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ChippenhamRed

OTIB Supporter
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Everything posted by ChippenhamRed

  1. Turning 40 last year really put into perspective just how little City has given me over the years. Four decades of bouncing between the second and third tiers for a club our size is just so depressing. One notable cup run. I look at fans of other clubs and I’m jealous of the journeys they have been on. Swansea made their way through the leagues and played in Europe. Luton have made it all the way from lowly divisions. Huddersfield, Blackpool, Barnsley, Bournemouth and even Swindon have tasted top flight football. Bradford, Portsmouth and Cardiff have all made it to a cup final. Some of these clubs have suffered since, but at least they’ve had genuinely exciting periods. I actually think we must be one of the dullest clubs to support in the entire league. I think you could reasonably say that City fans of my generation have seen the least achievement against potential and expectation of ANY set of fans in the entire country. I’m really fed up with it! Is there any club out there more dull than us when you consider size and potential?
  2. I’m a bit tired of being told “things have been worse” as a defence of our perpetual averageness. Things have also been a lot worse for Luton, Bournemouth, Brentford, Burnley, Ipswich and Coventry. It’s so dull supporting us.
  3. Warnock is available and I’d bite your hand off for a bit of the controversy, excitement and intrigue that would bring. I’m so bored of this club right now. A boring manager isn’t helping.
  4. 5 defeats in 6 and we barely deserved to win the one we did. Manning giving us absolutely nothing to get excited about on the pitch, coupled with an utterly uninspiring robotic demeanour. Can only see this ending one way. So let’s get rid now.
  5. The data is the data and no one is trying to “convey” anything. It’s just data that speaks for itself. Your experience in your “large network” does not trump that information - and it is frankly beyond ridiculous that you are still defending the notion that it is no harder to buy a home now than it was in the past.
  6. So you said that 95% of people on benefits are lazy, but your defence is that you subsequently admitted you made it up, so it doesn’t count that you said it. And now you’re saying we’re “offended”. Got it.
  7. Here you go @steviestevieneville. I’d say 20 out of 21 is pretty close to everyone, wouldn’t you? Not sure “I didn’t mean everyone, I just meant 95%” is the greatest defence.
  8. Housing being more expensive today relative to earnings isn’t merely a “narrative”, it is born out in the facts that you are continually ignoring when presented to you. Just because your kids were fortunate enough to buy a house doesn’t make the overall picture any less true - and that overall picture is that house prices have consistently risen well ahead of wages, and therefore priced more and more people out of home ownership. You keep talking about demand but you’re forgetting the other crucial variable - supply. There is a shortage of housing in this country that keeps prices high. We have seen fluctuations around the pandemic and the Truss budget, but the lack of supply has prevented prices falling substantially, and to a more reasonable level.
  9. The cost can be met by not giving a discount to pensioners like my Dad, who currently gets a discount despite owning two mortgage-free houses and a generous final salary pension. But for some reason that doesn’t provoke the same outrage that giving a discount to a disabled person would.
  10. I wasn’t aware there was no discount for the disabled, that’s very disappointing. It says so much about our country that giving a discount based solely on age, to statistically the wealthiest age group in society, is just accepted without question. But the well intentioned idea of trying to balance discounts across the fanbase based on need is met with outrage and lazy tropes about booze and fags. The Daily Mail has a lot to answer for.
  11. Your response to this is a LAUGH emoji @RedM?! Seriously? You think that’s a grown up and appropriate response to the points being made? Good grief.
  12. Blimey. I was asked directly how we can make it affordable for those who need financial support to enable them attend. It was just a suggestion. Not everyone is on benefits by choice. It seems you are pandering to the Daily Mail trope that anyone on benefits is lazy and spend it all on booze and fags. Many are disabled and unable to work. Many have learning difficulties. Some have had to give up work to become a carer. Others have suffered mental trauma. Are you saying we should do NOTHING to make football more accessible to such people? I have already argued on this thread against OAP discount as an outdated notion based on wealth distribution across the UK. There are no easy answers, but I was simply arguing for a way to make football accessible to as many people as possible, based on need rather than crude age-based discount. You might not like the suggestion, but I stand by that as well intentioned, and your attack is completely disproportionate and unnecessary.
