Creative Midfielder

Umm yes, a real person who is himself quite happy to dish it out at times but gets very huffy when he finds himself on the receiving end. So maybe he should be the one to re-appraise his approach to other posters who bizarely choose to disagree with the wisdom he so generously showers us with.

Yes definitely, and wasn't his goal originally to be a DoF rather than a Head Coach?

Yep, delighted that it has finally happened but it has come far, far too late. If only he had done the decent thing and resigned when he realised that he had blown £60m on players who hadn't a hope in hell of keeping us in the Premiership (or getting us promoted back out of the Championship for that matter) instead of making Farke the scapegoat..............

Of course we should but as in so many areas nowadays this country just doesn't seem to work at all - the Swedes finished their inquiry before we even decided to hold ours, and it has taken another year after we decided to hold one before anything has actually happened, and all the while the Government is still actively resisting releasing information to its own inquiry - yet another in a very long line of things which make it deeply embarassing to be British. Third world status here we come.

Sadly I suspect you are right, and as I said above I am already disappointed in Starmer for several reasons, this being just one. Am seriously concerned that a divided opposition will yet again let the Tories avoid the humiliating defeat which they so richly deserve and which a large marjority of voters appear to want. But our dysfunctional system makes it all so easy for a minority to win quite handsomely as we saw in 2019 - obviously the Tories are not going to achieve that next time but we appear to be sleep-walking towards another GE in which they may emerge with far more seats than their proportion of the vote deserves.

TBF, there are several in his team that I like much better him but the fact remains that he is in charge and appears to be calling all the shots which is another drag on Labour's chances of real success - we should be seeing a lot more of his front bench in public, and he should stick to just skewering Sunak at PMQs. It also still remains for him to get into government and whilst you could quite reasonably claim that electorally he has improved the Labour party's chances considerably since he became leader, given the state of the government and relative to the electoral successes of other opposition parties, viz the Lib Dems & Greens, you could also reasonably argue that he hasn't done anywhere near as well as he should have.

Thats a bit strange because I thought Herman made it pretty clear that he 'hated' Odey because he is British and quite deliberately damaged his own country in pursuit of making huge amounts of cash for himself. Soros, on the other hand, is not British and whilst you can argue that what he did wasn't so much different to Odey, he didn't stab his own country in the back and a fair bit of the money he made has gone to philantropic causes unlike the odious Odey which was just about personal enrichment.

No it isnt, although personally it just adds weight to the doubts about him that I've harboured for a long while - not originally so much about his decency, in that regard he is still somewhat better than his Tory counterparts. Although conduct such as described in that article, which has been going on for some considerable time now, has certainly tarnished his reputation for honesty and decency, and therefore in itself is pretty stupid as it significantly diminishes one of his major advantages over a corrupt and discredited Tory party. Although I was never really comfortable with his approach in enforcing a very bland orthodoxy on the entire Labour Party combined with an incredibly unambitious and vague policy platform, in the early days of his leadership it made an amount of sense not to give the Torygraph & the rest of the Tory gutter press anything which they can exploit to attack him. But a couple of years on and with the Tories in total disarray, that no longer makes any sense at all (to me anyway), and we still also have the stupidity of his absolute refusal to work with other parties to defeat the Tories, even though we now have clear and abundant electoral evidence that in many constituencies another party, be it Lib Dem, Green or SNP, is far more likely to beat a Tory candidate than Labour. It seems to me that, although clearly desirable, beating the Tories in next election is not his primary objective but rather that he consolidates Labour's and his own position as Leader by taking back the red wall seats and perhaps pinching a few off the SNP in Scotland (presumably with the aim of winning the GE in 2029), and as a result is going to fall short of winning an overall majority. Sunak and Starmer appear to have very little in common at all but in one respect I would suggest they are very similar - the more you see of them the less impressive\likeable\trustworthy they seem.

There is no real accountability at all - voting allows us, occasionally, to express a preference in a very imperfect manner as to who should represent us - one of the few things, I think, we agree on. But that accountability extends no further than poor performance over probably 5 years results in some MPs losing their seats - big deal and indeed long overdue in the case of some of the worst MPs. But there is no accountability whatsoever for really appalling behaviour or total incompetence of the sort we have witnessed on quite a few occasions over the last few years from Tory ministers and Prime Ministers. Prime example - Liz Truss is very likely to be re-elected next year despite crashing the UK economy and putting mortgage bills up very significantly for millions of people for absolutely no reason other than her own stupidity and utter incompetence.

Not saying you're wrong but if we are going to start punishing people in public life with ' no shame, no morals, no empathy' then the very first trawl is going to pick up a significant majority of Tory ministers and ex-ministers from the last ten years. Wouldn't be fantastic if there was some real accountabillity in our system of governance, if only we had a proper constitution enforceable by an independent legal system....................

Yep, it has obviously been a huge pleasure to see our cowardly ex-Prime Liar running away, frantically chucking his toys out of his pram and blaming, as he has consistently done, everyone except himself for the appalling behaviour and incompetence that has led to his disgrace - even now none of it was his fault apparently, he really is a complete t*sser. However, the enjoyment was seriously marred (for me) by the really sickening announcement that the disgraced scumbag has been allowed by both Sunak and King Charles to award honours to other scumbags many of whom were complicit in Johnson's bad behaviour and by rights should be joining him on the naughty step. It certainly reflects incredibly badly on Rishi “integrity, professionalism and accountability” Sunak and King Charles - of course we know that in Sunak's case he is simply too weak to stand up to Johnson and the Tories who still slavishly support him and the “integrity, professionalism and accountability” was an outright Trump/Johnsonism - a cheap headline which he had no intention or ability to deliver. But what the King's excuse is I have absolutely no idea..............

I really hope so, Labour have got no chance of winning that one whereas the Lib Dems clearly have.

Yes it is, how convenient is that???? 🙄

Because its a very stupid question that doesn't merit an answer and frankly I'm surprised that you are highlighting how dramatically corruption has increased under the crooked amd totally incompetent government that you so unthinkingly support.

That argument appears to fall at the first hurdle, certainly in the case of the infamous bus featured in the post you responded to. The wording is absolutely explicit - 'We send the EU £350 million a week' - it wasn't vague, it was a downright lie and the Leave campaign knew it just as they knew that many of the myths they peddled were attractive lies for the very gullible.of which there were many unfortunately.

Yes, it does rather seem that whether you are talking about people who the government want/need to be able to travel or stopping those that it believes shouldn't be travelling to this country that 'taking back control' has in fact resulted in a complete loss of control and an utter shambles.

.......and half an hour away on a train! 😀

Exactly so and hopefully after the next GE the railways will gradually all be brought back into public ownership very cost effectively by taking back immediately any franchises that are meeting their contractual obligations (and let's face it Transpenine should have been taken back a couple of years ago) and the remainder as the franchises expire - that would mean them all back in public ownership by 2030 with most well before then. Of course we would still have the problems of the ROSCOs to tackle but it would still be a big step towards returning some sanity and competence to our railways and reducing the costs to the public.

Not really - she was clearly requesting 'special treatment' (the usual application of 'one rule for us & our mates and a completely different set of rules for the plebs') but as it happens even asking them to make a dentist's appointment for her would also have been a breach of the ministerial code, and of course it isn't her first offence either. She is in a job, way beyond her capabilities, which she should never have been given in the first place and hopefully this is a chance for Sunak to put things right and dump her back to the back benches which is where she belongs.

I found this comment quite intriguing, nothing to do with the monarchy, just the timescales - I feel I've got some idea about how things generally might go in the next 20 or so years, at the absolute max 30 years but beyond that I think that everything will have changed so radically that I have absolutely no idea what anything will look like (which in many ways is a blessing).

Hopefully the regulator isn't going to let them get away with it this time, although based on the regulator's track record thus far.........🙄

I think it has definitely taken a dip with Nicola's resignation and all that has followed from that but suspect that the dip will be temporary. Fair point about North Sea oil declining but bear in mind that Scotland has huge amounts (actual and potential) of wind power (both on & off shore) to replace it and could probably generate a fair bit more hydro as well if they really wanted/needed to.

I think it is more a case of when rather than if, much like Scottish Independence, Irish unification and indeed us rejoining the EU - all are very likely to happen eventually but impossible to predict when with any great accuracy.

😂 I rather doubt that the Australian tourist who had flown over at a cost of goodness what to experience the coronation and who wasn't part of any protest but was arrested anyway and held for 13 hours would agree with such a ridiculous proposition and frankly nobody who genuinely believes in democracy, free speech and the rule of law would either.

Yes, but you are highlighting a slightly different problem there - the tax threshold of £12,500 is in reality another Tory stealth tax, as in these highly inflationary times the threshold has been frozen there for several years now & is going to stay frozen until this Tory government is ejected. Surely the answer is to concurrently raise the tax threshold significantly whilst at the same time bringing all income into the tax regime and/or raising income tax rates. That would appear to help the lower paid, mean the better paid pay a bit more (or a lot more for the really wealthy) and it would also take a lot of lower paid people out of income tax altogether which would reduce both company admin & HMRC collection costs - win, win, win IMO.