Clarkson used to have a share of the rights to Top Gear but got paid off – £1m?

Does everyone clean windows? Never felt the urge to do mine.

I think you will find that the old presenters were all very good drivers, much more capable and skillful in a car than you or me

True, but the original Stig told me when we had dinner recently (he he) that it’s easy to look good on an airfield. He also said James was the best diver.

Marry well. Not sure I did but seems to be earning more than she spends so suppose I can be happy with that.
On 3rd house, I would like to move again but flippin’ stamp duty puts me off.

I got a Speccy in ’84 and did some fairly decent BASIC programming – I do remember those books but think I just taught myself by seeing code in magazines. Made my programming modules at College/Uni pretty easy for me and then I went into an IT career – mostly Oracle database stuff. Lost most interest now though really in hands-on technical things.

Quite frankly you are taking the **** piss, little wonder landlords are seen to be **** scum!

Rubbish. It would be a particularly altrustic person who didn’t want to get market rate for renting or selling their property – who wants to give money away? The greedy ones are those who don’t look after the property properly or withhold deposits.

Once Upon a Time in the West – Sergio got a free hand to do what he wanted. The intro is the best ever.

FTSE’s dropped so much, may well start using my mortgage to put more money in but not sure on timing yet.

I have a flexible offset tracker mortgage and choose to keep it as might want to access a chunk of cash at some point and no need not to keep it – the fact I have this debt doesn’t bother me at all.

My wife wants to go to CP but would know not to do this as knows I hate the idea and would make a fuss. Indeed last year the extended family all went but us lot didn’t. Having said that we might end up going to a French one this year albeit with me disappearing on the bike some days as at least the family will have stuff to do without me around. And foreign things are always more fun – and cheaper.

Years ago I worked for a smallish IT consultancy, Fulcrum Solutions, that was bought by a bigger one that had been doing very well – Whittman Hart. The share price jumped up quite a bit to $52 but then they bought USWeb which was considered a v bad move and the price fell by 60% pretty quickly. The management kept telling us how all was fine and it seemed they just wanted us to stay in the share option purchase scheme. Just after we were committed some more bad news came out and the price fell to 10% of the peak. I had decided to go contracting and thought I’d buy some shares as a sort of hedge – I’d earn more as a contractor but would be losing some share options I had.

The company then went bust a few months later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MarchFirst

I had a few days of feeling terrible followed by a cough that’s mostly gone now after 4 weeks. Two people in the office have just started a to be ill, hoping its the one I had as don’t want another so soon.

I’ve had a lot of £50 notes recently as had to pay for some high price items with cash and easier to count.

BTW – I wrote the code that bills all banks when people use Link cash machines.

Can’t you wait for a few days? Seems fair enough to me.

Men are like carpets apparently.

Mostly I’ve done well really but deciding to move to a Surrey village from a decent part of London 9 years ago meant I missed out on some substantial property price increases.

My wife can be a bit over protective of our son but mostly OK now – I would always argue though and say she needed to show me something on the NHS site about whatever she was worrying about, if it’s there then I’ll accept it.
Here’s a few or hers – she seems to have forgotten about the top 3 now though:

Take own sheets to hotels
Wash underpants on their own
Avoid cow milk
Not eat eggs when have a cold
Must have bright light on to read
Must keep TV/Hi-Fi volume low

Surely we’d be overrun by birds if it wasn’t for cats? Mao wasn’t keen on the birds.

Would cat owners mind if their neighbours returned their cat poo by lobbing it over the fence? I used to do that as I had a small garden and lived next door to 5 cats.

£47 million would be bad – it’s £4.1 billion. They are huge so profits at this level are needed to justify the capital employed.

Now my son is at school I don’t need so much – just after school club – but I have to build up the vouchers to pay for holiday periods so consider that.

Virgin seem to be updating the 50mb to 70mb – just done me and the online tests showed I have that speed.

Gordon’s alive.

Pseudo-scientific diet fails to stop scientific illness

Use my calculator:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cLH5NU8s4ghbiB7wlc_a1obAcjXdY59TZuW5jhStqjc/edit?usp=sharing

Some studies have shown American Ginseng to be of some use

Ha Trout Mask Replica is genius 🙂

I seem to appreciate most music that is deemed good – but that’s not the sames as popular is it? Does anyone sensible like One Direction?

Isn’t it all about Zwift now?

Yeah you’re stuffed. I had similar, cost me 1000s and then the neighbour used the wall I built to do the same extension she’d tried to stop me doing so saving her a chunk of cash.

Cashing in his pension pot?

How about consider getting a TCR and keeping the Defy? I now have both – 2013 Advanced models.

Yes I find it bizarre, who wants the front of their house to look like so bad? I live in a nice Surrey village, some of my neighbours mow their own verges, some leave it to the council to do each month, and some trash there’s by driving all over it when its wet. Saw one car at the weekend parked completely off the road on a verge, makes the area look so unappealing.

Some did try putting plastic bollards in their verges, as we have a school near us and the Mums cause damage, all the bollards are trashed now. Maybe spikes are the answer.

I’d be getting this – special enough for me

https://www.giant-bicycles.com/en-gb/bikes/model/tcr.advanced.pro.0/24956/90500/#specifications

http://road.cc/content/review/174726-giant-tcr-advanced-pro-0

The estate agents I’ve bought and sold through have all been fine and good ones do make life easier, people still walk along the high street looking in windows to see what’s on sale which is worth something. Not sure if I’ll move again but if I do I won’t be using cheap people to deal with something so important. Maybe I don’t mind their cost as it’s stamp duty I hate – that’s the biggest problem with moving house for above average properties.

You have very accurate measuring devices…you’re at 25.1 right? Only just in the ‘overweight’ category, mostly depends how muscular you are. Best shape I’ve ever been in equated to a BMI of over 28.

My wife does online ordering and mostly just repeats the order from the week before so we have excess stock of various items then I get shouty and that item is removed from the recurring order This happens for different products at differing times, we currently have piles of baked beans, both liquid and solid soap – BTW I don’t get the point of liquid soap….

Willing to put your money where your mouth is on that?

what about hard-boiled eggs – fridge or not?

Raw eggs should be stored out of the fridge but hard boiled ones inside – for only a few days though.

I’m booked into 3D IMAX for next week, also 3D non-IMAX in same cinema but not sure who’d go for that.

Is there any reason to be wary of existing applications no longer working?