chrisp65

It's not incredibly original any more, it's true, the format is pretty predictable, but it's still one of the best shows on British TV, simply because it isn't clearings in the woods dancing, or clearings in the woods singing, or clearings in the woods buying a house, or selling a house, or doing up a house to sell it for more than they bought it for, or clearings in the woods cooking a meal for people in their newly bought house.

By simply not being aimed at women, it's good for a few million viewers.

Bang!

so true - it's just a brainless harmless bit of entertainment not aimed at the same old antiques / houses / food format

it ain't great, it's formulaic, but it is a little bit of fun

not sure if this is one for bollitics or just general chat, but here goes:

woke up on Thursday with a touch of the old red eye, still had it yesterday. Woke up this morning and it's still there and I've got blurry vision. Popped into Spec Savers in town about 10:30 this morning. They instantly took it more seriously than I had, gave me a quick examination and phoned the hospital to say I was on my way in! Pooping myself to listen to that conversation without a decent explanation to me first. Anyway, duty optho type person says get straight in. I get there at about 12 noon (its a 14 mile drive through mid saturday shopping traffic). I was booked in, seen within 20 minutes, in and out for various tests. I'm now home, can't see bugger all through the one eye, and I've been booked back in for Monday on instruction that if this gets worse phone the hospital direct and go straight there. Not completely obvious what is wrong, I'm clearly confusing them as apparently the scarring means I should be in serious pain but I'm not.

Anyway, the big waffly point I'd like to make is that I'm not currently feeling the money poured into the nhs was quite as wasteful as others may think. I'm lucky enough for my last few experiences of the nhs to have been a good few years ago and that was a whole load of shocking third world experience I don't want repeated.

The only way to judge this and put any political slant on it I suppose would be to do the same eye trick again in 5 years time and see what happens.

Off for a little lay down in a dark room.

cheers guys, birthday soon, if the cash roles in I'll report back!

ok a camera question from a novice (well not complete novice but ex OM10 user and digital moron).

I've currently got a couple of Canon Ixus digitals of varying vintage. Easy to use, pocket sized etc., but really annoying that they are both slow to grab focus and take a shot. Trying, for instance to persuade them to take a picture of the kids on a leisure park ride is almost impossible. The thinking time means you miss the shot. I've fancied a new digital Olympus Pen for no real reason than it looked and felt like my old OM 10. I've read some reviews and apparently it's also 'slow' on action or low light shots.

So, my question: on a budget from 0 to £300 what digi / digi slr camera can I get that takes a good happy amateur photo and is capable of photgraphing a moving thing without taking 90 minutes to run through face recognition software or some such. But is also capable of 'photography' above and beyong happy snapping when I happen to find a stunning piece of architecture that needs capturing.

I'm not simply too lazy to google, I'd just prefer recommendation from this thread to pages of What camera stats.

cheers

The new govt has decided to cut 11% of costs at Companies House in Cardiff. Essentially the 'costs' of Companies House are its staff. So I'd guess in round numbers that's a decree from Central Offfice that CH has to shed about 120 jobs. Doubtless those 120 will be told in a few months time they are making the unemployment figures look bad and they should stop being feckless spongers and get a bike.

It would be nice to see the staff there told they can choose to all take a pay cut to secure everyone's jobs, albeit on lower pay. It would actually be clever tactics from the govt to offer that option, the staff might even reject the offer absolving the govt of the accusation of tory kneejerk sackings. We shall see.

.......And proof of the dumbing down of the entire country is here, students are threatening to go on strike, that is dumb. Back in the day, students would have had a march in London, the odd sit in to raise awareness (or kill the vice chancellor in my case, good job we brought the coffin along - :oops: most unfortunate) and gone along to the bar and had a few shandies and considered the job done, going on strike would have been obviously laughable

...ah the London March. That gave me a lovely flashback. All on the bus, drinking before we've left town, hammered and tired when we arrived in London. Subverting the protest chant so we had a call and response of 'what do we want?' answered with 'beaujolais nouveau please'. Then off down Carnaby Street to spend my insufficient grant on vinyl.

And so it begins...

Students are 'burden on the taxpayer' says David Willetts

I know the new NUS president and I can tell you now that he will lead a national strike if this goes ahead!

HOLY POOP!

Newsnight telling me last night that we're close to peak oil was bad enough, but this! This could have serious consequences some of you may not have stopped to consider.......

.......can't think of any admittedly. Possibly a few less bags of washing back to mum's the country over if the students stay in their jams all day?

we can reduce the number of MP’s

Wasn't that in the Tory Manifesto ?

of course whether the Tory manifesto becomes like the Liebour one and is just a tree that died in vain , remains to be seen

dash it all, I wish I'd voted for them now!

not really, they're cnuts

With the government looking for cost saving ideas from the public, I think I’ve got half an idea to get the ball rolling. It’s not a massive sum of money, but every little helps.

We currently have 650 MP’s with constituencies that vary between 50,000 voters and 80,000 voters. With a little planning the number of voters could be smoothed out, currently some constituencies are 50% larger than others so surely either their MP’s can’t cope or the one’s with lower numbers are under employed.

