The country holds it breath…our potential World Cup-winning talisman has gone and got himself injured!  Yes, every football fan in England awaits the results of a scan on Wayne Rooney’s ankle following an injury picked up in last night’s Champions League game.

If Rooney were to not make it to the World Cup finals in the summer, it would be a major blow to the England team’s chances, probably ruining any hope we have of winning the competition – he is that good and that instrumental to the team.

Cozibag often supplies local pubs and bars with bean bags for major football tournaments, so we love these big occasions even more usual!  You just can’t beat seeing our luxury Everlast Faux Leather bean bag furniture scattered around a bar in front of the big screen, the atmosphere simmering with optimism, the beer pumps working over-time, as the growing crowd steadily cranks-up the excitement level with each passing minute as the game approaches.

Fortunately, Alex Ferguson seems to think that Rooney’s injury isn’t too serious, so let’s hope he is right and that Rooney simply twisted his ankle and will be back very soon.  Wayne, get yourself a Cozibag Bean Bag and put your feet up to rest those limbs!

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Another year, another budget to tell us how much more cash we have to pay out in taxes.  The usual rises were there – alcohol, cigarettes, and fuel duty, with strong cider drinkers taking a serious hit! – but not too much else to speak of.

The minimum wage will increase slightly but the tax-free earnings threshold will remain frozen, so no great shakes there.  In fact, there wasn’t much to complain about other than the dreaded rise of fuel duty, but even this has been delayed slightly, to be introduced in stages over the coming year.  However, unless you’re a Green Peace activist, you’d have to agree that fuel duty is extremely unfair on certain groups of people, particularly the transport industry.  Ultimately, it leads to price increases on all consumer goods so you’d think there was a fairer way to spread the taxation burden.

There was good news for first-time house buyers with the scrapping of stamp duty for 2 years for those purchasing properties under £250,000.  This, of course, will be balanced out by an increase of stamp duty on houses over one million pounds, but it probably sounds like a good idea to the majority of people.

Another snippet of good news was that government borrowings will be £11bn lower than previously anticipated, largely due to lower-than-expected unemployment figures.  Some political commentators seemed to enjoy proclaiming this figure to be a drop in the ocean, but I fail to see how saving £11bn can be a bad thing!  Plus, of course, the main point here is that less people are out of work, which is great for everyone.

Things are still a little sluggish in the retail sector, although it was announced earlier in the day that retail figures are actually a little higher than expected.  Again, great news and a sign that things are improving bit by bit.  With this in mind, we still have a huge sale of at least 40% off virtually all bean bag products, and even more off some items such as beanbags in our leather range.

Overall, it seems we’ve been let off rather lightly, but I suspect there’ll be a bit more to come after the election.  Still, we do seem to be heading in the right direction so fingers crossed that the whole banking/economic crisis will soon become just memory.

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A sporting theme seemed to dominate BBC’s TV schedule over the weekend.  With virtually uninterrupted live rugby and football all day Saturday, and marathon fundraiser Sports Relief at various other times over the weekend, there were inevitable complaints from those who were not impressed by such one-sided coverage.

In fairness, I think most complaints were regarding BBC 1’s line-up on Saturday, and though a sporting man myself I was surprised by a rugby/football extravaganza!  The Sports Relief programming obviously wasn’t really about sport, it was a massive event set up to raise millions of pounds for charity.  I do think the whole thing droned on a bit needlessly at times, especially on Friday night, but overall it was a good event.

We at Cozibag Bean Bags made our pledges and one of the team took part in the Sports Relief Mile at Cannon Hill Park in Birmingham.  We couldn’t fail to be impressed by the amount of money raised – the last I heard, the total stood at around £31m, although it may well now be higher – and it’s heartening to know that even in times of belt-tightening (which, being a retailer of high-end leather bean bag furniture is something we are very aware of), job losses and BA strikes, the British public is still willing to put their hands in their pockets to help the less fortunate.

As no doubt many people will agree, we particularly enjoyed the James Corden sketches.  He’s a hell of a performer, the type of person who simply has funny (and very large) bones.  He also doesn’t seem to have any shame when making fun of himself, which is an admiral attribute, especially in the world of comedy.  Fair play, also, to David Beckham for a pretty impressive performance.  I wasn’t expecting any sort of genuine acting ability but he was fantastic!

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Cozibag Bean Bags