chrisp65

The Queen gets a benefits rise of 6.7% so I'm well chuffed with that. Fourth consecutive year her money has gone up.

 

Out of curiosity, do all you non-hagglers buy cars at the price on the windscreen for the interest rate first quoted?

No, I haggle, but it's utterly excruciating. I just know that they're laughing at me.

 

I'm buying an old record turntable at some point, but I appear to be freaking out the retro hi fi shops by saying I'm definitely buying, but happy to buy today or wait a few months. When you don't 'need' to buy it does slightly change the dynamic.

I amazed my nipper last summer when we were walking through St James's Park and there was an ice cream concession. I walked up to it and calmly asked the bloke if I could have a free icecream for my nipper. There was a slight pause....then he said yes and handed me a cone! Once I had the cone, I asked if I could take a flake from the box. He gave that little 'help yourself' wave. 

Nobody was more surprised than me, I'm not sure that would work 999 times out of 1,000. But it did the one time I tried it!

Out of curiosity, do all you non-hagglers buy cars at the price on the windscreen for the interest rate first quoted?

 

I guess BOF doesn't haggle in his north european homeland either then?

 

If I'm paying for a hotel I'll do the usual travel sites, then phone them up and ask to pay less. Perfectly polite, I'll put an offer. Some say yes, some say no.

 

I can haggle a price down at a Novotel and sometimes a Hilton. You would imagine the desk jockey at those isn't in a position to offer discount but they often are.

 

Last visit to Novotel Hammersmith and Hilton NEC I got a combined total of 5 days parking for free - because I asked! That's £100 of spending money to me, thanks.

surely you are there for work and thus it's zero spending money in your pocket ... unless you mean you are fraudulently claiming the money back on your expenses 

 

Expenses are strictly receipt repayment. No receipt, I lose. So you're correct, I don't haggle work visits.....quite the opposite as I'm collecting various rewards points!

Believe it or not, NEC and Hammersmith were family trips out!

We have to double room now due to age of the kids, so haggling and points harvesting is nigh on essential! 

I may or may not sometimes get confused over office auto top up oyster card useage.

I guess BOF doesn't haggle in his north european homeland either then?

If I'm paying for a hotel I'll do the usual travel sites, then phone them up and ask to pay less. Perfectly polite, I'll put an offer. Some say yes, some say no.

I can haggle a price down at a Novotel and sometimes a Hilton. You would imagine the desk jockey at those isn't in a position to offer discount but they often are.

Last visit to Novotel Hammersmith and Hilton NEC I got a combined total of 5 days parking for free - because I asked! That's £100 of spending money to me, thanks.

Absolutely everything was a form of barter and negotiation, from airport taxes to bus fare, entry to attractions, the price of a bottle of water, the lot.

You get used to it very quickly. After a few days you carry a small amount of cash in your pocket and the rest elsewhere, in your sock or whatever. Then, whatever price you're quoted for anything, you open your wallet and show the $7 dollars you have left and shrug. Invariably the $7 is enough.

On our last day we traded all our (used) clothes except what we were stood up in for souvenirs from the beach shops. It's the most I've ever got for my used knickers.

When I went to Kenya we were whacked with a number of innovative taxes.

Everyone had to pay an 'arrival' tax, in dollars.

Everyone with a camera or a video camera (i.e., everyone) had to pay a 'tech' tax, in dollars.

Anyone that randomly had a chalk 'x' put on their baggabe had to pay 'chalk x' tax, in dollars. The main factor for receiving the chalk x appeared to be if the bag was dark and made of a material where chalk could leave a mark. Shiny, metallic finish bags or light coloured bags appeared to be exempt.

All these taxes were collected by a small group of men in military uniform with guns and mirror finish sunglasses.

We went to a zoo type place in Mombasa and on the big board outside were the entry prices:

local black visitor £1

black tourist £3

white £10

I think it was an attempt at being fair, I think it was a crude attempt to charge what they believed you could afford. A couple of black americans were charged the white price, for being american. They must have loved that.

what?

WHAT?

blue tooth TOWEL????

no I'm sorry sir, we don't have the technology

thanks for calling

click

sounds like a great life.......what's the CV for?

Without wishing to go full anorak, I don't see (or hear) where that backs up your case?

