Jenjie

because i don't want to get soaked on sat when i'm stood in a garden having pictures taken

Its been sunny since last wed. please keep your fingers crossed that the weather doesn't break until sun?

Piratses!!! :D

I was really enjoying that book but eventually had to give up because my head couldn't cope any more! There are about 4 or 5 characters from the same family with the same names and I couldn't work out who was who

How did i miss this post yesterday? Sounds a good read though

:thinking: get your coat

this is what I was trying to say, but put much more eloquently http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/reviews.html?in_article_id=447149&in_page_id=1924

Blair urged to quit early as Scottish poll disaster looms Tony Blair is under new pressure to announce his departure date after an exclusive Mail on Sunday poll shows Labour heading for unprecedented electoral defeat in Scotland. The survey reveals that the Scottish Nationalists are on course to oust Labour as the largest party in the Holyrood Parliament. Defeat in his Scottish power base would be a disaster for Gordon Brown as he prepares to succeed as Prime Minister. This weekend senior Labour figures are privately urging Mr Blair to bring forward his resignation to before polling day on May 3, when his party also faces a rout in the Welsh Assembly and English council elections. A senior aide said: "If Tony sets out an exit timetable before Scotland goes to the polls, then it will remove one of the main reasons for giving Labour a bloody nose. "Effectively he will be saying that you don't need to give me a good kicking because I am going anyway." But the risk of such a strategy is that if Labour still suffers defeat, it would throw the spotlight on Mr Brown's failings, leaving him to shoulder the blame. Downing Street strategists have pencilled in Tuesday, May 8, as the favoured date for Mr Blair's announcement. It is likely to coincide with an upbeat progress report on the Northern Ireland peace process. But the Friday and Saturday after polling day are also possibilities. The Scottish Opinion survey for The Mail on Sunday shows the SNP is set to become the biggest party in Scotland. But it faces being forced to form a three-party 'rainbow coalition' with the Liberal Democrats and the Greens in order to hold the reins of power at Holyrood. The poll shows that the Nationalists are poised to capture 44 seats in the 129-member Scottish Parliament. Labour would be on 40, the Liberal Democrats on 18, the Scottish Tories on 13 and the Greens would hit double figures for the first time by winning 11 seats. With just four more seats than Labour, the SNP would be forced to bring the Liberal Democrats - who had previously shared power with Labour - and the Greens into the Scottish Executive. The figures come as a bitter blow to Labour, which has been accused of running a 'negative' election campaign attacking solely the SNP. Last night John Curtice, Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University, said: "The good news for the SNP is that it has a very good chance of beating Labour. The bad news is that it might have to make some deals to form a government. It might end up in office but not in power." Prof Curtice said that the SNP faced the choice of cosying up to or attacking its potential coalition partners. "One of SNP leader Alex Salmond's tactical dilemmas in the next 11 days is whether to continue being nice to the Lib-Dems on the grounds that he doesn't want to spoil his chances of doing a deal after the election. Or does he slap them down because otherwise they may pinch too many votes?' he said. "The Greens are the other party the SNP has to watch out for as they, too, could pick up seats the SNP hopes to win." The poll showed that 30 per cent of Scottish voters are still undecided and four per cent say they will definitely not vote. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=449933&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=

