Where does the next point come from?

I’m depressed. No I seriously am. I’ve said for ages “there are no easy games in the Premier League” only to find that there is at the present time – Tottenham and Newcastle. After the euphoria of our trophy last season it has gone from bad to worse and I reckon if you plotted a table from March to now we would be points adrift with Derby. No wonder Robbie Keane was so quick out of the door! How we miss him and Malbranque.

 

Hull City at home next week and a possible exit from the UEFA cup on Thursday. The next 7 days are crucial for everyone at the club that’s for sure. Having seen the Wigan match – if you could call it that – I would ask “what happened to the entertainment factor?” I was pleased when we signed David Bentley but he looks a shadow of the player he can be and at the present time if his life depended upon hitting a great corner or free kick the funeral would have been sometime last week.

 

All sports are confidence based and we surely cannot be as bad as we are playing at the moment. But you have to see a spark of something to change what is happening. We seem to be making strange decisions regarding selection and substitutions and you surely cannot accommodate everyone in the hope that it all comes right. For example, Modric signs for a lot of money looks good in Euros, reasonable in pre season but sat on the bench yesterday. Gunter does not play the first two games, appears against Chelsea does well for 70 minutes is subbed and sits back on the bench again. Corluka plays right back, not so good, plays centre back against Wigan looks solid but then goes back to right back. Zokora has been one of our best in midfield this season but has played 3 games at right back and then gets subbed yesterday when playing well.

 

Decide on your best team and stick to it should be the answer, the problem appears to be “we haven’t got a clue which team that is!” If you went back to basics you’d play 4-4-2, with a settled centre back partnership, committed wingers, a ball winner, some one creative and two up front. You’d play them all in the positions they know and understand so in my book it has to be;

 

Gomez, Gunter, Corluka, Woodgate (Cptn), Bale, Bentley, Modric, Zokora, Lennon, Pavlyuchenko and Bent.

 

I’m missing King because he cannot play all the games and as such we need to get a settled side and Jenas because for all his box to box running  I’m interested what he does with the ball and I’ve never been convinced that’s a great deal. I would have them both on the bench along with Huddlestone, Frazer Campbell, O’Hara and Giovanni and Hutton would replace Gunter when his fitness is complete.  We also need a leader on the pitch so give the armband to Woody.

 

And Ramos and Poyet? You have to stick with them at the present time. No doubt the suggestion is to spend big in January but as Mike Ashley’s statement showed a number of clubs have plenty of debt and Spurs may well be one of them. Changing Manager once more will not be the answer but if the players at the Club are not good enough a certain Daniel Commolli must take his fair share of the responsibility for that. I doubt he will see out the season.

 

No team is ever too good to get relegated. It’s down to the Spurs squad to fight for every ball, win every tackle and header and get the fans back on side. Have they the talent, I think so – but have they the desire and commitment – not on performances so far.  So COME ON YOU SPURS.

There’s trouble in Toon….

It now appears that people power has scored a major victory on Tyneside, but the battering that the Newcastle faithful fans have taken over the last few weeks will surely continue to reverberate around St James Park long after owner Mike Ashley finds a buyer for the club and finally moves back to London after a disastrous few months at the helm.

The uncomfortable back room shenanigans, coupled with the numerous and vociferous protests in the week, has undoubtedly affected the players on the pitch, (a worrying trend given that the side were hardly full of world beaters), and the recent defeats to Hull and West Ham are clear evidence that the situation needs to be resolved as soon as possible, should the club harbour any thoughts of a top half finish. Amongst all this off the field commotion, a certain amount of empathy must be given to new signings Coloccini, Gutierrez and Xisco (a £5.75 million signing from Deportivo on deadline day) all of whom surely feel that they have been dropped into a war-zone, or at the very best a circus. Xisco, whose signing was undoubtedly the brainchild of the so called “Cockney Mafia”, will clearly be a target for the fans’ fury should his performances fail to deliver given that his move was the final straw that saw Keegan leave.

Yet, given all of the detrimental press and publicity surrounding the resignation of Keegan, the delicious irony of the whole situation is that Keegan could well come back to the club under the new ownership who will surely recognise, as Ashley clearly hasn’t, the enormous stature of the man known as The Messiah.

