threegee

I feel a song coming on: ...no, no, stop! Not Streisand, B.; more Como, P.!

That's what they want us to believe, but if there's not a deal this week they are screwed. It's the old "there will be no devaluation", "Northern Rock is as safe as houses" thing; the more they say it the less it's true. Lenders don't stick around when their funds are mobile and there's a mega-big IF hanging over the solvency of the borrower. Getting your cash back at the earliest possible instant is the only sensible thing to do in those circumstances! Yes, it compounds the problem, but it also concentrates minds. For the greater good banks, and even countries, need the freedom to go bust. If you constantly deny this possibility you only build up even bigger problems for the future. I think what those "anarchists" would achieve is some sort of return to real value, and an end to a 100% fiat money system. There are lots of things that would have a lot more credibility as currency backing than fresh air and the promises of a profligate government. Joe and Jane Bloggs put their house up as collateral, so why doesn't the government put it's own stock of buildings and land up as first stop? What they effectively do these days is promise more and more of future tax revenue from an already overtaxed populous. That populous doesn't see through the deception, so it seems OK to continue to bribe them with their own future earnings. The day of reckoning can't be postponed indefinitely though, and is likely a lot earlier than anyone can imagine. In Ireland's case it's quite literally tomorrow!

That soon is right now! There has been a flood of capital out of Irish banks over the last few days and they are now teetering. If there isn't a deal right away they are insolvent. Their pretense that the near fully nationalised banks are not the state has fooled no one! It's crazy that we are joining the queue to bail them out. They've been leeching UK jobs by undercutting our tax system to attract investment, and exploiting our market for their goods, for decades. We paid the price for their prosperity and now we are about to pay the price for their profligacy. Here the French are dead right: equalise your company taxation or no bail-out Ireland; no more free lunch!

I left the scene double quick when the young copper I flagged down on the roundabout hit the transmit button on his radio right over where the bubbles were coming up. No one was more surprised than me to see the smouldering pile of rubble later that day. I've heard lots of theories since on what triggered the blaze. All I can say for sure is that there was a mega gap in police training at the time!

I want a rep for being the one who discovered the gas leak the night it burned down! :D

No, I'm not talking about Irish finances. It's simply that the long range weather forecast I'm seeing shows -5c min temps for next weekend. Of course forecasting the weather that far ahead is only a bit less fraught with error than trying to forecast long term climate change, so it may never happen. But I'd be lagging my leeks and looking for my langies, all precautionary like, nevertheless. My 50p bet is that cold winters are back on the agenda, and that the global warming industry is no longer an investment which will bring good returns.

Don't agree that Cympil's photos are anywhere near the original one. There's next to no buildings in common between the two lots of snaps, but what little is in common is quite different. Firstly the shop nearest the Market Cross has lost it's sun-blind on Cympil's pix, and the sign seems to have been updated. Also there's now a distinct white band along the top of the front wall cladding on the Co-op. On the original pic the Co-op sports a collector combine (405 line) TV aerial. The need for these was gone in 1970, and being spindly they didn't generally stand a decades storms. So it's very likely it would have been blown down or taken down sometime before 1980. In the newer pix the shops are open, and there's lots more people around; clearly not the case in the original picture, though the Howard Arms, and probably something hidden in the Market Place (Bacchi's?) seems to be - still strong evidence for a Sunday or bank holiday. Then there's the Clevva Clothes evidence which no one has countered, whilst the contribution about the Presto opening tends to support a 70's date. Can't argue with Malc on the cars, but they are not at all distinct on the original pic, and the silver one looks to me like a big 60'/70's gas guzzler. The fuel crisis in the 70's encouraged the adoption of the more compact type of cars shown in Cympil's pix. So there's still strong evidence here that the pictures are several years, if not a decade, apart. This one will run and run!

Well it was near 2am, and I had had a few glasses, but my main excuse is that this new keyboard is enormous with funny flat keys. No? OK, suppose I now have to give you a rep as the only one to notice the err.. "typo".

LOL I think it's at least pan-european, speeds in Italy are way down too.

But hang on Malc, Gordon & Alastair told us a zillion times this was an international problem! Someone else spent all that money not us! So we really don't need to cut ourselves up about it and we'll get it back somehow. My guess is that it was those gnomes in Zürich; you know the ones who stole all the money in the previous Labour governments and were never brought to book. Why they always wait until Labour has been in power a while beats me, but I suppose it's just a coincidence. Anyway I'm going to carry on voting Labour as I'm sure Red Ed has all the answers, and as soon as Alan Johnson finishes reading that book on economics he just bought he'll know exactly were those gnomes live. Obviously exactly the right man to sort out all this international economics malarkey!

... this book will remain on sale at Amazon? One book you are unlikely to find very many people reselling their used copy of!

Even the ones who know (and care) BA about football?? Terriers excepted, of course!

Spelling Bedders with two b's gets you a rep vote from me!

And... how dare that Merlin guy call me a Tory!

Will Britain's next aircraft carrier be called the H2MS Waterloo? ( Half Her Majesty's Ship) And... do we get the bow or the stern if the French don't agree with what we are doing with it? Though, just to get this one right, maybe we should give Sarky half the Falkland's oil - so we have some common interest this time around? Umm.. didn't we invade Suez to protect their Suez Canal Company too? Ignoring the tiny matter of two world wars you'd think they'd figure that they might owe us at least one!

