McPhee

I've been doing the same job on and off for over 5 years, any attempt at escape seems to just propel me straight back there (I've had other part-time jobs at the same time that I hoped would lead somewhere and I've done various college and OU courses to try and secure something better). I'm currently trying to decide whether to just accept that this is the path before me and push for promotion, or start setting up my own business of some sort (Probably producing and selling some sort of food. Preserves and/or bread are currently the front runners). Thought I secured a really good job a few weeks back, but then I started to hear that the company is about to go pop, then key people walked and my enthusiasm disappeared. Most of the things that attracted me to the job in the first place are gone (and it was a pay cut...).

Anybody else noticed a huge jump in the time spent being spawn camped/spawn camping since the update? Almost every game of conquest seems to be like that now, one team gets anhialated. It's killing my enjoyment of the game

Gaggle sums it up pretty well for me. Was really saddened when I read this on the Guardian site earlier. Surprised this thread has so few replies tbh.

Yeah, I can definitely accept X-Men as a separate universe for films. In a lot of ways it works better, imagine working the 5 X-Men films in to the Marvel movieverse. Too many characters there for anyone not familiar with comics. Having Wolverine appear in a film or two would have been cool though. Spidey is the tragedy tbh. It would be ace to see him fighting with The Avengers, or Iron Man saving his arse in his own film. It's a shame it's unlikely to ever happen. Fantastic Four can die in a hole though. Dire films, and I don't find much to like in the comics either. I'd rather they kept them out!

The (now former) staff at my local Gamestation left an interesting note in the window. They claim they were the highest taking store on the region (either GAME or Gamestation) and were incredibly disappointed that the management and the administrators chose to dispose of the stores with the shortest leases rather than preserving the good stores and closing the under performing ones. Interesting if true.

Apologies for any offence caused. The view I got of the way staff were behaving was based on experiences in my local stores last week. Maybe the staff were convinced that everything was fine, and that the silly trade-in prices they were giving for store credit were part of some master plan to save the company. There was a board outside my local GAME advertising the Star Wars Xbox pre-order deal, with an extra manager's special discount if you traded in your old Xbox over the weekend. It's been common knowledge on the web for weeks that these consoles won't be sold by GAME, so I just saw it as the store manager's cheap ploy to get used consoles for effectively nothing. Similar situation with games, they were offering special prices with store-made advertising advising people to trade in anything they weren't using for credit as the prices will never be as good again. The whole thing annoyed me on Friday/Sunday when I was in town. When I saw the news this morning it really hit a nerve, over the weekend I only suspected the company was trying to rob it's customers. The news that they weren't going to accept gift cards confirmed it (It's also interesting that you were still able to issue store credit right up to closing. Were you accepting it to pay for goods? My local stores weren't. Not sure if they were still issuing it or not though).

Scum. For the past week my local Game and Gamestation have had boards outside encouraging customers to trade in their games in exchange for store credit. They've been offering extra to customers if they take store credit. They've also been pushing deposited pre-orders hard. Pretty sure this was planned all along and they have been taking goods and money from customers without any intention of paying anything back. Thieving scumbags tbh. Hope they burn (also got significantly less sympathy for the staff who have been party to this con).

Even on my slow 2Mbps connection a 20GB PC game downloads over 2 nights. Certainly doesn't put be off buying via download. Generally won't pay anything like full retail for download games though, £25 is about my limit.

Maybe licensing laws need changing, allowing councils to revoke licenses if they deem that alcohol is being sold irresponsibly (volume of measures/price). In my uni days I went to one pub opening that was doing Vodka at 40p/shot then increased by 10p a day until Saturday night (90p). Prices stayed at 90p/shot after that. At the time it wasn't as big a problem as it is now, students had very little disposable income and so prices needed to be cheap to draw people in. Problem is, most students have as much as a grand a month disposable income now (the rise of Jack Wills and Urban Outfitters being testament to this).