With so little outside interest in the Newcastle job, which has become something of a poisoned chalice in the eyes of the LMA, the only likely scenario seems to be the return of Keegan to the helm in a more authoritarian role, possibly using the financial clout of a certain Bill Gates…..dreamboat!!

HBOS saver? Worried about your position? Read on

The news of a takeover/merger between Lloyds TSB and HBOS has brought the current financial crisis a  little closer to home this morning. Whilst it is early days it is likely that talks will be quick and a deal struck to end the uncertainty that has hit the market. 

If you are a saver with HBOS or Lloyds TSB and you are worried about your position the BBC have put together a series of questions and answers to which may provide you with some comfort. These are available by clicking the link below.

BBC Link re Lloyds HBOS

I would also recommend that you discuss with your financial adviser your savings policy at an early opportunity though at this stage there appears no reason for panic. If you do not have a financial adviser please contact you local Lambert Chapman LLP contact who will be happy to make a recommendation.

A great performance….but not many saw it!

In my opinion, the England football team gave a great performance on Wednesday night, their best match for a very long time.  Remembering the fact that Croatia had never lost a home fixture since their independence (35 games ago), and that we played so poorly against them (home and away) in the European Championship qualifiers, this makes the result even better than at first glance.

 

It was one of those matches where everyone seemed to be playing to a high level – Heskey held the ball up well, Rooney was back to his best (having previously been criticised for only scoring two international goals since Euro 2004) and Theo Walcott showed that he has got what it takes to be an England striker, after being introduced on to the international scene too soon during the last World Cup – I just hope that our Nation’s hopes aren’t put onto his shoulders at such an early stage in his career.

 

All four goals showed that we do have the necessary skills and abilities when required and there was some great link-up play between the attacking players.  The best moment of the match for me was Lampard’s goal (prior to realising it had been disallowed) – it was great to see such flowing, one-touch football from someone other than the usual continental/South American teams. After some thought, I now favour Fat Frank to Stevie Gerrard…..for the time being at least.

 

It was only a pity that we scraped a nervy win against Andorra a matter of days before an altogether improved match. Presumably, we rose to the occasion when necessary and did not need to do this against such a weaker team.

 

Whilst writing this blog I should point out that I, unfortunately, only managed to see the second half of the match, as it took me about an hour to get find a local pub that has Setanta!  It is an appalling situation when, due to the greed of broadcasting companies, the majority of the nation are unable to watch the match or even get half an hour of highlights – surely international matches (at the very least) should be shown live on terrestrial TV.

How can it be that less than 3 million people saw our best game for years???!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Chance of a Lifetime

Mike Carabine

At the March committee meeting the club I have played for over 25 years, Beacon Hill Rovers, decided to nominate ourselves for the County Charter Standard Club of the Year for Essex more in hope than expectation.

 

The Scheme looks at both the playing and non-playing aspects of a club, so as well as coaching it covers child protection, administration, disciplinary and development. The Scheme is open to ALL clubs below league level, so locally we were potentially up against Braintree Town, Witham Town, Chelmsford City and the like. So imagine our delight when in June we were invited to the Waterfront to collect the County award.

 

Part of the award offered three lucky Under-10’s the chance of a lifetime to carry out one of the pre-match flags before the crucial England Under-21 qualifier against Portugal on Friday 5^th September. Imagine my pride therefore when my son was one of the three chosen to carry out this duty. As soon as he found out, he phoned everyone he knew to tell them – his excitement turned up to 11.

On the day the Essex FA had laid on a coach for all the boys and accompanying adults, arriving at Wembley in plenty of time before their duties were due to start. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of going to the new stadium, I must recommend it. As you approach by road it looks a fantastic sight, the Arch more than making up for the loss of the Twin Towers. After leaving the boys to get their kit sorted, have a tour of the stadium, eat and then have a practice of what they would be doing later, the adults were treated to a pleasant meal at the Wembley Plaza Hotel, again courtesy of the Essex FA.

Upon our entry into the stadium we were shown to our seats above the corner flag. What struck me was, despite its size, the arena seems quite small, an effect of the extended roof constructions most of the way round. The consequence of this is that you feel closer to the action than you really are.

