If you’re a teacher and got to go on these things, may as well make it somewhere nice to enjoy and also price out the poor kids – as they’re usually the difficult ones….

Mostly I missed out on school trips away but didn’t really care as there were always more who didn’t go than did. Did spend a week in Greece before my O’levels with the school though which was great – teachers loved it too though this was a fee paying school and most kids were sensible enough.

My son has just started at school and currently trips are cheap £15 days out type things, interestingly all kids can go even if the parents say they can’t afford to pay – guess the £15 is enough to cover the odd kid who doesn’t pay.

I worked on a project years ago in Crawley at Thales Training and Simulation which is where Redifon eventually ended up following various takeovers (I think). Used to watch the simulators being built then going through their test cycles, most interesting.

How many did Gregory have in that film about a girl who played football?

There was a telly peogramme recently about this with some really nice big houses getting knocked down – and some odd ones

http://www.surreymirror.co.uk/Eric-Pickles-overturns-inspector-s-recommendation/story-26302259-detail/story.html

Best to use bonsai kittens for this sort of thing

£75 for a Naim box 🙂

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Naim-Storage-Box-/301649565082

No wonder the Royal Mail share price has been going up recently

I recently had to pay this for a card – the attached badge made it too thick for normal rate.

I guess Win 8 would be fine if you hadn’t used an O/S before, most coming from previous versions got confused.

Imagine having kids late and possibly paying that from a pension !!

Yeah but if you have them young you could have other tough costs – mortgage. So the game is have them young then be free at 50 or late and be paying for their Uni places in your 60s?!

gotcha, that’ll be a hundred quid please

Hmmm, wondering if it’ll be more like a tenner/yr for security upgrades though. Also wondering if with 10 there’ll be tighter integration with other devices which might be their way of getting more people onto Window phones. I like my Windows phone so kinda hoping.

My son born when I was 39 and wife 34. Thought we might not have kids as wife seemed too into having a career but she was keen so we did. Was happy before but happy now in more ways, life has more meaning 🙂 and I get more enjoyment out of my son’s achievements than my own. In my old age hope that he’ll have a family – turns out I’m a soppy family man really.

Oh and we need more people born here – though it’s more than made up for with the immigration but if more of those nice middle class types had kids and educated them well I’m sure that would be of benefit to us all 🙂

Never been north of the Lakes on the west and Hull on the east.

He’s unlikely to be in the business of retail so doesn’t have storage costs and any markup is for hassle of ordering and collection – could just build into his labour costs really. If he was a retailer he’d be buying from a distributor so be paying less than the retailer who’s already making a profit.

I’d get a few quotes then pick the cheapest I think would do a good enough job, I’d be looking for recommendations from friends. No point worrying about how much anyone needs to feed their kids, that’s their job to get right.

Mortgage gone so council tax, food, childcare, utilities are the main costs shared with my wife. We each pay into a bills bank account and that means about 15% for me. So saving quite a bit but not too confident about my future employment prospects so could be used to fund early retirement.

I’ve mostly worked for London based consultancies and often go out for drinks and there’s always a tab Usually it’s a manager or the client picking up it up but if its someone leaving then they do – though I was lucky once and a manager said he’d sort it. Have to watch people trying to put food on it though!

It’s a cultural thing.

Ride up from Woolacombe is a bit of a challenge (road).

I can’t see how anyone would buy it assuming they could put it to another, more profitable use – well certainly not golf or housing as the chances of that being allowed are far too remote. So it’ll be left as it is but possibly with access restricted to rights of way – but what reason would they have to restrict in this way? Could it become a private place for shoots? They may not want the risk of mtbers clumsily injuring themselves and getting sued though.

In 2001 I fixed a Y2k bug on a mission critical computer system – didn’t mention that I’d created it….

I was in the OTC while at Uni for a while, I seemed to do so much with my time in the weekends I went away. Not sure it made me a better person but I was pretty sure on how I wanted things to turn out and how to go about achieving them.

So the point in compulsory service is to force those who don’t have constructive lives to be more interested in having one. Opinion seems to be that nothing should be compulsory these days – including wanting a job of course. So education required – during school age of course as afterwards is too late as can’t force anyone to take more education that that point.

Trouble is some schools have too difficult a time of it, the kids aren’t interested. Why aren’t they? Generations of unemployment in their family and neighbours make unemployment seem the obvious/only path.

How can they be encouraged? Military service does teach useful skills, charity work can too. But the effort doesn’t appeal to many. There needs to be a solution or the downward spiral will continue.

Poor people should only eat spaghetti and soup

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/05/15/wisconsin-gop-passes-bill-banning-poor-people-from-buying-shellfish-potatoes-and-ketchup/

I think this now very public row is because “them” don’t want to keep him. Or at least some of them don’t.

Yeah some, the exec committee do apparently.

Don’t blame them for wanting to keep him – and he seems to enjoy the role 🙂

Yeah many people drive aggressively in built up areas, pointless. I wonder if some people though think others are driving too slowly as cars tend to over state their speed? When I use my satnav I tend to use that to check my speed and see that I can go faster than the speed indicated by my car and still be in the speed limit. People are so impatient with other cars, no wonder cyclists cause them so much distress!

Can’t you just close it and put it into a low cost SIPP? Tell the SIPP you want to transfer and they’ll sort out.

Ordered the G forms as think good to have something so light but also thinking of the TLDs – I’ve seen comments about the sizing and wonder if I should go for smaller than their size guide?

Well the coalition had a stronger majority than the Tories do now, how much did the Lib Dems effect things? We’ll soon see.

Years ago I had a stomach problem – very strong burning feeling on and off for months. Tested negative for H Pylori, was given some meds but can’t remember what.

I tried eating/drinking thinks that are supposed to help such as apple vinegar and ginger and would again.

Is there an STW Velogames league?

36.9% voted Tory which is rather more than voted Labour – it’s a least bad thing for many.

The best thing is it’s now blatantly obvious that our first past the post system is broken.

Libdems made this clear a long time back but doesn’t mean our current system is wrong. Similarly, at the last election there was lots of info about how if Labour and the Tories got the same %age of votes Labour would get more seats due to the way the constituencies are.

I got one when I was 8, soon made a spear and stabbed my mate in the leg. If your kid’s sensible then maybe ok?!

It’ll stay as it is with the possible exception that people have to stick to designated paths and bridleways – so maybe some mtb trails will go?

But that would mean we’re all getting less intelligent over the generations, I’m more intelligent than my parents so a recessive gene thing?

I went for a job recently where I had to do some online intelligence tests as well as personality profiling before they’d accept me for interview. I’m really good at those sorts of intelligence tests and scored highly, a mate went through the same process and didn’t score too well but well enough. Thing is he’s better at the job than me – and I think comes across as brighter than me.

Testing was done by Mindmill.

200 Motels

Ever watched the film? Now that’s hard work!

Stupidity has a certain charm – ignorance does not

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

As Frank also said “Ignorance is more abundant than hydrogen”

Hmmm not sure about that. Reference?