threegee

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?)

http://www.timesonli...icle7094311.ece

So how does this help Bedlington Stephen? Due to a political stitch-up in former centuries the station is in the wrong place anyway! If Stevenson had had his way and put the station in the natural place the town would be a lot bigger and more prosperous than it is now. The local landowners and politicians screwed this one up for sure! Where is the mention of Bedlington Station in this LD proposal? Seems to me this is a recipe for being told that we are subsidised for x millions already for a transport link that it is impractical to use. Probably better for us that main-line Morpeth is made more accessible by a better bus service and stopping main line services - even Cramlington station! If this is a real pitch for votes we need details to determine if it's something actually worth Bedlingtonians voting for. Too many completely empty promises here already I think! http://www.senrug.co.uk/campaigns/8/re-open-ashington-blyth-tyne-line-to-passengers

Is either Brown or Cameron coming anywhere near us? Are any Nu Labour or Tory big wigs coming here to campaign? Only when we stop living in the 19th Century will we move into the 21st. Use your head and vote against the dominant party. When we're "a marginal" that can go either way we will get noticed by central government As ever it's in Nu Labour's interests to keep this a poor "working class" area. It's in the Tory's interest to divert investment elsewhere. This problem feeds on itself. If you really don't believe this then please explain why we have both the highest unemployment and very lowest house prices in the country? Is it that our area lacks anything other than a bit of enterprise and real sustained investment? Are we really so dumb that it will take another 50 years (and leave it to our kids or kid's kids) to work this out for ourselves?

It's quite simple: To Nu Labour we are taken for granted. To the Tories we are no-hopers, to be ignored. To the LD's - well they haven't got the clout at the national level. The way to break out of this is to vote with our heads, and not be taken for granted. The most productive thing a life-long Labour supporter who can't bring themselves to vote against Gordon Brown can do is to stay at home! What a pity they don't have the guts to put a none-of-the-above box on the ballot paper!

You remember well, but you don't remember enough! Tell us what you paid for your house and what it would be worth at today's prices? The reason that mortgage rates were 14.5% is that we'd just had a flirt with the Euro. That was something which Maggie wouldn't have any truck with. But she was stabbed in the back by her own party, half of who wanted the Euro at any price and half who were opposed. The Labour Party and LDs would also have dragged us in at any price. Once Maggie was gone the result would have been the same whatever party was in power. The Labour Party learnt from this and decided that they'd only join "when the time was right"- which of course was a nonsense, as Mr B wouldn't tell us what that actually meant. The reality was that the time was never and would never be right! Here UKIP was the only sane voice in the asylum. You've forgotten two things: First that your house was going up in value much more than the inflation rate. Second that the Hire Purchase controls were to stop private sector debt getting out of control. They didn't actually cost you anything; in fact they saved you money as you didn't have to pay interest on the deposit! When those Hire Purchase controls were abolished by a spend-spend-spend government the result is the staggering levels of private debt we have today, and people simply struggling to meet interest payments on credit cards rather than have the discretion to spend their money on anything useful. Today one pound in every four that is spent by big government (and it really is BIG government these days) is borrowed. Gordon wants you to believe that this party can go on, and somehow it will all work out right in the end. It wont! We have to stop spending, and right away. You and I have been repaying our debts for quite some time, but Gordon Brown is planning to go on borrowing at this ludicrous rate for another four years! The bill is already staggering; to carry on under the false assumption that the party can resume at some point is madness. Sooner or later roaring inflation is going to break out to match the huge printing of money that has been going on. That is inevitable - it's simply a matter of when and how bad it will become. The choice now is to wake up to reality and take some medicine right away, or carry on with Gordon's public spending binge. If the Country chose the latter Sterling will get devalued, the price of imports will rocket and we'll be into the biggest bust of all time (we are already carrying by far the biggest debt of all time). All this talk about the recovery being put at risk is complete nonsense. There will be no recovery in the sense that we can get back to the former ludicrous government spending splurge. I'm afraid that things can only get worse - it's just a matter of how worse! This is the price to pay for being fooled by Tony at the last election. He said he'd serve a full term; maybe he believed that at the time, but he saw this mess coming a lot sooner than Gordon! So you either vote Nu Labour out of mistaken self-interest, and get screwed anyway. Or you vote LD or Tory for the Country as a whole. Either way it's not going to be pretty. But in NOT voting Labour, you'll be voting for some sort of sanity; you'll be voting against the man who got us into this mess; and you'll be voting against the career politicians (particularly the likes of slimy Mandleson and Balls) who have been taking us all for a ride. It's not a choice for the sunny uplands as depicted on the old colliery banners, but it's not entirely Hobson's choice either!

