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.

I get annoyed so easily these days. I really am classed as a grumpy old man.
Yesterday, we went to Asda for the weekly bout of buying things we don't need, and a few bits we do. I ended up parking several miles away from the store despite still being in Asdas car park.
My first thought was to wonder why Asda take the measurements of my car then paint a box exactly 6 inches smaller and call it a parking space. After using the Vaseline and the brickhammer to get the car into the gap between two others, we set off on the epic hike to the shop itself.
Thought two was brought on by several million empty spaces I could not use. All very close to the shop, but marked "M/Cycle", "Mother & Baby" and finally "Disabled". I started wondering how close you could park if, for instance, you were a disabled mum, taking your young children shopping on the back of a motorbike. I reckoned the cheese aisle, but the wife thinks fresh produce department.
Anyway, judging by the % of parking spaces reserved for such shoppers, I live now in a country where the only able bodied people left are either new mums or people with leather fetishes, so why don't Asda have (as well as a baby goods aisle), an S&M aisle and a disabled goods section?
And why do motorcyclists need to be near the store? They are unlikely to have 17 bags of shopping to lug to their vehicle. And if Asda supply those little motorised buggies for the disabled to use to get round the store and back to their car, can I have one please because after shopping I face another trek back to the car that would be dismissed by Ranolph Fiennes as being just too long and cold.
Finally. When i do get back to the car, who has organised that the cars on either side have gone to be replaced by drivers who like to park diagonally so I cannot get in my car?
I think the answer must be to shop online and for the delivery address, just type in "The furthest distant space in your car park, next to the cars parked by Stevie Wonder".

And another one!!!!
I read this morning that GCSE exams are to get much harder. The government have found out that kids can get a "C" grade in English while being (I cannot believe I am writing this) "functionally illiterate", or a "C" grade in maths without the ability to add up consistently!!
Now they are demanding tougher tests, the exam boards (who have got a "C" in exam setting and are therefore "functionally stupid") are crying that some kids will fail and employers will not be able to distinguish between an old "C" grade and a new one.
Yes they will. They will be able to tell by the opening line of the letter for the job which starts "Can this be my aplicashun plees".
And so what if some kids fail. Our education system was envied the world over when 60% of GCE results were a fail. Nowadays, with little or no failures, its a Catherine Tate sketch.
Bovvered? They should be.

Note to Alan..... If no one moans, we will get even more C**P shoveled on us.

Fuel, food, gas, electric, travel and worse of all community charges are all increasing along with numerous other bills and commodities far above inflation (well above government inflationary figures anyway).
As far as the community charge is concerned, the increase is 4.9% in my area.
If these increases continue it won't be long before we hand over all our money and receive some sort of vouchers back to enable us to live.
If main and local governments cut out just 50% of the huge waste they generate no increases would be required, if fact tax (because thats all they are) cut could easily be made.
I intend to pay by direct debit until 9 of the 10 payments have been made. I will then stop the d/d and wait for the enforcement possess to start.
I can't understand why we sit back and just take what this government throws at us.
Although not a fan of the French, I sometimes admire their protest spirit. Long before now they would have taken to the streets.
At the moment I am trying to find a local (Beverley East Yorkshire) protest movement.
We are steadily being bled dry. It's time to man the barricades, legally and peacefully.

I am a member of The Tax Payers Alliance. If anyone wishes to take a look see http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/
At the moment they appear to be best organization for fighting our corner, (good for Grumpy old men as well, Alan please note).
They often publish government waste figures which would often be (if the evidence wasn't there) unbelievable.

Not just a grumpy old man, but a very bloody angry one.

