diable rouge

Week 5 fixtures... Saturday 3rd September Everton v Liverpool Brentford v Leeds United Chelsea v West Ham United Newcastle United v Crystal Palace Nottingham Forest v AFC Bournemouth Tottenham Hotspur v Fulham Wolverhampton Wanderers v Southampton Aston Villa v Manchester City Sunday 4th September Brighton & Hove Albion v Leicester City Manchester Unite v Arsenal

A good week for LadyG, back in the mix after missing Week 1. Week 4 points... Week 4 table...

A reminder that there are extra mid-week games this week, starting tonight...

As much as I don't like multi-nationals and the huge profits they make in general, the increase in their profits from rising gas prices is just a consequence of how the free market operates, supply and demand etc. It's like the huge profits supermarkets and online retailers like Amazon made during Covid and in particular the lockdowns. when there was literally a captive audience spending money like it had gone out of fashion . When we had the financial crisis, Gordon Brown proposed a plan and banged a few G7 heads together that helped stop the cash machines running out of money. Perhaps there are no such financial levers Govs can pull this time. Can these multi-nationals even be nationalised, and if so, at what cost? Does that cost outweigh the cost of the price increases? I just feel that if it was a case of some 'constructive thinking' then I think we'd have seen Govs sitting down and thrashing something out, as it's in no country's interest for this crisis to continue the way it's going...

An early 'Double Bubble'. Week 4 fixtures... Saturday 27th August Southampton v Manchester United Brentford v Everton Brighton & Hove Albion v Leeds United Chelsea v Leicester City Liverpool v AFC Bournemouth Manchester City v Crystal Palace Arsenal v Fulham Sunday 28th August Aston Villa v West Ham United Wolverhampton Wanderers v Newcastle United Nottingham Forest v Tottenham Hotspur Tuesday 30th August Crystal Palace v Brentford Fulham v Brighton & Hove Albion Southampton v Chelsea Leeds United v Everton Wednesday 31st August Arsenal v Aston Villa AFC Bournemouth v Wolverhampton Wanderers Manchester City v Nottingham Forest West Ham United v Tottenham Hotspur Liverpool v Newcastle United Thursday 1st September Leicester City v Manchester United

Thoughts and possible solutions from a relevant think tank...

I wonder why Johnson's phone calls and visits to Ukraine have suddenly stopped? Could it be that since he was booted out there's no political advantage to be gained anymore from the plight of Ukrainians getting killed and bombed out of their homes, in order to deflect the British public's attention from what a useless, lying, corrupt PM he's been? 13 days to go...

The two 'winter' bills are way underpriced, I'm surprised your supplier didn't flag this up and request a reading. As I suspected, they've underestimated your usage and now that actual readings have been submitted, there's a huge discrepancy in usage to pay. I don't think an average of £69/month over a year is that high for a 1 bed, prices have already shot up for lots of people, my D/D more than doubled last Autumn. If you haven't done so already, consider switching to D/D monthly payments so you don't get any more big quarterly bills like this...

What Seph said, bike-centric countries don't have such schemes as there's simply no need for them. How many deaths/serious injuries caused by cyclists are we actually talking about? Would be interesting to know who's lobbying for such a scheme, the insurance companies perchance?...

Have your previous bills been based on actual meter readings or estimated ones? If the latter then your previous bills may have been under-estimated, hence the large bill you now have with up to date readings...

Week 3 points... Week 3 table...

Would be churlish not to give Johnson a proper send-off before he's kicked out in two weeks time, so while our PM is sunning himself on a beach on his second holiday in as many weeks while the country goes to pot, a reminder of what he said less than a year ago about growing concern of rising inflation... I'll miss the lazy, good for nothing, racist, smirking cockwomble...

Where does it say anything about ''we were fond of'' ? I think a lot of the posts are people just posting the news that someone has died, regardless of whether they liked them or not...

Week 3 fixtures... Saturday 20th August Tottenham Hotspur v Wolverhampton Wanderers Crystal Palace v Aston Villa Everton v Nottingham Forest Fulham v Brentford Leicester City v Southampton AFC Bournemouth v Arsenal Sunday 21st August Leeds United v Chelsea West Ham United v Brighton & Hove Albion Newcastle United v Manchester City Monday 22nd August Manchester United v Liverpool

Week 2 points... Week 2 table...

Barry Bennell is a good Christian...

