Harrison Ford

I was at a meeting all day and missed everything :( Any help with the High Noon, Vintage Cut, Remix and Interactive 9@9 from yesterday will be greatly appreciated ;) Thanks!

"Savers thrown to the wolves" screams the headline in today's Daily Mail. But what if the Bank of England hadn't cut rates by a further percentage point to 2 per cent yesterday? Easy. "Borrowers/homeowners/small companies thrown to the wolves" would have done just as well.

It is certainly true that savers are being penalised by rate cuts, and that this is innately unfair, given that they are, generally, those who have been more conservative. However, companies have been crying out for lower interest rates - and not, in most cases, because they have been profligate. There was no pain-free option for the Bank.

Without recent sharp rate cuts, the chances of this recession tipping into a depression would be even higher. That would not help anybody. It's not that I expect the latest cuts to get us out of the current mess. I just think that we would be in an even worse mess without them. Similarly, bank recapitalisations are of course highly undesirable. They are, however, preferable to a string of bank failures and a defunct financial system. Yes, the economy is in very bad shape. But it could have been even worse.

We must hold the government and the banks to account for their actions in bringing us to this pass. Gordon Brown can't just shout a lot at the banks about passing on the interest rate cut to borrowers (which quite a few are already doing) as if this is the crux of the issue.

But there is little point in arguing against measures designed to address current problems, on the grounds that we wish we weren't in this mess in the first place.

Read Ron Broxted in "The Independent" on the Independent Minds page. Uncensored, unbiased coverage.

Casino tips and quick reminders will help the player to protect while gambling online whether it is poker games, blackjack or any other game. Some people consider online instant chat, messenger, emails or buddy communication systems are not safe methods to deal with. The most important point in online gambling is that the player should never hand out his password to friends, casino support or to any person as it is particularly foolish to transport that kind of information over insecure communication organization.

When you enroll a gambling site and notice that there is something erroneous, money missing, etc, it is most likely best to withdraw the remaining funds from your free online casino  gambling account. But many people leave enough to give the impression that you may have entered and played off most of the money and not appear you caught on there with a trouble. This not only keeps them from become conscious that you started a withdrawal and going in and canceling it but also may help keep them feeling comfortable accessing your account which might sometime help casino security to break the crook.

Anyhow once you have taken most of funds out of the account there is little left to lose by allowing the crook to feel safe toward accessing your account. Once you get your money out the issue must be addressed prior to gambling there again and let casino security handle it. In this matter the player should be confident to let the casino support know that you started a withdrawal to save the remaining money in your account. This will help them to know that the withdrawal was done by the player and not by the guilty party.

Following on from my plan last year for Integration Farms, how about a similar scheme for the terminally unemployed?

Some people are long term unemployed, living in state housing, on handouts from the tax payer, and are running to fat as a result.  Give them a second chance in life. 

Allocate them some unused land, help them build their own houses and farm that land to live off.

Problem solved.

Check out a picture of Dubbya's new house that he and Laura bought for just over $2 million in Dallas.

