Err… the Red Arrows, the Thunderbirds. I think the Hunters got a round of applause at Waddington as well. In fact, come to think of it, quite a few acts got a round of applause.

Well , the traffic was worse than two years ago (didn’t go last year) but we followed the signs, arriving Newark-ish at around 8am. We were parked at 8.45am, following the A607 and A15. We wer ein the Silver Wings enclosure which was bvery good indeed. The show itself was very good but the static a bit sparse. The Thunderbirds were very impressive, fast and loud.

On leaving, we drove straight out and were home in Cheshire by 7.45pm. A thoroughly enjoyable day out.

That’s it in then – a motorbike caught fire – sounds like batteries are very hazardous. We’d better stop using them in our PCs, cameras, aeroplanes, cars…. actually pretty much everything.

Maybe so but the trigger for recession was primarily the credit crunch wasn’t it? Do you really think that any government would deliberately send their own economy into recession?

A large part of the UK national deficit is in part due the bailout of the banks. Had the banks not required this bailout then perhaps we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Perhaps I should have said “sections of the financial sector”.

believing we are still a rich nation shows how deluded some are

I don’t think I’m the deluded one. Look around you – this is not a poor nation – far from it. Yes the wealth may be a little skewed in its distribution but definitely not poor.

Oh and the government didn’t sell ALL of the gold reserves either. Some of the gold was sold on advice from experts when gold was decreasing in price. Three years after it was sold the price started to rise. Gordon Brown may have been a good chancellor but he wasn’t clairvoyant.

we have to accept we are no longer the rich nation we once were

We are still a rich nation. It would have been richer if the financial sector hadn’t wasted it all.

A quote from elsewhere on the internet.

Remember when teachers, nurses, doctors, nursery education officers, school support staff, librarians, social workers, care assistants, bin men and lollipop ladies crashed the stock market, wiped out banks, took billions in bonuses and paid no tax?
No, me neither.

No, you are right, they shouldn’t. But it has happened in the past. In any case you would argue that if they had felt strongly enough they should have voted thereby perhaps even preventing the strike.

Of course teachers are not required to be members of a union. I wonder how many are not and why they did not offer to work.

In my daughter’s school, sufficient numbers of teachers were striking to ensure that the school closed. Presumably those that aren’t striking but are having an enforced day are getting paid?

Teachers it was stated on TV today pay 6% of their wages, and WE top it up.

Of course we (or the government) top it up, they are public employees. My company tops my pension up in exactly the same way.

If the teaching unions get their way and the pension proposals are altered then all teachers, not just union members, will benefit.

Union members shouldn’t really cross picket lines. They are part of a democratic union that voted for industrial action and have to abide by that decision whether they agree with it or not.