-crash stimulus distorting it. So they can’t even say they inherited a bad situation and made it better - they made it far worse, soaring debt, taxes and crumbling infrastructure (look at the roads!). They have some deep problems that won’t resolve in months or even years. It’s obvious they’ll follow the Labour left down the Corbyn rabbit hole and elect another loony after the GE rather than a solid Tugendhat type who might save them as a mainstream centre right party. As for the Mail, people know Ted Verity is basically Tory Party property after Cummings let the cat out of the bag about the anti-WFH campaign by Mogg and Grant Schapps/Michael Green/whatever scammer he is this week. Ironic that they only survive because of civil servants they despise picking up a copy of their free papers which have the bigger advert revenue eg Metro.

They’re not even the best sports team in their city - that’s the rugby, if they want to use the yardstick of winning things. As for saying Southampton and Hampshire is a borefest, Bristol has a livelier culture scene but both cities have major universities, they have even worse crime than Soton and the really nice countryside is an hour away either side (Mendip/Cotswolds/Black Mts and Brecon Beacons). Severn and Southampton estuaries score draw, Soton has IOW and the Forest, they have Severn Beach and the bridges. Bristol has its good points and uses, especially if you live in the nice suburbs eg Clifton, Thornbury. Good place to work, and more options than Soton. Both cities have horrific traffic systems. If we don’t get promotion in the first two seasons, they are what we are in danger of becoming as a club bobbing around in mid-table. Be careful on the way to the stadium - some Saints fans were attacked last time we went there in the league.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-68261249 As predicable as the sun coming up in the morning. The farmers would get more public empathy if they actually acknowledged their mistakes being misinformed over Brexit instead of adding to the already considerable industrial and civil unrest. Promise to unseat the government and collaborate with others looking for the same outcome at the GE. I get why them and the fisherman are so angry because they were totally mugged off by Boris, Rees Mogg, Farage and co. The Canada trade ‘deal’ by Truss has been a total joke for example and the Australia deal has pushed the farmers under the bus. I was in North Yorkshire during the lead up in 2016 and it was full of farms with Leave signs everywhere we drove.

Mad game, Hudds outplayed us first half. Baz should do better for the first. Great impact by Rothwell and Brooks, Mara has gained confidence from the cup games and taken that into the league. Very rare that you see 4 second half goals for one team all scored by subs! Hope Flynn ok, been immense for this run. Ashton Gate tricky trip Tuesday night with WBA Friday night but we have the squad depth to rotate and still be very competitive.

Biden is very iffy, Trump is a whole new level of pervert and just as cuckoo. It’s like being asked as a Saints fan whether you want to sit and watch Pompey in the Fratton End (Biden) sitting next to Westwood all game stinking you out or in the North Stand next to the nutter who attacked the Sunderland full back (Trump) with all his pisshead mates from Leigh Park (Trump supporters).

WGS would have called it propaganda football - JPs are very constrained on issuing short custodial sentences when defendants appear with our prisons system full to bursting, at best. They certainly won’t be prioritising such sentences for somebody who climbs on a monument. I don’t agree with protestors doing it by the way either or drunken students come to that - it’s dangerous, people fall off them and hurt/kill themselves and it just leads to more culture war crap. I remember the student who was filmed urinating on the Sheffield cenotaph totally out of it (I think it was Sheffield?). The shame in public and employability impact in the future was a far worse penalty than the cost, which we pay for, of a short stint in the nick with genuine criminals to learn from. Tugendhat having said that isn’t the worst modern day Tory around. If he calmed down the Israel and China stuff a bit. He won’t get the leadership next year, that’ll be a variation of Nigel Farage in a dress eg Braverman, Badenoch or just for the 😆 Truss. After that and another defeat they’ll start thinking about adults to lead the party by 2029/30 and he could be a serious option if he hasn’t got fed up by then with the idiots on the right. Mordaunt is more popular with the public - albeit because of carrying a sword - but can’t see 100k swivels amongst their senile membership voting for her.

Does that actually say in the small print ‘lessons from the only Conservative in the room’? 😂😂🤣😆 Fucking heck, she’s got an ego for the worst Prime Minister in British history and arguably Western Europe post-war. At least when Richard Nixon also left office, he kept a lower profile until the late 1970s. She does leave a legacy actually - total and utter personal humiliation, global disgrace and the crack pipe theories of the IEA in tatters.

I’m more bothered about about the millions who can’t get basic dental care as one example of hundreds I could pick. It’s OK for me, I pay through the nose for a quality local surgery through a monthly plan to spread the bills but a lot of people don’t have that option. We’re back to what our grandparents did eg piece of string a door handle to extract teeth. The associated health problems being stored up which will cost far more to fix later than prevention now. I hadn’t seen this article when I first typed this but shows the scale of the issue https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-68228322 Thats one example of a burning priority, anyone who says this country is in a better state than 2010 deserves to be sectioned. When Sunak debates key issues for a majority of voters, he’ll be taken more seriously. He needs to kick the worst from four of the five family factions out and clean it up for the One Nation strand as a centre right party. People say it’s boring when the parties are similar. Personally, I just want a few years at least of some consistency and not the latest faction launching whacky policies aimed at UKIP/Reform UK nutcases. Get the politics in the background and culture war off the front pages. With the hard right back seat driving, all we are getting is soundbites unworkable in practice - minimum service levels for train strikes, Rwanda policy etc. As a Lib Dem voter, I’m not exactly cheered up by Ed Davey either. Behind fucking Reform UK in the latest polls. Thought they blunted the worst of the coalition but Swinson knackered the party for a generation. Wake me up when GE is over. Months of this crap to go.