With less constituencies we can reduce the number of MP’s. Not some great revolutionary cull, just a shaving to make a saving. Not even 10%, just a 7.5% reduction. 50 MP’s in round numbers taking us from 650 to a nice round figure of 600. I’m quietly confident my quality of life wouldn’t noticeably deteriorate due to the Commons dropping from 650 to 600 MP’s.

The result? Well a bog basic MP earns £65,738 with staff allowances (up to £103,800), admin expenses (up to £23,000), communication expenses (up to £10,400) plus a whole raft of other expenses a cannon fodder back bencher can easily cost us £200,000 a year without having to flip, dip or take the piss in any way. 50 MP’s at £200k each is £10,000,000 a year. Over a single parliament that’s a saving of 40 or 50 million quid.

More than the relatively modest saving of tens of millions, it would show that the MP’s are sharing our pain.

Max Hastings, Piers Morgan, John Redwood and Alastair Campbell all in the same room and not a suicide bomber, wonky drone, friendly fire missile, or pretend SWP student with eggs for miles around.

Classic missed opportunity there.

Oh dear lord she's a headcase.

In 1996 Abbott was accused of racism when she suggested that "blonde, blue-eyed Finnish girls" in her local hospital in West London were unsuitable as nurses because they "may never have met a black person before".

From wiki.

Voting record (from PublicWhip)

How Diane Abbott voted on key issues since 2001:

Voted moderately for equal gay rights.

Voted very strongly against the Iraq war.

Voted a mixture of for and against introducing ID cards.

Voted moderately for removing hereditary peers from the House of Lords. Voted very strongly for a wholly elected House of Lords.

Voted moderately for the hunting ban.

Voted a mixture of for and against laws to stop climate change.

Voted strongly against introducing foundation hospitals.

Voted moderately against Labour's anti-terrorism laws.

Voted very strongly against replacing Trident.

Voted moderately against introducing student top-up fees.

yeah, absolute headcase

(ironical)

not my cup of tea, bit of a media darling

I've just drawn Brasil in the office sweep.

The money is as good as mine.

I believe the definition of left and right and hard left etc is skewed by where we are today. We currently have a system where there are three parties all offering different flavours of essentially the same thing. You might want your icecream with sprinkles or prefer it with strawberry sauce or like a flake up your 99. But it's all icecream and somehow we've all happily gone along with it and happily call each other names over our stance on sprinkles.

Back in the mid 70's Harold Wilson (not considered at all extreme at the time) had a plan to kerb house price rises and mortgage rate hikes by nationalising all land. All land taken out of private lease from the Queen and into State control, for the people. **** your sprinkles, who wants a mug of tea?

If you want 'land is power give the land to the people' these days where can you go? Not even the SWP. They are more interested in selling you a solid silver clenched left fist pendant on their website merchandising page.

So for me PR or AV is just another way of gently herding sufficient sheep into the unspectacular middle ground. Except of course, being afraid to protect jobs because it might upset billionaire money traders isn't actually the middle. Allowing 100,000 local government or nhs staff (that may well be the bread winners in their families) to be laid off so the rest of us don't have to pay an extra penny income tax (and thus take longer to acquire that flat screen tv) is not the middle ground.

I'm off for a lie down.

very happy with that, and with tickets for the second T20 against Pakistan already in the bag looking forward to a good summer of cricket

Has Kemp got a decent chance if he puts his hat in? Could he be rushed into parliament?

to be honest there are so many skeletons in that particular family cupboard I think the press would have a field day, more shagging and knocking off of each others relatives and spouses than an Austrian house party

I think my first non-Labour moment was Kinnock shouting 'well alright!' repeatedly.

Also, my circumstances have changed since the 80's. It's easy being radical with no kids, no mortgage and no Merc to service and fuel.

No Burnham and no Mandy as I didn't want the list to go on for 3 pages, also no Yvette Cooper. Quite interesting the 'sameness' of the list when you look at it. No decent female challenge, no obvious minority candidates.

I'll see if I have the i.t. nouse to add some more...

Does what it says on the tin really, regardless of your personal voting history, who would you like to see as next Labour leader...

Those political minxes amongst you may tactically vote for the most inept, but I personally don't think anyone on VT would be that cynical

For the record, I haven't voted Labour in a very very long time, but critically, I have done. As such, I guess the new leader has to appeal to people like me. Yippee doo and up the workers.

Aye I know mental illness is quite common. I don't really like the term and like I said I'm not sure if I actually I am, I've always been a bit dour and melancholic, recently however my mood and nature has gone through the floor, not wanting to do things, feeling down etc, which has also coincided with another problem I've had for donkeys becoming much more annoying. I don't think I am but who knows. It might explain a few things.

