chrisp65

I agree with the sentiment, agree entirely, but £2.50 pah! Try £6.40 most days of most weeks for me to use the M4. Usually at the back of a very long queue of people who cannot understand what 'don't try to use this toll if you don't have a card because this one only takes cards not cash, by cash, we mean it doesn't take coins and it doesn't take notes, it just takes credit cards and debit cards. These cards are the rectangular plastic things in your wallet, often with Visa or Maestro written on them. If it's paper or metal and has a drawing of the Queen on it, that's probably cash, this toll doesn't accept cash don't join this **** queue you **** retard' means when written in red neon that can be read from half a mile away.

It's such a difficult subject to have any sort of sensible conversation about, which bands were the best and which were cool and all that. It's just so utterly down to a magic mix of personal preference and who got themselves the right publicity at the right time. If it was down to technical proficiency, my missus would have been right in her thinking that these guys were about the best: But clearly that level of competence was no match for the totally superior Dr Feelgood and their singer that couldn't sing and guitarist that learnt by trying to copy, but failing and accidentally inventing his own sound.... So, yeah, Dire Straights, not my cup of tea, but I'm sure a great bunch of lads.

So, is Deisler suggesting that China isn't a one party communist state? That's not derogatory in any way is it? I thought that was a statement of fact? I was under the impression that anything 'the party' didn't endorse or like in China didn't flourish. Hence the other view being clung on to by some on here, the fact that Villa are potentially being bought by a man from China must mean the state have some direct or indirect interest in it succeeding.

There's a street that's part of my commute that is a bit of a run down secondary shopping street. It's got some sort of Greggs seconds shop, I'm not sure what that's about? i haven't been in there so I'm guessing it's bread close to it's sell by and wonky cakes? Anyway, that's not the point. The vast mjority of this street is charity shops and betting shops. Every betting chop known to man is represented. You drive down the street and it's basically British Heart Foundation, Bet Fred, PDSA, Paddy Power. Greggs, William Hill, Marie Curie, Ladbrookes, Wetherspoon, Coral..... It's the street I've mentioned before, where at 7:45am there's a crowd of men in mismatched leisurewear gathering outside 'Spoons. I believe the technical term amongst urban planners for this sort of area is shit hole.

put your finger in her drink, then push your finger in her mouth and then down her chin works every time

at parties I generally get my acoustic guitar out and let people hear some of my own poetry that I've put to music...

Menahan Street Band Budos Dap-Kings Sugarman 3 all available on the same excellent dbl album 'Daptone Gold ii' and it really is excellent The Barry Horns are not on it, but do have a new single coming out in a few days...

Alexei Sayle summed up this side of art. As a yoof he'd wanted to study art, he'd seen the cool kids going to Chelsea Arts College and wanted to get in there. He was really good at drawing horses and enjoyed drawing horses. But Chelsea Arts didn't want someone that was really good at drawing horses. They wanted someone to stand in the local shopping centre dressed as a teapot challenging people's perception of where the boundary between art and reality was in contemporary society. So he thought, oh ok, **** it, I'll just mess about then.

I think I've put this up before headphones if you're in a rush, skip straight to 8 minutes 40 if you're in the mood, it's euphoric

A man nobody has heard of before has turned up claiming to be the messiah. Randy Lerner tells us he's the real deal. Some people want to believe, some people would like a bit of a sense check on claims of his miracles. Doubts about his Olympic medals, space technology, how many companies he has, the reported business losses and whether he really is a doctor should not influence whether we sign the club over to him. It will all just be fine. There is no way the out going Board could **** this up. Absolutely no way. No way.

Isn't it absolutely fascinating to see the euphoria that is so easily created. Don't get me wrong, I really wanted rid of Lerner and I accept we have to move with the times and I hope we have the money to be successful. But wow, the promise of money has got what feels like an awful lot of people happy to abandon any sense of caution or critical thinking. I'm not suggesting the new owner is a charlatan, no idea one way or the other...yet. But this last couple of days does illustrate why in 2016 we still see so many people taken in by scams and cons. Just the most basic rule, 'if it appears too good to be true...' has gone out of the window. There are people on here happy to sign up to a name change and a relocation and anything else. All because the new guy is rumoured to be rich. The new guy we know nothing about that Randy Lerner has decided to do business with. Suddenly we are blindly accepting Randy Lerner's ability to pick a winner? Anyway, just needed to get that off my chest. I'm too old to get excited about Christmas coming early. I'm actually looking forward to next season, to actually attending. Not for billionaire expansion, but for seeing a different bunch of opposition teams. I'd prefer to win a cup from the Championship than spend eternity as the 6th best premier team. As for winning the Prem., well what would be the point of that if you just went out and bought it? I'd prefer to be stood directly behind the goal with a pie, than sat in the third tier of the Lotus Super Soccer Arena (just off the NEC junction) with a selfie stick. Whether the new guy is anywhere near capable of producing the Lotus Super Soccer Arena..... I guess we'll have a much better idea of how this is shaping up once we've got 3 months of the Championship under our belts. I hope he's a good owner and that we all do well out of this. In an old fashioned footballing sort of way.

That's the alibi firmly planted in social media. Now, on the presumption the police don't even know there's a basement hatch under the living room rug, you're home and dry my friend. Home and dry.

