I saw it earlier and my first reaction was – she’s landed in a field! Excellent story though and you never know in our rapidly depleting air force there might be more female pilots than males in a few more years!;) Bet you wish that’d been you, don’t you?:D

In response to your last point, yes, of course it will. Just as any business, when saddled with extra costs over which it has no control, will eventually recoup them.

Secondly “sizable” is relative and in the context of your comment, meaningless. And be under no illusion, companies if this size will have no compunction about setting up their HQ elsewhere if there are clear benefits from so doing. The cost of doing business in the UK, as you put it, is a cost which any company is free to avoid if it chooses.

“cutch!” – snuggle?? I think I’ve heard a friend use it…….

Too true – in fact we rarely do, other than to visit old friends very occasionally on the rare occasions when they cannot come to Kent.

The Civil War still rages, but it is no longer Rounheads and Cavaliers but midlanders!;)

And that raises a different question, Linc, based on your phrase “down to London”.

In some parts of the country it is “up to London” or “up to town” whereas the opposite in others. When we lived in East Anglia I went “down to London” as you do whereas my wife, from Yorkshire went “up to London”.

Now we are in Kent we go “up to London”. I suppose we should really be going “across a bit and then up to London”.:)

Correct me if I am wrong, pagen, but isn’t it a corrupted form of “directly”, which, in the delighfully iconic Cornish way, means it will be done directly I am ready to do it, leaving the matter wide open.:)

Wuss seems to have started life in California in the mid-sixties.

I suppose your reation is inevitable when the very word “profit” is seen as dirty in 2011 Britain. How you imagine industry works, I do not know. Plucking a number because it is “large” is meaningless, unless you provide full details of the distribtion of the profits towards short and long term investment.

What is quite clear is that the more big business is taxed inthe UK the more likely they arev to move elsewhere, thereby cutting off the considerable tax income to the Treasury. On the figures you have quoted HMRC would receive tax income of nearly £4 billion annualised on reducing Corporation Tax levels. How would that be replaced?