For Andy Hall

[The Medway Handyman]

Blinding deal here mate, don't miss it!

[Andy Hall]

It probably would. Like that wine with antifreeze from Austria.

[dennis]

Was it as bad as the French stuff with the cow blood in it?

[Andy Hall]

I never tried it, Dennis.

[Stuart Noble]

We've already had the olive discussion

[Owain]

Mmmm, black pudding wine. Pregnant mothers can probably get it free on the French NHS.

Owain

[The Medway Handyman]

Try telling Popeye & Bluto that.............

[Pete C]

Not knocking the oil but it looks a little pricy for what it is...

I'd prefer something like:

cheers, Pete.

[Mj]

Nah, much prefer the Linguine with Squid Ink

[dennis]

You have never drunk French red wine?

[Andy Hall]

Of course.

[Tim Decker]

I was in the plumbers merchant with my argumentative 13 year old son. He asked why we were there and I said I needed to buy some olives. I ended up winning a =A35 bet with him, because plumbers merchants obviously don't sell olives! Never paid me though.

[Andy Hall]

No, they never do.

Don't think it gets any easier as they get older either.

The amounts by which you subsidise them just increase.

[Stuart Noble]

Well, I'm sure at some point during your entrepreneurial career you said, "I'm only doing it for the kids", and they believed you.

[Andy Hall]

No I didn't because they wouldn't have. Fortunately they haven't become actuaries, accountants or tax inspectors either.

[Stuart Noble]

Why fortunately?

[Andy Hall]

I think that accountants are marginally useful in that at least they will do the boring work of assembling numbers, predominantly for those that don't really need to know them.

Actuaries are simply people who found acountancy too exciting.

I've never found anybody other than a tax inspector who believes that tax inspectors form a valued part of the food chain.

I wouldn't want to encourage anybody's child to go down any of these career paths let alone my own. This is in the slight hope that eventually the Darwinian principles would apply and these "professions" would die out. However, it is not one of my major crusades.

[Stuart Noble]

That's book keepers. Accountants run the world and, given our obsession with the bottom line, maybe that's appropriate.

I know one who is still working on Twin Towers cases. When bad things happen, the boring details don't disappear when the news coverage stops

They're there to keep entrepreneurs in check.

Then how would the government know how much to tax you?

[Andy Hall]

Actually you're right. I'd thought of them in terms of a subset rather than a sub species.

They think that that's what they do. Entrepreneurs simply look for an alternative solution.

They seem happy enough to outsource their data entry to people who they claim to be their customers.

[The Medway Handyman]

What do you call an actuaries girlfriend?

Inflatable :-)