El Pibe

Prices are much cheaper in Rwanda and Mexico Chippy, you might like to go there ;-P (Iran not so much, those sanctions are biting)

Are these the byproducts of your putting the world's foie gras stocks beyond use with powerful chemicals TM?

Bilious he may be, wrong he is not.

It's actually quite interesting to contrast the UK's problem with Spain's. There are no austerity measures necessary there because even the socialists, who presided over the nation since the madrid bombings helped oust the PP (their tories), were surprisingly sensible when it came to spending (gov't debt sits at a circumspect 60% of GDP, compared to UK's 80%). The problem there, mirrored here, was personal borrowing which went into the realms of the fantastical. As the housing bubble burst and confidence withered so too did spending and now their economy is in freefall because noone is spending any money and unemployment is apocalyptic (50% in 18-24 bracket, that's Tahrir sq levels!!) I make the comparisons because I wonder whether the cuts are rather missing the point. Whilst reining in spending strikes me as sensible, the constant bleating about austerity is sending out a message that is sucking away confidence which brings about a self-fulfilling situation of economic shrinkage, which means jobs are lost, which shrinks confidence, which curbs spending, which...etc. I'm not saying lets borrow heavily and splurge the cash. Perhaps tempering the language and releasing the iron grip, especially on front line services and long term social improvement programmes (god knows we need it before we lay the foundations for the next generation of riots) would be beneficial, but this sticking to a policy that may be doing more harm than good doesn't seem sensible. Surely politics should be about pragmatism, not 'staying the course'.

I admit that was a long sentence, but I'm not convinced youre actually reading anything I write. I'll set my stall out for you: 1. The cuts are ideological 2. I think they are damaging the economy, but I'm asking if perhaps the economy is simply screwed and regardless of the approach we'd still be here, hence my question about whether a change of tack would be beneficial, pointless or whether it's worth the pain to bring government debt down in the long run. Further to your points: 1. Labour's light regulation and impunity for financial irregularities helped get us into this mess whilst their financial mismanagement and overspend based upon an assumption of permanent growth (or housing bubble as we now call it) meant we couldn't get out of this, hence it's not the coalitions fault it's labour's.* But again I'm asking if the coalition could have done and could do better, and if so what? Debate ensues..... *I suppose you could say it was all the Tory's fault as they did the deregulation in the first place and personal debt spiralled under them before going nuclear under labour (no more bust remember!!!)

Really? I'm pretty sure they've sat over many booms and busts. It was brown who thought he'd abolished the latter....whoops. In all fairness you can't really lay the recession at the door of the coalition. I was merely asking if the coalition can admit that things haven't turned out as they hoped for, given that they were so convinced that pulling the plaster would be beneficial and that the economy would soon rebalance with the private sector expanding thanks to the lifting of the welfare cross the nation bore, would they be willing to consider another way. Sheesh, try writing a sentence that long! *long sentence edited for clarity*

Errr, yeeeeah. Q. Is sticking with the cuts sensible? A. Go back to North Korea. Twonk.

The one we're probably in, even if not, it's not good news however it's spun. http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1616085/Economy-watch-Is-Britain-heading-recession.html

Shall we add to this footballers charged with sex assault? http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/40000/0000/000/40078/40078.strip.gif

Did you have cable broadband installed or the adsl type? If the former they should have put in a new phone socket in the wall alongside where the cable comes in. If the latter your exisiting socket should work, but you'll need a splitter. You can't plug a phone into the router I'm afraid.

This one on the King's Road has always made me chuckle http://farm1.staticflickr.com/22/26935771_b7e224a755.jpg R Soles by samb, on Flickr

Double dip recession and sixth monthly increase in unemployment. Did the Tory's commitment to cuts never actually have aplan b, or was economic shrinkage always a necessary but unpleasant aspect of their ideological policies? (yes your honour, leading the witness....)

I'm hoping the brown lumpy liquid -> apples connection is scrumpy, but no way am I brave enough to test the hypothesis. ewwwwww

New Nexus meet Harold Camping, Mr Camping, Mr Nexus. You guys will get on famously!

oh, and of the OP point, I'm pretty sure it's more to do with cronyism and business interests (think Murdoch and pals) than suppressing real democracy maaaan. The stuffed shirts in the pentagon have nothing to fear from their people and it looks like whoever wins the next election will be taking a few of their toys away from them. Our gov't even less so, if they can ride out the expenses scandal and get a country to vote against change that will hand (a teeeeny teeeny teeeny bit of) power back to them, they can ride out anything. The occupy movement has consistently used the terminology of the arab spring to attempt to rouse the various target publics and have been met with general derision.

actually, and much to my chagrin after my overblown-too-clever-by-'arf method, just hitting escape when the page loads, but before the overlay appears does the job.

pretty much, and added that overlay thing

:)

hit ctrl+shift+i you'll get this thing appear at the bottom with all the html content. you'll see the usual stuff html, head, body etc. the third div down under body is called content &ltdiv id="content" ... click on it and look at the thing on the right. At the top it has a thing called styles under which is display: none double click the 'none' so it is highlighted and either type 'block' or cycle through your options with the up and down cursor keys. then press return. ta da. do the same with the mw-head div to bring up the search. It's a bit of a pain admittedly....

I repeat from another thread "As for wikipedia, it's not down so much as very clumsily hidden, a bit of manipulation with chrome or ie dev tools (ctrl+shift+i or F12 respectively) or firebug in firefox and you can see it in all its glory. " find the content Div and update display:none to something like display:block it's baaack. Or use a mobile browser/app as otta suggests.

I think Spooks probably jumped the shark sometime around series 2 or three, whenever it was that a busy section D became 4 people saving the world and doing allll the jobs ;) I do miss it, but it had become VERY silly. As far as I know everyone is committed to a third series in principal, but balls ain't rolling yet. As for wikipedia, it's not down so much as very clumsily hidden, a bit of manipulation with chrome or ie dev tools (ctrl+shift+i or F12 respectively) or firebug in firefox and you can see it in all its glory. *edited for section being a letter out*

Phew!!!!!! Congratualtions! Wow that was long, you beat La Piba by about 24 hours there for lengthiest labour i've ever heard of!

gang activity

I'm preparing myself to be unconvinced by any explanation to do with molly and her corpses (most of which are playing for England today it would appear). But I guess that'd be in keeping with the books wouldn't. Wasn't he actually killed off then reluctantly resurrected? (yeah yeah, wrong thread)

It is. Does anyone still have a gas oven? I've a gas hob with electric oven. There's got to be better ways to go than roasting ones head surely.