so we are shutting it down."

I guess popularity isn't important for a politician.

Now there's one less way to have our views ignored by the PM.

Fantastic, 120 characters or less to talk to the PM on Twitter. Let's start now:

What the f##k have you done to the f##rking country

That's 51 characters. What shall we finish this off with then??? Another 69 to go, fnarr, fnarr... We've all been there...

Fujitsu took over from HP as the service provider for the Cabinet Office's IT last year. I'm not sure if they do No 10 as well, but I know that certain functions are shared.

Given Fujitsu's performance generally is it any surprise that things have gone tits up?

PARIS - because if anyone knows about going tits up ...

Buffer Off For Holidays

or

Public Finance Ynitiative (sorry!).

Fujitsu wanted to host our SAP system from either a cloakroom or an open area (right next to the Fork-lift truck tracks) in a busy warehouse!!!

Nuff said!

<-- mine is the one with the P45 in the pocket...

So the most popular e-petition is in response to a story that isn't actually true?? Wow, you just gotta love modern tabloid fueled democracy in action.

either GB put up wrong out of office Assistant or that they all filled up their mailbox quota and since they have outsourced IT to india, they can not understand english too well so they have put up this note till GB gets back

Well thats what I last heard ..

HAHAHA we all know you use outlook GB

Whoops I didn't actually put the apostrophe after the plural in my last example :(

Should be "5 years' time"

The reason "its" has no apostrophe is not to do with the inanimateness, but to avoid confusion with the abbreviation "it's"="it is".

Pari's loves' grammar too.

...for example

"The computer's hard drive broke"

mines the one with the grammar book

AC, I'm all rusty, but I think "its" is a possessive determiner, like "his" or "her" and that's why it doesn't have an apostrophe. God, I'm going to have to take some lessons. Though it could be fun, my gf is an English professor. :D

The chair's legs. Inaminate object. Possessive. Apostrophe. Wow, fancy that. "Its" is the equivalent of "his" or "her". Would you rather put hi's or he'r?

No, "Its" doesn't lack an apostrophe in order to avoid confusion with the abbreviation "it's". It lacks an apostrophe simply because it doesn't have one.

Methinks he be trollin' to rile you lot up some more.

(Oh bloody hell, another apostrophe! THEY'RE E'V'E'R'Y'W'H'E'R'E)

...I don't blame the latter for spiking his own email address.

He's a nice guy who's given us 10 years during which our GDP doubled, fairly sustainably.

Yes so there are stealth taxes, but these existed under the Tories too. What Gordon Brown did is engineer a fiercely powerful wealth multiplication - by giving tax income to public servants and to capital project workers who were more likely to spend than save or move the dosh abroad. The money therefore did the rounds, got re-injected into society so many more times, than it would have done, under a Tory-style tax policy - with the longest virtuous cycle of growth on record in the OECD area. Or something.

Mine's the one with the gold-plated council logo ;)

Well I guess you'll believe what you want to, but "He's a nice guy who's given us 10 years during which our GDP doubled, fairly sustainably"? Oh dear me...

From www.statistics.gov.uk: (table) ABMI Gross Domestic Product: chained volume measures: Seasonally adjusted, Constant 2003 prices, Updated on 25/ 7/2008

1997 942154...2007 1247285

That's a 32% increase over 10 years, about 2.8% per year on average - respectable, but not massive - not a doubling, what could you have been thinking! China's growth over that same period has been stratospheric by comparison. I presume those figures are in £GBP; recast them into €EUR at the appropriate yearly rates and you'd find the result rather worse.

Not everyone that 'hates' Gordon Brown is ill-informed, and epithets like 'Daily Mail-reading cretin' and 'undeserved hate' say more about the author than the subject in hand.

Oops, did I just feed a troll?

IT - because online stats and a calculator really *can* make discussion more reasoned...

Dear Sirs,

I feel moved to comment on the furore surrounding the use of the apostrophe by a number of your correspondents. I am outraged that anyone who uses a less than symbol in combination with a solidus in an English paragraph feels in a position to comment on correct grammar and punctuation. May I suggest that your readership peruses the excellent "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation" before making any further comments on the subject.

Yours faithfully

Mr C. Mountford

That wasn't a solidus, it was a slash; the slash is more vertical than the solidus.