woolley

Define "good". Surely nice and smooth and as quiet as possible is optimum. I don't particularly have a bee in my bonnet about it. I'm not tearing my hair out. I just think it marks them out as total tossers.

Strange turn in this thread when the only vaguely lucid posts in 3 pages are by freakin' Finlo. ETA: At least 3 pages. Couldn't bear to delve back any further.

It amuses me. Why on earth do they do it? An exhaust system is there to muffle the noise of the engine. If it makes a din instead, it's like having a fridge that heats food up, a washing machine that soils clothing, a lamp that emits darkness, you get the idea. Do they believe it makes them look like they have big dicks? They're feckin' eejits.

Fixed for you.

That's all there is to it.

Haven't done a study, but I've often been on with a lot more than 2 coaches.

And to think that the UK was taken into the EEC/EU with no referendum at all. Even worse!

Ask everyone in Europe the same about their country. Probably say the same.

Welcome to the internet.

I fully agree. As standards become more eroded, fewer people notice it happening. Before you know it, even the schools don't get it right, and nobody cares, thinks it's an issue or even notices. It's a microcosm of the pervasive malaise throughout society.

Retailers or manufacturers? Surely competition on price here should have an effect as it does on everything else. The quoted margins seem ridiculously high, anything up to 70% quoted internationally. Maybe further legislation is required to curb it. Making them free at point of use solves the immediate problem of individual poverty, but it still leaves the taxpayer footing the bill and being gouged.

Yes. The VAT on sanitary products is an EU thing. Abolished following Brexit.

In other news, some of the Aldi price matches are no longer, er, Aldi price matches, despite claiming to be.

You actually went back and checked? Blimey.

Everybody wants kung fu fighting.

I think if that was the first move, it would also be the last. It would kill a plausible idea stone dead. You have to offer it where there is the biggest catchment, and that isn't Ireland.

"Financial genius wanted to tell us how to make a fortune for 8 grand a year." Hope they don't get killed in the stampede.

I thought we'd put that to bed.

I wouldn't go that far.

"Financial genius wanted to tell us how to make a fortune for 8 grand a year." Hope they don't get killed in the stampede.

It's a short statement going beyond the school walls to the outside world. You check it so that you get it right. It's not difficult. They exist to teach children to get it right, but they can't be bothered doing so themselves.

Standards are important and worth upholding. If you can't get the mundane correct you have no chance with complexity. People can't be arsed to get it right. They settle for mediocrity, and that's why everything is going pear-shaped nowadays. In general I like Americans I meet very much, and I have no problem with American English when used by Americans. Used by Ramsey Grammar School, because they either know no better or can't be bothered to amend their American English software, not so much. It's moronic.

Some grammar school that doesn't know its verbs from its nouns. Practising your spelling is good practice, as we were always taught. Unless they're all Americans there nowadays.

Business folk tend to have a pretty accurate appreciation of where they stand, or they certainly should. If the quarterly VAT bill comes as a surprise, they really shouldn't be in business at all in their own best interests. If things are running properly, VAT is a rolling interest free loan to them of between 1 and 4 months (average 75 days) tax at all times that should assist cashflow rather than kill the business. That money can be put to work in the interim. Any entity, large or small, should be continuously aware of it's approximate financial position for income, payables and taxes. If you have minimal VAT inputs, you (hopefully!) know what you have taken over a quarter so you can work it out in seconds in your head - a sixth of the sales/takings will be on the right side. How many businesses today don't have accounting software anyway? Even the most inexpensive rudimentary packages can give a balance sheet in real time. It's elementary stuff.

So what is this insight you have into the idiocy of Tesco?