threegee

A real tragedy when there was so much hope he was recovering. Anything but "burned out" too; it's quite recently he was interviewed, at which point he was looking forward to producing more great stuff.

Ah, yes, different outfit then?

How? Easy, always use ixquick instead. Use this link to add ixquick to Firefox: https://addons.mozil...pver=&platform= (select the HTTPS version to avoid other snoopers) Once you've added it select Manage Search Engines in the drop down select ixquick and then move it up to the top. Their privacy policy: https://ixquick.com/...ct-privacy.html makes interesting reading.

LOL! Blair stumped for words! Long pause for thought then thinks, umm.. no counter arguments here, and too dangerous to go there anyway, so I need to isolate these people. "In my experience in politics there are three kinds of people. First there are the reactionaries...". In typical shyster fashion, once he has seeded the thought he has no use for developing a real argument, and so veers off into playing to a house packed out with Euro gravy-train'ers. Pity Nige hadn't got right of reply, as he'd surely have helped Teflon Tone as to what the other two types of politician might be! Yes, at six or seven years distance it's self evident to all what a load of hot air is coming out of Blair. It would though be interesting to dissect his calculation of when to quit while the going was good.

Apple drops '4G' from iPad adverts Next retreat to reality will be the launch of a much smaller tab (or much larger phone)! Could take a while though - which is what the competition is hoping.

Excellent! I don't suppose the "part-time lecturer in economics at a second-rate polly" got as far as Hayeck. He's defo long overdue reading for too slow, too shallow Microband though.

The flame went out briefly before being relit and transferred to the first torchbearer. Wrong kind of lighter fluid then?

...subject only to a successful Greek Govt. appeal for the cash to buy a couple of tins of lighter fluid!

What Malcolm says; but the clue is the start of the second sentence: The government maintained most of the wartime controls over the economy, including control over the allocation of materials and manpower... Which neatly fails to mention that the principal one of those controls was rationing - food rationing long after other countries had ended it! That's the main reason Labour lost the 1951 election.

Nope; way back in those days golf was highly elitist. You'd only find people like businessmen, trade union bosses, management of nationalised industries, and upwardly mobile socialist politicians, able to afford the private club membership fees! Shameful what that stuck-up club did to poor old Ramsay MacDonald though!

The true winner here is Marine Le Pen - for whom it is all working out beautifully. She knew she wouldn't win, and ordinarily she'd have put Sarky back in by telling her 6.4M voters to make the best of a bad job and vote for him. But she undoubtedly has a long-term strategy of moving her party more to the centre and splitting the UMP. Expect a re-branding and getting rid of the "Front" bit but likely retaining the National in the title. She is brighter than her father, and more street-wise than any male opponents. I think she's reading things right and is going to get power at some point; history is playing right into her hands. Likewise I think Nigel is now in the right place at the right time. I've no doubt that sooner or later he will win on the single issue of Europe, as he's pushing at an open door. But.. if he (or indeed someone else) were to judge the moment right and re-brand UKIP we'd see a new major party in domestic politics too. Too soon or too late wouldn't hack it, but done at the right time and in the afterglow of a major shift of UK policy on Europe... We've been suffering from a huge misalignment in UK politics for decades. Labour suffered a split when the SDP was formed, and the SDP should have been able to take pro-europe Conservatives with it as well as many Liberals, but failed miserably in this leaving only the present stunted LD mess. The Conservatives would have ultimately been better off following a split, but that split could still happen from the other side - indeed needs to happen. This is the true reason for the disenchantment with current politics: no one knows what any party actually stands for any longer! The Coalition of the Unwilling (Conservatives) combined with the distinct possibility of a humiliation of major parties by UKIP could easily spark off the needed realignment.

