then retire early and will move
over there in about 8 years time

Mind out, son. Then you’ll be a bloody immigrant.

Mary Lorson

Maybe they’re actually finished and they’re just really tall, small houses with no windows.

I think your frequency of pay is a good guide – if you’re paid weekly, then give a week’s notice, monthly, a month.

I’ve managed until now without one, but I can’t help feeling there is stuff I’m missing out on

You could apply that equally to not having the opposite gender’s genitalia, but on reflection you might be better sticking with what you know.

A selection of pies, pasties and sausage rolls, then eclairs and jam donuts, delivered to your desk, hourly.

I work in a north eastern city I won’t name, and that’s healthy grazing here…

DezB – Can we take from your confrontational tone that either:

a) You’re a shareholder/employee
b) You’re a customer?

Shhh. Let them get on with it. This could be the world’s first healthy snack-based scrap…

“Did you spill my pulses, you c***…”

How moronic can you get?!

I’d rather listen to moronic nonsense (the aforementioned Joy Divison Oven Gloves at least made me laugh when I looked up the lyric).

This, true or not,

She’ll put on her make-up and brushes her long blonde hair

makes me weep.

when I was sick in the car

I know the feeling. Happens to me every time “Wonderful Tonight” comes on the radio.

Does it all being true make the lyric better or worse, I wonder..?

I may come round to your house and throw each one of my free nuts at you one by one

I’d do as he said, or he might get really nasty and reach for the pumpkin seeds.

No, he definitely wrote it.

Death it is, then…..

No – horrible torture, then death, if he actually wrote it…

Possibly after running out of other people’s good songs to murder, Clapton knocked out this inane toss:

It’s late in the evening; she’s wondering what clothes to wear.
She’ll put on her make-up and brushes her long blonde hair.
And then she asks me, “Do I look all right?”
And I say, “Yes, you look wonderful tonight.”

We go to a party and everyone turns to see
This beautiful lady that’s walking around with me.
And then she asks me, “Do you feel all right?”
And I say, “Yes, I feel wonderful tonight.”

I feel wonderful because I see
The love light in your eyes.

And the wonder of it all
Is that you just don’t realize how much I love you.
It’s time to go home now and I’ve got an aching head,
So I give her the car keys and she helps me to bed.

And then I tell her, as I turn out the light,
I say, “My darling, you were wonderful tonight.
Oh my darling, you were wonderful tonight.”

And even if he didn’t actually write it (anyone know?), performing it alone should have been punishable by death. “I give her the car keys”???…FFS…

I know I shouldn’t bite – but this opinion is incorrect

There’s nothing to bite about – I wasn’t goading Paul McCartney fans. I was offering an opinion, which to be fair is no more “incorrect” than yours. I don’t dispute McCartney’s ability, but I genuinely believe that it was Lennon’s maverick genius that lifted them above a lot of their contemporaries.

Strikes me that McCartney made the Beatles marketable, but any genuine edge and brilliance was down to Lennon. Maybe there was some kind of synergy between the two that helped, but without Lennon they would probably have been Freddie and the Dreamers. Or as Alan Partidge put it, “Who are Wings? They’re only the band the Beatles could have been.”

I’m starving

Relatively starving, I presume? You first world whinger. 😀

I was asking what the point of your argument is. six pages of this relentless drivel on a (relatively insignificant) UK bike forum is. I mean, we could have actually done something worthwhile with all that effort, but instead, I and many others spent a whole weekend arguing on the aforementioned bike forum. ALL EFFING WEEKEND. Woo, yay! Go me!

FTFY.

FFS.

Well if it’s such a sad thing to do, why the f*** are you sitting on here complaining about it??? Surely being such an interesting bloke, you should be out leading your amazingly interesting life???

Why yes, you really are smart. That’s exactly what I said, isn’t it?

I didn’t say it was what you said, I was asking what the point of your argument is.

The levels of poverty in the UK are nowhere near real poverty.

and what..?

You want masses of kids drinking dirty water and dying of preventable diseases before you think it’s actually a problem?

I generally suffer less from German(etc.) beers brewed under the old Reinheitsgebot or whatever it’s called, which ensures purity and no chemicals. The worst offender for me is Carling. Pure chemical p*ss.

Might i suggest you wind in the hyperbole when trying to make a point, and add some stats instead of relying on your own experiences (and that of some friends). It is easier to make a convincing and robust case that way

Well said!

And interestingly, I’ve just found an index of international rich/poor gaps which had Denmark top of the field, with an astonishing 82% of the population who are classed as “thriving” (the other categories being “struggling” and “suffering”). Seems like those Danes are doing okay despite the murderous taxes they all seem to be so keen to get away from.

If you look at any indices re social equality, quality of life, happiness etc., the countries which top those tables tend to be those with higher taxation. Which says to me that, at a very fundamental level, what makes people generally content with their lives is not adding an extra 2″ to the size of their plasma telly every 12 months, or having a big daft car to wrap around a lamp post, moreso living in a fair and equal society with decent civic services. And even little things, which might stupid at first, but matter, like provision of plentiful, safe cycling lanes. That “you’re only happy when you’ve got bags of disposable income” talk is specious propaganda.

