chrisp65

I've done it a few times and it's always worked out just fine. Met up with a bunch of guys in a hotel once. I must have gone well, I guess. Woke up two days later with forty quid tucked in my mask.

Met a man on an internet forum and I'm going to his house to listen to jazz albums and drink red wine. What could possibly go wrong?

or...Momentum has strengthened it's position as 'traditional' Labour supporters have thought, sod this for a game of pacificts... half a statistic is no statistic at all as 3 out of statisticians will tell you

it's perfectly fine, it's not going to be album of the year doesn't need to be three discs either, it's 70 something minutes in total so could easily be on two but I couldn't resist, a couple of weeks of long hours and lots of miles so I convinced myself I deserved it (I've got the download too, if you get my underlying meaning.... )

triple album of reggae'd up 70's disco covers - what's not to like! it's keeping me fit too, a couple of sides are less than 15 minutes long so I'm up and down like the proverbial

Life appears to be conspiring against Corbyn at the moment. The Lords have gone against the Commons and will return the bill to the Commons with an amendment to protect hard working families in Britain that were born in europe. Having previously whipped his party to support the tory government, what does he do now? Vote down the amendment and endorse the use of hostages as bargaining chips like some right wing arse? Or change his mind and team up with the unelected house of Lords?

I obviously can't go in to any level of detail at all, so file this under world's most vague unsubstantiated anecdote. But I have a 'client' at the moment that has tasked me with spending as much of a budget as possible and putting bills in for it, before the end of this month. An entire building programme framed around maximum possible spend now for a job that won't really start until the summer hols.. I've even been asked to 'front load' my fees for doing it.

Yep, I get all that, we'll soon be funding education as poorly as we were ten or twelve years ago. I'm not arguing in favour of government spending plans, I'm arguing that historically schools are still relatively well funded, better funded in real terms than at any time other than during the last 10 years. Better funded in real terms than in the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and the start of the 2000's. Overall, education is substantially better funded than it ever was. Better funded than many other european countries. In very crude terms, the UK is about 8th for education spending and 15th for educational attainment. If we are relatively high up the spending league table and relatively lower down the achievement league table, then budgets surely aren't the resigning issue? Make red tape or performance tables or the curriculum or whatever your resigning issue. I dunno, perhaps I just expected a head teacher to be able to explain themselves with facts and numbers. I'm probably being hyper critical, we should just give them more money.

been following a footy game on a german twitter feed (as I'm quite the intellectual) and I just learnt a new word Schlusspfiff - final whistle

Would her school be significantly different to 'the norm' for some reason? If budgets have indeed risen by 70% in real terms (I have no idea if that is true) then there is no way that increase has totally missed her school. The rise in spending this year was a union estimate not a government estimate. They offered her the fact there were more teaching assistants etc to explain the wedge taken out by salaries. She didn't come over very well for someone agreeing to a radio interview to discuss the resignation due to budgets. Prep and revision, anyone? As ever, I'm not anti teacher. I'm happy to be corrected on the budget increase. Happy to hear some facts. If I was making a political statement on national radio about my resignation I'd get myself familiar with the issues, not just say there's not enough money.

Radio 4 this morning at about 7:45am had, I presume, the same female head teacher announcing she was quitting due to budgets. They mentioned that per pupil budgets had risen 'in real terms' by 70% since 1990 and were due to further increase this year by 3% according to union figures. On hearing that, her response was that she didn't know about the actual funding figures involved. They asked if it was true that almost all the increased budget had gone on staff wages, making up 85% of all education spending. She said she didn't know about that. That struck me as an odd couple of answers from somebody resigning due to funding issues.

I once confused the Clevedon Steamer (departs from Penarth Pier) with a Cleveland Steamer.

It's a nice idea. All we've got to do now is stop Labour in Wales teaming up with UKIP to stop Plaid local council policies being implemented. Oh, and persuade the SNP this was just light hearted trolling: It would take next to nothing for me to vote Labour. Picking fights with Plaid and the SNP strikes me as a bit small time pathetic when a tory government is currently going unopposed.

the guy's a prick

It's the original 6 pointer weekend. Top versus second in a league where only one team gets promoted. As part of the big match build up I shall be decanting unwanted tat to the garage and walking up the allotment to see if Doris wrecked our shed.

Happily going through images looking for a comedy picture of a sperm bank and I've just remembered I'm on an office laptop and currently working on the office network.

The title of the Legislation is: Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. boring reading beyond newspaper headlines Newspapers are great, the Independent website is great. They offer a gateway to a subject. They are not the definitive font of all truth and knowledge.

My neighbour has a car the sole function of which, is to reserve the spot outside his house, whilst his actual car is 'out'. It's a slick operation. Just before either of them go out, the black VW will arrive from the rear garage, their actual 'driving' car will vacate the spot and the VW will park outside their house. On return, one of them jumps out of the 'driving' car, gets in the VW and puts it back in the garage. Whilst the other parks in the freshly vacated spot. It is a sad reflection on my life that one of my absolute highlights, was back in the summer of 2012, I arrived at that parking spot in the seconds between car switches. One of them had taken their eye off the ball and I fluked it. Parking and getting to my house before the second car rolled up. I left my car in that spot for as long as I could. I got the **** train to work for two days! You could feel the silent rage from behind their net curtains.

education - if you want to set up a state curriculum non-faith school you already can - I'm failing to see the lines of voters / parents / atheist altruists queuing to give it a crack. nationalised rail - 4 of us went to London on Tuesday. £50 of fuel and £8 to park. Rail would have been £226 per person. They just need to shave £850 off the bill and they'll be competitive. nuclear disarmament - best of luck In an ideal world all of the above are great ideas. Chuck something in about the NHS as well. Turns out Stoke and Copeland are not the places to begin the utopian ideal. In reality, 'the people' said they were fed up with slick PR machines, suits and focus groups. They wanted real people with real policies that would benefit the majority not the power behind the scenes that make 0.01 of a penny on billions of market fluctuations. They wanted someone that would share out the money a little more and expose the lies of perpetual austerity. Someone on the side of the NHS. Turns out 'the people' are a strange bunch. Tip for future Labour leader: Sharp suit. Minimal history and back story. Vaguely but enthusiastically promise a tax cut for hard workers and money for pensioners. Job done.

As a few commentator types discussed on the tv last night, the absolute ideal result for the tory party was probably a gain for tories in one byelection with a Labour hold in the other. They have a mid parliament election gain in a northern seat. Almost unheard of. UKIP have been given a comedy slap down. Corbyn hasn't lost everything, so will probably stay at the helm of Labour for a while longer. The only way the night could have been better for May is if a petting a zoo full of orphans had burnt down. For all the media hype and for all the politics that has gone on around Stoke, the win was achieved by gaining (in very round numbers) 40% of the votes of the 40% of people that bothered to vote. Hardly a ringing endorsement. So it looks like one of the very few blocks of people disinterested in Stoke, were the people of Stoke.

congratulations to Mr Nuttall, I see from his bio that he is now the MP for Stoke Central