threegee

You apologise, and retire with $70M in the bank?

Well it's obviously raining, so quite probably yes. If only the Radio Constructor had been bigger I could have used it to keep the Hovis dry. Keith: it's a well-known fact that around 1960 it was always raining. People put this down to all the nuclear weapons testing going on. Secretly, I just knew that this theory was rubbish, and that it was due to man-made climate change - as a result of all the new Ford Prefects Elliotts was selling!

A "nut job" who has reportedly collected $70M on the strength of this! I'm predicting the world will end before Christmas - and so you should send me all that pay rather than drinking it away.

After big media's fawning BS about Steve Jobs calms down just some of the truth starts to emerge: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15400984

Hang on, King Abdullah is a nice old despot, and doesn't deserve to be on a list with mass murderers like Mugabe! Maybe his security lot have roughed-up the odd "trouble maker", but he is a reformer, and things are consistently moving in the right direction. Without him the religious nutters would call all the shots, and we'd have another Iran on our hands. There's also the argument that it is us who have taken this women drivers thing far too far! And where is Bashar al-Assad on this list? Should be at the very top I think!

Brilliant! I particularly like Bedlington, not just the dog! The sort of thing I could have come up with myself - though maybe I did!

From memory the Wales' lived right on the West side of Great North Road, Gosforth. Somewhere around the Brunton Park area. Industrious family, but not a commute I'd have fancied! The newsagent next to Walter Wilson's in the photo is the only place in Bedlington I could get the "Radio Constructor" magazine in Bedlington circa 1960 - would bike down there regularly in the rain. Can even remember some of those covers!

Oh well! Returning to your original question: my vote is for Herman Van Rumpoy. I didn't vote for him and no one else seems to have either - ergo, as our President he's a dictator of the grandest kind! A sewerage pipe seems too good for him!

Let's hope he is still alive - shooting him is just too easy a way out! Deserves to be thrown into one of his own prisons, but that wouldn't be allowed as inhumane!

Yup, that too! Do you believe Dave's current promise on this? He's the sole arbiter what a "transfer of powers" means, so yet more politician's weasel words! "When the time is right"; those five woolly tests for joining the Euro; ho hum! I feel that whatever stirrings of true democracy we are about to witness are likely to be knocked on the head by Mili's-band of upwardly-mobile morons - steered by the appalling Ed Balls, and cheered on by Mrs mouth-disconnected-from-brain Balls! And no prizes for guessing how the Lemming Democrats will vote. Remember your election claims to "fairness" and "democracy" Mr Clegg? No? Oh well, no one above the age of political maturity ever expected you would! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11401594 Still, one can always hope!

Backbench MPs have agreed to hold a debate on a referendum on our membership of the EU. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15354203 Let's hope this starts the ball rolling on some genuine democratic process. With the Euro teetering and the politicos myths about it now thoroughly discredited this could be exactly the right time to re-examine the mess the political classes have got us into. Great that three options are proposed. Left to their own devices the politicos would rather a stark in or out - with all the scaremongering warnings about the latter - were the only possibilities. Even UKIP doesn't want the latter. We need to get back to what we actually agreed to thirty odd years ago: a commercial free-trade union, not a federal Europe!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15344297 Graph says it all. Double digit at some point in the coming years - the natural consequence of printing money!

The "Where does it mention "Asian", or is this in FACT just a typical unintelligent sterotype?" thread is a laugh a second.

The big boys often have less of a clue than the small guys. There's actually nowhere much to go if you are an investor, though anything (save Govt promises) beats bank/BS deposits. In inflationary times investments in good companies with real earnings and with pricing power is the way to go. If you can pick them up during the inevitable blood-on-the-screens days then so much the better. This is why the markets are turbulent yet resilient. The big losers will inevitably be people on fixed incomes, and people who refuse to take multiple small risks. And, if you are Joe Average Worker with no savings, your problem is being caught in the vice of price inflation without the usual corresponding wage inflation. This is the paradox of the markets: by far the bigger risk is to convince yourself that you aren't running any! As for the general situation - well, yes - we are all supremely &*&&*&*'d!

"Politics on the rates" a firmly established principal in good ole Wansbeck, so why should national government be any different?