I'm glad they finally got around to doing this. The pub trade and small producers have been calling out for it; the increased duty has hit them hard while larger companies like Diageo and AB InBev have simply cut their margins, cut back on production costs and continued to sell their products cheaply. Likewise with the supermarkets, they've cut back the profit margin and focused on volume sales/drawing customers in to store with deals instead. The end result is the pub trade losing out, small producers losing out and the louts pre-loading at home, away from the supervision of barstaff and doormen. Only thing I will say is IMO 40p per unit isn't enough. It's already easy enough to get a 1ltr bottle of Vodka for £15 (37.5p per unit). All this move will do is force supermarkets to add an extra £1 to the bottle (rendering own/budget brand drinks pointless?). Not a lot really and I'm not sure it's enough to make the impact that's needed.

I will be amazed if anyone tries to buy GAME; high street multimedia retail is dead. The only national players left are GAME, HMV and the supermarkets. HMV and GAME are unlikely to see 2013, which leaves the supermarkets (who make so much money elsewhere that games sales/losses barely matter). If someone thinks that they can magically turn things around and profit where GAME, HMV, WHSmiths, Virgin, Zavvi, Woolworths and many others failed then good luck to them. Personally, I remain skeptical. From what I gather, GAME own their stock (which is why they haven't been able to source new releases recently). If they go in to administration then expect a fire sale, everything will have to go (if I remember the Woolworths one right, they even sold the fixtures and fittings). The current sale they have going on is just there to clear some stock at more reasonable prices before the administrators take over.

Thank you to you and your friend Rummy. It's the roof terrace site, formerly Chez Gerrard. I spotted the poster on the doors at the top of the stairs leading up. It was the staircase on the south east side, opposite the transport museum. I can't remember what businesses it was in between, though I think one was a French bakers/cafe chain thingy (the name escapes me). If I can find a map when I get home I'll mark Olin on there. I've emailed a few of the addresses on their website, hoping that somebody has some info. Thanks again for the effort

I was walking through Covent Garden earlier when I spotted a poster advertising that a Brassiere Blanc was coming to the roof terrace soon. It also contained an advert for positions they're looking to fill. I was in a rush, I didn't copy down the details or read it through properly; I figured I could just check it on the web later. The problem is, I got home, checked the website and... there's no mention of Covent Garden. I'm not exactly local (I still live in the midlands...) so I can't go back and check the poster. Is there any chance one of you helpful people could take a photo of it if you're passing at some point this week? The poster is on the door to the restaurant, southeast side of Covent Garden (opposite the transport museum). Thanks a bundle! (hopefully )

I doubt there would be so much anger among brewers and publicans if they saw evidence that the government were working to curb the actions of the supermarket trade. As it stands it just looks like the government are out to kill pubs rather than actually fix the social and health problems associated with drinking too much. Beer is fast approaching £3.50/pint in most towns (£4.50 in London) yet you can walk in to your local Tesco and buy a litre bottle of branded Vodka (40 standard 25ml measure shots!) for under £15 or 24 cans of Carlsberg (18.56 pints) for £16! Even then, people could bury their anger if the tax was actually solving anti-social behaviour relating to alcohol consumption (or indeed, alcohol related injury). The problem is, no such thing has happened. People just buy from the supermarket, drink at home and then venture in to town later to go clubbing. Personally I don't mind the current beer (pub) prices. I think they're fair. It's too expensive to drink in vast quantities but cheap enough to afford a few pints a couple of times a week. In the interests of fairness though, I think action needs to be taken against the supermarkets to force a price rise. It doesn't take a genius to work out that something's wrong when the same bottle of Vodka you can buy from a supermarket for £15 would cost you £112 in the average pub (i.e. 40x£2.80). It's curious that the Scottish parliament is (and has been) tackling the supermarket trade, yet Westminster isn't interested. Not that I think the supermarkets have been lobbying our corrupt government or anything .

I thought that all of the extra content was coming to PC anyway? A lot of it is already out.