Lord Duckhunter

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 My basic take on it is I am protecting this benefit for the people who are geniune and ensuring it is not withdrawn because the cost is going through the roof.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.

We blame Taylor,Hoddle,Keegan,Sven,Maclearn and now Capello. Let's put the blame where it needs to be placed, the players.

Meanwhile, away from the bleeding heart Lefties that read The Guardian/Observer http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7856191/Lib-Dems-flounder-as-poll-shows-boost-for-George-Osborne.html Reducing tax credits supported by 80% of people, more medical assessments for Disability Living Allowance (82%), a levy on banks (78%), increasing CGT (68%) and reforming housing benefit (68%). Sixty per cent agreed with cutting spending in all government departments, except for overseas aid and health, by a quarter, and 53% agreed with freezing pay for all public sector workers earning over £21,000 a year. Some 52% said they thought the tough measures were necessary because of the state of the public finances.Overall 47% thought that the measures taken together would improve the state of the economy with only 19% saying they would make it worse. The results are a boost for Mr Osborne, whose personal rating was also up, by six points, taking the number of people who think he's doing a good job from 39% last week to 53% now. The coalition as a whole received a big boost in its rating, with the percentage of people thinking it is doing well moving up nine points from 45% last week to 54% now.

The difference between The Beatles and every other group is the sheer quality of everything they did. They are not my favourite band, but there must be a 100 songs of theirs that I would sit and listen to over and over again. Look at the quality of their B sides Like Rain, Dont Let Me down, Come together, You cant do that, She's a women, Revolution. Classic songs weren't even singles at the time Yesterday, Back in the USSR, Lucy in The Sky with Diamonds,Eight Days a week,Day in the life, Here comes the sun, All my loving, while my guiter. Then there's the throw away stuff, even that is great When I'm 64,Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. There's also some real gems tucked away and never really mentioned like I'm only sleeping,Yer Blues, Two of us, Oh Darling. I think The Who had one or two better songs, The Stones did some great stuff, I love Steely Dan and my personal favourite is The Band, but none of those people ever got anywhere near the amount of quality that The Beatles produced.90% of what they produced was top quality and no one has got anywhere near that sort of ratio. I was lucky enough to see Paul twice, once in The Gaumont about 79 and once in Joe Robbie Stadium FLA in the early 90's, both times he was fantastic and I would urge anyone with a chance to go and see the guy.He can be a bit of a knob at times, but he knows how to put on a memorable show.

I managed to find some of the above film on utube. Looks like Keith is going to chin Berry in this clip. Great documentry anyone interested in this sort of music should seek it out.

"Stealing" another mans bird is off limits, but borrowing her is a different matter.

I'm happy with AP as Manager, but feel it was a shame that NP never got a chance to rebuild Saints. Most Saints supporters have a lot of respect for how NP conducted himself at Saints and I feel he was a class act. He's done a really solid job at Leicester, walking League 1 and then reaching play offs, but it can't be easy working for MM. There should be no AP/NP debate, both fitted Saints nicely at the time. The only debate should be between NP/Dutch Duo and whether we got value for money from the cheaper option. By paying a decent Manager a bit more, we could have been pushing for the play offs and avioded administration, there wasn't much difference between Pearson's last team and Holloways Blackpool.

This thread should have been, who would you rather face in the 1/4 final South Korea or Uruguay. It'll be the same old England, going out to glorious defeat to gemany or the Argies with everyone forgetting the simple truth that had we topped a very poor group, we'd have had an easy run to the Semi's. One Semi finalist will be USA,South Korea,Ghana or Uruguay, that hasn't come around by luck of the draw, or us being unlucky. It's come about because we couldn't score more than one goal whilst battering Slovenia and because we let Algeria get a 0-0. Algeria's last 7 games were 0-4 to Egypt,0-1 to Nigeria, 0-3 to serbia,0-3 to Eire 0-1 Slovenia and 0-1 USA, and of course 0-0 to England. I want England to win, of course I do, but if we go out to Germany or the Argies, I know how I'll feel watching USA or one of the others in the semi finals.

I saw Chuck Berry about 20 years ago, he did 40 minutes of his great stuff and then the miserable old git just walked off, no encore, nothing. There was a great documentary years ago with Keith Richards arranging a concert for him, I had it on VHS, but haven't seen it for years. My personal favorite is Jerry Lee, as Robbie Robertson says at the start of this clip "A one man revolution". "Hello Darling, this is the killer speaking"