CB Saint

So if I give up my higher rate tax relief - will you agree that all public sector final salary schemes should be scrapped. I'm willing if you are

Cheap back breaker traps are the most effective. Tried them all and these work every time. The bloke from rentakill even confirmed this despite having to try and sell some other contraption.

Granted, but it is cool. Plus it pours a decent cold pint, try that using your bucket.

Just seen this and am now rewriting my letter to santa http://www.williamswarn.com/Shop

Mechanic? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Built_My_Hotrod

Say ok, here is a couple of hundred towards it as your Christmas present. Get him to ask anyone else to give cash instead and tell him to save the rest. Our nephews do this when they covert something unrealistic, and as a result save like demons to get it.

"Grab as much as you can boys, this is a once in a lifetime closing down sale. When its gone, its gone"

Or it could be that all the hedge funds are balancing the books after a very proftable week of short selling. Good news re the greeks and Italians, although getting in a proper economist may be 10 years to late for the Greeks.

Considering that a growing number of Scots would like independene beyond a devolved assembly, I would disagree with this. I do agree with your second point that Europe has to be all or nothing.

Hmm... ask any Scot if he is british or Scottish and see what answer you get.

The only way to get the euro to work is complete fiscal integration with central taxes and bonds. Unfortunately that is not palatable to a great many residents of the euro area which is why it wasn't set up like that in the first place. The euro was a political fudge and this is now coming home to roost. I would like nothing better than the euro to work out. that way the world might return to normal, but it is fundamentally flawed . I want the next best thing which is a managed removal from the euro of some of the more unstable nations. The longer the politicians dither the worst the medicine will taste when the euro finaaly implodes.

If a company is daft enough to pay us a severn figure sum to name our stadium, then I am happy to take their money. On this note I hope the CEO of Young's is a Portsmouth fan

Poxy was meant as a figure of speech, however when put up against was is currently going on in the EU, it is. http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/1105/eu-accounts-4-6bn-in-fraud-waste-and-irregularities

He must think he is the most unluckiest person in the EU. Fraud being committed on a grand scale by nation states and he gets his collar felt for a few poxy expenses.

One of the big problems they face in the southern european countries is endemic levels of tax evasion. to give some examples Greeece - there is a tax on swimming pools as part of their property tax. Their IRS had 300 on record - when google earthturned up, it was found that there were 15,000 in athens alone. Italy - Forbes magazine estimates that there are 200,000 millionaires in Italy. Their IRS thinks there are 700. Spain - When you sell a house there are two prices. The first , lower price is what you declare to the government and pay stamp duty on, the secong higher real price is what you actually pay. The difference is paid in cash between the buyer and the seller when the lawyer has to leave the room "convienently" to take a phone call. The euro is a basket case and the sooner the eurocrats face up to the fact that the euro cannot survive in its curent format the better.

Maybe, just maybe we will have a political thread that won't descend into mudslinging - ala tory boys are prats or Ed is a lisping nerd.

If I had to lend money to someone as described in tokyo's post, I would want a shed load of interest as well. It is not so much interest as risk premium, as there is an fair to middling chance that you will never see the person or cash again.

I am terrified that if I start believing, I will put the mockers on it.

http://www.oven-care.com/ just had them round - best £40 i have spent for a long time

christ Jonny, are you still biting?

The CEO credited with turning around IBM did this. He said that board members had to buy shares to the value of a multiple of the salary. His for instance was set at 4x his base salary. the next tier down was 3x so that they would feel real pain. Interesting he made 100's of millions from his options, but then again he saved IBM (they were 90 days away from running out of cash when he joined). Was he worth the money he made? or is he another freeloading parasite

If you read some of the stuff on here (and elsewhere) you would beleive that there was absolutely no point in having directors and that they added little or no value at all.

To answer your question - no one - or actually that should read Westminster. I am all for a common market for trade, but we should leave it at that, leave the law making to the individual states.

So if I read the wiki quote right our elected representative can only vote on topic proposed by the unelected representatives, and are unable to put forward their own legislation that we, the electorate, might actually want.

I suspect this is one of those cute headline grabbers. I notice that it includes the bonuses paid to directors. Bonuses make up a substantial part of executive pay. If I were to hazard a guess, most directors received a bonus this year and didn't get one the previous year hence the rise. Perhaps they should also compare against the previous 3 of 4 years as well to get a fairer picture.