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Whether I like them or not is immaterial, frankly. I don't like field hockey much but I accept that it has a global reach. US sports don't - the reason the US would "wipe the floor" with its opponents at American football is because no-one else plays it. QED.
@AndyJS
I was thinking of visiting either Copenhagen or Helsinki next weekend.
Might be a bit warmer than here.
Andy
You should combine Stockholm and Helsinki, transferring by overnight ferry (either the Viking or Silja lines, the debate as to which is best is endless). Leaves Stockholm at 6.00 pm and arrives in Helsinki around 8.00 am. On a fine day in May, passing through the Stockholm archipelago gives an opportunity to view one of the wonders of the Northern world. Food, entertainment and passengers all fun and Baltic crossings are almost always smooth.
Stay overnight in Stockholm in the old town (Gamla Stan) which has some relatively cheap small hotels (the most famous being the Lord Nelson, Lady Emma Hamilton and Victory trio but pricier than others).
In Helsinki, stay in a small central hotel near Esplanadi or along/behind the run of Mannerheimintie between the Central railway station and Stockmanns department store. A interesting choice would be Hotel Torni, which has an interesting history and was favoured by Lee Harvey Oswald in his transit to Moscow.
If you are feeling rich, an alternative could be the Hotel Kalastajatorppa. This is outside the centre of Helsinki and set on the sea shore with the best traditional (urban) sauna in Finland.
Very minimalist but luxurious.
My advice would be to make it a long weekend or even a week, then you could spend more time in Stockholm and take a 40 minute sea crossing from Helsinki to Tallinn in Estonia.
As always with the Nordic countries you need to keep an eye on costs but pre-booking and shopping around should keep the trip affordable.
I'm not talking about American Football - I accept that is a uniquely US thing. Baseball and basketball are, however, games that lots of people play seriously, but would still lose badly to the US. Ice hockey, Canada can compete with the US, but that's not enough for an international competition.
But anyway, this whole debate is pointless, because more countries playing a sport doesn't make it a better sport any more than more people listening to Katy Perry makes her a better musical artist than Bob Dylan.
Looks like it would be fun.
(cough) – Do you have a similar view to plagiarism as Johann Hari ?
http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2008/mar/30/italy.europe
An ancient horror still lurking in the sea caves of the Aeolian islands. ST Coleridge immolating himself by stuffing his Aeolian harp violently up his own bottom. A villainous, swarthy Italian villain who can speak perfect English apart from complex words such as "yes" ("Now I will shove my sharpened harp up your arse. And then you die. Si?")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYD4ppu9eV0
Mind you, crucifying dogs was probably the most horrific things the Romans did (after dogs failed to warn of Gauls approaching, unlike geese).
Welcome to pb.com, Mrs Erdleigh.
Edited extra bit: incidentally, the Tarpeian Rock is a rare example of something I learnt about classical history at school, rather than afterwards.
Baseball is good also, like cricket a game for statisticians, but faster paced.
I like many things about America but would not want to live there again
"in America they have three cities: New York, San Francisco and all the rest are Cincinnatti!"
Now I call BS on those figures, but what isn't the case is that it just one or two blokes in China are sitting at their computers trying to find a stream of the NBA.
I should also say, that I bloody hate basketball, just pointing out that despite world tournaments of basketball not being a big deal, as a sport it is much more than just a US game.
Unfortunately the ex was a TOWIE lover who just wanted to sunbathe round the pool, look pretty and totter about in high heels... refused to go on the boat trip to Stromboli, which is apparently the highlight, and I spent most of the time trying not to notice red blooded sicilian men gawping at her
I ended up getting pissed and watching Euro 2012 most nights and the only fireworks were the humongous rows we had!
We did go to Volcano, where the blacksand beach is. An awful smell on that island, with lots of people rolling around in the sulphur pool, but relatively interesting
Not much happening in Lipari
" just a volcano or two, a couple of churches, some trendy blacksand beaches, and that's it. " seems to sum it up!
There is an island that Berlusconi and his cronies go to, no cars allowed, everyone on scooters... I think its Panarea.. Id head there if I were you
Great places for walking and also diving. June will be the start of the season for the 'beautiful and rich' people.
