Jenjie

His leader may be beleaguered and his party staggering through a third term in government with a stricken economy, but one backbench MP still felt able to tell a voter where he could “stick” his vote. Labour’s fight to regain the support of the electorate took a less conventional turn this week as David Clelland began an epistolary battle with one dissatisfied voter. Mr Clelland, who has represented the people of Tyne Bridge in Newcastle for 23 years, has written to one resident informing him that he had no desire for his vote in the future. “I accept your offer not to vote for me again,” he wrote, in bold defiance of the usual conventions that exist in communications between elected representatives and their electorate. “I do not want your vote so you can stick it wherever best pleases you.” Mr Clelland, 64, offered this advice in response to a letter from Gary Scott, 27, an IT salesman with concerns over civil liberties. Mr Scott had written to his MP once before, while living in a different part of the city, a constituency represented by a Liberal Democrat MP. “He was kind enough to write a considerate reply and I hope you will do the same,” Mr Scott wrote. He then detailed his concerns. The Government was authoritarian and out of touch. He could no longer ignore what he regarded as a “blatant power grab”. Mr Clelland is regarded as a man of the Centre Left who votes broadly with the Labour mainstream: indeed, he was once a parliamentary whip. He voted in favour of identity cards and 42-day detention for terror suspects. He also voted for the hunting ban. He did stand up for civil liberties when it came to the smoking ban, perhaps because he is a pipe smoker. Mr Scott was very disappointed with what he saw. “You vote with your party on pretty much every single issue,” he wrote. “It’s not your constituents you represent, it’s your party.” He was sceptical of the usefulness of recent legislation, in particular the criminalisation of violent internet pornography, that was passed as part of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. “Not saying any of this is my bag,” he wrote. “I just do not understand why anybody should have the right to prohibit consensual sexual behaviour at all.” In short, he held the Government and Mr Clelland himself “responsible for destroying civil liberties that have been hard won from tyrannical monarchs over centuries”. Concluding what he described as “a bit of ranting and raving from one of your constituents”, he said that if Mr Clelland continued “toeing the party line”, he could “kiss my vote goodbye”. The warning did not have the desired effect. Mr Clelland replied accusing Mr Scott of arrogance for thinking that “you . . . represent the views of the people of our community”. This, Mr Clelland wrote, was his job. After firing off his frank missive, Mr Clelland said that he had found his constituent’s letter offensive. Mr Scott, in turn, said that he was offended that his MP considered his letter offensive. The battle of letters has now been followed by a war of words. “This just shows the arrogance of the man,” Mr Scott said. “He does not listen to the people he represents.” Yesterday Mr Clelland told The Times that his constituent’s letter was “extremely abusive”. “I’m not here to be dictated to like that,” he said. He allowed, however, that Mr Scott’s letter might have caught him “at a bad time”. Mr Clelland is the not the first Honourable Member to have allowed his true feelings to be heard. On announcing his intention to step down from Parliament, Tony Banks said that working with his constituents had been “intellectually numbing” and “tedious in the extreme”. On another occasion an aide to Dari Taylor, MP, advised his boss that there was “no rush” to help a constituent who was a “snotty” woman who “hates the Government”. The advice was accidentally e-mailed directly to the constituent. Michael Stern, MP for Bristol North West until 1997, named one of his constituents as a “neighbour from hell”. After electoral defeat in 1996, Gordon Bilney wrote to a committee saying: “One of the great pleasures of private life is that I need no longer be polite to the nincompoops, bigots, curmudgeons and twerps who infest local government bodies and committees such as yours.” http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4251867.ece

Coffee chain Starbucks plans to shut 500 stores in the US on top of the 100 closures it had already announced. Up to 12,000 full and part-time jobs will go, although Starbucks will try to move staff into other stores. While it is closing underperforming stores, the company is still opening new US outlets, although it is cutting back from 250 to 200 next year. Starbucks opened many stores in areas which have since been hard-hit by the housing slump such as Florida. Feeling the pinch About 70% of the outlets scheduled to be closed have only been open since 2006. The company has been hard-hit by US consumers feeling the pinch and cutting back on their spending on expensive coffee. The job losses would be about 7% of the company's global workforce. Starbucks said it was closing stores that were either not profitable or likely to struggle in the future as economic conditions deteriorate. "This makes our decision to close stores difficult because it is disrupting the lives of the people who have worked so hard to deliver superior service to our customers," said chief executive Howard Schultz. "At the same time, we recognise that it is necessary to make decisions that will strengthen the US store portfolio." After the announcement was made, Starbucks shares rose 6% in electronic post-market trading on Nasdaq. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7484563.stm

