Should we just open the door and let them all in?

karlypants wrote:Did anyone else have one of these?

Breadman wrote:

Norpig wrote:we were definitely scraping the barrel we had the betamax version with a remote control you had to plug in to the machine and had a cable attached. It was always a pain trying to get a good film on betamax at Video view on Chorley Old Road 

When we first got our VHS Videostar, the only place you could get films was that off licence on Elgin St near the allotments.

They had about ten films in total.

Mad Max was the first one I ever saw on video and even now, when I watch it, I can remember how awesome it felt being able to pause and rewind a film.

boltonbonce wrote:Bet you all watched porn on them.

boltonbonce wrote:You'd have been better with the Littlewoods catalogue.
It was portable,so you could disappear off to the bog on the pretext of 'looking at the record players'.

Breadman wrote:

boltonbonce wrote:You'd have been better with the Littlewoods catalogue.
It was portable,so you could disappear off to the bog on the pretext of 'looking at the record players'.

To be honest, I supplemented my video watching with the GUS catalogue quite a lot.

My excuse was "looking at the bikes", as opposed to record players.

My Mum's catalogues were so well thumbed that they started to fall open naturally at about page 180, which coincidentally, was where the undies started.

No idea why.

I was looking at the bikes.....

y2johnny wrote:

Breadman wrote:

boltonbonce wrote:You'd have been better with the Littlewoods catalogue.
It was portable,so you could disappear off to the bog on the pretext of 'looking at the record players'.

To be honest, I supplemented my video watching with the GUS catalogue quite a lot.

My excuse was "looking at the bikes", as opposed to record players.

My Mum's catalogues were so well thumbed that they started to fall open naturally at about page 180, which coincidentally, was where the undies started.

No idea why.

I was looking at the bikes.....

at least your pages turned..............

Breadman wrote:

y2johnny wrote:

Breadman wrote:

boltonbonce wrote:You'd have been better with the Littlewoods catalogue.
It was portable,so you could disappear off to the bog on the pretext of 'looking at the record players'.

To be honest, I supplemented my video watching with the GUS catalogue quite a lot.

My excuse was "looking at the bikes", as opposed to record players.

My Mum's catalogues were so well thumbed that they started to fall open naturally at about page 180, which coincidentally, was where the undies started.

No idea why.

I was looking at the bikes.....

at least your pages turned..............

A standard UK cistern in the 1980's was the perfect width and breadth for placing a GUS catalogue on and thus facilitating "hands free" reading.

If you sat facing backwards on the bog, that is.

Obviously......

karlypants wrote:

Breadman wrote:

boltonbonce wrote:I'll tape it for you mate.

Half the posters on here won't even know what that means.

We used to have a Ferguson Videostar!

Breadman wrote:

boltonbonce wrote:Bet you all watched porn on them.

This is honestly a true story and if anybody's offended, I apologise in advance - stop reading now.










Okay.

I once borrowed a "nacky vid" as we called them back then off a mate of mine and "used" it one weekend when my parents had gone away in the caravan with my sister.

Anybody who's ever been a 15 year old boy with the house to himself for the weekend, a video recorder and a porn tape can guess what I got up to.

Being 15, I was struggling to get much further into the film than about five minutes each time before, ahem......being done.

By Sunday morning, I could hardly walk but I was making progress.

I decided to try and abstain for a couple of hours in the hope that I'd (A) recover a bit of strength and (B) actually see how the film ended.

(The last scene was always a free for all involving the entire cast, so I was looking forward to it.)

Anyroad, I managed to keep my hands occupied doing less disgusting things until about 2pm and then I thought "Right! It's time!"

So I shut the curtains and (literally) cracked on.

And just when it got to the interesting bit (and I'd reached the point of no return) the picture went all fuzzy and when it cleared, it revealed an episode of the Antiques Roadshow that my mate had copied the porn over and I was left staring aghast at Arthur Negus holding up a set of spoons and saying "Oh yes! That's lovely....."

Even now, I can't go to a car boot sale without seeing his face in my mind's eye and feeling very ashamed....and a bit odd.

Breadman wrote:Well played, Madam Chair - I salute you for retaining your composure and displaying grace under fire.

I'd be no good in that situation - It'd be all flustered mumbling, pauses, lots of "Er...." and you didn't start a single sentence with that horrible "Well, you know....." device, first adopted by Tony Blair and subsequently flogged to death by politicians of all hues.

No, I don't know.....that's why I asked you the question, idiot!

Anyroad, I digress......back on topic:

Yes, controls on immigration are obviously a good idea but the notion that the country is full and all these horrible foreigners are coming over here to either (A) take all our jobs or (B) claim millions in benefits whilst sitting on their arses watching Sky TV all day is simply nonsense.

It's a myth propagated by UKIP which taps into (perfectly natural) fears that the indigenous population (whatever that means) may have about people and things they know little about.

In very simple terms, if you don't understand something it's easy to fall into the trap of fearing it and automatically viewing it as a bad thing.

And that's what UKIP are exploiting.

