i’d imagine the funds would be used to encourage commercial investment.

How is £150 million a year going to encourage any commercial investment of £3 billion?

Option 2 sounds good but how secure will it be? Public spending will be cut by whichever party wins the next election and I’d suspect contractors will be the first to go.

Will the tax stay at £6.00? Will it be hypothecated just for this purpose contrary to the treasury’s stance on any other tax in this country? Will it remain on landlines or will it be extended over time to include mobiles? We have to be very careful agreeing to any new tax as once its in place it tempting for governments to abuse it.

The tax will raise £150 million per year. Cost of taking land line broadband to those parts of the country that don’t already have it is £3 billion.

This is cynical revenue raising exercise.

Is it really that bad…?

Afraid so.

Brown just doesn’t get it does he. After the expenses fiasco the electorate want disclosure and accountability. He was forced into this by his backbenchers and by making it secret and delaying it beyond the next election its just coming across as if he’s playing a cynical political game- which is just what he is doing- instead of having a genuine attempt at getting to the truth. This from the man who as Chancellor effectively paid for the war but was somehow strangely invisible at the time.

I’m faster on FS mainly because I can see where I’m going due to my eyeballs not being vibrated so much.

I wear Raceface FR armour depending on the terrain. Used it for 3-4 hour XC rides no problem. Wouldn’t bother with it locally but would definitely use it somewhere rocky like the Peak District and also trail centres where I’d be tempted to push the envelope a bit.

Cycling gear seems to be all over the place sizing wise. For non cycling clothing I’m a large. Most Italian cycling stuff is made really small so I generally end up with XL or XXL. The Endura FS260 shorts I have are XL whilst my Specialized ones are L. Becuase of this I refuse to buy cycling clothes on line and always try on before I buy.

Yes it has a Floyd Rose tremelo!, it’s a flying V and it’s black

Nothing wrong with a Floyd Rose I’ve never had any problem with them and they’re a hell of a lot more stable than a non locking trem.

Does your lad play standing up all the time? If not then a Flying V shape will be very awkward to play seated.

But my mum was a lovely person, not some evil, twisted, war mongering, poor hating harpy

Oh you mean not like Tony Blair then

If you want something that’s fun to ride on the road at weekends as well I’d recommend one of these

Its one of the few pedigree road frames around that can take proper mudguards and has rack mounts. I use mine for occasional commuting. Its mainly used for recreational road riding throughout the year so I splashed out on Shimano 105 and full mudguards. Practical but still racy and light enough to ride quickly.

Five blade razors. Just imagine the R&D meeting.

” Right the punters bought it that our three blade razor shaved them closer. We need something new for this year what’s it going to be?”

“How about sticking another couple of blades on and spending a fortune on advertising- it worked before?”

Great idea- right who’s going down the pub?

As an aside, the Polish Government is currently running a campaign to persuade Poles to stay in the UK by making them aware of their benefit entitlements as a ploy to reduce the impact on their own benefit system.

The Polish women at my missus’s place of work openly admit to coming to Britain so they can have their babies on the NHS as the Polish alternative sucks (not literally!).

Cycling is non impact, restricted range of motion and your weight is supported. When walking your legs have to support your weight and your hamstrings are being stretched more which probably contributed to the soreness walking.

I better contribute here as I find myself in the strange position of agreeing with TJ which doesn’t happen very often.

Just now the North Sea oil revenues roughly balance the subsidy given to Scotland (yes TJ is right about London being an even greater subsidy junkie than Scotland). If an independent Scotland were allowed to keep the declining oil revenue this would give them breathing space to try to find a replacement source of income. As TJ says its not a sure thing but if my fellow countrymen can recover their entrepreneurial flair and invention and become less dependent on the state then it could work.

What do you mean “stop being deliberately obtuse” ? Don’t you mean, “stop disagreeing with me” ?

Well if you genuinely couldn’t spot that that was the subtext of Nu Labour’s message then I guess you’re not being obtuse- just gullible

Stop being deliberately obtuse GG.

No he wasn’t. No one really knew what Blair stood for. In fact, even he didn’t know.

That’s how he won elections.

I thought he won with the message of ” I know you like Tory policies but you don’t like the Tories. Vote for Nu Labour I’ve removed the socialist bit from Labour so you can have the policies without the Tories”

Yes they are are rip off if you buy in the UK. Just get them from Germany.

Is that being a slick media operator like Blair or Cameron?

Yes amongst other things if that’s what it takes. Blair no matter what you think of him is a natural communicator as is Cameron.

I’m no admirer of Blair but he’s more than just a slick media operator. Anyone who can get labour to drop clause three and make them electable again has got considerable leadership ability.

Have a look out of your window Capt Jon and you’ll probably see the chemical complex at Billingham. Looks plenty heavy to me. Don’t have any stats but it must employ a fair number even if it runs efficient continuous processes which don’t require much in the way of labour.

