Second the comment about Baxi. I bought a Baxi bahama in 1999 and have had engineers out to it on at least five occasions, mostly to do with flow switches and pressure valve.

95% doesn’t concern me too much; what would do is the criteria that the lender uses for eligibility. Making sure that the borrower can reasonably afford to pay back the loan without dodgy investment vehicles (usually with a fee/commission attached, natch) may sound boring but sounds a lot safer.

And, obviously, making sure that those monstrosities called ‘MIPS’ are consigned to the bin of history.

The housing market may soon receive a boost due to falling prices. Here in Nottingham there are absolutely shedloads of trendy flats etc. on the market that can’t sell because they are asking too much and the prices have been dropping recently quite a bit, even out in the suburbs. In a similar vein a number of buy-to-let people are finding it hard to recoup the money for the mortgage and are starting to sell-up. They may make a loss, but investments can go *down* as well as *up*.

That will be at least good for the young first-time buyers who have a little money tucked by to get onto the housing ladder. Unless, of course, other people start that cycle again and snap up houses when they are at the bottom of the market and cause the prices to rise significantly, pricing them out of the market again. I guess it means that they will just live with their parents until they are old-aged. I’m hoping that mortgagers will be sensible the next time around and the market stays sensible as opposed to stratospheric.

Get started. See if I care. 🙂

And the cycle of greed leading to another crash ten years down the line starts again…..

What about other complementary scientific theories of evolution that are not Darwynian theories.

Sure, go ahead. As long as there is evidence to back up the theories then that can only be for the best. If there aren’t, however, be prepared to be ridiculed!

Although the tag-line: “A new synthesis of Mind and Matter” rings alarm bells….

I’ve got this theory that when someone becomes home secretary, ‘the powers that be’ take said person into a room and either:

[list]
[*]Replace them with an ultra-right wing ar*ehole doppelganger[/*]
[*]Scare the living bejeesus out of them in some way to make them the aforementioned ultra-right wing ar*ehole.[/*]

I think it started with ‘lets get me bits out to show how tough I am’ Howard in previous tory governments and taken up with great gusto in Nulab.

Tossers, the lot of them. I am waiting for a new ‘terrorist’ law that makes it illegal to ride bikes. Anywhere.

</rant>

Don’t chuck bricks at cows.

In t’oven set at 120C for seven hours. With rosemary and garlic.

Yum.

Get up, get out and do the loooooong trip to work. Then in the canteen I get a bucket of porridge for 75p and dive in!

I even give up bacon/sausage etc. for porridge!

While I would like to see the back of Brown the author doesn’t understand that we don’t vote in a prime minister, we vote in local MPs that are in a stupid party system and they choose the leader; if that leader is the majority party s/he becomes prime minister.

Similar thing happened to Thatcher -> Major, as I recall, with a couple of years before a general election.

Still the sheer arrogance of Brown and his toadying to the city/wealthy makes me shudder. The only issue is who would take over after him? Cameron? They are all the same….

I missed Maggie. My aim was off, must have been the curry the night before….

I’m still a foetus. Honest. Its amazing what you have to do to get broadband in here….!

I had to tell someone that they blatantly couldn’t do the job they were hired for (on a bloody good salary too). He played the system for about 9 months until The Powers That Be decided to give him a choice: take ca. £13k and **** off now or face the long and winding road until he was chucked out.

I hated doing that.

Eh? Looks like it has those gear-type things…..
😀

There’s only one way to find out….

FIIIIGHT!

Sorry to hear that Matt.

However I’m sure the company will have a hard time to prove you were in any way at fault unless they have evidence.

Perhaps the best thing to do it threaten a tribunal and see if they give you dosh and a clean break? The best thing is to get out. It is the usual ‘if your face doesn’t fit’ routine. If they go for dismissal then they have to prove it and that could end up costly for them.

If you are sacked there is a possibility that you would lose JSA, BUT it has to be considered on an evidence-basis (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3954987.stm is all I could find). The place of work will be sent a form to fill in and they have to give their version of events and if it is just one person’s word against another that is unlikely to succeed I would guess (but I’m not a lawyer).

I wish you luck and hope you manage to get out on the bike to vent your frustration.

There’s Philip Glass, obvously. Very minimalist and hypnotic. His piano works are quite good.

I got two issues really. No problem with maternity.

First of all if we’re in the mood of saying ‘get more kids, they have to pay our pensions!’ what happens when they get old? With this thinking there would be a geometric explosion of people to keep the elderly well-cared for. At some point it breaks down.

The main thing I find disagreeable is that child benefit is universal. I know of people on > £100k getting it. They don’t need it. The people who are trying to make ends meet do. Greedy feckers should not be given it. And that “get a kid and we’ll set up a savings account with a couple of hundred quid” thing. And child benefit should start reducing as you have more kids. Those people who consider themselves baby-making-machines after two kids should get no child benefit unless they have triplets.

