As someone who seems to be doing a lot of weekends away, I find TA very useful – and you can usually tell who the muppet reviewers are. I’d be more worried about the increasing number of restaurants which actively push people to do TA reviews, and some of the ludicrously favourable reviews for very average places.

And edhornbyseems to be missing the point of TA, which is to have honest reviews, not a massive love-in.

Used the Valspar premium emulsion to paint a kitchen 6 months ago in a strong bright colour and actually it was rather good – only needed a single coat even going over a pale wall.

I can’t speak to the ordinary stuff, but I was surprised how good it was

No such thing as a safe effective appetite suppressant, there is a reason why you have to get them off mates, or from rather dodgy Docs in the private sector.

You need to alter your relationship with food, and stop looking for quick fixes, as they don’t last.

If I locked you in a room with 1200 kCal a day and an exercise bike, you’d lose weight.

Deefer

Had Corian fitted in last place – done cheaply by a Scottish outfit who were excellent and came to the South Coast to do it. No scratching in heavy usage for about 10 years

We fitted a Franke Composite sink in Black. Stainless steel just looks cheap and feels tinny to me.

Or put down cheap slate… Worked when we took up a dry old composite utility room floor and put down posh vinyl. Bubbled after 2 or 3 weeks..

ebay not proving helpful for 18 inch wheels…
16″ no problem!

Trouble is it is an uncommon variant – the diesel navplus – new the year before – and not enough of them have been scrapped yet!

suburbanreuben – good shout – will try

As for the OP.. You’re possibly liking for a fight with your friend where perhaps there isn’t a fight to have.. You should definitely be exploring your motives and maybe even questioning your friendship

thread closed…

anyway – we are all Prosecco socialists now down south… 🙂

Genuinely perplexed by this thread. The OP seems jealous and annoyed and confused by her friend.

Why should she sell her house for less than she thinks it is worth? Having left wing beliefs doesn’t mean having to give away all your posessions to the first person who comes along. Getting the maximum you can for your house doesn’t preclude being charitable in other things. 😕

Not really.
French hospital medicine is rather good. Unless you are in Paris in August.
French general practice is weird, poorly paid in many places, and prescribes stuff the rest of Europe stopped using 40 years ago.

All systems have their problems. Ours is mainly a combination of entrenched inefficiency and high-handedness by some managers and consultants, and continuing political meddling.

Most people probably do want their Doctor to be relatively bright.

These days most bright people can find less stressful ways to earn more money without every politician, forumite and Daily Mail reader having a go at them, and without the moronic government initiatives and reorganisations we deal with on a yearly basis.

Those who think that the current pay is enough may be correct in emotional terms, but the market simply doesn’t worklike that. Reducing pay of a workforce which is already inadequate, and can go and do other things, is dumb,

It’s very simple really, but some people posting above will be whinging when the NHS really goes downhill, as it will, over the next few years. And by then it will take 10 years to undo the damage.

We do have medical students with us for quite a lot of the year, but by the time they reach us they have been subject to a culture of contempt on the part of many hospital Drs.

And I think that the current admissions criteria are leading to well motivated and intelligent medical students, but not always ones who really like people.

They want to Meet, Treat and Street the patients.

I’ve picked up two people with Pulmonary Emboli, someone with nephrotic syndrome and some other stuff in the last 2 weeks, but my favourite moment was receiving a bit of the birthday cake from a 90 year old’s party.

Lemonysam

The job has changed, I spend tons of time doing acute medicine, diagnosing cancers, managing Diabetes to a better standard than the Hospital, Working in close collaboration with the Cardiologists. We can do or organise almost every outpatient test. I’d love to see more trivial stuff every now and then! By the time I send someone to a Consultant, we have investigated them to well beyond junior Dr levels.

But junior Drs don’t know this. I go and spend days observing how my hospital colleagues work. The other way around? – never happened…

But your point about personality is well taken. For my job you have to like people, like knowing them, like acute medicine, and be happy managing and living with risk. That doesn’t apply to many of the current intake.

The Juniors are getting screwed.

Private work for many Consultants has all but evaporated – not that I have huge sympathy with them about this…

And us GPs who everyone thinks screwed the Labour Government in 2004 and made shedloads, are in fact now earning less after inflation than we were before 2004 and working 30-50% harder.

Some simple truths.
1) The NHS is too big a trainset for any new Government to leave alone. They just have to meddle. 👿
2) People are getting older, healthier and expecting more.
3) One of the most poorly thought of professions, Politicians, are deliberately running down the image and public opinion of Drs – one of the best thought of.
4) The NHS was probably at its best 4-5 years ago, and waiting list and quality-wise is beginiing to hit the buffers.
5) The 7 day NHS issue applies in every single country. We do not have the money or the manpower ready to solve it.
6) There is a huge huge recruitment crisis in General Practice, and for me, and a lot of my cohort in our last 10 years of practice (30 Doctoring down, hopefully 7-8 to go), the Government’s behaviour, attitude to pensions and to “the 7 day NHS” is encouraging us to leave earlier than we would have, and not to consider working reduced hours etc.

Mr Lee on the migrant issue

£13 + £2 tip, and thats inside the M25 in Surrey. Good value really.

Partner has her hair coloured trimmed styled etc etc, and the usual place has just gone up to £135. She’s found somewhere else which is a bargain at £100 😯

Exactly the same with my partner’s macbook air.

Bookmarking this thread to look for solutions!

Free speech means hearing and seeing things you don’t agree with, like or find tasteful.

If someone is lying, defaming, inciting hatred or public panic there should be sanctions on that person.

Just because you think a cartoon, speech or article is tasteless, tacky, offensive or poor quality doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t defend the right of people to publish it.

