Lord Duckhunter

I always thought the stands should have been named after legends, not suites.

One thing that has always puzzled me is why cuts and staff reductions always result in cuts to "front line services" in the Public sector? It is not like this in the Private sector. Take Tesco, whatever you may think of them, for the past 20 years they have become a success story and in a cut throat and low margin business have become the major player in the Country. You can not tell me they have not cut staff numbers or made efficiency savings the past 5 years. I bet there have been recruitment bans and less staff working in stores. Obviously they have opened new stores taking on more people, but whatever their way of measuring efficiency is, whether £'s per hour worked or staff numbers per sq of retail space, I bet they have less staff doing more. Did the senior managers and CEO of Tesco accept the argument that cuts would "effect customer service"? Of course not, Managers would have been told to get on with it, deliver higher sales and still maintain customer service. They would have done this by moving staff about, clearing out the deadwood, cutting down on sickness and working smarter. Can this attitude be transferred to the Public sector? It bloody well should be. Take my dustmen. On a Bank Holiday Monday, they pick up my bins by 07.30pm, they are running down the road, working full on. A normal Monday it's 10am at the earliest and they're dawdling about. What's the reason for this? I suspect that Bank Holidays are "job and finish" (although I don't know). If they can do the job so much quicker on a Bank Holiday, why cant they do it every Monday? My mates a post man, he told me that if there's someone sick or overtime available the first people back from their rounds pick this up, you still get paid your normal day plus the O/T. Therefore he gets round as quick as he can, to snap up the O/T. When there's no O/T he does his round in his paid hours. Why is there not a Manager questioning this, why isn't he being asked, "why does your round take 5 hours (although he's paid for a full day) some days and a full day on other days. Why does he do his round quicker on a Saturday, as well. No Private Company I've ever worked for would put up with these examples. I have yet to work for a Company that, whether it was the 80's, early 90's or now, that have not sometime reduced numbers. Guess what, every single time we have to do the same job, deliver the same results and there are no excuses. If Private Companies can make cuts and deliver the same results, why can't the Public Sector?

I think on the whole the refereeing has been quite a good standard this time. Yes, there have been 1 or 2 mistakes, but overall I would say it's been better than most recent WC's, so far.

Love Shack B-52's,memories of working with some great blokes. Baby I'm-A Want You, Bread- Reminds me of my Mum listening to it whilst making Sunday lunch, when I was a nipper.

I have sent 4 children through the schools system and obviously went to school myself. My Wife also went to uni as a mature student to become a midwife and my Uncle was a Head teacher for many years. In my experience there are some fantastic teachers who inspire and enthuse the children. There are also some hopeless one's completely out of their depth, who do more harm than good. It should be up to the headmaster to get rid of these hopeless cases, just as it is for me to Manage out any hopeless staff I have. It is the useless lazy teachers that are bringing the profession into disrepute and allowing people to make stupid comments that tar all teachers. Does anyone know the % of teachers that are fired, not for misconduct, but for capability in this Country. My gut feeling is that it is not many. We should pay good teachers more, a lot more, but have zero tolerance of bad teachers, with Headmasters given the freedom to decide such issues. The holiday issue is just a very silly tool to hit teachers with. If we want our children to have 6 weeks off in the summer, it makes sense that teachers are off to. Unless you want them going into school with no one to teach.

I was refered to the NHS phsyio for my frozen shoulder. Whilst I was there she asked what medication I was on and I told her I was on a NSAID's for Achilles Tendonitis ( a result of still trying to play football at 45). She said" I have some great excersises that will help that". I said "great what are they"? She then turned round and said my Doc would have to refer me for that, as she was dealing with my shoulder at present. Is that not a waste? I now have to go back to my Doc, get an appointment to go and see the physio that I'm already seeing. Maybe they get paid per referall, maybe it's target driven, but it doesn't make any sense to me. That's just a small example of where common sense could be used to save the tax payer money. There must be millions of similar examples.

Littlejohn's got it spot on. There is massive waste in the Public sector and thankfully we have a Govt prepared to risk short term unpopularity to do so. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1290427/Black-magic-online-poker--just-slow-day-Town-Hall.html

It was the reason that he was hit round the head. Put it like this, the rumours were of the very worst kind someone could face. A friend of mine in the press told me about them, but said they could find no proof of it at all, and they did look into it. I've also seen hints of it on Newcastle Utd 606 message boards. The thread does seem a bit random and I suspect it was being hinted at. Dont know about Lawro though.

80% of my staff are on less than 3 absense's with a large amount on none, including myself and my 3 Supervisors.Because I've stuck strictly to the Company policy, there is no debate, no accusations of favouritism and no grey areas.This seems to work and my absence rates are well below average.My wife is a midwife and obviously stays off with the slightest hint of a bug or cold. However, our staff are expected to come in where ever possible (I dont make the policy I just enforce it). It is remarkable how much healthier people become after warnings are issued. There are people who play the system, our trigger points used to be 1 absence higher and some staff's absence rates came down as the trigger did. It's not a question of me bashing the workers, or of taking a bosses view of this. My basic take on it is I am protecting this benefit for the people who are geniune and ensuring it is not withdrawn because the cost is going through the roof.

There have been nasty unfounded rumours about the baseball bat incident and KK for years.

This is a very delicate balancing act. If you go after the Bankers and let them "have some of that" they'll move their operation elsewhere. It's a industry that's very fluid and can move cities relatively easily. It's a question of getting the most tax revenue from them, without them leaving. There's no point in taxing them so high that you lose the tax revenues to another country.

