chrisp65

Yeah, it's free here - but they do tell you when their internal invoicing / prescription costs are more than the medicine and then you can choose to buy it yourself, i.e., they'll hand you a prescription for cough meds and point out that the script is free to you, but costs the NHS about £8 minimum but the cough meds are available off the shelf for £3.99. It's still free if you want it, it's just a sort of self regulating thing for the virtuous folks with money. Next question. Talk up above about ages to get an appointment - I guess you folks can book a slot by internet but just don't bother? There's no listening to recorded messages or getting past nosey receptionists anymore. Or do I live in some little NHS nirvana bubble?

am I right in thinking you guys over in england are paying for your prescriptions?

careful now, you're channelling some pure tory thought there 'I'm ok, my mates appear to be ok, lots of people have money, no problem' If 2.63 million new cars represented a new car for everyone it would be a clear indicator that all is fine. Just as no need for free school meals and no bad landlords would be a sign we are fine. There are people using free food in church halls to get by. This does not mean we are all dirt poor. It does mean there is still a problem for a significant number of people - and not just the dirty lazy genetically pre disposed feckless criminal poor either. New car sales are not an indicator we can help out the property millionaires by charging the poor an extra £14 for that spare room.

£10 and all it's admin and means testing and invoicing is a piss poor idea It's very rare I need to use my doctors but when I do I've never had a any issues. I don't know if my surgery has an unusual bookings system, but you phone up the day you want the appointment. By chance, I just did, I called them about 15 minutes ago and my appointment is for 3:00pm. You can't book days in advance, so you can't forget / get better / dwell on it for a week and change your mind. If you miss today's booking slots try again tomorrow, if you can't wait until tomorrow, it's not a doctor's appointment you need. Holiday jabs, repeat prescriptions, weighing fatties, blood samples and all that shizzle is dealt with by nurse / sister / admin. How **** difficult is that?

It was Out of the Blue that I'd originally had on my long list, I'd already presumed to give the new one a swerve. But then I had a slightly mad lunch hour. Got to the shop, they mentioned this one and said they'd had great fun playing it out over Christmas in between the usual hipster trash and sombre welsh language folk stuff. Ash put it on, put the volume up and somehow I found myself 5 minutes later being 1 of a crowd of 5 (3 punters, 1 staff, 1 shop owner) in a little record shop hands in the air and swaying 'arena rock stylee'. Genuinely, one of us had a lighter waving in the air. Then I got invited out for a drink Saturday night and it all got a bit awkward and embarrassing. One of those lovely mad moments. So I bought it.

yep, pleasant enough track 1, Jeff Lynne doing an impression of Oasis doing an impression of a Lennon song

something for this evening's listening pleasure

@Ingram85 sounds like you've got a decent amount of information, and on a couple of posts it sounds like they have thought it through and offered you a full service. Always worth pm'ing Jim by the sound of it, you would have the advantage there of being able to rubbish him on the interweb if the job went bad! But with so much spec and understanding what they are doing it's always worth getting a couple of other quotes. Even if what that does is show you that other companies look like cowboys or just don't sit right with you. Whatever you pay, a month later someone will tell you they's have done it for half the price. But now you have a decent amount of spec., I'd say that cost doesn't sound too outrageous, not cheap, but . I've got away with charging people over £500 just to draw up a porch and submit it to planning - and then got the Client to pay the planning fee! As said above, you could likely get a cheaper price by getting a builder to build you a base and a window firm to put up the sides.. But when it leaks a bit in the rain, they'll all blame the bits that are by the others. When it's one firm, it's a one stop shop for getting snags fixed. What you might well find, is asking for the dimensions to be slightly bigger (if there's space), doesn't proportionately add to the cost. Making it 2.2m high or 2.5m high is almost no cost difference but will feel a lot different inside. But it might be that height to work out flashings and whatnot. Same with the width, I'm guessing the width, which is a bit mean at 1 metre, is because the further out you go massively effects the drop due to the slope on your drive. Just to throw a random thought in for you, if the door is side on to the current front door, and the porch is a metre wide - how will you get your next sofa or bed in to the house? Probably not an issue but I've known it cause problems later!

The Manchester Central by election of 2012 had a turn out of 18%. Labour won with just under 70% of the vote, so, doing the maths, the winner had less than 13% of the total possible vote. Winner is still in parliament. In a General Election it isn't 'total vote' or any such thing that wins, it's hundreds of individual little elections, they could all be like Manchester Central and all count.