7.35pm: As the teams take to the pitch, the first flag out of the tunnel is a blue “Respect” banner, supporting the new FA campaign to encourage players, coaches and spectators not to harangue and abuse match officials. Immediately we spot that the three bearers our end are the members of our club – little old Beacon Hill; on the pitch; at Wembley! They carry out their duties without falling over or kicking Ricardo Vaz Te and are brought back to sit with us for the game.

To be honest for much of the first half the boys would have been better off still under the stands, as the match was pretty dire. Considering Portugal needed to win to top the Group, they made no real effort to get forward. England played with Gaby Agbonlahor up front on his own supported by a midfield five. For this to work effectively you either have to get it in to the frontman’s feet and play off him or get the two wide men playing in more advanced positions and playing almost as wingers. For most of the first 45 minutes we managed to do neither very well, but just before half-time a soft penalty was awarded to England, which James Milner tucked away.

My only cause for a moan during the whole day came at the half-time interval. The cost of refreshments at Wembley has been well publicised, so I was prepared for the extortionate prices. However what did come as a shock was the speed of service and the fact that when we did finally get to the front of the queue half the menu was off! All this on a crowd of just over 27,000 – so what must it be like on Cup Final day?!!

The second half saw a better performance and when Mark Noble slid a great through ball to Mr A, who then finished casually, it was game over. Portugal eventually mustered a couple of efforts, which Joe Hart coped with easily, leaving England 2-0 winners to finish top of the Group. In a strange twist, this does not guarantee a place in the finals as there is a two-legged play-off before that.

I must commend the FA with regard to ticket pricing for this game, with it being only £10 for adults and a fiver for children. Given that most of the England side were regular performers in the Premier League, and the importance of the match, I thought that was good value and would consider going again in the future. Even better for me, the England side selected included players from a number of clubs not just the three or four that dominate the main England team.    

On the way back on the coach we had a bunch of tired but elated children, who were soon fast asleep. Although their enjoyment of the whole experience was clearly immense, I don’t think that at that age they can appreciate what an honour it was for them and how lucky they were to get the opportunity. Hopefully in years to come, when they look back and remember 5^th September 2008 they will.

 

 

 

 

Uncle Audley considers crime prevention and Institutional denial!

I arrived for a family Sunday lunch to see Uncle Audley deep in the newspaper. He had just been reading about a horrific racial attack on an Arab student in Hastings.  Before I could read the report, Uncle Audley was off.  “It seems this happened outside a kebab house.  The owner had called the Police an hour before because some youths had congregated outside, clearly intent on mischief.  Apparently there had been trouble on other occasions.  The Police did not intervene and an hour or so later the incident took place.  There was a subsequent Police announcement that they had been unable to take action because no crime had been committed.  So there you have it.  Someone has to be killed before the Police will do something.  So much for crime prevention!”

 

“There seems to me to be another issue here.  The Police are like many State sponsored organisations these days.  They find it impossible to admit that they may have failed.  I imagine it is an inevitable consequence of this ridiculous compensation culture we have these days.  Consequently, we have these ludicrous statements issued whenever there is an incident like this one.  The first casualty is confidence and credibility.  Apologies and compensation come later, sometimes much later.  I know that there are only a minuscule proportion of cases like this and the national newspapers gorge themselves in such cases.  In most cases, Police do take the appropriate preventative action.  But they should put their hands up if they do fall short of their own high standards”.

 

“The Revenue have the same mentality save that they are rather more prone to error.  But just try getting them to admit it.  Good heavens, it is likely pulling teeth.  What they do now is a sophisticated game of pass the parcel.  The poor, unfortunate taxpayer – sorry, customer (we must use the correct terminology) has his complaint passed from one department to another department to another.  It recalls Kafka’s description of the labyrinthine legal processes at work in the old Austro-Hungarian empire.  The Revenue are playing the percentages that busy taxpayers will eventually give up and get on with their lives, however just their cause might be.  My advice is “Don’t succumb.  Never give in, never give up, never despair”.

 

On this Churchillian note, Uncle Audley fell back into his chair and succumbed, himself, to sleep!

All that glisters is not gold! More problems with the detail on the 10p band!

I should have known better.