Isn't that a "Soviet" economy. If we give everyone a job, we could have full employment. I'm sorry but you don't reduce the deficit by guaranteeing every public sector worker their job for life.

The problem is where does it end? If it's just going to be for goalline decisions there will soon be pressure to bring it in for other decisions. Take the 2 incidents at the week-end, what if we combined the two? Tevez's header comes down over the line, like Lampard's did, and the Ref calls for a video reply. The video shows that the ball was over the line, but he was off-side.If it's just for goal-line decisions only they have to give a goal. The pressure will then build to include offsides.They then increase it for offsides and someone scores from a corner that was clearly a goal kick,what is the difference between that, ana a goal line incident? It's a minefield. The only way it could work is each team having 3 appeals a game, perhaps.

Golden generation, my arse. The press suck up to the players and people like Redknapp and Andy Gray dont help, "take a bow son", and all that pony.Our players are the most over rated players in the world and yet the papers will turn round and blame the Manager, just like they blamed Taylor, Hoddle, Keegan, Sven and Maclearn. I turned on Sky Sports this morning to see John Barnes giving his opinion, John Barnes!!! Crap England player and hopeless Manager, giving his opinion. When The Kaiser gave his, he was ridiculed and the English players were going to use it as motivation, bloody hell how bad would they have been without that "motivation". We'll have the same old rubbish next season as Sky and MOTD, praise up Lampard, Gerrard, Terry, Rooney and Co, telling us how good they are. We stank the place out in Germany 4 years ago, we didn't qualify for the Euros 2 years ago and we were disgracefuly poor this time. 3 different Managers, but the same players, but it'll all be brushed under the carpet and no blame attached to the players. The press need their stories and exclusive interviews and the ex Pro's on the TV dont want to rock the boat. Fabio will be hung out to dry as the others were before. Meanwhile in the real world, it'll be another 45 years before we win anything.

This is spot on. I work for a very large Company and I directly manage about 50 staff. The one thing I am completely balck and white about is sick pay. It is a benefit, which the Company dont have to provide and people who abuse it are putting it at risk. I have been very lucky with my health only having had 1 day off in 10 years, other managers I know have sick days at the drop of a hat and wonder why this KPI is too high. We run a rolling year system with various warning ect after 4 periods of sick, leading to fired after 7 (DDA excluded). Any sick and they lose their bonus entittlement for the period concerned. I follow this policy 100%, whereas other Managers let some of their people mask sickness with holiday or careers leave. All my staff, even the ones that think I'm a ****** (that's most of them) would say I am tough but fair. I constantly year after year have the lowest sick rates from my staff. I dont badger people, I dont make them feel uncomfortable about being sick, I just pay them. However if they take the **** (ie suddenly illl during an England game, or seen out and about drunk the night before) or take more time than the Company allow, I hammer them. If staff used this benefit correctly then Companies would be more inclined to keep it, and the geniune cases would be looked after.

We get too carried away with the England Manager's job.It's just about picking the best players, which 90% of everyone agrees with, and then making the players relax and feel good about themselves. It is a totally different job to that of a Club Manager and therefore we should take that into account when picking one. If we were going down the foregin route we should have picked guus hiddink, rather than Sven or Capello, as he has run national teams before. That said so has Roy Hodgson, so I would go with him.As for Redknapp, Clive Woodward has more chance of getting the England job than Redknapp, however much his cronies in the press champion him.

Did anyone get to see Willie Nelson?

It's the same at all levels. I played in a multi national league in FLA, only parks standard,but it was well organised and competitive. It was exactly the same, there was Italians, Mexicans,Cubans,Germans,Danes, and Poles all knocking the ball about and showing great skill. Then there was us and a team of Jocks, we just played a typical British game. We were pretty sucsessful and nobody liked playing against us, but it was just our determination and spirit that got us through.We had some pretty good local players, but some of the skill and passing the foregin sides had, put us to shame.

I would give Arsène Wenger a 10 year contract to run the international set up, to run the first team for 5 years and then put coaches in place at all levels. The next 5 years he can oversee the whole operation he's set up.

After the Germans were dire in Euro 2000, they sat down and changed the way they ran their football. We sacked Kevin Keegan and looked forward to the "Golden Generation" bringing home the bacon. 10 years on, the results were there for all to see.

Since the day Sir Alf subsituted Bobby Charlton whne 2-0 up, we have been hopeless, contrast our record with Germany's from that day. Dario Gradi tells a story that if you give 10 English players a ball and a pitch, they will all smash the ball into the back of the net as hard as they can.If you give foregin players a ball each, they'll do keep ups and work on their skills. He said, until we change that mindset, we'll never compete at international level.

Bobby Robson's record is over hyped. 1984 Euro's-Failed to qualify 1986, poor poor performances against Portugal and Morrocco before beating Poland and Paraguay and then out (earlier poor performances were forgotten about because of the Hand of God) 1988 Euros- Lost every game. 1990, beat Egypt,Belgium and Cameroon, again earlier poor performances over looked because we lost on Pens. If he wasn't such a nice man, that would be considered a pretty poor effort. We didn't beat one of the major nations in a tournement under Robson, under Sven we beat The Argies and Germany. Sven also took us to 3 Quarter finals. Robson to one and a semi final, in his other 2 tournements he failed to qualify and then lost every game.

What planet are these blokes on? John Terry's just given a interview saying the score line did not reflect the game, they just scored on breakaways. What a joker, had the scoreline reflected the game it would have been 6-2.

Spot on, great post.

Wont happen, the FA are foolish, but they're not that stupid, not whilst legal proceedings are going on. The police raids have cost him the job. Roy Hodgsons the man.