Rob

It doesn't show that Osborne benefited from the sale. What it did say was that the family business which owned the old factory was loss making prior to the sale, in which case it would be possible to sell the assets and offset the gains against the ongoing losses in order to mitigate tax. From the company's point of view it would be the ideal time to make the sale. What struck me more was the 'tax advisor' who tried to make the sale to an offshore company a major concern, whilst at the same time the clip was saying there was no evidence that George Osborne had benefited. If the gripe is trading with foreign countries, then we are all guilty. I've been a net exporter for the past 27 years and have happily sold to anyone who was willing to pay the going rate for the item/work. Least of my concerns was whether those of a certain persuasion would consider the deal to be politically incorrect. That's business which produces taxable profits that ultimately pay the benefits people are complaining about. If I am making a loss for the year, then a profit to roughly balance the books is a good thing.

I like my job as well and I earn enough money in order to finance a worthily life Ah, a self confessed member of the elusive rich club who need to pay higher taxes to fund the have nots

Mine's a Mitutoyo too. Best tool for the job. Had it roughly 30 years with no sign of a problem.

That can be answered in a simple way... A human being with a full time job has to be in the position to afford a worthily life. A government has the task to introduce suitable conditions. That is not the case. My government for example does force people into dishonourable working conditions instead. That has to be changed, we have to take action and elect appropiate parties. We already have a Santa Claus party in every country. Meanwhile we have to rely on those living in the real world..................

It's a bit of a dark art reading the manual ones! I 'got' my lesson at the boatyard, much to the amusement of everyone present! Not for those of us brought up to use a slide rule

I'm not so sure the quality argument holds up. I far prefer quality over price. I hate shopping which means one purchase every 10 years is more than twice as good as 2 purchases at 5 year intervals. The reality is I want something to last as long as possible. What I have noticed though in the past is that product lifespan is purchaser dependent. Our frugal lifestyle dictates that garden furniture be treated to provide as long service as possible. Somebody we know who couldn't care less bought the same item at the same time. Ours lasted 14 years, theirs was thrown out the following one and replaced. They are also allegedly poor. Some higher education is worthwhile, indeed it is necessary, but other areas could be covered by vocational training. I think many people are a tad deluded about wages in the west. The developed economies got to where they are by raping the third world of its natural resources at a discounted rate. The colonial powers did not invest heavily in the commodity producing areas. Today we live in a global economy and the same third world is playing catchup. Our salaries have to converge with the newly developing countries as a consequence of their increased industrial base (and our declining one). There is no sensible case that can be made for our producing less whilst at the same time demanding more. The west has had its time and now we are in a period of adjustment. Germany is in a relatively good position because of its resilient industrial base - many countries are not. To then suggest that we can all award ourselves a big pat on the back and a payrise is exactly what people are complaining the politicians and bankers are doing. If they are wrong to take excessive amounts for doing nothing, I fail to see how it can then be necessary, or desirable, for the whole of the European Union to award itself the same unearned 'freebies', unless you are trying to make two wrongs equal to a right. I'm not sure what you mean by saying the European people can re-take their continental union. If wages rise, then the price of goods will follow and so the purchasing power of an average wages will essentially stay the same. It won't follow exactly, but should track it fairly well. All of the world's businesses are trying to get the highest possible price for their products. Consumers will always oblige by putting silly amounts of money into the next must have gadget.

Buy a good old fashioned manual micrometer. Digital ones rely on a variable resistance which is highly susceptible to erroneous readings due to crud. The smallest amount of lubricant to make the slide work smoothly will also cause airborne matter to stick. This will eventually screw up the readings by giving either a higher resistance if the crap is an insulator, or lower if conducting. A manual reading only requires the temperature to be roughly constant from one reading to the next.

The price of goods is becoming progressively cheaper because they are being produced in low cost countries. If you don't want them made abroad you have to pay a higher price for a locally produced item. This is both the benefit and down side of globalisation. To manufacture goods locally at the same price level you have to automate production, but don't expect a jobs bonanza on the back of it. Businesses need people as consumers, but for very little else. As idle hands tend to make mischief, the best use for the economically inactive is to take up the slack where social provision is missing. Not full time necessarily, but something requiring a little self discipline.

