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.

Excellent series of articles about Steve Jobs in Bloomberg Businessweek. I've not yet finished reading but they are fascinating.

MM
Just look up 'Snurging'.

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Haystack

Why don't you just report it to the council or whoever own's the railings ?

Hays,

You are becoming more and more miserable as you get older.

If you park awkwardly sometime, perhaps somebody may nick you car, or sprocket it, in order to "teach" you not to do it again.


Of course, the "offender" could have been horsewhipped or shot.

It is the sort of action I consider, smile and hopefully reject.

You could ask the station to provide SAFE FREE cycle parking area.

Just in case you missed my reply to your post .



Great mistakes in politics (No23) Gordon Brown sells Britains gold reserves
Posted on June 10, 2011 by matthewashton
Gordon Brown is probably not going to be remembered as one of the Great British Prime Ministers. His short time in power saw his government lurch from disaster to disaster, eventually culminating in its electoral defeat in May 2010. However before that Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer for almost a decade during one of the biggest booms in Britains economic history. I think as time goes by he will try more and more to restore his reputation by emphasising his achievements as Chancellor, rather than his time as PM.

This has its problems as well though. Brown helped oversee the deregulation of the finance industry that led in part to the credit crunch of 2008. Browns defenders point out that the crisis started in America, which is certainly true, but there is no getting away from the fact that we were hit by it a lot worse than many other European countries whose banking sectors was better regulated.

The other great mistake of Browns reign is probably his decision to sell off Britains gold reserves. Every country likes to have a certain amount of gold in storage as a way of backing currency. When New Labour came to power in 1997 Britain had a relatively large supply of gold compared to other European countries, and the price had been falling for almost twenty years. Gordon Brown decided to diversify the UKs portfolio by selling off a certain portion of it. In actual fact he sold off almost 60 per cent of it between 1999 and 2002.

The first clear mistake Brown made was announcing the sale a year in advance. This had the effect of driving down the price even further. Eventually the UK sold almost 400 tonnes of gold at the price of 275 dollars an ounce. Effectively Brown sold a huge chunk of the countrys assets at rock bottom prices. This wasnt a million miles away from Margaret Thatchers privatisation programme of the 1980s when she sold off the family silver.

This would have been less of an issue if the price of gold had stayed low. Instead it almost immediately began to recover. Over the next ten years market prices rose steadily till eventually it passed 1,100 dollars an ounce in 2009. This means that Gordon Brown lost between three and four billion dollars. Now anyone can make a mistake, and some have argued that Browns rationale for doing this was perfectly sound, but in retrospect it was clearly the wrong decision taken at the wrong time. Several other countries bought heavily into gold in the late 90s on the assumption that the market had nowhere else to go but up, and made massive profits on it. Browns mistake became so infamous though that commentators started referring to it as Browns Bottom. The phrase is now used whenever anyone particularly mis-times the buying or selling of something.


" Suggest you review the arguments and reasons at the time, for the gold sell off.


Yes , we have done that Fred and he made a complete ball's up of it.

I often wondered where this government gets its advice from.

It seems it is from Adam Werritty and Moody's.

It wasn't advice you political moron , it was historical fact

Aids,

What are you rabbiting on about.

Economic history is interesting and the interpretation of it even more.

--------------------

Do you recall this episode

Can you remember Lamont. amd 'Black Wednesday'

This gentleman still seems to be a spokesman for the torrid party.

Perhaps, you remember the above episode.

"Ten years ago the pound was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a system for tying its value to that of other European currencies.

Black Wednesday, as 16 September 1992 came to be known, provided one of the most memorable failures of post-war British economic policy.

It was the defining failure of John Major's government."

Osborne appears as skilful and deft as Lamont.



========

Can somebody rid us of him!


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

Edited. Cut and paste from article after date.

Here is a paragraph or two from Wilson's obituary - 'Pipe Dreams' from the Socialist Review.

Harold Wilson, with his cheeky, cocky demeanour, his cheerful smile and his Yorkshire burr, summed up the confidence and hope. Here was living proof that Labour could deliver a prime minister who was plainly not a MacDonald or an Attlee--a man who genuinely believed in public enterprise and public endeavour, and would not sell the pass.