  13. “Probably not much different to now in real terms”. Good grief! Quite incredible that you’re still trying to defend the idea that houses aren’t much more expensive now than they used to be. Its already been explained to you that higher interest rates on a much lower value house are no more painful than today’s more modest rates on a much higher value house. Using your example, anyone buying that £50k house today will have to pay closer to £200k for it. They will also have to pay a lot more than that after interest. And salaries haven’t kept up - nowhere near. The cost of housing today is a million miles away from the 70s, 80s and 90s. https://landregistry.data.gov.uk/app/ukhpi/compare?print=true&from=1999-12-31&to=2019-04-16&location[]=W92000004&location[]=E92000001&st=all&in=avg
  14. The gym just isn’t a fair comparison. It’s not entertainment, it’s just access to facilities. They’re just totally different things. I’m not defending the price increases but the comparisons have to be reasonable. How much would it cost to go to four hours of live music a month at the equivalent professional level? Four hours of theatre? Four hours of another sport?
  15. Further up I proposed a loyalty discount increasing each year. That would be one measure. The fairest way would probably be a discount for those on government benefits, but I’m not sure if that could realistically be implemented. It’s the only real way to identify those who need the help, although some might argue it’s not a reasonable threshold.
  16. Yep. I’m 40 now and feel fortunate that my wife and I were just about able to afford our first house back in 2007 - based on a joint income - and have just about managed to climb the ladder since. But it’s even worse now and just impossible for many young people today.
  17. Ah yes, the old “but interest rates were 15%” argument. They were, but it was 15% on a much smaller sum relative to incomes. The table below shows the effective interest rate over the past few decades when taking that into consideration. What it means is that today’s interest rates are now a very similar financial burden on homeowners to that 15% peak. And that’s on top of the cost of living crisis. I am not pretending for one second that all pensioners are rich. And indeed every generation faces its challenges. But nothing I have said “rewrites history”, and it remains undeniable that - overall - wealth distribution in the UK today is skewed towards older generations - which is why a broad-brush discount for OAPs is so outdated.
  18. When you’re talking about a huge sectors of society based solely on their age, then generalisation is unavoidable and appropriate. And it is absolutely and demonstrably true that they are one of the wealthiest groups in society - see the chart below. The “easy ride” refers to the fact that today’s pensioners are not survivors of the war. They are baby boomers. They have benefitted from affordable housing and the house price boom that is so crippling for younger generations now. They could raise a family on a single income when now it takes two if you want to own a family home - and all the childcare costs that go with that. They were able to go to university for free, rather than leave with enormous debt. Many of them have final salary pensions and will likely have retired younger than today’s working population. Yes, it is true to say that not all pensioners are wealthy and many struggle. But that is the case across all age groups. And it absolutely true - in broad terms - to say that pensioners are the wealthiest group in a society.
  19. Thanks for refreshingly grown up responses to the OAP discount issue. I mentioned similar on twitter and got some utter nonsense thrown back at me by people who seem think someone born in 1955 fought in the war or something. Pensioner discount definitely needs to be revised to reflect loyalty rather than simply age. My Dad - with no mortgage, a final salary pension, plenty of savings and a house worth about twenty times what he paid for it - really doesn’t need a discount more than your average 20-something faced with huge rent and often little prospect of buying their own home. The world has changed.
  20. I won’t be popular for saying this but OAP discount is a completely outdated notion given the distribution of wealth by age group in the UK in 2024. There are - of course - many who are not well off across all age groups, including pensioners. But a broadly applied discount based solely on age must be broadly applicable, and it simply isn’t any more. It would be fairer to distribute that reduction across all age groups, and introduce a loyalty discount increasing with each year which would recognise the long serving (suffering) nature of our oldest supporters. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/distributionofindividualtotalwealthbycharacteristicingreatbritain/april2018tomarch2020
  21. I know it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but why are we such a strange club? We seem dysfunctional so often and this is just another example. Why don’t we have people capable of making basic decisions or organising simple things like a squad photo at the start of the season - not near the end? How can we ever hope to scale Everest and achieve promotion…when we can’t even tie our own laces on our walking boots?
  22. Just catching up, been out all day and wasn’t at the game. If ever there was an unwelcome three points, it sounds like it might have been today. I worry these sort of empty victories just buy Manning more time to do more damage.
  23. Starting to think it might be better is we lose to Swansea, if that means Manning gets sacked. Someone will be along in a second to say "I never want my team to lose"....but if you want the best for the club in the long term, sometimes you can see it as a necessary evil for the greater good. Having said all that - Manning is only a part of the problem, Tinnion and Crayon Boy need to go too.
  24. I guess my threshold for hating everything is just a bit higher than yours Andy.
  25. This is what we’re reduced to now. We’ve lost our fourth game in a row to a club who’ve just spent four years in League One, but it’s OK because “we gave it a go”. So what if it felt different. It felt different against Southampton and we’ve lost every game since then. I have zero faith in Manning now, and even less faith in the people that put him there. Meanwhile Ipswich join the long list of clubs that emerge from the depths of lower league football and pass us on the way up. Sick of this club.
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