Date: 12/05/2008
Subject: Sexually Frustrated

Hello SHirley and Steve...I'm a 32 y.o. woman...my man is 34...we've been dating about a year...I'm always supportive of him and he's always supprtive of me...for example...when he lost his job 4 months into our relationship, I didn't allow that to scare me away...I just tried to help out in any way I could...however, around that time our sex life suffered and I often felt rejected by him even for something as simple as a hug...We talked about it and I let him know how I felt and he told me that he was a little depressed about not working and was not feeling up to it...again, I understood and was supportive of how he was feeling...well 1 month passed and he found a good job...a month after that, I was still waiting and nothing changed...we moved in together 7 months into our relationship and have since become engaged and have plans on getting married early next year...he's been at his current job now for 4 months...and it's been months since we've been intimate...and that one time was a "quickie"...I have tried several different things to try and get him in the "mood"...yet I am consistantly told "I'm to tired" or "maybe tomorrow"...yet tomorrow never seems to come. I love my man very much, he's a good man, a good provider, we have a lot in common, I am happy when I'm around him, and he treats me with the utmost respect. But now it's getting to the point where my "needs" aren't being fulfilled. I have tried on several occasions to talk to him about it and he keeps telling me that it'll get better and to please be patient. I want to believe him, but don't know if I do any more. I am very frustrated because I love and miss him intimately. The last time we discussed this issue, we ended up arguing, and he told me that "he wouldn't blame me if I cheated"...Steve and Shirley, I don't want to "be" with anyone else. I LOVE HIM! But, I don't know what else to do. Sex and intimicy isn't the most important thing to me in a realtionship, however, none at all is unacceptable. I don't want this to be the cause of our breakup, but it seems that is where it's headed. Should I be patient and wait? Or should I start to consider other options? Please help!!! - Frustrated and in need of some loving!!!!

Budget chief who installed shower in office washes out

Mayor Daley's $163,656-a-year budget director abruptly resigned Thursday, leaving a giant void as Chicago struggles to survive its worst financial crisis in recent history.

It's official: City parking privatized; rates to soar

Chicago aldermen “afraid” to increase parking meter rates for the last 20 years on Thursday gave a private contractor carte blanche to raise them sky-high — in exchange for a cool $1.15 billion.

Gun sales boom 'definitely because of Obama'

Suburban gun shops report that sales are up since Barack Obama was elected president, because gun buyers are afraid Obama will push to ban ownership of some weapons.

Big 3 beg for $34 billion from Congress

Desperate U.S. automakers ran into fresh obstacles from skeptical lawmakers Thursday as they appealed with rising urgency — and a new dose of humility — for a $34 billion bailout.

Up for bid: SUV, slightly used -- by future president

In a way, Liz Murphy now owns a presidential vehicle, even though President-elect Barack Obama drove her Jeep Grand Cherokee only while he was an Illinois senator.

Having lurked here for some time I sense that there are lots of frustrations on this site. What are they? Lots of disrespect and personal abuse. A lot of intolerance. A lot of "Off topic" introduced. The better bloggers have left. The Bullies seem to grow by the day. There is no proper moderation leaving the malignancy systemic. What can you do about it?

Why not try a forum that will do all the things for you immediately that have not been done here at you command and at your pace? It's new, try it out. Your money back if you are not satisfied! But the quality is up to you. All welcome!

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/telegraph-forum/topics?start=

The death of Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow is sad news for the Russian Orthodox Church - but it also opens a window of opportunity for a Church whose paranoia has proved a serious obstacle to greater Christian unity.

Perhaps it would be unfair to call Alexy a creature of the Kremlin. Unfair on the Kremlin, that is. For, while the Patriarch firmly upheld Vladimir Putin's foreign policies, in some areas he managed to strike a more nationalist stance than the President/Prime Minister: no easy task.

Putin visited the Vatican in 2007, clearly signalling his wish to ease tensions between Moscow and Rome. Pope Benedict has a passionate commitment to making sure that (as Pope John Paul II put it) both lungs of Christianity, east and west, breathe together. And he is in a much better position to ease this process than his predecessor since he is not labouring under the crippling burden (in Russian eyes) of being Polish.

But prickly, compromised Alexy was having none of it. "No popery!" was his cry. He tapped into the deepest anti-Catholic instincts of the Russian people; nurtured them, even. Not a very dignified stance - though, because he was Orthodox, he was given an easy ride by his ecumenical partners in the Church of England, who were so busy paying tributes to the "richness" of the Orthodox tradition that they turned a blind eye to anti-Catholic bigotry that might have struck even a 17th-century Anabaptist as a bit much.

