The PM Glass Box.
The Glass Box is where the PM team meets in at 18.00 every weeknight to discuss the content of the programme. We stay six feet away from each other.
We try to be honest with each other, but not hurtful, as we talk about what worked and what didn't...what met our expectations and what fell short.
This virtual glass box is where you're encouraged to take part in the same spirit. Tonight's PM editor Sarah Wadeson will read your comments and may well add her own.
Listen to PM
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Today's programme has just kicked off, but I wonder if this will be on the agenda? I should think so. The Carrie Grace interview with Lord Foulkes. I'm less concerned with what was said (interesting though it was) but more concerned with how it was reported on the BBC news website. http://news.bbc
.co.uk/1/hi/8045414.stm?lsm
While the video of the spat is very clear the accompanying text article truncates and edits a key quote without informing the reader that changes have been made. As a journalist I was always taught that quotes must not be edited for meaning and that if words are removed they must be clearly marked.
The original quote:
"...to come on television and sneer at democracy and undermine democracy. Look, it is being, it is being cleared up and the cast majority of MPs are not abusing the system. The vast majority of MPs are working hard in their constituencies, the vast majority of MPs are being undermined by you and are devastated because of the kind of publicity you are giving them. And youre paid a lot more than them."
the reported quote in paragraph 5:
"to come on TV and sneer at democracy and undermine democracy. The vast majority of MPs are being undermined by you."
I have looked through the editorial guidelines but cannot find a section that deals with how to report direct quotes in text services.
What is your view Eddie? How should this have been handled? Will the wrath of the government be rained down on the BBC again?
Yours
Andy Soloman
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I really must do a new Glass Box thingy....
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Oh dear, not allowed to claim for household goods, furniture and food. How are they going to manage on a mere 64 thousand a year?
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The thing is, I don't want it stop undermining our political system of pomp, privilege and circumstance where, only people like Cameron and the rest of the public schoolboy brigade can get in. the same goes for the rest of the political elite of all parties in westminster.
Just because a politician apologises for the tennis courts, swimming pools etc, etc, Doesnt mean the pools, courts, pomp, privilege, houses are going to disappear or stop. They will still be the same privileged people whatever the party.
I want someone to represent me who knows what its like to live like me. Not someone who may as well be from K-PAX.
This is could be a once-in-lifetime opportunity to actually face the possibility of being able to change the system so as to make more/properly representative of real people. Don't let them stop at the relatively trivial expenses corruption.
There are already people talking about and openly thinking about real changes that, only a few weeks ago you would be labeled a freak or,at best, a single issue radical. commentators are now lining up to be interviewed over such radical political change, I am pleasantly surprised. Lets not allow this wonderful opportunity to just pass us by.
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Alternatively you could discuss the move by National Express East Coast (the mob who took over the East Coast Mainline franchise from GNER) to charge for reserving a seat. £2.50 single and £5 return. Staggering. This comes hot on the heels of a fall in revenue and before reapplying for the franchise. What of travellers facing rail fare increases, fewer trains stopping at some destinations and increasingly unreliable services...
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High David,
Talking of K-Pax
Like your class box. Bet you can't wait to get to basket weaving can you?
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fJd@4:
"only people like Cameron and the rest of the public schoolboy brigade can get in"
and
"Doesnt mean the pools, courts, pomp, privilege, houses are going to disappear or stop. They will still be the same privileged people whatever the party";
Perhaps it is not your intent and I certainly don't wish to offend, but your comments sound like pure envy.
Might I ask, do you always vote?
Wanting "someone to represent me who knows what its like to live like me" sounds very reasonable but we have no idea how you live.
Coverage of MPs expenses on the programme tonight has been first class.
Did anyone else think David Cameron sounded like a headmaster?
Nothing they say fools me into thinking they would have paid back a penny if they hadn't been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. They aren't the least bit sorry about that, only sorry they were found out.
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akaspinningjenny - further to yours @5, I wondered why the 'Honorable Member' didn't catch the train, stay in a reasonably priced hotel overnight and get the train back the following day.
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Gasp! How terrible that people are allowed to protest and demonstrate! And within earshot of hard-working MPs who are trying to take time off from lining their pockets to think about the possibility of maybe doing their job and representing the people of this country... including the protestors...
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What an insufferable piece of radio - the po-faced, pious Mr Mair interogating George Osborne about a car journey.
I would have loved to hear about those other car journeys paid for by the BBC.
I agree with Stephen Fry, this MPs' expenses business just doesn't matter. Let's get on with some real news.
