threegee

Here you are talking about £70 Billion per year? Whereas when the LDs talk about the Trident replacement cost they are talking about a figure that would be split over ten years. Seems to me that there's a lot of this bamboozle with figures going on. For the same reason we have an army, and a navy and an air force. For the same reason we fit locks on our doors knowing that they are really not a huge amount of use. For the same reason that we "throw away" money on insurance policies. For the same reason we have the Queen. Because they are a deterrent; because they've been proven to come in useful - often for the most unexpected reasons at the most unexpected times; because we'd be talking more risks than we need to take without them; because they contribute to the stability of ourselves, our Nation and our Planet; because we've always had them, and no one person or political party is wise enough to tell us exactly what we'd be letting ourselves in for without them. It's not that we can't find other things to do with the money, and it's not that we don't all wish they didn't exist or that all nations didn't say lets universally ban them - we'd be right at the front of the queue there! There's also a military case that says they allow us to have far less conventional forces than if we didn't have them! i.e. they are cost effective. AND because in the 1930's we made the same mistake of unilaterally running down our military by listening to the same sort of arguments. The bill for that "saving" is still visible in our public places. The Labour Party learned that lesson more thoroughly than most, because by and large it was their failed experiment (though it suited the general mood at the time)!

You forgot to mention that the Conservatives bayonet babies too! Did you get that garbage from one of the Labour leaflets that Gordon condemns for telling lies, but won't actually order the lefties that are writing them to stop putting the garbage out. The truth is that between half an million and a million public sector jobs that Gordon thought his tax and spend could sustain now HAVE to go. They have to go whoever gets in because there aren't enough wealth creators in the private sector to pay for them. They will go wherever they need to go, and it won't make a great deal of difference who is chancellor. The plans are have already been made by top civil servants, and the discretion available to ANY future government is really rather small. Darling has seen the plans but wont say what they contain - it would be electoral suicide! The other leaders haven't but they've had the briefings and their economists have made a fairly good guess at filling in any blanks. They wont say for exactly the same reasons. So who is kidding who here? Well, just about everyone is trying to kid everyone else. But no one is more kiddable than those who vote Labour in the belief that in voting for a bunch of greasy lawyers and spin doctors they are somehow furthering a "class war" that has had no meaning for most to the 20th Century and certainly no relevance in the 21st! Can there be any other reason for voting Labour when yet again a Labour Government has unfailingly landed us, our children, and maybe even our children's children, all at the door of the poorhouse? That the axe of inevitability will initially fall hardest in the North East is because we've made ourselves more dependant on public sector employment than most. There is no Dr Evil, only a Dr. G. Incompetent Brown!

Not even the worst of his barmy "policies" - he wants to give £6Bn+ of the Trident replacement "savings" to Brussels this year and £10Bn+ next. That's because the rebate Maggie negotiated has now run out, and from here on we are increasingly stuck with the full cost of subsidising the Brussels gravy train. So... make a big deal about clawing back the odd million from our own MPs, but a three-party conspiracy of silence about the thousands of millions we are now throwing at the European snouts-in-the-trough. And, the LD masterstroke on immigration: telling people who came here illegally in the first place what regions or towns they can and can not go to. Yeah, the illegals will pay some attention to that, and will be queueing up to pay their taxes too! Funny no one has thought to ask Vince Cable how much he has budgeted to police this idiotic idea! Even Gordo managed to call this one right; i.e. it will simply encourage more of the illegal immigration it is supposed to combat.

Westons Waggon Wheels - the original ones and not the tiny modern ones - from the general dealer West of Smails (which is now the lighting shop). Sweets from Bacchi's in the Market Place. 2d and 3d bars of Cadburys chocolate from Watsons Newsagents. (1d = 2.4p!) The Dandy, Beano, Topper, Lion, and especially The Eagle from same - even Film Fun (pretty dated even then!). Fish & Chips from Mrs Gates at the Market Place Chippy - never got food poisoning there!

