Johnny Bognor

I heard on the radio that the first one won't come into service until 2016 at the earliest and the second in 2018. Knowing how these sorts of projects work, they will probably be not be delivered by 2020. Dave hasn't ruled out aircraft altogether, just none until 2020.

Got me on that, but it doesn't distract from the point I was making So will you deduct the cost of linen, food, heating etc from his petrol costs. A sort of contra deal? He obviously doesn't feel you're worth seeing if he expects you to pay for his petrol. Not at all, I will help any friend/family member at no charge and they would help me at no charge. Anyway, enough about me, so not only are you depriving local B&B's but you are also depriving local trades people.

That doesn't say a lot about your son in that he isn't prepared to pay you for Bed & Breakfast (services rendered), but you are required to pay him for his carpentry (services rendered). I wouldn't expect B&B for free, just think of all the local guest houses with empty rooms missing out on that much needed revenue.

So you have never ever had anyone do you any favours? You have never been anywhere near a DIY store? (thus depriving the appropriate trade the revenue they would have had if you didn't do it yourself) Don't be ridiculous BTF It is his legal duty to get it sorted, but he is not legally required to pay someone to do it. If someone does it for him as a favour (assuming they are appropriately qualified), the fact that it is done (in a timely manner) is all that counts. Knowing what most plumbers are like, it would be quicker to get someone to do it as a favour and therefore benefit the tenant.

True, they certainly hadn't wiped it out. It went up as a consequence of the early 90's recession and with Gordon Brown following Ken Clarke's spending plans for the first two years of his tenure ensured that the rise was halted and started to fall into reverse. The debt fuelled boom following the millenium ensured it fell back to pre-90's recession levels until Labour went on a spending spree.

That is deliberately misleading. I know it is old, but if you go back to a time before it got out of control, of course it is not going to look too bad. Taking the latest figures from here: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=206 I have brought the graph up to date Doesn't look so good now, does it?

To use your analogy, it is like someone who earns £1800 a month (GDP divided by population divided by 12), but their outgoings are £1900 a month (Defecit divided by population added to monthly earnings) and the credit card is maxed out at £22,000 (National Debt divided by population). The defecit reduction is equivalent to cutting the outgoings from £1900 to £1890 which is about £10 a month. Quite small in the scheme of things.

Google "Lembit Opik" with images turned on......., just as I have done. You wish you were Lembit in your wildest dreams!

Are you Mr X in disguise?

Junior? Apprentice? I agree that I have more charm and charisma, that goes without saying. Not sure about age as I could not get excited about collecting spoons. FYI, I am in my late 30's. In running a business you have to look at income and expenditure and ensure you make a profit, but at the very least balance the books, something that most history graduates do not have a clue about. The only hope we have is that the current history graduate can learn from the mistakes of the last history graduate who should have gone on to work in a museum, not running our economy.

But he didn't make the decision to start buiding them, they are aready underway and have been for quite some time. The decision to build them without planes was taken by Old New Labour (interestingly the New Old Labour party are still in favour). Therefore if it is cheaper to keep going, then they should keep going. GO is bang on the money here. As for a strategic defence review, why were the carriers ordered by Old New Labour without hoding their own review? Could it be to provide employment in Gordon's constituency and therefore have nothing to do with defence? Gordon was supposed to hold an SDR before 2010, but totally bottled it. I suppose at the end of the day, that's what you get when a party of bottlers are in charge (They bottled the SDR and they bottled the election).

In the last SDR in 1998, Clown and Co were going to have another one before 2010, but they knew what was coming, bottled it and this is yet another poisened challice to be handed over to someone else to sort out.

I don't think GO has any choice. If cancelling costs more than allowing it to go through, then it would be stupid to cancel because at the end of the day the idea of cuts is to save money. On the bright side, it will help employment prospects in Brown's constituency. Did I just say that? Could it be that Labour ordered 2 aircraft carriers to buy votes in the former prime ministers constituency? You wouldn't even get that on Yes, Minister. Hmm, does make you think. I don't see how GO looks foolish on this as his hands are tied. This definately has the hallmarks of the old New Labour party, whilst the New Old Labour party are still in favour of the carriers. I am not a big GO fan by the way (Ken Carke for me any day) especially when he managed to look foolish over child benefits (yes, I agree with the concept that rich people shouldn't get benefit, but the execution/implementation was poor IMO).

