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And the run-away winner is.... Did it again, but perhaps I had the advantage of seeing it on German satellite without the benefit of any running commentary (I could understand). It's not entirely surprising that it was another UK total disaster. Are we going for the record on being last? In recent years we've completely lost sight of what this is all about. We fail to appreciate changing European taste, and consistently over-produce our entries, sometimes to the point of a complete screw-up. Simon Cowell commercial types shouldn't be let within a mile of this. Even the Irish have now completely lost the plot. A little bit of strategy (from someone definitely not in the commercial music biz) could see us consistently in the top five, and take it a lot of the time. Sure there's politics in this, but not as much as people would have you believe; often why countries vote for their neighbours is simply that they share similar tastes.

Thought the German girl was quite cute and not a bad singer. Portugal a poor rip-off of A Weekend in New England. Only caught the reprise of the UK entry, but it sounded passable.

Real soon, but Andy is very occupied at the moment, what with the new job (not entirely unrelated to the issue at hand ), putting a new car on the road, and supporting paying customers! We are also bringing up a new UK server at the mo. - which might just be the one tasked to handle the forthcoming YOURNAME@bedlington.co.uk e-mail service.

It's the saturated fats that are bad for you. Watch out for the mayonnaise too! Far too much salt in most commercial products, and when that salt is combined with sugar... !!!!! McLitter should be taxed. Appalling, and seems to go with many of the "convenience" food customers who patronise McD's. I've found McD's very poor value for money, and the WiFi at the two I tried (different countries) was crap! Curry can be good for you - depends on what you are currying I think. Pizzas aren't intrinsically unhealthy; again depends on exactly what they contain.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/27/asda-buys-netto "Staffing levels will be increased from an average of 14 per store to 25." ...so the "cues" should be shorter before too long! That's approx 11 more local jobs too.

You might get away with that rose coloured glasses view with any other Labour government, but you forget two things. 1) New Labour inherited one of the soundest economies in recent history. 2) Gordon Brown has been in charge of the economy for an incredible thirteen years. It's very easy to throw huge chunks of other people's money at things and claim an improvement, but have we had value for the huge sums involved, all the useless jobs-for-the-boys, and all the beaurocracy? Sooner or later the bills have to be paid. Despite the nonsense talked at the election about "putting the recovery at risk" that time is *now*. If we don't do something right away then Sterling (the only thing we have done right in not joining the Euro) will suffer a crisis of confidence, imports will rocket in price and we will re-run the history of previous Labour governments. Only, considering the scale of the deficit, it will be FAR worse this time. Saying our problems are "Global" is total propaganda. It's nonsense to say that every other country (except Australia) is suffering the same problems! China is running obscene balance of payments surpluses, The whole of Asia is in very good financial shape. The Arabs only have their investments in the West to mope about; otherwise they are coining it. Russia is doing very well thank you. Scandinavia - and particularly Norway (where they haven't squandered their North Sea inheritance) are doing OK. The USA is recovering very nicely - because they don't have the same mad job-costing "employment protection". The Euro-zone is in trouble for entirely different reasons - mainly politics getting in the way of business. Apart from basket case Greece, Spain is in the same trouble as the UK because of the same socalist madness. No coincidence that Gordon and the Spanish PM were bosom buddies! Our problems didn't start in the USA, they started here! The started because unlike previous chancellors Gordon started to believe he could walk on water - he'd "ended boom & bust". Read the posts here about Northern Rock that were made without the benefit of hindsight. They proved uncannily accurate in forecasting the meltdown, and the folly of putting public money into Northern Rock. He didn't act to reign in stupid lending, like all other governments did in the past. Lots of senior economists were warning of impending disaster year in and year out, his economic forecasts were consistently wrong year in and year out, yet he thought he knew better than the experts. He was entirely in charge of our economy, and no one else. He's entirely to blame for our financial crisis! No contest there - Major wasn't a very effective PM. But it has b .... all to do with the topic. Of course "the cuts" are coming. And they'd have come whoever won the election. You want to praise Brown for the sound finances he inherited, and to blame the new government for the absolute necessity of balancing the books again after his profligacy? That doesn't sound a very tenable view. Do you honestly think that the motivation for "the cuts" is something to do with your class war? Do you think that they aren't absolutely necessary? How do you propose that we close a £170,000,000,000 structural deficit without cutting government spending? Gordon's case was that it would all come right over the course of the economic cycle. It didn't; it won't; he never came clean on what he meant; and we don't have the luxury of waiting any longer to see if things pick-up anyway. The consequences of carrying on spending at the current rate will be devastating and long-term. Some short term pain can probably avoid a Sterling meltdown - there is no other sane option!

The idiotic Home Information Packs have just been scrapped. Ten years of "work" (and six figure salaries) by that waste of space John Prescott gone in ten minutes - brilliant! Everyone will be better off (except the purveyors of this nonsense) as a result. Like much Labour lunacy they started out as a quite good idea, but rapidly became detached from reality or stated purpose, and ended up only as a meal ticket for bureaucrats. If only it was as easy to roll back all the other elements of thirteen squandered years of Labour big government!

