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.

Can you believe Mr Ben here!


and the answer is here. :-))

To all,

I am glad no one took me 100% seriously.

Greek.

I wonder in how many other towns in the UK is the following happening?

Survey reveals upturn in Northampton town centre as number of empty shops decreases

By Wayne Bontoft
Friday 2 September 2011 07:34

FOR THE first time since the depths of the recession, the number of shops which are standing empty in Northampton town centre has decreased.

Every year, the Chronicle & Echo carries out a health check of the town centre to see how many shops are trading and how many are vacant.

In 2009, there were 76 empty shops in the town centre. That number was repeated last year as business leaders felt the impact of the global economic crisis.

But the Chrons latest survey, which was completed yesterday, shows there are now just 69 empty shops in the town and a number of those are currently being fitted out for new businesses.

Business expert, Neil Bartholomey, is the deputy chairman of Northampton Town Centre Ltd, a group set up to improve the town centre.

He said the Chrons survey showed the town was improving and argued it was performing much better than many other parts of the country.

He said: I think things are certainly looking up. The town centre is looking a lot better and more people are coming into town to shop, so people feel a lot more positive about opening businesses.

Wed like to cut the number of empty shops down to less than 50 over the next three or four years. But of course our ambition is not to have any closed shops at all and an environment where businesses feel that if theyre not in Northampton theyre missing out. Hopefully were starting to get that message across now.

The overall percentage of empty shops in Northampton stood at 16 per cent in both 2009 and 2010. It has now dropped to 15 per cent, meaning the town has seen an overall increase of seven new businesses over the past year.

While that growth has seen a number of big new shops open, such as Tesco in Abington Street and Costa Coffee in the Grosvenor Centre, a number of businesses have also either closed or moved into smaller premises, such as Churchs China, which has moved from St Giles Street to The Ridings.

A major investment has also been made in Peacock Place, which is now known as Market Walk and has a focus on fashion.

Despite the centre still having 40 per cent of its shops empty, the centres owners have said they are positive more of their empty units will be filled over the coming months.

A spokesman for the centre said: Were incredibly happy with the way the re-branding has progressed, giving Market Walk a fresh new look and feel.

The centres occupancy is also rising, with a large number of positive new enquiries for the remaining units.

BEST COME BACK LINE EVER


In summary, the police arrested Patrick Lawrence, 22 year old white male, in a pumpkin patch 11:38 p.m. on Friday night.

On Monday, at the courthouse, Lawrence was charged with lewd and lascivious behaviour, public indecency, and public intoxication.

The suspect explained that as he was passing a pumpkin patch on his way home from a drinking session when he decided to stop...

"You know how a pumpkin is soft and squishy inside, and there was no one
around for miles or at least I thought there wasn't anyone around" He stated in an interview.

Lawrence went on to say that he pulled over to the side of the road, picked out a pumpkin that he felt was appropriate to his purpose; cut a hole in it, and proceeded to satisfy his alleged need. 'Guess I was really into it, you know?' he commented with evident embarrassment

In the process of doing the deed, Lawrence failed to notice an approaching police car and was unaware of his audience until Officer Brenda Taylor approached him.

It was an unusual situation, that's for sure,' said Officer Taylor. 'I walked up to Lawrence and he's just banging away at this pumpkin.'

Officer Taylor went on to describe what happened when she approached Lawrence ..

I said, Excuse me sir, but do you realize that you're having sex with a pumpkin?

He froze and was clearly very surprised that I was there, and then he looked me straight in the face and said... A pumpkin? Shit ..... is it midnight already?

This was in the Washington Post...the title of the article was "Best Come Back Line Ever."

.

I'm just the 'cut n paster' :-)

.

Puts a new meaning into Pumpkin Pie.

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How very true.

And how ridiculously sad that we are being so stupidly altruistic we are ignoring all the common sense attached to most of the issues.

It is my humble opinion, that the main beneficiaries from this type of stuff are the members of the legal profession, who have a massive personal interest in retaining their extremely financially rewarding status quo.

'Just apply for legal aid'

!!!!

Actually, that's the least of it. There is much huffing and puffing over immigration and an unedifying amount of political posturing, but there is nothing we can do while we remain members of the EU. Most immigration is from other EU member states under the free movement of labour rule.

Some of this is good: I have a few Polish friends who are the most intelligent, hardworking individuals I know, some of them doing jobs that Brits seem to to be less than willing to get off their backsides to do.

This is me,

How tragically true.
It is one of those, 'It can't possibly be true but it is situations'.

If you took this to a TV station as a script/idea for a TV sitcom and if you could find a producer who was out of touch with the real world, they would turn it down due 'To being too unbelievable'.

You literally couldn't make it up.

The UK laughing stock of the world, you bet.

As we near '9/11' the remembrance of it to commemorate the deaths of all those who lost their lives, is now flooding into the media for us to watch and read about.

Here is such a piece on the BBC web site:

9/11 timeline: The story of the day

I was at home when this happened and actually saw the second plane hit the second WTC tower as it happened on Fox News.

As I watched some of the clips above, I still cannot believe the sheer audacity of it all.

But there again, there was absolutely no security on internal USA flights that we could see, when my wife and I once met our son who flew in from Chicago to meet us in Sarasota, Florida, to spend a few days with us.

We were able to meet him at the steps inside the airport building as he walked from the runway up the stairs into the airport building to meet us at the top of them, and similarly, but in reverse, on his return.

So if you were a terrorist, I guess it didn't take too much working out 'how to do it' really.

The main thing that the US authorities hadn't cottoned on to, IMHO, was that these fanatics had absolutely no trouble committing suicide, whilst they committed their atrocities.

It is interesting to look back at the old days of safe travel and lack of restrictions in various ways. I remember visiting my parents in Canada when they lived there. Iwas getting the plane at Regina airport to comeback the UK and they walked with me to the foot of the stairs that were against the plane. I was travelling on to Toronto so there was no customs and it was just an internal flight.

I can also remember just parking my MG for 10 minutes or so in Picadilly to pop into a shop.

9/11: An interesting movie piece telling 'How the Twin Towers were built'

Hmmmm. Probe pictures Moon landing sites

You one of them there 'conspiracy theorists' Skinny?

;-)

I loved watching it at the time as a child - but I do like a good conspiracy theory :-)

Those images are obviously 'doctored' - as are the telescopes that they are selling people to look at them with

:-)

If you want cheap petrol then go to one of these places

Algeria: Algiers 20p per litre
Oman: Muscat 20p per litre
Egypt: Cairo 19p per litre
Qatar: Doha 15p per litre
Bahrain: Manama 13p per litre
Turkmenistan: Ashgabat 12p per litre
In Turkmenistan they give it away literally. Every driver in the Turkic state is entitled to 120 litres of petrol for free every month. If they exceed this, the pump price is only 12p per litre.
Libya: Tripoli 9p per litre
Saudi Arabia: Riyadh 8p per litre
Venezuela: Caracas 2/3p per litre
if you have a 70 litre fuel tank in your car, you could fill it up in Venezuela for around 1.50. While In Britain it would cost you a whopping 95.