It depends on what the recovery rate is as 26 billion barrels is not necessarily recoverable oil which is a major consideration given Greece sits on a fault line with regular earthquakes. Like any solution it can only be temporary even if fully exploited. It also requires bought in expertise to exploit which means capital loss to foreign oil companies and ancilliary service companies. No business will supply services without suitable recompense. With it also being a recent discovery, it doesn't get away from the point that Greece was happily spending money it didn't have prior to this. That is a cultural problem (not restricted to Greece) which it is reasonable to assume has not gone away. Just a thought, but if Greece wants to develop the fields, why doesn't it offer a tax amnesty to all those Greeks who have supposedly not paid their fair share in return for freeing up funds, developing the fields and keeping the oil in Greek hands?

Which is why you should be debt free and hold diverse investments which are physical assets that have a value - land, property, gold, and to a much lesser extent paper of which currencies are part. In that way you are not beholden to your creditors, plus you have something to fall back on when the financial systems go into free-fall. Why does the average person rely on deposit guarantees and not actively manage their relatively meagre savings? If there was ever a case for looking after number one this is it. The topic is drifting a bit, so to return to the original point, how exactly is the problem to be resolved? Greece still wants someone to give them a funded lifestyle that they can't afford. Even if all their debt was written off, the country is still structurally defective. In common with most of the world, it can't generate sufficient income to provide all the benefits the people demand or the standard of living enjoyed by the wealthiest nations and more importantly, no system left or right, dictatorship or commune can do away with the haves and the have nots. In the absence of an alternative to the staus quo, you have to live within your means for a sustainable lifestyle. Only the very largest countries in physical terms could ever hope to be self sustaining (e.g. USA, China, Russia, Canada) as only they have sufficiently diverse resources to do without imports should the need arise.

I have no problem in putting forward a right of centre opinion as like many people, I am a mixture of both political sides. Neither side has a monopoly on common sense. However, far too many people want to live in a nanny state where everything is provided and personal accountability isn't required. Apparently all the problems in the world are someone else's fault - make the 'rich' pay - whatever that means. This dependency culture doesn't solve problems, but does create its own. Benefit provision by and large doesn't generate wealth, so as a cost is merely digging a deeper hole. I think you have grasped the wrong end of the stick. I'm not saying that borrowing should occur to provide benefits, rather that people should organise more at a local level to provide things without recourse to beaurocracy which is inevitably clunky, inefficient, politically motivated and always over budget by the time palms have been greased. I quite agree. Banks (amongst others) are parasitic which is why I don't think they should have been bailed out. Irresponsible banks should fail, and more importantly be seen to fail, but it is equally important that people realise their money isn't safe in a bank and by not looking after their own assets are also at risk of loss. It is incumbent on everyone to take steps to look after their own property. Things you have to buy are less likely to be thrown away. Self funding produces better husbanding of resources. It is actually the only way forward because borrowing without any intention of repaying a loan or the nebulous concept of simply making the rich pay is a false call. You could denude the top 100 richest people in this country of their entire wealth and give it to everyone else, but the handout per person would only amount to a few £Ks each.

Any defect will reduce value, but as to how much is anyone's guess. Twenty years down the line, the market will be hot in different areas to those that are popular today. Equally, different faults might be more or less acceptable. The commoner the coin, the more impact is my gut feeling because you can invariably pick up a fault free example with a little patience. It's the patience thing where most collectors fail.

What you say is exactly what the problem is. Politicians of all countries do things in the name of their citizens and said people have to live with the consequences ad infinitum. That is what makes history. It doesn't matter whether you opposed the Iraq war or not - it has already happened and the money spent. It doesn't matter any more that Gordon Brown sold all the nation's gold reserves off at rock bottom prices - the transaction has completed. If you want to rebuild them, you will have to do it at market rates. The same can be said for the actions of any other politician; Thatcher, De Gaulle, Hitler, Washington, Mugabe, Merkel etc. All would have attracted varying degrees of support and dissent at the time, but their decisions have lasting ramifications for citizens both immediately after, and for some, long into the future. So we return to the point in question. Government borrowing affects people today and tomorrow. If you don't want to be controlled by the banks, don't borrow. The actions of politicians are mostly restricted to spouting populist policies, or backing pet projects. If people of any country want things done for their benefit, then both good and bad are done in their name with collective responsibility for the outcome. Benefit provision costs money, which is usually borrowed. More happens at a local level when you have a sense of community - something that has been lost to a great extent in much of the developed world primarily on the back of greed and avarice. Materialism has a lot to answer for, as without it, far less capital would be borrowed. Politicians of most democracies are voted into power by either the largest minority or occasionally an outright majority, but the entire population has to live with the consequences. It doesn't really matter whether the point in question is a financial one or a political one, it will be opposed by something approaching a majority because of political division.

