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.

oooo you are so nasty Fred ,typical Left Winger .

Poor chap. Pass him a sandpaper. Sorry! Tissue paper, tissue paper.

I'm sad because I've been caught. Hug me and call me George.

I think I would look like that if I had just lost $5M. He messed up badly but a fine batsman nevertheless. He won't do that again.

my view is that a 1 year ban is insufficient given the high profile of both australia as a cricketing nation and smith (and warner) as leading players in that team

Bring back hanging in the colonies.

Iturama,

I thought all hard working white van delivery drivers in the UK nowadays were eastern Europeans on zero-hours contracts. You might miss them after Brexit.

:o)

Nothing against any hard working van drivers, Hilary, white, black, east or west. Only champagne labour leaders like to diminish their contribution.
Somehow I think they will still be around long after Brexit. One year to go I believe, but I will have to consult with the official time keeper from Cardiff.

Not when the pound drops.

I thought the Skripals were almost clinically dead but apparently not.

The daughter of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal may lead police to her would-be assassins after it was reported she had regained consciousness for the first time since she was struck down in a suspected nerve agent attack in Salisbury.

The BBC reported Yulia Skripal was "conscious and talking".

Salisbury Hospital said her condition is “improving rapidly” and she is now no longer critical, raising hopes that she may recover enough to be able to give the police valuable information about the attack.

Correct iturama just one short year to go (and I'm from Barry Island).

I was there today visiting relatives and lo and behold Fred's hero Mrs May was there too in Barry.

Appears that Mrs May has been everywhere today.

Now this is one illegal immigrant we could do without. I like the optimism of the spokesman who said that he didn't think it managed to migrate all this way. Doesn't he know how far a hungry migrant will go? Best keep your dangly bits in a safe place.
Actually the piranha shown appears to be of the less aggressive type. I have caught and eaten these on my wife's ranch that has an hydroelectric dam lake running on one side. They are boney so need to be baked. The more aggressive types, typically found in the Amazon region, have a red breast, rather like a Robin.

A water company has pleaded with householders not to flush exotic animals down the toilet after a piranha fish was discovered in a sewer in Chichester. The flesh-eating creature was found by a startled member of staff at Southern Water who was carrying out checks at the West Sussex treatment works. The South-American river predator, which normally hunt in packs, can rip flesh to shreds in a matter of seconds.
Although the newly discovered piranha was dead and posed no threat, having most likely been flushed away after dying naturally in its tank, water bosses said that only ‘p’s that should go down the toilet were ‘pee, poo and paper.’
Southern Water spokeswoman Nicola Crichton said: "Obviously someone who owns exotic animals must have flushed it down the toilet, I don't think it managed to migrate all this way. "People will flush anything down their toilets, we once found a bed sheet at the waterworks, and find all sorts of strange things."

I bet.

Picked this up across the road. Even if you could comply, who would want to?


https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-29/state-department-demand-us-visitors-turn-over-social-media-history

.

the biter bit, and he doesn't like it :-)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/31/mcdonnell-calls-for-lord-sugar-to-delete-corbyn-hitler-tweet?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=269613&subid=8674302&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2

Many a true word spoken in jest Corbyn pic.twitter.com/tzI3P6LyIx

from today's Times headers ......

Labour has been lost to fools and crackpots
My party is led by a man who prefers to entrench division on every occasion instead of searching for common ground



France paralysed as unions revive the spirit of 1968
Fear of nationwide protests before the anniversary of the May 1968 uprising is gripping the Élysée Palace with strikes spreading across the public and private sectors as President Macron seeks to reform the French economy

====================

good reasons to bring back the spirit of derek hatton, red robbo, arthur scargill and the other marxist wreckers

.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/31/mcdonnell-calls-for-lord-sugar-to-delete-corbyn-hitler-tweet

thanks max ..... of course, lord sugar used to be a labour supportere but resigned from that in 2015

i think the mock-up is actually very sharp satire and amused me much, though clearly not the labour hierarchy
it'll certainly have red fred hopping about :-)

Russia says Britain must cut over 50 diplomats as spy crisis deepens

Sputnik
Mikhail KLIMENTYEV

Russia says it did not unleash the diplomatic war with the West

Russia said on Saturday that Britain had to reduce its diplomatic staff by more than 50 more people as a crisis in ties between Moscow and the West escalated over the nerve agent attack on a former spy.

The new measures came after 23 British diplomats left Russia earlier this month and are seen as Moscow's punishment after Britain's allies expelled Russian diplomats over the March 4 poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in an English city.

"Russia suggested parity. The British side has more than 50 more people," foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told AFP.

On Friday, Moscow summoned British ambassador Laurie Bristow, giving London a month to cut the number of diplomatic staff in Russia to the same number Russia has in Britain.

He was summoned along with the heads of diplomatic missions from 23 other countries who were told that some of their diplomats had to leave, in the biggest wave of tit-for-tat expulsions in recent memory.

Bristow had been handed a protest note over the "provocative and unfounded actions of the British side which instigated the unwarranted expulsion of Russian diplomats from a variety of states," the Russian foreign ministry said.

In London, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said on Saturday: "We are considering the implication of the measures announced yesterday by the Russian foreign ministry."

The Foreign Office had said it regretted the most recent developments but insisted Russia was the culprit.

"This doesn't change the facts of the matter: the attempted assassination of two people on British soil, for which there is no alternative conclusion other than that the Russian state was culpable," it said.

More than 150 Russian diplomats have been ordered out of the US, EU members, NATO countries and other nations.

On Friday, Russia expelled diplomats from 23 countries -- most of them EU member states -- in retaliation against the West.

France, Germany, Canada and Poland each said that Russia was expelling four of their diplomats.

Other countries including Australia, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Finland, Lithuania and Norway were also told to pull their envoys.

- Russians set to leave US -

In the United States, 60 Russian diplomats expelled by Washington prepared Saturday to leave the country.

In total, 171 people -- diplomats which Washington alleges are "spies" and their families -- were set to leave the United States, Moscow's envoy Anatoly Antonov told Russian reporters in Washington.

The Russian government provided two planes for the evacuation and one of them will make a brief stopover in New York to collect 14 families, he added, according to TASS state news agency.

US media showed footage of a Russian government plane on the tarmac at Washington's Dulles airport, apparently getting ready to take the expelled Russians home.

Britain has said it is "highly likely" that Russia was responsible for the Skripal attack using the Novichok nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union, but Russia has angrily denied any involvement.

Britain has suspended high-level diplomatic contact with Moscow and said it would not be sending any members of its royal family to the 2018 football World Cup hosted by Russia.

Russia responded by expelling 23 British diplomats, closing a British consulate in Saint Petersburg and halting the activities of the British Council educational and cultural organisation.

- Access to Yulia Skripal -

Britain said Saturday it was considering Moscow's request for consular access to Yulia Skripal, while taking into account her wishes.

The 33-year-old came out of critical care on Thursday and was "improving rapidly", said Salisbury District Hospital.

She is now in a "stable" condition -- with the BBC reporting that she was conscious and talking.

"We are considering requests for consular access in line with our obligations under international and domestic law, including the rights and wishes of Yulia Skripal," a Foreign Office spokeswoman told AFP.

Sergei Skripal, 66, remains in a critical but stable condition.

Skripal sold secrets to Britain and moved there in a 2010 spy swap. His daughter was visiting from Russia.

The Tories are s. scared of Corbyn and showing it with every smear.

When the effect of the fascist-led tory Brexit hits before the next election it will be interesting to watch public opinion.

Manuel and Max will need to emigrate to protect their ill-gotten gains.