I sometimes think, Greek, that I am now too old to care any more. My (our?) generation faced much the same crap when The Maggon closed every manufacturing industry we had and introduced the poll tax, but we at least set fire to London in protest and had her packed off to a home for the dangerously optimistic. The current generation of angry young men seem content to take it out on their X-Box.
I have a French business friend who I asked about the new smoking ban in France and he said it was being noted and very strictly ignored, and that this is the French way. The government live enough in the real world to know that if they try too hard to enforce it, they will cause even more smoke as people take to the streets and set fire to British sheep.
I like the ways of the French and Italians. They have an unspoken agreement with their respective governments that they can pass any laws, or charge any taxes they like providing they do not expect the population to obey them or pay them. This seems to me to be a very healthy democracy, and one which every politician we have ever had would do well to follow.
So the battle cry goes out. Every man woman and child should disobey the next ludicrous dictat from central government and all young men should go to their local town hall and put a strimmer down the underpants of the council leader, until they promise to stop interfering and spending our money on the latest political sweeties.

Same re any EU laws. The French tend to look at them and obey/disobey depending on if they think it will benefit them. We on the other hand tend to bow down, grovel and say Thanks Very much for even more C**ping on us from a great height.
Like you after moaning, protesting for many years, despondency is creeping in, although I am trying very hard not to allow it to.

At the moment I have inquired if I can have a sex change on the NHS.
Then in a civil partnership marry any mixed race, one legged, blind, mentally disturbed, transsexual ex con I can find (Don't suppose you or Trev know such a person). Apply to adopt twins from Cambodia, sit back and allow the government to take care of me for the rest of my life.

Probably should not have mentioned TREV. Bet I/we all regret it.

So, Alan, you think if Maggie hadn't 'closed every manufacturing industry' (debatable) that we'd now be competing successfully with the likes of Vietnam, China, Korea etc?

Don't make me laugh! She had the vision to see what was happening in the far east and replace our manufacturing industry (what was left of it at that time) with a far more enduring and profitable service industry which has left us as number 4 richest economy in the world.

And as for the poll tax - I'd gladly swap what we've got now for that. Our council tax has more than doubled in the past ten years.

And you think the poll tax wouldn't???????

Anyway, The Maggon may be hailed by some as a visionary, but we are now left as an economy based on stealing each others washing. We do not actually produce anything. Sure we have a few manufacturing plants but they do little more than nail together bits from other countries.
Where is the innovation coming from? Trevor Bayliss may make a few radios and James Dyson the odd vac, but we have no raw material production, no agriculture worth talking of, no worldwide giants of white goods production, no car industry. Our tourist trade is knackered cos they all live here already and we have banned ourselves from fishing in the sea.
We have moved our callcentres and banking operations to Mumbai.
What we have is a financial services industry that is in ruins and the worlds largest output of dopey liberal academics. Even our gas and electric is supplied by someone who probably couldn't find the UK on a map.
Given the world climate, how are we going to climb back from the brink if we cannot actually make anything to sell to someone else and they no longer trust our only industry. The FSA and BoE cannot replace that trust. They are incompetent and weighed down by more regulation than Brussels could make in a year.
No. Farsighted is to realise that when the shit hits the fan, as it is undoubtedly doing, a country needs to be able to support itself and make a few quid supplying others.
My opinion, but closing everything rather than making it more economically viable was shortsighted and just the easy way out.

Al ,i have to defend Thatcher a little here ,,most of the crap today is down to 10 years of Blair ,it's the reason i'm leaving .

Each to their own, JB, each to their own.
When ya going????

(Please remember, as a professional Yorkshireman, I cannot defend the Maggon. You cannot imagine the crap my beloved county went through at her hands).

I was a great supporter of Maggie until she became to domineering. She reached the stage where she was in her own eyes never wrong. She went from a brilliant strong democratic politician, to almost being a dictator. Her main fault being that she stopped listening to her own cabinet as well as the voter.
Although on balance I feel she did far more good than bad.
As to Maggie and the EU, well we all know that she would still be giving them the diplomatic equivalent of the 2 fingers, and quite right too.
As to Blair, his government during and after his reign, have done more to damage this country than any government in the last 100 years.
My epitaph for Blair would be. He sold the UK down the river.