A papal visit to Moscow will be difficult to arrange. But, so long as the next Patriarch of Moscow is prepared to drop the Paisleyite rhetoric, the problems are not insurmoutable. I sense a willingness on the part of the Pope to make concessions that will help rectify a thousand years of misunderstandings and malice on both sides. Now that the Anglican Communion has embraced women bishops, the only ecumenical dialogue that really matters is between Orthodox and Catholics. Let's get it started.

Peter Hain stood down to clear his name in January. With today's news that the CPS are not going to bring charges over the donations to his deputy leadership campaign, he now says he has done that.

But will Gordon Brown give him a job?

Hain was Work and Pensions Secretary. There is no vacancy there.

But what about the other job he held, Welsh Secretary?

Word from Whitehall is that Paul Murphy, his replacement, is not running the Welsh Office particularly efficiently. He was asked back to fill the vacancy having previously been dumped from the Cabinet by the Prime Minister.

When I asked someone recently about Murphy's position they said he was "very secure." That is slightly mystifying.

Still, if Brown is planning another reshuffle I would be tempted to punt on Hain, the Neath MP, being put back into the lesser of his two old jobs.

I would be highly suspicious of friend Cowper if I were you. People who keep hares and dogs to my mind go coursing at the weekend. But then if he has got a church window to himself, perhaps he is the patron saint? If lunatics and lawyers can have patron saints, why not coursers? Dereham competes for his favours, by the way with   Catfield, Happisburgh, Little Dunham, Mattishall and Mundesly. And the book I got at Worstead is a good deal more detailed than the Sheepcentre site. For instance, it is commonly said that the Flemish weavers came over in 1331 but the point is that they were probably coming in small numbers since Norman times. It also says that the technique of worsted is actually much older than even the Romans.

Anyway, what have I been doing with myself apart from catching old monia in pursuit of worsteds and woollens? On a Sunday in November I found myself in Brinton. This is a tiny village with some handsome Georgian cottages opposite the hall and a church dedicated, like many around here, to St Andrew, which I entered. I had no sooner got my camera out when the door crashed shut... there was no one around, and it gave me a start. Then there were a couple of knocks on the door. I went to investigate - but there was no one there. I would love to pretend this was my first encounter with a ghost, but when I examined the doorknocker - a funny thing to find on a church door, now I think of it - it was so flimsy that it must have been lifted by the strong wind.

This is an interesting little church with a well preserved and huge Elizabethan tract, a modest angel roof, some late glass which Knott admires and some very interesting 16^th century pews with carvings, unfortunately mostly destroyed but one particularly amusing barrel on fire - a burnt tun, a rebus of the village name, (photo) which must also have reminded the parishioners that the pub was only a few yards from the church door when divine service was over! This was called the Thatched House, or at least in 1883, The Thatched Tavern, although in a photo from that date, was not then thatched. The building is now a private house and is still called Thatched House and still un-thatched. It was trading apparently from the mid 1700s but closed in 1960.

Its only a couple of miles from there to Briningham, which shares the origin of its name with Brinton, both being home to Bryni's people and nothing to do with burnt barrels. You will recall that we last met there at Peter Whitbread's funeral and you might like to know he has got himself a prime plot outside the church door between two 18^th century headstones. Inscribed on his, is All the word's a stage, appropriate for an actor but I am not sure exactly what is meant. The idea of writing something thespian may have come from a play that he wrote in 1978 called Exit Burbage. This, in turn, was written on Burbage's grave. It was a reflection on Peters's standing in the county that Norfolk's premier folklorist Keith Skipper gave the oration that day but I only recall his crack that Briningham was the dyslexic's Birmingham.

I was thinking about Peter that week because of an article in the paper. You may know, Senex, that the library in Holt was once a livery stable run by a man who had taken part in the Charge of the Light Brigade. His name was James Olley. Well, his account of the charge was recently auctioned and it makes pretty hairy reading, especially as he was only 16. His horse was shot under him before he reached the Russian guns, but he found a rider-less horse and, he says, "I mounted it and rode down to the guns, where I was attacked by a Russian gunner who I cut down with my sword. I received a severe wound on my forehead which went through to the skull bone."  Now Peter said he knew him. According to my calculations Olley would have died in 1918. Peter admitted he was very young, but he definitely said he remembered him.