Bah, humbug!

For atheists, Richard Dawkins is their prophet and The God Delusion is their Bible.

Discuss.

That old hoary chestnut. Richard Dawkins is just vocal and his opinions are his own. Whether I agree with them or not is a moot point; he doesn’t speak for me. You’re attempting to lump everyone together under a target that can be attacked in order to smear everyone with similar beliefs, usually used as a last-ditch attempt to move the focus away.

The God Delusion is a book. Just a book. Same as the bible is a book. Just a book. Get over yourself!

If you are wrong then the consequences are pretty bad.

Ah that old chestnut.

I haven’t got enough life/time to believe in every G/god(s) just on the off-chance that one of them could be right. What if it is a non-theistic religion (e.g. Buddhism) that is right and I should spend all my time meditating – on the off-chance? There are so many religions out there I don’t know about. Some with loads of gods, some with one.

Just imagine, you die and “arrive” somewhere where a big booming voice says “do you believe in the Lord God Squidgy and his faithful doodlebug Janet?”, as only worshipped on Zaxylat 5 in the Andromeda galaxy?

To me I use the word ‘atheist’ in that while there is philosophical doubt about all god(s) they are all equally possible. The Christian god is no more probable than Zeus, Apollo, the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the aforementioned Squidgy. Call me agnostic if you want to, but I’m as agnostic about the Christian/Muslim/Jewish (etc, etc) god as Christians are about the Flying Spaghetti Monster…

I cannot disprove god/s. To those who say that god/s definitely exist I only have one question:

Please prove it and then I’ll believe.

Show me proof God doesn’t exist.

You prove to me why the Invisible Pink Unicorn and the Flying Spaghetti Monster don’t exist and let me know how you worked it out. I’ll most probably use the same argument…

(hint: you cannot prove a negative)

Why not?

Why ‘why not’?

Oh, so because an Atheist says so, that’s that, is it?

Nah. You made the positive statment: “Why does the universe exist?”. It is for you to prove that there is a ‘why’. I’ll sit here with a nice book (Alexander McCall Smith at the mo). Tap me on the shoulder when you are ready.

We had this a few weeks ago. Interestingly, like then, it’s the Atheists that are being the most vociferous. Like, somehow, that shouting louder is going to make them more right…

Nah, it is the wheedly ones who think they have a privileged belief that can never be scrutinised and yet want to tell everyone else how to live based upon it…

You trolling again RudeBoy?

Try picasa if you have a Windows PC. Or an intel-mac.

Free from Google.

picasa link[/url]

PIcadilly, invoking Stovold’s 1894 rule on the diagonals, hence avoiding trump.

Not to wind you up but…

My partner replied to a mail from a colleague in which he stated some external contractors sometimes act like cowboys. The so-called-colleague forwarded this mail (with a throw-away line in it, not the main thrust of the mail or owt) to the third party who then got in a huff.

The short of it was a disciplinary followed by a written warning (nothing happened to the colleague who sent the mail externally, of course). Then, lo and behold, shortly after this there was an email to all staff to discuss redundancies. “Oh look AdamW’s better half, you have a black mark here due to a disciplinary. Don’t slam the door on the way out, and it is statutory redundancy.”

Yes, he shouldn’t have written what was a throwaway line to someone he thought was a colleague. Now he’s scared stiff that he won’t get another job because of the disciplinary that happened beforehand….

BUT

I think you’ll be all-right. If it is internal type stuff it would, at the most be a word in your ear.

Wish it was about Norman Tebbit – obviously we could leave out anything about being missed

Erm. Blah blah blah. Blah “great back into Britain” blah blah blah. Blah blah BLAH blah blah!

I thought I’d say it before some eejit finds a large horse to get on!

😀

Damn! Now I’ll have to get one!
😆

As a gay bloke they won’t take mine. Obviously I’m riddled with AIDS or something.

Strangely though they *do* want me to donate my organs. I’ve told them they can have both blood and organs or neither. I don’t understand why blood is bad but organs (swimming in the stuff) is fine…

Looks like Winston Churchill….
😀

I reckon everyone will come round to my house and we’ll go biking. Then I’ll make a cake and we’ll eat it with a nice cup of tea. Then beer, obviously.

But seriously, most of what everyone else said, and I’m sorry but the public sector people I know are paid more, never seem to suffer any rounds of redundancies (and some of them are *dire*) and still won’t stop whinging!

I reckon we’ll be bust pensions-wise and the govt of the day (whoever, they’re all as bad as each other) will be forced to do something. Most probably up everyone else’s taxes to cover it!