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.

The truth sometimes is!

When two people view and incident there are three truths.

One as each one perceived it and on as it actually was.




8-)

you can multiply that several times over

and yes, off home very soon for some fresh hake fillet with a tomato and pepper sauce + swiss chard

I like hake.

But seem to be going for simpler cooking with just a knob of butter and salt and pepper.

Although, do like Fish Soup with tomato and fennel etc..

I first tasted Fish Soup in Cassis Marseille 57 years ago, sitting on a bench table on the quay outside a restaurant, with other hitch hikers from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Holland, UK and of course an Australian.

Strange mixture, all seemed to be interested in the International Union of Students and wanted to have and unified and integrated Europe. (Students were more interested in politics then.)

First time a kissed a pretty German girl and pretty French girl in one night.

Must go back, but returning is rarely as good as the first time one visits a place.

off to malta for a few days

You sure Tanks? lots of foreigners and potential immigrants out there you know -):

Don't knock Esther McVey - the 'vacuous airbag' who wants to be PM

Esther McVey has received a public ribbing for admitting she wants to lead the country, but Sophy Ridge smells a rat




The Conservative Party could certainly do worse than the 47-year-old Esther McVey in charge Photo: REX



Sophy Ridge
By Sophy Ridge, Political Correspondent for Sky News

2:13PM GMT 19 Feb 2015



“Vacuous airbag.”


The comments started within minutes.


“All that peroxide must have gone to her head.”


So far, so predictable.


When Employment Minister Esther McVey admitted yesterday she quite fancies being Prime Minister, the online reaction was boringly unoriginal.

“Sorry Est, PM means ‘Prime Minister’ not Pre-Menstrual. Only thing she might be suited to is a Pole-dancer.”

On first inspection, the usual drivel. But on closer examination, one theme did strike me.

Esther McVey was a “cocky, obnoxious, arrogant, big-headed woman”, according to the public. She was “Lady Macbeth”.

In other words, her worst crime was being overly ambitious and she should be silenced.

“The only thing I can see Esther McVey bringing to Downing Street would be noise, incessant noise, rather like a small, insignificant Yorkshire terrier that doesn’t know when to shut up – yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap,” went another tweeter.



More airbag here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11422873/Esther-McVey-the-vacuous-airbag-who-wants-to-be-Prime-Minister.html

In that the tories have allowed the armed forces to become a Dad's army and demoralised the NHS and failed in general"

Wing commander dave has it all under control....

Mind with Captain Dodgy Dave, leading Corporal Fallon organising and George counting the coppers in biscuit tin what is there to worry about:

I suppose there is always Guy Fawkes night to look forward to.


Forgot, due to austerity there are cut backs.

Just a reminder!

Good one Fred.


A reminder that they haven't fixed one of the interventions, not one!

fred - the hake recipe last night was a "definite repeat" so i'll try to get round to posting it on the COOK thread .... it would work just as well with cod or haddock fillet, or i guess any other firm white fish fillet though the softness of hake worked particulalry well

Don’t panic: The sky won’t fall in if Greece decides to leave the euro
There will be no global rout nor all-out crash if Greece leaves the euro - it is too small to matter

Greece is the one country that the eurozone can afford to lose
Telegraph.co.uk, By Allister Heath,9:29PM GMT, 19 Feb 2015

Slowly but surely, we are moving to a denouement in this latest incarnation of the eurozone crisis. Nobody knows for sure what is going to happen – but there is a greater chance than ever before that Greece will eventually quit the eurozone and default on its debts. Greeks and Germans are refusing to move back from the brink, which means that a complete breakdown now looks eerily possible.

Many investors and analysts will be tempted to panic at the thought of a possible Grexit. They certainly should be very concerned. But the slightly boring reality is that the world won’t end if the Greeks decide to quit the single currency. The financial markets will experience extreme volatility in the short term, of course, and anybody with exposure to Greek markets and Greek debt will lose heavily. But there will be no global rout, no all-out crash. Greece is too small to matter, and 77pc of Greek government debt is owned by official bodies or governments. There will be huge problems, and a major row over Greece’s Target 2 liabilities to the European Central Bank. But the sky won’t fall in.

Until now, the yields of the other troubled eurozone economies haven’t reacted to the Greek negotiations, probably because the markets believe that some sort of deal will eventually be reached. That, after all, is always the City’s default position: bankers inevitably think that a compromise is better than nothing, and that political actors are “rational”, as defined by the received wisdom of the day. The reality is very different. Countries do default and they do quit currency unions. Monetary textbooks are replete with such cases; and this is not the end of history. The euro is not “irreversible” – nothing is.

I’m more sanguine than some observers such as Capital Economics, which believes that a Grexit will trigger “a seismic reaction across global markets”. Greece’s economy will face short-term devastation, to be sure. But the global effect will be modest.

Any major sell-off will be limited in scope and duration. Investors will assume that a Grexit was a one-off, a warning to others to get their act together. Greece is the one country that the eurozone can afford to lose. In fact, there are at least some in the chancelleries of Europe who believe that the chaos that Greece would face in the event of a precipitated departure from the euro would serve as a warning to others. A Grexit, the argument goes, would reduce the chances of any further break-up, and nip populist uprisings in the bud in Spain and elsewhere.

The German public agrees: an N24/Emnid poll shows that 47pc of German voters believe that a Greek departure would be a one-off; just 39pc say that it would threaten the existence of the entire eurozone.

There are two other reasons why investors will be more relaxed: the ECB’s quantitative easing programme ought to keep bond yields low and the Outright Monetary Transactions programme ensure the survival of the euro.

It is true that the latter can only be activated for economies that are enrolled in and abiding by the terms of a troika programme. But the markets will expect this to be a bluff: with Greece gone, they will assume that the eurozone and the EU will do all in their power to keep countries in the single currency at any cost. There is another reason why yields will stay low: the spectre of low growth and deflation in some parts of the eurozone will continue to cancel out an increased default risk premium.

What of the foreign exchange markets? Paradoxically, and here I agree with Capital Economics, the euro is unlikely to fall much overall. It could even rise. Finally, we would expect safe-haven currencies to do well, partly at the expense of the euro. The prospect of QE has already pushed down the value of the single currency; meanwhile, CFTC numbers reveal that net short positions for the euro – in other words, bets that it will drop in value – are already near a record high.

A Grexit would be a major event, a defining moment for the global economy. But it will not by itself prove catastrophic to the rest of us.

allister.heath@telegraph.co.uk

EL - it's not Grexit per se that is so devastating, but more the shortening odds of a domino effect across other countries in EU especially those with very feeble economies - eg Spain

And all those happy holiday makers shuffling off to the (devalued) land of €l Greco for sun, booze and shagging.

Compared to the alternative (for the bloke in the street) of depression, unemployment, never ending debt.

shame that the best greek (cypriot) food is probably to be had in london rather than anywhere in greece

That's a fallacy, Cyners.

Nobody cares less about the bubbles squeaking. It's an isolated case. They need to exit the EZ, and the sooner the better imo, so they can devalue their new drachmas and start the rebuilding process.

Spain and Italy have got their debt under control now. Look at the chart for Spanish 10's. Yields peaked in 2012 at the height of the EZ crisis. They're currently close to multi-year lows around 1.6%.

If the market thought that there was going to be a Grexit domino, Club Med 10 yields would be up over 5% or 6% right now.

actually, i think you made a very valid point the other day when you suggested that the russians might pump money into greece in exchange for port (warship) facilities ..... that would make for coinsiderable discomfort