I am not from W Yorks and I used to live in the Stockport area.

I've never been to Stockport, but look forward to visiting sometime. My father's family moved there from Middlesbrough in about 1914. I've never been to Middlesbrough, either; would a move from Middlesbrough to Stockport be considered going up in the world, or down?

Apparently, the biggest tourist attraction in Stockport are the Air Raid Shelters. According to the promotional materials,

"Did you know . . . that the shelters also had 16-seater toilets!
Did you know . . . everyone had to possess a gas mask and carry it with them wherever they went."

I just mention the toilets to tie in with another interesting discussion currently in progress.

Well crudely speaking a 16 seater toilet would certainly involve the use of gas masks.........

I'd give it ten minutes, if I were you...

If it's a 16-seater, that ten minutes ain't never gonna come. Also, some of the stuff they ate in the war, you might want to give it 20 minutes.

Definitely up

I blame myself for this. I introduced "toilets" to the discussion. Not content with this, "gas-masks" were mentioned on the next line. What is it with BE & toilets? Hmm?
In future I'll confine myself to the following concepts;
Bacon
Battle of Bunker Hill
American Driving Tests
WWII
Beer
Cheese
Weather

Respectfully disagree, especially on the car insurance thing. I am still mystified at how low the auto rates are here.

I'm thinking there's something he knows that we don't. And I'd love to know.

Maybe if you went to ABC insurance and got the bare minimum, with exchange rate you just might see it.....

Well, we are both USC's, been here for a while, no claims (apart from hail damage) and for two cars we still pay $80 a month, that's pretty cheap, but when you take that over the year and add in that it cost us over $400 to get them registered (for a year) and I am thinking it is cheaper in the UK?

When we came to live here we paid the same amount per month for car insurance as we did in the UK per year.

Are you insane?

Now there are some posts that Bob makes that make you question his sanity, I don't think this is one of them.

I agree with him here that raising taxes would be beneficial (well taxes for rich people anyway, not taxes on people like me obviously).

I'm with you. I just want to be left alone. If and when I want help, I'll ask for it.

And another thing, when paying at the register at Walmart, I don't need to be asked if I found everything okay (which is obviously just the latest bullet point in the Shopkeeping for Dummies handbook). The answer is: (a) if I hadn't found everything okay I wouldn't be at the checkout because I'd still be looking for it, and (b) I don't believe for a moment that Walmart has a robust and effective process for a checkout person to resolve a complex product-location issue, so let's just spare me the bother of saying "yes, I found everything okay", okay?