Quote Originally Posted by Tichi1 View Post
Given that you seem an intelligent man - albeit a misserable one - I am surprised to say the least that you didn't have the foresight and / or the opportunity to invest in a private pension to subsidise your lifestyle following retirement?
It seems to be a given nowadays that people are expected to take out a private pension - wasn't always the case, but from previous posts I beleive you have held some senior positions in your working life and so would have expected you to have taken steps to support yourself through retirement.
Perhaps I am completely wrong here and you do actually have a private pension, or where never in a position to invest in one, but it's just the way you respond to comments about not attending games, and refer to people living on a pension, meaning the state pension that lead me to this conclusion.

This is not a dig by the way.
I did indeed "invest in a private pension", only to see its value drop like a stone as a result of poor investment management (I'm not one of the fortunate enough to have had a final salary pension), leaving me with a fraction of what I contributed to "subsidise my lifestyle". Despite being of retirement age I work, when I can find employers willing to take on a 66-year old, although the earnings are usually at the level of the national minimum wage (roughly half of the average wage figure I gave), partly to keep the wolf from the door, partly to stave off boredom, but still have much less than the average wage figure to manage on. I don't know what personal circumstances apply to any of those who post here, but I do know how hard it can be just to exist, and to do so at a time when it might have been reasonably expected that life would be just a little less harsh. Shame some others find it easier to make flippant "humorous" remarks. "Walk a mile......."

I'm not, as you put it, a miserable man, just hard-bitten, particularly in the time since my wife died, to the extent that the measures I suggested to prevent ticket touts are but a mere bagatelle compared to what I would do if the law didn't prevent me. Slicing off the hands and tongues of those found guilty of ticket touting, and perhaps for the real bosses of what is an industrial scale crime, gouging out of eyes, would be some of the milder punishments, with no recourse to state assistance for those punished.