Alan Tyler

🚨🎙️| Joe Hart on West Ham’s disallowed equalizer vs Arsenal, accuses VAR of saving Arsenal’s title hopes: 🗣️“Listen, I don’t care what anyone says, that goal should’ve stood. VAR has absolutely ruined moments like that. West Ham fought for that equalizer and somehow they’ve found a way to disallow it for the softest little touch you’ll ever see. If that’s Arsenal scoring at the Emirates, nobody even checks it for more than five seconds. And this is what frustrates fans, Arsenal have lived off those scrappy, aggressive goals all season. Blocking keepers, crowding the six-yard box, little nudges here and there… suddenly when it happens against them, it’s ‘clear and obvious.’ Give me a break. I was a goalkeeper, I know when a keeper’s genuinely impeded and when he’s looking for help. There’s no way you can tell me that was enough contact for the goal to be overturned. The game’s gone soft. West Ham have been robbed, simple as that. You wonder why fans think certain clubs get favourable decisions because moments like this keep happening. Arsenal are in a title race and somehow every 50/50 call seems to land their way. That equalizer changes the whole atmosphere of the game and VAR bottled it. Absolutely bottled it.”

Full statement here: Our party has suffered a historic defeat. Many good Labour colleagues have lost their seats despite working hard for those they represented. We have lost good Labour administrations and lost the chance for more. What we are doing isn’t working, and it needs to change. This may be our last chance. The Labour Party must now live up to our name: we must be the party of working people. We’ve heard the same on the doorstep as we’ve seen in the polls - the cost of living is the top issue for voters of all parties. People have turned to populists and nationalists because we have not done enough to fix it. Living standards are barely higher than they were a decade and a half ago. People feel hopeless - that the cost of living crisis will never end, and now they see oil and gas companies use global instability to post record profits. Once again, ordinary people are paying the price for decisions they didn’t make. It’s no wonder that across the UK, working people feel the system is rigged against them. Things can be so much better than this. Countries including Spain and Canada have shown that economies can grow and people can thrive when governments stay true to labour and social democratic values and put people first. We need to learn from that. In London, we lost young people who fear they will never afford a home. In my patch and across the north, we lost working people whose wages are too low and costs too high. In Scotland and Wales, people do not currently see Labour as the answer. We are in danger of becoming a party of the well-off, not working people. The Peter Mandelson scandal showed a toxic culture of cronyism. Decisions like cutting winter fuel allowance just weren’t what people expected from a Labour government. For too long, successive governments have allowed wealth and power to concentrate at the top without a plan to ensure the benefits of economic growth are shared fairly. The result is an economy that does not work for the majority, with wealth concentrated in too few hands. This level of inequality, alongside squeezed living standards, is the outcome of a model built on deregulation, privatisation, and trickle-down economics. But we have the chance to fix this. We need immediate action to cut costs for households and put money back into the everyday economy. This can be done within the current fiscal rules, by ensuring those who benefit from the crisis contribute more so that everyone can thrive. Our Employment Rights Act was just the first step in our plan to Make Work Pay. Now is the time to take the next steps, starting with a Fair Pay Agreement in social care - but not ending there. A rising minimum wage must go alongside our programme to get young people into work. The investment we secured in social and affordable housing should now unleash a building boom that benefits British business and workers. We must double down on renters’ reform and show leaseholders our action on tackling ground rents and charges was just a first step to ending freehold for good. Our devolution revolution has begun, but is nowhere near done. Giving mayors powers to transform planning and licensing can boost local business and good growth, in the interests of local people. They must go alongside economic powers and public services. Boosting community ownership and stopping the sell-off of local assets from pubs to playgrounds will put power back in local hands, helping restore the pride they feel in the places they live. We must go further on planning reforms, to build the schools, hospitals, roads and infrastructure the country needs to grow. We should be unafraid to promote new forms of public, community and cooperative ownership across the board. Buses and trains being brought back into public hands can now operate for the public good, at prices passengers can afford. (1/2)

It's amazing how many people complain about parenting and their kids. Being a dad is literally the best thing in the world.

Decline.