Why did you invite them?, i see this every year and it baffles me, if you don’t like these people why invite them?.

Depends on your relationship with your other half. Sometimes it can be better to lose a battle to win a war.

I was expecting an inlaw thread but where is the “Can any recommend any good divorce lawyers thread?” Or is it too early?

The main problem in terms of coupling up is this: people don’t want to compromise, they are looking for the ideal, which doesn’t exist.

The people who are serious about settling down and having kids in their 30s often end up compromising, especially on the romance and courting side of things – they are often married and with two kids within four years of meeting one another.

I was speaking to a lady who cares for people in hospice care. She said the biggest regret many of them had was not having children.

Ricky also did a tv documentry with Bernard Manning few years ago.Twas quite intresting.

I saw that too. I remember one scene at the Embassy club, during the day and there was a young woman off her face at the bar on God-knows-what with what looked like a group of undesirables.

Manning described them all as “the salt of the earth”, without irony.

Bernard Manning’s comic timing was the best I’ve seen next to Frank Skinner. But you knew the jokes were intended to be offensive in advance, so the issue seems to be lack of forewarning that you had a Manning-wannabee lined up for the evening.
Jed Stone is simply trying too hard and I think I’d be embarrassed as to his timing more than the material itself.

Son of a famous footballer? Sounds a bit hardcore for Brooklyn Beckham.

Hard to tell exactly what’s going on from your post, i.e. is he culpable?
Invite some Hells Angels around for a pre-xmas drink and then go visit him the morning after. I’m sure he’d pay.

The gov wants to crack down on “self employed” people who are in reality working fulltime, long-term for companies, who want to avoid paying tax as per an employee.
IF they make it easy to do online, then I’d support the initiative.
But if it just means more work for accountants, and more stress for the genuine self-employed, then it is a mistake.
I’d be more favourable to HMRC if they properly went after Facebook and Google beforehand.

The top 50 list has changed quite a bit this year – the top 10 used to be dominated by areas in the East of England. But the whole region is suffering from people moving from/escaping London, without the infrastructure to support the population growth.
The population of Hertfordshire, for example, has doubled in the last 20 years – now over a million people live there.
When I think of the South East, I think traffic. I now think the same of the East. If you can work remotely then I’d recommend the South West or a nice village up north.

Just through by the skin of our teeth at number 50.
That’s a big drop though and I suspect the fact that we are being dragged into greater london is a reason for it.

They should have never sacked The Tinker Man.

Has he not seen his GP yet?
He needs to make an appointment asap. The medication will help with the anxiety issues, give him some time basically.
Best of luck.

The Gardeners Arms is probably my favourite pub (in Clarkson tone), in the world.

One of the main reasons I jacked in Academia was moral revulsion of a system that works by saddling young people with huge debts at the start of their working lives.
I wouldn’t have gone to uni if the fees were this high back in 99.

Does this mean he didn’t get his Big Mac?

I thought I might be.
Cheers for the heads up.

No. Neit. Nein.

If I call my GP surgery, then the quickest appointment I can book is around 3 weeks.
But they now have a walk in surgery every morning and afternoon, which is much better. Just turn up on the day and usually wait for 30 mins to see a dr.

One of the guys at work is now paying his dead sons debts off after he died leaving big medical bills too.

That is awful. What a horrid thing to go through as a parent.

I remember going up to a uni open day in the late 90s with my dad. He went off to a lecture just for the parents, which explained the loan system to them.

When we met up afterwards, the first thing he said to me was, “It’s fine, if you die, we don’t have to pay your debt back.”

What happened to her ex who she had the kids with?
Did she do the dirty on him as well.

Definitely post up your story. And well done.

Sounds like a poor-taste practical joke that went a bit too far.

Or a cunningly devised scheme to sue for millions of Benjamins.

And regarding the Made in Britain status, research has been conducted into this and also confirmed it is highly valued internationally.
Source.

Regarding the growth of the global middle class, was a report published on the emerging Chinese G2 generation – a huge baby-boomer type generation, people now in their 20s and 30s.

They have plenty of money and one of their buying characteristics is to have Western made products, from independent companies.

Here is a quote from the report:

McKinsey research has shown that this generation of Chinese consumers is the most Westernized to date. Prone to regard expensive products as intrinsically better than less expensive ones, they are happy to try new things, such as personal digital gadgetry. They are also more likely than previous generations to check the Internet for other people’s usage experiences or comments. These consumers seek emotional satisfaction through better taste or higher status, are loyal to the brands they trust, and prefer niche over mass brands (Exhibit 2). Teenage members of this cohort already have a big influence on decisions about family purchases, according to our research.

But unless British manufacturers can get their prices down to those of the far east, who is going to buy those expensive bikes?