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With regard to Gordon Brown's latest whiz idea of a nice police officer escorting nervous walkers the last mile home, I thought of a way it could possibly work. Because school walking buses are now a recognised and popular form of transport for children between home and school, perhaps a similar thing could be organised for grown ups after a night out. They would first have to register and get a responsible adult to sign for them, then they would be issued with a high visibility waistcoat which they would need to take with them when they go out. When they decide they want to go home they could phone a premium rate number (to pay for the nice police officers) and they would be escorted (obviously wearing the high viz thingy) to a collection point and when enough people are gathered together they could walk home together, holding hands of course, escorted by two nice police officers, one at the front and one at the rear. Perhaps we could call it a Drinking or Clubbing bus. An alternative may be to get muggers etc. to agree not to attack people before they reach their last mile home, when of course they can take advantage of their police escort. Should I send these ideas to Gordon?
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Ref 1 nhaqueoi
Good point. You should get an answer quite soon. There seems to be both a 'spelling police' and a 'grammar squad' on this page. Sometimes you get a lecture. Yet when you look at their own posts - guess what jumps out? Every time.
When I quote by breaking up a sentence , I separate with a few full stops. If I'm joining quotes from differnt sentences, I open and close quotation mrks respectively. It's probably wrong - but there you go. However, the example you give looks reasonable. It doesn't distort the general theme. Its as well to look out for these practices, especially in books, where it seems to be more common.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Mr. Clegg says Britain should remain safe inside the EU. The EU will start shrinking shortly when Berlin, Brussels and The Vatican realise there isn't enough money for handouts for all.
The EU will shrink and Britain will either leave voluntarily, or be told to leave.
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Lady Sue,
No, It sounds and means like how I meant it. Please don't pull out that same tired old patronising script. the trump card reserved for when there is no defense. Yes, I do find your comments slightly offensive as, I feel I am more worthy of an proper thought out answer. Come on Lady Sue, you can do better than that can't you?
So your content then with over 60% of the members of parliament being drawn from from less than 5% of the indigenous population of our country; including wealth? This is apart from, women, ethnic minorities, disabled and the just plain poor/working class.
You have reminded me of the commentator I heard on the radio this morning who thought as long as their parents were 'working class', this makes the children of such people representative of that class. This commentator assumed, the children were going to turn out clones of their parents, political aspirations and all. What a load of old tosh.
Just like your accusation!
For your information, I draw your attention to the interview with Peter York on this edition. You can also rest assured, I do not own a pool or tennis court nor have any desire for one.
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So Lord Tebbit thinks voters should boycott the 'big' parties at the Euro elections, does he? If they're angry about the expenses fiddling, that is.
So that hits the Lib Dems, Plaid and the SNP, too, I assume, even though the Telegraph (Fount Of All Wisdom) hasn't (yet?) unmasked any fiddlers in their party.
Expect a big increase in votes for UKIP and the BNP, then. Oh, what a good idea.
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Or parties, even.
Meanwhile, Stephen Fry, who I adore, mostly, opines that it's 'bourgeois' to care about MPs' Xs.
That's, like, soooooooo C20th as an insult, Stephen.
(Who isn't as far, as I know, aristocracy, landed gentry or working class himself)
I did smile.
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Do your correspondents really think a complaint about MP dishonesty is at the expense of a demand for genuine global equality?
The 'political rhetoric' intention is that the issue will put pressure on the need for equality.
The media won't report the need for the unemployed not to suffer one jot compared with anyone else in this SLUMP.
The media won't report that the worst off person in Kenya should be no worse off than the best off person here.
But it DOES report issues which can only be properly resolved by EQUALITY and intergenerational work justice. (The first shall be last...)
Its the proper principle of organisation in the post-scarcity world.
Eddie Mair may be the right person for the PM job for example.
But not at what I guess his salary is.
Hence the muddying of the waters on PM tonight.
PS The idea that technical progress will match the rate of fall in employment so that output keeps up, is a good description of a continuing SLUMP.
Three/four years of that and you have in five of the work force unemployed. Exactly what it was in the 1930s. 5 million on benefit levels.*
Where does Nils find these people. No economist would call that a recovery, except the sort who says we are having a recovery....in unemployment as it we get more of it.
(A bit like one of those doctor/scientists talking about successful viruses as they infect more and more hosts)
* Which is why we need equality now, comrades.
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Frances O - what Tebbit hasn't spotted, of course, is that while the expenses row relates to Westminster miscreants, the elections he wants us to boycott are for Europe and local councils. He's as daft as a lord.