Yes, Marconiphone was the fourth brand that came off the production line. I knew there was a fourth one, but the Pilot brand kept coming into my head, and that seemed to me wrong. Marconiphone was different from the other three brands in that it was sold through wholesalers, and not to Radio and TV dealers directly. Thanks for the memory jog! Fidelity remained an independant company for much longer than most. They were associated with cheap audio rather than TV. A large range of "trannies" ( transistor(ised) radios ) kept them going in the 1960's, until the inevitable rise and rise of far eastern imports swamped them. Wasn't the Fidelity name finally bought by Amstrad?

Thorn - without the e - actually! But it was an independant company before Sir Jules Thorn (British Radio Corporation part of Thorn Industries) bought the consumer side back in the late '50s or early '60s. Ferguson was his main brand; he also had HMV. And (like the British Motor Corporation in those days) branding differentiation ultimately reduced to name stickers and a different bit of glitz on the cabinet. At times they even managed to get the wrong BRC brand in the right box. Ultra still has some professional electronics interests I think; military radios and things if my failing memory serves me right. Under BRC Ultra was always quite flashy and "modern" looking, even if the guts didn't always live up to the good-design image. One particularly iconic bit of advertising showed a female sitting in one of those cocoon hanging chair things - "ultra" sheek in the '1960's, and they still look quite cool. The original company's consumer products were a bit more mundane than under the BRC marketing guys, but that was mostly before my time. Pity you hadn't kept it; I'm likely one of the very few people still around with enough design knowledge of how it worked to fix it - using modern parts! LOL

Yup, +2.9% for the eurocrats is being hailed as a Dave win! -10% would have been a win - pointing to the -20% that our own govt. departments have suffered. The euro gravy train only travels in one direction, and there are no red lights! They're smiling all the way to the celebratory all-expenses-paid nosh-up!

Hmm.. to be #1 we need 2800 votes, and we have seventy odd! With the level of social cohesion we have here I can't see this happening this millennium. If you had a team of several hundred highly motivated door-knockers it would be still be touch and go. Always worth trying - someone has to - but from my own point of view I wouldn't give BT Internet the time of day since they literally stole over £100 out of our account some years back. Sounds like this level of trust is relicated amongst BCOUK workers too! Brave try, but can we try someting easier first, like.. launching our own Mars probe? http://discovermagazine.com/2007/space/how-to-assemble-rover

Didn't someone post on the board about buying some BS title a good while back? Now if he'd though to mention in passing that he was a millionaire we'd have told him... errm... If you are reading this m'lud please come back, we didn't mean to take the !*!@# . You need to understand that it's an ancient imitation ceremony that all Bedlington gentry are required to go through. In order to validate your title of Honourable Sir of Bedlington County it's necessary to sign this small rectangular - but mostly blank - bit of paper bearing the letters patent (H.S.B.C.) in the lower right-hand corner; then stand on the ancient Market Cross and proclaim to everyone on the Front Street the traditional cry "The pints are on me!". You will then be taken by your grateful subjects on a guided tour of all the places of interest in your realm - thus completing the time-honoured ceremony.

Update: Product existence and forthcoming launch confirmed by Nokia: the N9 to be launched at a Dublin event in the first quarter of 2011. So not too far away, and it will sport MeeGo from day one. Rumoured to have an AMOLED (Active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) display and a 1GH/z snapdragon CPU, but AMOLED seems unlikely on such a short timescale; more likely in the next generation device with an Intel CPU. That nextgen device could come before the end of next year though. We are already seeing the first MeeGo tablets coming to market. Prediction: Wall to wall Android and MeeGo tablets by the end of next year at prices little more than a third that of an iPad. Apple will need to slash prices, add features, and turn up the propaganda even more just to stay in the low-end tablet game.

Later this week Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary, will get to his feet in the commons to announce the sites of eight new nuclear power stations. That's fairly unremarkable except that... he knows that a majority of Lib Dem MPs will vote it down. But... he's not worried about this because he knows he'll still get them built - because... Labour MPs will support him! Confused? It all becomes clear when you recall the LibDem election proposition: a vote for us is a vote for change.

Probably the last ARM base Nokia pocket computer. 2011 / 12 will undoubtedly see an Intel base one. http://vimeo.com/12925392 This is the successor to the N900 - which I now have - and blows the socks off the over-hyped and grossly over-priced iPhone 4. The operating system is MeeGo, which I've mentioned here before. This is a merging of Nokia's open-source Maemo and Intel's Moblin (Mobile Linux). Just like Google's Android (another Linux derivative) you'll soon see MeeGo on other manufacturer's machines too.

LOL Recently saw a post for a "Randomisation Officer" advertised. I've since been trying to figure out what the duties would be, and whether you'd need to supply your own coin.

a ) I'm not a Tory - out and out or any other kind! Though - like all current political parties - I believe in free markets. b ) This sounds straight out of Marx! That's not how modern industry works. Not all union activity is bad, but in recent decades much of it has been completely counterproductive. That's been particularly the case when it has been used to further someone's political ends in the guise of improving working conditions.