coldel

Have you ever watched 'The Thick Of It' ? She is soooo Ben Swain

Its not actually a real leadership debate from how I read it - the leaders will be handed questions to answer from the public. The actual 7 party debate indicates that senior representatives of each party will attend and be moderated. So its likely TM and JC will not attend and send someone in their place, who if they do a bad job will be hung out to dry.

The same man that told me 'stock is best' when I was umming and urring about changing the front bumper on my GT-Four

About as close as we will get to a leaders debate, without actually having one http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-39845685

Good result - such a good looking car!

It all began to lift when sat in the sun, it needs doing by someone who can do it properly which means spending probably £100 for vinyl and time. I checked hydro-dip costs and was looking at over £200+ for the bits I just sprayed myself with a £10 can of plastidip.

Yeah it just looks that little bit more modern - it's just nicer to get in and not be overwhelmed with black plastic. That little black cubby hole below the A/C controls though is screaming at me to put an EBC in there...must resist!

Interior really getting there now, some nice treatment on the leather seats, aluminium plastidip on the interior centre binnacle area to match the sides and the subtle chrome rings on the dials - such a nicer place to be compared to when I first got it I think: Before After:

Good luck with whatever decision you take mate, not a nice decision to have to take to break up a family but my look out would also be what G raised, in that if she just runs off with the kids because of a financial situation the courts might not look on that favourably in terms of custody, I mean they could look on her as a flight risk? As I say, good luck pal.

Very cool - always amazes me the engineering involved to get one of these out to sea.

I think thats how most people do it - and the providers seem happy to allow it to happen? Switching each year, the bigger ones are all pretty samey I think?

I am no expert in many of the things described above but the opening comments would ring alarm bells for me, just upping and leaving whilst he is at work. Who knows what the personal situation is (domestic abuse or the like?) but if the partner has done nothing wrong and she does a runner with the kids then all sorts of legals he brings could suddenly become part of the equation including custody battles and the immense stress that must bring. It feels like she is going to enter a traumatic period of her life, either you could be there for support when she needs it or you will live it day to day - worth considering how that might impact your life, its going to be a lot more than them taking up a couple of spare bedrooms I would think?

If you look at the supermarket price increases and combine with WTO rules you get to that number, it's informed speculation. And you're right circumstantial but no moreso than thinking that brexit won't affect us and we are through the worst. Until trade deals are done the current situation is not representative of the future either. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Well you may as well not debate anything and sit waiting for things to happen to you? I don't know what job I will have, how many kids I will have or even if I will still be with my wife next year (don't tell her that just making a point!) but that doesn't stop me taking what I do know and working through best and worst case scenarios. Sometimes these do play out as well so it's hardly BS. To put my comment int context, it was a response to a point that brexit hasn't affected us, I tried to just show that it has and potentially if TM doesn't get what she wants and we get hard exit, there is a reasonable chance it will really affect us under certain conditions. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Seems your first statement is right with regards to your last points There is absolutely no evidence or proof that either of those two statements will be fact, its all hypothetical. To be clear i am not saying it wont happen, but lets not start the scaremongering bs again please. No the BS was "fact" presented as such which was clearly not. The UK has NEVER paid £350k to the EU per week, the countries publicly available accounts showed this. I then speculated about price increases for supermarkets, prices have already gone up (again measured by the market as fact) in some food areas by up to 10% (again fact) - WTO rules have % levels associated with them (again fact) and I speculated if they came into play adding them together what the outcome would be - that's using informed data to predict an outcome, that's not BS. BS is telling something to the public as fact which is proven not to be. The UK never at any point sent £350m to the EU in fees. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Its this...people think because they are spending £1 in a shop they are not being affected, but that £1 the business receives buys them less in from their non-UK suppliers than before. Businesses have to hit margin levels (most good businesses will measure their company strength on margin or EBITDA than revenue) and thus this cost is passed on.