Brompton is a premium product, which is expanding very successfully into China and other newly emerging economies.

There is now a huge global middle class which didn’t exist 30 years ago, and they want premium, Made-in-Britain products.

I’d imagine they were waiting for the results of the spending review…biggest cuts in history as George Obsbourne wants a surplus for the next election, when a) hopes he is leader and b) that his housing bubble economy hasn’t burst.

Sorry to hear that Sazter, it’s not a nice time of year to lose a job…
I’d take the short term work, and then just go away in the van for a bit, try to decide what you fancy doing next, then return in the New Year to start the job search.

I give it a month until…

Cougar, I’ve read many of your contributions to religion forums, and it’s clear that you have a pathological, irrational dislike of religion.

This has the unfortunate consequence that you come across as close minded and arrogant.

Infact, it’s such an attitude which is now harming the atheist cause – plenty of people are fed up with Richard Dawkins because of his complete self-confidence that God does not exist (which he has actually rescinded under pressure, as nobody can be completely sure either way).

In terms of greed and materialism, the Abrahamic religions are in their purest, uncorrupted form, negative towards them.
Christianity was an unprecedented civilising force in Europe. The things the posters take for granted on here, like human rights, would not have developed without Christianity, as the book “Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism” demonstrates.
The idea that humans left to their own devices will create a less competitive, materialistic world without the insights of the great religions into human nature is to my mind naive. Europe has had two centuries of Enlightenment, but during that time we’ve had extreme political ideologies which have largely filled the void left by religion, like nationalism and communism, and which have killed many innocents along the way.

I made the mistake of going to my local Wickes on a business park this morning to buy a lightbulb.
The horror, the horror…

I would look at old town Stevenage. You are near the Lister hospital for work. The old town is quite pleasant. And it’s only 20 mins on a fast train to Finsbury park (North London).

so they can question why is happened, why was it deserved, and other such rubbish, instead of accepting life for what it is – accidents happen, people get old and diseased, people are evil, etc.

TurnerGuy, that would be pretty awful advice to someone in emotional distress from having lost a loved one.

My point is, we don’t know whether God exists or not, but it makes sense to have a religiously motivated institution which people can turn to in times of trouble. People don’t have to stay in that institution, but in a cold hard world, where many people have nobody to turn to, I have no problem with a group of people meeting up every Sunday who can in-turn help people in difficult circumstances.

Packing them off with the latest Richard Dawkins book, telling them to cheer up and have a happy life, doesn’t tend to have the same comforting effect!

What is this brighter future precisely?
More consumerism?
Deadening one’s brain with 80 TV channels?
I’m afraid life doesn’t suddenly improve once you get rid of the church.
Human beings also tend to need it at emotionally difficult times, like losing a loved one.

Welby is supposed to be on the evangelical wing, I think he is simply playing at PR.
In my experience, Anglicans are generally the least religious of Christians in terms of actual belief. There was one bishop a while back who wrote books and gave media broadcasts continually questioning the existence of God. Now while I think that is fine for the laity, he was happy to accept a (rather lucrative) living through the church.

It’s part of what makes the C of E so innocuous and acceptable in what is in reality quite a secular society in all but actual law.

I agree, it makes the C of E more acceptable to secular society. But from it’s own point of view, it’s suicide.
The C of E is dying out, whereas evangelical churches are growing (plenty of research proves this).
By talking like this, Welby is hammering the nail into the coffin.

The other reason I object to him saying this is the fact that it implicitly prioritises the lives of white europeans. The Christian God is supposed to love everybody, but Welby has chosen to confess feelings of doubt in relation to Paris – but why then doesn’t he have those feelings regarding the thousands of children who starve to death in Africa?
I’m afraid he has tried to catch the public mood unsuccessfully.

It’s nonsense like this which makes the C of E such a weak institution.
Surely belief in God is in the job description?
I think he is trying to “engage” with the public mood.

Kids wouldn’t have been seen dead listening to anything like that a few years back.

I fear for their future. This generation simply doesn’t rebel.

I think it has a massive generational middle age breakdown ahead of it.

I noticed The Premier League has been pushing the commemoration angle to the extreme…I wonder if this is a case of the lady doth protest too much, given how much Saudi money is in the game.

I find out this week what’s happening with the contract from my main client…I have to admit I’ve been eyeing up full time corporate jobs in the meantime, but my preference is to stay self employed, even if it means earning less and no pension contributions.
There is another way also to look at the “uncertainty of income” situation from being self employed. That is, most corporates are always going through waves of redundancies anyway, so there is an increasing amount of uncertainty now with full time corporate jobs. So I guess the difference is getting smaller over time.
I think in 20 years time the majority of work in the UK will be done by freelancers.