 

When Mr Darling, in his Budget, announced the introduction of a 10% tax rate on the first £2,320 of savings income, I started to rub my hands.  OK the Chancellor was, illogically, ending the 10% starting rate of tax for income in general and this was just a sop to Cerberus but something we could exploit for our clients. 

 

I therefore penned a paper on how our clients could create a director’s loan account balance of £23,000 and then charge interest to the company at 10%.  For a husband and wife company this could be nearly £500 per annum of tax saved.

 

Unfortunately, I failed to heed a favourite dictum of mine, “the devil is in the detail”.

 

The watchful guardians in our tax department, Chris and Gill, intervened.  “It is not quite as you may think.  The reality is that your earnings are taken into account in priority to your savings income in establishing whether you qualify for the 10% tax rate on savings income”. 

 

If your earnings are at least £7,755, these will be set against your personal allowance (£5,435) with the balance (£2,320) set against the 10% savings band of £2,320. As the balance of earnings has used up the £2,320 band savings income will be taxed at 20%.

 

Let us take another example.  You have a salary of £20,000 per annum and you have savings income of £2,000.  I imagine your first thought might be that your savings income will be taxed at 10% as it is below £2,320.  No.  Your salary soaks up your 10% band and you will be taxed at 20% on your investment income.

 

The 10% savings rate will be helpful to some people, possibly those who are at home and do not work or those whose wages are below £7,775 per annum.  Given that one’s personal allowance will be set against taxable income first and that tax credits on dividends are not recoverable in any event, it looks like the measure is not going to cost too much in tax.  I wonder how many people have no earned income but savings income between £5,500 and £8,000, given how much capital one might need to generate that level of savings income, I would warrant not an awful lot.

 

It seems to me that this 10% savings rate measure was just there as a headline to take some of the publicity away from the removal of the 10% lower rate band.

Is the Construction Industry victimised? You bet your life they are!

What did the construction industry do to upset the Government? Granted in previous decades the lump required some form of regulation but has it not all got a little over the top? Readers of our web site may have seen an article penned by Chris Harman setting out the current policy of HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) to unpaid debt from tax payers. This told us that if PAYE was in arrears the current year’s liability needed to be up to date before any negotiation could take place on the arrears and this needed a cashflow to demonstrate the need for such instalments.

 

Consider this to the plight of construction businesses. If they fail to pay PAYE on time more than once they can lose the right to be paid in full for work done with an imposition by HMRC of 18% being deducted from the labour element of the sales invoices until all tax liabilities have been up to date for more than 12 months. And this includes the personal tax of the directors.

 

So non construction businesses; 18% deductions? Not at all. Business as usual. So is this fair or appropriate? Cleary not, but this is how the tax legislation currently stands. At the present time case officers at the Collector of Taxes offices are implementing a hard line as they work to collect back the secondary overdrafts that the Crown has unwittingly allowed. Please don’t misunderstand me, I don’t think that these liabilities should be allowed to continue for ever and that tax payers should be encouraged not to pay their taxes as they fall due but I do feel that there should be some form of consistency across the board. After all what is the difference between a construction business and a road haulage business or a printer or a manufacturer of cardboard boxes at the end of the day? Very little apart from the industry in which they operate.

 

The difficulty faced by HMRC is that to implement such a deductions system across the board would prove to be unmanageable, and unfortunately this is what the current system in the construction industry is proving to be. For those of you who are unaware if you suffer deductions in construction you are able to offset this against your monthly PAYE bill and use any surplus to settle the corporation tax liability before receiving a refund. So what if you use subcontractors to manage your work and they are paid gross rather than under deduction? If you yourself as a construction company have gross status there is no problem, but if this is not the case then it gets a little difficult and you need an understanding bank manager.

 

If you owed PAYE as an example you would get your gross status suspended. You would then be building credits towards repaying the debt, after accounting for your PAYE liability if there was agreement from HMRC to do this but you would need a plan to do so. You also need to make monthly returns to set out your tax position which allows HMRC to keep a watching brief over you.

 

If you were not in construction you make an annual return to tell HMRC the tale of the tape. If they see no payment from you before that they may visit and assess you asking you to complete the correct figures for them so that they may collect it from you. No deductions from sales, no automatic offset against PAYE for the future. In my eyes that gives non construction businesses an automatic advantage that I have never felt was fair.