"only come into their own at European election time" is exactly my point! Though they are polling a decent number of votes in local elections now. At the last eurolections they polled more than Labour and now have the same number of seats - and that was a whole two years ago. The majority Conservative group must know that a lot of their supporters are going to jump ship to UKIP now that they are the second party, and at last have a real chance of becoming the majority one. Sympathetic Labour voters will also see that UKIP is now the real challenger to the Conservatives, and that in voting UKIP they can send a message to Milliband on Europe, and also give the Conservatives a bloody nose; whereas a vote for Labour would be a wasted vote. All UKIP has to say is "We are now the second party in Europe, and the only alternative choice the British people have. This election is the referendum the great majority of the people now want, and the other parties have conspired not to permit. Whatever you think or don't think of our other policies this is your one chance to make the other three parties sit up and take notice of what you are telling them. If you miss this opportunity it could take another five years or more for us to deliver a non-federal Europe for the British people. With a majority in the European parliament we will shame whatever party is running the country into doing the will of the people, and obstruct all their moves until they do deliver." Tactical voting? You ain't seen nuffin' yet! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17974787

I'm no apologist for Sarky, but if Hollande gets in - as looks quite possible - the French are going to repeat the Brown public spending driven boom into megabust scenario for sure. Won't sit well with the Germans either. The value of Sterling many even be reflecting this right now, so not the time to be holding Euros (and we've got as few as we can get away with here!). Greece has already defaulted, but in a way that they won't see the benefits! Only euro politicos could engineer such a mess! Here UKIP is going from strength to strength - where they can manage to get their actual name on the ballot papers! At the next eurolections they might not just be the runner-up, but the majority party representing our country. That will be giving left-leaning Dave a few sleepless nights! His only way out could be to find an excuse for that long overdue referendum - but how would this play with the party with "Democrats" in its name?

There's some hilarious stuff on the net about baiting 419 fraudsters - mostly on the principal if that you waste their time you rob them of resources to scam anyone vulnerable. The Beeb joined in the fun back in 2004: http://news.bbc.co.u...ica/3887493.stm Scam-baiter central is here: http://www.419eater.com/index.php - hours of endless fun there!

Dear Limana, I have some really good news for you. You don't need to be desperate; you don't even need to use the Internet. Just look around you in that Internet cafe in Nigeria you are using. Maybe even sitting right next to you you will find a poor desperate person spending every waking hour in the now near-fruitless pursuit of sending out 419 fraud e-mails. All you need do is give each of these poor wretches a minuscule portion of your wealth - say $1000 - on the strict condition that he/she will return to their family and never be seen near a computer for at least a year. Not only will you be re-uniting these poor people with their families, but you will be preventing countless attempted frauds, and making a real start in restoring the now appalling reputation of your formerly fine country. Two months is very short time to carry the task God has to assigned you, so I'm going to pray that the doctors have made a mistake, or that you are least spared until you have completed God's good work. In any event you really need to get started right now; so turn off that computer for good, and get out your cheque book in the memory of your late dear husband and only child. I can only close by quoting the words of the late, great, Dave Allen - a master teller of fictional religious stories, the like of which we will never see again - "Goodnight, thank you, and may your God go with you". Your beloved brother in Christ. Richard Dawkins

Something we should be celebrating! If Moronband and Balls (sorry can't improve on that one!) got their way (except I'm fairly sure he isn't quite that stupid, and it's just for the audience) they'd all be up and off to sunnier climes, and we'd be taxing £0.00 at a the penal 50%. Of course a fair proportion of this wealth is generated from government intervention in free markets and dumb things like long-past-fit-for-purpose and increasingly nonsensical patent law, that governments have absolutely no interest in freeing enterprise from. Anyway, good luck to Paul and his well-healed and r-a-t-h-e-r smart catch; might have been suffering from a mental aberration when he got heathered through the mills, but the boy learns good! Think we may know a song about that!

A few weeks back I had a shiny new Samsung Galaxy Note! But "teacher" confiscated it for her own use! Funny the people who laugh at the size of the Note - assuming it's very uncool phone - then shorty afterwards are seen sporting one themselves - as a hot Tab! My current companion out walking is a Motorola Milestone 2 (because I like real keyboards, and it was a bargain at £165) with a cheapo Chinese fat-boy battery compartment clagged on the back. Great for Internet Radio, Skype etc.

http://www.theregist..._investigation/ By no means the first time the Apple Marketing Corporation have over-egged it! Anyone else would have been brought to book in no time, but... we are so big and rich (and have so many over-rich air-heads in tow) that we can ignore normal advertising standards. Anyway, tablets are crashing in price now through sheer oversupply, so Joe Average is going to be spoiled for choice. Just been looking at a Android ICS one with HDMI output, 8GB Flash and 1GB RAM for £85 post free - and it has a microSD slot, and a swappable battery! At 7" it's just about pocketable too; which, to me, seems to be the whole point of a tablet.

