Michael

@policy_uk Haven’t watched Corrie in many years, but do they still pop into the Rovers for a lunchtime pint? Seems unthinkable now.

Do think it’s worth acknowledging lifestyle changes. Eg. Queen Vic & Rovers Return feel a bit of an anachronism being the centre of life in the soaps now, with the decline in regular drinking. More likely to meet regular friends in a coffee shop in 2026…

@Vintageboy2000 @elliottttttpriv “Listen very carefully, I will say this only once”

@JennyAThatcher @LucyGoBag Another good rule of thumb is not to put anything in writing about work matters or colleagues that you wouldn’t be prepared for them to see, be that WhatsApp, Teams or an email.

I have no sympathy for them. Unofficial work WhatsApp group should be banned by HR. They're used to bully and exclude people. I have many stories from academia 'Their bosses read their WhatsApps. Then their jobs were on the line' livpost.co.uk/writing-on-the…

@Pam_Ewing_ @FootballInT80s @LFC Yup, I remember this and thinking that we’d finished 4th in a 2-horse race.

@FootballInT80s What a great position @LFC had themselves in, only to finish 4th 🙃 Lost 2-1 at Anfield to bottom placed Coventry the following day 😢 (David James shocker for Dion Dublins winner)

05/04/1997: Gary Lineker has a quick look at the Premiership table

@DouggieDabbler @CptHastings1916 Even those houses have gone up around 50% in the last 10 years. I bought one of those for just over £100K in 2015. It’s also full of litter and student HMOs. My street had hardly any locals. I couldn’t wait to get out.

@CptHastings1916 I mean, you could just get a standard 3 bedroom terrace house in Wavertree in Liverpool for 150k. 7 minutes from town. Or Sheffield. Or somewhere in Leeds. People have lost all perspective on this issue. However bad it is, it isnt *that* bad.

I don't know what young people are moaning about, housing in England is totally affordable if you're willing to move to a cramped terrace in a remote coastal town with no railway station where all the pubs close at 9pm and you have no social circle or employment prospects.

@JayMcKenna87 Only time in my life I’ve left Anfield early was “out on 77” and it worked, didn’t it! Ignore the naysayers: match-going fans are right behind this.

Except they did sign a contract with SOS to form the supporters board. Mad that

@jclib1990 The “lowest state pension” line compares apples with oranges (as I’m sure you know), as many countries don’t have workplace pensions in the way we do. Plus it ignores pension credits and other help that exists for those on just the state pension.

Okay, but two things can be true at once: it wasn't particularly fair then, and it's certainly not fair now. We've got one of the lowest state pensions in Europe (comparatively), high taxes, worsening prospects for young people, and we're not getting much richer.

@AlexLFC31 I am sure read that Everton even did their own market research on this a few years ago and found it was 2 local Reds for each local Blue.

Anyone who’s grown up in Liverpool knows how one sided Liverpool is, you had about 1 blue for every 10 red mates growing up 😂

@Thatguyisback77 City Bar, That Beer Place, Harker’s Arms, Cavern of the Curious Gnome, Beer Heroes, Brewery Tap.

Going to Chester this weekend . Is there anything I should see or any particular place I should visit or any pub thats a particular favourite ?

@That1984onTTWAR I can remember keeping hold of ticket stubs in the late 90s and people offering to buy them for a fiver outside.

More clearing out at my mam's

@CoKeynesian A lot of intelligent Gen Z people can’t tell the time on an analogue clock, apparently.

One thing I've noticed is that digital watches are mentally... easier than analogue ones because your brain doesn't have to convert the image of the watch hands into a time.

@Dan4Barnet Bet I can guess which company. 🤣 One of them is notorious for the difficulty of cancelling.

Wild day. Govt announces new laws making cancelling subscriptions easier. Happy MP! Knocking on doors. Meet resident who has "way too much beer" because he can't cancel subscription. He offers me a box. Happy MP! Now conflicted on the benefits of the new laws....

@HeracleanVision My issue with moving to means testing it is that there must be millions who’ve planned their private or work pension contributions based on the assumption they’ll also receive a state pension, who’ll then be significantly worse off and would’ve made different choices otherwise.

The fundamental problem is that if you have defined benefit state pensions plus an aging population, you will be forced to seize a greater and greater portion of the income of the productive class. That is morally unsustainable, but it is also just mathematically unsustainable. The solution has to involve moving away from defined benefit, and given that it's probably impossible to move to a properly funded pension scheme, state pension will likely have to become a straightforward tax-and-redistribute mechanism, with the total pot defined by ringfenced taxes. Perhaps you would want to overfund initially to guarantee a certain level for five years, then have a five year delay subsequently (revenues from 2030 defining pension payments for 2035) to allow some financial planning. You could do something slightly more complex and set aside additional revenues from better years to subsidise worse years, but the basic premise remains the same. You would also probably have to means test pensions. I don't really like this system - I'd rather have a genuine insurance system, but it's not really possible to get from here to there, so this is the best you can do.

@Donks1982 @IverHanrahanGP @BernadetteStric This. Massively underreported issue.