 

To cap that I learned from Chris last week that the CIS scheme is to be centralised at one office for the whole of the United Kingdom and the name of the Office might bring a chill to the heart. Newry is the place from where Pat Jennings hails, the man with the big hands who would be the keeper in my all times Spurs XI. Unfortunately it was also the place which became the VAT headquarters for registrations when HMRC got into a complete and utter mess before rescheduling to Grimsby and Wolverhampton got things back on track. We understand that CIS is to be centralised here. When the VAT troubles were in Newry we were told by staff that the person responsible for the problems was Gordon Brown for his failure to provide the correct number of staff to operate the scheme properly. I certainly hope that there will be no repetition in terms of this mistake for the Construction Industry suffers sufficiently at the present time without further burden being added in terms of lack of training and a misunderstanding of the rules.

 

So if it is not fair what can be done? Perhaps every business should have to produce monthly returns like we have in construction. Too difficult to manage? Absolutely. How about on line quarterly returns for all businesses, construction and non construction so that computer generated reports would identify stragglers, non payers and under payers in an effort to give some form of level playing field. At the very least that this would encourage early efforts to make plans to catch up payments rather than hope things get better.

 

And make deduction from payments across the board? This would be really difficult unless the law allowed lists to be published showing those businesses not eligible for gross payment, or alternatively those businesses entitled to gross payment which might be easier. That certainly would place an onus upon businesses to get onto the list and to plan cashflow correctly. Too much to ask, I certainly suspect it to be so – so is a reality check and some relaxation needed for construction? I think so.      

“It’s not the despair, I can stand the despair; it’s the hope …”

Film buffs amongst you might recognise the above quote which came from the 1986 film “Clockwise”. For those of you who haven’t seen it, it is about Brian Stimson, a headmaster who is a stickler for punctuality, and his misadventures in getting to an important meeting. Mr Stimson was played by a certain John Cleese, who is well known for his work in Monty Python, Fawlty Towers and A Fish called Wanda.

 

Less well known is the fact that he an ardent West Ham United fan, which might explain his forte for manic expression, bouts of depression and occasional moments where his pent up frustrations boil over into aggression. His years in therapy are well documented, although nowhere I have seen has identified whether his attendance was due to professional pressures, personal problems or simply that we had dropped another three points due to our inability to defend properly.

 

The titular quotation aptly sums up my feelings about supporting the Irons. Perennial underachievers with any sporadic moment of success matched soon after by a dismal failure of some sort or another. My expectations for this season were low and, three games in, I have seen nothing to change my mind, despite us being in the Top 3 for a brief while on Saturday. From the matches/ highlights that I have watched we were lucky to get a victory against Wigan on the opening day, we were totally outplayed by Manchester City even prior to Mark Noble being sent off and in serious danger of being embarrassed by a Macclesfield side that managed to lose 6-0 at the weekend.

 

From Alan Curbishley’s point of view a visit to Upton Park by Blackburn Rovers was just what the doctor ordered, with the crowd having a manger to dislike more than their own man for once! It was 19 years ago that Paul Ince made that serious misjudgement in getting photographed in a Manchester United kit before the deal was done and dusted for him to move to Old Trafford. Hammers fans do appear to have long memories and, although the abuse was not as bad as most feared, the Guv’nor was asked most vociferously if he knew the score at the end of the match, which saw us claim another flattering victory.

 

I am worried however. The Credit Crunch was always going to be an issue for us, given that Bjorgulfer Gudmundsson our Icelandic owner earns his crust in the banking sector back home. It also became clear that as popular a figure as the Eggman was, his largesse in terms of players’ contracts had put unnecessary strain on the club’s finances. Finally there is Mr C’s penchant for buying players who spend more time on the treatment table than the training pitch. The combination of these three factors has seen Freddie Ljungberg walk away with bulging pockets, Anton Ferdinand decide that the North-East looked a better bet than the club he had been with since school, decent squad players sold without replacement and various rumours of key men being lined up as the next to be off.

 

Still things could be worse I suppose, we could have spent £5m on Dos Santos only to find out he is too lightweight for the hurly burly of the Premier League. As my friend Mr Cleese might have said in one of his many guises, “It’s alright – he came from Barcelona!” 

 

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