It looks like a harmless teenage prank - training shoes dangling from telephone wires in a quiet suburban street. But for residents in this affluent neighbourhood it is a sign of something far more sinister. It tells them violent gangs are operating in their midst. Police say the symbol has started springing up across the country as a warning sign from gangs to rivals to keep off their 'patch'. The shoes are often taken from mugging victims and hurled on to the wires by new members of the gangs as an initiation ritual. This picture was taken last week in Kensal Rise, North West London, close to the homes of celebrities such as Jade Jagger, Zadie Smith, Louis Theroux and Vogue Editor Alexandra Shulman. This method of marking territory was first adopted by gangs in the Los Angeles ghettos but can now be seen across Britain. Two pairs of trainers were found hanging above the spot in Bath where 32-year-old Paul Kelly was knifed to death on New Year's Eve: police think he may have been a victim of gang rivalry over the local drugs trade. Nicko and Bettina Ketelhodt have just moved out of Rigeley Road in Kensal Rise after becoming tired of gang problems. Mr Ketelhodt said the trainers had appeared after an escalation in gang activity in the area, where houses fetch up to £400,000. He said: "There were gangs of teenagers and a lot of things started happening that made us feel unsafe. We saw a man running through our garden - we think he was escaping from the police. "Then we started getting helicopters flying over low about twice a week looking for someone, and we had a break-in while we were asleep. This man broke in through the front window. The police came but he got away. "We asked about the trainers and people said it was an American thing and to do with drugs." A local youth in Kensal Rise, who called himself Gaz and claimed to be a member of a street gang, said the trainers indicated that there were dealers of the drugs crack and skunk in the area, and were put there as a 'respect thing'. He said: "The trainers show this is our patch, to show other crews not to mess with us here. It's a respect thing. Lots of crews do it." One of the gangs he mentioned was the Kensal Green Tribe, which carried out 150 robberies on the London Underground during an eight-month period last year. Two members of the gang, Donnel Carty, 19, and Delano Brown, 18, were jailed for life for the murder of City lawyer Tom ap Rhys Price. The pair attacked him after following him home from the local tube station. Two other members of the gang were jailed for five years for the robberies. Gaz claimed that trainers belonging to mugging victims - often children targeted for their mobile phones - were seized as 'prizes' and thrown on to the wires on the edge of the gang's turf by newcomers to the gang. He explained that this was the way of warning other gangs to stay away, and alerting drug users looking for a fix that dealers were in the area. Internet forum users discussing the issue say some gangs in North London even use specific brands of trainers to identify their patch. Twilight Bey, who was raised in the Los Angeles ghettos and now works as a consultant to the British probation service, said the symbol meant 'different things to different gangs' in the US. "These British groups are probably creating their own definitions. There are rules about these things." A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "Safer Neighbourhoods Teams play an important role in accruing intelligence about possible gang activities, which can then be acted upon by specialist teams depending its nature." http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=449948&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=

i would google it to find out for oyu, but as I'm at work i don't think imploding my computer with that sort of search is such a good plan!! :laugh3:

A £7m sex theme park, which has no rides, is to open in London's West End later this year. Visitors to Amora - The Academy of Sex and Relationships at the Trocadero in Piccadilly, will pass through seven zones including Pleasure and Orgasm. The 10,500sq-ft exhibit is designed to "separate fact from myth and educate everyone into being better lovers". You have to be aged 18 and over to get in and tickets will cost £15 for the attraction which opens on 7 September. Organisers expect to attract more than 600,000 visitors within the first year. The theme park will include life-sized silicone-made models which visitors can touch to discover erogenous zones. People will also be able to build their ideal partner from a series of body parts and there will be instructions on how best to kiss and how to talk more sexily. The seven zones will start with attraction, love and relationships and include a sexual well-being zone which looks at the dangers of unsafe sex. The academy's director of exhibits Dr Sarah Brewer said: "The more sex we have the more we want and the less sex we have the more we want. "This academy does push boundaries back and whatever your prowess when you come in we will give you all the information you need to become a fantastic lover." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5012334.stm?ls

Thousands of motorists who use a bank card to buy petrol are thought to have lost millions of pounds in a scam allegedly linked to Tamil rebels. It is believed cards are being skimmed at petrol stations, whereby the card details and pin numbers are retrieved and money withdrawn from the account. About 200 of the UK's 9,500 petrol stations are thought to have been hit. The Sri Lankan government has claimed its opponents, the Tamil Tigers, are behind the scam. Police are investigating complaints made in Edinburgh, Norwich, Bury St Edmunds, Peterborough, Nottingham, Leeds, Bristol and Hull. In Hull, the economic crime section of Humberside Police are checking thousands of receipts for fuel bought with credit or debit cards at one petrol station. Detective Inspector Paul Welton, of Humberside Police, said "Quite clearly this was well-organised and it was done on an international basis." Those alleged to have been involved were able to obtain card details and pin numbers and put them together to clone the cards, police said. The site in Hull is now under new management, and the new owners are not linked to the police inquiry. Sean Gillespie, one of thousands of possible victims, noticed his bank account was being emptied of small amounts over weeks, amounting to thousands of pounds. "I knew how much had been taken but how it was taken was an absolute mystery to me," he told BBC News. 'Arms funding' Most of the UK's petrol stations are independently run which means they are susceptible to being infiltrated by organised crime. And the Sri Lankan Government believes it is the Tamil Tigers who are using threats to coerce innocent Sri Lankans to take part in the scam. They say Tamil asylum seekers arriving in the UK are loaned money to open a petrol station, and once established they supply information to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Maxwell Keegel, first secretary of the Sri Lankan High Commission in London, said: "They extract the pin and details from the cards and within minutes this information is sent to LTTE agents who operate in remote parts of the world, as far away as Thailand and Indonesia. "And the money goes unwittingly from people's accounts and ends up going into the LTTE's arms activities." The petrol industry accepts it is a problem. Some retailers have already replaced all their chip and pin machines, while some consumers are only using cash to buy petrol. Nick Vandervell, of the UK Petroleum Industry Association, said "We are working with the independent retailers but it is difficult to tell them what to do." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6578595.stm

