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Reply | Do you want Joe Allen to have a one year contract in June ?
at 10:50 6 Apr 2025
It could make sense with the right contract. He may have only been involved in 19 games so far (maybe 22/23 by the end of the season so half of all games) but he always has a good effect on games. Not always crucial things like these last two games but he still sees things quicker than most and is able to impose himself even if it's just 'normal' midfield work.
The player/coach suggestion is a good one. I don't know if he's started any prep work to go into coaching yet. |
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Reply | Wrexham
at 10:40 6 Apr 2025
Wrexham to come up and Cardiff to go down. That's my preference. |
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Reply | Alan Sheehan : What about the level those job offers came from !
at 16:51 4 Apr 2025
This was a brilliant report. I based my opinion on AS based on very little knowledge. What else could I do at the time.
Reading that has completely changed my mind. Apart from the obvious about A's abilities the transition would be so much easier. He knows the current squad inside out Lready so would hit the ground running. A new manager would be starting from scratch again. |
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Reply | Why can't the UK
at 09:51 3 Apr 2025
No one responded to this thought. Is that because you all thought it was a stupid idea ? That it wouldn't work ? |
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Reply | Why can't the UK
at 22:49 30 Mar 2025
When people cross the channel and claim asylum and their claims are processed we find that about 60% are valid claims and 40% aren't. But the 40% still come presumably because they know they'll end up being in the UK for years before anything happens and they'll probably just disappear under the radar anyway and end up washing cars or whatever.
The government say they've recruited a large number of extra people to process the backlog. What if they decided they were going to use all the new processors to work on the claims of the small boat people as soon as they cross the channel. And those people would be detained, unable to go anywhere while their claim is processed. And the failed asylum seekers would be deported immediately.
This would mean that the 40% would KNOW they will be refused and would KNOW that they would be paying £3/4/5000 for nothing. That they would be deported back to where they came from and would not be allowed to stay.
If that was to happen would they simply decide not to come in the first place.
And if they did decide not to come then the 50,000 or so each year drops immediately to 30,000.
Can anyone explain any logic problems with that idea ?
So surely they would not come because there'd be no point. |
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Reply | Iorwerth
at 15:20 23 Mar 2025
Actually what I should have said cat is that I don't really know enough about parts of the second para to agree or disagree. Apart from the part about Cardiff getting all the investment of course  . |
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Reply | Iorwerth
at 18:21 22 Mar 2025
I agree with most of that cat especially the part about Cardiff getting more than its fair share. It's blatantly obvious to me.
As regards Plaid, their strength at present is in the West and if they do get a majority in the next Senedd election their strength in the West will remain along with newly won seats in the current Labour heartland.
It stands to reason that if Plaid do get into power the emphasis will naturally shift West and North West (Iorwerth represents Anglesey). If that does happen they probably won't have a majority so will have to rely on support from Labour. But if they (Plaid) try to move the emphasis toward the West/N West and Labour try use their junior partner strength to hold that back it will hopefully be blindingly obvious who is doing the blocking and Labour will lose even more support. |
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Reply | Iorwerth
at 17:46 22 Mar 2025
You can always vote for Plaid and against Indy if we ever get a referendum on it.
One doesn't preclude the other. |
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Reply | Iorwerth
at 12:07 22 Mar 2025
Spot on Cat. And Plaid are the only party whose only concern is what's best for Wales.
All the other parties have their UK bosses in Westminster telling them what to do which never benefits Wales.
How well Plaid do will only be known if they get into power. |
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Reply | Iorwerth
at 11:58 22 Mar 2025
Current polling of the general public say around 25% would vote for Independence.
So 25% of the population. |
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Reply | Iorwerth
at 22:23 20 Mar 2025
'Plaid, we don't want independence.'
Factually incorrect. At the moment at least 25% do.
And I don't know anyone that plan to vote Reform. Just my circle of course. |
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Thread | Train Drivers Pay Rise
at 18:35 19 Mar 2025
What prompted me to create this thread is yet another comment by another of the useless members of the last Tory Government re train drivers pay.
He criticised the Labour government for awarding a pay rise to the train drivers in order to end the dispute about pay. He said, yet again, that the rise was inflation busting and that some train drivers were earning far more than their standard £60,000 or so salary.
A while ago the train driver pay story came up in the same newscast as a story about Thames Water. In that story the boss of Thames Water was explaining that when they were appointing people to senior positions within their company they had to pay the going rate to attract the best people.
I googled the Thames Water boss’ pay and this came up.
