NoFakie

If Van Gaal is as no nonsense as they say, I wouldn't want to be Ed Woodward if they don't get some more players in!

People on a floating rate will be under 1%. They call it floating but with some lenders its a six month fix. We got ours adjusted and refixed last year so we're on 1.6% fixed for ten years. The loan has another three and half years to run after that. Over the entire twenty years of the loan, we pay just over 20% of the principal in interest. Compared to other countries, it's very low.

100m bid for Hulk coming up!

Second hand bunjo mansions bought to let in regional cities can make quite a bit of money, as GN says. There is less risk buying in Tokyo, but you won't get 10 to 15%. Given the bleak state of most of Hokkaido's economy, Sapporo may be an especially good buy because many Hokkaido locals wanting to get on will end up there. Inaka thinking means some of them can't settle there for good because they'll be expected to head back and look after oldies and take over whatever remains of the family business.

No faffing about etc. etc. Thing is though, in the last couple of years, they've just got rid of the gaijin card and the gaijin tax, and they've started counting gaijin in shichouson's populations. For places with lots of Chinese, Koreans or Brazilians, that could be a big deal. There are bound to be some national government handouts to local governments that get calculated on population size. So if anything, the moves that have been made recently are pro gaijin. I don't know what the problem is here and why the Supreme Court has been asked to make a ruling on this now, but if the curr

Maybe one thing to note here is that the Supreme Court judges what the law says, it doesn't get to make new ones. That's the job of Shinzo and his crew.

I guess its the system called "seikatsu hogo". Like BM said, help for people seen as needing it. Single mothers, the sick, the mentally ill, the infirm etc. Its separate to the regular health care system and pension system. Unlike those two systems, its funded by the general taxpayer, so you qualify by being in need, not by paying in. I think single mothers get a living expenses benefit and an educate the kid benefit, on top of the child benefit all parents get.

At least they're bloody reliable, the ol' weed whacker. The blades with lots of teeth on them, 60 plus, can take out trees up to about 8-10cm depending on how dense the wood is. They use a similar engine, but chain saws are well temperamental and you've got to keep sharpening and unclogging the buggers.

This mightn't surprise some but is worthy of outrage and is therefore outrageous. We'll take your money like everyone else but don't expect any help. Don't call us if you get MS, if your Japanese husband runs off leaving you with kids, if you're out on your bike and someone hits and runs....

That's about the worst of all worlds. You wear a condom. You don't get the added thrill of err, sending your boys in battle! ( if you've experienced it) The missus still has a kid My suggestion would be making a people genuinely-shagging-for-a-kid porn video. Come to think of it, its possibly the only genre of porn that doesn't exist. They could get the Catholic Church to sponsor it.

Apparently two Newcastle fans were on the plane. The team are on tour in NZ and they were going there to see the games. Anyway, the fans of our big local rivals Sunderland have had an online whipround, and they've raised getting on for twenty thousand pounds. There's been a lot of bad blood between the clubs in recent years, so it's a fantastic gesture. It won't bring the lads and the other victims back, but it might bring back some faith in humanity. Something that well needed after incidents like this. Nice one Sunderland fans :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

I thought I'd found some Shiga Kogen beer for 200 a can the other day, but it was another ji-biiru sneakily called Shinshuu Kogen, a place that presumably doesn't exist. The beers are actually made by the Yona Yona people and sold at Tsuruya Supermarket. They're alright, but not particularly distinctive. Not as good as Yona Yona. Or White Belg even.

So she lives in it but they won't regard it as her primary residence?

I think there's a bit of "reassuringly expensive" in there, the way they used to market Stella in the 1980s when it was exotic. Retail in Japan is increasingly being divided into as cheap as poss or luxury because you are worth it. Its getting harder to sell to the middle.

Wigan's most famous son on vocals there. The rest of them soon kicked him out though because he didn't have the funk!

Music experts like Gary Davies and Steve Wright were well into him and would tell us how amazing he was at every opportunity. Even as Level 42's music went from sometimes funky, sometimes soppy to mostly super soppy. Still, if there's room for Sting, there should be room for Mark King. And John Taylor, and the bloke with the fluffy hair from Kajagoogoo.

My favourite Jamiroquai one is When You Gonna Learn. Its probably also his best song. Those 100 certainly aren't all amazing but the video's good at showing how things have gone from the simple, and to be honest pretty lame, basslines on classic rock records to the funk powered ones from Cliff Burton, Flea, and whoever the bloke in Rage is. Message in a Bottle would get my vote as least amazing of the 100! Maybe he's related to Sting.

It's actually been dry here for a day or two so I got a few hours in with the weed whacker yesterday. The ol spinning blade of retribution. They were four feet high in places. Rainy season has really lived up to its name round here this year. It makes me super grumpy.

The other issue is who will be paying. For the competitors, their flights, transfers, accom and all the assorted officials. I wouldn't be surprised if Naeba and the local government are paying for a fair chunk of it. Money that won't be covered by ticket sales or tv rights.

Genuinely rich people don't pay inheritance taxes. They only hit kind of well-off people who can't afford the accounting tricks. I heard that there is no inheritance tax on the family home in Australia, and if so, that is a fair system. Most huge landowners in the UK have had the land in their family since the Middle Ages. The current owners won't have it through working and earning.

I think epic form from RVP and Rooney (after that gash), and something mad like fifteen goals from Rafael, Evra, and Johnny Evans papered over the cracks in Fergie's last year. They were the first champions in years to concede more than a goal a game. Conceding too many goals is ultimately what cost Liverpool last year. Man U have a higher income than Bayern and aren't far behind Barca, but not many of their players would get in either team.

A quick shuftie suggests that's triple what Nike pay. For all ManYoo's massive commercial income, they don't spend very much on the team. Most of it just disappears somewhere else.

The first half was pretty good, but it got increasingly tiresome after that. 90 minutes is my limit, and even that can be a struggle with Japanese commentators.

There's a bit in the film where they suggest four times the number of people will bob their head to a piece of music if they hear it in high quality. Its about 15 minutes in.

It's also arrogant of musicians to suggest that potential fans don't get their music just because of low-quality file formats. Most of the time its going to be because they don't like the music.