NJS

If you believe the holding company angle then very slim.

I've had a blackberry or other phone from work for about 5 years now. Previous to that I had a contract with Orange but I always thought it was poor value as I never used all the minutes etc so I transferred to pay as you go which worked fine for me. I still have the phone/number with that sim lying around. As I intend to leave my current place in the near future I need to get a personal phone again and fancy a smart phone - probably an Android of some kind. Now I can afford £30/£35 a month but again I would be nagged by the thought it wasn't good value again as I can't imagine using these hundreds of minutes/thousands of texts you get on contract now. However I do want a good internet deal. I've done a few searches and see what look like "pay as you go" deals but they are basically just regular monthly amounts unbound by contracts. What I want is what I had previously on Orange - I want to buy a £20 top up and if that lasts 2 week, 2 months or 2 years that's up to me - then I'd just buy another one. However as I said it needs to include Internet. Anyone got any recommendations of retailers/deals available? Is it possible? I don't mind buying the phone and getting a SIM only deal if that's what it takes.

Hopefully any deal will not involve a new stadium which should keep them at their present level.

Sounds to me like LM's "heroic" special forces turned out to be incompetent killers - nothing to choose between them and the kidnappers. Agree the lass was daft for going there though.

Bad crack that like! Any chance you could name and shame to avoid the rest of us ending up getting ripped off there? Unlikely - the offender is now an HGV fuel depot just outside Chelmsford, the good guy was in Harlow - should be the other way round given the two towns really.

So is the evidence real?

Not in answer but I had a problem a few years ago when a garage "failed" my MOT for the handbrake. I then took it to a garage round the corner from work as it was more convenient who told me there was nowt wrong with it so I went back to the original garage to complain. The manager tested it and entered the number into a card type calculator, took a doubletake, then right in front of me turned the dial before pointing at it saying "there you go, fail". I went apeshit but he basically said it was my word against his as nobody else was there. I took it back to the other garage to get MOTed and he told me he wasn't surprised but in any case even if I proved they'd done the test wrong the best I'd get would be the a refund of the test fee.

I keep seeing a figure for vacancies of 550k (don't know how that's defined). Between 2-3 million "job seekers" + another 3 or 4 "not seeking" work for other reasons suggests a shortfall.

The problem with QE was that the money was sucked up by the banks - I'd liked to have seen it invested more directly in the economy, cutting out the middle man - things like extending the car scrappage scheme to all household goods etc.

It's 7th century. 7th. Wouldn't want you to commit a factual error to go along with your ignorance and racism, you've got enough on your plate. Islam wasn't that bad in the early days - certainly pissed on Europe's dark ages in terms of scientific progress etc - I think it was about the 16th century when it started to go a bit wrong. What happened in the 1500s that made it go wrong? The Ottoman Empire was still at its strongest then. No, it was the late 19th century when Islamic civilisation entered a terminal decline ending in the fall of the Ottomans and the rise of Islamism as a political philosophy, then the early 20th century post-WWI period when Western colonial powers set up dictatorships in the former Ottoman territories that endure to this day (see Saudi, Jordan, most of the Gulf states, etc). What I said about the 7th century was referring to his "turn back the clock" comment. Nobody wants to turn back the clock to the 1300s. The radicals say they're going to re-implement the caliphate, shari'a, etc - all of which dates from the 7th century, the time of the Prophet. Wasn't in around the 16th that the Sunni/Shia split happened? - obviously I'm not an expert but had read what may have been a throwaway remark about Islamic centres of learning etc "coming to an end" about then.

It's 7th century. 7th. Wouldn't want you to commit a factual error to go along with your ignorance and racism, you've got enough on your plate. Islam wasn't that bad in the early days - certainly pissed on Europe's dark ages in terms of scientific progress etc - I think it was about the 16th century when it started to go a bit wrong.

I had to have the two teeth either side of my front teeth taken out when I was 13 I think and it stopped me going to the dentists for years - I chipped a tooth as an adult so had to go then but just had 3 or 4 fillings at that time - I've looked after them pretty well since then. My last but one dentist (within the same practice) had a talent for making the anasthetic injection pain free - first time I refused to believe she's done it. She moved on unfortunately.

I think the "why would you want to go there?" can be applied to most places but the failure of Mackems to recognise Newcastle as by far the regional hub is quite amusing. Especially when they start bleating about regeneration.

Unfortunately you need their bias driven power base to be able to get away with his outbursts. I still remember Martin Edwardes saying that Arsenal should give David Elleray one of their championship medals for some perceived "crime" - an unbelievable statement for a club chairman to make.

The club were right imo to raise the issue of Atkinson being shit but I can't help feeling it will also cost us with other refs.

That post from Parky sound like its similar to Barry Moat for us - we can but hope its true and the bloke does stretch himself to buy.

That just makes Pompey look more stupid - if vaguely competent people (business-wise) like Hicks, Ashley and the the Icelandic bloke knew to set up holding companies then so should they.

I had one out about 8 years ago when I had a dentist who was quite a small (and very attractive) Indian lass who had to give up half way through and call her husband (the other practice dentist) in to get the fucker out - even then it was a struggle. I think I've mentioned before that one of the reasons I hate Everton is that I had my first ever root filling on the Saturday before we played them in the cup in 95 and I associate the mind-numbing agony that entailed with them. Since then I think I've had another 3 - 2 were fine - no worse then an extraction but the other was agony as well.

Still liking the Kindle - find myself reading 3 or 4 books at once - maybe it is a little too easy to buy new ones direct from it.

A lot of the criticism (joint thing aside) seems to be that it will disengage the well-off from the welfare state with the view that if people feel "part of the system" it enhances community or something - there may be something to this but I'm not convinced. If this is true I could see this as a deliberate attempt to do just that - to again demonize everyone on benefits so you can't use the "well you're happy to get CB" view.

I spotted the deranged fucker on his bike last week heading into Liverpool St station - first "celeb" I've seen in London for ages.

I have no objection to trying to get people into work and would love it if they could end the "generations of scum" - the problem is I still can't see the neceesary jobs being created in the present climate.

I seem to remember the the Tories introducing internal markets into the NHS in the 90s - a mate of mine (who was/is a Tory) was living with a nurse at the time and described them via her as disastrous. As far as I know you can choose your GP even now (within reason) - I don't see how introducing the notion of a free market can work - you can see "We do stomach staples for fatties unlike the other lot" type of ads in some sad competetion for patients and hence resources. I and others have already said how the actual aim is to open the door to BUPA etc to "manage" surgeries for GPs leading to further selective care.

Its so the press will concentrate on that while the real cuts that hit the real poor start next Monday and will be ignored.

The joint thing is stupid. People in the office discussing this just won't be told that 45k is a huge salary to millions of people - it isn't "middle income" - the median is something like 24k which means millions earn that or less.