I too was horrified at the above when I first read about it in 2009 (a year before the tories has been elected and GO appointed chancellor) http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23710801-defence-cuts-to-leave-aircraft-carriers-without-any-planes.do The question you need to ask is which dimwit signed the contract for the carriers? Which imbecile negotiated the contract so that it costs more to cancel them than it does to finish them? Could it be the same genius that thought he had abolished boom and bust? I doubt you will criticise Brown and Co for this decision? (as it is it OK for them to make such a catastrophic mistake) Anyway, since the New Old Labour party is clearly in favour of the carriers (http://www.scottishlabour.org.uk/saveourcarriers), despite being a decision made by imbeciles (as you put it), you are not singing off the party songsheet

One of the other parents at my kids school gave up his day job as a plumber and trades professionally. He makes enough from it to pay the mortgage and bills.

Watching the lefties on this thread pit their wits against June got me thinking. When anyone from the centre right criticises the Blair or Brown governments, the lefties on here are quick to distance themselves from New Labour with cries of "they weren't socialist". Now when anyone criticises Red MilliBLAND, they are all rushing to his defence. So can I take it that the New Old labour party is now socialist? This confuses me as not much has changed (OK, the new leader is better than the last because let's face it, Brown was ****), but some of the war mongerours are in the shadow cabinet and they haven't renamed themselves "New Old Labour". If we take it that the socialists now support the New Old Labour party, can they associate themselves with a leader who showed more concern for the middle classes yesterday, than he did for the working man? Just interested as I think it is a bit odd.

Whenever people talk about moles, why does it remind me of this?

Indeed. Then chuck in a couple of sprigs of rosemary and bingo!!!!!!! Mole in the Hole

But this doesn't get away from the point that in the past, the top 10% academically ended up in the top 10%. Now we have the top 50%, most of whom won't make the top 10% by definition, unless 50% of the population will be directors and knights of the realm, which would be a case of too many chiefs and not enough indians. We can't all be at the top at the end of the day. The sheer amount of people with degrees, devalues a degree simply as it is not as 'special' as it once was. When we advertise for a vacancy, the number of applicants with degrees is outstanding. As a small business, it makes sense to hire the right person and if there are two that are identical, except for the degree subject, it makes more sense to select the one with the most relevant qualification who a) demonstrates a general interest in that discipline and b) can hit the ground running. Therefore in the world of work, some degrees are more useful than others. When my kids come of age, I would like them to go to Uni, but I will suggest they do something that makes them more employable / attractive to employers.

I agree with you, however I have found that those with degrees in psychology can do well in sales as they may be able to read people better.

The only way is up (Yaz and the plastic whatever)

Hmm, there is something in that, but it is more about the individual's ability, more than the subject of a degree as to where someone ends up eventualy. In politics, the Chancellor is a history graduate, the shadow chancellor was a postie. Let us look at the most succcessful business people from Alan Sugar, Richard Branson, Doug Ballyntine, Peter Jones, etc none of which had degree whatsover. So a degree on it's own is not the be all and end all. It is also worth pointing out that you are looking at the graduates of yesteryear where they were in the top 10% academically. I guess they all ended up in the top 10%, so you could argue that back then, subject choice was not so important. However today, with 50% of youngersters going to uni, you don't need to be a maths graduate to know that they won't all make the top 10%. I'd wager that one fifth might, with the other 4 fifths fighting over the scraps. With this in mind, if you are not going to make the top 10%, you would be better off studying something useful. Therefore, I would suggest that 20/30/40 years ago, subject matter was less important, however today it is essential to make the right choices in terms of subject area. The number of graduates with 1st class honours degrees (in fairly useless subjects) doing menial jobs is testament to this, without considering record levels of graduate unemployment.

Ah, but it is more according to Greenpeace as with VAT the costs go up. WTF? Where do they think the VAT goes?

One of them was heard saying "Remember lads, what went on down the mine, stays down the mine"

...and that is my point precisely. If fees have to go up, then we can look at areas where there are needs/potential returns and ring fence them, at the expense of others. Not ideal, but needs must. As I have said before, I am against fees going up, but something has to be affordable. If we take a macro view as to where the nation will be in 30, 40, 50 years time, where are we going to generate wealth? We need to invent and design the products/services of the future. If we do this, our nation will be wealthier (which means we can all argue about how that can be spent/distributed). If we don't, we'll all be highly educated sitting in our grass huts listening to the philosophers tell us all where we all went wrong, whilst the Chinese and Indians will be delivering food parcels and holding Live Aid concerts for us poor old Brits.