I used to have a pop-top 1990 Westfalia T3, brought back from Germany. It was a 1.6 turbo diesel and returned 30-40 mpg full of stuff. A newer non-VW van might be more economical and cheaper to run, but there’s just something about a VW Camper…

On reflection I did. We’ll played OP.

Now is that apostrophe a typo, or have I been caught out too..?

Could of have done better.

Sorry.

I think you missed a subtle joke…

the glaring hypocrisy

Yeah TJ – don’t you dare be left wing unless you live on a park bench and eat used cardboard.

Me, I’ve just realised I own four bikes, which is undoubtedly much higher than the national average, so I’m going to slit my own throat.

WHAT A PRICK!!!

Yeah okay, fair enough, I apologise for leaving that inflammatory comment there with no explanation.

But, really that “well you vote Labour so why don’t you give all your money away” is such a baseless and inane response, which I genuinely haven’t heard since I was a schoolboy. As a socialist, I’m looking for a fairer system which reduces social and economic inequalities, and closes off the system of privilege bestowed on certain people just because they happen to be born into a certain set of circumstances. I’ll vote for a party that attempts that, and if I end up giving away more of my income in taxation in pursuit of that, then I’m more than happy. Me giving fifty quid of my wages every week to a poorer family down the road won’t achieve it.
Secondly, you imply that only middle class, well-off people are socialists. So all the working classes of this country vote Tory then?

And thirdly, I take offence at being called a bigot by someone who writes this about 20m plus nordic inhabitants:

(and a lot of people who really can’t be bothered to work), and are basically a nightmare for anyone who really wants to get off their arse and work hard and earn a decent living

Offensive and borderline racist. What a prick indeed.

Hehehe. THIS is my problem with socialism (and the left wing bigots)… All too happy to bang on about sharing the wealth, making society better for everyone, and “wouldn’t it be better if everyone had the same” etc… But they’ll never actively do anything about it themselves, and just about all of them that I meet or know drive fairly decent cars, live in nice houses, with good jobs etc. Try living on the breadline for a bit you bigots, trust me!

Ooh socialists with good jobs. What a bunch of b8st8rds! You genuinely do not have a good, reasoned argument in you, do you?

with a few more sausages

Or some lovely Richmond ham, just as nature intended.

some of the most intellectually powerful members of society have reached the opposite conclusion

And it’s a relatively commonly held view, and possibly true, that a benevolent dictator provides the most stable form of government. Would you surrender your vote for a bit of that? I doubt it.

they saw how well ER had followed Voltaire’s notion of fulfilling a duty to govern wisely

She doesn’t actually govern, does she? Well, only in the feudal fantasies of the ever-shrinking Delusion of Monarchists.

Don’t wish to piss on your chips

and the rest of that paragraph…

You’d have a hard job pissing on anyone’s chips with that one-topic argument. Seems you think the only thing important in life is how much cash you have in the bank. Not clean, safe streets, not public health, not education, not equality, etc. etc. etc.

Oh, you poor defeatist.

Back to the original advert, did nature intend us to have a little hat on?

Yes ! They banned Christmas !

Ooh, are we talking about Birmingham City Council five or six years ago? Or something less relevant?

ps. Just because one is not keen on the idea of monarchy does not mean that one is in favour of a violent Russian-style revolution toppling the monarchy.

I’d give that a go. Better than passively being rodgered by the feudal hierarchy, supported by the slack-jawed Tory toffs. Pass me a Mosin Nagant, I’m going to storm the palace…

I there a religious aspect to social inequality and wealth redistribution?

Those bloody Catholics…they’re as bad as the Muslims. Protestants? Don’t get me started on them.

hey, did anyone hear about the rare (1 of 77) Aston that was crashed? Shame…..

I’m sure there was a thread about that on STW…

S’funny – ’cause for the last two years the rallied cry of the STW Lefty brigade has been that we didn’t choose them

Well, yeah but no but yeah. We have a relatively unrepresentative voting system, I’d agree, and a very lazy voting population. But at least we do notionally get to vote for/against them.

Seems like a cooperative, mutually beneficial Utopian dream

…if the Green’s cheap…

Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, New Zealand.

Life’s shit

Oh, you poor defeatist…

If we lived in a world where we all shared the wealth equally, NONE of us would even be able to afford a fairly basic mountain bike, such is the imbalance of wealth in the world

that doesn’t even make sense.

Your Animal Farm style utopia does not work, several countries have already tried and the result is worse corruption than before, mass poverty and a country falling to its knees economically.

there are plenty of countries without the rich/poor differential that we have, which offer a far preferable social model.

God Bless EIIR

I think you’ll find it’s spelt EIRE – now there’s a good republic!