Glastonbury chart boost for Jay-Z Jay-Z's headline performance at the Glastonbury festival on Saturday has helped boost the rapper's record sales. The rapper's 2004 single 99 Problems is set to go straight into the Top 25 of the UK singles chart this weekend. His Linkin Park duet Numb/Encore, which he closed his Glastonbury set with, is also likely to return to the Top 40. The star has helped Oasis's Wonderwall return to the charts after he mockingly opened his set with the 1995 single, midweek figures also suggest. Huge exposure Jay-Z chose to cover an Oasis track after Noel Gallagher told the BBC that he was "wrong" for the three-day Somerset festival. The original version has experienced a huge sales boost, with the single challenging for a place in the Top 100. What's The Story (Morning Glory), the album it originally appeared on, has seen sales increase of over 200%, while their compilation Stop the Clocks has had a week on week increase of over 140%. A number of other acts which appeared at the weekend festival have benefitted from the huge exposure the event provides. Elbow's Saturday afternoon set on The Other Stage was one of the best received of the weekend. Their current album The Seldom Seen Kid is expected to climb over 40 places back into the Top 20 on Sunday. Sing-a-long moments Friday night's headliners Kings of Leon will see their latest album Because of The Times rise over 40 places, while both their previous albums will return to the Top 75. Other bands to have experienced huge sales increases of their latest albums are The Feeling (78%), The Raconteurs (140%) and Editors (342%). There is also a surge of interest in the songs which provided two of Glastonbury's biggest sing-a-long moments. The Verve's Bitter Sweet Symphony and Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline are both set to re-enter the Top 75. But Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday concert, which took place on Friday, has failed to have the same effect. There is likely to be no return to the charts for Simple Minds, Annie Lennox or Special AKA's Free Nelson Mandela. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7484732.stm

How can you not like dark chocolate? you're all mad!!! Bournville outranks normal Cadbury any day

The Verve go 'Forth' with new album Posted Jun 30th 2008 6:18PM by Richard Driver Filed under: Press releases, Products and services, Marketing and advertising, News Corp'B' (NWS) English rock band The Verve, famous for the hit single "Bitter Sweet Symphony" and the ensuing struggle over the rights to the song (eventually awarded to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards because the song sampled a short snippet of a Rolling Stone song), are set to return in August with a new album -- the band's first since 1997's Urban Hymns that featured that bitter sweet single. Billboard reported last week that the new album, titled Forth (Billboard cites it incorrectly as Four) will be released on August 18 in the United Kingdom and a day later in the United States. While the band had not worked together in nine years before reuniting last year to commence work on new music and play a number of festivals, lead singer Richard Ashcroft had enjoyed a semi-successful solo career built on the success that the band had enjoyed in the nineties. He joined Coldplay onstage at Live 8 in 2005 to perform "Bitter Sweet Symphony" to an elated Chris Martin (lead singer of Coldplay) and cheering crowds. The first single from Forth, "Love is Noise", was premiered on British radio June 23 and will be released a couple of weeks before the album. It is currently streaming from the band's News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) MySpace page. In the United Kingdom, The Verve are signed to EMI Group and will release Forth via Parlophone, but in the United States, a unique release scheme will be utilized, somewhat similar to Radiohead's deal in the U.S. for In Rainbows earlier this year. The band has set up a label, On Our Own, and will release the album through a distribution deal with RED Distribution and Megaforce Records. Previously, the band's albums had been released through EMI's Virgin Records imprint in the United States. http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/06/30/the-verve-go-forth-with-new-album/

the post gig reviews start at approx p58

went on his hols.

it does when you've got a carefully placed VIP pass lol

so men don't think about sex very often then? nah! don't believe it!!

you might get away with that one :P :D

Chris Bra-tin THAT bra doesn’t look like it belongs to GWYNETH PALTROW? But CHRIS MARTIN took a good, long look – and maybe a cheeky sniff – after a fan tossed it at him from a crowd, just to make sure. COLDPLAY were mid-song on NBC’s The Today Show in New York yesterday when Chris found the over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder clamped to his face. And with his biblical lyrics, I bet he thought the brassiere had rained down from heaven. God Putting A Smile on his face and all that jazz. But I don’t think I would have marvelled at it for long by the look of it. I bet the girl who lobbed it didn’t have matching undercrackers on. And it seems to have done something odd to Chris too... http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/article1352558.ece

