Maybe he is covering one of these…

A tattooed cock with two dried apricots stuck to it?

So he guests now and then on other people's shows, which he'll get a bit of appearance money for, but I don't the BBC pay him to write for the Times and the Sun

Why would Radio 4 cost so much?

Because its pretty much all original created content, morning noon and night, every day. Everything you hear as been written, researched. performed, created and produced by them. Its not just some bloke with a haircut given an open mic to say whatever pops into his head in the 30 second gaps between the pop songs.

flatfish – Member
comparing the £2m clarkson recieves for a dozen shows a year

to be fair, clarkson does a lot more than a dozen shows a year.

Each top gear series is 7 episodes, usually two series a year. Am I missing something else he makes?

I thought they were taking the pi$$ when they kept saying it's made in Argentina but then I discovered it's true!

Its a syndicated show, its not a Beeb creation, its a US format different regions buy in to it and effectively rent the set and crew for their version of it. So on one day a handful of contestants and a talking head get flown in from the UK for our version and rent the set and crew, the next day a bunch from a dutch channel do the same thing and so on, its effectively a timeshare gameshow.

I'd say its a pretty economical way of doing things (the show gives me the boak though)

Hi involvement in worldwar two, and even the run up the world war two is pretty fascinating. He mullered Neville Chamberlain so comprehensively that nobody even considered until recently that Chamberlain might actually have won WW2 for us.

looking at that breakdown of the money paid to the 'talent' comparing the £2m clarkson recieves for a dozen shows a year with the 6m Ross gets for 30-40 shows a year, plus nearly as many film programmes,plus a weekly radio programme looks like rather good value.

Its interesting that the channels they talking of cutting are so small in terms of costs that you struggle to find them on that graphic.

"790" mill. from "commercial business" – and not an advert in sight. Hmmmm.

The BBC has commercial channels, with adverts, DAVE and all the similarly chummy named former UKTV channels are mostly owned by the BBC and are a way of generating a commercial income from their back catalogue

Mine has been making quite a committed effort to loose weight so I bought him vouchers to shop for new clothes as suddenly there isn't anything in his wardrobe that fits him anymore

Total Table Tennis

Developed in an attic games room at a holiday home we used for a stag weekend. The sloping attic roof meant any high bounce would ping off at 90 degrees, so like court tennis we decided that all the surfaces in the room we're playable, even the stairs to the hall below so long as you could get to the ball in three bounces

Forwarding address to send the deposit too looks like the answer, withholding the desposit for spurious reasons isn't going to calm the situation, it'll just make his unjustified aggression feel justified. Broken hoovers and so on I wouldn't really quibble over, if it broke while he was using it, at least he was hoovering. But tell him you need send the cheque to him at his new address once he's moved out and once he's provided evidence that any bills due to him are being sent to that new address, so that you're not have debts dumped on you. The means say his mobile phone account need to write to him at his new billing address confirming his move there, once he's shown you a copy of that letter the cheque is his, but also his address in yours which discourages any rash behavior by making it traceable.

Are you sleep walking? I've known people with a habit of pissing in the wardrobe whilst in a zombie trance

EDIT ha

It was showing concurrently in the States and here. The element I liked about it was that each episode was set 'this week' and when you watch the next episode a week has passed. Compared to Lost where you can watch for years and only 40 odd days have passed, or the whole of Twin Peaks which was a story covering two weeks from Cooper's arrival in town to the discovery of who killed Laura Palmer.

I don't think its brilliant but its entertaining enough. The series took a break for Thanks Giving/Christmas as there wasn't room on the schedule to keep the week by week thing working then they decided to extend that break to cover the winter olympics for the same reason but I think a few extra episodes are being added as result too

Its starting to show up in Channel 5's idents so it'll be back on here when it restarts in the US

Oh for FFS Harry, are you me in a parallel universe exactly one year in the past? I was with Tiscali before I moved to BT last year, they did the same think, kept taking payments off despite masses of notice, written and telephone communications. In the end I had to get the bank to block payments to them. Then they start sending me summons for money owed to them when they in fact owed money to me. It was all faint annoyance in the background though and BT were the real worry. It dragged on into June though, at the time I put it down to Tiscali being on the brink of going bust, as they were actually pretty good to deal with right up to that point.

Now mark this Harry, this is the future speaking. You think you are tied in with BT for a year, but if you don't cancel at the end of that year then without any notification your contract will be extended for another full year, complete with a penalty for early release. Its the new BT way, if you can't keep customer happy keep them trapped. How fecked is that! Even though you know'll that, when you call in good time to cancel they'll tell you that 'sorry all our systems are down we can't log your cancelation you'll need to call another time'

As for the rest of the year ahead, you're not going to get a holiday this year, the hernia op is going to go fine, but you'll be swearing at speed bumps for a month, and you're going to spend too much on Christmas but it'll be a real pleasure having all the family together and you'll have a really good time of it.

