I would suggest as usual you are struggling with comprehension - maybe you need to visit your local library?

I would suggest its you that has the problem if you think that by visiting a library you have somehow lost out compared to an alternative. It's free.
Maybe you never got that pay rise from your employer because you were always online looking for books instead of doing that in your spare time like everyone else. When you go out for a drink with your friends do you invoice them for the time spent with them?

Good to see that one of the most jingoistic of British tabloids has managed to make a balls-up on the front page.

Here's the Daily Express celebrating yesterday's British gold medals. Only problem is, it's a photo of the Dutch dressage team:

50 Shades of Grey?

FFS we're talking about books here, not some soft-core, chick-lit, pulp-fiction trash

Opportunity cost is very subjective - would I rather shop at play and use the extra time to play golf with my son who is moving to Australia in September than meander through a library. To me the opportunity cost of visiting the library is very expensive.

So how on earth do you choose your book in the first place ?

You go online and see what is on Amazon's best seller list and just buy those ?
You walk into a second hand book shop and ask which book they have the most copies of and buy those on the basis that they must have been popular six months ago ?

You've never browsed in a library have you, you've never read sleeve notes and then picked a section at random to see what the prose are hung together like ?

I pity anyone who has never had that experience.

I especially pity anyone who thinks that half an hour on a Saturday morninh has to be costed out to see where their time would be best spent, or anyone who actually thinks that they are worth £xxx per hour.

How much do you bill your son for the four hour golf session ?

Sal Paradise – the individual who believes that, in "the real world", everyone can afford to buy whatever books they want; all sports facilities (and any other facilities) can be afforded by anyone – well, anyone worthwhile. Because if they can't afford books or sports facilities (including golf) then they jolly well don't deserve nice things.

And that's why he's never been in a library, doesn't actually know what else goes on in a library, will only discuss the issue from his personal perspective and would, presumably, be perfectly happy for all libraries to be closed and even more people thrown onto the dole so that he can then complain that they're scroungers.

The length of notice or otherwise was never my point.





So it's an agreement – ergo it's voluntary.



I'm not. I'm 'on about' your apparent belief that everything is hunky dory really, McDonalds and co really do need defending from nasty corner shops etc. If that's the case, can we assume that, in the name of profit, it's fine for landlords to evict tenants in order to make more money?

As an aside, had my hair cut last night (Marchmont Street). The salon owner is yet another business person saying that business has been hit.

Although, to be fair, you don't need to browse long to find something like this: