Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

I think we could send The Tinker to Holland to help the Dear Leader with his negotiations.

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Mind he could take the his tribe of 100 party followers with him.

my family came from wales and go back hundreds of years

May I apologise on the part of Wales.

.

from wales? ..... oh so definitely not ENGLISH then ...... the Welsh were always just marauders, whose ancestry i think came from brittany or maybe even further east

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ah yes indeed .... the celts, among whom the welsh number, are a pretty nondescript bunch that came from central europe ..... clearly early illegal immigrants then

The pun conundrum

To pun or not to pun, that is the question. The lowest form of wordplay, or an ancient art form embraced by the likes of Jesus and Shakespeare, asks Sally Davies.

Optomistic, if you are around - the MF offer is due to finally end (again) this evening! :-))

The Motley Fool’s incredible ‘5-in-1 New Year Investor Mega-Bundle’

Cheers Skinny, rarely far away :-)
I won't be taking the offer up, even though it is the final offer I'm very stubborn in that I like to make my own mistakes ! LOL

Ditto!

I hate making my own mistakes.

It leaves me with nobody to blame.

Like to-day.

Fred - its the British way.

Damn! I didn't get that offer.Was it something I said?

Don't move to Cabot cove! How unrealistic is murder on television?

There is a great deal of fictionalised murder on television. But does it give us the wrong idea about crime?

Murder happens a lot less in real life than on television.

There were 636 killings in England and Wales in 2010-11 - that equates to 11.5 for every one million people - or a rate of 0.00115%.

Lotto line cost will double to £2

The cost of playing the Lottery is set to double - but more winners will share in the prize pot, operator Camelot has announced.

The price of a Lotto line will increase from £1 to £2 in the autumn, but the prize for matching three numbers will rise from £10 to £25.

However, the prize pot for matching five numbers will drop by £500 to £1,000 while the reward for matching five numbers and the bonus number will halve to £50,000. The prize for matching four numbers will increase from £60 to £100.

The price rise is the first since Lotto launched in 1994 and follows research which found that consumers "want more ways to win more money" from the game.

They are very quick with the jokes

Despite the recent news, Tesco says that their beef burger sales remain
stable...

Just got a batch of 200 Tesco beef burgers cheap, it only cost me a Pony

Checked my Tesco Burgers in the fridge..... and they're off.

If there's horse meat in the burgers, seriously worried about the new
Tesco extra-long sausages

Sat here reading the label on these Tesco burgers and it turns out they're
fairly low in fat, but surprisingly high in Shergar.

Apparently they've refused to name their mane supplier

New kids food found in budget supermarket.......My lidl pony

TESCO-would expect stock to trade down initially this morning, but not
furlong...

All horse burgers should be cooked medium mare

I had a burger from Tesco's last night it gave me the trots

Enough already...........

Nice one...


No-one could have written that better, 'stable' )

Apparently they've refused to name their mane supplier ....... and thereby hangs a tail

Blockbuster Collapses: 4,200 Jobs At Risk

..

By (c) Sky News 2013 | Sky News – 4 hours ago
The crisis on Britain's high streets is continuing after Blockbuster UK, the DVD rental chain, called in administrators in a move which puts more than 4,000 jobs at risk.

Blockbuster UK has appointed the accountancy firm Deloitte to handle an insolvency process less than 48 hours after it was hired to oversee the administration of HMV , the entertainment retailer.

The move was confirmed following a report by Sky News.

The spate of administrations threatens to make this one of the grimmest periods in the history of the high street as retailers face up to the prospect that they can no longer compete with digital competitors.

Blockbuster has been especially hurt by the growth of online film rental companies such as Lovefilm. A plan for Blockbuster to offer its own version of a film-streaming service appeared to stall in recent months.

Blockbuster UK, which is headquartered in Uxbridge, employs almost 4,200 staff and operates from 528 stores.

Its parent company, Blockbuster LLC in the US, is owned by The Dish Network, a US telecoms and media group which is headed by Charlie Ergen, a billionaire businessman.

Lee Manning, a partner at Deloitte, said: "In recent years Blockbuster has faced increased competition from internet-based providers along with the shift to digital streaming of movies and games.

"We are working closely with suppliers and employees to ensure the business has the best possible platform to secure a sale, preserve jobs and generate as much value as possible for all creditors.

"The core of the business is still profitable and we will continue to trade as normal in both retail and rental whilst we seek a buyer for all or parts of the business as a going concern.

"During this time gift cards and credit acquired through Blockbuster's trade-in scheme will be honoured towards the purchase of goods."

A spokesman for the administrator said the company's pension scheme was fully funded and gift-cards would be honoured at Blockbuster stores.

The recent flurry of retail collapses threatens to remove some of the famous names on British high streets.

If buyers cannot be found for HMV and Blockbuster, they will join the likes of Jessops, JJB Sports, Clintons Cards and Comet, which have all been forced to call in administrators.

The fact that the collapses of Blockbuster, HMV and Jessops have happened within just a few days of each other - with the potential combined loss of more than 10,000 jobs - also threatens to escalate the crisis into a broader political issue.

IMMIGRANTS FROM ROMANIA AND BULGARIA
there are forecasts for a potential flood of 5,000,000 immigrants from the above countries between 2014 and 2018 ..... difficult to know how much is good old-fashioned scaremongering and how much is proper and realistic prognosis ..... my guess tends heavily towards the former, but nevertheless cause for concern ......

it is indisputable that at the end of this year, eu-imposed restrictions on the "free movement of labour" from romania and bulgaria will come to an end

income per head in the above countries is said to be about 20% of that in uk ....... spain, france and italy already have huge unemployment of their own and that will take a good number of years to turn around .... as it stands, and goodness knows how it can let alone will be stemmed or even controlled, the uk (+ germany and nl) will almost inevitably be the lucky recipients of swathes of this new and hungry labour force ..... oh goody goody!

apart from the more obvious potential effects, the great fear to me is that the seeds for a resurgence of hard-right nationalism could all too easily be sown and come to flourish

Obama unveils sweeping gun control measures
this is another interesting one to watch ...... for sure Obama is intent on pushing this through and i'ld guess that the majority of half-way intelligent americans will back him ..... unfortunately, there are also huge numbers of grey-cell-deprived red-necks who will bitterly oppose any move that will restrict their right to buy anything from machine guns downwards

the gun lobby is usa has held disproportionate sway over any move towards any gun control spuriously citing 2nd Amendment (right to bear arms) as being enshrined in a commandment from heaven and thus set in basalt

to avoid ranting on for far too long, i'll merely c+p two comments below which say it all .....

"Guns require a finger to pull the trigger," Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry said.
"There is evil prowling in the world... let us all return to our places of worship and pray for help."

Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a potential 2016 presidential hopeful, added: "Guns are not the problem; criminals with evil in their hearts and mentally ill people prone to violence are."

aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh!!!!!