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Most of it was hits we were already anticipating. Can't say I'm happy but I also can't say I'm surprised.

As someone on my Twitter feed put it, at least we were expecting it from the Tories.

I could definitely live without Daylight Savings. It's disconcerting enough to have the sun slipping away - that horrible moment when you realise you're going home and it's dark already - without needlessly jolting everyone's body clock.

Congratulations!

(Race you?)

So tell us, Mike... how do you feel about those horns?

Best one I've heard so far, wish I knew who to attribute it to:

"Prime Minister David Cameron has announced that he will be flying the England flag at Number 10 for the duration of the tournament. Well, I suppose it is a council house..."

Some people go to considerable effort to mask their IP addresses simply because they sometimes feel paranoid that anyone from the CIA to the next door's cat might be spying on them. Using stuff like this makes them feel a bit better - not safe, but safer.

I can also name any number of allegedly sane people who are convinced that if you don't mask everything you can while using the Big Bad Internet, evil mass-murdering paedophile zombies break into your house and feast on your intestines, or something.

En-GER-land, surely?

I think I gave up all hope when I went onto the *wedding* section of a *knitting* forum I belong to... and the ladies were all talking about the football.

Congratulations!

The only other things I can think of are:

1. Use a UK hire company (RH drive) for the few days of the UK section, from Manchester as far as the ferry/airport/eurostar.

Cross the water as foot passengers, or if you've got a lot of luggage and are going by ferry/tunnel, get a friend to take you over in their car.

Then pick up a continental hire car (LH drive) on the other side.

2. Buy a cheap second-hand LH drive car on the continent before coming to Manchester. Bring it over by the most direct route before the wedding, then start your honeymoon drive in it. It should last well into Europe... if it survives all the way back to Spain, you have a lovely souvenir, if it conks out, you hire a continental LH drive car at that point.

I should probably declare that I don't drive and I haven't travelled outside the UK since I was a teenager, so this is not exactly an informed opinion.

Can't say it's surprising...

A company I used to work for had some severe understaffing issues -small team, then suddenly about half of them were either pregnant or hospitalised within the space of about two months. Those of us who remained were all stressed out to the max trying to juggle the workload.

We desperately called and emailed head office asking for funding for a temp, or for someone to be transferred to us on secondment... what they did was send in a trainer to do a "Stress Management In The Workplace" course with us, or to put it another way, they dragged us away from our already overflowing inboxes for an entire morning so that a self-styled consultant could explain to us that if we felt stressed, we should explain our concerns to management and constructively ask for practical support such as funding for a temp or for someone to be transferred to us on oh no I've gone crosseyed.

I reckon you're probably right - it can be very effective for some businesses (eg "here's some video footage of Bonzo, an incredibly cute puppy who came to the shelter six months ago after nearly being drowned in a sack with a brick. Help save puppies like Bonzo. Give us money.") but for enterprises that are, um, less visually appealing, it's less relevant.

The tutorial aspect depends on whether your customers really need tutoring. Google use tutorial videos quite effectively, but then, you do need to learn how to use a Google product and lots of people still aren't confident to learn by trial and error.

And a rubbish video is almost definitely worse than no video at all. Does everyone remember WebCameron?