What do you think? There was no reason for Peter to say he remembered him if he did not but he would be 90 now, even if he was born the year of Olley's death. You might well remark that if I had made a note of Peter's dates on his headstone, that would resolve the question but it wouldn't because we can't be sure about Olley's date of death. He is probably buried in Holt, so it might be a project for us. There are still some pubs in Holt while the last one in Briningham, The White Horse - previously the White Hart - closed in 1966. Prior to 1861 there had been another called the Coach and Horses. But I am wandering again. The whole point of this story is that it is a real time shrinker. If you can say you knew somebody who knew someone who had taken part in the Crimean War, it really puts history into perspective.

I then rode down to Hunnybell to contemplate the living, having decided to avoid St Maurice, which has got those nasty hard board divisions, but it is linked, should you wish to see what Simon Knott says. I found myself standing in exactly the spot Peter used to stand at the bar. I recalled another story which I have never seen confirmed but which I read when I first came to Norfolk. There is a large open tract of country between Thornage and Hunworth marked on the 1797 map and about that time a farmer was lost in a snow drift in it. He eventually worked out his position from hearing the church bells at Thornage and, having escaped, dedicated the income from the field to the maintenance of the Thornage bells, in perpetuity. I wonder how long that lasted. After a couple of pints with a Chelsea supporter of your acquaintance I set off for Thornage.

I had only looked at the outside of Thornage church and I have to admit I was looking for something quite un-ecclesiastical, Roman building materials, as a large villa had been located in the district and I wondered if anything had found its way into the local churches. I thought I spied some brick, but I might be wrong. The main feature to me inside is the chest tomb of William Butt whose father was Henry VIII's doctor, a post that Knott remarks must have been quite hazardous. If you go to his website of All Saints you will see that he disagrees with Pevsner and Mortlock about it, which seems unusual and I would back him, not being qualified to debate among such cognoscenti. It also seemed to me that the church once had aisles, which have been removed at some stage, although it was difficult to see well as one of the main windows had been boarded up.

There is only a record of one pub in Thornage, which seems unlikely when many smaller villages had more. It was called the Black Boys, and is now a private house of the same name. There are a plethora of explanations for this name; the most common that it was a reference to Charles II who was very swarthy. You mentioned some of them in your Aylsham post. I agree with you about the plural. You never find a Black Boy. But all these like named pubs seem to date from the seventeenth century so the period is right. Could it be a Royalist dig at dark suited Puritans? I await a convincing explanation.

When I got home I found my wife had also been at St Andrew's. She has a walk that goes past the church and it being Remembrance Sunday, and having got up too late to get to a service, she decided to go in. The two wars had cut a vast swathe through the ranks of her family. Happily for me, Senex, her parents, both RAF, survived, like James Olley, to come back to Norfolk, where, like him, they are buried.

Vado

New PPV CARD 14.12.2008.

WWE Armageddon HSBC Arena in Buffalo/New York


World Heavyweight Championship
John Cena © vs. Chris Jericho

WWE Championship
Triple Threat Match
Edge © vs. Triple H vs. Jeff Hardy

Randy Orton vs. Batista

Finlay & Hornswoggle vs. Mark Henry & Tony Atlas

Mr Hain - a labourite Minister is "pleased" not to be facing charges following a cash probe. Understandably he must have been worried or upset during an investigation .........wonder if he has ever suffered investigations like this before.

James, I can't see your Roy Keane blog, and I suspect that many others can't see it either ... this seems to be a problem with formatting that some bloggers have experienced.

There's a good article on Keane in today's Telegraph.

Good morning all you Minglers.   :)   I woke up at 4 am this morning and could NOT go back to sleep---been surfing about an hour and a half and I'm finally starting to fade.  I'm going back to bed--hope everyone has a great and productive day!

