What grinds my gears...

[The Doctor]

Finding out George Galloway is running for my constituency in the by-election soon - **** off you twat.

[lavrentis]

Got facebook raped FFS!

[Rincewind]

Neighbour setting the fire alarm off at 5.30am. Just had to call the fire brigade because one of his 'mates' must have taken the key to the box that would reset it. Knocked on his door and he doesnt seem to know where he is. Fireman also knocked on his door, he opened it with a fag in his hand. Got to wait for one of the repair team from the housing now with a key to reset.

Gonna cost the landlord a fair bit as the fire service charge for false alarms.

I reset the lock before I went bed at 12.30. Went to check the alarm the lock was on dead lock so somebody had been let in the house and gone.

The lights are on timers and they have had bits of paper put in so they stay on.

A bad time for it to happen because cannot contact the office until Monday.

I know it wasn't my flat. It shows up as my neighbours.

Just had a call from the emergancy engineers. The engineer is about hour and half away. So have to listen to it until they get here along with the rest of the street. I bet they will be happy. Hope none have to go church.

Edited 18 March 2012 by Nightguard

[Daggers]

This.

I can't see the real justification for it. At least implementing a Mansion Tax will get something from the only thing they can't take offshore. Clegg is spineless and the Tories are a bunch or lying, self servers.

Meanwhile, back at Labour Central Office Ed's brain scan has arrived...

[Rincewind]

I stuck tissues while waiting for an engineer to reset our fire alarm. Must have dozed off. I awoke to silence and it was gone 7.30. Never left a key though. I'm going to see if I can get an extra key made or one for each flat so if the one in the unit at least one of us will have one. I would keep mine on my keyring ready for use. Not sure though if my neighbour would be reliable in having one and the woman in the ground floor flat is never there. In hospital most of the time I think. So the onus falls on me to act as a warden, security and informant.

What I would like is to stop people entering the house after midnight and using the communial areas to 'hang out' leaving cigarette ends and other rubbish on the floor.

Thinking about asking to have fake CCTV cameras installed in the hallway. Don't know if a crime prevention officer could give advice on it if done through the housing. As I will be starting work in the next 2-3 months I could pay towards the cost if not too much.

I am sure the visits are drug related but have no proof. My neighbour is known to the police and early last year I saw somebody taken away from the house by police. I have a spare monitor so don't know if anything can be set up.

[Stay Positive]

Well this doesn't "grind my gears", so to speak, but it made me cringe - I went into Rock-a-boom with my wife and asked the guy who works there if he had the Lazarus and The Plane Crash album, and he said he didn't, and the missus said, in a stupid voice "Computer says no", a reference to "Little Britain", which is a programme I never liked one bit. Then I asked if he had the Y Niwl one, and once again, he said no, and she DID IT AGAIN!!

What's even more annoying is the fact that I know SHE doesn't like bloody "Little Britain" either!

She got a bit of a telling off for that afterwards...

[21st Century Fox]

Meanwhile, back at Labour Central Office Ed's brain scan has arrived...

It fell out when he had his nose done.

That's genuinely depressing, HOW is he the alternative!

[Stay Positive]

When you're feeling great and then your missus says to you "YOU'RE in a bad mood". Pretty much guaranteed to PUT you in a bad mood.

Edited 19 March 2012 by Stay Positive

[Finnegan]

Twitter trends. Namely people who put hash tags on things not on Twitter.

[Daggers]

Twitter trends. Namely people who put hash tags on things not on Twitter.

#This

[ozleicester]

Cyclists!.... not the occasional cyclist who is going about his or her business and is saving the world etc blah blah. No, the FOOKIN "close the roads down" Freeway bike hike type. where literally thousands of them ride down the freeway for 6 fookin hours closing it to all other traffic. Fook off, i dont come and drive me fooking car all over your bikepaths... get the fook off the freeway.

