Buying shares/stock

How does one go about buying shares or stocks? Anyone know?

Well, there are several methods, but if you want to invest in publicly traded companies, it is best to use a brokerage.  There are online brokerages.  Most of them have a minimum investment requirement in order to open an account and then you can buy and sell shares online.  Most of them have a per transaction cost to buy or sell the shares (which is how they make their money).

A good place to start is here:
http://www.fool.co.uk/brokers/brokers.htm

It is a fairly good list of online brokers in the UK.  Most banks now offer brokerages as well, so if you have a good relationship with a bank you may be able to do all of your investing and banking in one location.

How does one go about buying shares or stocks? Anyone know?

In the UK most high street banks will give you a brokerage account a good place to find some advice is:

www.fool.co.uk

and

www.fool.com

Be very careful. I'm a US citizen moving to the UK and I am considering opening a UK brokerage account. Bottomline is if you are not domiciled in the UK I think its better to use a US account.

There are many restrictions placed on US citizens by the US governmnet when it comes to foreign investments, eg the draconian tax rules wrt foreign mutual funds and the tax reporting quickly becomes a nightmare. So unless you are pretty savy taxwise or have a good accountant who can do both US and UK tax I'd just buy US based stuff.

If you want to be linked to the UK or European markets to avoid currency fluctuation just invest in things like a European or UK  Index that are offered by many of the big US firms.