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.

Italian cruise ships


How do they serve alcoholic drinks on Italian cruise ships? - On the rocks.

What vegetables do you get with dinner on Italian cruise ships? - Leeks.

What's the fastest way to get off an Italian cruise ship? - Follow the captain.

When the captain of the ill fated Costa Concordia was asked if he knew where he was going he replied "off course."

So the captain of the Costa Concordia will soon be in the dock. That's more than can be said for his ship.

I like my women how I like my Italian Cruises. Wet, wrecked and ready to go down.

The Costa Concordia is probably the most expensive thing to go down in Italy since Berlusconi's last hooker.

What's the difference between the Italian economy and the stricken cruise liner Costa Concordia?

Nothing - The bottom's dropped out of both.

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Just one arm :-)

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Airbus to inspect all A380 superjumbos for wing cracks

Aircraft maker Airbus has been ordered to check the wings of all A380 superjumbo planes currently in service.

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has ordered all 67 Airbus A380 superjumbo planes currently in operation to be checked.

Airbus said the cracks were not an immediate threat to safety and that repairs would be carried out if any damage was found.

Hence the expression.. Let the Train take the strain.. Unless it's across water of course.

Well that's Friday nights buggered :-)

The rise and fall of lap dancing

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Blimey, what are MPs and city Councilors going to do to pass the time on their never ending 'Fact finding' or 'Team building' junkets, sorry I mean hard working, no time for leisure, business trips.

Our politicians should be called to account
Westminster leaders not Whitehall mandarins are responsible for our public finances.

Anyone searching for clues as to why the public finances are in such a distressing state could do worse than read the Whole of Government Accounts for 2009/10, published in November and taken apart with forensic precision yesterday by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee.

The WGA are an attempt by the Treasury to provide the big picture of the Government’s assets and liabilities over the longer term. In the words of the PAC, they should show what the Government “owes, owns, spends and receives”, since without such basic information, proper management of the public finances is not possible.

It speaks volumes for Whitehall’s historically slapdash approach to taxation and spending that this was the first time the Treasury had ever conducted such an exercise. To the irritation of the MPs, it did so tardily, taking 20 months to prepare and publish the data, and incompletely – omitting, for example, the state-owned banks and Network Rail from the exercise, in defiance of standard accounting practice.

Even so, the findings make salutary reading. They identify a public sector pensions liability of £1.13 trillion; PFI commitments of £131.5 billion (four times the asset value of the projects they financed); nuclear de-commissioning costs of £59.7 billion; £10.9 billion of unpaid taxes written off; and £15.7 billion earmarked for settling clinical negligence claims.

The figures are dizzying – but not as alarming as the Treasury’s sanguine approach to them. The PAC found that officials “do not have a grip on trends in some key areas of risk or plans for managing them”.

This accounting exercise has exposed the weakness of the senior civil service when it comes to financial management. Among permanent secretaries and their deputies, expertise in this field is as rare as hen’s teeth. They may have other strengths that compensate, but if there are not people reporting to them who know how to run big projects and keep them within budget, it causes serious problems.

Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, took a small step in the right direction yesterday by announcing a new project leadership academy at the Said Business School in Oxford, aimed at teaching mandarins how to manage big-ticket projects.

However, the real problem lies not with civil servants, but with their political masters. It is politicians who demanded the tax credit system, ID cards, the child support agency, the NHS computer system, the children’s database and countless other high-spending fiascos that have cost the taxpayer billions.

The public finances will be restored to good health only when our leaders start spending money because they have to, not because they want to.

The above is in the 'Editorial Comment Section' of today's Telegraph

I think it beggars belief! However, it is something that we have undoubtedly all suspected for a very long time. No wonder we are so strongly opinioned against the paying our taxes.

But it's relieving to read that at last something is being done about it.

PS. Don't forget to click on the link so that you can also read some of the attached 'Comments' to this article.

Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp and co- defendant Milan Mandaric cleared of all charges !!!!!

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"Isn't this something which we all knew anyway?" Know what MN?

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Oh sorry, thought it was a response to the Redknapp news.

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Greekman ,

Is there any truth in " Never cast a clout until May is out " the meaning of which I was told meant Archers should not practice until after May, due to arrow's breaking on hard frost covered ground.

Redknapps Law.

A man with no business nous does not open up a bank account in Monaco in his dogs name so that his employer can put an amount of money in there for him that by a quirk of coincidence corresponds to a bonus payment to which he believes he is morally entitled, and hide it from his accountant. We are also expected to believe that his admission of guilt to the press was just to make them go away, and not because he actually was guilty.

CONCLUSION

Nobody who sat through all the evidence will be surprised at the jury's verdicts. The prosecution's case appeared to be flimsy at times. In particular, the prosecution never had an answer to a question that Redknapp and Mandaric asked over and over again. Why would two men who had paid so many millions of pounds in taxes over the years try to concoct such an elaborate fiddle in order to save such a relatively small sum of money? After an investigation which lasted nearly five years, both Harry Redknapp and Milan Mandaric have finally cleared their names.

A five year investigation and a court case. How much will that cost the tax payer ?

aldwickk - the "May" referred to is the May tree (Hawthorn).