These islands have been fought over many times - lots of history - could spend a week there easily if one can afford it - with your own yacht/boat/canoe etc is best.
We did a week there cruising with a hired sailing boat (younger son has a master mariner's cert and rest of us were his crew) - slept on board and dined when in port. If that is slumming it too much - you could always hire a yacht.
This will put a crimp on further blogposts for the time being.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/polls-are-just-an-indication-of-how-people-intend-to-vote-says-miliband-2014051386528
Was Pasiphae Minos' wife?
Mr. Jim, was she crushed beneath the weight of shields, by any chance?
“It’s around £10,000 per practice. That’s a welcome start. It certainly won’t go anywhere near employing more nurses, more GPs.”....Providing a "proper general practice service" would mean increasing the GPs' share of the NHS budget from 8 per cent to 11 per cent, at a cost of £3 billion, said Dr Baker.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10826715/Labour-48-hour-GP-plan-would-cost-30-times-more-than-promised.html
£10k per practice is chicken feed, you couldn't get another part-time receptionist to make the appointments for that in some parts of the country.
I presume Labour say it also comes from saving at A&E, and GP union are always going to say but we need more. I think that is probably impossible to quantify until you have actually implemented it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2627181/Ultimate-cut-shut-Romanian-thieves-apart-range-BMW-pack-van-ship-border.html
That said, just imagine if the kind of robust, slightly mental patriotism the Romans had in the Second Punic War were part of Britain today. That's the thing I admire most about the Romans. Hannibal slaughtered almost 80,000 of their men (after wiping out two full consular armies shortly beforehand) and they sold the field it happened on for the full market price.
"Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, said he did not accept the figures and said Labour’s plans are “clear and costed”."
£10k per GP practice equates to less than £7k in pay for extra staff (once you lop off the usual third on-costs for public sector employment). How many extra Doctors is the average practice going to find for £7k? If there are no extra doctors how is the 48 hour rule going to work? Is Burnham off in la-la land again? He does seem to have this idea that if he says it then it must be true but objective reality does keep sticking its oar in.
I vowed never to use Virgin Media again in 2007, so I switched to TalkTalk.
When we move later in the year I have vowed that we will not use TalkTalk. My mother would never speak to me again were I to engage the services of the Sky lot.
As a consequence we are considering doing without a fixed line connection, though it is possible we will join the Phone co-op.
France - fell off a canoe
Copenhagen - weed available
Amsterdam - weed available
Tenerife - direct flights from abz, timeshares, beer and fun
USA - good food
Paris - good graffiti in the Eiffel tower loos
Czech - skiing
Austria - skiing
Italy - skiing
Zurich - [censored]
The problem is not the money, it's that there are just not the available qualified GPs to do the work.
RCGP is not the GPs' union, incidentally (that's the BMA, and there is very little cross-fertilisation). RCGP is concerned with quality of provision.
WESTMINSTER has been accused of hiding the findings of an opinion poll on Scottish independence, amid allegations it shows a rise in Yes voters.
The failed project cost £12.4 billion (it was expected to cost £2.3 bn) (1). It has lasted ten years, which gives £1.2 bn a year roughly.
There are 7,960 GP practices (2). This means that if Labour had never gone ahead with that accursed scheme, each practice could have had an extra £150,000 every year.
Instead the money was poured into the pockets of massive, mostly foreign, IT companies.
Okay, these are very vague estimates and I know some parts of the system were eventually delivered, but the cost was staggering.
(1): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Connecting_for_Health#Costs
(2): http://www.nhsconfed.org/priorities/political-engagement/Pages/NHS-statistics.aspx
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27397695
But then I thought No! Surely it was 300 million - and Labour are out by a factor of 'only' 3, surely?
It can't possibly be by a factor of 30!
try Plusnet. Pretty good.
If they did that, there would rightfully be uproar. I for one wouldnt vote for them if they refused to have anything to do with immigrants that are legitimately in this country.
I almost feel sorry for leftys that take this view.. so desperate to paint anyone who wants to control immigration as a racist xenophobe that they get upset when the truth is outed...
