Only in this country would we put up with it. Elsewhere the bird would be forcibly moved or put down. Don't know whether that makes us daft or wonderful.

Bring back roast swan I say. It was a delicacy for the rich in times gone past. Wouldn't mind trying a bit myself.

Happy birthday to all of you who may be celebrating today, especially to the mums.

Further, he said that it is not just the England players but all Premiership players. Even the praise is grudging. "He is good", is always followed by "but he should be on £100,000 a week".

He further says that football has been taken away from the common man.

Thankfully somebody has had the balls to tell it like it is. If football doesn't start changing soon it is going to lose the fan base and then the whole thing will come crashing down.

This wonderful government have come up with a wheeze that if you are fined for anything, anything at all, at a court, then you will have to pay £15 above the fine imposed which will be used to help victims of violence getting to court. Remember I didn't say you had to be fined for violence or aggressive behaviou but fined for anything.

So, if you are fined for speeding at court then you will have to pay the extra. Now that is bad enough, but here is the good bit.

If you are convicted of beating someone to within an inch of their life, grevious bodily harm etc. and you are sent to prison, you don't have to pay anything. That's right not a bean!!!! So the ones that are convicted of causing the problems don't have to pay. Bizzare? Unquestionably.

The government minister responsible made a statement that they want the criminals to pay for the new domestic violence counsellors that will help the victims go to court.

So, if you are a speeding driver you are a criminal, or you drop litter you are a criminal. If you get 10 years for violent crime then you are not as far as this legislation goes.

Oh and one more thing. At the moment this only applies to fines imposed by a court, but in future this will apply to on the spot fines!!!!
The motorist is being used as a cash cow, no?

Is there any wonder we are in the state we are in?

How long is the stupid Iranian government going to carry this charade on? Do they not realise that this is not a game, but a serious international problem that could have huge repercussions?

We are not at war with Iran and neither is anybody else as far as I can make out. They have no real right to detain these people and they have absolutely no right to use them as pawns in their propaganda campaign.

The location of the sailors and marines when they were taken is really no longer an issue. They should not be held any longer as there is no justification for this any longer. There wasn't from day one but the longer they hold them the less there is.

The Iranian apologists will carry on with their smoke and mirrors comments I am sure but anyone with any intelligence knows that this is completely wrong.

The daughter has just fed them strawberry for their weekly treat.

Not a bad life being an ant.

This is disgusting and will cause problems for loads of people. People will go overdrawn unnecessarily with the charges that will bring. Mortgages and direct debits will not be able to be paid etc.

Is it my imagination or is this happening more often than it used to?

Whatever, somebody ought to get this system sorted out.

Just seen a report on women being treated badly by empoloyers when they are pregnant and also not being allowed to work the reduced hours that they want when returning to work. This is now their right.

On the other hand we have the lady sailor who is not one of those kidnapped by the Iranians who has a small daughter (4 years old I think) and is spending her time at sea and taking part in boarding parties with her shipmates. She is on the ship and taking part in these activiites because this is her right to do so.

Not confused now. The ladies want it all. Cake and eat it comes to mind.

Fed up with having to wait until 1st July before it comes in. I would see it in today.

At least then I wouldn't come home smelling like an ashtray every time I pop into the pub.

Banks have said there is already "preliminary evidence" that some of the details have been used fraudulently. If you used TK Maxx before Dec 14th last year then I would suggest you take a close look at your bank accounts and see if there is anything strange there.

For the full story click here;

I am talking about the comment made by the England cricket captain Michael Vaughan about todays momentous (well for me anyway) match between England and Ireland.

As he quite rightly says, England should be much too strong for the Irish but they can't afford to be taken lightly.

I hope England win this as they have a chance to go forward and that Ireland push them to the limits. Ireland can then go on and win as many of the remaining Super 8 games as they can.

Didn't ever think the day would come when England would play Ireland in the latter stages of the World Cup.

A proud day no matter what the score.

Find it difficult to separate these types of blogs as a lot of them are both. I am not heavily into the primarily religious blogs although I have got some of the authors as friends and there are some very amusing posts and also interesting posts that appear. Not the stuffy sorts of entries that "religious blogs" might suggest.

The political blogs are of great interest to me. I have a lively interest in what is going on around the world and I like to get other perspectives on it. I must say I have found the present Iranian issue hugely entertaining. Might sound a strange way to put it, and it probably is, but some of the posts and comments I have read have been from the realms of fantasy. The authors cannot see that of course and it doesn't matter what you say to them they always try and support the original fantasy statement. They have great difficulty spotting a wind-up.

Welcome to Anglosaxon, my latest blogging friend.  Interesting blog and I look forward to more.

Whatever you blog on, keep doing it.

Sad really. Leaves a bit of a whole in my blogging community mates. Neilonline is the latest to wrap his hand in.

Is this something that happens regularly on blog sites like this? Do people get fed up and disappear?

Seems a shame if that is the case.

They had councils on-side, big business on-side, just about everybody on-side. Until that is the House of Lords, which they have tampered with to the point of masturbation, voted against them.
 
It beggars belief. And then to top it all (wiping the tears from my eyes - tears of laughter) the dozy woman in charge, states that they have no plan B and will have to delay this until they sort themselves out.

That will be about 150 years then.

Priceless. They out Yes Minister , Yes Minister.

She wanted to see smaller portions sold and the price reduced accordingly. She obviously has no comprehension of the impact that doing this would have on the industry. It would be bound to push up costs and therefore increase the cost to the consumer.

