Moan, Moan, Moan - 2012

[Martin Baxendale]

@Lesley...

(I think this is going to come in very handy in this thread)

[Luc Gilgemyn]

Good grief Lesley - if this had all happened on a Friday 13th... 
Hope today's day is a better one !! 

[angie]

Lesley hope you have a very pleasant day today. One thing you can say you don't live a boring life like me 

Angie 

[Anthony Darby]

Last night I watched the Nadal v Federa tennis semifinal, but think it's unfair that Nadal will now have a whole day longer to prepare for Sunday's final than the winner of today's semi! Can't the plonkers organise the semis on the same day, or is that too much like common sense? Even the commentators commented on it!

[Lesley Cox]

Thank you so much Martin. I definitely needed that. It wasn't the end, by midnight I was screaming out to the kitchen for salt having got bad cramp in one leg and this morning my camera wouldn't work. Kept saying "Write Error" every time I clicked the shutter but it's stopped that now and the pics I took seem OK.

No Angie, life is never boring here. Roger is going south to see a friend tomorrow and MAY come home with a little 6 year old dog whose family are moving to Australia. Not sure if I'm ready yet. We'll see. I wouldn't want to love him less than his due.

Anthony they're on different days so the paying punters don't get to see two for the price of one. They have to pay twice to see both games. Don't the silly things understand they just send more people to their TV sets?

BUT..... I'm pleased to see there are many more Happy pages so far this year than there are Moans.

[Anthony Darby]

Will be interesting to see how the Djoker gets on tonight. I think it's a disgrace. Bet Mickey Mouse is wearing an Aussie Open watch?

[Anthony Darby]

Weedkilling the lawn edges is not confined to Falkirk, or council grass! The last shot is of my front lawn, which ends at the end of the brick out of shot and black circular cover. I wonder how long it will take for the bare patch to double in width? I'm responsible for the grass to the road edge on each side of the foot path in front of the house. The second last pic shows a view up the road, where one chap has also sprayed weed killer (yellow edge). I use a wheel edger, which does it just about as fast as spraying. Almost like using a child's scooter. While I was taking the first shots, a group of pukekos came to check if I had any bread.

[Anthony Darby]

I see the NZ treasury are suggesting raising class sizes in NZ schools to save money! Typical of government thinking world wide. What price education?! I never taught a class larger than 20 as in Scotland, unless you went to a private school, practical classes legally had to be 20 or fewer. The present Scottish government were supposed to reduce class sizes in primary schools, but seem to have failed? It has been proved time and time again that the teacher pupil ratio is vital for improving education standards. Raising class sizes is false economy! Let the treasury officials try to teach a class of 35 or more!

[Lesley Cox]

What goes around comes around. I remember perhaps 20 years ago the then govt - can't remember which party - made huge efforts and spent many millions recruiting immigrant teachers, enlarging teacher training colleges etc all to bring down class sizes, the aim being from around 35 per class to not more than 20. I don't think that was ever fully achieved but good progress was made. Now in order to save money, we go back to square one.

My fondest hope in all this and so many other areas in recent weeks is that the current govt has alienated so many people, groups, races et al, that they won't last longer than until the next election.

Funny that since the banks/economies debacle of recent years, the word "millions" mean peanuts. Billions and trillions are the new millions.

Where does a country like the USA, with such astronomic debt get the money to "lend" to other countries and provide aid and so on? Where does the IMF get all its money from, with which to bail out Greece, Italy etc? Do they just print more or what? I really want to know. The other day the head of IMF said they would have to get more money. Where from since everyone seems to be getting it from them?

[Kim]

"Quantitive easing" is the answer to that. They just print more money!

Kim

[Lesley Cox]

Hi Kim, hope all is well with you.

Is that so? I though printing more and more was supposed to devalue what we already had so to be avoided at all costs (you can see I'm no economist!) Isn't that what Robert Mugabe did?

[Anthony Darby]

Perhaps if they removed the private sector from the source of the problem, private hedge funds wouldn't be able to buy up the debts of countries like Greece at 40% and then instantly cash them in at 100%, because, unlike banks, they are honour bound to stick to banking ethics and so remove yet more of the tax payer's money from the public coffers?

[WimB]

Is that so? I though printing more and more was supposed to devalue what we already had so to be avoided at all costs (you can see I'm no economist!) Isn't that what Robert Mugabe did?

I guess it depends on which country prints more money. If a country with a huge economy and with a currency that is used in a lot of countries as a reserve-currency prints more money, it will not devalue their money (in the short term)!!

[WimB]

Weedkilling the lawn edges is not confined to Falkirk, or council grass!

That's really ugly! It has been forbidden here since years to use weedkillers on public lawn edges!

[Martin Baxendale]

Lesley, I think I heard someone explain the other day that the only "real" money is debt, which seems to make sense - i.e. money has no purpose and is valueless until someone owes you for something (work done, goods purchased) then money means something, what is due in return for the service, goods etc. Which helps explain the recent and current problems - debt = money, so debt occurs when people or countries buy services or goods. The problem seems to be that financial institutions then buy and sell that debt, creating a poorly-balanced, sometimes pyramid-like or bubble-like market in debt which feeds on itself and eventually comes crashing down when the value of the debt turns out to be much lower than its "market" value because the people or countries who built it up can't actually afford to pay it off.