Flatpackhamster

Absolutely. There were ongoing, systemic problems and the short-termist attitude of the politicians was "We can spend our way out of this and everything will return to normal." Sorry, but it won't. We have a decade or more of zero-growth while we start to pay off our debts. Then we can return to an expanding economy - if we deal with the debt and the welfarism and entitlement culture and so on. But we have a huge mess to deal with and it was very foolish (IMO) for the coalition to pretend everything was going to be fine. It smacks of an intellectual poverty that one would hope that a government as well-educated as this wouldn't be suffering from.

Cybernerd was claiming that cutting government expenditure led to the double-dip recession. Expenditure clearly hasn't been cut. Nor has borrowing - in fact borrowing is larger than ever and makes up the £100Bn+ shortfall between tax receipts and expenditure. So if there's one thing that the government hasn't done, it's spend less. There are plenty of things that caused the double-dip recession, but the GuardianWorld view that it's cutting expenditure which has done it has no basis in reality.

UK Central Government and Local Authority Public Spending 2013 - Pie Charts Tables 2008: £576.0Bn 2009: £621.4Bn 2010: £660.8Bn 2011: £681.3Bn 2012: £688.0Bn 2013: £676.6Bn 2014: £715.3Bn Obviously the 12-14 figures are projected. Government is spending more than ever. It seems to me that some people could do with broadening their news consumption beyond the Guardian and BBC.

Except that there haven't been massive cuts because government expenditure has risen under the Coalition government.

I just bought the Crusader Kings 2 bundle and all the addons. I was planning to get it at some point, but 75% off was too cheap to resist.

You must be just down the road from me, because we had three colossal downpours yesterday, the second and third with thunder and lightning. This morning all was sunny and serene. I'm hoping for a bit more rain to save me from using my hosepipe on the paddy field that was once my lawn.

Am I right in thinking that the games have to be written to take advantage of 3D in order for you to see the benefit? Asus screens are nice. Take a look at Iiyama too. Mmmm.

Bear in mind that since you're not a retail customer your rights are slightly different. I don't think you can use the Sale of Goods Act to claim the product isn't of merchantable quality and you want a replacement. (Correct me if I'm wrong). I suggest you start shouting at people. Tell your supplier you won't deal with them unless they get it sorted, and tell Lacie their product sucks donkey todgers and you'll never use them again, etc etc.

How do we differentiate between the kids in the top 20%? At present there's no way to do that. GCSEs aren't hard enough. Multiple guess is part of the problem. It's cheaper to mark, which is why it's popular, but it doesn't allow the candidate to display any understanding.

The old Henry does the job everywhere I've been. Not sure a handheld is going to have the oomph to get 1,500 kids' skin cells off the fans of a school computer.

BYOD - Bring Your Own Dog?

Nearly ran over Gloria Hunniford this morning.

What else does your money go on? In 2001, when I was 25 I bought a brand-new Ford Puma. But I was living with my parents rent-free so my other outgoings were minimal. If you're paying rent and buying food and raising a family then no, you can't buy a swanky car.

Will it take my ATI Radeon??

The local weather station says it's 26.6C here.

Have you played Ibble Dibble? You need drink, and a wine cork (a proper one, not a plastic one) and a lighter. Firstly, take the lighter and burn the end of the cork so it blackens and goes nicely charcoalled. Everyone sits in a circle, and gets allocated a number. The player who starts takes the number one. The first player says "This is Ibble Dibble number 1, with no spots, calling Ibble Dibble number (choose a number), with no spots, Ibble Dibble. Each player then has to follow this on, choosing a person and getting their number of spots right and the sentence correct. Every time you make a mistake, either with your number, or their number, or the number of spots or the sentence, you have to take a drink, and you get a charcoal 'spot' on your face from the burned cork. Some years ago I played this with friends on a Friday night. After colossal amounts of Ibble Dibble and vodka we all went home/to sleep. One of my friends overslept and was due in work on Saturday morning. He flung on his suit, didn't wash or shave or shower and hopped straight on the train, and didn't realise until he reached the office washroom that he was still covered in charcoal blotches. He did say he wondered why everyone was giving him funny looks.

Depending upon the condition of the drive, it may be recoverable using a piece of software like GetDataBack. I've used GDB for NT and FAT plenty of times to recover files from damaged drives. If you can't do that, I would imagine it'll cost at least £500 to have a data recovery company do it.

Ahh, but he's virtualised it 80,000 times so that he can play every possible iteration in less than a day.

How about War & Peace Show - The Largest Military Vehicle Spectacular in the World - Home ?

Do you miss her?

Don't use the good stuff. Buy tramp vodka from the cheapy supermarkets.

Rhubarb Schnapps. Take 1 litre of the cheapest vodka you can find. Pour in to a cleaned, wide-necked bottle. Add 600g of washed rhubarb which you've chopped in to 1-inch lengths. Add 300g caster sugar. Put the lid on the bottle. Shake and move to a cool, dark place. Every day for the first week, shake the bottle gently to make sure that the sugar is all dissolved. Leave for at least two weeks and if possible, six weeks. After two weeks, the schnapps will be a pale pink colour but that fades after six weeks. However, after six weeks the flavour is far better. When the process is finished, strain from the bottle in to another clean bottle, and dispose of the rhubarb (or cook and eat if you like vodka'd rhubarb). I've done this recipe for the last 2 years, and it's a fantastic drink. I don't even like spirits normally but this is superb.

Mostly yes, but sometimes no, because it depends what they want to replace it with. Lenin wasn't a Republican, for example. The Ayatollahs in Iran weren't Republicans, they were Theocrats. In the UK, though, you can find almost all Republicans on the left.

Oh, it's absurd, I'll grant you. But what's more absurd is the idea that getting rid of it would change anything at all. Does France have no honours system? Does the US have no honours system? Do 'the people' decide there? If you don't have the courage of your convictions to outline your worldview, I advise you not to post it in the first place.

I'm with IDNet. If you're techy and you like to talk straight to another tech, IDNet is brilliant. Very small company, but the great thing about them is that if there's a problem you aren't phoning India, you're phoning Letchworth. When I had broadband problems last week I didn't have to talk to eight different people who all told me to restart my router, I just outlined the problem and the things I'd tried to fix it, and they sent a BT engineer who fixed the fault.