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.

Fred remind me which Bank was it in the US that went Tits Up and the World followed.

Note Hays doesnt comment he stays well away when he knows hes beaten.

Right off out fishing.

Lovely evening setting in here.

You may mean this one:

"Bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers"

I am off to the kitchen for a glass of red.

Didn't have a drop of alcohol in France for 3 weeks.

I am not sure what I was punishing myself for?

perhaps the gentlest of tasters for the luxury gulag?

anyway, young sticky, while you go fishing for hays and tin cans, i'll enjoy the first of this season's wild salmon with some freshly picked asparagus :-)

A good fish, a bloody awful oversold tasteless vegetable.

The only thing which makes it any better than an overpriced stalk of grass, is the amount of dressing it can hold.

That applies to the large variety which is be flogged by the bucketful.

I must admit the thought of Hays on a hook and being dragged through the water does have some attraction.

shows what crap you eat!
these came from our local farm this morning and needed nothing but cooking for a few minutes in lightly salted water and then eating with nothing else to be added

asparagus, wouldnt want to be in your tail wind.

Manuel.

You seem to have appalling taste.

No wonder the catering trade gave you up.

Your customers must have been grateful.

It seems to me you valuation is base on price and taste is based on the price not value of the ingredients.

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Seem you are a chancer at heart!

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Back to my tomato soup from hand picked tomatoes and fennel.

GF.

If you haven't already tried them and you are in France try a form of artichoke which they call in the markets "topinambours".

Small cone shaped artichokes, purple and white skinned under an inch in length and then you don't have to peel them.

Steam or small amount of water and boilt and strained, then pepper, salt and knobs of butter and glass of WHITE wine to drink with them.

Beautiful, but you will fart for days!!!!!!

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I never realised the pleasure of fresh spring vegetables served as a course with a suitable dressing, until I had a French mistress.

Ah, now we know why French mistresses fart a lot.

And what's to make of this lady and her comments?



'Struth! Unreal!

Lets have less of the farting and more of the burping.

In some countries Im told its a mark of respect for some food.

Ukip vote in European elections no flash in pan according to new poll
Poll suggests vast majority of people who voted for Ukip in European elections will vote for the party in general election.


By James Kirkup, Political Editor10:00PM BST 30 May 2014

The vast majority of the four million people who voted for the UK Independence Party in the European elections will make the same choice at the general election, a new poll predicts today.
The poll, by ComRes suggests that 86 per cent of people who voted for Nigel Farage’s party will do so again next year.

More than 4.3 million people voted for Ukip in the European elections, giving the party its first national victory. The Conservatives came third, suggesting many of their previous supporters had defected to Ukip. Several Cabinet ministers have publicly said that many Ukip voters are merely “lending” their votes to Ukip this year and will return to the Tory fold ahead of the general election. But the poll, conducted in the days after the European election, casts doubt on those predictions.

The survey found that 37 per cent of Ukip voters said that they were “certain” to support the party at the general election. Another 49 per cent said that they were “likely” to do so, while 14 per cent said that they would probably back another party.
The poll was commissioned by Paul Sykes, Ukip’s biggest financial backer. In a further boost for Mr Farage, Mr Sykes today pledges to help the party score a second major victory over the Tories in next week’s Newark by-election. The Tories have poured resources into the by-election, which was prompted by the resignation of Patrick Mercer over a cash for questions scandal. On Thursday the party sent five ministers including George Osborne, the Chancellor, Theresa May, the Home Secretary, and Sajid Javid, the Culture Secretary, in a sign of how seriously they take the Ukip threat.

A poll taken in Newark yesterday showed that the Tories lead Ukip by 36 per cent to 28 per cent. But support for the Tories has fallen 18 percentage points since the general election while Ukip has gained 24 percentage points.
Last week’s Ukip victory was achieved despite repeated attacks on the party from senior Conservatives; an approach that is criticised today by David Davis, a senior Tory backbencher. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he described Mr Farage as “rather admirable” and “clever” and said Mr Cameron had taken the wrong approach to Ukip. “It’s unwise to be rude about your potential voters,” he said.
According to the poll, Ukip attracted voters due to its policy on immigration and Mr Farage’s complaint that Britain had ceded control of its borders to Europe.

A Tory Cabinet minister today concedes that immigration is a “legitimate complaint” and admits that Britain has “virtually no control” over immigration from Europe.
In an interview, Mr Javid says that the Tories are “committed” to reforming EU migration rules.
“We do recognise that we as a country today have much more control over non-EU immigration – and we have virtually no control over EU immigration,” he told Total Politics magazine. “That’s something that we’d like to change, but that is much easier said than done at this point and requires renegotiating with our European partners, and that’s something that Conservatives are committed to.”
The interventions will come as a further boost to Mr Farage at the end of a week that saw Ukip become the first party other than the Conservatives or Labour to win a national election for 100 years. Writing for telegraph.co.uk, Mr Sykes said that the ComRes poll findings should shake the Conservatives out of their complacent belief that Ukip will not threaten them at the general election.
“Conservative MPs, with a few honourable exceptions, appear to be in denial about the scale of the popular uprising against our current rulers. This is despite their party finishing third in the elections,” he said. “They appear to think that the Ukip threat will go away (it won’t) or that the economic recovery will float them off the political rocks. They should recall what happened in 1997. Then the economy had been growing strongly for four years. That did not stop John Major going down to the worst Tory defeat since 1832.”
According to ComRes, 46 per cent of this year’s Ukip voters had supported the Tories at the 2010 general election. Fifteen per cent had been Labour voters, and 16 per cent defected from the Liberal Democrats.

CONCLUSION.........

unless Camoron does some shady deal with UKIP this will give LABOUR a BIG overal majority and a return to governing the country.

No, I think Millibandus will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory!

He is a complete clown, and will destroy the labour party, just like the other clown is doing with the Conservatives....Cleggy already won the race tho, he came first.

Everyone as an opinion Max but the maths are very much against labour not winning now if UKIP voters stick to the above newspaper piece.

ffs fred ..... you call yourself educated and go to france a lot, yet have clearly never seen topinambours in uk ..... they're just jerusalem artichokes which you even see in most supermarkets when in season .... and yes, they are indeed recommended for flatualnce extreme, though they may help your caravanette up some of those hills!

as for green asparagus, they have a wonderful flavour when freshly picked, though it dissipates quite quickly .... are they particularly expensive? ..... depends where you buy
personally, i don't go a bundle on white asparagus which is primarily seen in europe, and especially in germany .... now there i do agree that they are pretty tasteless

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actually fred, i'm amazed that you're not a huge fan of both vegetables .....

the one will fill you with a super-abundance of hot air and gas and the other with smelly piss, both of which attributes you seem to enjoy