'Bart'

Shows how much confidence they have in "deflation kicking in".

Surely a long, tiresome commute surrounded by sullen, ill-mannered strangers to a job you hate but that you're bound to like a bonded serf because of the high cost of accommodation is what we all aspire to?

A women so unbearably divine must surely be high maintenance. Hey, a thousand ships ain't cheap. (Says Bart, one of a thousand faces at the launching of one ship.)

That's crazy. I could rent a house locally for about 20-25% of my income. Even that seems a bit much to me. At the moment I spend about 11.5% of my wages on rent.

And here was me worrying.

Ahh, the wonderful, magical "medium term". Low inflation in 18 months, never today. Here's Merv the Swerve in 2007: LINK And by the time 2009 came along.... LINK BoE 2010 inflation report LINK Mervyn King in 2011 LINK And from the BoE February 2012 inflation overview LINK And of course, it's always "temporary effects" that keep inflation above target. "past depreciation of sterling"? Hmmmm, I wonder what could have caused that?

Wow, they've only taken 5 years to work out the bleedin' obvious. Clearly the kind of go-getting intellects that built the Empire. In other news, fire is still hot!

Yes, this is correct. Ever increasing prices are a sure sign of deflation. It's Economics 101. (These people must go to different shops to me, or buy their gas/electric from different suppliers, or not run cars, or not eat or pay Council Tax.)

Depends on the brand. I prefer Joe Bloggs jeans to Levi 501s because (in my experience) the cheaper jeans lasted longer. My Miele washer cost double the price of the competition, yet seems to be value for money because of the improved quality. A lot of the time though, it's hard to tell if the expensive brands will follow this rule. Never heard of any of these, so would be unlikely to buy whatever it is they make. Could be the cast of a low-brow Italian comedy for all I know.

2000 years ago. Or last week? Not much in it. Yes. because they've made such a brilliant job of it so far.

Or, are simply reacting to an existing demand by providing a service. It's called capitalism. Fine. Who's going to fund them? And why? You'd have to be a total muffin to sink your life savings into a butcher's shop because some clueless council official (who has never run a business and hasn't the first clue about how real world economics works) thinks there should be one. I'm clearly walking down the wrong streets. Don't forget phone shops. I always said she was perverted.

Afraid not.

Why do you think the dealers will be shut down? More importantly, why would you think this would reduce the demand? Just the opposite I'd have thought.

Some 24 month contracts total up to £864. £864. For a phone.

A golden year of a lost golden age. The New Economics Foundation declared 1976 as the post-war year in which people were happiest. Given the absolute a***hole of a decade that the noughties turned out to be, they may be right. For those that missed out.

Oh really? But it seems that it's the saver's job to help the BoE out of a jam. Savers told to stop moaning and start spending Advice from Merv's deputy Charlie Bean.

I could do with an iPhone 4s for testing purposes, but with Apple, there's always something.... Why is my iPhone 4S battery running down extremely fast and what can I do? And various threads on Apple.com forums (link). This problem seems to be following the usual pattern (ie. "Antenna-gate"): (1) Apple and the fanbois deny that there's a problem. (2) Apple and the fanbois concede that there *might* be a problem, but that it's not very widespread and likely to be the user's fault anyway. (3) Apple finally fix the problem and the fanbois wet themselves in their effusive praise of Apple and their great customer service. (4) After a decent interval the problem is downgraded as "never that big an issue" and "blown up out of all proportion by the media". With this issue I reckon we're just about at stage (2) now. Why not? Having used both I fail to see any stunning advantages to iOS. Siri looks to be fun but other than that... In fact, for people with poor eyesight, Android has one major advantage over iOS when using a browser: Text Reflow Still A No-Go For iPhone & iOS5? (The answer to that question BTW is.... yes.) On an Android phone when browsing the web, you can pinch to zoom to make the text bigger, then tap the screen and the text reflows to fit the sides of the screen, rather than running off the edge. On an iPhone, it won't, you have to scroll from side to side to read lines. I have the HP Touchpad running Web OS (HP) and Android 4.0. On Web OS, this feature does not exist (like on the iPhone). You can zoom in to say, a Wikipedia page but the text goes off the edge of the screen, necessitating much side to side scrolling. On Android, I can zoom the text to a comfortable size, tap the screen and the text that was off the edge of the screen reflows to fit. The difference in terms of readability is amazing. No surprise that I spend 99% of the time in Android these days. And before anyone starts going on about the "retina display": Of course the fanbois will mindf**k themselves into believing that this is actually the right way to do things. Or perhaps it's our fault for having poor eyesight? Latest? HTC Desire launch date: 14 May 2010

Has it? Is it? Must it? Nothing else? Come on Polly, let's have a bit of "transparency".

Interesting video (preaching to the converted in my case).

Apple were staggering around the grave before Steve Jobs returned. Aug. 6, 1997: Apple Rescued — by Microsoft 1997: Steve Jobs Was Wrong and Microsoft Saved Apple The transformation in Apple's fortunes was entirely due to Steve Jobs. And he's gone now. Expect a slow, steady decline in Apple's fortunes. Oh we'll get the iPhone 7 with quintuple core processors and the iPad 5s with 3D VR icons. Faster, better specs. New, improved newness. But the force that created new markets has gone. By new markets I mean the smartphone and tablet markets we have today. Yes, there were smartphones and tablets before then, but no sod bought 'em! No one was busting a gut trying to come up with the "Palm OS Treo killer". People weren't queuing up overnight to buy the Neoware Voyager. Apple have been here before of course, 1985 to 1997 (by which time things had gotten so bad that Microsoft had to step in).

The same money men who pay £250,000 for the ear of The Boy Cameron (and made Blair rich) will still be there. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7mLBMNKQF8 You can play musical chairs with the front man as much as you like. Occupy Wall Street Says: Get Money Out of Politics!

My computer model predicts a steady stream of prurient Daily Mail articles in Off-Topic.