ecuk268

According to the latest ONS figures there are about 500000 vacancies. So what's going to happen to the remaining 900000 (assuming that the vacancies are in the same areas as the unemployed)?

What evidence have you got that his father's opinions would be ingrained. Did you know the family? When we reach our teenage years, many of us rebel against our parents views and don't blithely taken on their opinions. What you think at 17 is hardly indicative of how you'll be in later years. Ken Livingstone was on R4 this morning telling how his mother and father were both working-class Tory voters and, when he was 17, he was very anti-Labour. He started to form his own left-wing views in his 20's, much to his parents dismay.

That's exactly what they show. Did mine back in the late 70's and was invited to join. They certainly had their share of weirdos .

Thatcher and Blair both considered this but gave up. Is the idea to save money or is it a sop to the right-wing in their dislike of anyone in receipt of benefits (despite many having contributed all their lives via National Insurance). If you're on Jobseekers at about £70.00 per week, how many hours are you expected to do? If it's at the minimum wage, then about 11. How will it be administered? Will there be a small army of supervisors checking up on people? How much will they cost? It'll probably be contracted out to some company who donates to the Tories, who'll make a fat profit whilst managing to cock the whole thing up (perhaps G4S). Can't see it ever getting off the ground.

Our Bramley trees are loaded this year and Southampton Common yielded a good haul of blackberries. What's the best way to freeze cooking apples?

John Humphries was interviewing Farage on R4 this morning. He sacked him because he felt that the media leapt on remarks like that and used them to reinforce Cameron's remark that UKIP was a party of "loonies, fruitcakes and closet racists". Although I wouldn't touch UKIP with a bargepole, Farage is a very entertaining speaker.

Wheater was said to be better with the bat. Didn't quite work today.

Brackets first so 1.

How about the Saudis, those bastions of democracy. We've flogged them enough kit in the past and it's not like they can't afford it. Mind you, they're probably not too keen on encouraging the populace to rise up against their leaders.

Mrs ecuk268 bought me a year's subscription to The i. Don't normally have time to read a decent paper every day so The i is a good compromise between quality and brevity. Reasonable coverage of cricket and Premiership footy and some good articles on sport in general. If I want more depth, I go online.

Used to park in M&S but they may have rumbled that one now.

We all had the jab when I was at school.

Sholing to Southampton Central is £4.00 return (or £3.90 off-peak).

A guy here in the office uses Bartley UK in Totton. http://www.bartleyuk.com/

Ah, the brilliant Framley Examiner. The Classified Ads were brilliant. Why did they stop producing it?

There an article in today's Evening Standard in which Patrick Barclay reckons that, because Rooney was pretty poor last night, Chelsea and Arsenal will give up trying to sign him and turn their attentions to Rickie. Not convinced myself. I think that they would want someone younger with a proven top-flight record.

Reported this morning that Danny Briggs has signed a new 2-year contract to 2015.

Whoopie!!!

He got the sack for lending you his scarf? That's a bit extreme.

You can get a weekly bus ticket for £15.00. Gives unlimited travel for 7 days.

£4.20, which isn't bad when you consider petrol, parking and avoiding matchday traffic.

Good point. The old excuse that's often trotted out that "it's expensive to eat healthy food" is utter rubbish. Learn a bit of basic cookery, shop locally for fruit and veg, grow some herbs on your window sill and you'd be surprised how economically you can create good food. And you know exactly what goes into it.

Exactly. Fruit and veg have one of the highest markups in supermarkets. There's a guy who's had a stall in Shirley for years (in front of the old Crown pub) and he's so much cheaper than Sainsburys.

You’re too young to remember the early 80’s and the drastic cuts about to be implemented by Margaret Thatcher and her Defence Minister John Nott. Under pressure from Thatcher’s desire to slash spending, Nott had implemented a Defence Review and his solution was to concentrate almost solely on Britain’s role in NATO. The purchase of Trident was confirmed. The British Army of the Rhine was to be limited to 55,000 men. The Royal Navy was to lose one fifth of its 60 Destroyers and Frigates. Aircraft Carriers were to be phased out, with the sale of HMS Hermes and the newly-built HMS Invincible. Amphibious ships were to be scrapped too, meaning the end of HMS Intrepid and HMS Fearless. Essentially, the Navy was to become an anti-submarine force to operate in the North Sea, North Atlantic and the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap. The ability to act independently out of the NATO area was effectively being given up. Amongst other things, the Royal Navy Dockyards were to be drastically wound down and privatised, meaning thousands of redundancies. One of the lesser-known items in the review was the withdrawal of the Antarctic patrol ship, HMS Endurance. I was working for a company that did R&D work for the MoD and we had a visit from Keith Speed, the Navy minister. He totally opposed the cuts and was later ordered to resign by Thatcher. He refused and was sacked. He gave us a passionate speech about why the cuts were wrong, which I thought at the time was a brave thing for a serving Minister to do, expressing views directly opposing his superior and the Prime Minister. Then the Falklands came along. Nott’s career was finished and Keith Speed was vindicated. So, if it hadn’t been for the Falklands, the Navy would probably be even smaller than it is now.

I see that next year's "Grande Depart" is in Yorkshire.