threegee

Mandelsonian Rhapsody ================== Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a recession, No escape for LDV Open your eyes, Look at the wrecked economy, They're just a poor firm, they need some sympathy, Because it's easy come, easy go, Little cut, little blow, Any way the custard goes, doesn't really matter to Mandy Mama he just killed an industry, Put a gun against its head, pulled the trigger, now it's dead Mama, recovery had just begun, But now they've gone and thrown it all away ... (Galileo) Galileo (Galileo) Galileo, Galileo politico Magnifico It's just a poor firm and nobody loves it It's just a poor firm from a poor industry, Spare it its life from your pomposity Easy come, easy go, will you let it go Northern Rock! No, we will not let it go (Let it go!) RBS! We will not let it go (Let it go!) Merchant Bank! We will not let it go (Let it go) Will not let it go (Let it go) Will not let it go (Let it go) Ah No, no, no, no, no, no, no ... Nothing really matters, Anyone can see, Nothing really matters, Nothing really matters to Mandy Any way the wind blows

I think he's waiting for us all to say go on then Malc we'll all vote for you (and I for one would). BUT... a word of caution. Don't expect Parish Councillors to be able to actually do anything, because they have nothing to spend and appear to be completely powerless. Which raises the obvious question why do we have then anyway. Someone please explain? This someone will probably have to be non-political, because it seems that all our politicians, from the top downwards, are busily fiddling their expenses, and therefore have no time to come on here and engage with their electorate. Even if they had their spin doctors wouldn't let then for fear they said something that wasn't in accordance with the current party line. Someone might even ask them the terribly difficult question of how come we now have major local government reforms foisted off on us when the overwhelming majority of people voted against this!

Rumour has it that Apple Store sales are down about 22%. They are planning to reduce prices and/or launch a new range of "value" products to hold onto market share. Other manufacturers are sure to counter this. There are already some pretty hefty cash back offers to clear surplus stock. New, more attractive models, also gives the excuse to slash prices on the current ranges.

The FT is reporting that LDV (formerly Leyland DAF Vans) have given up all hope of getting the £4M to £6M necessary to keep going until better times. Someone remind me how much is being spent on unnecessary "improvements" to our Market Place - that's not even a market place and which won't create/save a single job! Also some back of the envelope figures to work out how much extra dole the taxpayer is going to be in for here? So it's OK to throw billions of public money at bankers to cover backsides and save political skins, but if you're doing a real job and creating something that people will want to buy come the upturn (and that doesn't run up our huge import bill any further), you're screwed! The French are pulling their motor manufacturing back to France to preserve their industry. They know that we are dumb enough to continue buying their cars when we no longer have any capacity to produce our own.

Ssh.. everybody, I'm busy helping this nice Nigerian gentleman repatriate his ill gotten gains. Only thing I can't work out is why he chose me and no one else. Must be that I'm so trustworthy - getting involved in fraud like this!

The old ones are always the best ones. The Internet is a bit like the fashion industry, the same ideas come around again years later in only a marginally modified form. There's always a new generation who've never heard/seen them before. This invariant principal must cheer the scammers up no end. The real mystery is where they lurk in the fallow years. I expect that doctors puzzle similarly about diseases. Now where's my copy of the Bob Monkhouse joke manual?

...and spin! Interesting snippet on TV the other night of how the golden boys & girls of Nu Labour sound bite someone else's affordable and substantial rise in public spending as a cut. (not that there are any affordable rises any more!) Pity the ASA's brief doesn't include political claims; few, if any, would make it to the screen. But new Nu Labour has still to learn the only business lesson worth learning: whether your customers are happy, and will buy again. Instead they rely on people having short memories. About time that the chief constable and his crew were locally elected - like in civilised and democratic countries.

