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.

Hays we could turn them all in to mosques .

Even though I will vote out at the referendum, I am happy that Obama said what he did. I think he has been a good president and has done good things in many areas. You can expect more such comments over the next couple of weeks. Both sides are campaigning via fear.

high streets
it is not impossible (i hope) that we'll see lower high street rents and a resurgence of quality local shops - eg butchers, bakers, hardware, greengrocers etc

boring and bulky stuff like loo paper and detergent will remain best bought on line, but if good quality indy retailers are not throttled at birth by extortionate rent and rates, then there should always be a place for them in the high street ........ i'll hold up marylebone high street and its environs (yet again) as a great example where this approach really works

Rents are one of the problems. In Muswell Hill there are 15 charity shops. They damage the high streets. They enable landlords to keep rents high as they pay no staff costs and pay reduced business rates. If the shops were left empty the rents would fall quickly. I have several friends who would take shops there but rent and rates for a small shop is over £100,000. Add other costs and staff and you have no business. The result is that you cannot buy anything there. It is all hairdressers, cafes, restaurants, estate agents, banks, Waitrose, M&S and a couple of clothes shops.

marlow has a similar disease, not helped by the fact that a local builder/developer has now built up an unhealthy proportion of the sites
for him, a pop-up or charity shop is just dandy as he then avoids all sorts of costs that would on his shoulders
it also means that he controls rent levels

It's always been a polluted doss house in many ways but London's finished as a place to live and enjoy in quality of life terms, and that comes from several of our friends in the last few weeks who live there.

Yes Stan it is finished (London) full of immigrants ,i was in two London hospitals last Thursday and it's either East Europeans with their kids or the rest of the world ,very few Brits .

Just back after taking my dogs for a walk and I thought this picture apt.

london
depends where you are in london
boroughs and their desirability or otherwise changes with time
around portobello is still a delight, and certainly stoke newington now has a lot going for it, whereas not many years ago, it would have been considered a dump ..... ditto shepherds bush

For BHS think of Littlewoods i suppose .

Where ever you go in a built up area the size of London the pollution is horrible, trouble is for most people unless they can see the bad air quality they don't even know it's there.

at least london has lots of green space
try joburg for being just a vile concrete jungle

Joburg ,wouldn't really matter cause you would be murdered long before bad air quality took hold .

you may even choose to jump off the high balcony!

This was a feature fitted to some cars in South Africa to counteract car jacking .

I am talking about London and no where else abroad.

The real fault with charity shops is the local councils. They allow the charity shops to pay reduced business rates. This should not be allowed. It increases the rate burden on the other businesses and keeps rents up.

And also of course they are helping to keep over paid fat arsed fannies in their role as CEO or something equally sick .

If you are serious about quality of life in a built up largish urban area then you could do a lot worst and live here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0783m9w being broadcast now.

What has Hunt on Cameron.

He should have been shot after the "Jeremy Hunt clings on after Leveson inquiry ordeal"
and his management of the "Doctors" strike is abysmal.

Prepared, "to let patients die" rather than talk to the doctors and allow a public enquiry into the results of changes to practice and contracts.

Prepared to allow patients to be used as pawns in his ideological game.


Cameron should fire him now before it is too late.

What a government.