Flashman

So you were paid within the time limit specified in the agreement?

That’s no reason for an honour. A comedy award, perhaps.

I try to forget the Scotch as much as possible. And it is not hatred - it is pity.

He's a good driver, for what it's worth, but he doesn't have to be likeable.

Dunno - all are fair game if you ask me.

I'd avoid the Twitter, Facebook and the internet generally if you find that offensive.

I buy it as well. The rose gin's also good They have a pitch as the surrounding farmers' markets or buy direct from the distillery. Cheaper than Waitrose or Duty Free at the airport.

LBJ biog film out later this year - worth a look

The main windscreen replacement companies used to fix chips and scratches for nothing if you had full comp insurance. Maybe worth asking them?

None of this sounds like an investment that should be made by a typical (retail) investor. The FCA are reviewing the position of ICOs in any case and you may find that regulation stops this sort of investing being available to retail investors in the near future. "Normal" currency is underwritten by governments and investors take a view on sovereign risk. To compare cryto currencies to Sterling and other AAA/AA-rated countries is laughable. However, as long as an investor understands the risks and is prepared to lose his entire investment, then they can speculate to their heart's comtent.

People are free to like or dislike shooting. My issue is that he lies about the shooting community. He has used Twitter to make statements that are patently untrue. When challenged, he quietly backs down, but the damage to shooting has already happened. Whether he has a mental illness or is/also just a tool is irrelevant to me - it's not a defence to lying.

Are BASC, etc. endorsing this view? Are there any comments from these organisations about how to comment?

Judging by the comments on here, the marketing has been hugely successful. It's a cheap supermarket's ready meal, so I don't know what you're expecting above the nornal mediocre quality but hotter. However, pandering to the flaming hot brigade has produced lots of chatter, so well done the PR boys.

He's got a book out about having Asbergers. Doesn't that make your pee smell funny?

Why be rude to them? They have a job and they're on commission. Shockingly, they try to up-sell... Perhaps a little charm would be a better approach than know-it-all hostility?

I've heard good things from existing owners. Also, big tax breaks on the new ones.

They say that old people don't like change. Still, a couple of more years and it won't make any difference to you.

I don't believe TfL have a real problem with Uber - this is Labour spin in advance of their conference. I don't think Uber can compare with London cabbies, who in my experience all know the quickest route. Uber drivers don't have the knowledge and simply follow their free mobile phone sat-nav. Also, there are generally plenty of cabs in the City and West End, so hailing one down is quicker than booking through the app. However, the rest of the country doesn't have the same quality of black cab drivers, so why shouldn't Uber compete with the existing firms? It's exactly the same service - following the sat-nav, etc. but with the convenience of booking via a phone app: what's not to like?

BlackRock invests over USD 4.5 Trillion worldwide, but they and Osborne concoct a conspiracy with Cameron, who's former adviser's wife took a job at Uber? It's embarrassing that grown-ups see a world-wide master plan. Perhaps they're all Kosher Freemasons as well..?

Who? When did you read or hear this? From what source?

Look in this month's Field - there's a whole article about socks.

This is worthy of Pseuds Corner...

Still for sale - for £60: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B073JP7STS