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No change there, then. Glad to see he's still the same old Norman two decades on, Sid.
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Lady Sue @ 8, I thought that the point was that he had missed the train and so took a car instead. What I wonder is whether train+hotel+train would have been that much cheaper than train+car for the journey in both directions.
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An awful lot of attention is focused on the trivial the unimportant and the irrelevant, while the issues of overwhelming importance are given only fleeting focus and analysis.
I can fully understand peoples indignation at MPs expenses claims, many of which seem bizarre. However I do not feel that overall they are paid a sufficient remuneration, and that is our fault.
However I am apoplectic over the attempt by the Speaker of the House Michael Martin, to attempt to cover up the information and for his reprimands to some MPs for supporting the Daily Telegraph exposé. Once again this man has shown that he represents malfeasance and maladministration in public life. He should be removed forthwith.
What I would centre my attention on is the actions of Sir Fred Goodwin and the RBS board. What they did is of such a magnitude that it does not have a name. Therefore it is at present not designated a crime. I designate the name Endangerment of the Realm and suggest life imprisonment and full confiscation of all assets, the law to be retrospective.
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Lady sue,
Perhaps I was a little bit too personal with my initial comments about the privileged. However, with all this anger floating around you need to be a bit understanding. It just that I truly do believe the sickness is so much deeper than these expenses. It has though been a good catalist in that, people have been able to voice concerns that would have just been dismissed but are now being taken that bit more seriously. Yes, Cameron has his right along with everybody else to be truly represented in the politics of his country. But, surly you have to agree, it needs to be balanced and representative of the wider population.
Interesting thought I just heard Jeremy Harding make on a comedy program.
He said people always say, "for evil to abound, all it takes is for good men to do nothing". Then he said, "Why don't evil people just stop doing evil"
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Frances O - you've just reminded me of a rude joke. The first bit is: what do Lord Tebbit and William the Conqueror have in common?
And the second bit is: they're both Norman. But you can make it rude by adding words ...
(Originally it was Jeremy Thorpe and W the C, which is much funnier.)
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Richard_SM @ 12 ...
Not sure how nhaqueoi @ 1 can have a good point if, as you say, "However, the example you give looks reasonable."
Anyway - the main thing about quotation mrks (or speech mrks, as some people call them) is that you have to have a set of mrks at the beginning and another set of mrks at the end. Otherwise you lose mrks.
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TRW - 13 and all else
I was born under socialism, "comrade".
Nobody could graduate in their chosen profession unless they passed exams (dusts off the old Diploma) in:
The History of the Communist Party of the USSR, Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Dialectical Materialism, Political Ecomony, Scientific Communism and the Foundations of the Scientific Atheism. I passed exams on DAS KAPITAL twice - in the first and in the fourth year.
But until I came to the UK I have never seen hot water coming out of a tap or a room, called "bedroom", where people went to sleep or to be alone, as opposed to a room in which the whole family ate, sat and slept, including the wife's mother paralysed from the neck down on a camp bed in the corner (I watched her lying there for 12 years, when visiting that room).
I gave birth in a ward shared by 11 other women, without anaethetics, with all babies delivered in our full view.
In 1989 the whole of Eastern Europe rose against Communist oppression. Soon enough the USSR and Yugoslavia collapsed. Socialism/Communism have had their chance. It doesn't work as I know on my own skin.
I FIND YOUR IGNORANT COMMENTS PUERILE AND OFFENSIVE.
I love coming to this blog, I like to read the opinions and the jokes, I am glad of the companionship as my cancer has limited my freedom of movement.
I shall be sorry to have to abandon this small joy in my life, but you are getting too close to the bone.
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Maybe its just we've all had enough of this 'news'
I dont really care if my member of parliament is representative of one group or another. My MP will have a tough job being representative of us all.
What I *do* want in Parliament is people of whatever background who have the interest of my country at heart - who make strategic and long-term decisions to ensure that my children and my children's children are secure, fed, watered and warm, and have all the education, infrastructure and health benefits that we can bestow upon them.
[Maybe the best reps would already be grandparents? - who knows]
n-n
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It would appear that 'Cossack girl' was not born 'working class' in the British Empire or in the Third World...as someone who was... I have for most of my life lived in relative poverty and even went hungry many times after passing my P.G.C.E at Cardiff University in the West Midlands...so still think that Western Capitalism is a form of criminality and will till my dying day....and cannot quite believe that the Telegraph is telling the Truth about their MPs', or that very Rich Tories will pay any money back to the exchequer...
