bridge too far

It was bad tonight, wasn't it. It seemed to go down completely about 15 minutes ago and, before that, it was so slow that I realised Walsall had scored by looking at the BBC web page. Yep! THAT slow FFS! I managed to play 5 games of Solitaire between each refresh! Not good enough IMO

K, see you outside

I'm back too - had a fag AND loaded and started the dishwasher contemporaneously but it's taken this long for the refresh to reload

Counting down from 5 .........

Oh OK - I'll go to have a fag - see if I can work the magic

republic

enema

^^^ We've now got a 2 car policy and I'm the policy holder - because I now do a lower mileage and also because Mr TF has just bought a sh*t hot Subaru. I'm surprised more men don't put their wives as main policy holder although I guess any advantage will be wiped out because of this ruling. Is it so that there are more male drivers than female ones? Hmmm I wonder. However, I'll concede that GENERALLY males drive more miles than women. But again, when I was working, I drove far more miles a year than Mr TF did, because of my job. Sadly, you guys won't get a reduction for your car insurance. You can bet your bottom dollar that the insurance companies will leap on this and hike everyone's rates, saying that they'll have to calculate individual insurances rather than rely on actuarial and empirical evidence. Low mileage is reflected in everyone's policy. I reduced my own (paltry) insurance amount once I'd stopped work and reduced my annual mileage by two thirds.

aloes

dales

plaster

You should have shared my rather awesome thai chicken curry, cooked for me by Mr TF. That would have shifted your trapped wind.

For the first time that I can remember, old misery has made me laugh

You can buy liquid drink yoghurt these days. Is it just food you're denying yourself?

That's your perogative SG. My children haven't missed out on anything. They're all doing really well in their chosen careers and, more importantly to me, they're all well balanced, rounded individuals who are very caring and considerate. That's all I'd ever want from my children.

My point was that local authorities plan their budgets on known school rolls. And they plan 3 - 5 years ahead. If there is a sudden influx of children from an unexpected source, it can play havoc with their budgets by having to provide additional places and teachers. As someone pointed out earlier, private schools are granted charitable status which means there's a lot of taxes they don't have to pay. But they still have, on their staff, teachers who have been trained by the state and at a cost to you and me, the taxpayer. I don't applaud or castigate people who send their children to fee paying schools. That's their choice to make. I chose to send my children to state schools although, had I wanted to, I could have paid for them to have a private education. It was, and still is, against my principles.

Of course, because if there were no private schools, then all the privately educated pupils would need to be schooled in state schools. So the number of state school places would need to increase and so would the number of teachers to staff the schools. Interestingly, in some areas, the state system is suffering because of a sudden influx of children from the private sector whose parents can no longer afford school fees. This has caused the state system some difficulty as, paring their budgets to the bone, they suddenly found they had to find extra places.

Or an opposing point of view could be that the state paid for the training of all those teachers now teaching in private schools and, therefore, got little or no return on its investment. The same point of view can be adduced to doctors working in private medicine.

I notice that Sergei still hasn't answered my question. Where should I look to find an unbiased broadcaster?

I don't 'use' schools and so far have only once in my life had to call the fire service and a couple of times the police. But I don't object to paying for them, even though I have no choice. The BBC is a public service and, let's face it, in times of real national emergency it's the BBC that gives us the true picture and broadcasts necessary information.

I guess you meant to type 'partial' here? What 'intimidating adverts' are you referring to? All I've seen is the occasional advert reminding people that they have to pay a licence and that there are ways of detecting fraudsters who haven't paid. No different to number plate recognition stuff used by the police to seek out car tax evaders. Goodness me, when I compare the Value for Money I get for my TV licence to the mainly trash offered by the commercial broadcasters, I realise just how fortunate I am to have such a great public service broadcaster.

So which broadcaster IS impartial, in your view? I did chuckle at the link at the top of this site - to Sky News. Much lolage in the BTF household

too far

I thought that the parachute money was supposed to be paying off the football creditors?

And therein lies the counter-argument. Commercial broadcasters are always watching their backs in case their advertisers don't like stuff they broadcast. Some of these advertisers are big, big business - many of whom contribute to political parties. It could be argued, therefore, that they have a significant influence on how and what is reported on commercial media (we see it all too often in newspapers). I'm glad we have the BBC and I think it is impartial. It also produces magnificent programmes that earn shed loads abroad. As for sending 'too many people' to cover events, I would argue that BBC reporters and commentators are the best in the world. It's interesting that the first foreign correspondent allowed in Tripoli this week was the BBC's Jeremy Bowen. Because the BBC are held in such high regard.