I caught part of a lovely documentary a while back featuring a really old bloke in an old folks home in the western isles, it turns out he owns the island and bought it sight-unseen in his wayward youth on the strength of an advert in the paper and has lived there ever since. He was on first name terms with most of the worlds monarchs and other greats and goods and was talking about his various international gliteratti adventures.

He was asked will all the privilege and wealth and adventure whether he had any regrets now that he was old and he said "I wish I'd planted trees when I was young"

Its all just luck and circumstance, some walks of life have a high exposure, some a low one, when I worked in a prison and spent time cooped up with people who themselves are cooped up all the time I had colds all the time. In fact I seemed to catch every cold twice – catch one in the wild, infect the prison population and it would change hands so many times it seemed like it would have evolved enough for me to catch it again two weeks later.

Now that both me and my GF work by ourselves, and we live out in the sticks I hardly every get them, one or two a year max, usually when a 2 year old nephew visits. He came to visit last weekend and right now the build up of high pressure snot is trying to push my left eyeball out of its socket.

I'm supposed to be walking up the red carpet at a movie premiere this evening and I look and feel a total drooling wreck, think I might try and break in through the fire exit instead.

It`s controversial but try 1000mg of Vitamin C a day

High doses of vitamin C show a marginal benefit amongst a population in that the number of days per year with a cold is slightly less. As an individual the difference isn't something you'd actually be able to notice measure, and it certainly wouldn't stop you from getting colds. That would be the illusive "cure for the common cold" and there isn't a cure for the common cold. There is the effective marketing of expensive piss though, and the branding of food as medicine.

Vit C or any other guff is like pushing the button at the pedestrian crossing repeatedly, its not going to do anything, but it makes you feel like you are doing something and that helps pass the time. However I would worry about all the other complex biochemical processes you are screwing up loading your system with vitamins, and I'd also worry as to why people medicate themselves when they're not sick. I think it would be healthier to save the money spent on vit c tablets, stick it in an envelope and post it to somewhere that nourishment and medication aren't quite so taken for granted.

Angela – Member
Oh Feefoo…I feel so much better now knowing that I'm not the only one to make their children clean out the fireplace!!

At least Feefoo lets them wait til the fire has gone out though 🙂

Errr NO VAT on 2nd hand cars. But there usually is for Vans. Don't let anyone b/s you on this point

Are you sure about that? A dealer will need to be vat registered if their turnover is over the threshold, which if they sell a dozen or so cars a year they will be, so the goods and services they offer will all involve VAT. Its just that unlike vans business users can't claim the vat back, so its pointless itemising it in the same way you see with vans

The other good thing about it is that it doesn't seem to result in any nasty/allergic reactions.

It makes my eyes go pink and makes the world look blurry, although some would suggest you shouldn't squirt in your eyes

skidartist – Member
When I disguise myself by wearing a pink blouse people pretend not to know me either.

coffeeking – Member
Who's adam?

see what i mean!

but a good chance of moving up the pay scale pretty quickly.

ha! only if they've blocked access to STW! 😀

When I disguise myself by wearing a pink blouse people pretend not to know me either.

should this mean that everything in it is tickety boo and will last till the next one?

no its a safety test, not a reliability test, and it only proves the roadworthyness on the day it was tested, do it could be terminally sick and unreliable, and still safe to drive on the day of the test

convenience and all that

the hire co won't mind what day of the week it is, if there is one local to you (and plenty will deliver to your door) then hire cars are convenient for occasional use. Unless you mean convenient to nip out to the shops.

One issue with cheap bangers is the risk of getting saddled with them, if you're not living somethere where you can get the car off the road then failing MOTS/tax expiring means the car is suddenly sitting on the road illegally and you've got the hassle of trying to offload it. Bangers can very suddenly become inconvenient.

Is it every weekend, most weekends or some weekends you'll be using it? If you've already got a solution for day to day transport then option three is to just hire the car / van / whatever you want.

A £500 car will still cost another £1000 or so a year, at least to tax/insure/MOT/service. Look at the weekend hire rates for cars locally, divide £1500 by that number and see how many weekends away that would fund (perhaps 20) in a newer car than your £5k option, that will always be exactly the right size and shape of car for the job. If you are going to do regular business with a hire co an account will be even cheaper, my account would get me a hire a car almost every weekend of the year for £1500

He's in quality control.

Ladies, every item of underwear you buy Hairy's facebook friend has pre-worn them for you.

I would say universal broadband would be a 'good thing' because many people are already providing services on the presumption that it is universal

Aye you spend a looooong time dying. A not insignificant chuck of the people awaiting liver transplants are due to paracetamol overdose. It annoys me with a lot of cold remedy stuff its difficult to get it without paracetamol in it and its not always that obvious in the labeling that its there.

Humans display the mechanism quite well – we tend to select partners who are very similar genetically to ourselves, even genetic traits that aren't perceptible to us. Have a look in the announcements bit of your local paper at the pictures of newlyweds and see how many got that 'couple look'. Now the people you would be most genetically similar too would be your own family but for some reason growing up in a family prevents that romantic bond from forming.