The Daily Telegraph - of course - had something interesting to say about this under the suitable heading, "Protesting against statues of Nelson, Churchill or Rhodes is just a way of showing off" "Does Winston Churchill deserve a statue? He wrote some nasty things about Muslims. What about Wellington, a snob who opposed extending the franchise? Or Gandhi, who disdained black Africans? Most of us recognise that these men are memorialised for other reasons, such as winning wars against tyrants or, in Gandhi’s case, maintaining his creed of non-violence while leading a great country to independence. There are some people, though, for whom statues – like everything else – are primarily about them. The fact that Thomas Jefferson was a slave-owner, albeit a tortured one, allows them to look down on the author of the Declaration of Independence. The fact that Churchill declared himself “strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes” lets them feel superior to the man who beat Hitler. Once you grasp that protesting against statues is partly a way of showing off, it all makes sense. Flaunting your piety is a competitive game. It’s not enough to be against statues of, say, Franco: anyone can do that. You need to find a revered national figure, and then let everyone know that, at least in one sense, you are a better human being than he was. Eventually, this virtue-signalling was bound to reach the top – literally. In The Guardian, Afua Hirsch took aim at Nelson’s Column. By any conventional definition, the Admiral was a hero: brave, dashing, adored by his men. He died at the moment of his triumph, saving Britain from the threat of Bonapartist tyranny and, indeed, making possible the liberation of Europe. All this, though, counts for nothing, because Nelson was, we are told, “a white supremacist”. It is true that Nelson, to the extent that he took any interest at all, backed the pro-slavery West Indies lobby against Wilberforce’s abolitionists, whom we now recognise as moral titans. Still, it is facile to assess historical figures wholly according to how closely their views resemble ours. As Herbert Butterfield put it in his famous 1931 critique of Whig history: “The study of the past with one eye upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history. It is the essence of what we mean by the word ‘unhistorical’.” In 1805, when Nelson died, slavery was, for most people, a familiar and immemorial part of the human condition. It was widely practised in Asia, Africa and the Americas and, in the adapted form of serfdom, across much of Europe. The real outlier turned out to be the United Kingdom which, 18 months later, voted to outlaw the slave trade – an act partly made possible, ironically enough, by Nelson’s victory. Although the war with France continued, Britain proudly diverted ships to hunt down the slavers. How bizarre to judge Nelson by an opinion which, though we find it obnoxious, was incidental to his story. Sure, all ages have their shibboleths: some medieval clergymen wanted to ban classical philosophers, such as Aristotle, because they were not Christian. Still, it’s odd that we should be so obsessed with slavery at a time when everyone agrees that it is abominable. Indeed, it’s hard to think of a less controversial issue. Whom are the statue-fellers trying to convince? The current bout of iconoclasm began two years ago at my old Oxford College, Oriel, with a campaign to dislodge the guano-encrusted Cecil Rhodes from his discreet niche – a campaign that still rumbles on. On Newsnight last week Rahul Rao, an anti-statue academic from SOAS and former Rhodes scholar, described the diamond magnate as “the father figure of apartheid” – a bizarre claim when Rhodes died in 1902, and apartheid was imposed in 1948. Actually, by the standards of his age, Rhodes was pretty enlightened: he enjoyed warm relations with Africans, opposed the attempt to disfranchise indigenous voters in Cape Colony and funded the newspaper of what became the ANC. It seems harsh to us that he displaced the Ndebele from their lands in pursuit of diamond wealth. But we are committing Butterfield’s sin. The Ndebele had themselves seized those lands from the Shona, many of whom they killed or enslaved. Their outlook was, by most measures, far more distant from modern opinion than that of Oriel’s benefactor. But the campaign was never really about Rhodes; it was about angry students fitting everything around their own prejudices. Statues can be removed for good reasons. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, hundreds of little Lenins were plucked from their pedestals. When Saddam Hussein was overthrown, his vast and trunkless legs of stone were left standing in the desert. In the same way, local communities in the American South have every right to take down Confederate memorials, some of them recent and gimcrack. The trouble is, it doesn’t stop there. The oldest monument to Christopher Columbus in North America, which had stood in Baltimore since 1792, was sledgehammered last week by a man who, in an accompanying video, blamed the explorer for capitalism. There are campaigns in Australia against Captain Cook, who discovered the place, and governor Macquarie, who oversaw its settlement. Statues of both men were vandalised yesterday. If you see Churchill, Nelson, Cook and even Columbus as villains, you’re effectively saying that you’d rather English-speaking civilisation hadn’t happened, that the world would be better off without jury trials, uncensored media, parliamentary democracy, habeas corpus and, come to that, the anti-slavery movement. One question, then. Whose civilisation would you prefer? Where else were individual liberty, free speech, women’s rights, equality before the law and prosperity for the masses so secure? Among the Montenegrins? The Masai? The Maori? The Maya? Against whom are we being so harshly judged?"

But still, some nets, some training for a couple of nights per week for a few brief summer months doesn't sound earth shattering - it isn't like Glastonbury's running 24/7. This isn't the first time cricket's been an issue and Lord Denning opined on this back in the 1970's in Miller v.s Jackson. His opening statement is famous (in a dry legal way) for letting you know what's about to happen straight from the opening sentence: "In summertime village cricket is the delight of everyone. Nearly every village has its own cricket field where the young men play and the old men watch. In the village of Lintz in County Durham they have their own ground, where they have played these last 70 years. They tend it well. The wicket area is well rolled and mown. The outfield is kept short. It has a good club house for the players and seats for the onlookers. The village team play there on Saturdays and Sundays. They belong to a league, competing with the neighbouring villages. On other evenings after work they practise while the light lasts. Yet now after these 70 years a judge of the High Court has ordered that they must not play there any more. He has issued an injunction to stop them. He has done it at the instance of a newcomer who is no lover of cricket. This newcomer has built, or has had built for him, a house on the edge of the cricket ground which four years ago was a field where cattle grazed. The animals did not mind the cricket. But now this adjoining field has been turned into a housing estate. The newcomer bought one of the houses on the edge of the cricket ground. No doubt the open space was a selling point. Now he complains that when a batsman hits a six the ball has been known to land in his garden or on or near his house. His wife has got so upset about it that they always go out at week-ends. They do not go into the garden when cricket is being played. They say that this is intolerable. So they asked the judge to stop the cricket being played. And the judge, much against his will, has felt that he must order the cricket to be stopped: with the consequence, I suppose, that the Lintz Cricket Club will disappear. The cricket ground will be turned to some other use. I expect for more houses or a factory. The young men will turn to other things instead of cricket. The whole village will be much the poorer. And all this because of a newcomer who has just bought a house there next to the cricket ground..."