Yes, but look how much less the trade gap is now than it was under Gordo. If you are saying we should stop all imports, that's quite impossible. The majority of what we import we couldn't possibly obtain in this small island, and even (for things like coal) if we did ignore international market forces we might gain in the short-term, but beyond that we doom our industries to being uncompetitive and turning out tat that no one else wanted to buy. The real trick is buying what other people are good at making and mining, then adding value to them. There's another post on this thread about just that! Imports have always been this small island's life-blood, and what made us a small nation that changed the world. Part of that is using our skills to supply thing other nations really want/need to buy, and protectionism is the sure way to ruin all that. On the face of it the EU is about free trade, but in reality it has become a protectionist racket. There's another factor in the trade figures besides "invisible earnings" from services, and that's what British companies earn by operating overseas and don't immediately repatriate. We are good at this too, but a high tax regime at home encourages what are essentially British companies from repatriating their overseas earnings. There is an optimum tax rate to maximise take, and that's essentially what is behind George's so-called gift to the rich.

http://www.tradingec...kingdom/exports

We are just bouncing along the bottom, and are going to be for years. Given Gordon's binge there's not really much anyone can or could have done about it - the cuts had to come and would have come more or less the same under Alistair Darling. The figures will likely be revised either way so it's just a technical argument at this point, though that won't stop the media and Westminster village idiot Too-Deep-Too-Fast Miliband trying to make political capital out of nothing of consequence. The fact that the Pound is still improving against the US Dollar and the Euro shows that the markets have some confidence that we are moving in the right direction in reducing the debt, and that the eurozone and US aren't. This will help stem inflation, though it's not going to help our exports too much. We ARE in a hole, but at least we've stopped digging! Just now Sterling is one of a tiny few really trusted currencies in the World and we'd be lunatics to destroy that stability by falling for more of Ed Balls' crap.

Yup, played the odd tune: http://www.bertweedon.com/discography.htm Some photos, some taken only last year: http://www.bertweedon.com/features.htm - raising the interesting question: was there anyone in British entertainment he didn't know, or hadn't worked with?

Unfortunately you don't! Economic reasons, or not? So why aren't you protesting about the stupid Carbon Tax instead of playing the blame game? And.. if you want to see what happens when a socialist regime nationalises (i.e. misappropriates other people's property for wholly political ends) then follow this one as it develops: http://www.bbc.co.uk...europe-17739204 She seems to have given up on thieving the Falklands for now, and is now targeting Spanish assets for political glorification. Like all nationalisations, it will end in tears, and everyone will lose in the end! But, she'll buy a bit of political popularity with money Argentina can ill afford, and be long gone to her luxury villa (in our Labour MP Robens case it was a castle) by the time the chickens come home to roost.

"Policing the language" is such a French thing to do that you are going to need to become "Le Taureau Noir"! http://www.french-pr...e_rules_france/ Any Anglo Saxon government wouldn't dare meddle in the vernacular. And, thank your luck stars your pub isn't in Montreal: http://www.cbc.ca/ne...c-olf-0214.html Ciao!

Mrs. Thatcher of course kicked no one out of a job. It would be just as silly to say that the Redcar steel works that has just re-opened was closed by Labour, and was re-opened by the Conservatives/LibDems. http://www.bbc.co.uk...d-tees-17719747 Economic forces closed it, and economic forces have re-opened it. If it had been nationalised it would have plodded on producing steel that no one wanted to buy, running up huge losses for the Country and disrupting the market of profitable plants, until being closed by the decree of some overpaid state supremo, on the advice of dozens of overpaid senior "civil servants". A Thai company has ploughed a couple of billion into it as it has a market for the steel. Granted it now employs less people, but given the huge investment its future is now much more secure. That is real "modernisation" - not the sort of mass delusion that took place under post-war nationalisation and the Robens cull of the mining industry.