Best Of

First?

Of course you're first - you devised, posted, and then commented on your own thread.

Jeez.

We need a judge-led inquiry.

Lessons will be learnt.

Documentation will be e-mailed to Afghanistan.

Don't forget to bcc Iran, Russia and China.

And leave paper copies on a train, in a bar, and in a waste paper bin.

That's why Leon is so well-informed, it's not the gossip, it's wandering around St James's Park checking the bins

I’ve just had enough of it. The constant negging. The gloomsters

I’m still walking - I went down old Bond Street and then new Bond Street. Mile after mile past sothebys and the Louis Vuitton flagship. Then on - heedless of my safety - past south molton street and into Marylebone and ALL the way down wimpole street, not just part of it - all of it. Hours

And now I am in the Regent’s Park by the Nash terraces and it’s all Bentleys and Ferraris and the like. And happy people like me drinking free pouilly fusse in the sun

Where is this so-called “breadline Britain”??? It doesn’t exist. It’s a tabloid fiction, and it’s time we stopped listening to these doom-mongers

Very true. Mrs Stodge and I have visited Matlock today. Very pleasant town with a park and nice walks along the banks of the Derwent. Plenty of food and drink options and as I remarked to Mrs Stodge over lunch, the place reeks of money.

Prosperous Derbyshire - Reform heartland. Who’d have thunk it?

I find we are often rather blinkered in our attitudes to our local/national environments.

Most of Britain is a very pleasant looking country and a lot of our town environments aren’t too bad compared to places on the continent. Yes, we do have some very grim and soulless bits and I am not going to pretend that there are not significant challenges for our town centres, and urban environments alongside small town and rural economies. But if you are not careful you can walk into a pessimistic vision of the place as a hellscape, when that is very far from the truth.

This is the basic mistake this Labour government has made from day 1; instead of telling us that the UK is a basically decent place with problems and Labour will make sure our half full glass gets fuller, and keep telling us how they are doing it really well, they have acted as if they plan to make our half empty glass emptier and tell us so.

I'd just like to put out a big thanks to @Pagan2 for putting his own time and effort in to redisgn the comments layout.

Any issues, please reach out directly to him.

errr what? have hardly posted of late let alone designed anything sort of of been coming to terms with the brain tumour

Sorry if you've disclosed this before, but it feels like new news to me.

Very sorry to hear it. My mother had a brain tumour when we were little -deemed to be inoperable at one stage. I am delighted to say they managed to get it all (the specialist said "there's your miracle") and she is still very much vertical 35 years on, and thriving.

Life and death are merely two different states of being as far as I am concerned. We transition all of us at some point