Malcolm Robinson

Getting back to Greece for a minute, it would seem euro membership doesn't come with any guarantees attached as we see time after time the Greek people let down by grandstanding Eurocrats. Merkel, hamstrung by her own constitutional court ruling, notwithstanding the wishes of her electorate, is pushing for an IMF bale out, Sarko is railed against that insisting the ECB does the job, and looking at the latest election ratings his party has just had in France he might not be President much longer. It looks a right mess with nothing of any worth coming-out of euroland to help the Greeks. We now see a Dutch MEP calling for the Nordic nations to hold Northern Euros and let the Southern ones hold separate South Euro notes? The Dutch are almost implacably behind the IMF plan but that would bring the sustainability of the euro, as well as the ECB not being able to sort its own troubles out, into question. There is one thing to note at this stage and that is if the IMF are brought in to bale Greece out the austerity measures their government are trying to bring in now will look like a walk in the park, as IMF intervention carries it's own conditions!

Do Labour not have any seats in the West country?

A typical bloke, having split from his latest girlfriend, decided to take a holiday. He booked himself on a cruise and proceeded to have the time of his life, that is, until the ship sank. He found himself on an island with no other people, no supplies, nothing, only bananas and coconuts. After about four months, he is lying on the beach one day when the most gorgeous woman he has ever seen rows up to the shore. In disbelief, he asks, 'Where did you come from? How did You get here?' She replies, 'I rowed from the other side of the island. I landed here when my cruise ship sank.' 'Amazing,' he notes. 'You were really lucky to have a row boat wash up with you.' 'Oh, this thing?' explains the woman.. 'I made the boat out of raw material I found on the island. The oars were whittled from gum tree branches. I wove the bottom from palm branches, and the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree.' 'But, where did you get the tools?' 'Oh, that was no problem,' replied the woman. 'On the south side of the island, a very unusual stratum of alluvial rock is exposed. I found if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into ductile iron. I used that for tools and used the tools to make the hardware..' The guy is stunned. 'Let's row over to my place,' she says. After a few minutes of rowing, she docks the boat at a small wharf. As the man looks to shore, he nearly falls off the boat.. Before him is stone walk leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white. While the woman ties up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope, the man can only stare ahead, dumb struck. As they walk into the house, she says casually, 'It's not much but I call it home. Sit down, please. Would you like a drink?' 'No! No thank you,' he blurts out, still dazed. 'I can't take another drop of coconut juice.' 'It's not coconut juice,' winks the woman. 'I have a still.. How would you like a Pina Colada?' Trying to hide his continued amazement, the man accepts, and they sit down on her couch to talk. After they have exchanged their stories, the woman announces, 'I'm going to slip into something more comfortable.. Would you like to take a shower and shave? There is a razor in the bathroom cabinet.' No longer questioning anything, the man goes into the bathroom. There, in the cabinet, a razor made from a piece of tortoise bone. Two shells honed to a hollow ground edge are fastened on to its end inside a swivel mechanism. 'This woman is amazing,' he muses. 'What next?' When he returns, she greets him wearing nothing but vines, strategically positioned, and smelling faintly of gardenias. She beckons for him to sit down next to her. 'Tell me,' she begins suggestively, slithering closer to him, 'We've been out here for many months. You've been lonely. There's something I'm sure you really feel like doing right now, something you've been longing for?' She stares into his eyes .. He swallows excitedly and tears start to form in his eyes..... 'Flipping heck, don't tell me you've got Sky Sports?'

Ok then Monsta, They are fiddling their own figures to make things look better than they are with their eyes firmly on the election. If International investors see through this it will probably result in another round of money printing and another fall in the sterling exchange rate which makes your quid worthless not only abroad but at home as well!

Blooming heck another one............... Pretty soon it will be a case of, 'pist... heard such and such is staying open!'

Well we have had the non event budget which very nearly turned into a party political broadcast. The ONS came out with inflation figures just before which were 'not as bad as feared.' No they weren't but taking a closer look someone had manipulated the basket of goods which are measured to produce that very sentence! Now who is at the centre of government who might be guilty of that one? You can see the hand of the unelected dark Lord all over that! This means ALL 'ONS' figures have to be suspect from now on. The fiscal portion of the budget revealed more about the missing information than any which has been included. £100M less borrowing over the next 5 years looks little more than an exercise in creative accounting as the forecasts have had about 0.5% subtracted each year over that cycle. The structural fiscal deficit figure of 8.4% of GDP reducing to 2.5% at first glance looks to be going in the right direction but the fact that it will still be there after we have gone through an austerity package will not be unnoticed by international investors. Speaking of which it would seem opportune that Portugal had their rating downgraded by Fitch which must have taken some of the spotlight off the UK. Still we saw UK 10Y gilts up 5 basis points and let's remember we need to get £186B away soon. The UK growth figures Darling is using seem to be optimistic to say the least even allowing him to get this year's figures right. Not hitting his 3-3.5% growth rate over each of the following years would have a catastrophic effect on borrowing needs and wipe out that projected £100M saving. As for government savings those were noticeable by the absence of any detail what-so-ever. Asset sales were mentioned but as they reiterated figures used by Chancellor Brown in 1997 probably not even worth looking into them! Bank lending, quite an optical illusion here as we heard our second Iron Chancellor telling the part nationalised banks to increase business lending to £94B next financial year. Same sort of rhetoric he has already used on them and the result, business lending by RBS has actually fallen this year! Stamp duty looks to be a particular minefield as it would now seem government wants first time buyers to enter a house bubble market with the distinct possibity of buying straight into negative equity. Not only that the concession to those buyers is temporary whilst the increase levied at £1M+ properties is permanent. That would seem strange for a supposed meritocracy? The much heralded Mortgage Support Scheme seems to show very very limited take up if Cam's figure of 15 is correct maybe that was a clear case of grabbing headlines with no one looking at the small print? Also the whole university issue looks to be very complicated as on the one hand there is to be a £35M innovation fund whilst at the same time £20M worth of cuts? What is apparent is that this budget is at best a halfway house towards the next spending review if Darling still resides at number 11. With Tory promises of initiating their own budget within weeks of coming to office whoever is Chancellor will have to make a much more detailed and fiscally strategic offering next time.

