Happy Face

Got ours done last year and I think it was either £1500 or £1700 so the price you have isnt bad. However I do recall last week that there was either an advert on the radio or on a van, newcastle based, offering boilers fitted for £995. I'll see if I can find it for you, however there may have been small print etc. £995 to £1700? That's quite a span.

I'd rather be part of Scotland if it happened.

Some fella was going on before about how Scotland will be the heart of the UK economy in a few decades (maybe a century), what with rising temperatures and rising seas and overpopulation in the south, Scotland will be the most comfortable, desireable, place to live. I'll have to google it...

Posting a photo of Cameron and Osbourne laughing their rich tits off was a fucking arsehole move for starters.

Nothing. So a bit sill really posting it to try and show how the cuts are effecting south tyneside. With regard to some of your other points, people in my cab are a measure. I drive unemployed, employed, self employed one man bands, Big business execs and footballers quite a wide breadth of the local population. They discuss all sorts from current affairs to elections etc. Nobody, not one is going on about how savage cuts are making things difficult. They are complaining about petrol prices going up, old age, the weather, lots of things. Now if the lower classes were being savaged, then it would be the number one topic, business would have crashed, all the regulars would be losing jobs left right and centre. Its just not like that. I also dont recall saying friends or family will never be affected by the cuts....another made up quote I guess. The truth, as anyone with an ounce of sense on this subject would know, is that the majority of the cuts have been back loaded, ie the coalition is hoping the economy takes off, everything is rosy and therefore some of the cuts will not need to happen. And one final point, Labours cuts program for this year, had they been elected, would have virtually matched the coalitions, penny for penny. If you want to debate the issue, debate it with some sense and not this wish washy lefty codswallop. Business doesn't crash when the lower classes are being savaged you numbskull. Business spunk their load that their biggest cost (wages) is being driven down. That's supposed to be YOUR argument in favour of cuts. You obviously never read Meenzers earlier post about health and safety cuts if you think regulators aren't losing work. Which reminds me of another aunt and uncle in the field. He's had to go abroad for work and she's doing one day a week.

I was in some state myself after the game. I did the old trick of falling asleep on the wrong metro and ended up at the Airport rather than Cullercoats. Could have been worse. I used to wake up on the last metro pulling into the Stadium of light rather than South Shields. No good if you're wearing a Newcastle top.

Hell will freeze over first My comments were at use of the word "savage" and I 100% stand by them. I don't know anyone whose being effected by the cuts not 1. And as Ive already said, the fact that some people have lost their jobs is sad for them, but that still doesn't warrant "savage" cuts and still won't stop me from discussing them in a political thread. If it's too sensitive for some then stay off the net ffs. Everyone says they're savage cuts. Clegg defends 'savage cuts' call http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8266260.stm Savage cuts and social cohesion http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leadi...on-2113111.html In a first round of savage cuts, 2,600 servicemen and women will definitely go in the autumn. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/...dy-wars-on.html MUMS with newborn babies will today find themselves in the front line of the Tory-led Coalition’s savage cuts.http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/2011/04/06/mums-with-new-babies-big-losers-in-tory-led-coalition-s-savage-cuts-115875-23041058/ Isn't your argument they're necessarily so?

Nothing. There's no numbers available on those effects yet, and people in your cab isn't a measure. But as you think it is, I just wondered what you've seen to demonstrate a good job by the Tories. I posted the graph cos I think you vote against your own interests and those of your friends & family. It's mostly a graph of job gains under 8 years of labour. It shows joblessness cut by twice in south shields what it was nationally (2% compared to 1%). It shows a worldwide economic crash caused by (southern) bankers - not public sector workers, or the NHS or pensions or anything like that - undid a lot of it in 6 months. It shows you how much better off the country is than the north east and how better off the rest of the North East east is than South Tyneside. Whether long before, during or after the crash. It shows the crash itself only left South Shields a sixth worse off than we had been a decade earlier though. Nationally, the country as a whole was left a third worse off, so we weren't really impacted as much. What will affect you and your friends is the cuts.

And thats to do with the deficit cuts that started on April 1st?????? What utter bollocks. Well why are you praising the Tories CT? you're going to have to help me out here. Are you saying you had noticed the effect of a 75% increase in the proportion of benefit claimants in the town going back 2 years to the crash, but that you have more recently witnessed a bounce back around the town in the last month thanks to Cameron's wise economic policy?

I reckon he's got southern heritage being that condescending. Was your dad from Jarra Steve?