The example also presumes the vineyard would be in capitalist control and not a co-operative. It also presumes no worker would ever be prepared to pay more than the hourly production rate for an item, which is a bit of a crude year 1 version of Marxism.

My version is definitely better. My version allows art appreciation and individuality.

 

 

... I'm a civil servant on a poultry wage...

You must be quackers.

 

Don't get me started.  I was going to confront "her" but felt like chicken tonight. 

 

cock

they were well lubricated

Parma have failed to find a buyer, have officially been declared bankrupt and will start next season in amateur division 4

busted

 

 

Parma are set to begin next season as an amateur club in Italy's fourth tier after failing to find a buyer to pay off a debt of 22.6m euros (£16.2m).

a night tube to Stockwell should go straight on the tourists 'things to do' list

at first I nearly choked on my supermarket knock off version of Alpen

then I watched it

now I'm ready to face Monday with a smile and a '**** yeah!' attitude

'thanks for posting' as they say on youtube...

 

 

Oasis on another level? Basement and penthouse.

77m albums sold worldwide will buy you one hell of a penthouse

 

 

Popularity isn't everything. Justin Bieber has probably sold more.

 

between them, Cliff Richards and the Spice Girls have sold over 300 million

yet with the exception of 'Devil Woman' and '2 become 1', much of their output has been mediocre 

I'll let that criticism of Oasis pass chrisp65, as you're going to sort me out with Charlotte Church in the near future.

Aahh I was only dicking around to start a mini war, both bands are perfectly fine and nobody's musical taste is better than anyone else's.

The first Oasis album is a stand out piece of work, excellent. But then, first listen to some of those Roses singles* as they came out, oooh man.

*they'll be up in the attic somewhere, I'm sure they've got postcards of art and whatnot tucked in them, from memory.

there's a world difference between the art of The Stone Roses and anything Oasis have managed to knock out that's not instantly recognisable as a rip off of someone else's work

I believe it's an unwritten rule that postmen wear shorts, like a badge of honour kind of thing. Anyone who does their round in trousers is seen as a bit of a second-class citizen.

Do they make the second class one's do the afternoon delivery?

(That's an age related joke - in olden times your first class post turned up in the morning, second class post turned up mid afternoon. Now of course, all post turns up mid afternoon, some of it with more stamps than others)

Islington,

It's on the 'Light in the attic' label.

I've ended up with a couple of things from there and it's pretty much turning into a label you can buy something unknown and it will be good. 

Just to doubly prove my left wing credentials I shall blame that apostrophe on the rather louche 10:00am glass of port I'd just knocked back (I was cooking up a stock for the beef and had run out of red wine, so used port).

I think it's ok to drink 2007 port in the morning providing the glass started out life as a nutella pot.

I'll be honest, I have had a brief nap this afternoon.

straight on to the Scott's website - sold out!

lovely, lovely album, second side is just sublime

 

Back in the day, when I knew everything and still had teenage spots, I had a badge on my two tone harrington jacket that read 'Ferrari's for everyone.'

 

The put down 'Champagne socialism' just isn't thinking hard enough. Champagne for everyone is a perfectly decent goal.

 

The problem is that Marx's labour theory of value predicts that it would not be possible and not even desirable.

 

The reason Champagne is expensive is that the traditional method of making it is very labour-intensive, especially the remuage process where each bottle is turned a minute amount by hand and le dosage where wine and sugar are added for secondary fermentation.

 

Under a socialist system, wasting precious man-hours on such a decadent and frivolous product, when the manpower could be used to produce essential goods, would be total anathema.

 

If you want Champaign for everyone, you need a capitalist system where large amounts of capital is invested to automate the process, which would lower the price, and make it accessible to all.  

 

Having read a little bit of Marx and around Marx (enough to blag it in some company) I'd have to disagree.

What you're quoting is the bolshevik end of the communist interpretation of Marxism. Rooted in a 110 year old take on a 150 year old idea.

The World has moved on since the 1800's, my champagne for everyone version is a great improvement. But not to be taken literally. For 'champagne' you can also slot in fancy looking cars, Bruce Springsteen, gardening or cake. Not in the let them eat cake way of the tories. But in the way where there is more than enough to go around if we all have one cake. It's when somebody wants to corner the cake market that we have problems.

Ferrari for everyone would actually be fantastically easy to provide. It really would. Whether it fits a skewed 2015 view of original Marxist thought, well I just don't know about that.