@IverHanrahanGP @BernadetteStric We have a homegrown issue incoming

If Anthony Gordon was not a scouser and Liverpool fan, would he even be being linked with us? I really hope we don’t end up dropping a big wedge of cash on him this Summer. Decent player but not prolific enough. Far better value out there (in my opinion anyway!)

@LucyGoBag “Puritanical” and “curtain twitching” is what we do best in this country.

Re-upping in readiness for this morning’s briefing 🚗 🚗 🚗

@CouchNish I was there at his retirement match. The Kop also chanted “one more year”, I’m sure.

The fact that many in the replies don’t even realise that this is Carra’s song that was sung most games is quite telling…

@robbohuyton Key difference is between regs & people who go once a season or never. Paying £100 a ticket vs £45 is no big deal if you go rarely or never. For those of us who go all the time, even £2 more a match mounts up. When I can’t get in the Kop for half a season, it’s a huge extra cost.

Ultimately, the power on these decisions rests in America and while FSG have been great owners of LFC in many respects, they have also repeatedly shown themselves to be tone deaf on issues that matter deeply to supporters: £77 tickets, furlough and the European Super League being three obvious examples. This is another one. Announcing that prices will go up for three years running is a line in the sand. They don’t want this debated every year because they don’t want the scrutiny that comes with it. They’ve made that clear. And from what others involved in running Premier League clubs have let slip over time, Liverpool are far from alone in that thinking. This is about avoiding accountability. It’s about testing the water. And it’s about direction of travel. It’s about taking the game further away from the communities the clubs are supposed to represent. It’s about threatening matchday culture as we know it. It’s about making football less affordable, less accessible and less rooted in the people who made it what it is. You can afford it? Sound. But it’s not just about you. What about the next generation? What about the lads and girls opening their curtains and seeing a Premier League ground on their doorstep? What about the generational supporters who have followed their club through the decades, whatever the weather, whatever the football, wherever the game? Just fuck them off if they can’t afford it? Just let the atmospheres go? Let the flags, the banners, the songs, the traditions, the passion all slowly be priced out, leaving us with a popcorn product? And when people say Liverpool’s ticket prices are “not that bad”, ask why that is. We’d have had £77 tickets at Anfield a decade ago if supporters hadn’t stood up and done something about it. People need to read the room. This is about squeezing as much as possible out of what was once a working-class game. It’s about turning football into a premium product for those with the deepest pockets. It’s about the continued repackaging of the game people love into something colder, slicker and less human. And for what? Games abroad. Personal seat licences. Moving supporters from seats they’ve had for decades with friends and family to create more premium areas for experience hunters. “Category A+” £168 general admission tickets. This is not paranoia. It’s happening. It’s being discussed. And the powerbrokers in football don’t give a flying one about the cost of living, about the growing chunk of disposable income it takes for families to keep doing something they’ve always done, or about the communities that built these clubs in the first place. They don’t think it’s the tipping point. They don’t think it will lead to protests, boycotts or campaigning of the sort that won the away cap. So they all keep doing it. And they justify it by pointing at each other, while sitting round the same table and nudging the whole thing in the same direction. How did the European Super League come about again? They could stop. They could call a halt to the arms race. They could say enough, we’ve taken enough from matchgoers. Protect the people in the ordinary seats who create the atmosphere and make the money elsewhere. But they choose not to. It’s not business critical. It doesn’t move the dial in any meaningful way. But they do it anyway. So yes, you can come on here and tell people to “earn more”, or say £1,000 for a season ticket is fine. You can shrug your shoulders, do nothing and wait until it becomes your tipping point. You can ridicule or abuse the people who give up loads of their time trying to fight for football supporters. Or you can try to do something about it. There is an online meeting tomorrow. Come along, listen and have your say. Or don’t. Up to you. 👊🏼

@Schilted @jclib1990 Most people’s pension planning is on the assumption that they’ll receive a state pension. Mine is. I and others would have paid in far more to our occupational or private pensions if we knew we wouldn’t get it. We should certainly scrap triple lock and many other perks, though.

@jclib1990 I still think it should be means tested. There is absolutely no way we should be giving pensioners who are already independently wealthy more state money

The state pension will have to be reformed drastically if it's to remain fiscally sustainable over the next decade, against a backdrop of low replacement rates, a worsening dependency ratio, and anaemic GDP growth. Whether the public accepts that is another matter.

@fascinatorfun This did the rounds last year and you’re right. PVC windows and cars too. That and the patched-up road surface. It looks grubby, but most of it is the infrastructure.

The main differences are the addition of PVC windows and doors, air con units, satellite dishes, road signs, ugly shop frontage, electricity boxes, cars and road markings. I don't think it's a people problem it's a modern amenities and necessities are ugly problem.

@l4pablo I think we win the league in 2014 if he stays on for one more season. Another option at the back, his organisation and his presence around the dressing room.

I stood on the Kop as a kid from the age of six right up until the day Jamie Carragher left the club, and let me tell you, he was definitely not average. With 737 appearances for the biggest club in England (Liverpol) in all competitions between (1996) and (2013) he ranks second on the club's all-time appearance list. He won 7 major trophies , 38 caps for England and was Liverpool through and through. Like it or not, Liverpudlians decide who our legends are, and Jamie Carragher is most definitely a LFC legend. Scouser!