So Roy Keane finally resigned as the Sunderland boss after several weeks of speculation that had seen much behind the scenes activity at the troubled club. It is believed that efforts were made to keep him but the manner in which he decided to resign by a text message tells its own story regarding Keane’s disillusionment.

The writing was clearly on the wall last week, following Sunderland’s dismal home display against Bolton in a match that they lost 4-1 and which also put them into the relegation zone. Keane had apparently been in talks with Chairman, Niall Quinn after Keane suggested publicly that the Bolton match was probably his last in charge and it appears that those talks failed to keep Keano at the club.

He leaves the club in a much better shape than he found it but he also leaves them as a loser, something that really should not be associated with a player of his stature, Keano was  a winner as a player and one of the very best midfield players to have played in the Premier League.

Keane was the powerhouse in a Manchester United midfield which included David Beckham, Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes. During that time Beckham was voted third best player in the world and it was said at the time how could he be the third best player in the world when he was not even the third best player in the United midfield.

It was Keano who was the number one at that time and he bossed his team mates as well as he bullied the opposition and perhaps it was those qualities that let him down off the pitch as the Black Cats manager.

Rumours are rife suggesting that Keane was somewhat of a bully and his stick and carrot management style had too much stick and very little carrot. As a player he motivated his team mates by his sheer presence and with his verbal authority, as a manager he struggled to translate that presence into a winning management style.

His departure from the Premier League is a sad one; Keano seems to have been around forever, firstly as a swashbuckling midfielder, nurtured into a footballing superstar by the late, great Brian Clough. His arrival at United was seen as filling the void left by Brian Robson three years earlier and his impact once established in the team was profound. The cries of ‘KEANO KEANO KEANO’ that buzzed around Old Trafford for years had became part and parcel of the Premier League and Roy Keane will now be sorely missed. His name will no doubt top the Next Manager Betting Markets in any future management positions as and when they occur but for the time being Roy Keane is in the past tense.

Dutch yobs banished to steel container homes

I remember this story from a few years ago and with all the furore erupting about the mathews case I wondered how  nulab are doing with the 'monitoring of the situation'.

Holland's rowdiest housing tenants are being moved into steel container homes in a government crackdown on nuisance neighbours.

The reinforced houses, which resemble shipping containers, are to be built at sites on the outskirts of cities for residents who cause problems with noise, violence, drug abuse or untidiness.

"Nuisance neighbours" can be evicted from rented homes under existing law, but Dutch MPs say that this just shifts the problem onto the streets.

Politicians were prompted to find the fresh solution after a "neighbours from hell" television documentary, which starred the notorious Tokkie family, from Amsterdam, caused nationwide uproar.

The family's 20-year feud with neighbours has been marked by fights with baseball bats, guns and Molotov cocktails. During the show, cameras followed individual family members who live in a filthy, rubbish-strewn home.

At one point the family patriarch, Gerrie, 51, a tattooed, pot-bellied sewage worker who was the family's sole bread-winner, took to the street with a samurai sword to attack his neighbours.

His twin daughters, Natalie and Natascha, 21, had their own children taken into care. His eldest son, Wesley, 20, constantly claimed to be too sick to work while another son, Wimpie, 15, whiled away his life loitering in the local shopping centre. The fly-on-the wall show provoked widespread debate in Dutch society. The programme-makers were accused of glamorising anti-social families, while politicians were criticised for not tackling the problem.

The government turned to the container homes proposal after the success of a pilot scheme of four dwellings outside the medieval town of Kampen, in eastern Holland.

Each home has three basic bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom, and is supplied with heating, gas, electricity and hot water. Tenants who cannot afford furniture are given financial help to buy items second-hand.

Members of the first family to move in were so dirty that local shopkeepers kept air fresheners to hand lest any wandered in.

Anette Schlueter, a city housing adviser, described the family as being of "low IQ". She said: "They defecated all over their hou