Greek, "He sold the UK down the river." Would that be Enoch Powell's "river(s) of blood" by any chance?!

And was there anything left to sell???

Greekman ,your bang on about Maggie ,and bang on about Blair ,i can't tell you how much i despise the Labour govenment and all the self rightuous regulaters .

Alan i'm going back to the usa soon to sort out the house i bought and then returning after a few months ,(i'm trying to sell my house here) ,so i'm hoping to live there full time by about September ..

Alan, the only way our manufacturing industry could have been made viable is if it could have been made to compete with the manufacturing countries I have already mentioned.

Grant you, that could have been done - but only if our workers had been happy to have a similar standard of living as those in those other countries. I.E. an annual income of between 400-1200. I seem to remember the unions not being to happy at wages being kept competitive.

The rest of your post is so rambling I don't think even you can take what you say seriously! 'Climb back from the brink'. Look around the world at the standard of living of most people. The average person in the UK has never had it so good, and I'm sure you're old enough to know that! This is a result of changes in the way our economy is financed - i.e. a move away from manufacturing to sciences, service industry, in short using our brains rather than braun to earn income from the world market.

I hate to bring this thread dangerously close to sanity, but I'm not certain how much I can blame Blair for.
Certainly, all politicians deserve blame when things go wrong, and he made several mistakes, but what annoys me most about the UK at the moment, and how much of it is his fault and how much mine?
Our economy was good and is now shit, but that can be applied to every corner of the planet, so it is hard to plonk that one on his doorstep. The thing that gets my goat is the erosion of civil liberties and the nanny culture. I would escape that tomorrow. But can we blame Blair?
Most of it is from european and world dictats, or from bunches of vegitarians sat on steering groups, and we have allowed it to happen.
Blair too has allowed it to happen, but he also has the job of getting on with other countries, whereas The Maggon didn't care about them. Can you imagine our position on the world stage if our leaders told the UN to pi55 off, we would not accept their latest tripe about the number of refugees we must accept, and from which countries, or the EU to get knotted, we would not accept a law that said all factories must produce tulip blossoms from their chimneys and spend millions adapting their place of work to accept disabled people who don't work there anyway?
This is where the USA have got it partly right. They tell the rest of the world to mind its own damn business, and everyone hates them for that, but then they go and home grow the same rubbish.
Apparantly in LA it is now illegal to consume alcohol after 2am. Even at home. What a hoot life must be there.
So lets get rid of the world enforced nonsense and the next time someone suggests we dictate what anyone thinks or does in their own time, lets bend them over the table and subject them to cruel and unusual punishments in contravention of the Geneva Convention. At least we can then blame ourselves properly.

Seriously Oblo. The rest of the world will increase prices for the things we need. And we definitely need them, and we will have to pay cos we cannot provide them ourselves.
We cannot do the same now, because the world will happily wait a while for its financial services and a new scientific breakthrough, whereas on the whole we would prefer our dinner to be imported, cooked on a German stove with French gas, within the next few hours.

sums up the state of play I would say:

Staff at McDonald's will soon be able to gain the equivalent of A-levels in running burger bars after the fast food giant won government approval to become an exam board.

The firm is piloting a "basic shift manager" course, which will train staff in everything they need to run a McDonald's restaurant, from marketing to human resources and customer service skills.

and more b*ll*x from po face:

Gordon Brown has denied that plans for McDonald's and other firms to run A-level topics would amount to dumbing down - insisting the courses would be tough and intensive.

unfortunate name , Ed Balls!

Actually i hate to say it but the French have it right ,,go in to any french car park and 8 out 10 cars are french made ,,immigrants,, they just find new ways of sending them to us ,,don't want imports ,burn the trucks ,,don't like something ,block the ports,,the Iraq wars wrong ,we won't help,,they don't suck up to anyone..

Strange that the McDonalds A Level doesn't include nutrition. Wonder why.