PeeDee – I am sure I remember 1/11, 3/11, 17/11 and 18/11 and so on, long ago. I think it has always been with us hasn’t it?

Pity we couldn’t wrap it us this morning, but it is all over bar the shouting, which means that the dreadful Sprinkler dance will be everywhere by tomorrow morning.

And the highest score by any side in a test series in Australia – and there’ll be a few more good stats to feast on.

Fortunately Starbucks has competition and they would only be my choice of last resort for a cup of coffee.

I too spent a few years in marketing and never got brainwashed by its claims. Branding is a serious element in the process but there are many factors other than a logo which determine the success or failure of a product. If Starbucks feels the need to spend a fortune on a new logo it must be because its sales are flat or falling. And the reasons for that may not be solved by a new logo. In fact they are unlikely to be.

The interesting question will be how the retailers deal with all their ….99p price points. £9.99 to £10.20? I don,t think so. I’ll give it 6 months before we see the full £1 round-up e.g. £9.99 to £10.99 creeping in. These apparently successful price points are too valuable to be scrapped. Personally I can’t fathom it; when I see £11.99 I see £12.00 immediately…..

that’s Thatcher still off the hook, she didn’t become an MP until 1959

I wasn’t trying to implicate her in in any case, merely making the observation that it was a Tory government which implemented the most critical Defence Review, post-war.

No problems with Chrome or Firefox…………..

With apologies, CD, my statement was misleading. I intended to express the total net cost of our EU membership, which has been variously estimated at between £40 billion and £65 billion. The government does not publish cost benefit figures to enable true figures to be calculated, unsurprisingly.

So my comment was unintentionally misleading but the “large percentage” in my mind when I wrote the post was the amount referred to above.

I certainly do believe that spending money on the EU is preferable to a European war. As as far whether or not there would have been another European war? Who knows. The track record isn’t great though.

In which case I cannot add more to the debate.