It would appear that the only one single thing he did was to help relegate Newcastle. So to sum up, our most successful manager of recent times.

wasn't really sure where to put this, but this is prolly as good a place as any I was particularly enthused by the queen's speech this year. We are to live within our means and reach out to the poorest in society by tackling social problems, deprivation and debt, whilst measuring people's life chances. We are to spread prosperity. Corruption and tax evasion to be tackled. We will tackle poverty. The lowest income families will have help with savings. Public services will help the hardest to reach in society. Mental health provision and support will be improved. The devil is potentially in the detail as always, and I guess it could be derailed if the wrong result comes from the EU referendum. But not a bad set of goals.

May I suggest the 'Mouse-away 3000' by Xia Industries. Rent two for a week, put them either end of the attic.

true story alert: Many years ago I worked in a bar attached to a hotel and we'd get a lot of the bands and celebs stay with us. On the first Style Council tour they all stayed with us, they were all in the bar after their gig. Mr Paul Weller was buying a round and asked what people wanted and somebody asked for an Irish Whiskey. Weller said he wasn't stupid, he knew there was no such thing. The guy insisted there was such a thing and that's what he wanted, an Irish Whiskey. Weller looked at me, I looked at him. He marched up to my bar and with the rest of the crew now silent and watching, 'can I have an Irish Scotch please'. The place erupted in laughter and he announced he'd known all along there was no such thing and was just playing along. They put him right eventually. The man was a god to me, it was fascinating to see he didn't know everything, wasn't universally cool and the people around him felt comfortable enough to take the piss.

Stargazer! Aye fair play, as previously said, it was them and Nazareth. They were my go to band when I needed to noodle an air guitar to song lyrics about wizards.

pah, Rainbow. Showing your age. You need to update and get with the kids, like me mate. My order from last week has arrived, imagine that, walking to a shop, placing an order and waiting to be contacted to go back to the shop a week later to pick it up. Anyway, all downloaded ready for the car for the journey home...

I was trying to draw comparisons from my own experience, and that was all I had.

I'll not make a big deal about it, but if we are to get all flustered and cream our knickers at quotes we'll be top three on the planet. I guess we also have to give equal weighting to his message to Villa fans to 'forget the past'. I'm sure this is just glib and means the 2015 / 16 season. Not 1982 or 1957 or William McGregor or Ian Taylor....... He hasn't even waved his money at the bar yet and people are prepared to put out. He's only told us he's going to wave his money at the bar. Let's be classy and try and keep it in our pants until we've actually seen some drinks lined up on the table.

I'm as pleased as punch that Lerner has gone. I suspect there must be more than just incompetence to this last sad few years and those bizarre postings on the official website. 'We want our Villa back. We want our Villa back.' Well, that didn't happen. It got sold to a guy we know next to nothing about that may or may not be ridiculously rich and may or may not be an arm of the Chinese state. Either directly, or in a more subtle indirect soft power way. But you don't get to be an international billionaire player based in China, if the Chinese state don't approve of you. I guess if we are morally ok with our underpants and phones coming from China, what's the difference. It's not that different to being owned by an american recluse that puts up a military general as a spokesman and only communicates when the pain killers have kicked in. It might be a good thing or it might be a bad thing, we can't know. I'm more happy than worried right now, but I'm very aware that I personally didn't want to be a supporter of the next Man City or Chelsea. But I also accept that the days of the local owner, the holiday shop entrepreneur are long gone if you want your club live on Sky in HD. We've got non league for all that emotional nourishment stuff. Villa are the marketing and entertainments arm of...well, we don't really know what of yet do we. So I'm chuffed, I'm at the party, but I'm at the back, cautious about the new guy in the waistcoat that may or may not be from Stark Industries and that we know nothing about. I'm really hoping this goes well, but I'm always careful what I wish for.

It's a rolling programme of improvements, it will take years. But it is being improved. Locally, we've just got our blue flags back. It's not anywhere near a perfect system, but bloody hell, I know that the water now is (usually) fantastically cleaner than it used to be. You didn't have to test the water in the 70's and the 80's it stank of sewage and it had turds rolling in with the waves. We've been lucky that locally Welsh Water have got their act together and spent a ton of money and radically improved the situation. But it isn't universal. The old system was killing the environment. You wouldn't have eaten a fish caught back then - not that there were many. Now there are fish again, and you can eat them. Sorry to say, we would not have begun the clean up without EU pressure. The proof of that is in our 20 year resistance to their interfering ways. Although, I guess you could argue we were being stubborn and weren't cleaning our bedroom simply because mum was constantly nagging us to clean our bedroom? It is a good point about the vague nature of weather on the water quality. Strong rainfall washes dogshit off the land and nitrates out of the soil and carries more dumped sewage further. Perhaps we have to ask why there are so many nitrates being used to over produce subsidised food that then goes to recycling? It's a far far better system than it was. Not perfect, easily improved, expensive. But better than when we weren't in it. A bit of a metaphor I guess. Incidentally, that Panorama programme is good. It's 7 years old, but still worth a watch.

News this morning that my local beach has been awarded a blue flag for the holiday season. It's probably worth noting, that among all the crazy EU legislation we don't want that costs us millions, one piece we in the UK have particularly resisted is cleaning up the sea. It took from the legislation being passed in the 1970's right through to the 1990's for the UK to grudgingly accept it. So we decided quite late on to comply. Hopefully, if we drop out of the EU, this can be one of the first crazy euro expenses we drop and we can just start pumping millions of litres of untreated human shit straight to sea again, via open pipes. Like the good old days. On the down side, that fish was claimed by the Spanish.

I'm in. I can only do Monday's.