Good things come in small packages "Invention,” as Willie Wonka told visitors to his chocolate factory, “is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation and 2% butterscotch ripple.” Even though the butterscotch ripple is replaced by marshmallow, the equation still holds fairly firm — given the figures still add up to 105% — for the Tunnock’s factory in south Lanarkshire, manufacturers since 1890 of moreish tea accompanying baked goods in antiquated wrappers. Invention, though, isn’t the correct word for what Tunnock’s do. The bulk of the company’s invention — the Snowball, the Tunnock’s Teacake, the Caramel Log and the Caramel Wafer — was done in the early 1950s; crazy, radical stuff. It was an era when trad jazz and the coronation had put everybody in a bring-it-on kind of mood. Tunnock’s products never change in appearance, content or spirit. They are always crispy, chewy and wrapped in cartoonish art noveau with a rosy-cheeked chap on the front. The Caramel Log and the Teacake are fixed points in a changing world, among the few non-negotiables in the packed lunch of existence. “We always look to Kit Kat as the number one market-leading competitor,” says Fergus Loudon, sales manager of Tunnock’s, “but it recently appointed a new chairman who had a background in ice cream. He introduced all these new flavourings — raspberry ripple Kit Kats and giant Kit Kats and so on — and he lost the brand considerable sales. Our secret is, never dilute the line.” This type of unchanging, reliable role breeds a certain type of affection among consumers and such was evinced last week with the disclosure of a curious fact about the Tunnock’s operation. The company runs public tours of its production plant in Uddingston. You would imagine these tours to be the kind of grim chore undertaken by groups from sheltered housing complexes when the weather’s bad. In reality, the tours are wildly popular and oversubscribed. Should you wish to inspect the Tunnock’s operation, apply now and they might be able to fit you in next summer. The band Coldplay will get special treatment, however. After the singer, Chris Martin, recently expressed his enthusiasm for its products (“You can’t choose between the Caramel Wafer and the Teacake,” he said, “They’re like Lennon and McCartney, you can’t separate them”), Tunnock’s dispatched a hamper to the band’s studio in Abbey Road with an invitation to visit when they play Glasgow later in the year. When they get there, they will get to peer inside one of the oddest, most charming operations currently extant, the last great survivor of the Victorian business world. The publishing firm DC Thomson is something similar, but it lacks a toweringly central, Wonka-like king figure, such as Boyd Tunnock, the septuagenarian grandson of the company’s founder and its current managing director, the type of kindly paternal overlord who in the olden days would build his workforce villages and holiday resorts. Tunnock’s still has a tenement on Uddingston high street, with 18 flats rented to employees. Tunnock’s three daughters, Karen, Leslie and Fiona, are all shareholders in the business; his son-in-law Fergus is his sales manager. There are six grandchildren. It’s safe to say that the company’s reputation for conscientious, modest perfectionism from another era will not be relinquished easily. To show he leads by example, Tunnock shows me the card on which he has noted the hours he’s worked this week: a 4am start on Monday, 6am the next day. “Baker’s hours,” he says. He carries cash to hand out £50 notes when an employee makes a useful suggestion; he’s down £100 today for two ideas involving bin bags. When an engineer passes on his way to repair some clanking piece of machinery, Tunnock tells him to stand down and scampers off to do the job himself. His silver 1951 Lagonda sits outside the front door, part of a fleet that includes a 1999 Rolls-Royce and a 1938 Tunnock’s van. A former rally driver, yachtsman and Church of Scotland elder, Tunnock refuses to take life at the pace you’d expect of a man with a reported fortune of £30m. “We never discuss money,” says Tunnock. “Money has nothing to do with what we do here. It’s a good company, it turns a profit and as long as that stays the same we’ll continue doing what we do.” Tunnock even ambles along to the tours occasionally, to sketch the basics of the company’s foundation, as a baker’s shop run by his grandfather Thomas in 1890, quickly famed for its teacakes, before his son Archie expanded operations in 1952 with the launch of a chocolate-covered wafer and caramel sandwich. Today Tunnock’s and Uddingston are synonymous. The factory covers 300,000sq ft and employs 550 staff, all of whom seem hopelessly devoted to Boyd and the Tunnock’s ethos. Almost 20 current employees have been at the firm for a quarter of a century. Before we set off on the tour, Loudon insists we scrub up — receptacles of antibacterial unguents are on the walls — and put on white coats and hairnets. Jewellery and chewing gum are banned, lest they fall into the Snowball mix and turn them into warped takes on the Kinder egg. There are four production floors here: the wafer ovens on the top, Caramel Log department below, Teacakes below that and Snowballs on the ground. This necessitates a curious relationship between gravity and the typical Tunnock’s product. The snow in the Snowballs is made in bulbous copper tanks on the second floor then pumped down tubes to the ground floor, where the mix is swathed in chocolate. This adds a certain Wonka-esque frisson to the humble Snowball. However, the point of a tour of a confectionary factory is to see the tricks of the trade. When the filling of a Teacake is deposited on its biscuit base it retains a pointy, quiff-like peak, which must be removed as it would prevent the chocolate setting properly. This was less of a problem in the handmade days, more so when you’re pumping out 29,000 an hour. Tunnock was foxed until an Irish baker told him to run the marshmallow under a roller covered in crepe bandage, a Heath Robinson-like method that’s still employed today. Curiouser still is the quality control department, a little office just off the Caramel Wafer cooling line. Here, as well as confirming the arrival of deliveries and that paperwork is in order, the product is sampled regularly to ensure it contains no flaws undetected by the naked eye. This office is staffed by three women, suprisingly svelte young women, apparently unaffected by their ceaseless consumption of Teacakes and chocolate. The truly interesting things about a visit to the Tunnock’s factory, however, are the glimpses it affords of a hallowed institution moonlighting. They make a lot of confectionery they don’t tell us about. It’s a little like discovering your mother has a secret career as an airline pilot. We’re all accustomed to the basic Tunnock’s range. In here, though, they’ve got items made for the export market mainly: mallow cakes, Caramel Shortcake for the wholesale trade, own-brand teacakes for “a supermarket in the north of England” and birthday cakes made to customer commissions. For some reason the discovery of these secret sweetmeats left me feeling slightly hurt. You can’t hold it against them, though. Times are getting hard. The company gas bill has shot up by 75% in a year; the rising price of wheat will always have an effect on bakers. Last year Tunnock’s posted the first profit warning in its 117-year history. The market impinges on even the tea shop of our dreams. A quick inspection, though, of the cheerful, comradely employees and the manically passionate Boyd persuades you Tunnock’s can outlive any big crunch. As, indeed, might Boyd Tunnock himself. Leaving the factory, we find him cleaning up the car park. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article4231830.ece

