We need to teach kids imperial measurements because once Brave Dave leads us out of the EU we will be able revert to pounds shillings and pence.

It all makes sense.

Fist fights caused over what station to listen to?

They also want to raise the personal allowance to £13,500.

I think they might need to do more than scrap foreign aid to pay for that.

Perhaps they would be more convincing if they jsut offered free coke and hookers to everyone.

accepted above that ‘the sort of service you expect’ does not necessarily have anything to do with money,

But I don’t accept that. I believe it has quite a lot to do with money, amongst other things.

At what point is the NHS properly funded?

Simple answer – At the point it is able to deliver the sort of service you expect.

My point is that finding more funding may or may not be possible and may or may not be acceptable to the electorate whatever our own personal political stances on the matter..

Perhaps we could have a referendum.

“Should we pay more tax in order to properly fund the NHS – yes/no”

But politicians don’t seem to like devolving power to the people 🙁

Is medical insurance like any other insure?

i.e. its gerat if you never have to use it, or only use it once. But if you’re unfortunate enough to have to make a couple of claims your premiums go through roof, even if you can get someone to sell you a policy.

And we are all going to need to make a claim under some sort compulsory health insurance at some time.

I just can see how it fits in with providing long term quality health care. Particulalry into old age.

That’s another thing. Modern incarnations of fairy tales seem to have become diluted over time. The original versions are often much more grim(m).

I think the originals weren’t just meant for kids.

Did anyone else have Struwelpeter (sp?) as a kid?

I remeber that! Isn’t there a story in it about a kid who gets his thumbs cut off by a guy wielding a giant pair of scisssors? With gory illustrations as well.

“I needed a wee”

Did he really just say that?

That was a big margin

Never paid more than 30 quid for a pair of Vans.
Outlets and sales all over the place.

Must be the same for Cons?

We obviously have a difference of opinion of what is “overpriced” for a pair of plimsolls 😀

The idiot shadow health secretary actually thought the land registry recorded house values and didn’t realise it was sale prices, not until he had this explained to him by the Andrew O’Neill of the BBC.

I don’t disagree with you, but what is the difference between house value and sale price?

Buy yourself a pair.

It won’t be long before you realise they are overpriced crap. Then give them to your daughter. She can probably wear them with a nice pair of woolly socks.

despite the fact the public sector had few redundancies and even fewer wage cuts over the last 5 years, on average still earn more, retire earlier, get more paid time off, take more time off sick and get pension contributions about 6 x more than the average in the private sector,.

This is one of the biggest challenges in any conversations about wages.

Despite the fact that the “public sector” is the fastest shrinking employer in the country, that wages have been falling since 2008, that public sector staff jobs pay less than the equivalent private sector jobs, that public sector staff will be retiring at 67 like everyone else, tha public sector staff take the same annual leave and have less time off sick you still get people making huge generalisation and assuming its still 1973.

OK I’m sold, where do I sign?

Just wait until I establish the People’s Democratic Republic of Wessex.

You can be the minister for education (Its an honorary post of course, as all the money will go on teachers).

The wages are good enough to attract people, just not good ones.

So to attract and retain the good ones you need to pay more.

Apparently this works for city bankers and business executives.

All of which misses the point that fireman, police, teachers, ambulance people are all trained and a great expense by the government, get in post and then piss off and teachers are in short supply. Its a massive waste of money.

This is because these are “vocations”. You don’t do it the for the money. Or so the government (of whatever political persuasion) believe.

Contrast this with the treatment of MPs and senior civil servants. They have to be given a good remuneration to attract the right quality of candidate away from the lucrative private sector (or something like that).

School my niece used to work at is going down the NHS route. They can’t get staff in the Uk so they are looking to recruit newly qualified teachers from Spain.

Meanwhile niece is quite happy working as a private tutor, cramming kids for their maths GCSEs. Its teaching but without all the shit (apparently).

There is no shortage of qualified teachers in the UK. Just a shortage of those prepared to do the work for the price the government is willing to pay. I image it will become the same with paramedics/firemen etc. etc.

vague promises of a move into broad sunlit socialist uplands,

No, they weren’t…

Damn…. if only you’d said that earlier, I wouldn’t have voted “yes”. 😀

We request that Buffs are worn around the neck and not on the head

Next there will be a health and safety note on the dangers of strangulation.

Which basically leaves us with the Green Party, or maybe the Libs (although I think the Greens will have more influence).

Well last week the SNP seemed to be making vague promises of a move into broad sunlit socialist uplands, but only in an independant Scotland.

Perhaps they could be persuadd to move their border south by about 400 miles.

Its survey of 700 graduates found that six out of 10 were working in a field or profession not related to the degree they studied.

so maybe teachers are doing better than the average?

But most degrees will not qualify you to work in a profession. A teaching qualification is profession specific. Therefore you would expect all/most qualified teachers to go into teaching.

On the other hand you wouldn’t expect all/most history graduates to become professional historians.

So the comparison doesn’t work.

Thinking about the original post – I know more people who used to be a paramedic than I do current paramedics.

That weather map is really annoying wherever you live.

I don’t think it was deliberately chosen annoy the Scots.

Has anyone actually been to a trail centre and whilst riding the trails come across a queue of people?

