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've got a proper director's job this morning - filing, and it's boring :-(

Cynic, don't knock the easy jobs... I'm credit checking and would swap for some nice easy filing any day... just watch out for those paper cuts!!

BRUSSELS, June 4 (Reuters) - Lithuania meets all the criteria for joining the euro, the European Commission said on Wednesday, clearing the way for the small Baltic state to become the 19th member of the single currency from the start of next year. To adopt the euro, a country has to have government debt no higher than 60 percent of gross domestic product, a budget deficit below 3 percent of GDP, low inflation and interest rates and its own currency has to be stable against the euro. For a factbox on all the criteria see ID:L6N0OL28E . Out of the 28 countries in the European Union, only Britain and Denmark do not have to adopt the euro because they have negotiated formal opt-outs. All the others are obliged to switch to the single currency at some point provided they meet the criteria. The Commission assesses such compliance every two years in what it calls a convergence report. "The 2014 Convergence Report concludes that Lithuania meets the criteria for adopting the euro. As a consequence, the Commission is proposing that Lithuania adopt the euro on 1 January 2015," the Commission said. The formal decision to accept Lithuania into the euro zone will be taken by EU finance ministers in the second half of July, at which point the ministers will also agree on a conversion rate of the litas currency into the euro. The remaining seven countries that still remain outside the euro zone -- Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Sweden -- do not meet all of the criteria to adopt the currency. ID:L6N0OL24P With the addition of Lithuania's 3.4 million people, the euro zone will have a total population of 336 million people and a GDP of approximately $9.5 trillion. The single currency was launched in 1999 and started trading as notes and coins in Europe Jan. 1, 2002.

Of course Greece and Italy and a couple of others met the criteria and later it was obvious that they fixed the figures.

Filing? Oh really how the fallen have fallen further -):

as always, directors/owners shoulder the jobs that no one else wants :-)

Never mind the shoulder about time you got the elbow? -):

i'm currently on a 5-year consultancy contract that may well get extended :-)

Hah! I've heard it all now.

no you haven't, not even the half of it :-)

I dread to think.

cynic
Are you expanding your business in line with an improved economy?

I've just wet myself -):

clearly you should be wearing incontinence pants!

hays
our business has little to do with uk economy
our major areas of growth at the moment are in F/E and India, though both have their "idiosyncracies"!
domestic europe has been quiet for quite some time, though many of our clients are based and operate internationally from there


queen's speech
it certainly was very odd that there was not even an allusion to immigration control, notwithstanding that there are some difficult legal obstructions

I see stan. :-))

The lack of immigration topics in the Queen's speech is partly due to the Lib partners in the coalition. The Libs have to agree to everything. The Conservatives wanted a commitment to a referendum in the speech, but the Libs wouldn't permit it. The speech is a bit thin due to there only being a year left. There are also several major Bills, such as HS2, which are in a continuation stage from the previous session and they will continue and take up quite a bit of parliamentary time in this session.

but it certainly comes across as being a bit of a pathetic prog

Manuel,

More evidence of your inherent abilities!

"do whatever you like, including posting totally unbalanced political polemic, but it doesn't mean that i or anyone else has to bother to read it"



An ability to have an opinion on seemingly anything, but not enough ability to examine the "information" before forming the opinion.

Is this due to your said "education", disregard of the education you had, or the "poverty" of the "education"?

In many ways the above could apply to the "old etonians cabinet".

By the way was there a society in your place of education where they had to rolled their trouser legs up?

Just to remind some of the success of the present (old etonian) government:


I wonder where the loot went!

That line would have been straight if it weren't for 'The Brown Bottom'... Always makes me laugh when Labour talk about accountability!! Yeah right...!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sale_of_UK_gold_reserves,_1999%E2%80%932002

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-07-10/gordon-brown-sold-britain%E2%80%99s-gold-artificially-low-prices-bail-out-large-ameri

Two good links as to why Brown really had to go... Cameron and the ginger one fell into the job as there really wasn't anyone worth voting for at the time. Remember when they thought they won the election fair and square really it could easily be argued they were promoted by default..!