We live in a short-term age where lots of people don't/can't plan for the long-term. In the workplace a 'job for life' is the exception rather than the rule. Short-term/zero hours contracts have brought about more job insecurity, with people living/surviving from pay day to pay day. People are saving less, pension planning is considered an unaffordable luxury rather than the norm. Less and less people can afford to buy their own home and instead are forced to rent. I live in an area where renters far outweigh home owners, and the renters are extremely transient in nature, there's hardly a week that goes by without someone moving in/out. People have also become used to short-term/instant gratification in their daily lives where everything is just a click away. Added to all this you've now got the uncertainties/economic damage caused by Brexit, Covid, Ukraine etc. How can people plan for the future with such uncertainty? Would they even bother listening to a politician offering a 'long-term vision'? So is it any wonder this short-termism has crept into politics too. Whether by design or accident, populists have tapped into this by offering seemingly quick and easy solutions to difficult long-term problems just to get elected. Of course, they fail but then another one comes along with more of the same, witness Johnson and now the soon-to-be new PM Truss. At least Labour did the decent thing and got rid of Corbyn and his brand of populism, but it would be nice to be able to judge whether Labour under Starmer are any different, but I still don't now exactly what he's offering the country except to say the Tories are rubbish etc. I can understand Starmer keeping his head below the parapet with regard to Brexit, but the cost of living and NHS crises should be fertile home ground for Labour, they should be setting the agenda on these issues. A personal 'long-term vision'...I think the best thing that could happen to UK politics is an end to the First Past The Post voting system. That would shake things up, provide a better format for new/fresh ideas/visions to be heard/discussed, but I can't see the two dinosaurs changing that, certainly not the Tories...

Speak to RDA Architects, fairly sure he did the development next to the Jeannie Avent art gallery on Lacon Road, seem to remember the windows were Velfac, they are specified a lot by architects...

Thanks Joe...

Week 2 fixtures... Saturday 13th August Aston Villa v Everton Arsenal v Leicester City Brighton & Hove Albion v Newcastle United Manchester City v AFC Bournemouth Southampton v Leeds United Wolverhampton Wanderers v Fulham Brentford v Manchester United Sunday 14th August Nottingham Forest v West Ham United Chelsea v Tottenham Hotspur Monday 15th August Liverpool v Crystal Palace

You don't have to know someone personally for their death to have some kind of impact. The footballer who was a little boy's childhood hero. The singer who's song was playing in the background when someone had their first kiss. Do you need to know an author personally to be affected by a book they've written? Do you need to know an artist personally to be affected by one of their paintings? And so on. People we don't know personally can be a part of our lives and affect who we are, so why would anyone not want to remember them? I suspect part of that remembering is a mourning for their own past childhood/adulthood memories rather than the person per se...

There are already millions in fuel poverty and many more will be joining them this Autumn, so for them it's a rather moot point whether it hits £3k, £3.5k, £4k etc come January. Here are some sobering figures... 10m Britons have savings of less than £100. The poorest 25% of households have average savings of just £2000 (scraped together over entire lifetimes) The proposed Truss NI 'handout' equates to about an average of £60 off the fuel bill, and that excludes those who don't even earn enough to pay NI i.e. the very poorest Whoever wins the Tory leadership better have deeper pockets than that pittance...

Spartacus, do you think about all the unnamed victims of cancer who died, on the days when no one well known has died from cancer?...

Jah, like Spurs, off to a flyer. Week 1 points and table...

Well, it would be helpful if we actually had a functioning Government rather than the PM and Chancellor both away on holiday at the same time during a major economic crisis that's about to blow-up and get out of control come the autumn. Instead the country is being spammed daily for weeks on end by a ridiculous Tory/PM leadership contest, with the protagonists more concerned with a manufactured culture war so they can throw red meat to a selectorate that is probably one of the most insulated against the effects of the cost of living crisis. Neither of them has a coherent plan how to tackle the crisis, and during these 'debates' not enough time or even the right questions are being asked as to how they are going to deal with it. Before last night's latest 'debate' the Telegraph journalist Juliet Samuel suggested some questions that should be asked... 1. How will you keep the lights on, factories running and homes warm this winter? 2. What are you/the government doing to ensure we have access to enough gas imports if Europe cannot supply us with the gas we usually rely on every winter? Are we signing new supply contracts? Why not? 3. Do you believe there's a realistic prospect of getting significant gas supplies flowing from the North Sea or British shale this winter? 4. What are you/the government doing to reopen British gas storage facilities as quickly as possible so we can stock up for winter, as Europe is doing? 5. Are you prepared to reopen coal plants temporarily to see us through the winter? 6. How can the government launch an emergency insulation scheme to insulate as many homes as possible this summer/autumn/winter? Especially in social housing and private-rented, the worst-served sectors 7. Will you announce more welfare for households struggling with extraordinary energy and food bills? On what scale? 8. What will you do if the "Don't Pay UK" energy bill strike reaches scale? Will you support the bill strikers? Would you bail out our biggest energy suppliers if needed? 9. How will you stop the NHS falling over this winter, given that it's already in acute stress? Or, of course, they could go with the usual mix of fatuous, pointless question about shoes, earrings, "quick-fire", "your naughtiest moment" and "trust in politics". My understanding of the "Don't Pay UK" protest is that people will initially stop paying their monthly direct debits and then wait for the quarterly bill to arrive and decide how much they can afford to pay, taking into effect other bills, in particular food bills. Seems a perfectly reasonable and rational thing to do to me, if people haven't got the money to cover all their bills then they have to prioritise, and no parent is going to put a heating bill before making sure their child gets fed. Unless the new PM gets on top of this very quickly, then yes, I can see this becoming the Gov's 'Poll Tax moment'...