It's not rational. It assumes that the Banks exist in the same world of accountability as their customers. What is rational - and would have prevented the current credit free-for-all - is a levy on fractional reserve lending. You or I expect to have to pay for a licence to do this or that, but the banks get a licence to create money for free.

It's down into the bunkers for the euro-politicos! "Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said Thursday the ECB would offer an unlimited amount of 12-month and 13-month credits." Isn't this fait currency thing all about credibility and confidence? And, take a look at the 30 day gold price. As I pointed out earlier: you can't preserve wealth by following a herd mentality. Merv seldom says much of significance - well that's his job - but he's determined not to be on the wrong side of history. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15210112 Will more QE work though? Well, if I was being compulsory purchased and found my fund in possession of oodles of QE funny money I'd be tempted to move it to more stable climes, and not do what he hopes I'd do with it. The only real term "benefit" will likely be stir up a bit more inflation. Why doesn't he come clean and bury the 2% inflation target nonsense for good?!

http://www.bbc.co.uk...nology-15180835 Maybe we should be considering a move to technologically advanced Bulgaria?

Goodness, yet another out-by-one programming error in this code!

It will never replace Home Highway!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14705838 You know what; Dr Swire is no fool, and he's right! The Scottish justice system knows it is wrong, but hasn't got the decency to come right out and say so. That's the real reason why they released him "on licence", though no one but an idiot can deny he's terminally ill. Despite the CIA frame-up, in time we may still well get to the real truth here. Even ex-CIA people are saying the whole thing stinks!

That's likely because you weren't logged in. The Northumberland Chat Forum is special in that it allows posts from non-members. If you haven't logged in your post will require approval, if you have it won't. It has been that way for a long time.

Will Not Be Liked? Amazing that when you mention this the old meaningless socialist e-word always comes up in the first sentence. In recent times TMW has done more damage to people's chances of getting a job, and to British industry, than anything else. The government has no right to dictate what parties should or should not accept in free negotiation - particularly when it does it for tawdry vote-getting purposes. If the government thinks that people aren't being paid enough as an hourly rate then it should put it's money where its mouth is and provide the extra out of the public purse. It would be a fraction of what they already pay on the dole and make good economic sense for everyone. It's also good social engineering because TMW stupidity destroys the work habit and actively encourages state dependency. There are disabled people sitting bored at home but wanting to work and employers willing to employ them, but big-brother socialism says no. Crazy! That's curtains for a lot of people on the dole then! Set term maybe - it works in the USA. If you are going to have a true insurance scheme then HMG is the last organisation anyone should trust to run it! Well, a start already has been made on planning, so lets see how far they get. I'd be surprised if enacted reforms have a fraction of the impact on the economy as they could have though. No it wasn't lack of regulation, it was lack of transparency caused by over-regulation. Too many people to pass the buck to; too many regulations to quote to cover your backside; and a supreme overall lack of common sense. The simply huge amount of current "compliance" kills competition because it militates towards ever larger organisations who can support the layers of unproductive activity. In amongst this hide the "financial engineers" who come up with ever-more complicated, obscure and interdependent "financial products" designed - as if by magic - to wring ever greater returns out of simple market activities for the issuers. The net result is patterns of trading that no one understands, least of all the issuers of these "products". It might be hard for the politicos to understand this, but you can't regulate your way out of this sort of thing. The only sane approach is a back to basics one. Back to what worked in the past. Back to people who understand their customers and the true risk to lenders they represent - the local bank manager. The last bit isn't true, and I speak as one of those small investors. There's a different set of constraints to the big boys, but smaller investors can - and frequently do - run rings around them. As I said the real problem with the markets is where smaller companies who need to raise capital meet up with far too much regulation and level of expense. The sort of investors who would punt on very small companies don't need the level of protection promised by the main markets. Not even the level of protection offered by AIM. We need a "Dragon's Den" market for smaller enterprises where risk can be widely spread and maybe the level of any individual's single investment is severely limited. This, of course, wouldn't interest larger investors, but the potential returns and excitement would certainly interest many experienced smaller ones. Agreed.

They sent them to an Italian lab forgetting that 2011 is a public holiday?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14582499 Enter NE22 in the box. T-Mobile looks the best, and Vodaphone looks quite poor at "the station". Not too many results collected for Three, but what there are look good. I suspect that Three might have the best overall coverage.