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.

One for Fred (nicked from across the road)

max - very easily ..... i use one of my biz cards in restaurants and hotels or for other "heavy" bills, and then settle with the company each month ..... quite often, i'll use my direct debit card

=========

oh MrT, you really do brighten my day and make me chuckle sometimes :-)

cynic the labour party is a party for the idle and against the working person trying to get on . they would destroy the will to both to work to make their lives better it would be pointless under a lab gov

you don't need to convince me not to vote for wallace, nor even fred, for he won't vote at all :-)

my wife was interesting this morning ..... she reckons she'll turn off as soon as we start getting the pre-election mud-slinging and propaganda ...... she'll vote for sure (as will my children), but i think the general public finds all this electioneering a meaningless bore and i fear a low turn-out

Max,

The same as has been said of "here to-day gone to-morrow tub-thumpers".

Being able to point out the problems and getting others to shout with you doesn't solve problems.

-=====---

This election so far has been a poorly managed PR event.

I suppose you have to spend £50 million of ill-got gains somehow or other!

Must have filled a few back pockets!

fred - i trust that is a non-partisan x-party comment

Of course!

I was to young to be a partisan.

Terrorist is a different matter.

so you're more like aged parmesan then? :-)

Not quite as hard!

the good stuff is quite crumbly and good with a decent red wine - rather like you i'ld have thought

If you mean crumbling, at this moment in time you are quite right, but many a good dish contains crumbs.

If you are thinking of buying a new car and are wondering if you could make a saving by buying 'an import' from somewhere in the EU, then these are the guys to talk to:

http://www.bob-gerard.co.uk/vehicle-imports

Give them a ring, tell them what it is you are looking for and leave the rest to them.

THe last time I dealt with them I bought a brand new Toyota Landcruiser, importing it into the UK out of Cyprus and saving myself a little over £6,000.

They paid for my flight and hotel accommodation out there for a 3-day stay, so that I qualified to be able to export the vehicle out of Cyprus over to the UK.

I saved £6,000+ on my purchase of a totally UK specification vehicle (Cyprus is RH Drive)
The Leicester dealers obviously made a profit.
The agent they dealt with in Cyprus (and who took my wife and I and the two Leicester guys out for a very nice lunch in Nicosia) also made a profit.
The Cyprus Toyota dealer (who was also the Cyprus Toyota distributor - ie. two businesses at the same location) also must have made a double profit.

The result was, that everyone involved was very happy.

(Just one slight regret, though. When we went for the very nice lunch at, what was a top notch restaurant in Nicosia, my wife and I were dressed in 'very casual holiday clothes'. The other three guys were dressed in extremely smart suits, shirts and ties - so we did feel very 'underdressed')

this isn't anything i have tried myself, but i think you are quite right that a great deal of money can be saved by buying in europe, sometimes even direct from the factory
however, it is equally certain that a great deal of care needs to be taken if you are not to be mugged

similarly, there can be a serious discrepancy with long haul flights on very reputable airlines
admittedly several years ago, it was very much worth my while for our NL office to buy my (return!) flights from A'dam to S'pore with S'pore Airlines ..... I then spent a very small sum for flights to/from A'dam with minimal downtime

It's no good buying those Japanese pussy wagons, you should have bought a land rover...just think of all the garage visits you have missed.

don't know about land rover, but range rovers, that favourite on-the-kerb vehicle of the yummy mummies, is not only massive but hugely overpriced ....... a bit like some of those (ex) yummy mummies!

Unless you can be sure that you are really keeping it slap bang up to date, here's yet another reason to consider totally dumping IE :-

From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31869595

13 March 2015 Last updated at 15:33
Jamie Oliver site hit by virus for second time


Screengrab of Jamie Oliver website
The Jamie Oliver site was first hit by malware in mid-February

Two security companies have independently found evidence that hackers put malicious code on the site.

Anyone visiting using a vulnerable browser risks losing login names, passwords and other data, said the security firms.

A spokesman for Jamie Oliver confirmed the site had been hit and said it had now cleaned it up.

Web attacks
"We have taken measures to clear the offending code and the site is now safe to visit," said the spokesman. "We are now running a forensic audit to find out more information."

The site first fell victim to hackers in mid-February and that breach was quickly cleaned up after administrators were told about the problem.

However, said Maarten van Dantzig from Fox-IT, cyber-thieves have returned to the site and planted the virus in the main part of the page.

"We are wondering if it has been compromised in other ways," he said.

Anyone visiting the site using the Internet Explorer browser that did not have up-to-date plug-ins for Java and Flash would be infected, he said.

The malicious code lurking on the site helps to install a virus on compromised machines called Dorkbot.ED and it watches what people do online and grabs copies of any login or password information. It also blocks security updates and can use victims' machines as proxies for other web attacks.

The Jamie Oliver website is visited by about 10 million people per month. Mr van Dantzig said a high-traffic site like this was a "goldmine" for cyber-thieves.

Jerome Segura from Malwarebytes said the second infection was similar to the first one seen on the site.

"This leads us to believe this is the same infection that was not completely removed or perhaps that a vulnerability with the server software or Content Management System still exists," he said.

He said it was "quite common" for servers that have been hacked once to retain vestiges of the infection that attackers can use to keep re-infecting a site.

Mr van Dantzig said his company spotted the infection via security monitoring systems it runs for several large Dutch companies. It traced the source of one infection back to the cooking website and found other records which suggest the malware had been present since 5 March.

George and Cameron had better sell off the kitchens in their second, third and fourth homes.

Manuel.

Isn't it Jewish custom to have two kitchens if or when possible?