How can we have a poll when we don't know who the runners are? Nominations now extended to 9th June. Anyway they are ooot for the next five years, at least. So does it matter anyway? You don't know who Diane Abbott is!? http://www.dianeabbott.org.uk/ You can't have been watching much political TV as she frequently appears, and seems to get on quite well with arch Tory, Michael Portillo. Diane seems less wooden and more up-front than most Labour wimmin. Definitely someone I'd buy a used car from (but not a used political party).

There have been *lots* of non-prime ministers (both Tory and Labour), and I can't argue with you that John Major wasn't ineffective. But they didn't wreck the economy, and, operating under some sort of self delusion, mortgage the future for decades to come. The history books will show that Gordon Brown was the uncontested all-time champion. Not just the astonishing £1.4 Trillion in debt that this prize idiot was planning to rack up on the crazy assumption that it would somehow all come right in the end, but the vast number of non-jobs in the public sector, and the layers of unenforcible, pointless and counterproductive legislation that were introduced in the last thirteen years. Nick Clegg seems to have accepted the mission to unravel some of this; the best of luck to him!

No one has mentioned "contention ratio" - simply put: the number of other people sharing that bandwidth. 50:1 is normal; 20:1 is premium; lower is very expensive! Always ask what yours is - you could be sharing exchange gear with Monsta!

I wonder how long Global Gordon's "not putting the recovery at risk" election stance would have lasted? Happily we'll never know, but it didn't take the LDs very long to be convinced that we had to do something right away about the Labour binge. Course he'd have declared it another completely unforeseen global problem, that started somewhere else, and was all someone else's fault. I think we can be fairly sure now that we've only done the bare minimum to prevent the markets rounding on the pound. We have to be seen to be more than fiscally prudent (something Gordon was in the first couple of years, but then he inherited a reasonably sound economy before he completely lost touch with reality). I can remember Wim Duisenberg, chairman of the ECB, on the money program back in the late 90's confidently lecturing us on how we were doomed if we didn't join the Euro. Wonder what happened to him? Oops... probably bad taste to make a "floating exchange rate" joke out of that ...but so tempting. Amusing to see Mrs Merkel writing bigger and bigger cheques by the day. Someone should have told her that banning short selling is ranked alongside ministerial pronouncements there will be NO devaluation. Now what's that German word? Ah, yes: schadenfreude. Proposal for a future film: Dr. Strangelove 2, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Inflation. Going to be a hard sell in Germany! (except to wheelbarrow manufacturers)

I don't think the no "disc thing" is the problem. You seldom use "disk things" on notebooks these days, so it's not worth the extra weight carrying an internal "disk thing" around when external USB ones are as cheap as chips. It's also an extra mechanical "failure point". No, I think the prob with the machine is the power-hungry CPU and so the very poor battery life. There are obviously quality issues too. You could have got a netbook with better battery life and far more portability for the same sort of price. Always a good idea to state your requirements here first, and see what the local "experts" suggest before parting with cash. If the shop has to send things away then there's probably no point dealing with them, and you'd do better on price and service by buying from a reputable on-line retailer like laptopsdirect.co.uk - where you can make the distance selling regulations your friend. Anyway, we look forward to the next instalment of the Curried Lemon with Chips Saga.

Of course! Name 'n' Shame! Currys; Dixons; PC World?? I think maybe you'd have done better with an Atom powered netbook. I've got several now!

Come on Deb, tell us where you bought it and the make and model. No need to be shy about such things. Cympil is right: if the repair isn't satisfactory ask for a replacement, or a refund.as it's obviously not readily repairable. The problem with any goods you accept a repair on is that you've sort of acquiesced to keep them, and are then on weak ground demanding a refund later. But if they can't then be satisfactorily repaired they are at least obliged to replace them. ALWAYS politely ask for the outcome you want first, and if they won't oblige you then tell them that you are taking their alternative only "under protest". That way they can't say you agreed to whatever if you find you need to bring a claim later - it was a situation they forced on you.

I agree with Nick - oops I mean Monsta! The Two Cleggies could probably change places and no one would notice - and they probably will! They're both out of the same mold, and not Nu Labour greaseballs or Lavery/Scargill type anarchists. Can they carry their parties at all times is the only unknown. As it's the only show in town at the moment, then they probably can.

Wow, stand up the guy who made that uncannily accurate prediction! Turns out that Gordon was sitting at the table in Downing Street - when all about him had quit and the engine was running to take him to the palace - desperately making last bid phone calls to the LDs for that extra four months in power. That VAT to 20% prediction is only counting down the days now. How do you close the revenue shortfall without it, and without a stiff rise in direct taxation? It would be nice if it was only for a few years, but I fear it will be near permanent.

