The Riff-Raff Element

[quote]We need to discuss this young man, face to face over a few beers.[6][/quote] Absolutely. Before the Archbish and his cohorts prohibit the sale of beer. I'll check my calendar with The Boss and drop you an email tomorrow.

[quote user="Russethouse"]The Arcbishop is in a position of responsibility and is seen as 'establishment' by many. If he was a paid recruiter for the BNP he could hardly have done a better job. [/quote] Oh come on Gay. If the position of Archbishop were a serious one he'd be in the cabinet as "Minister for Moral Fibre" and his responsibilty would be backed by some actual authority. He is establishment in the same way as Father Christmas. Britain is no longer a Christian country or in any other way a theocracy. It should come as no surprise to anyone that some people may still want to follow as system of laws based in faith nor that an archbishop should be amongst them. This incident should get him more column inches than his appointment. Which is better than being ignored, as he is most of the rest of the time.

[quote] Jon, elements of Sharia are barbaric nonsense and you know it. it has no place in Western traditions [/quote] Its all relative. About 300 years ago the British were still hanging drawing and quatering people. They'd probably have viewed the shariah rules on setting a minimum size for rocks to be used in stonings as to avoid prolonged suffering as being sissy. Western traditions have no monopoly on civilisation. Hell, we've only just stopped hanging and beating people ourselves. Personally I regard this as progress, but there's plently of people out there who would be delighted to see the return of capital punishment and, indeed, would be perfectly happy to "pull the lever themselves." We're a full hairs breath from barbarism - no further.

There is a certain piquant irony here. After all, leave aside the British desire to have access to alcohol, a certain degree of interest in sexual licentiousness and a general belief that women should be no longer treated as chattels, and shariah law does rather fulfil a solution to What Is Wrong With Britain Today. For example: clamping down on, well, pretty much everything; having no truck with same sex marriages, loutish behaviour, truancy, teenage pregnancy, the poor performance of the national football team and corruption in public life. All the preceding to be punishable with physical penalties up to and including death. The Daily Mail should love it. Plenty of people moan about the legal system in the UK – how unjust the speed cameras are, how the teachers can’t clip kids around the ear for fear of prosecution, how litigious the country has become, etc  and the Archbish pops up and offers some imaginative ideas for combating this – at least in some quarters of society - and everyone jumps on him… Actually, what really scares people about shariah law is that it is faith based. The UK may nominally be a Christian nation, but the idea of actually basing law on that or indeed any religous philosophy would scare the crap out most people. One of the great plus points of Christianity (at least the version currently in vogue chez C of E) is that one can profess a sort of general, in principle, agreement with some of the fluffier parts and comfortably ignore the more rigorous stuff. Go along with the idea of being quite nice to people, where this is convenient, but keep shopping on Sunday, that sort of thing.  If one could sign up to be judged according shariah law in Britain, but only by choice, it would be interesting to see how many of those advocating the need for a firmer hand (wielded with enthusiasm and without mercy) would be prepared to do so. Give the poor old Archbish a break. After all, freedom of speech and opinion is what we're all supposed to be about, isn't it?

[quote user="Deimos"] I thought that being married to more than one person was illegal in the UK (and that people could be prosecuted for it).  If this (my understanding) is correct, how then are some UK residents married to more than one person (at the same time) and not being prosecuted ? Ian [/quote] A-ha! Because in the juridsiction where the marriages took place it is legal. Think of it this way. In the UK I was married in a CofE church - a religious marriage in other words. But if the same ceremony were conducted in France by an Anglican priest the resulting marriage would not be recognised as legally binding by the authorities. Nonetheless, they very sportingly recognise that where the marriage took place it was legally recocognised and is therefore valid. Why anyone would want to marry more than one person at the same time, however, is a mystery to me.

Andrew makes a very good point - only the kit strictly required for the solar part would attract the rebate. So, for example, a back-up electric heater to a solar circuit would be excluded from the scheme, even though some might argue that it is an entirely necessary bit. And labour most certainly is not rebated. A competent artisan should break out all the relevent bits on the devis. You could consider a solar / electric combination. I've been very impressed by those I've seen in operation.

That does sound high...I think I'd seek a second opinion. It seems no matter how long we are in France, or how well we speek the language, there is always someone willing to chance their arm with a special "prix Britannique." The latest was a pair of herberts who claimed to be specialists in fitting solar water heating that my wife picked up handing out flyers by the checkouts in LeClerc. They gave us a devis for almost 12000 euros for fitting a kit we knew to cost off the shelf about 4500. They included in the quote 100 hours of labour at 30 euros per hour and several hundred meters of copper pipe that they shouldn't need. Assuming, I presume, that we would be unable to read it and even if we could we'd be too minted to care. Oh and there was no way that the solar system could be integrated with water heating from a woodburner. Prats. Happily we discovered that the plumber in the village - who has done all the work in our house and business over the past 5 years - had had some of his chaps trained to fit solar and he dropped off his quote yesterday. €5100, including a €600 grant from the Region and fitting only taking 30 hours...

I found this on the Beeb today. The article is actually about 'phone boxes and who still uses them (I do, if I can find one. Some seem to have been turned into Starbucks and similar, but most just vanished), but in it they mention that there are 70 million mobile 'phones in use in the UK. Even if we include those with no network coverage (there are some, appearantly), those sad, sad people like me who don't have one and the under-5's, this means that about one person in six has more than one mobile 'phone. And probably a landline. And a 'phone at work...how do they find time to do anything but talk and text? Are there people out there who text on two 'phones simultaneously while using a third one hands free to carry on a conversation with their mums? What would Darwin make of this in evolutionary terms, I wonder? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7228184.stm

[quote user="Hoddy"] I think that what bothers me most is that despite massive coverage, I still have no idea what the candidates policies are. Obama is for change, but what change ? We just seem to be told over and over again that Obama is black and Clinton is a woman. So what ? Hoddy [/quote] Interesting you say that. Neither am I. Nor anyone else I know. As you say one is for "change" and the other for "experience" and also "change." All completely baffling. Perhaps there are some policies there, but its difficult to tell due to all the froth. And I suspect that all the froth is mostly there in an attempt to convince the world at large that the US is a democracy. Not just any old democracy, mind, but THE democracy. A democracy where the highest office in the land is open to absolutely anyone who can raise quarter of a billion bucks.

[quote user="TWINKLE"] Also - have you noticed since they banned smoking in bars and clubs (halleluiah by the way[:)]) how smelly everyone is?[+o(] [/quote] Too true. Nightclubs that once reeked of fag smoke now reek of sweat and stale-beer soaked carpet tiles. Agreed, it is an improvement in 'elf terms, but I'm not sure it has necessarily improved the whole nightclub experience.

[quote user="Clair"][quote user="The Riff-Raff Element"]So what would people say to a section on the forum that was kept exclusively for posting in French? With nice, gentle, corrections for errors and a little mutual support.[/quote] There is a thread in French here Qui veut "chatter" en français ? et tout le monde est le bienvenu [:)] [/quote] And deeply excellent it is too...but I was thinking more in terms of a section where a number of threads could be developed rather than just one so that we could play around with different subjects. Just an idea. Actually, forget it. It was a stupid suggestion. Forums can get unwieldy very quickly if people just keep adding sections to them.

[quote user="Patf"]Well I think people are having a hard time of it nowadays learning french. I did A level french ages ago and only did 5 tenses:  present, future, past perfect, past imperfect and past pluperfect. No subjunctive. But at the same time we were learning latin grammar and english grammar, so it all hung together. More recently I tried to teach english grammar and conversation to a few russians, and the book I used opened up huge new horizons of tenses, moods etc. Pads - take it slowly and don't look too far ahead.[/quote] Vous avez raison, bien sur. Et, à mon avis, c’est peut-être triste, car, pour les plus part nous habitons en France ou nous avons une maison là, et souvant nous avons le puer de se humilier si nous écririons quel que chose en français. C’était regrettable qu' il y avait certaines gens sur ce forum qui, il me semblait, gagnaient beaucoup de satisfaction à dire « Vous avez fait les fautes. Vous êtes idiot » si quel qu’un a eu le courage d’écrire en français, mais, pour le plus part, ils sont parti. D’être clair, je dois dire que les gens français parmi-nous sont toujours, et sans exception, gentils. Les andouilles étaient britanniques. Mais, est-ce que vous avez vu les fautes d’écriture anglaise qu’on peut trouver parmi ces fils ? Normalement,  personne ne dit rien à-propos ceux. Et moi, je voudrais bien apprendre français. Donc, peut-être c’est le moment de créer une section dans ce forum où il est interdit d’écrire en anglaise…que pensez-vous, tout le monde ? Let's see - 170 words or so and based on my normal performance...50 faults? And at least two of the paragraphs will make no sense at all. But then, I don't get much opportunity to write in French in situations where I can be allowed to make mistakes without people looking utterly baffled or having 25 snotty kids jeering at me and pointing out my inadequacies (I really, really hate CM2 this year). So what would people say to a section on the forum that was kept exclusively for posting in French? With nice, gentle, corrections for errors and a little mutual support.  

Jon, your servant they ain't. Oi! Stop trying to spoil my Sunday daydream! I'd just got to the bit where the branch manager had finally kow-towed to my satisfaction and was about to deliver the line "And now you will dance for me! Yes! Dance! Lest I take my business to CIC across the road where I understand they are giving our free biros with every new account...." What I don't quite understand is that if the customers haven't got the money (which they can't have, otherwise they wouldn't need the credit) and the banks haven't  got it (because if they had they'd be lending it), where has it all gone? I've checked, and I haven't got it, so who has? It's all a teensy-weensy bit worrying. I mean, supposing that it never existed in the first place? What have we been building our economy on for the past 20 years? [8-)]

[quote user="Georgina"] The problem would be for me not being able to hire a car without a credit card which you need to go back home or abroad. I am a little worried that they are binning a lot of people who actually pay off their card each month, which even though some are saying they are a business, don't they actually make a percentage from the shops anyhow, so why would they do this?  [/quote] As m'learned friend WBB implied, what these sharks REALLY want are people who run up, say, £1000 on the card and on top spend £500 or so per month that they dutifully pay off but always with a chunk of interest. It is no accident that the industry is trying to shed cheques - it is the one means of payment that the prudent can use without profiting the bloodsuckers. We can confound them by cotinuing to use them and by taking our business away from those who refuse to either issue or accept them. These people are our servents and deserve to be reminded of the fact. Particularly now that they've sqaundered billions betting on the dogs and will be whoring for any business they can grub up. I love banks, me.