Don’t think he cares, the culture war is their only tactic in the same way hitting long balls in the channel was Branfoot’s only tactic as Saints manager. If it’s not transgender jibes by the pack of animals and their media, it’s whether a top University has played the national anthem at a graduation ceremony or not. It smacks of all the irrelevant shit Trump spouted about the taking of the knee in the NFL. They’re just Republican Trump-lite wannabes - keep pressing F5 on the culture war button where their and the IEA’s theories on the economy got blown to smithereens by Truss (who won’t take the hint either - the public doesn’t want her and never will), the NHS is saddled with huge waiting lists, no affordable dentists for anyone earning less than the national average, soaring food bank use, failing and most expensive transport in Europe and the HS2 disaster. Car insurance through the roof and it’s a brute trying to renovate a house with the cost of materials and impact of Brexit. The UK is twice as expensive as the EU per mile of road/rail built. Only Australia worse and they are in the middle of nowhere geographically. The new border checks fuck UK SMEs who export and import over royally. Instead, they restrict freedom of movement through Farage-esque 40% hikes in visas and surcharge costs which bar cancer science postdocs and people who could help bring clinical and allied waiting lists in a lot of key seats. That’s what I want answers from Starmer on as a taxpayer, because the Tories sure as eggs is eggs have no answers at all, and no clue what to do even if they weren’t distracted by the latest civil war going on. Frost and the £40k poll wipeout forecast last week, Truss and Pop Chips (apologies to the snacks firm) this week. It's the economy stupid, followed by the NHS, and skills/R&D. As the CEO of Tesco said, none of which the Tories are even on the pitch for. I don’t know he or Reeves will have them to get out of this hole but since May went,and she was no great shakes, the UK and England especially has become exactly the rundown shithole of the late 1970s the Tories always said we risked voting Labour throughout the 1980s. They may have a point at the time but they don’t now. No downsides to voting them out for a generation.

I thought Pop Cons was Popchips expanding into Love Corn’s segment of the snacks market…but no, it’s just a load of re-hashed Tory has beens from the deluded Tory right, in turn from the worst government in British history, if not Western civilisation in 2022 from one bonkers month. https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/liz-truss-and-the-popcon-attention-seekers/ Total humiliation and wipeout on the world stage, with Jeremy Hunt having to re-write everything you’d planned and clean up your vomit and wet farts would have persuaded most people to try a different career - see Matt Hancock. But no, Liz Truss, Mark Littlewood and Rees Mogg really don’t understand that their ideas suck, and trashed the economy in a month. Bit of an issue with ‘Popular’ too - a record -59 rating from a poll of those who voted Tory in 2019. It’s a bit like Nathan Jones taking Charlton into League 2 and claiming in the summer he deserves the Southampton job back if Martin took Saints up, and the Saints fans really rate him as their greatest manager, above Lawrie, Ted, Ronald et al. Clearly Liz doesn’t think Jeremy and Rishi have done a good enough job cleaning up after her projectile vomit. Another poll sees Penny the flying wardrobe with a clear 26 point lead in the leadership contest which already seems well underway. Mainly because of the sword at the Coronation apparently. Alasdair Heath will have to hide his stiffy at the launch event as the DT sale is still in the balance. Lord D might get tickets though - his hero Nige will be there https://dailysceptic.org/2024/02/04/liz-truss-to-launch-popular-conservatives-with-nigel-farage-present/

Meanwhile in the real world, more UK businesses incurring extra costs and bureaucracy https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68126880 I don’t know this article will be visible, and what correlation there is to Brexit, or whether historically low productivity is more of a factor, but it’s interesting that the cost of major road and rail projects is nearly double the EU. The nearest most expensive in the G7 is the US and only Australia amongst the developed nations is higher. Doesn’t exactly make a further argument for Brexit benefits even if not the direct cause as there’s been a few years to drive project costs down https://www.ft.com/content/9cc19ce5-fbdb-4285-80ac-498f01f97dfd It probably says more about the shortcomings of economies driven heavily by the supply side and share capital but of course the advocates for that approach tend to also be loudly pro-Brexit.

1-0 Oxford after 57 minutes. Not so surprised by Luton, their home form has been improving and if Brighton were slightly off it - and they are more than that tonight - they could get battered up there. Throw in a few more points on the road and with Everton deduction, Forest possible deduction and a couple of other just above the drain, they could stay up. Which would be remarkable on their budget. I thought they might a Blackpool - tight ground, good at home where they shock a couple of the top 6, leaky away and just fall short, but they have a bit more about them as the season goes on.

Pre pandemic Mrs Trousers wasn’t the only one https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/falkland-islands-tourism-flights-raf-latam-war-sao-paulo-a9165736.html Previously you had to fly from Brize Norton but you could see if the Sao Paolo link survived the pandemic? Might be an opportunity - although pricey - to travel further south on the mainland over the Chilean border after a few days in the Falklands to see the Towers of Paine national park https://worldlyadventurer.com/torres-del-paine-national-park/ Alternatively https://www.swoop-antarctica.com/cruises/flights Falklands themselves look a lot like the Outer Hebridies or Shetland scenically, which is very pretty, natural and just as windy. Easy to get away from it all though.