Wow, some great action stuff there! Bedlington.co.uk spot-the-ball compy coming soon? "The Big Picture" agency move over! But where's the one of a dog - any dog will do - taken at the Bank Top? I said shoot some terriers not shoot THE terriers! :lol:

This - of course - is almost the very thing we all voted against in the referendum. We were asked if we wanted bigger regional government and everyone with any experience of how these things work said NO! In fact the only reason we had the referendum was that big government - encouraged by poor deluded political dinosaur John Prescott - thought they could win. It's a basic rule of government never to hold a referendum that all indications say you won't win decisively. The result is then pointed to as conclusive for the next 50 years; except if by some extreme mischance you get the result that you don't want - when you keep asking the same question in a different way until you do get your result. Well in this instance British "democracy" didn't even get that glaze of legitimacy. So, I suppose we should all write on our Council Tax bills "Unauthorised Application" and send them back. BTW our new politicos have got off to a brilliant start by holding their very first meeting in secret session. It would be interesting to find out who exactly decided on this and who - if anyone - objected. So interesting that I think I will!

Pawn shops? BTW even solicitors are seeing tough times. A regional one was heard to comment on the budget's new top rate of tax: it didn't matter to him as he wouldn't be seeing a six figure salary again for some time to come!

http://geocities.yahoo.com/ No more new accounts, and users told to find somewhere else before year end. Or Yahoo now wants you to pay for their hosting. The $3,500,000,000 they paid for this a decade ago - and the running costs - now money down the drain!

Bedlington.co.uk is and will remain free. It's a resource for the entire town and only needs a smidgeon of sponsorship (and lots of voluntary effort) to keep it going until doomsday and beyond. Town people's support is all that's needed to see it grow. Sorry for the oversight, the subs option shouldn't even have been there.

There wouldn't be a company. It would long since have been in receivership, and the directors would be charged with fraudulent trading. If only it wasn't about politics! But the necessary swingeing tax rises AND huge cuts in public spending are hostage to the next general election. The fact that Goro's total incompetence has been exposed doesn't seem to matter to Nu Labour. They didn't ditch him when they needed to and now their seats are at risk. Let's just cling on in the hope that something will turn up and sod the country! The tax increases are a political move too. Common sense says that the receipts will be nothing like the "official figure". Why should any high earners stay in the country when you can telecommute these days? What's there to stay for anyway? And those who do elect to stay will - as you say - find avoidance schemes quicker than any civil service can close them. Yes, the burden of Gordo's profligacy will fall on the people who don't have the resources or inclination to take countermeasures. What annoys me more than anything is bloody - a mouth totally disconnected from a brain if ever there was one! I really hope she doesn't manage to cling on to her seat and has to get out and get a real job. But no firm in their right minds is going to employ her.As for our own Dennis Murphy - tireless worker for the local area that he is - I'd like him to come on here and answer the simple question: Do you ever wake up at night and imagine that you are in the wrong political party?

The guy swears it's only used for backups and not for ripping DVDs. Full article: http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/florian/

Sshhh.. it's a secret project. You have to promise not to tell anyone 'cos she's getting a world exclusive interview with Osama BL for the Bedlington.co.uk news desk.

This is the problem: the global warming industry is muddying the issue. C02 is a vital part of the ecosystem and available in abundance, even taken as a "greenhouse gas" it is only a marginal contributor, and man's contribution to this marginal contribution is pretty minor. Trying to alter the levels of an innocuous life-giving substance in the atmosphere at colossal expense is pure madness. But we can all see the environmental pollution that is going on; it makes us feel bad, and we know that it can't continue like this. Lead pollution is a crime for which a lot of people have escaped punishment. Its done huge damage to health, but it's a non-fashionable issue and is better buried as there's no political mileage in it. Plastics pollution is perhaps the single biggest problem we have on the planet. Practical measures are easy and cheap, but there's little political will to do anything about it. It's non-glamorous to go flying off to international conferences on global plastic waste. It's also a creeping problem, so impossible to imagine any doomsday scenario to capture the headlines. We are simply too familiar with plastics, they're part of our everyday lives and impossible to imagine an existence without. Suggesting that we should change our attitude to them has no political appeal at all. There's an interesting video on the Sun on the BBC website today. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8009185.stm Common sense says that when you turn down the only source of heat in the room things will cool. Some scientists are suggesting that this may presage another ice-age. The astronomers admit that they are baffled. But not the global warming industry. They know more about this than the astronomers and the the particle physicists put together. They are absolutely certain; here's proof positive that the problem is worse than even they imagined. As certain as if their globe-trotting expense allowances and comfortable new research budgets depended on it.

