A Ram for All Seasons

I remember when the Queen visited Derby in 1977. I had never seen the Queen in the flesh before (or since), so I decided to go down to the Market Place to have a look. I was standing next to a fella, probably in his fifties, who was a lot taller than me (I'm just over 6 ft.) and built like a brick outhouse. He was crying like a baby and the tears were pouring down his cheeks in torrents. I still don't understand to this day what that was about. Can anybody enlighten me? The nearest thing that I could compare it to is the screaming, fainting and mass adulation of young girls at Beatles concerts. I suspect it probably had something to do with the war.

Did his Achilles and was out for nine months.

The Express wouldn't let them in. Bloody foreigners.

Now that's an achievement they can be proud of.

I wish people would start to be proud of things that they have actually achieved rather than some mere accident of birth that they could do nothing about.

I'm sure I read somewhere that someone had developed a better diagnostic test. The PSA method is very useful for telling you how bad it is once you have it, but it's not reliable for finding out whether you have it or not.

I do see the contradiction between having a one size fits all currency for the Eurozone and 19 different tax regimes and fiscal policies in the Eurozone countries, but that’s not the issue. Britain still has the Pound. My objection to a hard Brexit is that it will destroy living standards and wreck what is still left of British manufacturing industry which, like it or not, depends on complex international just-in-time supply chains. Airbus UK has already lost its high-tech European satellite work, and Trump is busy imposing punitive tariffs on what’s left of the British steel industry. What’s going to happen when the EU starts imposing tariffs? People will be reduced to cutting each other’s hair, making each other’s beds and grilling each other burgers in order to make a living. Unless, of course, you work in a bank. Rees-Mogg and his chums want to turn Britain into a cheap, ethnically homogeneous, low-wage, low-tax sweatshop where the native workers doff their caps and tug their forelocks to their betters, don’t expect to be pampered with things like affordable housing, schools, hospitals and old people’s homes, and meekly allow themselves to be shafted by private companies owned by their rich pals. All they are interested in is undercutting, and it won’t work. Do you really want to go along with that?

I didn't know which finger the doctor was using because he had both of his hands on my shoulders at the time. On a serious note, a mate of mine died from it three weeks ago aged 66. The last few months were not good.

The truth behind the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald

A lot of Greece's problems were caused by joining the Euro. The Greek state was already in trouble before it adopted the Euro, and it had to get Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to fiddle the books and hide state debts by declaring them as currency swaps so that it met the criteria for joining. You can't blame that on the EU. The Greek economy is based on agriculture and tourism, and you can't get rich by picking grapes and making beds. Joining the Euro made it impossible for Greece to allow its currency to devalue in order to be able to compete with highly productive industrial economies such as Germany. This has also allowed Germany to export its unemployment to other countries, because its currency cannot appreciate in value relative to its productivity and German prices are held artificially low. This was caused by the Euro and not the EU. There is a big difference. Britain can be thankful that it still has the Pound, which has already fallen by around 20 % since the Brexit vote, and it will have to be devalued by a lot more in order to make up for the mess caused by Brexit when it eventually happens. However, a hard Brexit will ensure that British exports to its main markets are not boosted by competitive devaluation, because EU countries will have no option but to impose tariffs on imports from the UK in order to preserve the competitiveness of their own industries. If the UK then retaliates with tariffs of its own, this will result in a trade war, a huge increase in the price of imports and a massive fall in living standards. Trump has already declared a trade war on the rest of the world. At least the EU countries can protect themselves by ganging up on him. Britain will be completely isolated and on a hiding to nothing. Britain will be poor and immigrants will go elsewhere. Well done Brexiters.

You should have seen the way Npower tried to rip off my 90 year old mother and read some of the BS they came out with in the correspondence when the matter was referred to the ombudsman. This is Tory-sponsored predatory capitalism of the worst order. Utterly disgusting.

It's a bit like deciding that you don't want to father any more kids. Do you have a vasectomy or do you have the whole lot chopped off? I would go for the minimally invasive procedure. The Tory Brexit nutters want to inflict maximum damage. Talk about cutting your nose to spite your face.

Won't be good for attendances on a Tuesday night.