Yes, but only for 15 minutes! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol

Aircraft with piston engines should be OK provided they stay clear of the worst and check air and oil filters regularly. They are also generally slower, so airframe abrasion affects wont be anything like as severe except to the propeller tips (which often go near supersonic). Props fairly regularly encounter small stones and chippings on less than perfect runways, so a bit of pumice dust here and there will be no big deal. Don't know enough about turboprops to call that one, but I suspect they'd be more or less as susceptible to this as high bypass jets. Pray for lots of rain to wash this stuff out of the atmosphere - hardly a tough call in the UK! My Nephew and his friend are stuck in Italy. Holiday extended by one week and then have to travel 100Km to another airport due to Ryanair rescheduling. That will be best case.

Any sensible person will avoid tax where feasible and the people who they are targeting can and will put their wealth outside of any governments clutches. I think we are already very close to what will be tolerated by many, so rather than increasing tax take it's possible that further grabs could be counterproductive. Either way any Lib Dem delusions on this score are doomed to fail miserably. Both the main parties know this, but the conspiracy we have to keep the bad news out of the debate lets Clegg get away with the Lib Dem nonsense. If it had been possible to "soak the rich" any more Gordon would already be doing it! As for the bigger picture: well... if the politicians are right about concealing the true picture we're doomed to government by the most skilled liars, and the best outcome we can hope for is that the most skilled liars are also the most skilled economists.

Thanks for taking time to let everyone know Maria. I had noted he'd been quiet of late - he's always got something valuable to contribute. Please let him know that everyone here sends their best wishes.

100% success for Unite - ALL planes grounded!

Clegg got far too easy a ride: "I agree with Nick". Actually they didn't but were jockeying to look the most consensual. Almost looked as if they were both making a pitch for an alliance, anticipating a hung parliament. Gordon was his usual master of BS, but got away with a lot of it due to Cameron being too rehearsed, and nothing like aggressive enough. Too many spin doctors on both sides, but Labour's probably earned their money just by advising Gordon to avoid going into his well worn routines, which Cameron is practised at poking holes in. Cameron would have been better off throwing away the script and being more reactive. The "None of the above party" currently leads in the debate! ITV easily the ratings winner: viewing figures will surely be a lot less for the next two!

Thankless task being a local rag reporter these days. Next to no one reads your work, and constantly worried for your job. Only an apprenticeship hoping for the "big-time" really. I'd be sorely tempted to slip something like that in - just to see if anyone noticed!

No they are not! This thread is DIRECTLY related to commerce. For the others the connection is indirect, or incidental. i.e. Vacant shop now occupied = Town News. Former vacant shop does great pies = Consumer News. The test: is the post about something - an article or service - being directly bought or sold? It gets a bit hazy when someone says why can't I buy xxxxx in Bedders, but if someone asks where can I buy xxxxx there's a direct intention to buy being expressed, so it's consumer.

What I said. BUT there's only one Labour candidate who openly supports a referrendum at the moment, and no LDs. This year we pay Brussels over £6,000,000,000 and next year it's set to rise to £10,000,000,000 odd when the rebate runs out. Any mention from the major parties about this? The cost of membership used to be an issue, now it's just too embarassing to talk about. Remember this when they are shutting a post office, or a library, or a community center, in order to save a few tens of thousands of pounds!

Monsta: I will follow your recommendation, but not a General election where UKIP themselves are saying go out and vote for another candidate who supports a referendum. BTW there's only one Labour candidate they support. He alone has enough clout to resist the party line. At this election it's the Tories who support local democracy, and Labour who wants to continue with the big government farce. At the European elections things are very different, and unless the Conservatives go a lot further than the current manifesto they deserve to lose badly then. Whilst the LibDems are often the best choice at the local level their thinking on Europe is completely barmy. Though Vince Cable is a decent guy he called it very wrong on Northern Rock. Also I don't trust them not to form an alliance with power-mad Gordon Brown. They've kept an unpopular minority Labour government in power before, and ambitious Nick Clegg could easily do this again. This didn't do the Country any good back then, and it would be read as a disaster by the markets now!