Make that at least 3 Stephen!!!

I have looked too Merc and can't find it, as well as other pub for sale chains, and I assume you are right about the status of the current landlady. The Percy is up for £46K if anyone is interested.

Merc, I see you have embraced the self employed business philosophy!

The days when reality hit everyone between the eyes and people in jobs took pay cuts to save them. There are now a whole host of strikes planned at a time when we should all be pulling together to get the country through its self inflected financial crisis.

That was the olden days monsta, last year!

Buy into this????????? http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/23032010/58/championship-sex-text-brawl-leaves-taylor-broken-jaw.html

GGG, If we accept the need for fiscal rebalancing, belt tightening, call it whatever, then the case for a rise in VAT is probably necessary, it could produce an extra £13B a year. It will be politically sensitive no doubt but it may have to be done whoever sits in at number 11. As well as that there now seems a general agreement the public sector has to face facts and accept deep cost cutting exercises. The Institute of Directors have published a paper outlining what it sees as possible cost restricting in this area and suggest possible savings of around £25B a year after 3 years. One area of particular concern should be public sector pensions, a black hole if there is ever one! We need to work our way out of the fiscal nightmare we are in so there is a need to incentivise the low paid to actually work and not rely on state benefits. That means we have to make it worthwhile to work. I would be particularly keen to see micro businesses helped with regard to this. Seeing one guy getting 60 odd million for not quite blowing the place to bits is staggering! I do take your point about having a budget and saying they will redo it later that is crazy but it exemplifies the way our current crop of politicians think and the political process we are locked into.

Merc, I understand your points and the fact you want pubs to continue to be the hearts of their communities but I think there are issues other than those you have mentioned to consider. The gov had said they are going to change the terms landlords operate under in tied pubs to enable them to source more of their products at better prices. Will this change what we see happening in the declining pub trade? Probably not. We have seen people become more insular in their personal lives for some time which seems strange as we are a gregarious animal by nature. Why has this happened, probably in an effort to maintain the illusion of middle class lifestyles where material possessions are what measures us as people. Personal debt piles have to be serviced and living costs have to be met which leaves little by way of disposable incomes to spend on nights out at the pub. That is probably going to get worse as interest rates rise! Factor in your point about pub products being too expensive and we can see the obvious effects. Pubs are businesses in the first instance and have to operate within the confines of their sector averages. If they don't service what their punters want, be that price, decor, entertainment or whatever they loose out and all at a time of greater need in other areas of personal expenditure. Perm in the attack they face off the likes of supermarkets (super-aggressive-marketers) who have targeted their market and it looks like 'time is called gentlemen!' They are slap bang in the middle of a pernicious pincher movement economically. There will be business models which survive this onslaught but there will be much less of them and we will end up having a pint in characterless plastic effigies where individuality is non existent!

Do we need a Great Reform Act 2010? Certainly looks that way! The first one of 1832 was necessitated by the endemic corruption within the politics of the time, disenfranchisement of vast swathes of the population, and popular unrest with the likes of rotten boroughs where political cronies could be parachuted in to stand in unlosable seats. Sounding familiar and this nearly 200years ago! With the latest expose of MPs willing to sell their services to the highest bidder we can clearly see exactly the effect recent changes introduced to clean up politics has had. I have to say I find it paradoxical that even Tory Peers don't ask for the sums NuLab MPs demand to influence government policy! It would seem our 'socialist' MPs have completely embraced the enterprise culture of capitalism in their quest for personal gain! We are about to see upwards of 160 new MPs and whilst I accept the vast majority will be party products some must have an enthusiasm, a sense of altruism, if not naivety which could count for something. Last time we saw such a number of MPs leaving the commons they were replaced with a set which brought in the National Health Service, a defining moment within UK society! Can we hope for the same to come with the next lot?

