BUT......Ukraine have been striking into Russia using British missiles.......I doubt Russia would take into consideration if or not we supported Trump......a British missile is a British missile at the end of the day.......
It’s an Anglo-French missile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Shadow The Ukrainians have used this too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brimstone_(missile) it was used in the defeat of the large armoured columns that Russia deployed In the early days of the war in Ukraine.
Not many would dispute that Wayne Rooney was not a top player of his generation. But he has proven also that he isn't a top manager or even a successful one at any level.....as we found out to our cost. He has now settled in to being a pundit.....and the question then is.....just because he was a top player does that qualify him to be a top pundit ? At present he is being critical of Liverpool and their present form....to the extent that Virgil van Dijk has hit back say that Rooney's comments are just lazy criticism.....so what qualities has Rooney got so that people respect his thought on the game today. Personally I think he has no qualifications at all to be accepted as a top pundit just like with his management abilities lacking and proven over time to be poor. One other comment....you need to concentrate quite hard to decipher his scouse accent to understand at times what he is saying. You might not be surprised to know that Rooney isn't top of my favourite player...manager...or pundit list. Anyone who knocks my favourite Bobby Charlton at Man U off of top spot....doesn't go down well with me......at least Bobby realized he wasn't a manager or a pundit of renown. The boss of his family his wife Coleen needs to keep him on a shorter chain and find him something useful to do around the house.
WE are all pundits without any formal qualifications including you. You do not have to have a GCE (for the more senior amongst us) in English to be able to read or write. Punditry is an opinion as are most things written or spoken about football. I would hazard a guess however that Rooney, despite his failures, has more idea about the professional game than all the contributors on this site put together. Your opinion has more to do with your own personal like or dislike of the man. p.s. I would be surprised if Bobby Charlton would get into the Man U team or any other top team in this era. The game has moved on a million miles from his time. He was only a great player in HIS time.
It’d be interesting to know what the background is of the games top managers of this generation. There are some who were top players: Pep Guardiola is an obvious one.but I suspect far fewer are these days. General management skills are to the fore - particularly man-management. Gareth Southgate was in the BBC News this morning - he has a book coming out in time for Xmas dealing with how he used references in general business to help build his England teams. He mentioned the Army particularly for its blend of discipline and camaraderie. He took the squad out onto the moors and into the woods on exercises. Many of the England players had never slept in a tent or been without their phones for days on the trot. He comes across a very thoughtful man. He said that it was wrong to see players and managers as somehow different - almost superheroes. He said had often thought of posting pictures of himself on social media while putting the bins out just to show that he was like everyone else with all the doubts and fears that go with it. Compare and contrast……… I leave it to you.
I see with fury that the Resolution Foundation, a Think Tank extremely closely linked to the current government, has suggested that tax rises are inevitable and that Rachel Reeves should increase Income Tax rates with a partial offset by cutting National Insurance. That would mean that as NI isn’t payable on pensions, pensioners will suffer a higher than necessary Income Tax hike in order to fund a cut in NI for those in work. What is the logic of that? If she wants to tax income that isn’t taxed as heavily as that from employment that she perceives “the idle rich” benefit from disproportionately (rents, interest, dividends from investments, capital gains etc), then she should tax them directly. If she is thinks the Triple Lock is excessively generous, then she should have the balls to scrap it. Otherwise, this is a cowardly and underhand attempt to benefit workers (who can after all increase their income by working more hours or getting a better job etc) at the expense of those whose income is fixed and who by enlarge won’t understand what a fraudulent sleight of hand has been inflicted on them. Bearing in mind the State Pension now takes up almost all of the Income Tax zero rate band, which hasn’t been increased to cover inflation for years, and won’t be increased for years to come, this would mean pretty much anyone who has a private pension will suffer. Most of those are not remotely “super rich” by any stretch of the imagination. This of course is all necessary primarily to cover the failure of this government to push through the cuts in welfare spending which it itself deemed necessary and fair, in the face of opposition by its own far-left MPs. Not only would pensioners therefore be subsidising those in work, they’s also be subsidising the growing numbers who could work but won’t. This is perhaps what she means by “protecting the NHS” because NI was introduced originally precisely to fund the NHS, state pensions and sickness and unemployment benefits. It’s obviously true that older people use the NHS more than other groups but surely the whole point was that it was “free at the point of use”. The corollary of that is that it’s paid for evenly over over life. Why then should the current cohort of pensioners suddenly be required to make up a shortfall in funding? It’s certainly true that it’s working age individuals who are making excessive use of sickness and unemployment benefits and indeed ineffective counselling schemes vainly aimed at getting them to work. Finally, it must be seen as absolute cant to say on the one hand that protecting the NHS is your priority and then cut National Insurance which traditionally is seen as being ring-fenced to pay for it.
Dick Cheney, Vice President under George W Bush and on 9/11, has died. He was seen as a warmonger at the time but my goodness, doesn’t he look like a paragon of rationality compared the lot currently in the White House.