The success of democracy and freedom is tested by the way it deals with hard cases, not easy things on which all can agree.

gonzy They are taking a risk for sure, but it is a risk we need people to take. People need to speak out and challenge this stuff. Society benefits and you should be supporting their right to do this, even if, once you’ve actually understood their point, you disagree with them.

As a Dr, not part of the culture these days, and never was really more than a lunchtime pint if on-call was quiet at a weekend.

We did used to crack open a bottle of wine at the close of play on Friday.

Happy days

tpbiker Good points, but I’d argue that single image has already become totemic in a way similar to the girl running from napalm, the monk on fire etc from Vietnam days. But what we have had is partly a death-of-Diana type mass hand-wringing, which may only last a few weeks before business and apathy as usual, and I think work like the CH cartoon might encourage a deeper look at our own values and attitudes. And to get that across needed a certain shock value.

We have dozens of religions and political ideas in the world with conflicting views and rules. They should all be accorded equal lack of respect. The correct response to a cartoon is not a mass murder, and the OP still doesn’t get how the “they’ve got it coming” is a cowardly self-censoring stance.

No – it wasn’t insulting someone – it wasn’t objectively wrong – one group of people thought it was wrong but that doesn’t make it so. And the analogy of going upto someone in the street and telling them they were fat was a poor one.

We need to work on stopping people from punching people in the face when words or pictures or thoughts upset them, and get them to respone with words, with cartoons, with arguments. We shouldn’t cave to their sensitivities, or yours.

JY – read my post again – at which, ironically, you seem determined to take offense. It doesn’t say everyone who doesn’t get the Cartoons is any of those things. Just that the OP is talking about a situation where he thinks a certain sector of the population will take offense…

nickjb has it on the nail. There is no right not to be offended.

Not sure why some people seem so offended or puzzled that they don’t get a particular comedian.

I don’t get Broccoli or Thrash Metal. That means that I don’t like them, not that they are bad.

Not liking or getting Stewart Lee doesn’t mean that he isn’t funny.

The question is, do we want all comment and satire to be at a level where everyone, however thick, bigoted or determined to take offence, cannot take exception?

I’d say a rather big “no”. But obviously the OP doesn’t see that it is western values in the first cartoon, and assumptions of inferiority of Islam in the second that are being criticised. There is an argument that the child’s image is being used “too soon”, but on the other hand it took the using of that image to bring about a worldwide reaction to actually do the right thing, which we all should have done months ago.

Look at how bad our satirical news coverage is in the UK. In the US they have the Daily Show, John Oliver, and until recently, Colbert. We have, mock the week… We need a Charlie Hebdo, rather than a smug establishment organ like Private Eye.

You want food? You get Tractors and Lorries. Tough.

Caravans on the other hand… 😈

@Bez, loving the irony in your work…

Not everyone has to like every comedian. And their dislike does not mean the comedian isn’t funny. He/her is just not for them.

I find Peter Kay smug, lazy and full of hack material. Lots love him.
Michael McIntyre – over exposed and not my favourite, but obviously hugely skilled and very good at what he does.

Off to see Stewart Lee again in 8 days. His wife is often better though… 🙂

Seen Romesh live, and he’s very good.. If you want to learn more about him you could do worse than listen to the podcast peacock and gamble did interviewing him before he got the high profile.

Stewart Lee isn’t for everyone and doesn’t want to be. Very good live in smaller venues, if a bit meta.

Lots of comedians become the thing of the month, Katherine Ryan for instance, also clever and very good live. but might seem a bit overexposed at the moment.

My grandfather used to live opposite a Moskovich garage in Northampton. Later it sold Ladas, but it never sold petrol.

Half way between his house and mine was a canal boat museum.

I am not going to buy a decent bike from you without a lot of proof of ownership and identity unless you meet me at your home or your workplace

yes 🙂

A forrester saved me and my family’s life when we were hit head on at night by a numpty who fell asleep, Estimated combined impact speed 100mph. Brand loyalty ever since. So I feel your pain 🙁

Decent upper level burgers. Decent fries
GBK is better, Byron is worse
Their system works
Kids like their multi flavor drink machines.
Cost to match. More than MacDs, less than Byron as far as I recall.

Davey Down. good stuff, not that expensive, awesome service. greatfor Duvets too.

once, as good as…

Shortlisted candidate, interviewed by the Partners, one was nearly asleep, another seemed completely pissed, the others hassled.

When they asked me if I had any questions, I asked them which twit had chosen the colour scheme for the building. At which point the interview ended, and someone said to me as they showed me out that they presumed I was no longer interested.

Met the bloke I would have replaced a few years later. I’d made the right call… 🙂

Did the sports car, did more skiing, took up MTBing. But then looked at where I was, and a few relationships on, amicable divorce in progress, I am with someone I love to bits.

To call it an MLC is a bit pejorative. Sometimes we get an opportunity to look at our lives and change them. Uncertainty is scary, but creative and exhilarating. If you are happy with where you are in life, good for you. If you aren’t and you think you can be happy, do think about it. YOLO as those young people say…

Try http://en.parisinfo.com/paris-museum-monument/71499/Musée-des-égouts-de-Paris if she isn’t too girlie…

The Musee de la magie is good for kids.

The Marais area is cool to stroll around.

Is that Mark’s Teal?

(Oh, how I’ve been waiting for that!)

well I liked it CFH… 🙂

54 and having a lot of fun.
And went to Ibiza with friends last year, probably won’t go again.
In a new and great relationship and traveling a fair amount.
I won’t say it is always easy, and there are ups and downs, but enjoying it.