Chris Weston, the CEO of Thames Water, has a base salary of £850,000 a year, plus a performance-related bonus of up to 156% of his salary. This gives him a potential total package of around £2.25 million. This is obscene bearing in mind what an awful service they provide.
Because of this obscenity OFWAT started looking to reduce their pay levels by cutting the amount they can be paid in bonuses. The water companies then told OFWAT that if they limit the amount they are allowed to pay the bosses in bonuses they will simply raise the base salary. So, no matter what happens these people will get their enormous salaries and neither OFWAT nor the Government nor anybody can do a thing about it.
If you were to ask these people how they warrant these levels of pay they say that they have enormous responsibilities, that they are in charge of a multi million pound company and they have to run that company well and if they don’t they will be sacked. When they ARE sacked how many times have we read that their contract included a golden handshake. So they still don’t lose out despite utter incompetence.
If it is their responsibility that the company is run well then it’s their responsibility when the company doesn’t run well – like when the company breaks the law for example. It has been reported that Thames and all the other Water companies break the law several times a day, every day of the year. So does that not make the people that run those companies criminals if they say they are responsible for how the company is run ?
Now take your average train driver. He drives his train from Swansea to Paddington for example and then drives it back again. And he does that every working day and, as far as I’m aware, doesn’t break the law. He just does the job that he is responsible for and does it properly. And if he did break the law the company would quite rightly sack him. And he wouldn’t have a golden handshake.
The deal the train drivers were awarded was 5% a year over a number of years. That would be £3000 a year on a base salary of £60,000. And after tax just £1,800 after paying higher level income tax.
Ask yourself how many times members of the last Tory government said the pay rise was inflation busting. Inflation this last year is around 2.5/3% so 5% is inflation busting. So what was 5% the year before in 2023 when annual inflation was 7.3% with a peak of 11% ? I don’t remember any of them mentioning that. I also don’t remember any of them praising the train drivers for working through the pandemic because they were an essential service like NHS workers.
And did they mention that, when inflation in 2023 was 7.3%, bosses in the biggest UK companies enjoyed average pay rises of 16%. Did they call that inflation busting ? Of course they didn’t. Makes you wonder why when those pesky train drivers were being so horrible.
Now think of how the two groups of workers were treated by the press. The water company problems were/are criticised in the press every now and then. But when the train drivers were striking to try to get their ‘inflation busting’ pay rise they were crucified on the front pages of the usual papers virtually every single day of the week.
It almost makes you think that maybe ordinary people are treated unfairly in the press. Surely not.
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Reply | News on Sheehan and another contender joins the race
at 10:33 19 Mar 2025
In now is far and away the best option. The new manager would have a number of games to get to know the squad (games are always the best way of doing that) ready for the summer. Otherwise he'd spend the summer bedding in and before you know it it's panic stations again. |
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Reply | Crown Estate latest
at 11:39 18 Mar 2025
Agreed. It works both ways.
I suppose what's most important is that twenty years ago or so support was less than 10%. So support has definitely increased substantially while the Welsh demographic has been much the same. In fact the population is getting gradually older. |
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Reply | Crown Estate latest
at 11:33 18 Mar 2025
A government minister said in an interview a couple of weeks ago that the armed forces get around 100,000 applications a year. So, in theory, it should be easy to expand the size of the armed forces as long as the money is there to recruit and train those people.
He also said that incredibly it takes 249 days from application to acceptance. Plainly ridiculous. |
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Reply | Harry Darling
at 11:26 18 Mar 2025
I wish all our players were as average as Harry. |
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Reply | Crown Estate latest
at 10:01 17 Mar 2025
I've seen this many times. The suggestion is that when they grow up they realise the folly of their ways and change tack.
In the Scottish ref in 2014 the result was 45% yes and 55% no. The numbers in the younger age groups was more yes than no. Fast forward 11 years and in theory, according to unionists, many of those younger voters will have grown up and changed to become unionists.
Also many unionists were thrilled at the fall in SNP popularity saying that would mean a fall in support for Indy in Scotland. A plainly ridiculous thought.
Just think of the logic. A person who believed in Scottish Indy votes for the SNP because they are a pro indy party. They wouldn't have been pro indy because the SNP suddenly existed, they were already pro indy. But then when the SNP implodes (for internal party reasons) that person suddenly thinks I think i'll change to pro union ! As I say, ridiculous.
And when you check what the current Indy situation is in Scotland it's basically the same as in 2014, roughly a 45/55 split. |
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Reply | Crown Estate latest
at 18:07 16 Mar 2025
Just checked.
The latest one I could find showed that 55% of 18 - 24 year olds would vote yes. |
| | johnlangy
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