Bob Arctor

Stuck in another 65daysofstatic binge at the moment. They are so good it is hard to imagine listening to anything else, although I will at some point of course. Giving The Fall of Math a particular caning; 14 years on and it still sounds incredible.

Greek tomatoes, fresh feta, fresh Greek cucumber, herbs. On a sun drenched balcony. Mmmmmmmmmmmm

I know more than you do - got good contacts. Liverpool were able to negotiate the exit because of the improvement notices. They could have renegotiated the contract and entered a new one but chose not to. ---------- Post added 09-06-2018 at 13:29 ---------- They've told me they complained using the Streets Ahead complaints procedure but copied in a sympathetic councillor to ensure it was dealt with properly.

The contract with Amey and Liverpool council was ended after 3 Improvement notices for relatively minor breaches of contract were served. It's how Liverpool got out of it. Did you know that?

I'll check with the original complainant and let you know.

Hi Paula, that sounds a similar chain of events to the fly tipping complaint, although in this case the work has been done so they may not be in breach of contract (although may be in breach of timescales). Worth complaining though. Having worked on a local government contract, I know that SCC do not like the idea of contractors falsifying performance data one bit.

There is a way out of the Amey contract. In fact, we are one third of the way there already. Last year, someone made a report of fly tipping. Amey took about half the items and left the rest, they then emailed the reporter to say the job was complete. The person didn't let it drop and asked them to come back and get the rest, which they failed to do. The person persisted, raising the issue with SCC and their local councillor. As a result, Amey were given an Improvement Notice (a way of recording a default on the contract). Three of these and SCC can tear up the contract - this is written into the contract. I have this from impeccable sources. So, if you want an end to the contract in its current form, report as many fly tipping incidents and faulty pedestrian crossings as you can, keep a note of the job number, and if they fail to do the job complain like hell to SCC and a sympathetic councillor. I've got a pedestrian crossing fault to report to them, they are hopeless at responding to those.

Thanks. It seems overall to be negative rather than useful, probably leading to food waste.

It seems just about all fruit and veg is described as Class 1 regardless of what it actually tastes like. Is it a totally pointless classification?

If a fake is so indistinguishable from the original I would question whether it matters who made it.

This is how bad the Morrissey situation has become.

Sadly he has become a total jerk and has disappeared up his own arse. Johnny Marr must be particularly upset.

Depends on the mode of transport. I'm home in 10 minutes to Burngreave Edit: by bike

Woodseats and Heeley would presumably also qualify.

No, according to Car Boot. He's attempted to argue that people manage to get it together for a referendum but return to ignorance when a pollster approaches them, but hasn't offered any evidence for this. Although I do think if you are going to do anything in life you should try to inform yourself of the likely consequences before acting.

But apparently they didn't have any in-depth knowledge of the political and economic issues involved. So they just kind of guessed which way to vote? According to Car Boot anyway.

I can't see what him being Somalian has to do with whether he has anything to offer, except to a racist. And yes, let's remember that such luminaries as Jackie Drayton have previously held this office - the prestige! The understated gravitas of the role!

Erm, doesn't that rather invalidate the referendum?

I thought it worked well. It was creepy and put me on edge, and I thought it did a good job of giving a sense of isolation. I also liked the sense of ancient evil pre-dating the European settlers (I am a fan of H.P. Lovecraft so that appealed to me). I didn't like the ending much, mind.

Ok, so I think this post is going to contain some suprising statements. One of the people who uses social media in the most positive ways, i.e. in order to learn about things he doesn't know much about, rather than just sit in an echo chamber exchanging mindless nonsense with likeminded people, is ex-Everton and Wales goalkeeper Neville Southall. There's two for starters. He says "I like Twitter because it brings me into contact with people I'd never meet" unlike 98% of people who use Twitter. It turns out that Big Nev (slightly bigger than before, it must be said) regularly hands his Twitter feed over to give a platform to people who have little power and not much of a voice, including people with mental health problems, sex workers and LGBT people. There's another. Nev now works in a pupil referral unit that offers education to kids excluded from mainstream school. And another. He despises Piers Morgan (ok, that one's fairly standard) and hopes that a footballer feels able to come out as gay soon. He is a legend, and here is his Twitter feed https://twitter.com/NevilleSouthall?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor and a great interview https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/jun/04/neville-southall-flak-sex-workers-lgbt-issues

Whooooosh!!

How many posts on this topic are you going to "treat" us to, exactly?

I didn't know you were so knowledgeable about classical civilisations Seriously though, we know it hasn't changed in centuries, but did it used to be different? You can't just say it's always been the same without evidence.

How would we know what has happened pre-history? To look at whether racism has always been present we'd probably need to know how minority groups were treated in ancient Rome, Egypt and Greece. This may already be known, I don't know.

I don't care who came up with the wording, it was still crap. I don't live in the binary world where if a remainer did something it's automatically good or bad. I just think people should be given adult options to choose from. I also think it's deeply suspicious when anyone claims to know what kind of Brexit people voted for, since they were only given one option.