Let me ask you this. If your Mars Bar was reduced in size by half, would you eat less. Or would you, as I think will come to the surprise of the sandal wearer, buy two?

Perhaps the next plan will be to dictate to us how many we could buy?

Exasperation setting in.

Keep the happy words coming.

Well done Tone and the Cronies.

But let me ask. What good are these savings clubs in the first place and why would anybody wish to save in them?

Why do people not just put money into a bank savings account? At least they would get a bit of interest on their money and it would be safe. People should realise that the money they pay in is invested by the companies and they earn the interest on it. They then charge premium prices for the contents of the hampers that they provide.

So in effect people who use these clubs lose out on any interest and get little for their money compared to spending it in one of the large supermarkets or on the high street. I believe in one experiment on the TV just before Christmas the presenter managed to buy over 20% more goods for the same money.

My advice. Don't use these companies. Save your money in a bank, building society or friendly society and go out and spend it wisely.

Remember that GPS is capable of plotting a position within 50 metres so there is no doubt that they were where they should be.

Bear in mind also that the Iranians changed their story as to where the sailors were captured. The first set of co-ordinates placed the spot inside Iraqi waters. They then changed the story to move the spot over 3 nautical miles (I estimate).  Remember the GPS at 50 metres above.

Then to compound their behaviour they have the temerity to parade the sailors on TV, showing them no respect whatsoever. They only allowed the female sailor to speak for full propaganda effect.

The Iranians have shown themselves in a very bad light and are going to have to go a long way to be forgiven by the international community. It will be interesting what happens if this reaches the security council.

This was described on the news tonight as an international kidnap. I don't think that is far wrong.

I have now lost that feeling. It has been replaced by a feeling of not being able to give a stuff. Not only for the England team but for the Premiership as well. The game has changed so much in the last few years that there doesn't appear to be any heart and soul to it anymore.

Have you noticed that there is not an English striker in any of the top teams now. Other than Rooney who has gone off the boil there is not another class English striker. Notice how they have to go to the Championship for players. This is because there are just too many foreign players in the premiership. Nothing against the foreign players but they have severely limited the production of good young English players and we are now seeing the outcome of that.

I hope England don't embarrass themselves tonight. I hope they get to the Euro finals but to be honest I don't really care if they do. At least there won't be an outburst of false patriotism with the flags flying off the cars etc.

Sad.

Heard an interview on the radio where an NHS Dentist, one of 3 who practice together, was saying that they are running a one day on and two day off system at the moment as the money has run out from the NHS and there is not enough work for them to be there on a full time basis.

Well done Tone and the plonkers you have provided a great benefit to all of us there then!!!!!

Don't know if you have heard about this but Ken Livingstone is planning to use tax payer's money to build an enormous mosque costing an estimated 100M in the docklands. What do you think about it? Wouldn't it be better to spend the money on a new hospital or improved transport facilities?? BIGGER THAN ST PAULS!!!

The plan is for the mosque to be so big that people flying in from all over the world for the 2012 Olympics will it see it as the biggest landmark in London , bigger than St Pauls, Westminster Abbey or Wembley Stadium Take a second to cast your vote in The Evening Standard on-line poll to determine public opinion about whether a mega mosque should be built for the Olympics.

The vote so far is 62 % in favour. It looks like the Muslim
community is casting its vote in droves, and as usual the Christians
are burying their heads in the sand....you can.

When I started on here in December of last year there  appeared to be very few people actually using the site. I was soon into the top 10 on a regular basis.

Yesterday I received both my highest ever number of views and also highest ever number of visits (thanks to all who did pop in) and I was ranked at 17th!!! I can guarantee that if I had that number of visits just a month ago I would have been in the top 3.

This is great news. I love receiving views and the numbers are becoming bigger all the time.

As an added bonus, the site seems to be running much more freely with down-time hugely reduced and the slow times dramatically reduced.

Looks like we are a healthy and growing community.

In the last two weeks we have had everything from snow to bright cloudless sunshine, temperatures from minus 2 to plus 15 degrees.

Yesterday was absolutely beautiful with wall to wall sunshine, but today I see that we are under a blanket of thick fog. Sure this will eventually burn off.

We have had enormously high tides over the last few days. None of the flooding that they said might occur thankfully. The sea has redefined the sand dunes in a big way. Great gaps have appeared in them. The salt marshes are awash with black mud that has been redeposited by the sea. Only when you see that kind of damage do you realise how powerful the sea really is.

Yep this is a great time of year leading into the summer. Hope that it will be as hot if not hotter than last year with just as much sunshine.

"Don't mope about you make the place look untidy"

Mum knows best.

A bin man (sorry refuse collector for you sandal wearers) was photographed by a local resident taking bags of recycling and throwing them in a private skip to save him having to load and unload the old dustcart. Absolutely obvious what was going on.

The council ordered an enquiry and the guilty bin man was sacked for his obvious misconduct. Did the rest of the bin men say "Fair enough he got caught and he has got his come-uppance?"

No they decided to go on-strike. They want him reinstated for some strange reason. Apparently the strike could spread to neighbouring bin men organisations.

Thank the lord for that. I thought Britains industrial relations had moved forward to work on an adult basis. Glad to see I am wrong and the British disease (closely aligned to the French disease) is alive and well and we can still strike with the best of them. Whether there is any justification or not doesn't matter.