And please (CG) go to any on-line book store as evidence that at least this ex-Colonial serf has got a few active brain cells... when according to Chris Woodhead today (guardian p,8) I should have stayed a skilled working class person...for the rest of my life...
Brian V Peck
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Cossackgirl - we seem to have got messages on two threads - I have written on the other PM Glass box
n-n
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what do you think Oliver Cromwell would make of all this. to think that parliament has come to this.
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Cossackgirl -- I for one am glad that you are here and would be sorry if you went away.
You may have gathered that I do not take TRW particularly seriously -- TUW would be better, with the addition of an "Un" -- and mostly in order not to be bored beyond my capacity I simply scroll down until I reach someone else's less stultifying comments.
On this occasion I should ignore gS as well, on the grounds of magnificent irrelevance.
Stick around, though: you've got interesting things to say!
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At least we can vote soon for our Euro MP's. They keep their expenses very transparent
Ahhhhh.......
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v100 (22). You are absolutely right about M.P's salary,If we paid them the going rate for the job, then we would'nt be in this mess. and lets face it we are in a hell of a mess
Whilst we were all engulfed in news about a late night taxi bill, and a leaking pipe under a tennis court, an announcement slipped quietly out that 244,000 people have become unemployed since the last figures were announced. Imagine it , twice the capacity of wembley stadium, each one a tale of worry, stress, and misery.
THATS! Where our priorities should lie.
M.P's salary; How's this for a solution!
They represent a constituancy, correct?
Then let the constituancy pay them!
About the same amount as say, a headmaster of a large comprehensive
Or a Chef police officer.
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Ref # 33 nextoanidiot
What is the benefit in setting up over 600 new payrolls, when one is sufficient.
How are you planning on collecting the money from the constituents to pay the MP?
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CONT-
Expenses! All expenses agreed at an open council meeting, where the public and press can attend. Problem solved! so
now they can get on with the problem of sorting out the country.
Cossack Girl I love you! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. For stuffing an Exocet up the nose of a few socialist numpty's
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Richard!
The exchequer pays god knows how many millions to The Westminster pay machine. That money saved, will just be diverted to council funds. Easy
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ntai:
"Or a Chef police officer."
Aren't you thinking of a 'Chef accountant' - i.e. one who cooks the books?
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Sid.
Whoops! Freudient slip parhaps. Or the beer. (Butcombe Gold)
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cossackgirl (26) - Make the assumption that most of us are opinionated idiots.
Accept it as FACT that TRW is of a pratitude that none of us can ever hope to attain.
Keep conversing with us. There are quite a number that are sensible and a joy to talk to.
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Ref #33 nexttoanidiot.
"M.P's salary; How's this for a solution!
They represent a constituancy, correct?
Then let the constituancy pay them!
About the same amount as say, a headmaster"
Constituencies and councils are not the same thing.
Constituencies are generally made up of wards. Each constituency is designed to contain around 70,000 electors.
So how would that work?
And are you suggesting an MP's expenses are agreed by ward councillors?
And they all get together and agree the MP's expenses every week/month. How would they divide the costs amongst the wards?
The Ward Councillors might easily be in the same party: the same people who campaigned to get that MP elected. The same people who try and raise party funds. And you'd like them to check the expenses?
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29, 31, 39 Nikki, Chris, TIH
I got fed up with TRW on a previous thread, left the message and came here for a change, only to run into the same old (what mods forbid).
So I just pasted that comment here again, to make sure he sees it either way. I saw and greatly appreciated your encouragement on that thread, Nikki and all.
I think the comment at 35 (notatallanidiot) has cancelled out the comment at 28 (neithergallantnorSocrates).
To (28) I can add: I never said a word about Western Capitalism, believe what you like about it. I only wrote what I KNOW about Soviet Communism, which after all was overthrown by the people who lived under it. How disobliging of them not to keep on suffering just to protect you in your Utopia. Lenin called Western fellow-travellers "useful idiots", I had no idea they are still around, in Britain of all places...
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Richard.
C'mon keep up! Expenses are agreed at an open meeting, with public and press access. No problem.
As for your other point about a constituancy not corresponding exactly with council boundary's, that is a problem, which can be overcome.
Think of the advantages. the rate of pay would be set by the people that the member of parliament represents.! If he Is a "toff" who doesnt needthe money, then you only pay him the basic minimum wage, as agreed.(sod the expenses). If the MP is a person of less means, then parhaps, more allowance could be made for expenses incurred.