I guess its understandable given the polling
http://order-order.com/2014/05/13/ukips-ethnic-minority-poster-girl-quits-party-citing-racism/#comments
Farage kept on saying that UKIP was not a racist party, but perhaps the message was not getting through.
Maybe customer loyalty is, in the back room, recognised. I don't know, probably it isn't, but I do know I have had far fewer problems, and got good levels of service, than friends who have gone off chasing the deal.
It's almost funny.
Corrected that for you.
In fact the reason I've decided not to stick with TalkTalk is that they just won't leave me alone. I'm pretty happy with the service we have in general, but they keep on phoning me up to try and sell me more.
Have to go into an all evening meeting now - will post tomorrow with some ideas
We've been with BT, Virgin and TalkTalk during our various house moves. Of these, setting up BT's equipment was simplicity itself, and they were competitive at first. All are bad in their own way, though.
But for us, at the moment at least, it is BT. The best of a bad lot.
At the moment, FWIW, I am using sterling cash reserves to pay down USD debt. Breaking my natural balance sheet hedge in the process, but longer term I no longer have USD income, so I'm exposed to FX on the cashflow side & my USD denominated assets are core holdings so won't be divested near term.
(Alternatively, I'm looking at buying a small business & could cut you in for £100K if you like...)
Unfortunately many years ago I adopted a btinternet email address as my main personal address - is there anyway to keep that while not using BT?
http://www.channel4.com/news/ethnic-minorities-uk-policy-exchange-30-per-cent-2050
"The current immigration policy is biased and unfair because everyone is subordinate to Europeans. We have nothing more in common with someone from Bulgaria than we do with someone from Africa or South America or Asia.
“It makes me angry that my grandparents had to work so hard to come over whereas now people just arrive. I’m not saying that all EU immigrants sponge off the State, but they have the opportunity to use our services.”"
http://sanya-jeet.com/politics/
Still, a young girl who has had a change of mind, fair enough.
The router has been upgraded again since, at no charge, when we started having interference on our wi-fi from neighbouring systems.
We also have BT vision and again the service has been excellent. Couple of problems admittedly over the years but either everything has been sorted out over the phone or an efficient, polite and helpful engineer has visited.
The perceived difference therefore is down to customer satisfaction, unrelated to delivery.
In mobile phones, T-mobile used to have the worst customer reputation. Tesco mobile had the best, although their service was delivered entirely by T-Mobile
Like most normal people
The structure has pretty much served its tour of duty, but the plot of land (1 acre), the view (astonishing), the garden (mature azaleas and select rhododendron species) and the planning permission (unobtainable nowadays in that kind of spot) are worth well over the asking price.
Given the right weather, the West Highlands is the finest spot on the planet. And if the weather is crap, retire to the local hotel for a dram. Or entertain the wife. Life is for living after all.
One of their representatives lied to me on the phone, when I asked a very specific question, and they refused to admit that they had done me wrong.
Lesson learnt: Always get it in writing. Never deal with BT again.
Once everyone you know is using your new address, you can then move from BT.
Astonishing! I have had one unsolicited call from Plus Net and that was earlier this year when the rang to to tell me fibre to the cabinet was now available in my area and did I want it. Getting the new system bedded in was not entirely pain free and necessitated one of those ghastly phone calls but I ain't complaining. I darkest Sussex I am getting 34mbs download and 7mbs upload at anyt ime day or night.
I have same experience , never had any trouble. Phoned recently and said it was too expensive and they upgrade me to Infinity at 40 - 70 Meg , better TV package , etc and reduce the monthly cost.
UKIP 1/2 (Lad)
Lab 11/4 (various)
Con 9/1 (SJ)
LD 1000/1 (Betfair)
(*) There's another issue with Internet/phone contracts and renting, especially if you are staying for a short period.
Con 4/7 (PP)
UKIP 4/1 (Betfair)
Lab 5/1 (Hills)
LD 250/1 (various)
As far as I'm aware, UKIP does not go around advocating that people break the law.
http://www.earth-of-fire.com/the-obsidian-roads-1-around-the-mediterranean-basin.html
It's a bit like Malta. All those temples - a lot older than Ancient Egypt - were on the top of the mountain and the people lived lower down - until the sea rose and that was the end of them.