Oh, and making it have some "charity event" function isnt any better, we have literally hundreds of kilometres of bike paths here (which i paid for out of my road tax...and you cvnting cyclists pay NOTHING for), so stay on them and raise your money there.

[Daggers]

What the cvnting fvck is a freeway?

Cars drive on and obstruct cycle paths in every city in this country. Oh, and kill & maim cyclists.

Your road fund licence is a tax which goes directly to the exchequer and does not pay for cycle paths. On the other hand it does go towards combatting the pollution you produce during use and after vehicle expiry.

You got delayed a few minutes? Bless.

[FoxyPV]

Cyclists!.... not the occasional cyclist who is going about his or her business and is saving the world etc blah blah. No, the FOOKIN "close the roads down" Freeway bike hike type. where literally thousands of them ride down the freeway for 6 fookin hours closing it to all other traffic. Fook off, i dont come and drive me fooking car all over your bikepaths... get the fook off the freeway.

Oh, and making it have some "charity event" function isnt any better, we have literally hundreds of kilometres of bike paths here (which i paid for out of my road tax...and you cvnting cyclists pay NOTHING for), so stay on them and raise your money there.

I was on a "Critical Mass" protest in Belfast not so long ago when a couple of hundred of us on bicycles took to the roads at rush hour. It was good craic. It was nice to be the ones with power on the road for a change as usually cars would cut you up, try and run you over or as Daggers has said block all the cycle lanes.

[FoxyPV]

The lack of joined up thinking from the Govt. The plans to sell off some roads makes very little sense as all the private companies will do is put up toll booths. The govt could do exactly the same thing and raise money for the exchequer without having to privatise anything.

[ozleicester]

What the cvnting fvck is a freeway?

One would have thought that a person who likes to appear as, educated, well travelled and intellectually gifted as you, would have come across the term

“freeway” before, however to assist you, …

free·way noun

1. An express highway with no intersections, usually having traffic routed on and off by means of a cloverleaf.

2. A toll-free highway.

The one I’m specifically referring to is the “Mitchell freeway” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Freeway

Cars drive on and obstruct cycle paths in every city in this country. Oh, and kill & maim cyclists.

If you bother to read the wiki page above you will note that the “freeway” has a bike path built alongside of it, cars cannot access the path, a car has never parked on it and there has never been a single car/bike accident on it.

Your road fund licence is a tax which goes directly to the exchequer and does not pay for cycle paths. On the other hand it does go towards combatting the pollution you produce during use and after vehicle expiry.

I assume you are currently peddling your bike which is connected to your home electricity in order to generate enough power to keep your interweb functioning (your 30,000+ posts must have used an amazing amount of coal fired kilowatts)

Even if it goes into a grouped pot… government funded bike paths are being in part, paid for by me.

You got delayed a few minutes? Bless.

Disappointingly I wasted more time reading and responding to your post than I did in having the freeway blocked.

[Jon the Hat]

The lack of joined up thinking from the Govt. The plans to sell off some roads makes very little sense as all the private companies will do is put up toll booths. The govt could do exactly the same thing and raise money for the exchequer without having to privatise anything.

They still have to fund the money to do the building work though. And do the building work. Then administer and run the tolls. All of which is done very successfully by private companies in loads of countries. Its a no brainer, and everybody wins.

[Jon the Hat]

George Osbourne's proposal that public sector pay should be dependant on the area in which you work.

Where do you work? My wife works at a hospital in Surrey where a two bed semi costs £250k. For the same amount in Sunderland you could buy a 5 bed detached house. I know Labour like to punish people for having the audacity to live in the South-East, but I see absolutely no reason why this policy should exist beyond making Labour popular in the North.

That said, this should be used to allow NHS trusts in expensive parts to pay what they need to pay to recruit decent staff. Not to force pay cuts elsewhere. Pay freezes maybe.