I'll mention it when I go to the docs next, which'll have to be soon as the other problem is now royally pissing me off. Should set my mind at ease. However my doctor in Aber is shocking. I've seen him once, needed a stitch my dentist in Brum had put in taken out. First thing he said was 'Dentist put it in, dentist take it out'. When he finally did it he went on to ask me if I smoked seeming surprised when I said I didn't, then weighed me, to which I said 'yeah, the student life's taken it's tole, need to lose a bit' jokingly, and he straight faced went 'No not a bit. A lot.'. Not sure that's a doctor patient relationship I want to blossom with 'I've had this problem for a while and I've also been feeling low'. I'm not entirely sure he'd be helpful.

Chindie, chin up lad. I think from other posts you are studying in Aber?

This isn't just flippant Aber bashing but that is a quite small quite insular Uni town that is geographically remote. It's great when it's great with a few decent boozers and a half decent (relatively) footy team. But if you are used to a bigger town then coming through an Aber winter won't help you if you are naturally a bit 'down' anyway. I've known Aber close in on people, it can feel cut off.

Mention it to the doc, if you don't get an answer that you consider acceptable or it's not delivered in a tone you appreciate, tell the guy. If that doesn't improve the situation tell him thanks and I'd like to see someone else.

If I've got the Aber place wrong then just read the paragraph above this one!

You have to put in to the system before you get anything out of it 8)

.....is a perfectly fair and logical viewpoint providing there are jobs created that enable you to 'put in'.

The problem previously in my town under the tory's was that there simply were no jobs created to replace those that were cut at ABP, BP, Dow etc.. It simply wasn't fair that thousands of people were put on the dole and then told they should be working. It wouldn't be realistic to expect thousands of people in a single town brought up in a comp education system where they are trained to be workers not leaders to all suddenly become little one man businesses (there is only space for so many window cleaners).

Where there are jobs, anybody not working without a bloody good reason should not expect anything but absolutely basic humane support.

Having mentioned the 'problem' under the last tory govt its only fair to point out the failing I can see under the current system. The kids that mix with my kids that have the latest phones and games, are the ones who's parents aren't working. That's a simple anecdotal snapshot, but I see that and similar every day. It needs to be addressed.

BNP candidate looked like a bit of an old biggot, but I'd never say that out loud.

Houghton and Sunderland South: Lab Hold. Unsurprisingly.

there will be Labour party officials all over the land shouting blow the whistle ref, blow the whistle.....

this could be interesting, politicians forced to work together for the greater good of the nation

If Labour have done such a good job these past 13 years, why are they not walking it?

but conversley, if they did such a bad job........

life is more complicated than that and there will be a few local government workers voting for a better chance of staying in a job

Surely its supply and demand.

The marketplace dictates the price.

Sounds like Tory heaven.

Whats the alternative?

Well let’s consider a few alternatives.

If you were poor and lived somewhere with a necessary but expensive ferry route:

Alternative 1: market forces suggest you need to acquire more wealth to get on the ferry sonny. All additional wealth is located on the other side of the water. You get to stay on the island.

Alternative 2: a modest subsidy from the more well off will ensure your fare is not disproportionate to your income and allow you to enter the marketplace at rung one. Once you have sufficient funds for the full fare, a portion of your fare will go towards subsidising those less well off than yourself.

Alternative 3: the ferry is nationalised, we can all get on for free, turns out it wasn’t free but alternatively funded by your tax, ferry driver gets above himself and regularly strikes for better pay and conditions, ferry lacks investment and eventually closes down. We all get to stay on the island.

trouble is, if you ask any of the three mainstream parties which alternative they are they will only tell you that the others will sell / scupper the boat eat your kids and shag your nan

Probably a bit late for this election, but my new personal manifesto…

I have a dream. A dream of an independent Wales, physically detached from mainland UK and parked somewhere warm and benign in the Oceania qualifying zone. All of us tall slim tanned ex ballet dancers (but in a totally hetro way, except those that don't want to be hetro which is also totally cool) making an honest living driving 15 year old Jags as taxi’s, brewing our own hooch and hand rolling cigars. Where being a woman with a single mono eyebrow or a man with a bit of a gut isn’t automatically a bad thing.

We would be self sufficient from the toll money on a much longer Severn bridge and Dr Who merchandising. The M4 would have four lanes, but each side, not in total. English would still be the first language, so that way we can still make use of cheap east european labour and watch Ashes to Ashes without sub titles. Welsh would be strongly promoted, but only when the English were listening. England would regularly play Ashes matches in their new spiritual home, Cardiff.

This new Wales would be improved in many ways (no, not napalm). For a start, we wouldn’t tell Bangor, Merthyr, Cwmbran, Newport or Rhyl the new address. We would all have a full and rounded education in practical subjects and the classics. But we wouldn’t be up ourselves, like Brian Sewel or Switzerland. We would be a fundamentally happy and content people without western levels of spending on pointless shite. A Wales of modest material needs. This would be a nation with good access to wifi and large format flat screen technology. Perhaps most importantly, there would be a liberal attitude towards patching into Premier League football without the fussy formality of subscriptions. The law would be stripped down and simplified. We could see how we get along with a body of law along the lines of ‘don’t be an arse’. If you do something and people agree you’ve been an arse, that’s you sent back to Rhyl. We would retain our European status, so if it all went tits we could come back or get bailed out.

slow day