Pipe down, fuckin Peter Snow.

Which is Cameron engaged in? Populist whim catering or hard line difficult decisions that need to be made despite their unpopularity? Surely it can't be both? Perhaps the papers you read give the impression of tough decisions being popular. The polls on those cuts don't back it up. An unrelated AV referendum tells you nothing about how they're handling the economy. First off all I said the public backed the conservative plans on the deficit reduction which is entirely different to saying that the government does whats popular? Secondly, you havent stated where your mish mash figures come from. The main poll that backs up what i said is the Guardian / ICM poll taken a few weeks back that shows 57% of voters back the current cuts or think they should be even deeper. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/ma...-coalition-poll As I said before, the public at large will always agree on a generic "should spending be cut?" question. Everyone wants to save money. When you said "the majority are more relieved that its someone else whose losing and not them" I got the impression this is how you feel rather than what that poll shows which is "southerners are more relieved that its northerners losing and not them". Which I'd agree with. Look at the chart above. Our area has been more adversley affected, and your average Londoner doesn't know/care. Ask a Londoner "do you think it's right that northerners suffer from cuts to a greater extent than southerners" and I do think the answer would be no. But ask them about the cuts they see around them (which are NOT as savage as they are up here) and of course they haven't personally felt the affect as much....apart from housing being cheaper...bonus! However, you aren't a southerner. You're like a white geordie Uncle Tom.

Science can prove anything with some fancy facts and figures. Of course it can. For example, theoretical physics can prove an elephant can hang from a cliff with his tail tied to a daisy. But use your eyes, your common sense ... Where've they done that? I'd be very interested in reading the peer reviewed proof. It's actually based on a line from the film JFK. Love the Stewart Lee bit where he's arguing with a taxi driver (coincidentally enough) who says to him "yeah well, you can prove anything with facts can't you". There's people who'll argue global warming isn't happening because science has shown bee's can't fly. The truth is science has shown bee's can't glide, like helicopters, but the science of getting a helicopter in the air is pretty solid.

It's one thing ignoring the facts of what Ashley has done at Newcastle to wind people up. It's 'just' sport. But to play the WUM about job losses affecting peoples lives is as bad as Rob standing up for Jon Venables. Your own borough of South Tyneside has the highest proportion of people of working age claiming benefits.... http://www.newcastle.gov.uk/wwwfileroot/tw...V01_2011Mar.pdf Look at how far above every other borough your town is, after 8 years of downward trending. Look at the spike over the last couple of years. It's impossible for you not to see this affecting the people around you, unless you're a particularly self absorbed toss-pot.

Science can prove anything with some fancy facts and figures. Of course it can. For example, theoretical physics can prove an elephant can hang from a cliff with his tail tied to a daisy. But use your eyes, your common sense ... Where've they done that? I'd be very interested in reading the peer reviewed proof.

2 cousins...both with newborn babies*. *separately. No south shields jokes.

Hard to believe anyone being more full of themselves than some of the posters in this thread

Everyone I know that's lost their job gets a taxi to the job centre. Jesus wept.

CT is by far the biggest moaner. He hides it behing a wall of unreasonably positive guff, but he's constantly moaning about how miserable every other poster is without providing any reason for his Mary Mary positions. His constant negativity and contradictory position about what anyone and everyone else on the board says has become tiresome. He makes me sick.

Which is Cameron engaged in? Populist whim catering or hard line difficult decisions that need to be made despite their unpopularity? Surely it can't be both? Perhaps the papers you read give the impression of tough decisions being popular. The polls on those cuts don't back it up. An unrelated AV referendum tells you nothing about how they're handling the economy.

So the opposite of what you said before then? About them doing what's most popular I've given you numbers to show the majority oppose what cuts there have been and favour tax hikes. Can you back up your claim here?

Not really. This is where the idiocy comes in. Of course everyone when asked if the deficit should be cut says yes, who wants more debt? But ask where they think cuts should be made and the publiccontradict themselves. 82% against cuts in education and healthcare. 66% against military cuts The majority think public sector pensions are too low, not too high. The ONLY program the majoriy want to be cut is welfare to immigrants at 76%, which would produce miniscule savings on the overall budget. If that's the case, you need to raise taxes to cut the deficit...but 49% are against increased taxes too. What the government have done is go AGAINST the majority in every one of those cases, cutting services majorities don't want cut, and refusing to increase taxes when the majority do want it.

A royal wedding, extra bank holiday and the most evil man in the world killed. Great week for the incumbents to say "life is good"