So what exactly does that mean in the 21st century? Suppose I have a software company - what's to stop you competing with me? A computer perhaps; well blow me down but doesn't every kid have one these days, and someone here says you get £500 for one if you are on the dole! Isn't this Marxist Leninist crap just a supremely outdated excuse for lack of enterprise, envy, and sloth? The world owes us a living comrades; no matter that we can't be arsed to produce anything that anyone needs! P.S. Sorry for my lack of familiarity with the NUM rulebook. I suppose the miners union that broke away from the NUM around that time thought those rules were transparent and honest too. Did Arthur write them all himself, or did he have a little help from Uncle Joe? BTW I absolutely agree with you about resistance not being an outdated or futile concept. But there are real enemies of the people out there; you don't have to invent them, or import them from days long past!

The chintz curtains are a big clue I think. Whould do credit to a high-class bro.... umm... better not say that! So who lives in a hose liek this?

You're winding us up! (There will be a two day pause whilst Monsta works that one out. )

It would be a lot harder if they were close-ups. Like maybe a detail on a building, with just a subtle clue to fox Monsta.

You were saying?

I'm beginning to think that there are two Alastair Darlings! The tricky dicky one who puts out a load of puff and buries the bad news in the small print that he hopes no one will read, and the honest truthful one! Obviously the budget was presented by A. T. D. Darling, but tonight A. H. T. Darling was on the tele saying that if Labour is re-elected public spending cuts will be "tougher and deeper" than those implemented by Margaret Thatcher. An alternative - but almost unthinkable - explanation would be that Alastair's budget speech was heavily censored by Gordo's spin doctors.

The P in PIGS gets downgraded. http://news.bbc.co.u...ess/8584812.stm Doing well then isn't he? Someone was throwing a projection around after the budget saying that we were scheduled to spend more on simply servicing debt than the entire education budget. A really good use of public money! That, of course, presumed that our own debt rating would be maintained. Thing is a lot of Darling's figures are based on very optimistic projections, and some of them sound (particularly the proposed public sector "efficiency" savings) plain barmy. I'd take a bet that he's wildly wrong in more than one mission-critical assumption.

I had to Google it to make sure, but yes, I was right. Won't spoil it for others though. Really nice building when you stop to look at it. BTW you could probably get that down to about 30 or 40KB with almost no loss in quality. 630KB is a little large for the web!

Actually the change to the law put the unions of the same basis of civil law as the rest of us have to obey. Before they'd considered themselves above the law, and in Arthur Scargill's case above the democratically elected government. Arthur's contempt for democracy extended to not even allowing his own members a strike ballot. There's a very good reason why Labour didn't revoke the changes: the Country once again became governable! They were tacitly supported by large sections of the Labour party as well as by the vast majority of the electorate. And that's not at all true about the Town. The decline had set in decades before Mrs T. The mining industry had become complacent and inefficient under the post-war nationalisation. There was a lack of investment where it mattered, and wages had run a little ahead of what the market would support. Hence it was cheaper to import coal (and opencast it here through private mining companies) than the NCB mine it. Much of the decline here happened under a Labour government - that's the inconvenient truth of it! Point to any job that a strike has saved? Where is the logic in withdrawing your labour to save your job? What you can do is to bring down your employer, thus losing all the jobs that are available.

Pretty much as expected. Spent most of the time slapping himself on the back and trying to make a place for himself in history. What was interesting was the huge difference between what he said and what is in the red book. The stamp duty holiday for properties under £250K is hedged with so many conditions (15 tests) in the small print that it will benefit very few people. There were public spending cuts announced - obviously just the very first round - but he completely failed to mention them in his speech. These include a £4,200,000,000 cut in the NHS budget! Not the sort of thing you want to make a fuss about with an election imminent. Three more rises in fuel duty - that's six rises in 24 months. He's phasing them because they've learnt from the fuel protests. He's hoping people wont notice that fuel should be falling in-line with falls in the wholesale oil price, and making a steady grab at the reductions. So just another Gordon Brown type stealth tax really! The Treasury bods themselves are now on record as saying that this budget is pointless. What more needs to be said? But I did wonder how many times he'd do a "global" - thus sustaining the brainwash. He didn't disappoint: a "global" right in the very first sentence! After the first dozen globals I lost count.