[Jon the Hat]

Cameron unveils passing of enormous buck

19-03-12

DAVID Cameron has outlined plans to pass the largest buck in British history.

Can also be used to pass rail networks

The prime minister confirmed the government will no longer accept responsibility for an absolutely massive thing that does not work and is never going to work.

To pass the gigantic buck the government will use a 200ft high crane, much like the one that will be positioned next to the entire British motorway network for the next 30 years as the new Custodians of the Buck keep adding lanes in a futile bid to stop 60 million people from going insane.

Speaking next to Junction Bastard on the M4, Mr Cameron said: "When I became prime minister I told the head of the civil service that I would accept responsibility for everything, except roads. I said to him, 'There's no way I'm doing roads'."

Mr Cameron then turned to transport secretary Justine Greening and said: "This has nothing to do with me."

Ms Greening replied: "It's nothing to do with me either."

The pair then laughed and laughed and went back to London in a helicopter.

The buck will be passed in a symbolic ceremony later this year when Mr Cameron will use the government crane to rip out a perfectly good section of the M6 and heave it into a nearby field.

A consortium of French companies will then work out how to take 12 years to put it back while Mr Cameron just walks away with his hand in his pockets.

[Len Finsbury]

Parcel delivery companies.

They lie in wait until you leave the house for ten minutes and then stick a card through the door asking for you to contact them so they attempt to deliver at another inconvenient time.

Either that or you can drive a round trip of 30 miles to go and fetch something you paid delivery for in the first place.

[Daggers]

They still have to fund the money to do the building work though. And do the building work. Then administer and run the tolls. All of which is done very successfully by private companies in loads of countries. Its a no brainer, and everybody wins.

Like everything else which has been privatised by continues to receive subsidies from the government from the public purse?

Giving our roads on 100-year leases would merely transfer public assets to some private-sector oligarch. Photograph: Alamy

Einstein defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". In which case, going by his speech yesterday on overhauling Britain's roads and airports, David Cameron is mad.

I don't usually do personal, or rude. But if the prime minister really, truly thinks he can do what his predecessors have done over the past couple of decades and not cop precisely the same woeful mess that they did, then he's bonkers. Gaga. A few Pret sandwiches short of the full picnic.

Strip away the novelty of a prime ministerial speech devoted to, um, tarmac and what the Tory leader proposes is pretty much what we have heard over and over, from Thatcher onwards. Every British prime minister of recent memory has turned to private businesses and investors to build and run hospitals, schools and tube services. Now Cameron wants them to take over our motorways and trunk roads, too.

There are some big details to iron out first and, for appearance's sake, a feasibility study, but given the effort, time and briefing already put into this policy, we can safely assume that it will happen within a year or so, unless Jeremy Clarkson turns to wrathful self-immolation.

And this nation's potholes are only the beginning. Cameron talked yesterday about the need to upgrade everything from broadband to the rail network, while the national infrastructure plan launched during last autumn's mini-budget identifies more than 500 projects in need of urgent attention. Given the coalition's swingeing cuts on capital spending, the implication is clear: Cameron wants the private sector in charge of the bulk of those upgrades, too.

There is one problem. Time after time, these public-private partnerships (PPPs) have turned out to be a great deal for the companies, but a terrible bargain for the taxpayer. And on occasion, as with what happened on London's tube network just four years back, they can lead to outright collapse of the services involved.

How could it be anything but a bad deal for the British taxpayer? The private sector can't raise money more cheaply or easily than the government. According to an FT analysis done towards the end of last year, paying for PPPs with private-sector cash costs taxpayers well over £20bn extra. The public sector calculated this as "the equivalent of more than 40 sizeable new hospitals".

Or is there some magic private-sector dust that means whatever company executives do is just far more efficient than those Soviet realists in public service? Not a bit of it. The typical PPP experience is of a multiplication of middlemen and transactions designed to benefit the private sector.