It is quite a difficult budget to forecast as on one hand with a huge deficit they need to be seen to act responsibly and do things to cut that back while at the same time, and with an imminent election, sweeten the pot for the very people who have to pay up. They already have a 1% tax increase on jobs going though! I guess the normal things will take a mildish hit but we may see a bit more discrimination within the likes of alcohol sales. Considering all the statements made by B/D the devil will be in the details of this one not the headline rates. Anyone want a daft bet on the time it takes Darling to deliver this budget? 1hr 55m.

As far as I can see the Gov are being typically hypercritical as per. They should have had the maracas to make tobacco into a class A drug and ban its use, if they really want to go down this road. Talk about mixed messages. Course the 8 odd billion a year income they get while spending 1.7 billion on smoking related health treatment might have something to do with it?

So we now have one of the Miliband boyos calling for the establishment of a national bank based on the post office network which will take on the private banking sector. It would seem an immanent election has forced this change in ideology! If it does go ahead pity it didn't come sooner and at least try to save some of the closed post offices up and down the country. Is this really a change back to the roots of the Labour party as some sort of acknowledgement of their voter demographics in the run up to an election or does it make commercial sense? It would seem to make more sense if we didn't have such big public stakes in the banking sector already as this could easily undermine those positions. It should certainly have been a serious option considered at the time we lavished such huge piles of money towards failing banks, which has then disappeared!

Well listening to the reports coming out of the Office for National Statistics etc anyone would believe we are out of recession and on the up again. Unemployment is falling, always a welcome sign, but we have to look a little closer to see the whole picture and one not quite so rosy. The employed figures are falling too as are hours worked and the ONS are blaming students for the apparent dichotomy of these two statements. This looks like straight political manipulation of government stats but with the unelected Dark Lord in the centre of government is anyone surprised? Any rise in 'economically inactives 'has to be of concern at a time when we need as many people as possible to contribute to our deficit reduction. Public sector employment is 6.1 million and has risen by 7000 since Sept 2009!!!! I thought we were supposed to be reducing PSBR not increasing it? So across our green and pleasant land every time you walk past 4 people the next one works for the public sector. That's possibly unsustainable particularly at a time of recession but what really worries is that here, in our county, that ratio is one in two! For every two people you meet one of them works for the public sector, now is that really sustainable or is it payback for political allegiance? Some members of the MPC seem to be getting jittery about inflation prospects, about time, but they are still voting unanimously. We now seem locked into importing inflation as a result of a weak exchange rate policy at the very least. 'The depreciation of sterling since the start of the year was likely to put additional upwards pressure on inflation over coming months.' They are still extolling the QE argument, I think this will be shown to be wrong at some point. The BOE have come out with a 'normalising' exercise as they consider the financial crisis over. It is rewriting its policy regarding loan securitisations so it can get real securities, ones which the private sector will buy if needed, instead of the 'phantom' securities it has been accepting. Will this lead to a further tightening of credit lines? One last thought before the budget of next week. Has Darling got anything in the pot to give away to bribe voters? You would think not but with a little creative accounting.........Looks like the amount of loans UKPLC needed this year (£174B?) might see an undershoot of around 20 billion (£152B?) on previously budgeted figures. (Need to see the March figures to be certain of course!) What can we expect Gordon/Alistair to do with that, not borrow it and therefore save not only that amount of capital but also the repayments? I think we might see the opposite with government maintaining its annual proposed borrowing figure which could give it up to 20 billion to sweeten the electorate. Not doing that would be the responsible thing to do as it would give international investors confidence that UKPLC was taking its recovery seriously, and who do we need to start buying our bonds instead of relying on a QE programme?

There is always a plan GGGG, it just some are better than others.......... Withdrawal of a Supplementary Planning Document (SPD): Bedlington Conservation Area Management Strategy SPD Northumberland County Council adopted the above document on 1 April 2009. The SPD set out management proposals for the Bedlington Conservation Area. It sought to ensure that change in the area is managed in ways which maintain and, if possible, strengthen the area's special architectural and historic qualities. It incorporated proposals for the extension of the boundaries of the Conservation Area. Following adoption of the SPD, it came to light that not all representations made to the draft SPD at the consultation stage (October/November 2008) were taken into account by the Council when it adopted the document. As a consequence, the SPD has been withdrawn.

upstairs there were different coloured rooms with certain ladies of the night up there. You sure they were upstairs BarLass?

Nice one monsta.........

Sym, I too would defend the monsta right of free speech, I just didn't want him inundating us with BNP propaganda! Isn't the real problem down to the modern diet of our dogs? In the old days letting your cur munch on bones produced something which at least could be handled, these days and with modern pet dietary products the end results are quite often less solid and more liquefied leading to a reticent by even the most respectful owners to handle said matter. As for equine faeces better watch out for those amazingly fast fungal explosions as identified by the Hamster, they could take your eye out!

Jim, Get with the programme! It has taken 2 years to get to this position and for the first time we will have an independent report into leisure facilities, the lack or need, within Bedlington. Mistawispa, When you identify the piecemeal attitude toward any re/development within Bedlington that is something I can particularly identify with. There has never been any holistic strategic planning for the town since BUDC disbanded! That needs to change if we are to have any hope of bringing it back from the brink.

Just put in the first 2 letters and 2 numbers of the local post code Mr D!