Nah but seriously, I'm out of here. On me bike. See yers in ten days.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

The second one was at the White Horse which can normally be relied upon to have a huge selection of American beer at its fests, but this was just hopeless.

Still, the day was not a total loss, I'd been to the Ealing beer fest first and had enjoyed myself quite a bit. If I'd known how poor the others were going to be, I'd have stayed.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Raspberries started coming on in late June. We're giving them away and eating fresh every day, because these keep coming for a month.

Good thing that most of the grandkids live next door.

paul spencer

keep to the Fen Causeway

Retirees Occupy Community Center in Berlin with Stasi History - SPIEGEL ONLINE

The building was once used by the Stasi, East Germany's dreaded secret police. But, more recently, it has served as a popular activity center for seniors in a high-rent neighborhood. When local authorities decided to shut it down and sell it, retirees adopted a classic Berlin tactic: squatting. And they're determined to win.

Germany's capital is famous for its squatting culture. Back in the 1980s, punks moved into disused buildings in what was then West Berlin. After the Wall fell, the movement spread to the eastern part of the city, where squatted buildings became a hallmark of the techno-fuelled counterculture of the 1990s.

OAS_RICH('Middle2'); But the city has definitely never seen squatters like the ones currently occupying a villa in the northeastern district of Pankow. A group of senior citizens has taken over a community center to stop the local municipality from closing it down -- and they're determined to stay until they get what they want.

The squatters, who are all in their 70s or 80s, have been sleeping in the building -- called "Stille Strasse" after the street on which it is located -- since last Friday. They take turns sleeping there on air mattresses and cots, with six or seven people staying there every night to stop local authorities from barring its entrance. Posters and banners reading "We are all staying" are on display outside.

It wasn't a conspiracy that no bankers went to prison after the 2008 crash; it was simply that their high-risk activity was almost entirely legal. But the lack of prosecutions also meant the anger kept bubbling and building like a pressure cooker.

People felt more cheated every year as bankers' bonuses increased while their paychecks decreased. So it shouldn't come as any surprise that a scandal most people don't really understand still generates palpable public anger.

But it is important to understand why the Libor scandal matters and how it affected ordinary people.

Frances Coppola points out that a combination of Quantitative Easing, which involves the government buying back its debt, and austerity - which means the government is issuing less debt - is drastically restricting supply of these bonds (debt).

This contraction in the supply is causing a real shortage of safe assets for financial institutions to put their money into. This leads to a liquidity crisis because they don't want to lend to each other. It also means you get record low interest rates on government bonds as demand from these institutions for our debt hugely outstrips supply.

There's a weird irony here. According to the way neoliberalism tells us markets should work, this situation shouldn't really be happening.

No, its not the Higgs-Boson. More here

Last week, the release of the NEET stats (Not in Education, Employment or Training) for young people and a key note speech from the Deputy Prime Minster made sure that once again the focus of attention was on young people in the labour market. This is nothing new. An endless number of commentators lament about the prospects of a lost generation of young people and push Government to do more and more to help young people in our labour market find work. On its part, Government has focussed nearly all of its effort on young people through the Youth Contract and extensions announced this week.

By implication, that would suggest that unemployed people of all other ages are not a concern: they will find work quickly, not suffer from experiences of `scarring' from unemployment and do not need too much support from the state until they have hit the Work Programme from around 12 months of unemployment.

Unfortunately, Policy Exchange published a report last week outlining that this was very far from reality.

In particular, we found that while employment has been rising for the older (50 plus) workforce, those who find themselves out of work find it extremely hard to get back into work. Long-term unemployment is more likely for the over 50s than the under 25s (less than 40% of the over 50s who were unemployed in January 2010 were in work a year later, compared to nearly 65% of the under 25s); and our research shows that wage scarring (the pay penalty that results from experiencing spells of unemployment between jobs) is much higher for the over 50s than any other age group.