welcome back, Ben :)

and lawyers love thread titles like that because it makes them money. hence the reason all the news articles about that band alleged plagiarism, and mentioned that Coldplay had been accused of copying.

The Happening 3/10. it had such promise, the stry sounded ok, the trailers were quite good, but unfortunately the film was dire. Mark Wahlberg was awful, the wind in the trees was just funny.

I gave up once half my team was knocked out lol. Backing the wring horse is so not the way to go!! Darn Portugese, can't trust them to do anything right!!! Gratz to the Spanish though lol

i'm guessing the timescale is too small for them to have copied Kanye and incorporated it into the tour. so using the same set designer could potentially be the key. i'm thinking that the production time on the balls would be a lot longer than a month or two I also think you might want to have a think about your thread title, sensational it may be but i'd also consider the libelous side of it...

Pop into the Hartford thread and say hi. If there's one thing I've discovered about the guys on this board, they're all mad but they do enjoy a meet-up :D

Good question, I was wondering that myself only the other day coz I couldn't find a size chart on there

:stunned: :confused: :laugh3: tell that to the barman at the free bar last night :P

why do you think I logged out after borrowing your laptop :P :laugh3: :kiss:

Thanks for all the reviews, photos and vids. Did we ever tell you you're amazing? :D Thanks to Winigwl for adding the setlist in to Wiki for me. Thanks to Camu for putting up with the frequent text messages on fri morning! Hey, I was in a car on the motorway, with no other way of finding out how you all were getting on. Standing in a grey London street with rain in the air outside some random alleyway just didn't compare with the descriptions of hot New York!! I am very jealous of you all, but have faith the Coldplay karma will work for us too, one day!! Ive done another Wiki update, and you're so prolific, I've had to give the Today show too pages because Wiki stropped at me!! Setlist & Media Reviews Fan Reviews.

anyone who shares is always welcome :D

I love that even with chris messing around, Will knew the exact moment to kick the drums back in

doesn't know 500 words!! :rolleyes: and this is just the lead-up, no actual today show lol :P :kiss: