Clark Kent II

Paul I have just about 30 minutes composing a rational, reasoned response to your last posting and then - in a moment of inattention - sent it straight down a black hole into oblivion. I can't summon the energy to recreate it. I don't think that the problem with MPs is that they are rich and sit as directors on boards, but that they go from university into party organisations and then into Parliament without seeing anything of the world outside. They (or many of them) are devoid of real world experience.

Serious comment: One MP gets caught in what looks suspiciously like a sting, so all MPs are castigated. PaulT implies that all MPs are rich. Are they? Certainly not on their MPs salaries. What part of Lincolnshire are you from Paul? If it's Boston, are you looking forward to a UKIP MP?   Not quite so serious comment: Francois Holland  doesn't seem to know what trousers are! Why are we all so po-faced about sex? There is, I'm told, an old Irish proverb: When God invented sex he intended it to be a joke. Nobody laughed, so he made it a sin. I wonder what they laugh about in Arundel and Brighton?    

I am mild mannered and bespectacled. I have not yet mastered the technique of changing my clothes in telephone boxes. I used to post under my own name but was convinced that this was not a good idea when Idun (under a previous identity) had her name and address presented to the world by someone who disagreed with her over something or other. My name was chosen totally at random - I cannot recall even thinking about it. My reincarnation as Type II is because of some technicality or other I was unable to log in, so I registered as a new member.

[quote user="PaulT"] In France, there is L'Eclerc but they are not exactly cheap.....[/quote] L'Eclerc? I don't know this chain, but near my French home there is a hypermarket called E.Leclerc.[6] This store, by the way, is not owned or run by the Leclerc company but is franchised. The same is true of another local store, Geant Casino. Franchising means that you are not going to get uniform standards throughout that chain.  [quote user="PaulT"]Think I have also read that at times when Tesco has an offer on a product they lose nothing because they tell the supplier to drop their price which to me seem to be bully boy tactics.[/quote] And do you think that Tesco is alone in doing this? ALL supermarket chains pressure their suppliers - including the sainted Waitrose. Possibly the most famous example of this was the way yhat Marks & Spencer treated its suppliers during the M&S glory days. Do you recall the milk price scandal of a couple of years ago, when farmers were complaining that they were being forced to sell milk below production cost? It turned out that the good customers were Tesco and Sainsbury. The real villains were the German discounters and the milk converters like Muller-Wiseman.

[quote user="powerdesal"] More people need to shop at Tescos, get the profits back up and hence the share price and thus the dividend ( we have a lot of Tesco shares ).[/quote] I'll do what I can - but I shall want a share of your profits ... I use Tesco quite a lot - I was there earlier this afternoon. All I can say is that of the supermarkets in my small town, it's head and shoulders above the rest. It is - easily - the most spacious and most pleasant place to ship. The staff are friendly and helpful, the range and quality of food appears to be very good. In comparison, Morrisons is cramped and quirky and both Lidl and Aldi give the feeling of being in the third world. I don't use the Co-op. There is an M&S food store, where, no doubt, elevated prices for identical products fool people into thinking that they are getting elevated quality. We haven't got a Waitrose - yet ....  

I suspect that Tesco's main problem is simply that Terry Leahy is no longer at the helm, and that the people now running it are just corporate jobsworths and not retailers. They can all read balance sheets and recite managerial bovine effluent but do not realise retail is one area where you have to understand your customer. I don't really see Tesco as a takeover target - yet. It would require an enormous amount of leverage. If you are looking for a High Street takeover target, I would cast my gaze towards Marks & Spencer, that's a company that has really lost its way!

I think that the most difficult French word to pronounce is the one which means "locksmith's premises".

We do have a constitution but it is not contained in a single document but many, starting, I suppose, with Magna Carta. You are right about the American constitution. It was written in times very different from today and its intention was to prevent the state from interfering too much in the affairs of (well off) individuals. It completely separates the tasks of making law from running the country - so that the president (chief executive and figurehead) is all too often at loggerheads with Congress (legislature) and ends up all too often in stalemate. In spite of the USA's image in the rest of the world its president is all too often quite powerless. The founding fathers made the constitution difficult to amend and so the process of government in the USA can be very messy and confrontational. In the UK, the executive is made up from members of the legislature, usually (through being formed from the majority party in the Commons) ending up with considerable real power. One of the consequences of this has been that governments like to hang onto power and accumulate as much of it as they can - to the level of determining how frequently dustbins can be emptied in Scunthorpe. Perhaps the central difference between the US and UK constitutions is that in the USA, unless otherwise stated, power is located at the lowest possible level. In the UK unless otherwise stated, power is located at the highest possible level. If it results in the breakup of this centralised power, then the Scottish referendum will have done us all a great favour.  

The sensible outcome from this should be a commission examining the British constitution and proposing a new constitution which will meet the needs of a diverse economy in the 21st century. My fears are that politicians, obsessed with the short term and quick fixes, will dodge their responsibilities and merely tweak a system designed as a system of stewardship for the 19th century to give the impression that something has changed. Cameron does not appear to me to be capable of strategic thinking and will do whatever he considers necessary to appease the more Neanderthal occupants of his backbenchers. His only qualification for leadership of his party was that his name is not Clarke.

[quote user="woolybanana"] ... However, to more serious things; without looking it up, can anyone tell me what the national animal of Scotland is?  ...  [/quote] It's the lesser spotted haggis. In a national vote (which wasn't reported anywhere else) it was a clear winner over the greater gum-booted bald sporran. [6]

[quote user="idun"]I heard something on a french tv program that was............ well bonkers, to put it mildly. Some french bloke, with what was supposed to be an important job said that they were tweaking Longtitudej bit by bit so that it would go through it's rightful and logical place which is Paris. And no it was not a poisson d'Avril. Mad, quite mad![:-))][/quote] Anything to do with this? I've taken it from Wikipedia - it is pretty reliable: The Paris meridian is a meridian line running through the Paris Observatory in Paris, France—now longitude 2°20′14.03″ east. It was a long-standing rival to the Greenwich meridian as the prime meridian of the world, as was the Antwerp meridian in Antwerp, Belgium. .... In the early 19th century, the Paris meridian was recalculated with greater precision by the astronomer François Arago, whose name now appears on the plaques or medallions tracing the route of the meridian through Paris. In 1884, at the International Meridian Conference in Washington DC, the Greenwich meridian was adopted as the prime meridian of the world. France and Brazil abstained. The French clung to the Paris meridian as a rival to Greenwich until 1911 for timekeeping purposes and 1914 for navigation. To this day, French cartographers continue to indicate the Paris meridian on some maps. The competition between the Paris and Greenwich meridians is a plot element in Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", published just before the international decision in favor of the British one. Then have a look at the entry for The Rose Line. Be warned, though, you will need to be wearing your anti-tripe protection gear.  

[quote user="Explorer450"]   I don’t want to sound totally clueless here, I think I’ve got the basics covered, pipes insulated, hot water tank drained down, anti-freeze in the toilets, we have electric heating which can be left on frost guard and we have a friendly neighbour who’s agreed to keep a key and pop in regularly to make sure everything’s ok. But I was just wondering if there’s anything I’m not thinking of?   [/quote]   A thought: check your property insurance to see whether you can leave electricity on if the house is unoccupied.   When I vacate my house, which is possibly in a more temperate area than yours, I turn off electricity and water and leave at least two windows ajar behind closed shutters. The windows do have security catches. This to allow a through flow of air.   The first time I closed up the house I made certain all windows were closed. There was a lot of warm air containing moisture trapped inside the building and, when the temperature dropped, this moisture condensed on cold walls on the north facing side of the house.   Some people suggest dropping a tennis ball into wc pans - if the water freezes, its expansion is taken up by the ball and the pan is at less risk of cracking.

How bad is my phone phobia? Pretty bad. I will not use the phone if there is any other reasonable means of communication, email is a godsend! My family, when I was a child, had no phone - it was either going to a neighbour or to the nearest red box about half a mile away, clutching two pennies in both cases. The telephone habit was never established. We had our first phone installed in our third marital home - when I was in my 30s. ! agree with what everyone says about mobile phones. They have introduced a new level of rudeness into society and have caused the rules of social intercourse to be rewritten

Definitely an Indian Summer here in 17 this week. We had 30degrees today and for me it is too hot. Thank goodnesss for an old stone house and shutters. No. It is still late summer, autumn hasn't started yet. It has certainly been very warm for the last day or two, but for me the discomfort has been caused by the humidity rather than the heat. Expect thunderstorms! [6] Indian summers occur in October and November and sometimes have special names if they occur around a particular date. October 18 is St Luke's Day, and warm spells around that time were known as St Luke's Little Summer.

I cannot think of a more despicable act. I think that you are showing great fortitude and courage - even by sharing your experience on this forum. I hope that you can be mobile again very quickly. What on earth was the motivation? It couldn't have been to sell it. Drunken prank? I hope that you weren't deliberately targeted.  

[quote user="You can call me Betty"]It's the same the world over. If they'd concentrate on playing the ball and not the man, things might get somewhere. [/quote] Indeed. "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."   Eleanor Roosevelt

[quote user="Benjamin"] ... I have a problem with the whole of this episode. For example why take a very sick young boy on a six hour journey and then round it off by driving over 1.900 kms.? Why take the whole of the family? Why not drive to the Czech Republic? ... What the family have done, by their actions', is to make a huge media impact. They could not have wished for any more publicity than they have received. If this gets them the treatment that they feel their son deserves, then 100% good luck to them and I wish them well. [/quote] I'm pleased to see that someone else shares my misgivings about this whole episode, Benjamin. I would agree with anyone who says that the CPS was unduly slow and heavy handed in this matter. The Spanish authorities have not covered themselves with glory either. However, the fact remains that the King family's behaviour has contributed to this situation. Their actions were foolish. They had advice from appropriately qualified clinicians but, presumably, preferred information from the blogosphere. Knowing retrospectively that the Kings were equipped with suitable batteries and food supplies in no way invalidates the fears that the hospital had for the child's safety. The populist media has conferred some honorary heroic status upon the Kings. Just think how would have been treated if the child had died.  

[quote user="idun"] ...  I cannot see what she could say that would bring him down ... [/quote] She could always say that he is not well developed in the  ... err ...  underwear department!  [6]

The family may not have done anything illegal (this is a presumption we are making) but they have been very foolish.

Indeed it is a mess. But what should the hospital staff have done when they realised a child in their care was missing? Shrug their shoulders and be pleased that another bed was suddenly free? The decision of apply for a European Arrest Warrant would have been taken a high level, probably within the Home Office. We are getting rather sentimental about this - the child is with his family and so on. But do we know that this is best for the child? When it comes to his welfare, his rights are more important than his parents' rights. His condition is serious and has been assessed by an appropriately qualified clinician and appropriate treatment prescribed. His father wants him to receive an alternative treatment which is not available in the UK (but suitable patients may be sent abroad to receive it) - we don't know what advice the father has been given. The hospital - reasonably - believed that the child's life was in immediate danger. It had no alternative. What would you have done?

Indeed it is a mess. But what should the hospital staff have done when they realised a child in their care was missing? Shrug their shoulders and be pleased that another bed was suddenly free? The decision of apply for a European Arrest Warrant would have been taken a high level, probably within the Home Office. We are getting rather sentimental about this - the child is with his family and so on - but do we know that this is best for the child? When it comes to his welfare, his rights are more important than his parents' rights. His condition is serious and has been assessed by an appropriately qualified clinician and appropriate treatment prescribed. His father wants him to receive an alternative treatment which is not available in the UK (but suitable patients may be sent abroad to receive it) - we don't know what advice the father has been given. The hospital - reasonably - believed that the child's life was in immediate danger. It had no alternative. What would you have done?

Jonzjob wrote: 'and now their little girl will have to carry that throughout her life and she is the only person that I have any feeling of regret for!' I'm sure that she will told some tripe like: "Jesus loved him so much that he wanted him in Heaven. You have just helped him on his way." There has now been another accidental killing. A TV crew member making a real life programme about policing was shot in a restaurant by a police officer. The supposed perpetrator was also shot dead. He had been carrying something that sounded like a technologically advanced peashooter. Life is cheap in the USA.

I have looked at Charles Vacca's Facebook Page. I did feel a little like a voyeur. The man was obsessed with guns and the Second Amendment. (He also seemed to like Top Gear. Enough said.) I wonder if he had time to consider the irony of the manner of his death? What is also unfortunate is that due to the USA's constitution, which almost by design makes the country ungovernable, no president is ever likely to get any Congress to rescind the Second Amendment.

[quote user="Pickles"]On a related point, I read on a newspaper's website in the last couple of days that if you use your UK-provided credit card to pay for road tolls, they are treated as cash advances, and therefore interest runs on them from when the payment was made. [/quote]   I have just checked my Nationwide credit card account. The payments I have made for autoroute use have NOT been treated as cash advances. They are normal payments with no interest added if payment is made in full.

Earlier today, I saw a number of scouts walking through the village. I assumed that they were on a hike, and that we were on their route. Later in the day I saw some more. Then my doorbell rang. I went to the door and found a couple of scouts. They told me that they were camping near the village and that they required food. I found this bizarre, told them I had only fruit and gave them some apples. Is this normal? Do scouts in France actually set up camp and then go begging for food? I'm sure this would be unheard of in England - it certainly would have been ... err ... a long time ago when I was a member of the movement.