louisiana

Also a good contender, Huge-nut. That would have been my other choice. But for some twisted reason, I - an unbeliever - decided to give a fillip to Kumbaya, possibly the most irritating song on earth. In general, PPL is only including as contenders 'recordings' played in public places. A 'broadcast' passive listening thing. Because that is all they are interested in on behalf of their clients. But 'songs played in public places' suggests to me people actively playing/singing, whatever, together. Which is of absolutely no interest to PPL unless the song concerned is under copyright of a client of theirs. And thus history is rewritten by those in power. Count the hundreds (thousands?) of references to the PPL 'anniversary story' across the interweb, already. :-S

Oh and of course, do use the TfL survey to feed back your 'cyclist' views. The page linked to by fractionater suggests that this survey is seeking the views of motorcyclists only. In fact, it is seeking the views of all road users, including cyclists.

I absolutely object. Really strongly. I'm writing to my MP, and would encourage other cyclists to do the same. You can use Write To Them And consider joining London Cycling Campaign, to help make London safer for cyclists. Cyclists have enough to contend with in bus lanes, without motorcyclists weaving in and out at speed and also accelerating hard, as they generally tend to do. It's not that they behave any worse than car and lorry drivers - but car and lorry drivers are not permitted in the lane and I don't think high performance machines should be allowed in a lane which is in effect slower than other traffic.

"The website set up to smear Tory politicians about their health, family and sex lives was registered to the House of Commons, The Times has learnt." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6094572.ece

"anarchist's"? "protest's"? then why not "hippy's"and "protester's" and "case's"? AfN, I can forgive people most things bar random 'greengrocer's apostrophe's' B)

People from the Council who tell you that nothing can be done about X, Y or Z council service because 'that's run by a private company'.

I should be finally getting a pick-up this Thursday, though my builder - who has been watching the whole tale unfold over the last 2 weeks - has suggested other solutions, along the 'don't waste your time love' lines. On bulky waste, I think they're quite right to insist on only taking what you asked for. It can be a bit of a hassle if you don't forward plan but it keeps everything clear... I do however object to the recycling jobsworth who this week refused to take a bag of cardboard, marked as recycling, because it was not in he requisite 'blue bag'. It was clearly just brown cardboard (flattened brown cardboard boxes) and very light. He said I'd have to put in a request to the 'bulky refuse' people to remove it. The daft thing is, they empty all the blue bag contents straight into a huge container much bigger than the bag concerned, on the pavement right next to where you leave the blue bag... and then move that around.

It was out of action 'for a month'. She didn't specify the exact dates of that month, but it included 3 April, according to her own double-checks on the dates. My experience in early days was that there would always be an email confirmation of date well before they arrived. That worked well for ages. Then earlier this year they seemed to move to picking up without the email confirmation. This happened several times. Hence my confusion on what was happening this time around, and my delay in getting back in touch with them. I'm not objecting to the system being out of action. Just to them failing to spend a few minutes telling people same via the website. There were apparently many people in a similar position to me, expecting someone to pick up stuff but with nothing actually happening. They have all had to re-request, same as me. Or are still waiting...

I particularly like the term 'chavtastic'. :)

What he said. Good link macroban.

For all I know, they were also 'broken'. :-S The woman on the Southwark Council phone system didn't elaborate. Apparently 'bulky items' are collected by another organisation, a private company. It is outsourced by Southwark to this private company. I'm sure if no work arrives, they don't ask any questions. They no doubt get paid just the same whether there is work or not. It remains unclear whether it was just the Web system back end that failed (i.e. whether you could still call by phone and have the stuff go through the process successfully). I'm kind of past caring...

I know. I know, you actually pass the day singing Kumbaya in public places...

Bulk waste collection requested online 3 April. Not a peep from them, either to confirm or deny. (This follows on from other occasions, when they have collected without providing any confirmation.) I call them today. Apparently, their bulky waste 'system' has been 'broken' for a month. So their online forms have been 'working', but all the info that people provided on the various screens was going into a black hole. It clearly did not occur to anyone at Southwark to take the online forms offline for that month, given that the back-end-was-disconnected-from-the-front-end. They could even have put up a page to that effect. In three minutes. But no.

bigbadwolf I would like to slap some police officers around. Is this wrong?

Good article. I agree with her: it's earnings multiples that are important. And right now multiples are still totally out of kilter. To cap it all, many are suffering not just bonus cuts etc. but also cuts in basic wages, short-time working etc. Normally we'd expect wage inflation to smooth the path towards reasonable earnings multiples, but the opposite is happening now.

I was actually walking from the station entrance on Praed Steet towards the ticket machines at the far end (West) by the ticket office. But then I did have a camera around my neck...

I strongly suspect that the 'most played tune in public places' over the last 75 years is Kumbaya But then that is not a song controlled by the private firm PPL B) Do you work for PPL by any chance Tony?

Can anyone enlighten me about the law and/or railway byelaws re being on a station concourse? My doubt is: is it legal/permissible to be on a station 'concourse' i.e. where the shops and cafeterias are, without a valid ticket? Do you actually need to have a valid ticket to go into Boots and Smiths and the sandwich shop, and to stare at the train departures and arrivals board? Obviously you need a ticket for a train, and no doubt at least a platform ticket - if they still exist - to go on a platform, but... Situation: Paddington station concourse Sat eve was over-run with police (ordinary police, not railway police) and two van loads of police dogs, for no apparent reason. Police officers demanded to see my ticket and if I didn't have one I was breaking the law. They also demanded to know where I was going (destination). No doubt they might claim there were 'terrists' about, though to my eyes the station concourse looked pretty quiet for a Saturday evening.

Both a bunch of utter tripe? :)

Ah, it's finally sorted itself out...

I'm just getting 'This content doesn't seem to be working. Try again later.' Continuously. A Mac/streaming problem??

Oh Drooper is dire, but McPoo is paid from the pubic purse, thus placing himself in a whole other dimension. Super Poop. I did use to vote Labour, once upon a time, in a land far, far away... I am now fascinated by the question of why a political party should have such a violent death wish. Or not. (Fascinated, that is.) Why waste mental space on these - as you say - charlatans and leeches.

'Hack' might be a bit of an overstatement. He probably did nothing more than accurately guess a crappy (insecure) password. All too often it'll be the name of the person's dog or cat. The proportion of computer users that use 'password' as their password has fallen but is still shockingly high. And apparently there's been a huge rise is people using 'password1' as their password.

I don't like it.

LegalEagle-ish Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I want to know whether CCTV footage of the day is > going to be seen by anyone other than the police. The police and IPCC claim there is no CCTV footage. This in the country in the world with the greatest number off CCTV cameras, and in the capital of that country, in one of that capital's most monitored districts. How convenient.