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 went to the Le Mans years ago and Derek Bell won the race in a Porsche. I had stayed overnight after the race at a farm on the Cherbourg peninsula belonging to the father of a girl I was with. The next morning I was in the queue for the ferry at Cherbourg. Behind me in the queue was Derek Bell. He was driving a brand new Porsche that the company had given him for winning. There was a plaque on the dashboard that said, On the occasion of Derek Bell winning Le Mans.

I looked up the car and found this. The article says the car is worth £100,000 plus and that was in 2011. It is about the actual car from 1980.

http://www.pistonheads.com/doc.asp?c=161&i=24823

Haze,,,

The people you have met and know.

Phew!!!

Pity some of their attributes haven't imbued your.

Ban Delilah? Why, why, why?

Our inherited culture cannot be censored and that's why the attempt to ban Tom Jones's hit Delilah as the Welsh rugby anthem was deeply flawed






By Ivan Hewett, Music Critic

2:35PM GMT 15 Dec 2014

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/11294301/Ban-Delilah-Why-why-why.html



How did Tom Jones’s song about a man killing a woman in a fit of blind rage come to be a Welsh rugby anthem? Whatever the reason, it’s just too shocking for one of the self-appointed gate-keepers of our collective cultural life.Dafydd Iwan, a folk singer and past president of Plaid Cymru, has said it really won’t do. “It is a song about murder and it does tend to trivialise the idea of murdering a woman and it's a pity these words now have been elevated to the status of a secondary national anthem,” he declares. “I think we should rummage around for another song instead of Delilah.”


It’s interesting to speculate exactly what form this “rummaging around” would take. The fans surely can't be trusted to do it, because they're the ones who chose Delilah. Presumably the Welsh Rugby Union would have to appoint a committee, representing “all sections of the rugby audience”, with at least one woman, one person from an ethnic minority, one disabled person, one Welsh speaker, one non-Welsh speaker, one bilingual person, one gay person, one trans-gender person etc, etc. This committee would then sift through all the possible candidates for a nice, clean rugby anthem.


The first sifting would be easy. All those dreadful sexist rugby songs would go straight into the bin. Throwing out the folk and pop songs that rejoice in booze, fags, high-fat foods and sex would also be quite easy. After that the job would get harder. These songs were created by people who definitely did not share our enlightened view of the world. The trouble is they had a very annoying way of using poetic language, often strangely moving, and often laced with humour and innuendo. So weeding out the ones that might possibly contain sexist, nationalist, superstitious, racist, homophobic or sectarian feelings would take a lot longer.


Once the winning song was chosen, there’d be the even more difficult job of forcing the fans to like it. There would have to be compulsory sing-along sessions at the Millennium Stadium, led by a fresh-faced young “animateur” appointed by the Arts Council of Wales, to teach the fans the new inclusive, culturally-aware, low-fat, anthem.


Thank God this horror, plausible though it is, won’t actually happen. Dafydd Iwan seems to have climbed down, saying he doesn’t want to actually ban Delilah, which won the 1968 Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically and was performed by Jones at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert.


Perhaps he’s now realised the song is so loved because the fans can feel the strong emotion coursing through it. Far from “glorifying domestic violence”, it actually mourns the effects of one crazed moment. Perhaps he then thought a bit more, and realised our inherited culture cannot be censored, always and everywhere, without destroying our collective memory. Or it could be more straightforward. Perhaps he woke up in a sweat one morning and realised that unless he backed down the fans might just make up a brand-new rugby song of their own, about what they’d like to do to Dafydd Iwan.

I think he should refer to Ella Fitzgerald singing

Miss Otis regrets, she's unable to lunch today, madam,
Miss Otis regrets, she's unable to lunch today.
She is sorry to be delayed,
But last evening down in Lover's Lane she strayed, madam,

Miss Otis regrets, she's unable to lunch today.
When she woke up and found that her dream of love was gone, madam,
She ran to the man who had led her so far astray,
And from under her velvet gown,

She drew a gun and shot her love down, madam,
Miss Otis regrets, she's unable to lunch today.
When the mob came and got her and dragged her from the jail, madam,
They strung her upon the old willow across the way,

And the moment before she died,
She lifted up her lovely head and cried, madam......
Miss Otis regrets, she's unable to lunch today.
Miss Otis regrets, she's unable to lunch today


--------

Far bloodier!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VihaFKPmO8

Without doubt the most famous person I have ever met is George Best.

Was doing a after events speech at a dinner and I had best of 3 at pool and although he was slightly intoxicated he still beat me 2-1.

What a nice guy he was although incredibly shy.

Perhaphs one of the reasons that led to his downfall.

GF,

My Dad knew Lloyd George!


I didn't!


8-)

Yes I think I remember you pointing this out before Fred.

Ive also met Harold Wilson at my former schools certificate and prize giving evening.

Alastair Cook has got to go surely? No point in him saying that he is working hard, he's been saying that for months and he's not getting any better. His body language is dreadful on the field and he is probably a very nice guy, but his batting is cr-p.

Where goes the FTSE 100 tomorrow?

Tell you in the morning.

Commentators think the oil price hasn't stopped dropping just yet and prices could go on dropping into next year.

IMHO, buy quality stocks now that will benefit from falling oil prices:

eg, Easyjet, Ryanair, IAG, Thomas Cook, Carnival, First Group, National Express, Stobart, Wincanton

The market had a good rise today and hopefully, this should follow on tomorrow. In the longer term, retailers like M&S and Next might also benefit indirectly from a drop in the oil price and because of the lower inflation we are now getting (thus more money being available to be spent). This should also be of help to the supermarkets too.