Sorry we're still closing down coal fired power stations. Doubtless continuing Maggie T's master-plan to trash the mining industry. It's now back to the future with nuclear! You really should get into the right century. To put the argument back on to a serious (and non-emotive) level: do you or do you not believe the planet is warming, and if so why, and on what grounds do you hold this belief? Please set out why we need to spend billions of pounds on carbon capture - technology that by and large doest yet exist, and is totally unproven - in order to make what little industry we have left even less competitive by driving energy cost up still further. Is this supported by any actual science, or is it just pure politics and/or green-lobby emotion? Do you believe we can tamper with nature on this scale to achieve a positive result? If you study the weather forecast on a daily basis you'll surely find that the five day one is of very little practical use, and the ten day ones are a pure fiction. So, do you think our current understanding of the atmosphere makes any predictions about what is going on at twenty or even fifty years distance worth the paper it's printed on, let alone worth throwing countless billions of pounds we don't have at? Assuming that we (as a nation) can lay our hands on the astronomic sums being talked about, don't you think that there would be better uses for these massive resources? If - for the sake of argument - the planet is warming then do you think the overall consequences will be bad or good? Actually it probably is warming a bit - we are coming out of an exceptionally cold period once again. However the more recent fashion is to talk about climate change - thus taking a two way bet on something that by its very nature has always changed one way or the other. Note that no one is saying we shouldn't take all practical measures to clean up exhaust gasses, and general pollution. In fact this issue is detracting from other serious issues that aren't getting the attention they deserve. What we are talking about here is the carbon dioxide + global warming myth. It's not about whether you are for or against the environment, it's about the sensible direction of available resources towards an achievable and worthwhile goal. Some reasoned argument to show that you haven't been sucked in to this dangerous and costly myth please? I've been following the arguments for some years now and have found the scientists who question it are more than eager to consider all the issues, whereas the ones promulgating it generally refuse to engage in serious debate. The same reaction you'd expect when you question someone's religion. So there's the challenge: show us you've though this one through properly, and that this is not a religious belief that you only feel must be true!

The story from NOAA our politicians and the press focused on: The correction that no one wanted to know about (or you to know about) - because it doesn't fit in with the requirements of the highly lucrative global warming industry. So, as long as their archives are correct their quality control measures don't extend to not putting out inaccurate and alarmist reports. This isn't the first time there has been a fanfare about the release of junk data which was then quietly retracted. Nor is it likely to be the last.

Ask Fourgee, he's the gamer! Nothing to stop Monsta doing some features for the site himself of course!

Don't think so. Wouldn't swap Ringo's women for any pick'n'mix of anything the Lennon McCartney matrimonial agency could come up with. And, on composing talent, I think our Paul have been doing a little re-writing of history of late. He was rumbled a short while back by the rediscovery in someone's garage of a long forgotten BBC Scotland tape of his younger more candid self. Bet he would have paid half a Heather divorce settlement to stop it finally reaching its intended desination. Three so far and counting.

And right on cue the police employ a bent pathologist who has been discredited before to produce evidence of a heart attack. The IPCC and the family insist on another pathologist doing a second autopsy which concludes the guy actually died of internal haemorrhaging. This is a system we are supposed to have confidence in? Thank god for the IPCC, but how long before they are reformed away, have their powers limited in the interests of protecting us from something or other, or are simply compromised by the opaque appointments system. It's slow, it's steady, and it's insidious; but when an MP simply doing his job is threatened with life imprisonment in the very House of Commons, by a aspiring Gestapo officer who doesn't even have the constitutional right to be there, we are headed for a totalitarian state.

I'd insist on the use of the VIP facilities. Denial of such basic facilities for worship is an insult to your religion of western consumerism, quite apart from being overtly sexist. (No, forget the last bit, won't get you anywhere there). A cyber fatwa is being proposed on the airport manager. May his camels never spit at anyone again, and his satellite TV adverts be shown on faulty transponders! If the Dubai Four are on the same flight make sure the cake goes through the x-ray machine or refuse to board!