You’ve never ridden Swinley on a bank holiday weekend then?

You come across groups the same as you do when out riding natural stuff…

I can ride “natural” stuff for a couple of hours and meet one or two walkers/horse riders and no cyclists. And I live in the over crowded south east.

I like trail centres, but apart from Swinley they are all at least a couple of hours drive away. For me, the fun on the trail doesn’t really make up for hours spent in the car.

Starship Troopers. (I imagine that got slated) Although I think you have to be familiar with Heinlein’s militaristic rantings in the original novel to appreciate it fully.

I like Smart Sam’s in 700×35. A CX pal used to use them at pre-facelift Swinley (think deep mud and wet roots)and never had much problem with grip.

Do you always need the bracket? Would it attach directly to a saddle with saddlebag loops?

Given that intelligence is strongly hereditary, you would expect bright parents to do well, perhaps send their kids to private school and perhaps their kids would be bright enough to get to Oxbridge.

I remeber being told years ago that you couldn’t breed for intelligence. ie. The offspring of two brighter than average parents will most likey be less intelligent than the parents, not more.

Mind you the person who told me that was a woman, a teacher and a member of the “old” labour party. So she would say thay, wouldn’t she.

I’ve got the cheaper one of these with a 1TB drive. It’s OK and was much cheaper and less faff than anything else I looked at. (eg Sonos with NAS)

http://www.cocktailaudio.co.uk/

You can stream from it as well if you can be arsed.

The more expensive one is supposed to be a bit more HiFi. Perhaps you could “audition” it 🙂

Ripped mine and put them all in a cardboard box. Then realised I preferred using CDs in some situations.

So I got a cheap (£25) bookcase from homebase. You can’t really tell its cheap beech effect chipboard as it full of CD’s.

Those IKEA CD racks look nice, but if you need three of them they work out a bit pricey.

If corporation tax is based on the location of economic activity, how come Amazon pay’s bugger in in the UK?

I think Corporation tax is paid on the profit a company reports in the particular country it is incorporated (ie. where it renders its annual accounts). Threatening to move your registered office from Edinburgh to London could be a real threat.

But that profit can also be reduced by offsetting against previous years losses or losses reported by closely linked companies.

One sleight of hand involves moving your profit into a low tax juristiction. Thats why there are so many brass plates in places like Bermuda. If Scotland reduced its CT rate to, say 2%, it would be in order to attract the brass plates, not necessarily actual business activity.

(I’m sure a tax accountant could point out errors in what I just wrote).

I am not suggesting that SSBN’s are the most efficient job creation schemes, however, once they close the immediate effect on the surrounding area will be dramatic.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the submarine bases stay where they are for the time being.

rUK will just lease them form the Scottish government.

Thinking about the arguments for greater devolution within England.

I’m wondering if, about 10 years after a yes vote, we will see the highlands and islands arguing for greater devolution/independance because scottish policies are seen as too Glasgow/Edinburgh centric.

he was explaining that in the event of a yes vote, it is almost certain that retail prices would rise in scotland at some stage following the split.

Interesting. What was his reasoning ?

What’s the chance of this scenario:
1. Yes wins
2. The negotiations start. Likely to be messy but eventually come out with an agreement – e.g. currency, division of the debt, division of oil reserves.
3. rUK says, as this impacts the English, Northern Irish and Welsh wealth and prosperity (at a time when the future looks very uncertain), we think it should go to a referendum – as a condition of accepting the deal.

I think 2. is more likely to result in some sort of fudged compromise where no one is particularly happy but all the politicians, of whatever persuasion, can proclaim a “victory” and that they were right all along.

What tyres for leaping Hadrian’s Wall in Steve McQueen Great Escape style? (From England to Free Scotland.)

See, this is another thing that worries me. Hadrian’s wall is actually quite far into England. So will there be a long running and bitter border dispute over who gets half of Newcastle?.

Or do we turn England north of the Wall into some kind of Korean style DMZ?

Assuming there is a yes vote, I can see Scotland going through something a bit like the opposite of the five stages of grief.

1. Euphoria

Hooray, we’re independent. We’ve got rid of those tory ****.

2. Anxiety

Oh shit… what do we do next?

3. Bargaining

Err… you know we said we wanted independence? Well what we meant by independence was…

4. Anger

It was those bloody politicians, they tricked us into it. Again!

5. Denial

Well I never voted for it. Did you?

And if there is a no vote there will be an eternity of Scottish politicians commenting on every issue with “This would never have happened in an independent Scotland.”

That was ALWAYS going to be moved to other countries because they can simply do it cheaper. It was inevitable, that’s got nothing to do with government policy.

I seem to remember that this was a result of Government policy. In ’79 and ’83 the nation had the choice of this or withdrawl from the EU, trade tariffs and a semi planned economy. (At least I think thats what labour wanted at the time.)

The only way round that is protectionism, and that never a good idea.

That’s what 30 years of a market economy would have us belive. Some of us may be better off materially, but has it made Binners, or our friends in Scotland any happier?

Why? what are you lot doing, leave Hampshire alone I tell ya’s

Dont worry, the Wessex Regionalists will look after you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wessex_Regionalist_Party