Wow loads of interesting stuff to debate, my tuppence for what its worth: Rail unions dress up unrealistic pay rises with borderline BS about safety, I agree its debatable about closing ticket offices/staff being isolated in quiet locations etc is safe but other issues around track safety is just all utter BS and you are fool to believe it - how comes every time there is a strike about safety the issue of guaranteed pay rise levels (utterly ridiculous notion in this day and age) are put in as part of the conversation. I for one minute do not believe unions act in the interests of public safety, only acting to remain favourable to members that pay to be part of that union and their wages. And lets not even talk about the voting system whereby less than half of members vote and only half again vote to strike Brexit was a great learning experience, I don't think anyone on that mammoth thread I started really caught the mood correctly with our views, that protest votes would stretch so far. People voted against the EU, they couldn't have voted for non-EU as there was nothing on the table that was at all convincing (apart from garbled stuff around £350m per week to the NHS, £350m a week for the armed forces etc even though we only send £190m a week in any case if you added up all the promises we are going to be spending billions a week). There were some horrendous amount of BS from both sides going around - with people so willing to believe what 'confirmed' what they wanted to believe and ignore anything else said to them even if it was irrefutable. As for not being affected by Brexit, well of course not, yet. Economics is not an on off switch. How do supermarket prices work for instance? Well, they hedge their purchasing, which means agreed currency rates for 6-12 months on imports. Most supermarkets import around 60-80 percent of their food stuffs, many of those hedged prices expired beginning of this year which is seeing food prices pushing up inflation. If we do not sort a trade deal, the combination of currency issues and potentially WTO rules coming in could mean your supermarket bill going up 20-30% Lets not even think about the loss in taxation if tens of thousands of jobs leave the city (Goldman Sachs the latest) to go set up passporting rights in the EU, a report earlier this year showing that 20% of new startups will build their base in the EU not the UK and many other factors that could impact long term growth This GE its becoming clear through the strong and stable message is that TM wants enough votes to push her agenda through the house on Brexit, nothing more. My fear is that she has already burnt a few bridges with her hard approach, the longer the trade deals take, the harder it will be for us.

UKIP mob all moving back to the Tories is mostly whats going on (look at Essex) I think.

...back on politics, a bit of a guide on the GE yesterday. UKIP smashed as basically there is no reason to vote for them anymore. Libs neither here nor there, Labour folding and losing seats. Its going to be nothing but a Tory landslide this year.

Taxation flew up on cigs but smokers still voted for the ruling party? I agree though, any government should conduct some sort of policy research before committing.

If you buy the occasional burger the tax on it won't really affect your overall spending though? Effectively taxation was one of the main drivers of the reduction of smoking (along with all the supporting media, banning in public etc). On the flip side, if they made healthy food cheaper that would also help. There is a programme called Early Doors a comedy set in a pub, there is a bit where the cantankerous old guy in the corner starts talking about organic food. How everything used to be organic in the old days (but not called that), then they put preservatives in food to make it last longer and charged us all for it, then took it out again called it organic and charged us more again, its a rip off!

Sold - thread locked

To the very last point - the NHS is a fix for a problem in many cases which could be avoided. Sorting out the issues such as increasing obesity, alcohol (which I read yesterday is actually dropping in the UK) and the like is what the focus should really be on. Better to not have the problems in the first place than to constantly look to fix the outcomes of them.

It's not just the NHS, social care, school, policing. All these 'state funded' services run at a 'loss' and none are cheap. This chart below is produced by the institute of fiscal studies, and it essentially shows the balance of how much money people receive (top half of the graph) versus how much people contribute to tax (lower half of the graph) broken down according earnings. Essentially if the top bar chart is the same as the bar chart at the bottom than that group of people use as much public resources as they contribute in tax. If you look carefully it's only the top 20% of the working public that contributes more to state funds through taxation than they consume in public services. The old favourite line touted by many 'I deserve X/Y/Z from the state because I've worked all my life' is really only true if you earn at least £38K pre-tax. Been devils advocate if you really wanted to run the country like a business and balance the books the only solution you have is to exclude 80% of the population from accessing public services once they have used up their 'allotted' amount - be that health care, school, housing etc. Would you expect Nissan to give you a GTR if all you could afford was a Note because you have previously owned a 350Z so clearly a Nissan citizen/club member? BUT would you judge one person life over another purely based on the size of their bank account? Because if all you care about is the financial figures that's what it comes down to, I know I wouldn't want to live in that kind of society. https://www.gov.uk/g...e-and-after-tax There loads of things I love about StarTrek, but the notion of humanity existing without money is probably the most exciting thing part of the StarTrek universe for me.....However I'm pretty sure that is also by far the most unrealistic SciFi idea anyone has come up with ...We'll probably have flying electric antigravity cars before than happens I always wondered that, cashless society with no material ownership of anything. Then I thought, so whilst Jean Luc here gets all the glory who is cleaning the bogs back at HQ? And not getting paid for doing a rubbish job?

Good post Dan - I remember making the same points during the Brexit debate, everyone saying how the weekly £350m savings (ignoring for now that the actual number is less than £200m) put into the NHS etc it will barely touch the sides before disappearing down the hole. Politicians do a very good job of using numbers when it suits them i.e. when spending billions, or % when they need to. Ultimately to fool the public who believe whatever is put in front of them. The real point is as you mention in the last paragraph, that the government currently spends more than it earns, yet there is a public expectation that spending should go up, but debt goes down (http://www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk/) - its all a bit cockahoop really. Osbourne for all his unpopularity wanted us to be pushing that clock down, not up. He didn't expect to clear the debt, just change direction. Labour felt the way was to borrow more to generate more business in the UK but as we are now at something like 90% debt as a percent of GDP its such a high risk move to make with so little wiggle room before that goes over 100%