It's a common theme these days for everyone to blame someone else, because saying mea culpa isn't a vote winner. If politicians ran their countries as well as they managed their own finances, I believe the debt levels would be much lower and by extension manageable. Countries borrow money for the most part because they are incapable of generating sufficient capital internally to fulfil the pledges made to buy votes. If the various countries of the Eurozone want to maintain their diverse lifestyles, for the less efficient it has to come at a price in the form of wages and therefore purchasing power. A common currency dictates that wages must be lower in line with relative inefficiency and a comparison of services available should reflect the degree to which they can be afforded. The national balance of payments will ultimately determine what luxuries you may or may not be able to enjoy, because a permanent negative balance as seen in this and many other countries is money that has gone forever unless you take steps to build up resereves (i.e reform your economy) The question of bank debt is a practical example of inappropriate political expediency. Banks were bailed out that should have been allowed to fail with the associated problems for depositors. Individuals need an occasional kick in the nether region to realise that their money is their responsibility and should not be treated as a cossetted asset safeguarded by the state. The willingness to diversify risk would soon take root were this the case. If the problem is genuinely the banks, then politicians need to man up and refuse the loans/money 'forced' upon them. They are voted into power to run the country's finances in a responsible way, but I think it goes without saying that significant and damaging decisions are made by politicians who are not the best tool for the job as this country's PFI projects, or the local government loans discussed on tonight's Channel 4 program amply demonstrate.

I think all the noise being made on this topic misses the point. Leaving aside the question of whether the Greeks cooked the books to ensure they were admitted, once they were in they were on the same treadmill as all the other constituent nations. The root cause is trying to fit the variously efficient economies of Europe into a one size fits all exchange rate. The Euro is overvalued for the Greek economy and undervalued for the German one. Without full political union to accompany the monetary one, there is only the slightest chance that it can end other than in tears. If Greece, or any other country wants to be part of the Euro on a sustainable basis then they must either forego their sovereign independence and become part of a political settlement that determines everything is controlled from the centre so that you have common taxation and other regulations across the community, or they must ensure that their economy adjusts to the average for the EU. If they don't want to become like the average Eurozone economy then they have to consider leaving the Euro to enable them to set their own interest rates with their own currency. It's their choice, but there is no reason why the other Eurozone countries should be accommodating a country that wants the free lunch of no reform and unlimited funding. Given the likelihood that the Greek debt will never be repaid and there is no appetite for reform, it would be an abrogation of responsibility for people to lend further amounts to a government that is taking you for a ride with no intention of future loans being repaid either. When in a hole, it is best to stop digging. Creditor nations also have responsibilities to their own taxpayers which is something that spendthrifts are anxious to forget. Living beyond your means is a problem that's closer to home than Greece, but at the moment we are able to keep the balls in the air because we have control of our own currency. However, people are advised not to be too complacent.

He's changed his phone number Now it is +918469466030

Same as ships I guess. Why are they always female, because the vast majority of crews are going to be men? There might be some basis for gender allocation to otherwise asexual objects derived from languages such as German or French for example. e.g a good rule of thumb is that most things that do work in German are the feminine die (as are plurals). The exception to this rule is of course der mund (mouth), which invariably works overtime in the female version, but less so with the male form.

Doing well I see. HB.

Why? That's what we are here for.

Ok, I'm happy to stand corrected, so do we have a die link for it?

There are a lot of modern copies, for example, the William I PAXS penny posted a few minutes before your thread. If it looks odd, it probably is. Whilst somebody could possibly unearth a rarity, eastern europe (or ebay) and a potentially valuable type are usually accompanied by a large red flag. A lot of Roman copies emanate from eastern europe, so a Viking copy doesn't require a great leap of faith.

To expand, it appears that the coin attempts to imitate an Ethelred II long cross penny, but the legends are completely wrong. An example of a long cross penny is below. Maybe there is a Viking imitation of this issue, but those are also round. Weight?

Best bet is ebay which has 2500 listings in the bulk lots section. I've about 40kg here which I am gradually sorting through, but unsorted means a lot of different things to people. If you want unsorted in the hope of finding something valuable then it will be difficult to find this as most accumulations will have had at least a cursory look, but unsorted in terms of things that people aren't interested in might offer more potential. What countries are you looking for?

How much do you want?

Casts are invariably thicker because the metal has to be poured into a mould whereas a coin struck from sheet silver is actually quite thin, because the integrity of the metal means it follows the relief of the dies. You often see a line which shows the join around the edge because often casts are made in two parts.