What the muffin man said. Those in the know reckon that put in the same car the drivers would all be within 0.5 sec a lap of each other.

For example we now have no train manufacturers so if we want to buy new trains we have to buy German or French.

Really? How about GEC Alsthom? OK its not 100% British but its a 50:50 venture between British GEC and French Alsthom.

We have a steel industry and a small coal industry. Land Rover and Jaguar still survive albeit under foreign ownership.

We’ve also got a large chemical industry a lot of which I’d say was heavy- and with one exception I can think of its never received any subsidy.

The salvageable bits of those industries were salvaged. Its just they were much smaller than what they replaced.

Surely if these policies were good for Britain, then Tories would be more than happy for Labour to ‘steal them’ ?

Come on Ernie you can do better than that. You’re just trolling now.

Keeping the industries going would also keep the communities wealthy

Yes it would but it redirects resources away from more productive industry resulting in long term harm to the economy.

Those industries aren’t inherently inefficient, just look at the Nissan plant in Sunderland – aptly in an area that suffered after heavy manufacturing was decimated. And even though some sectors have been privatised – trains – they now recieve a bigger subsidy than under govt ownership!

Agree they are not inherently inefficient now. I assumed the poster was blaming the reduction in heavy industry to the Tory’s policies of removing subsidies and privatisation during the 70s and 80s.

It was based around huge numbers of workers paying into a big NI pot. Sadly, someone came along and decided to do away with this huge NI paying workforce and replace it with a smaller workforce many of whom would be self employed sub contractors paying less in the way of NI.

Guess you mean shipbuilding, coal mining, steel production and car manufacture. Inefficient industries that couldn’t survive without subsidy.

No point in debating it with you tho – you mind is obviously closed

As is yours TJ!

No but its his fault the country was in so much debt going into the crisis that paying off that plus what he’s spent on saving the banks will take us the next 30 years to pay off.

He’s also spent the last 7 years pouring money into unreformed public services which is the equivalent of trying to pump up a punctured tyre.

Oh and every year he dips his filthy mitts into our pension funds and over the last 10 years has helped himself to 100 billion contributing massively to the decline of a pension system that was the envy of the world whilst the public sector sit on unfunded final salary schemes.

Is that enough to be going on with?

Two adults and two large children. Rubbish and recycling collected on alternate weeks. Rubbish wheelie bin is deliberately small to encourage recycling- fine if the local council (Wiltshire) would accept for recycling the two largest components of our recyclable rubbish which is cardboard and plastic. I usually have to jump up and down in the wheelie bin to get the rubbish to fit. If it doesn’t I then get a snotty note threatening not to collect the rubbish. If they ever did that I’d dump the lot at the door of the council offices. If they accepted cardboard and plastic for recycling there’d be no problem. Bl00dy local government and its half thought out policies.

Border terriers are OK if you can put up with the piercing yap they have.

I think the naysayers are saying that if you believe it will work it will. Sounds like a good recommendation to me

Then wouldn’t it be better to believe in a more convenient quack remedy like homeopathy? Its non-invasive and swallowing a sugar pill is a lot faster and probably cheaper than lying on a bench having someone stick pins into you.

For my taste, a ride with more than about5 people on it is too big and is doomed to turn into a giant faff-and-puncture-a-thon.

Totally agree.

Also the Howgills are hardly “back country”

Actually we do know how. Its a combination of the placebo effect and reversion to the mean.

It’s only worth it if you can find a decent acupuncturist

and you know this how? Because your brother is an acupuncturist and told you? Not biased advice then.

there’s certain stuff she refuses to go to a “western” GP for cos its not as effective as accupuncture.

On what data did she base that decision on then?

Properly blinded trials studying the effectiveness of acupuncture for back pain found no statistically significant effect for acupuncture. However trials that were not blinded i.e. where the patients knew whether they were being given proper acupuncture or not showed a massive statistically significant effect for acupuncture- the placebo effect is amazingly strong.

In case you’re wondering the placebo control for acupuncture is “sham” acupuncture using fake needles or needles put in the “wrong” places

BTW Ernie, science is quite happy about why bumblebees can fly.

I’m constantly disappointed by so called classics that I feel I have to read in order to call myself educated and literate. Maybe I’m just a philistine. This includes.

Tale of Two Cities- did they really make a film about this turgid nonsense

Moby Dick- found out a lot about the New England whaling industry but not a lot else

Heart of Darkness- same as for Tale of Two Cities only the movie (Apocalypse Now) was much better

Anybody actually know how much the govt make in taxes from smoking/ drinking? Is it more than they then pay out via the NHS for smoking/ drink related treatment?

They make more than it costs to treat the results of it on the NHS. I reckon the level of tax is finely calculated to bring in a positive return whilst allowing Governments to claim they are doing their bit to reduce smoking and drinking by making it more expensive.