Oh, understood. But if the 30cents per kWh goes for wind power too, I'm buying a trubine to put at the end of the garden.

Fantastic - thanks Clair. Well, if any banks have any money left over from throwing cash at the deserving poor of American trailer parks[:P], they really could do worse than to lend to people wanting to festoon their houses with photovolatic cells! What a wizzard wheeze - a revenue gauranteed by EDF as security. Doesn't come much better than that.

I read an article in some expat paper about someone in Dordogne (I think) who had put solar panels on their roof and were flogging power to EDF during daylight when they made it, while buying back their needs when they did not. Now, I knew this was possible, but what surprised me is this: they are contracted to buy the power they use at 8 cents per unit, but EDF will buy from them at 50cents. To me, from EDF's point of view, this doesn't immediately look like great business sense, particularly as the highest tarrif they seem to charge consumers, AFAIK, is the "red" daytime tarrif at 32cents, HT. So, at best, they lock in something like an 18 cent loss on every unit they buy. Are these prices correct, or should that "50 cents" be 5 cents, a much more believable price for wholesale electricity? The EDF website is strangely unhelpful on this subject (or I'm being thick and just can't see it), but at 50cents a unit there would be a huge incentive for me to cover the several hundred square meters of roof (house, gite and assorted out buildings) with panels - even if they're not all exactly south facing - and put a dozen of those mini wind turbines in the garden. Back of a fag packet, I'd gross around 45,000 euros per year. And I'd presumably get some kind of tax credit for being dead environmentally friendly too. Add in the child benefit and I'd just be able to spend my time reading Graham Greene novels, sipping fine wines and watching the sails turn on me windmills while the cheques piled on the doormat (figuratively speaking). Life couldn't be that easy, could it????

I can't see HMG going through with it. Take 1.9million off IB and class them as what? Unemployed? Can you imagine what that would do to the unemployment stats? They'd be as bad as France's. People I know in the social field have always maintained that one of the side-line purposes of IB was to keep the unemployable seperate from the unemployed, so this chap is probably not that popular with the Powers That Be at the moment, even if they did give him the job.

[quote user="LEO"]This proposed ban is probably linked to the smoking ban. Many pub landlords in the UK have installed  patio heaters to make smoking outside more comfortable on cold nights. [/quote] Well these fag addicts should jolly well get themselves a warm jumper! That's what I did when my dad wouldn't let me smoke in the house. The whole thing is just indicative of a widespread decay in the moral fibre of the nation. What next? Patio heaters behind the bike sheds in all schools? Political correctness gone mad, yet again.[:@]

I've got one that many, many people find deeply annoying but which I really like. I heard it, oohh, years ago but I understand that it has recently gained in popularity amongst the management classes. I had a Texan for a boss once. When he came across something that really wasn't worth doing he would say: "The juice ain't worth the squeeze..." It sounded dead good when he said it with the right kind of drawl but utterly stupid with Home Counties received pronounciation.

Cast them into the outer darkness I say . I cannot think of a more pointless waste of valuable hydrocarbon. Except F1 perhaps. I don't care if people say "it's my money and I'll do what I want with it!" Fine - set fire to the cash instead. Rant. Foam. Gibber.

[quote user="Jane and Danny"]bought some in the local Bricomarche. If you want soda crystals... St Marc - Cristaux de Soude Danny [/quote] Ah - those are washing soda crystals. Very, very useful as a cheap alternative to exactly the same chemical marketed as "pH plus" by exploitative pool treatments suppliers, but not the same as caustic soda. I have been pointed in the direction of the local pharmacy, which sounds a slightly unlikely venue to me, but I'll give it a whirl!

Has anyone ever bought caustic soda in powder form in France? I need to make up a solution of a known and particular concentration, but the ready-made up bottles that are available in the supermarkets don't seem to say just how much in in them, and most of them are in gel form which just isn't right for what I need. I've tried our local brico's to no avail - none of the pimply youths employed to allegedly aid the buying public seem to know that caustic soda can be a powder let alone where I could buy the same. Any help would be appreciated,

[quote user="Cathy"]I don't think that there are huge numbers of people on this Forum with children.  Most seem to have grandchildren.  Am I right?   [/quote] I've got three children - 8, 6 and 17 months. So it's a bit difficult to say what they'll do long term, but so far so good. Though I can't really contribute much to the OQ.

Didn't something similiar happen with satsumas? The UK was the biggest market for them (everyone else eating clementines instead) but Tesco et al didn't want to pay anything like the amount it would need to make them worth growing. So many of the farmers grubbed up their trees and planted clementines, the price of satsumas rocked and the few that still grow them actually make a living these days.