chrisp65

It's interesting in that it really shouldn't matter, but that is the same loop I went through with the Mini. I really fancied one, I could afford it.....then I noticed sooo many of them were driven by girlies. To my shame I backed out of buying one with that as the main reason. Car choice coming up again in about 10 months and I've promised myself to have another look.

I was under the impression they were designed and pitched at WAG's?

Also in today's Independent (and totally unrelated), Jenny Jones makes an appearaqnce in an article on Snowboarding Holidays in St Tignes, France. Very nice little name check, well done kiddo.

on the subject of sleeping with other people's partners.... I am in principle against it, it's not a good thing. But, it's a lot more complex than yes / no, good / bad. For me and where I'm at now, it's an absolute no no. In the very very distant past I did have a bit of a fling with a girl that was also dating an amateur boxer. She'd been going out with him for ages, they were a known local couple and had been for some time. Anyway, an opportunity or situation arose and being a dumb young thing I took it. Several times. Part of me thought it was cool doing a boxers missus. Part of me thought I had the insurance back up of he was the one guy in town that couldn't hit me (end of boxing licence). Anyway, eventually word got out (beer leads to bragging at that age). Shortly afterwards two things happened. His missus stopped seeing me and I got the kicking of my life for no apparent reason from a bunch of strangers I'd never seen before that had been going from club to club asking for me. Years later it transpires he'd been ok with me doing his gf as he had some sort of problem with that side of things, it was other people knowing that he'd taken exception to. People are complex.

I have to confess I love London and I don't feel any arrogant vibe from the area. Yes, they can be pushy and in a rush and more interested in the profit margin on jobs than some other regions. But it's a capital city, it goes with the territory. To label any region as arrogant is a bit sweeping, but if I was forced to I'd say tou can get attitude from Yorkshire, Manchester, Scotland and Wales. But not always. I know some really self effacing Yorkies and a couple of guys from Leeds currently in London which should be a perfect storm of arrogance but they are really great. For myself, I can't be bothered with rugby, generally love england and have two distinctly separate eyebrows, so I'm not stereotypically Welsh. Back on the 'lympics: I've had to go down to Weymouth a few times recently. Best of luck to anyone thinking of watching some of the boating events. Set out in plenty of time. The nice new road is still single lane and knackered by a single lorry or tanker or tractor at any point. Apparently, during the events they are going to try and ban wide vehicles and tractors etc.. The fact they have that contingency plan shows they know it's going to be horrible.

same attitude I get off my missus

I've gone for two quick songs, no titles, no tracklist, a photoshop enhanced picture of my cock and my grinder nickname. Thought anymore would look too keen.

cd checked over on a long car journey today and one rogue track had popped up twice - always good to check revised cd in post tomorrow (thus saving me the cost of both a cd and postage)

Can I just point out that I won at Suzuka on F1 2009 on the wii - and I was driving a Force India and I'd had a few bacardi and cokes. I used the little steering wheel and I had all the variables on their toughest settings. I've written to Mercedes and Ferrari and not heard a thing. Ah well, their loss.

aye you and me both, victimised for being baldies.

# 47 ignore any health issues until patently too late to do anything about it # 48 always go one mile further than last time the petrol tank said empty

First some context: I'm a nice guy. I rarely drink. I have no points on my license. For my job I have some crb checks and security checks on my side. I look utterly normal. I rarely have attitude. My limited experience over 47 years is wholly bad. As a kid in my first few cars I would be routinely stopped and treated to shitty attitude by fucktards with time on their hands that couldn't find anything wrong with the car or me. As a proud new house owner I phoned the police to report the off license across the road was currrently being raided with people running around filling boxes. An hour later they called me back and said they now had a spare car if they were still in there. I kid you not, they called back and asked if it was still being robbed an hour later. In my late 20's at a footy game a swansea fucktard in police uniform pushed me from behind with no warning and tried to provoke me into a fight. Luckily I'm soft and wouldn't rise to it. A few years ago I stopped alongside a police car and told the two occupants some drunks were vandalising cars a couple of blocks away. They asked if it was my car. I said no. The response was 'there you go then'. I do know that in the grand scheme of things they are necessary and do greatly contribute to keeping the beasts at bay. I would not advocate changing the system greatly. I guess I just had a bad run of luck in my once every 10 years contact with them.

... Nike sounds like Pike.... Adibass? puma tuna

Hhmmm, you may wish to consider why your house has a cavity. In the majority of cases filling the cavity works just dandy. In some cases, for various reasons, bridging the cavity causes rainwater to get into the inner leaf of wall and cause damp. It's worth asking if the installer / adviser will guarantee that your house is suitable.

It's a risk, but then you never know if you don't try. If I hadn't tried dogging I would never have got those night vision goggles on the cheap. I'll give somebody a funtastic 76 minutes.

By strange coincidence, radio 4 tonight had a short article about the 'fact' that Steve Jobs told Neil Young he listened to his fave music on vinyl as the compression of an mp3 spoiled some music. They than played two twiddly bits of Neil Young and asked a wheeled in expert to spot the difference - which he failed to do. I got it right, but then it was a fifty fifty test of limited scientific credibility. Being neil Young, both version sounded equally boring.

'kin 'ell Bicks, I was worried i didn't know what brickwalling was, now I've got to deal with 'kin tweetdeckafobia

I can't remember off the top of my head (and I'm not going to bother googling it), but the old ska bands from the 60's used to have enough money for a single take (hence the raw appeal of that genre!). Anyway, whoever it was that recorded Skinhead Moonstomp clearly cocks up the lyric, using the word foor not feet - but then corrects himself. Makes me chuckle everytime. I have diverted well off topic.