But, as I've said before on here, whilst the Kippers are a joke and will never be a credible force in UK politics, some good has come out of their rise in popularity:

Prior to the last election anybody who raised the issue of controlling immigration was seen as a de facto racist but at least now, thanks to Nige and his ilk, we can now all at least discuss the subject in the mainstream, without fear of the debate being stifled to death from the off because it was taboo.

In terms of "foreigners coming over here and taking our jobs and driving wages down", doing what I do for a living, I have been in literally dozens of manufacturing plants over the last twenty years and yes, I have seen a rise in the numbers of foreign workers in them.

But when you start to ask why, it very quickly becomes apparent that the reason we have so many eastern Europeans working in our factories is quite simply because the going rate for the job has always been around minimum wage level and English people won't get off their arses at five AM and go to work for that amount because they can claim more in benefits.

And can you honestly blame them for that?

The Poles aren't driving wages down but they are prepared to work 40+ hours a week for £240 and, in my experience at least, that's something that English people, in increasingly large numbers, simply aren't prepared to do.

Does anybody think that if all the Eastern Europeans suddenly upped sticks and went home, UK employers would be forced to start paying £15 an hour to English people to fill unskilled jobs?

Nonsense - it doesn't work like that.

The current situation is a bit of a mess in my view because you can't blame the English for not wanting to work for less than they can claim and you can't blame the migrants for filling the labour gap.

If you want to blame someone, blame successive Tory governments (starting with Thatcher) for eroding the collective bargaining power of the British workforce by destroying the unions and raising taxes to the point where British industry stopped being competitive and which resulted in our manufacturing base crumbling to the point where we hardly manufacture anything in this country any more because cheap foreign imports are better value and it's too expensive to manufacture alternatives here at home.

And on top of this, our economy relies more on the financial services / banking sector far more nowadays than it ever did previously, so all our eggs are in that basket and profits made from that money stay in the hands of an elite few and don't filter down into the economy at large, hence why we're all feeling the pinch.

Rant over.

(I only started this comment to say well done to Manda and look what happened.......Off for a lie down now.)

Reebok Trotter wrote:

Breadman wrote:Well played, Madam Chair - I salute you for retaining your composure and displaying grace under fire.

I'd be no good in that situation - It'd be all flustered mumbling, pauses, lots of "Er...." and you didn't start a single sentence with that horrible "Well, you know....." device, first adopted by Tony Blair and subsequently flogged to death by politicians of all hues.

No, I don't know.....that's why I asked you the question, idiot!

Anyroad, I digress......back on topic:

Yes, controls on immigration are obviously a good idea but the notion that the country is full and all these horrible foreigners are coming over here to either (A) take all our jobs or (B) claim millions in benefits whilst sitting on their arses watching Sky TV all day is simply nonsense.

It's a myth propagated by UKIP which taps into (perfectly natural) fears that the indigenous population (whatever that means) may have about people and things they know little about.

In very simple terms, if you don't understand something it's easy to fall into the trap of fearing it and automatically viewing it as a bad thing.

And that's what UKIP are exploiting.

But, as I've said before on here, whilst the Kippers are a joke and will never be a credible force in UK politics, some good has come out of their rise in popularity:

Prior to the last election anybody who raised the issue of controlling immigration was seen as a de facto racist but at least now, thanks to Nige and his ilk, we can now all at least discuss the subject in the mainstream, without fear of the debate being stifled to death from the off because it was taboo.

In terms of "foreigners coming over here and taking our jobs and driving wages down", doing what I do for a living, I have been in literally dozens of manufacturing plants over the last twenty years and yes, I have seen a rise in the numbers of foreign workers in them.

But when you start to ask why, it very quickly becomes apparent that the reason we have so many eastern Europeans working in our factories is quite simply because the going rate for the job has always been around minimum wage level and English people won't get off their arses at five AM and go to work for that amount because they can claim more in benefits.

And can you honestly blame them for that?

The Poles aren't driving wages down but they are prepared to work 40+ hours a week for £240 and, in my experience at least, that's something that English people, in increasingly large numbers, simply aren't prepared to do.

Does anybody think that if all the Eastern Europeans suddenly upped sticks and went home, UK employers would be forced to start paying £15 an hour to English people to fill unskilled jobs?

Nonsense - it doesn't work like that.

The current situation is a bit of a mess in my view because you can't blame the English for not wanting to work for less than they can claim and you can't blame the migrants for filling the labour gap.

If you want to blame someone, blame successive Tory governments (starting with Thatcher) for eroding the collective bargaining power of the British workforce by destroying the unions and raising taxes to the point where British industry stopped being competitive and which resulted in our manufacturing base crumbling to the point where we hardly manufacture anything in this country any more because cheap foreign imports are better value and it's too expensive to manufacture alternatives here at home.

And on top of this, our economy relies more on the financial services / banking sector far more nowadays than it ever did previously, so all our eggs are in that basket and profits made from that money stay in the hands of an elite few and don't filter down into the economy at large, hence why we're all feeling the pinch.

Rant over.

(I only started this comment to say well done to Manda and look what happened.......Off for a lie down now.)

Natasha Whittam wrote:

Breadman wrote:

Yeah, they appeal to feckless idiots like you who are too thick to see the bigger picture.

You just toe the popular line every single time. I've eaten Haribo with more spine.