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CossackGirl - it's a pleasure to read your contributions, unlike a certain few (and they know who they are) who delight in either trying to start a flamewar or think that by rephrasing their (by now very familiar) point of view several hundred times over the course of several months, they will somehow acquire kudos and encourage more people to subscribe to their viewpoint (a bit like political parties, I suppose...)
Anyway, as for this MPs expenses business, could someone wake me up when it's all over and the media find something worthwhile to talk about?
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"here here" (mumble mumble, house of commons)
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Ref # 42 nextoanidiot
I'm just leading you by the hand so you can see how your plan might work. ;-)
The Government collects the tax nationally, divides an amount up (?) into 646 'constituencies' and sends it out to the 646 constituencies?
Each 'constituency' sets it's own rate of pay. A devolved bargaining arrangement for each one. So, instead of one rate of pay there'd be 646 different rates of pay.
Instead of one office checking and processing MP's expenses, there'd be 646 around the country. With local press watching.
And each constituency would have some sort of panel, of say 6 members, representing all the wards, totalling around 3800 people nationally - to oversee the costs of 646 people.
Once the expenses are agreed, they'd be divided amongst the wards, by activity? by ward size?
When an MP goes on foreign fact finding trips overseasflights, hotels etc. that would be paid for by....who? The wards? Or charged back to the Government?
Sounds great. It would certainly help create jobs.
Do you think with the different rates of pay, 646 in fact, that sooner or later the MP's would put forward an argument for equal pay for doing the same job?
And after a few years, might someone suggest paying them all the same rate of pay from one central point?
:-)))
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We have a SLUMP.
We have a fundamentally dishonest society.
The solution is honesty and equality.
Achieved via majority decision making.
In the war that followed the last slump, some Cossacks supported Stalin and some Hitler. My lineage neither.
How SHOULD we decide who are to be our judges, who our street cleaners?
My answer is to allocate (choose to educate) people who have not had such jobs in their lineage.
One could say there are work-owers, work-owed and work-neutral traditions. In respect of different sorts of work.
Benn on Tonight tonight, wedged comfortably between one of his grandfathers (an MP), his other grandfather (an MP), his father (an MP) and his son (an MP), told us the MPs expenses scandal was muck raking. (His grand daughter is standing in Worthing at the next General Election).
I'd say it was time for other lineages to espouse socialism in the Benns' place.
The work-neutral, from the point of view of every sort of work among us have an interesting pivotal role during social revolution. Their position will be unchanged so that they may usefully deliver just commentaries on our society in transition.
I think to do so, however, they need to realise that equality is achievable through majority voting, that it is dictatorship that is bad, not notions of equality. The SWP is just about the worst induction into egalitarian majoritarian work-redistributive socialism there is.** (It encourages ugly semantics, quasi-theoretical bogus terminology, too)
Just as it is the inequality that is so bad, not the notions of majority decision making, that we find in market capitalism.
In Afghanistan the Americans and the Brutish are still there killing. The USSR war there does not excuse it. That dictatorships profess or even pursue equality, equally, does not damn the concept****.
The Brutish settlements throughout the world, in Africa (thankfully shrinking) Canada, Australia and NZ, the USA, China (thankfully shrunk) etc are the result of cruel genocidal land grabs and crude militarism. The wealth of the Brutish here depends on advantages it secured from 1750 onwards - from slavery and from the 'jewel in the crown'.
Our post war prosperity here was built on those consolidated advantages and the mutual annihilation of our European rivals Nazi Germany and the USSR.
Their impoverishment was achieved at the expense, of course, of six and a half million Jews
To see the Soviet Union as the womb of equality as a political concept is...
......well, honestly, I just can't be doing with it.
There was a way to majoritarian equality for the Russian Revolution after 1918 but Lenin and Stalin and the White Russians and the Cossacks and the West all prevented it in their way.
It's interesting that (read on from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossack#Second_World_War) the Cossacks appear to be emerging in a post - Meiji Samurai caste role in Russia today.
But, comrades, here, we are seeing a society collapsing in on itself and concerns about the Soviet Union or even of the way Lithuanians treated the Cossacks and the Jews look less relevant than concerns about Germnay's post-Empire experience.
The need to dream Utopian dreams has never been greater.
They have never been closer, here, to being realised and so never been sweeter to dream.
The immediate task, comrades, however, is to recognise that this political and economic crisis is a crisis in the ruling class and their market methods.
Indeed it is the death knell of both.
