????

I love The Smiths....and I'm essentially a late 70s southerrn soulboy who generally is not all in to that angst driven stuff.....(though I like The Cure too!). Back to the overated....Bruce Springsteen anyone?

The Monkeyhangers away.....I'm thinking of a trip to Hartlepool as I've not been there....not squared it with the missus yet...

I can't agree on The Clash, if someone said play mean album that defines punk it would be the first Clash album "The Clash"...I think that London Calling is an OK album subject to too much hyperbole (ditto Petsounds as someone already mentioned) and then I think that they have enough decent other tracks from various other albums or singles (eg Stay Free, WMIHP, Clash City Rockers, Radio Clash)...I guess if you don't like punk then you won't like early Clash stuff

mmm...youth is taking over the world...just look what all those bright young things did with the banks/economy/world!

Can I also add New Order and.....*gulp.....Joy Division.......what is it about the music press' love with Manchester? In FACT, the best band to come out of Manchester (by a mile) is The Smiths.....other than that it seems a place that produces bands that follow the zeitgeist rather than make it.......Oasis, New Order, SR, Happy Mondays...all pretty average in my book.... Simply Red are good though....;-)

....The Stone Roses...one decent album does not a great band make...right time right place, that's all.

Don't ask for a beer? Sound advice. Can't wait for how to walk C&P..."put one foot in front then the other"

Now if we were talking bookmakers and not bookshops.....

Not me....one of my EDF resolutions is not to be so resolutely gloomy about the economy and also to be nicer to that lot from White Hart Lane.....but not 'Wall Tony ;-)

....and there was the pint nicker from the Maudsley who often did nick your pint there!!

I think I do bob...not my scene but i'm sure they were good too. I used to go on saturday nights...they did a big Salsa do on thursdays or something too....I think it's just flats now :'(

Jah, I loved that place....big queues for somewhere that was (especially then) located in a fairy hairy area! we always used to play pool in the pub until the queues subsided. Great mixture of music in the different floors and i can't honestly remember seeing any trouble....and then a walk down coldharbour lane (there were always a few of us!) and home to SE5...good times indeed

mockney - you have just struck off almost anything by Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde!! (both good in my 'book')

it was originally a firkin...the second one ever...The pheonix and Firkin (as it had been rebuilt after a fire gutted DH station) and at one time was the Camberwell spot......but then so was The Grove and in those days the Funky was The Artichoke and a genuinely scary pub (shotguns etc) and the sun & doves was a disco pub all white socks and Millwall boys in one bar and old geezers playing crib in the other

What rosie said...it's an urban myth

*Bob* If everyone in Wales deserving of a turd through the post got sent one it would take several dozen articulated lorries....

"Is this in fact a cheese shop?"

We used to have elcletic and individual places with their own mini-cultures and quirks....they were called pubs. so called "bar culture" is shite...and so are most bars

Sorry, forgot to add retail sales will be down about 10% next year plus not much demand for 'premium' kitchen nicknacks or marked up average restaurant food or delicatessan food, servicing debt with your income imploding??....carnage I tell thee

Credit is cheap in the 'shop window', you try getting it if you're a retailer!!! The problem is that with deflation and especially asset (see what I did there) deflation any debt starts to get scary (and bigger) unless you're repaying...that's the problem for consumers, businesses and retailers in 2009...although, ironically in 2010 we could have massive inflation with the ? going down the swanny). I'd not want to be in retail or any debt at the moment despite the fact that money is nominally 'cheap'.

My favourite NYE 'locally' used to be Mambo in the Loughboro Hotel, Loughboro Junction...any older forumites remember?

Someone got one wheel parked on the pavement I suspect...

Asset, it's their gearing that's hurting the chains not any lost 'investments' and I expect that many of the small chains are in the same boat - soooo the obvious ones in LL (better not name or admin may tell me off) are in relatively similar picture...over expanded on high levels of debt that are now unsustainable. The true independents? Maybe...but theyll have to lower their prices

Well you could of chav - the article you C&P shows some empathy with those suffering in the private sector including buy to let....rather than your very unempathetic "My heart bleeds for them"........personally I feel sorry for those living in substandard public sector housing and those being repossessed just for trying to live their dream....

One of the compensations of getting old is not having that awful am in the right club/bar/pub/party with the right people? bollox that seems compulsory on NYE until you get to your 30s...friends with a baby coming round few beers up early (no choice with the quidlets) and then in search of a pub for a lunctime beverage with just a minor hangover