'cos I don't like difficult typing, even though I do like tiny machines with sometimes awkward keyboards. And, in this recent case, I got a brilliant Logitech Bluetooth keyboard (with track-pad) for next to nowt, on that auction site that's not as good as BedBay. Only problems are: that it's an Italian layout (fixed with the supplied key-top stickers), AND that it's customised for the Playstation! Now my (trackpadless) ancient netbook has a trackpad and a brilliant top-quality 102 key wireless keyboard that beats any modern hardware combination at any price. Even so, I can think of several Windoze keys I never use on other machines that would be a lot more use if changed to key codes I do use. For instance what would you do if say the return or CTRL key on your favourite notebook was dickey? Or if you didn't like the wonky key placement on an EEE PC (many don't)? The messages are: one size does not fit all, and that you'll never know there IS a better way if you don't experiment.

Keytweak changes the MS Windows registry entries to remap keys the way you want them to be, and it's FREE! http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/ Works great, though you do have to reboot for the changes to take affect. I've remapped some of those silly media keys to do useful things. As it simply makes one-off changes to the registry, it doesn't appear to use any memory, or slow up booting the machine at all. So NOT yet another draggy utility to kill your PCs performance.

A pretty fair look at the current position in the housing market here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/rush-to-sell-homes-before-the-general-election-fight-1943148.html Still doesn't look good for our area, and I think it will get a lot worse after the public spending cuts.

Things will inevitably get worse because that's the way they are already headed. Not only do we have a £850,000,000,000 debt, but we are increasing that debt at nearly £170,000,000,000 a year, and Gordon doesn't plan to stop spending for another four years on the highly mistaken assumption that it will all come right by itself - "the recovery" that you hear mentioned in every other Nu Labour sentence. He's killed off, frightened off (abroad), and taxed to death any source of revenue that would normally bring about such a recovery. Government simply has to stop borrowing one pound in every four it spends, and it needs to face up to that NOW! You don't get out of debt by taking out another credit card at an even higher rate of interest, or putting off the day of reckoning. They've been trying to brainwash people by this constant "Global, Global, Global". It's our debt, and Gordon got us into the mess by not saving during the good times - as we used to - to pay for the downturn. His boast he ended Boom and Bust is correct: it's all Bust from now on. We need a responsible Government who will face up to the disaster and slowly drag us out of it. Not one who constantly blames someone else for their own string of mistakes. Every Labour Government in history has ended in a financial disaster, but never on this massive scale! Whatever their politics it's amazing to me that there are people who can't see through power mad Gordon Brown, who will do or say anything to keep power. By contrast I think Alastair Darling is a pretty honest person who is trying hard to make a difference. But he's a solicitor and not an economist and shouldn't be running the economy. He'd probably make quite a decent Prime Minister if he could get rid of the greasy hangers-on like Milliband, Balls, and Mandleson. Though it was his mistake with Northern Rock (which I pointed out at the time) which started this whole disaster off. But by then Gordon had already planted all the seeds - including (as Malcolm observed at the time) giving away our gold reserves. So, don't blame the next government for the mistakes of this one. It's going to take a very long time to pay off Gordon's debt mountain. If we don't the pound will tumble and the result will be dire for everyone. You can see just a little of what will happen by following what is now happening to Greece. But our problem is already immensely bigger than theirs; it's simply that at present the markets THINK we can get out of it. Once that confidence goes we are really sunk - and that's the way we are going under power-mad Gordon!

Do they still make Segways? Bring back the Sinclair C5 I say.

Well there you have it in Labour's Manifesto just out: A promise not to increase Income Tax; and a promise not to increase the extent of VAT; but no promise not to increase the rate of VAT. It's the only way "squaring the circle" of starting to pay off Gordo's public spending binge is now possible. Even the LDs won't give a commitment not to raise it - so none of the major parties even wants to discuss it before the election.

Attlee pulleese! As in Clement Avenue. Can't have people knocking double letters out of Bedlington place names!

http://www2.labour.org.uk/ppc/ian_lavery/898/ Can it be that what our prospective MP thinks about Nu Labour is unprintable? Hell, it's got Labour on the tin, so you're going to vote for it anyway Wansbeck! Why waste effort with policies and all that garbage?

Neddy! (or should that be Rosebud?)