I wonder how many threads to post this on. Mmm. Don't want to be thought repetitious.
**They don't believe in work redistribution. That's why so many middle class exhibitionists feel so comfortable yelling from there. They don't believe in majority decision making. I've even heard such hide behind the Arrow Theorem (qv) for goodness sake. They don't believe in equality. And frankly I don't believe they believe in socialism. Apart from that.... fine.
****Frankly a lot of it sounds like 'There shouldn't be bridges across the River Kwai because of the way our soldiers suffered so badly when that one was built during the war'
Or canals here because of the condition the navvies were forced to work under.
Or democracy here because of the war mongers Thatcher, Blair, Brown and Cameron.
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I meant 'a SLUMP'. Sorry.
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The Inland Revenue applies the law. Apparently the law which the MP's made for themselves says CGT is NOT a tax MP's are due to pay, so how they will be able to accept an overpayment of tax?
Surely when Hazel Blears or others submits a tax return at the end of the tax year it will ALL automatically be returned?
Its an EMPTY gesture - TYPICAL NEW LABOUR POLITICIAN - or maybe just a typical politician?
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TRW #46, Well you're a little ray of sunshine, aren't you.
I'm still waiting for an answer to a question I posed to you a few days ago. In case you'd forgotten, this is what you said:
25. At 2:55pm on 08 May 2009, TRWTheRealWorld wrote:
Yes. Stealing to establish equality may be illegal but it is not immoral You then went on at some length (no surprise there!) about the re-distribution of wealth and property
I asked:
I assume that when someone breaks into your house and steals your computer, on the grounds that they haven't got one, then you will not be reporting it to the police, or claiming on any insurance, and will fund the replacement out of your own pocket?
I await your response.
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49.
JM
Well, actually I didn't.
Walsall 1981.
I was earning good money then.
The second time, my partner did. I was fine about it until a police liason officer came round and spent 2 hours telling me how upset I was.
46.
Till I stop hearing that it is the Brutish upper classes who guarantee good plumbing here, and the rich using private medicine who make the NHS so good.....****
...I'll content myself by pointing out that the poor plumbers have to uproot and travel here, to do the sorts of jobs their lineages have done too much of. Thus relieving the sorts of people here who have been too busy, generation by generation being people of opinion to learn how a lavatory works, from the 'indignity' of ever holding a spanner.
Meanwhile the exchange rate which made them cheap here but well paid in translation, led to....
...the wholesale acquisition by Brutish farmers of enormous tracts of central Euorope at knock down prices.
And to point out that whilst Europe destroyed itself in the holocaust 39 to 45, the Brutish observing, Brutish wealth producers in the US, Canada, Australia and NZ were unaffected by bombing or invasion.
So capitalisation, post WW2, was a little easier this side of the Iron Curtain.
****not forgeting the important role that the stream of posh historians, English graduates etc that the intellectual elites provide us with, so crucially, in the installation of hot water systems in homes here.
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fJd, As I said, I also do origami.
A catalyst:
3 bulls
6 cows
5 calves
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TRW (various) If you want to discuss ecomonic theory, why not stick to the economics blogs? (Or are you scared that your interminable droning on about how only socialism works despite all evidence to the contrary will be shown up for the delusion it really is?).
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(10) ioaw: disagree. It was a very interesting interview and there was nothing "po-faced" or "pious" about Eddie's tone. Your comment says rather more about you than it does about him.
(50) TRW: the plumbers here are mostly local lads. Everyone has a contribution to make in the workplace and I don't see there is anything to be 'indignant' about in holding a spanner or knowing how a lavatory works.
Australia was briefly invaded. Should we apologise for being so far away from where the action was taking place that it made it difficult for 'the enemy' to get to? There was a recent thread on how many Australians and NZers were killed in 1939-1945 war fighting for the Allies just in France. Do you think the "wealth" producers deliberately sent their country's sons off to war to be slaughtered? Yet again, your comment is as long winded as is non-sensical.
Cossackgirl: I'm also glad you are here and think many of us would miss your most interesting posts if you departed. Please stay.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
And look out for TRW not answering simple questions (like Jim Moriarty's above - 49).
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43. Mittfh and 53. Lady Sue
My post earlier this evening at 54 began by giving you both my thanks for the friendly vote of confidence.
Unfortnately it was removed by the moderator because I have used a Russian word in it. I hope I am allowed to say that.
In fact, that word has already been used at least twice by another blogger, including in (13) above, but perhaps he has a special dispensation. I hope I am allowed to say this too, is just a joke.
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