The collapse came very swiftly, in the middle of the clear blue summer of 1966. First, the same Wilson who had in opposition championed the low paid and the trade unions, threw all the forces of his rhetoric against an official strike of seamen, some of the lowest paid workers in the country. When he finally beat the seamen by the most revolting witch hunt, he turned his bile, his office and his government against the entire working class movement. The same man who had derided Selwyn Lloyd, former Tory chancellor, for a 'one sided pay pause', now instituted a year long total wage freeze, enforced by law and backed by savage cuts in the public spending programme he had advocated.

In 1967 he reimposed the health prescription charges he'd abolished. In 1968 he sanctioned another, even more racist, immigration act to keep out persecuted Asians from East Africa. In 1969 he proposed to ban unofficial strikes, the first plan for anti-union laws since the war. Throughout all this he supported the barbaric US invasion of Vietnam with a passion which inspired the US president Johnson to describe him as 'another Churchill'.

Another smoke screen from Fred , just reply to the articular that I posted . Is it not historical fact that Gordon Brown made a complete balls up selling the Gold.

And it is also historical fact that he was one of the worst Prime minsters this country ever had.

Do you agree Fred ? or do want to carry on being a political moron .

Black Wednesday.

Black Wednesday, July 1966--the day of the cuts and the wage freeze--was named as such not by a revolutionary but by a mild mannered television journalist called John Morgan, who, like hundreds of thousands of others, had high hopes that the Labour government would lead the way to a new social order. This hope was widespread throughout the left, and it was the dashing of this hope by backsliding and grovelling to the rich and powerful which brought Wilson down so low in the eyes of so many of his former supporters.

Fred
There is a very large parking area adjacent to the station for cycles, which is secure. You have to pay for it and why not, so many people just chain their bikes to the railings.

aldwickk
I have called the council in the past about the problem and they do nothing. They say it is not up to them. The police don't want to know nor the Highways Agency and not Transport for London who look after bus lanes etc. No public body wants to do anything about it.

The message I gave the cyclist may have been effective. I shall have to look out for his bike again, it was quite distinctive. If he stops parking there then I will add a padlock to more bikes now and then. It would be worth 99p a time to stop the parking. I know a few other people who dislike it as well. Perhaps we could all start doing it.

Bikes are bad enough riding on the pavement and jumping traffic lights and now we have to put up with them chained up all over the place. I have a friend who had the ligaments in his leg torn by a bike hitting him on the pavement. At least in central London the police do pullup and fine cyclists who jump the lights.

remind me BARCLAYS CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT YOU DID CARE WHEN YOU KNEW MR R SCOTT ABOUT NATWEST ALONG WITH OLD G PARKES GOD SAVE THE QUEEN THE SEX PISTOLS HOWS PHILIP HIS HE GOING NEXT WEEK OUR DAVE HIS THE MAN STILL KNOW FEAR IN HIS EYES THE NEXT THE DOG BOO USA LIKE A IRAN MR BLAIR WOULD LIKE A CHANGE SCOTT AIR 9/11 THANK GOD FOR THE EBC LOCAL THEN THERE THE ECB SOME SMALL COMPANY DID COMPLAIN TO GERMANY NO REPLAY THIS IS MY THANK YOU TO YOU NOT LONG BEFORE I TAKE THEM OUT

TRUST MR BROWN SELL GOLD AT 275 OZ LIKE A COUNTRY BUYS THE EURO A 1.44 ISAVE THE BANK IN ICELAND MAY DAY MAY MAY DAY COME MR BUSH NO FAER WITH MEN WE HVE TO LOOK AFTER OUR INTERST BUILD UP WHEN MEN GET THAT BIG DO YOU GET little BALLS BUT WE HAVE MR BALLS SO HARD ALONG WITH HIS MATES

MRSI?

I remember Black Wednesday when we were bounced out of the ERM, very well. I was staying at this hotel on my honeymoon. It was certainly better than hearing all about it in London.

http://www.capestel.com/uk/index.php

I have avoided several bit of significant news by being away. When Priness Di found out the consequences of not wearing a seat belt, I was in this hotel. Lickily I was there for long enough to miss all of it including the very silly funeral.

http://www.hotels-platinum.com/mazzaro_sea_palace/eng/home.htm

Mention of such events always bring back happy memories.

I forget which hotel I was in when the miners strikes was on. But that is a happy memory even without the hotel.

.

I think you are right, so the best solution would be to encourage some others to do it instead of me.

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