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.

What caption could you put to JC ? What do his eyes tell you? Is he comfortable?

Left is Best!

Thanks for that, Hils

Good for the legs too, eh? I also like a kitchen/dining/living area to be open plan.

We downsized about 15 years ago and so my home is now a quite easy to manage 2-storey detached. I do suppose it's a bit 'lock up and go'. It's on a golf course and overlooks a lake and this morning we've just had a lone swan land on it - which is a very nice thing to have in your back garden.

When we first moved here and had swans visit, I made the stupid mistake of feeding them bread. Next thing they started drooling all over our conservatory doors and we had to hide from the bloody things because as soon as they saw us they would rush over to be fed. Like all the best lessons, you learn the hard way.

Twice now, I've been visited by a big dragon fly, who came and hovered between my face and the monitor screen. That was in the days of the older type of monitor, pre-flat screens. A magical experience, indeed!

and for the first time in many years, i saw a kingfisher this morning

They are coming back before we close the border.

haha! it was on the avon at bradford-on-avon ..... perched on a bush and then flew off

Trump imposes controversial tariffs
Countries had warned a trade war could be triggered by the new US tariffs on steel and aluminium.

39 minutes ago
From the section US & Canada
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Too late for US steel?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43337951

The idea is to look after American jobs, whats wrong with that? (Him being the American President?)

True to his word ,he promised to bring back jobs to the USA ,good for him.

except that in the longer run, it is likely to lose jobs

That's a very complicated theory that would take up a lot of words and your time to write !

No Jimbo, it's a no-brainer theory that protectionism leads to inflation, a smaller economy, and the firms that the government are trying to protect end up going out of business.

Economists disagree on many things, but they agree universally that free trade is a good thing.

Is dumping free trade? Is manipulating your currency to lower your exports costs a valid component of free trade? A level playing field is not easy to achieve when you are up against command economies where profit is not the primary aim of production.
Does the EU practice free trade???

The nerve gas that poisoned those poor people in Salisbury might have been delivered by a latest tech remote controlled flying drone......

re: 80329

Well said, allowing another to destroy your industries on the back of bogus free trade is stupid.

hilary i would need a 250,000 word essay from you to be convinced !

there is a difference between dumping like the chinese do - eg selling at below cost - and genuine free trade
coal mining in uk was an example of a local industry being unable to produce at a world-economic price

What's your poison

Iturama, cyners, Max,

We've all heard about Chinese steel dumping and how China pegs the yuan to the greenback, but seeing as the US only imports somewhere between 1% and 4% of its steel from China (depending upon which report you read), I'm not sure what that's got to do with anything??!!??

YTD figures as at Q3 2017:

Canada accounted for the largest share of U.S. steel imports by source country at 16 percent (4.3 mmt), followed by Brazil at 13 percent (3.6 mmt), South Korea at 10 percent (2.7 mmt), Mexico at 9 percent (2.4 mmt), and Russia at 9 percent (2.4 mmt).

i was merely making an observation about china in general and its dumping of all sorts of things, not just steel