you want that responsibility? bagsy not being the admin who has to talk to dubyah!

just finished kathy reichs last pb, whose name escapes me right now. was very good, not read any Tempe Brennan for a while and it reminded me how much I'd missed her and how much more i prefer her to Scarpetta. Have started Miss Wyoming by Douglas Coupland during my lunch today. seems pretty cool so far

Sunshine 5/10. it was ticking along nicely but then went plain wierd!!! once it started getting all jumping out from corners & randomness i didn't enjoy it anywhere near as much. some pretty cool effects though, loved the sun room stuff.

A Piece of my Heart by Peter Robinson, which was absolutely fab once you got your head round the plot jumping.

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh!! she's nice, she's not nice, nope we misunderstood her, nope she's nice, nope she definitely isn't nice!! i can understand the motiviation behind her actions but i wish we knew one way or the other whose side she's on.

5-0!!!!!

calm down!!! you've another 75 mins to go yet!!!!!!

Not a chance of any bookshop running out, they have enough problems price-matching the supermarkets without not having enough copies themselves. They'll look at the last books sales and work out how many they need for the first 5 days. And even then, the chains have a habit of over-estimating so that they're sending a pile back a few months later!!

I've read quite a few. Think Brian Jacques is ace! Nice user name!

How could you? :P :P :laugh3:

man u???????? OMG, how can you suggest such heresy!! :stunned: :shocked2: :laugh3: If I'm Manchester based at all, I'm on the blue side of town :D as for Chelsea, I wouldn't say I was a Chelsea fan, more an admirer of the lovely Mr Lampard!! :D

definitely Frank Lampard :D am liking the other Chelsea videos too

A man who paid local children to set fire to his car in an insurance scam was caught when one of them burned his eyebrows off. Robert Cummings's car exploded after it was doused in petrol, injuring one of the boys. Cummings, from Perth, was found guilty of trying to obtain money fraudulently from his insurers. He was also found guilty of offering the boys money, giving them petrol and endangering one of them. Unemployed Cummings, of Dunkeld Road, ended up losing his car and was ordered to carry out 200 hours of community service as a result of his plan, described by police as "inept". The court heard how he spent several days trying to persuade the boys and their friend, who cannot be named for legal reasons, to help him set fire to his people carrier. Initially they refused but took up his offer when he handed them £180 and a box of matches. On 2 May last year, they smashed the window of his Hyundai Trajet and threw in several matches which failed to light the interior. Cummings then called Tayside Police to report that his car had been damaged before telling the boys to finish the job the next day. They returned to the car, parked outside Cummings's home and poured petrol over it. As two of the boys stood back, a third stood by the car and lit a match - blowing the car up and burning his eyebrows in the process. When Cummings phoned police to tell them his car had been subjected to an attack, officers were suspicious and further investigations led them to the injured boy. 'Significant loss' Pc Stuart McDonald told the court that all three boys were questioned by detectives and freely admitted the plan was Cummings' idea. Meanwhile, Cummings was filling out a claim to obtain the £7,450 value of the car from his insurer. He denied the scam but was found guilty after a trial. His solicitor, David Holmes, said: "He lost the value of his car. That was by his own actions. That is a significant loss for a person on state benefits. "A police source was quoted as stating it was hard to imagine a more inept attempt at fraud." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/6475499.stm