If you are in cash worth sitting on the fence what with a number of atrocities happening around the world at the moment I feel.

Trophies stolen from the Red Bull Racing factory in Milton Keynes have been found in a lake near Sandhurst.

About 20 of the 60 trophies, which were taken 10 days ago when six men used a 4x4 to drive through the building's entrance, have been recovered.

Thames Valley Police said many of the trophies, which were spotted by a member of the public, were damaged.

The stolen trophies did not include the F1 championship and constructors prize, which were not at the factory.

Reuters

Russian ruble suffers steepest drop in 16 years
BY ALEXANDER WINNING AND VLADIMIR ABRAMOV
MOSCOW Tue Dec 16, 2014 5:26pm EST

The ruble plunged more than 11 percent against the dollar on Tuesday in its steepest intraday fall since the Russian financial crisis in 1998 as confidence in the central bank evaporated after an ineffectual rate hike.

The ruble opened around 10 percent stronger against the dollar after the central bank unexpectedly raised its benchmark interest rate by a hefty 650 basis points to try and halt the currency's slide, but it reversed gains in volatile trade and repeatedly set new record lows.

It has now fallen close to 20 percent this week, taking its losses this year against the dollar to more than 50 percent and stirring memories of the 1998 crisis when the currency collapsed within a matter of days, forcing Russia to default on its debt.

Although Russia's public finances and reserves are much healthier than in 1998, analysts say the country is on the brink of a full-blown currency crisis.

At 10:10 a.m. ET, the ruble was down around 11 percent against the dollar at 72.80 RUBUTSTN=MCX after earlier racing past 80 roubles per dollar for the first time to be down around 20 percent at one stage from the previous close.

Against the euro, it was more than 13 percent weaker at 91.00 EURRUBTN=MCX.

The ruble has been hammered by the slump in oil prices and Western sanctions imposed over Russia's involvement in Ukraine, but its sharp decline over the past two days also reflects declining confidence in the central bank.

The 650-basis-point rate hike, less than a week after another 100-basis-point rise, was seen as a sign of desperation by the bank, whose Governor Elvira Nabiullina now appears powerless to stop the currency's slide, raising the risk of capital controls.

The market ignored Nabiullina's comments on Tuesday that the rouble was undervalued, as well as comments by Putin's spokesman that the rouble fall was driven largely by a speculative mood.

INTERVENTIONS

The central bank's First Deputy Governor Sergei Shvetsov said the bank would implement more measures to stabilize the currency market, calling the situation "critical".

"If such an interest rate rise didn't impress the market, then they (the central bank) have left the option of interventions of $10 billion a day. They are in (the market) every day," said Natalia Orlova, chief economist at Alfa Bank.

Investors were also unnerved by the prospect that Russian oil major Rosneft (ROSN.MM), which recently issued 625 billion rubles ($8.67 billion) in bonds, could convert the funds into foreign currency, adding further pressure on the rouble.

Rosneft has said the money will not be used to buy foreign currency.

Russia's dollar-denominated RTS share index .IRTS was down as much as 19 percent at one point, extending heavy losses from Monday, and shares in top bank Sberbank (SBER.MM) - seen as a barometer for the wider economy - plunged more than 20 percent.

Russian sovereign dollar bonds fell and money market rates jumped.

President Vladimir Putin has blamed both the slide in oil and the ruble on speculators and the West. A weak rouble poses a major test for Putin, since his popularity in part depends on his reputation for guaranteeing prosperity and stability, and it stokes inflation.

"The central bank will have a very hard time stabilizing the rouble as long as the sharp sell-off in oil prices continues," Vladimir Miklashevsky, an economist at Danske Bank, said in a note.

Brent crude prices LCOc1 fell below $60 on Tuesday for the first time since July 2009, hurting the outlook for Russia's oil-dependent economy, which the central bank says is likely to contract early next year.

The central bank has spent more than $80 billion defending the ruble this year, including more than $8 billion since it floated the currency in November.

Russia still has ample reserves of around $416 billion but analysts say the currency is in dangerous territory as it is increasingly being driven down by sheer panic.

"What now rules the Russian currency is not oil, or even waiting for it to move, but panic fueled by a large number of rumors about the return of our country to the "98-year" regime," said Alena Afanasyeva, a senior analyst at Forex Club in Moscow, referring to the 1998 crisis.

(Additional reporting by Lidia Kelly, Katya Golubkova and Elena Fabrichnaya; Editing by Elizabeth Piper and Gareth Jones)

Will the above create disloyalty towards Putin and cost him some power?

IMHO, it's going to be "watch this space".

Putin has kept his popularity by foreign aggression. As his popularity ratings fall, as they will soon, he may do things to boost his position. That could include a full scale invasion of Eastern Ukraine as he knows that the US won't go to war over it. In fact no country or NATO will intervene at all.

The irony is that once Russia gets into a major recession and currency collapse, they will need a bail out.

They'll only need a bailout...if they choose to repay foreign banks.

Be carefull.

Dil - 12 Dec 2014 01:16 - 52827 of 53153 edit this post

Three cheers for the CIA and the politician's sticking up for them .

Someone remind me how many they beheaded and posted footage of on the internet ?

They are trying to keep us safe ffs ...



Geez only 5 days later and the sh*t that has happened in the world (and I aint talking VT and our colours Stan) maybe just maybe the CIA tactics look a bit mamby pamby given the sh%t they are trying to prevent.

Can't believe Haystack hasn't blamed Israel .... yet !

Petrol set to fall to £1 per litre quite soon say the RAC

And at Westminster!