chrisp65

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp8pv3NsJoE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY5nhYLCCYk&list=PLsrjS1yZDKed_oA1ggohbc-iYL72t-H5w&index=6

'say my name'

KP is innocent

The amount of artistry and love in a country and in a building can usually be measured against the going rate for that material and craft. If you have one country where immigrants will work stone with their hands and that stone is native to the area then that is a cheap commodity and you use it. Typically, around the med, you'll get Algerian and Moroccan craftsmen to work for pennies and make incredible things out of the local stones and you'll be able to lay stone floors. I've been involved in building projects overseas where the whole building was marble floors. Five storeys of marble floors with marble stairs. Marble in the staff toilets and marble in the bin store. To show the Directors were Directors and worth a bit more we went for the more expensive finishes for them - we imported some carpet tiles. In the UK a stonemason is going to cost you £16 / £17k a year for a pretty basic level of expertise. Somebody with flair and an eye for artistry will cost you double. He'll also need some scaffolding and fencing and skips and a mate or apprentice and spend 2 days a week filling in health and safety returns and BREEAM assessments and reporting on what recycling opportunities have been realised and wotnot. I don't believe that is the model they are following in Qatar. The hoarding around a building site - I've just been quoted £10,000 to put secure hoarding around a shop for 10 weeks. That puts a bit of a hole in your budget for artisan stucco work. So you can have a pretty building in the UK, but if the stonemason is going to have a decent wage and a safe work environment then that building is going to cost you. Problem with a building being expensive, nobody here needs a building to last more than 25 years but they do want it 'future proof' with raised floors and ceiling voids because who knows what tech we will need in 5 years time. You basically get what you pay for. There are few Clients here willing to pay for more than they 'need'. The shareholders tend not to like it. Saying that, I'd prefer the health and safety gone mad UK where toilets flush and drinking water comes out of the taps and generally the roads and rails are safe and you can get out of a burning building and buildings rarely collapse whilst fully occupied. But overall, plenty of pretty to look at too. Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Brutalism, Neo Gothic, Modern, Tudor. All around you. Just not on the retail parks and drive through's. Seriously, I had a walk around Ipswich a week or two ago - architectural tour de force. The locals think it's a dump, people on VT probably think it's a dump. But it had great examples of every kind of architecture you could possibly wish to see. I had an indian meal in an original art deco restaurant with leaded glass windows. It was within sight of the Willis building, itself within sight of a medieval church. I'll be going back to have a proper look around. Ipswich ffs - it's a dump, isn't it? I'm going for a lie down.

I wouldn't say I have that much of an accent, a bit south east ish if anything at times. Rounded off and averaged out by years of working away. Anyway, I've been given a job, a rescue job for a project that's gone tits. A project that was being run by a guy with a good Brum accent. The Client has quite a strong Welsh* accent and is one of them odd people that love's the old country and bangs on about it and plays up to it - but doesn't actually live there*. To my great shame I've played on this and my accent changes greatly when I'm on that job, I go the full Gavin and Stacey's Nessa, oh what's occurin'. Just selling my soul for the job really. *you know the type, insert Scot / Irish / Yorkshire / Manc / Latvian / Aussie / Kiwi etc., as per your choice

don't blubber about it

.....and I'm in the very lucky position of being walking distance from a very good friendly independent record store. They just love it when I walk in and ask, what's that one that was on BBC 6 yesterday morning that sort of goes.....or the sort of country one that was on last night's opening credits for Fargo. Much smugness.

If the money we'd spent on wars and espionage had instead been spent drilling a huge great **** off pipeline from southern Italy or Greece, under Egypt and across to the oil where we could simply syphon it off unnoticed, we'd be minted.

FKW head to toe in his fave Belgium away kit.

Mark Bresciano, Australia

well, it certainly worked a treat when they got into a long drawn out war against Iraq

apparently some bird Dave knows smuggled it in up her jumper

I think maybe the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos etc., not to mention Mao's China, Stalin's USSR, Shining Path, Khmer Rouge, Red Army Faction, the American Civil War, Pinochet, the Contras and a hundred others suggest it doesn't take too long for something else to fill the gap religion might leave as an excuse to kill 'the others'.

Could you equally ask why so many people and politicians think we should get out of europe to be our own masters, but think Scotland is better off staying as an economically remote, numerically small, politically different, geographically distant part of the UK, governed from London? Neither side has a claim on total logic.

week one of the World Cup and I think my telly is bust Neil Lennon is bright red.

It's not automatically cruel. People might just want a pleasant night out. You might strike lucky and find 'the one'. Or it could be the basic 'pizza for a hand job' relationship like I have with my parole officer.

I think it's fair to say that after a hundred years, many wars, many allegiances, drones, spy planes and satellites. After listening in on phones and filtering the internet. After doing deals and being complicit in torture. We haven't got a **** clue what's going on out there.

yes agreed There is every chance that some 'major' event a day before the vote could jolt people into a reactive emotional decision that we'll all have to live with for a very long time. 36 hours before the election and somebody famously Scottish dies or a tape emerges of Cameron making haggis jokes or that Potter woman turns out to be a spy or whatever and suddenly there's lots of ill thought out emotional voting. Ditto any euro in/out election. Will people pour over the facts and the trade figures and the projected impact on jobs and wages? Or will they decide Farage outwitted Clegg in a debate on telly where somebody made a funny quip about German secretaries and Polish dancers? Benign dictatorship headed by me is the only sensible way forward.

I had a giant toblerone and 4 bottles of beer. Took me about 90 minutes to undo a month of exercise.

nobody can remember

Tata don't look too scruffy (I'm not suggesting it's Tata, just that it's tricky to generalise).

If it wasn't for religion there would be no power crazy mental cases in the world and we'd all be happily skipping through the meadow hand in hand sharing resources without borders. If it wasn't for religion there is no way the borders of nations as currently defined in the middle east would be contentious or the oil so poorly managed as a shared resource. We'd have avoided two world wars as well. Yep, problem solved. Why had we not thought of this earlier?

that's not a bottle opener, that's so you can tie a rope to the end in case it gets fully sucked in