Ask anyone who uses the M25 between junctions 16 and 23. That stretch of Britain's biggest motorway is being widened under a 30-year, £3.4bn private finance contract, of exactly the kind Cameron wants to extend nationwide. Except that the deal has recently been lambasted as "poor" by the public accounts committee of MPs, who estimate that it has cost taxpayers an extra £1bn. They found that allowing drivers to use the hard shoulder would have been the cheapest option, but was dismissed from the off. Their report also paints a picture of consultants and contractors attempting to drag out their work to get bigger fees. The result is that drivers caught in traffic jams between Buckinghamshire and Essex will have to wait years longer for these improvements and that we will all have to pay more for carrying them out.

Nor is it just the roads. Report after report – whether from MPs' committees or the IMF – shows that the myth of greater private-sector efficiency in doing public works is just that: a myth.

Were I a true believer in bringing in the private sector, I'd argue that the best way to do this would be to open up the market to full-blown competition. I'd point to what happened to telecoms after BT was privatised. But that isn't what Cameron's talking about. His lieutenants have floated the possibility that whoever takes over our roads could get them on 100-year leases – which would just be transferring a public asset to some private-sector oligarch.

Ah, but look at the water industry, said the prime minister yesterday. Yes, look. According to David Hall, an expert in this field at the University of Greenwich, turning the provision of water into private hands costs almost £1bn a year extra. Were it still to be in the public sector, he estimates, that would amount to about 12% off the average household bill.

The odd thing about all this is that it has never been cheaper for the government to carry out infrastructure projects. Amid a global slump and a dearth of places to put their cash, investors are desperate to lend to safe bets yielding reliable returns. If Cameron wanted to take out a 30-year loan, he'd find markets would be willing to give it to him at just over 3% – an absolute bargain. And George Osborne knows this, which is why he is now talking about taking out 100-year loans to lock in these low rates.

So MPs know that PPPs are a bad deal, and the government knows it could do the same work more cheaply itself. Which might lead one to believe that Cameron isn't mad at all – that in flogging off the public's assets to financiers in the City and beyond, he is doing something much more wicked. But like I say, I don't do personal or rude.

[Daggers]

Where do you work? My wife works at a hospital in Surrey where a two bed semi costs £250k. For the same amount in Sunderland you could buy a 5 bed detached house. I know Labour like to punish people for having the audacity to live in the South-East, but I see absolutely no reason why this policy should exist beyond making Labour popular in the North.

That said, this should be used to allow NHS trusts in expensive parts to pay what they need to pay to recruit decent staff. Not to force pay cuts elsewhere. Pay freezes maybe.

Move to Sunderland then? It's what Tebbitt would tell you to do. (Ignoring the fact that most decent houses in Sunderland for that money would be 4 bed not 5).

Yet again we have the lowest common denominator being used as an argument by a Tory. "I can't afford a 5 bedroom house so they shouldn't have one either". And people slag off the left for having politics of envy. I don't have a Bentley or a private jet - maybe we should ban top bank executives from having them in the name of parity?

Can you cite examples where privatised companies have driven up salaries? If you see no reason why it should exist then do you plan to demand MPs have regionalised salaries too? Are you all in Surrey going to pay substantially more NI, tax and council tax in order to fund the pay rises you propose in your local hospitals or do you expect those of us receiving annual tax cuts to pay more for you to enjoy the accrued benefit?

[Daggers]

[Stay Positive]

Long posts.

[jonlcfc1990]

Work is getting to me more and more plus the fact i seem to be having an alarming rate of junk food which i'm not happy about but feel too weak to slap myself round the face and get a grip

[21st Century Fox]

What ****** are replying to spam like this that makes it worth their while sending more...

[email protected]

Re:Woorldz}ErectPillsMed{Check neRCGmcagR92gSDKpS

mess," pointing to his wet clothes. http://**********1.ru.gg/?/jDb=****

Edited 20 March 2012 by 21st Century Fox