How much are the materials costing? If it's brick and a standard upvc then I'd say you could get someone to build that for much closer to £3,000. But stuff varies in price, a basic door might be £150 but if you wanted to, you could find yourself a £1,000 door. Do the bricks perfectly match the existing bricks or are they whatever they had? Will there be a proper flashing making it properly waterproof. Get a minimum of three quotes and make sure you both understand what you are getting for your money. How long will it take to build? Will they be putting in a new floor / foundation? Is it including power for an internal light? Have you got space for a light if it's only 2.2m high? Are they dealing with all planning and building regs including the planning fee? Don't be shy, ask, and get the answer written down before they start.

From a position of ignorance here, but is the fear less about little Kim firing his nukes at Japan and Seoul and more about them deciding one random day 'yeah, **** it, let's sell one to ISIS for a million dollars and see what happens'?

Are you suggesting that a politician that wanted bombing without a clear strategy has poor principles and a career to nurture? Never heard the likes of it!

or, uses experience and instinct to follow the money whilst simultaneously winding people up!

Meh, bunch of minions I've never heard of getting bumped from jobs I never knew they had. BBC appear to be quite upset that it wasn't a bigger more dramatic story with more blood and guts than it's turned out to be.

I'm constantly invited to meetings by people with the invite everyone to everything mentality. I usually attend the ones where I'm on an hourly rate and query the ones where I've agreed a set fee.

She was working the till. I was stood next to her waiting for her to tell me how much my weekly shop of Aldi Jaffa Cakes and Aldi cheese was when I guess her mobile phone must have buzzed. I don't know, perhaps they are not allowed phones, or perhaps she just likes it that way, but her phone went off and as it turned out, it was inside her knickers. So she just pulled her trousers and knickers out wide enough to be able to read the screen on her phone. I don't think it was for my benefit, I think she just instantly forgot I was there when her important message vibrated her into semi consciousness. She was hairy, but not unpleasant.

Last time I shopped in our nearest Aldi I got a fanny flash from the girl on the counter. I like Waitrose, but they've never done that for me.

..and anyone suggesting anything is taken back into our ownership will be described as a dangerous nutter from a bygone failed age and probably a threat to our security and our children.

Your disinterested paymaster has got a lot of stuff wrong general. Desert Storm, he couldn't plan his way out of a dessert storm.

Why can't people just sing nice songs? There's nothing 'wrong' or unfashionable about being pleasantly in love with a someone of the opposite gender that you respect and may eventually have a legitimate family with. We don't all have to smack our bitches up whilst poppin' a cap in yo ass.

Blind taste test a whole bunch of cola, including naff brands like Virgin or Morrisons, it's a revelation. Pepsi Max wins more than it's fair share, full fat Coca Cola didn't win once (massive sample size of 11 people for my nipper's science project). Ubuntu cola came 8th out of 8 every single time.

I don't think you guys are seeing the subtle geo political sub text woven into the complex and titanic story lines. Yes, there is the cartoon action movie. But there are other levels for the sophisticated and mature observer of timeless philosophical truths. There are often free toys to tie in with happy meals too. But then, I buy music in obsolete formats and pay to watch other people play football so who am I to comment.

I think maybe on the subject of prisons being 'easy' or three star or a joke it very much depends on what wing of what prison you might find yourself in. There are simply too many variables on the quality of the environment to say 'prison' is good or bad for all prisoners. It's far too sweeping a statement to have any universal truth about it. On prison needing to be orrible like South Africa to deter people - I guess they must have low crime and low offending rates there then to prove that point? No. As for there being no severe poverty or people not being as poor as they used to be, I think maybe it's easy to think like this if you don't come in to contact with absolute or relative poverty. Sometimes the poverty is unfortunate, sometimes it can be self inflicted by poor decision making or ill health (including mental health). Sometimes it can be depravation inflicted by others, most often parents. I live in a town where every house is walking distance from a sandy beach yet there are kids in the town that don't go to the seaside until it's an organised school trip. When you're raised in those circumstances you are living with poverty, even if 'dad' has an x-box and a penchant for some blow. Poverty, poor education, mental health and prison all feed off each other. Equally, some people are just shits that see prison as a nuisance or risk in their profession of being low life scum.

firstly: don't panic second: get in early tomorrow and make a bigger better deal to cover it off no worries, my pleasure