However if you get family members who have been separated at birth and later as adults they unwittingly meet, they not uncommonly fall madly in love.
Like this

I can't claim credit for this but in an old job someone stuck up a "there is no I in team" sign. Someone else stuck up under it "There is no U in team either".

I prefer the response "Theres no U in 'Competent'"

You don't need to be mad to work here, so clear your desk.

have a whip round and hire a hitman……..quicker and easier than trying to stick to the rules and guaranted to solve the problem

I can have someone killed for £2000 plus bus fare, but if you have a specific target rather than some random bystander that costs a quite a bit more, and I have a terrible memory for names and faces so I'm still not promising anything.

If you can get the same excess as you have with your own policy then that seems fair enough to me. Like I say its not a £250 penalty if there's damage, just the cost of repair upto £250.

The inspection the car gets on return won't be any more rigourous that the one you and the hire co give it when you collect it, just be thorough and you'll be fine

I'm having one off those months..

don't pick it up til monday then!

If it was you hiring direct then you should be able to get a damage waiver (insurance that pays the excess of any claims for damage). The excess the waiver is protecting you is usually in the order of £100 if you are a cash customer. If you are having the car hired for you – provided as a courtesy – then the deal is whatever the hirers have paid for. They'll have a trade account of some sort and get a preferential price.

Thats why they are offering to supply you with a hire car, rather than giving you money to hire one, they can hire it cheaper than you, by quite a factor.

I've got a trade account for hire vehicles as I own a van, but not a car (and sometimes need bigger vans). I pay about half what a cash customer would pay for vehicles, but the trade off for that is can't get a waiver, so I'm liable for the first £500 of any damage I might do. However that doesn't mean that any damage costs me £500, it means any damage costs what it reasonably costs to repair, upto £500. Now as the account holder I'm liable for that £500 no matter who I have driving the vehicle, so the buck stops with me, unless I make a explicit arrangement with the driver.

So if you are having the car hired for you, you should check with the hirer as to what the deal is and what the liabilities are.

More people are staying in to drink, rather than going out, right across europe, so local factors such as fag bans, choice, pricing or taxation count for less than the changing of the times.

The smoking ban is a ban on all public buildings, not just pubs, so unless theres been a corresponding drop in the takings of motorway service stations, pet shops and massage palours then its not a key factor.

The most interesting outcome from the ban though is that many smokers now don't consider their own home to be a suitable place to smoke either

Does it open the doors to copyright infringement, or try to shut them. At the moment people publish their photos on the internet in a form that makes them ripe for theft and reproduction – if you post a picture, either for business or pleasure, I can take it, host it, reproduce it and claim it as yours, mine, anybodies whether for profit or fun, whether you sanction it or not. And its still as fresh as the image you posted, its not like photocopies and tape to tape, theres no degradation as part of the piracy.

Theres no framework to protect images on the internet, so people post their images…. and thats it. If its good (or cute, or stupid) and people get excited about it it'll get re-hosted and re-posted so many times you might not be able to trace the owner or know the terms it was published under no matter how hard you try. Thats crap for some people, but the internet would practically stop if it didn't happen.

If you create legislation that requires to the copyright owner to be responsible for making their work identifiable and traceable if they want to retain copyright then at least theres a rule and you can choose whether to play or not. Either don't put your pictures out there, or except that if you do you are making them available copyright-free, or identify your work. I'm sure there are ways of making your work identifiably yours, digitally, without that identification being visible, for instance if I post a picture I've taken, if you know how to look then you could find all the other pictures taken with my camera that are on the internet. So why not make deliberate use of that digital fingerprint?

The smoking ban coincides with a decline in pubs, in scotland at least there thought to be more people encouraged to go to pubs than discouraged, and given the near universal compliance it would seem smokers are as supportive of the ban as anyone else. You need to look elsewhere for causes – for instance younger drinkers tend to drink before they go out, and just have little top-ups while they are out, so they are not actually buying very much booze. I've seen young (and not all that young) city suits in Glasgow necking a bottle of Bucky by the bins outside their own office before their post-work tipple.

I think the smoking ban is irrelevant too, at the time some pub owners were insistent on telling the world and their customers that there was no reason to go to the pub if you couldn't smoke, but I'm pretty sure that if the reason to go to a pub was to smoke you wouldn't be able to smoke your own fags in them, you'd need to buy them in there (just like I can't sit in a cafe and eat a packed lunch).

I don't think smokers were paying £3 a pint to just to have somewhere to sit and smoke their own fags, I think social interaction, fun, entertainment might have been why they were sitting in a pub smoking their fags. I don't think those same smokers are now resolutely sitting on their own at home with a fag and a can in lonely silence (any more often than usual).

Theres a general reduction in the number of people going to pubs because there are generally more things to do of an evening these days, whether you go out or stay in.

I mean its beer-oclock, its nearly the weekend, and here we all are on the internet.

Take the kidnapping> organ-harvesting> limb and eye grafting route. Its expensive and time consuming but it pays in the long run.

However your next shag may be your last