AVB

Yes it is a great technical achievement but I can't help thing "what's the point?". Will we ever be able to colonise Mars and if so will it ever be any more than a few people living in tents?

It's winter. There are always more people in hospital during the winter. I accept they won't flick a switch but I wish they even knew where the light switch was. Or what one looked like.

We are over that. We are still in lockdown.

This. Although the government messaging changed over time. Originally it was "for the vast majority or people it will be a minor illness" and it became "stay indoors forever because we need to flatten the curve/protect the NHS/reduce the R number (delete as appropriate)"

Three ways of counting deaths 1) 28 days of a positive test = Covid death. This is the number reported daiiy 2) Covid mentioned on the death certificate. This is reported by the ONS I think monthly. This number is higher than 1. 3) Excess deaths above the 5 year norm. Reported again monthly by the ONS. This number is higher than 2 as it includes all deaths that may have been caused by lockdown but not directly covid related - delayed treatment for example.

too many years of working with utter **** holes. You are right they seem decent. Like Piers Morgan. A lockdown fanatic who jets of to Antigua at the first opportunity because he can.

Yes we went for Vonage. Agree install was dire but customer service has improved since live. One bad experience early doors but a couple of good ones since.

Full of 'celebs'?

And they were £20 pre covid so you absolutely bought at the right time. You've made a profit but if you were holding any that you bought pre-covid then you are facing a fairly big loss on paper at least.

Can somebody give me some advice as a PCP newbie. I bought a second hand FX Cyclone. It arrived relatively empty with the gauge showing 50 bar. I have bought a pump which seems to be pumping out air but I don't seem to making any progress on filling the gun. I pump and pump (probably 200+ pumps so far) but the gauge doesn't move and I don't seem to feel any pressure building up in the pump. The filling probe doesn't seem a very tight fit. I expect it to be a tight fit in order to create an airtight seal but it slides in and out quite easily (held between finger and thumb). Is pump or gun at fault or do I just persevere?

I am sure he was a lovely bloke. The cynic in me wonders if his family thought "ooh here's the chance of a free first class trip to Barbados, Dad why don't you put it on your bucket list and come along"! I hope not.

We were upgrade to Fibre to the Premises with Gigaclear as part of the governments rural broadband initiative. They are only servicing a few counties at the moment but seem to be very good so far (1 year in). Pay for and get 300 mbs. £30 something per month

Two things in my opinion. People are no longer employed to analyse the fundamentals of companies and make recommendations (used to be called research analysts) but bots do a lot of it instead especially with large volume programme trades and whats called high frequency trading. The bots say when airlines have been low in the past they have recovered therefore that is what will happen this time. The problem is if there is a 'new normal' (hate that phrase) that means all previous behaviour is discounted. Secondly is tracker funds. A lot of funds track indices in order to get performance in line with a specific index. Therefore if an index contains a particular company then funds will buy that company and the price will rise. Which is why indices have to be treated with a pinch of salt. And don't forget the constituents are refreshed regularly with low performers booted out. So the index will always rise. Inflation isn't a tax. It isn't imposed on anything it is derived from the value of goods rising or falling. Rising inflation typically shows a growing economy (and I.m not talking about hyper inflation here). So in your example wages would also have grown in that period and therefore the value of your debts would also have decreased over that same period. If you had a £10K mortgage in 1970 that was stretching you, you would be less worried about it being a £10K mortgage in 1990.

There are two things that don't reconcile with the state of the economy - Inflation and Share Prices. Both should be tanking but they aren't. For years the value of shares have been detached from company fundamentals, one reason being that with interest rates being so low their is only one place for investors to put their money and that's the equity and bond markets. Inflation is a strange one. Obviously people are still spending and research is showing that many people have saved so much money during lockdown that they are splurging on building projects and luxury items which is compensating for the downturn in some sectors. I see the government lifting the shackles on inflation, keeping interest rates low, for a while to let the economy grow. It depends on how high it gets. 'Reasonable' inflation isn't a bad thing.