Skinhead Girl by Symarip absolutely fantastic sex for the ears

Can I ask, and it's not a leading question, but do you ever listen to music for the simple pleasure of it, rather than as an accompanyment to somehting else, like doing dishes, reading a book or having a bath. Have you in the last few years, picked up an album you like/love, and pressed play on what ever kit you posess, and then just sat back and "listened". Secondly, what's the best kit you ever heard that album on? In broad terms of value, or just by brand/naim? (Did anyone see what I did there?). Because, its often that people who profess to have "cloth ears", often never actually sat back and relaxed, and listened to their music in a way that isn't "distracted", nor have they had the benefits of really good hi-fi demonstrated to them. I think my hi-fi is pretty poor, I know what it "could" sound like, (its an LP12, IttokII and Linn k9, with Audiolab8000a and Castle Durhams, (all about 20 years old) but I reckon even Mike would be convinced if he came round mine for a coffee - Even my Dad, who would be of the same view as Mike, conceeded that my turntable just sounded more "natural" - the sound stage was far clearer, better defined, deeper, and somehow more "rythmical", even listening to the fairly poor "Stone Roses" album on LP and CD back to back. Hi fi is a bit like fine wine. A glass of wine might be good, a good glass even better. But when you had one glass, thought it was good, and THEN opened the next one, and really could compare the 2, then thats when it hits you. ahh beat me to it, but my analogy was beans. Sometimes you get home, you've got stuff to do, so you chuck some Morrisons beans in a medium white sliced sandwich and scoff it watching Flog It. Lovely. Spot on. Sometimes, you need to make sure it's Branstons beans, the bread must be hand cut and toasted, the toast has to be cooled so the butter doesn't completely melt, and you eat it slowly, listening to Radio 4. Surely you get excited when a Small Faces track you've already got on 8 cd's pops up on another cd .... but with some previously unheard little sound in there? Surely you've gone over and over the Beatles roof top stuff listening for police knocking the door? For what it's worth, I've had a new digital radio for Christmas. Radio 6 is simply transformed compared with the previous laptop experience. God bless decent kit, people who care and late stuff from the Small Faces.

For contractors to make money at present they have to 'sweat' their assets to use a trendy current term. That is, previously they would have had a number of staff on tap to allow a rolling programme of work. A couple of guys setting up a site and starting the basics, whilst the majority worked on the current main scheme, whilst a couple mopped up the snags on the last job. Now, there isn't the profit for the luxury of 'spare' staff. This means unemployment for many, and running around like overworked idiots for those retained or working through agencies etc.. It also means that 'snaggging' is now a struggle. Nobody wants to pay a day rate to a subby or an agency to sort out a couple of minor faults. A £500 day rate to fix those annoying last odds and ends isn't going to get shelled out by the contractor, it eats profit. Similalry, the agency or subby isn't going to do an hour and a half for you, when he can get £500 a day elswhere.

You shouldn't waste your time with all this classical music nonsense anyway. Look, the world population is approximately 30 times what it was in Beethoven's day. Therefore, statistically, the Chemical Brothers are 30 times as good as Beethoven. Anyway, nine times out of ten, re-mastering is nothing more than a marketing ploy. They don't need to do it well. (Sings in Morrissey voice:)"At the record company meeting...." I've never understood why the likes of Beethoven didn't experiment and collaborate more. If he had teamed up with Kraftwerk or some other Krautrock the synergy would have been obvious and the cross over would have introduced him to a wider audience. Mozart tried it a bit, but other than one hit with 'Amadeus Amadeus' he didn't do that much.

It's dead. But a very complex dead. There is very little going on, and what is hapening is skewing the industry. With very little work many people have elected to leave or been forced out of the industry. this means the pool of talent has contracted to reflect the lack of money making opportunities. This is then made more complicated by the occassional 'big job' such as an Olympics contract, where, the few people in any one specialism that are still in circulation all get sucked into one big job. We are in a situation at present where all the big construction firms have laid off their own labour and workforce and now rely on subbies and agencies for everything. Problem with that, is that when a big contract comes along, they just don't honestly have the resource they claim to have access to. I've seen a number of instances lately where national contractors have won multi million pound jobs and then cannot perform or deliver on time. They've made a promise reliant on subbies, those remaining subbies, all shafted by the big boys for the last 4 years now just work for the highest bidder on any given day. This is particularly clear in government contracts. They won't deal with smaller firms, they demand the lowest price will win regardless of people knowing it can't be delivered at some of the stupid prices offered. Then, big surprise, the winner can't deliver on time. Solution? Well we can go legal, or throw more money at it and pay more than the other tenderers originally wanted. Result? Every contract costs more than forecast. Every project over runs. Every bricky, plasterer and sparky knows that if he's still in the game at the end of this year, he should be making a good living.

spot on

I first noticed this a good few years ago when some Who album was released that was trumpeted as a 'digitally remastered' set of hits and 'best of' stuff. It's as if the guys doing the remastering just didn't understand the immediacy of the original. Rather than just taking out a few hisses and crackles and imperfections, they thought turning every dial up and softening the contrast showed how good modern mixing could be. They were proving they could twiddle nobs and change music, rather than bringing purity to scratchy originals. Thanks all the same, but I tend to avoid anything labelled as remastered these days. Give me the original, give me a remix by a trendy name. But don't bother with a re master.