Nope, all the really potty LD ideas have been discarded. Trident stays and a replacement will be bought, though carefully costed. Also the daft idea of giving away £16Bn in tax reductions in order to get £1.5Bn to the low paid has been revised to something a lot more cost effective and affordable.

Unemployment up another 53,000, and "the recovery" has been "put at risk" by the need to stop spending more than we earn. Even the chairman of the BoE is spouting about the dangers of not reigning in our chronic overspending right away. He's also revised his forecasts to point up that inflation is a much bigger problem than he formerly forecast. Who would have thought that printing loads of money would cause inflation? Worse: Foreigners are no longer to blame for our woes - we now have to take ownership of our own problems. And... we are no longer able to jet around lecturing other countries on how to run their economies as we're now too busy fixing our own. No one is even out there saving the World! This is tragic! Things were never this bad under Global Gordon!

http://www.metacafe....oon_at_nite.swf If the wind wasn't a Westerly: we've got a problem Houston! http://midimagic.sgc-hosting.com/candbal.htm

Actually it looks like Cleggie is in a quite weak position with his own party - he can't deliver on a deal! And, as I said, the longer this thing goes on.... So... we've not only had secret talks, we've had secret talks which were kept secret from those secret talks! This is what always happens when you abandon FPTP. And... would you adam & eve that Gordon is going to cling on until Septemberish, and that it is starting to look like NONE of the candidates that were paraded before the public at the party leaders debate is going to get to be PM! Worse still, minority Labour is planning to impose yet another unelected PM on the Country! Gordon has only dared to have a proper cabinet meeting AFTER he's preempted the people planning to knife him in the back. "Dignified exit" my foot! What the people who are crowing that we don't have a presidential form of government conveniently fail to mention is, that this sort of thing wouldn't have happened in the past because it WAS ALWAYS an unwritten rule that a PM had to have a mandate to govern and so was obliged to hold an election fairly quickly to maintain authority. Exactly when this rule was sidelined I don't know.

Because you couldn't! One way or another they'd club up - even covertly. With parties at least you know broadly what they support and are agin. Most people don't bother to do their research; how many people voted LibDem just because it was neither Labour nor Tory without checking exactly what they were voting for? The majority I'd wager! I'm Nick and I'm different, without being required to specify how they were different, and with no (modern) record of failure, was the most powerful thing they had going for them. So, difficult even with parties, and near impossible without! The alternative is to get rid of MPs and simply elect a government. That won't at all appeal to the political classes as it means many fewer politicians. The so-called constituency work could be done by an expansion of the ombudsman, possibly merging it all into the local CAB. Combine that with some on-line opinion canvasing with teeth, and mandatory e-referendums on major matters, and you'd likely get a stronger democracy at a much lower price. Can someone explain what happens when you've taken a problem to an MP and it has been progressed a way, then that MP is suddenly removed from office?

Depends on what you mean by... I don't think that politicians hatching deals in secret is very democratic. At least when you put someone in on a firm manifesto you've got some sort of benchmark as to whether they've delivered or not. With this form of horse trading you don't even know exactly what you're voting for, or the character and record of who you are voting for! It all boils down to whether the MPs are representing you or their party. With FPTP they are representing you even if you didn't vote for them, and you can take your problem to them and they are obliged to listen. Who can you take a problem to when there's a hodge podge of various parties who don't necessarily represent your neck of the woods? If they are not there to represent their constituents what exactly are they there for, and in these days of instant communication do we even need them anyway? The MPs themselves will tell you that the days of policy swaying speeches in parliament are long gone. They get up and spout and no one listens. The parliamentary process as was is totally pointless!

It's win-win for the Tories on this one. If the present negotiations break down they'll say this is what we are heading for IF we were to adopt PR. If they don't and a coalition is patched together then they'll say things would have been much better if we hadn't been compromised, and they'll be plugging that at the next election. As far as Labour is concerned Gordon is quite prepared to put Labour at a huge disadvantage for his own immediate purposes, but senior Labour figures can see past the next few months and how this would be suicidal. I wonder how many of the rent-a-mob demonstrating yesterday - if taken aside and asked to explain how what EXACTLY they were demonstrating for - could give a coherent answer as to how it would work in practise? It's one of the "simple" type of ideas (like communism) which appeal to the sorts of people who don't think through the practical consequences, and how human nature will exploit them. All any form of PR will yield is more politicians, more public expense, more fudges, and more excuses why things don't change! It's a change to less change!

Interesting to scrutinise what Cleggie has just said in his four points. He steered clear of both the Euro and Trident. And he didn't specify PR. A fundamental vertical reform of the political system. Vertical codeword for the house of lords; political system can be made to mean whatever you want it to mean - he didn't actually use the words voting system like some of the media is reporting, It suits the Tories that the electoral boundaries be redrawn. Cameron has already said that compromise is readily possible on education, and tax. So Cleggie reeeeely wants a deal, and so does Dave. But the longer it goes on the more deal-breaking demands will be thought up by those in the wings.