Clarkkent
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Posts posted by Clarkkent
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The bread and coffee version of breakfast at zero-star budget hotels such as F1 is about €4. On this basis I don't think your deal was all that bad. You are talking about France!
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[quote user="Martin963"]In answer to Clair's point, yes, things moved round recently; as part of the BBC's "20% cuts" it was decided to end the rental on one transponder on Astra 2 and cram everything/dump some interactive services into the remaining ones.
Not a good omen, picture quality is not going to be helped by decisions to reduce carriage capacity.
[/quote]Indeed. And there are rumours going around that the BBC is thinking of dumping BBC4 as part of its 20% cuts, "merging" it with BBC2.
How typical, in these days of dumbing down, that the one freely available channel that behaves as though its viewers can think is considered disposable. They wouldn't consider elimination of the tripy BBC3, the chavs would be upset if they couldn't get "Snog, Marry, Avoid"!
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[quote user="Will"]
Rudolf Diesel must be turning in his grave.
[/quote]Once again a foreigner gets all the credit.
The heavy oil engine was invented by Herbert Ackroyd Stuart, employed by Richard Hornsby & Sons of Grantham, in 1886. Rudolf Diesel did not produce his (admitted better design using internal compression for ignition) for another decade.
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I'm coming a little late to this, so I apologise.
The best drink to have with fish and chips is - sadly - no longer available. I refer to the Shipstone's bitter of my native Nottingham. A victim of Margaret Thatcher's ill-considered assault on the English pub.
As for wine? I only drink wine in company. In its various forms it's nice enough, but I can live without it. Under no circumstances would I drink wine on my own. It is a drink for social occasions.
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I vaguely remember seeing tablecloths decades ago when I was very young.
Seriously, how many people use them nowadays? Most people seem to like showing off the veneer - or even solid wood - of their oak or walnut or pine furniture.
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[quote user="marmite"][quote user="idun"]
Is it just me, or does anyone else go brain dead when they start blathering on?
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Try not pressing any buttons when they ask, quite often you are put through to the switchboard. Well it usually works for me.
Give it a try.
[/quote]Just press any button. The person you are connected to will sort it out. [6]
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[quote user="Rabbie"]SW17, I think you will find that things have changed in the NHS now. We have to attend the doctor's surgery every 3 months to get our repeat prescriptions renewed. so it doesn't seem like there's a lot of difference between the two countries. Of course because visits to doctors in the NHS are free there is always long queues at the surgery. Waits of over 30 minutes are not uncommon. Bureaucracy and efficiency seem to be mutually exclusive.[/quote]
I suppose everyone has his or her own experience of the NHS.
I make an appointment to see my GP and he usually runs on time, I have never had to wait more than about five minutes beyond my appointment time. If I wish to see him that day or within a specified number of days it can always be arranged. If he is not available then one of his partners will be.
I order repeat prescriptions on line and, because I live in the country, can pick the completed prescription from the dispensary at the surgery or have it delivered to my home. I believe that a decision was made some years ago that prescriptions should be limited to supplies for 28 days - presumably to minimise waste, but also, I seem to recall, to minimise the opportunity for overdose (which is also why there are restrictions on the quantity of aspirin and paracetamol one can buy in supermarkets). I see my GP once a year to review my prescriptions.
Should I require more than 28 days supply of any medication I simply place two orders on line.
The asthma clinic is run by a nurse, vaccinations for foreign travel are given by a nurse.
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Richard's point is valid, although I think that Bush was merely a mouthpiece for others. His philosophical foundation, the Campaign for the New American Century, crumbled very quickly.
However, I think that the real culprit is the constitution. Despite the pride that Americans have in their constitution, it is really a rather ramshackle affair whose main purpose is to make the USA difficult to govern. Seperation of the Executive from the Legislature - and the tension between them - means that any president is forced to spend his first term electioneering. Obama sees what he thinks is happening at the grass roots and tries to appease the electorate instead of proposing long term solutions. And, as we have seen, an opposition Congress can hobble a president by refusing to enact his proposals - as happened with Obama's budget.
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You think that Palin was bad? There's worse to come - Michele Bachmann ...
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[quote user="pachapapa"]
Glad to see the Mail is making a moral stand.
[/quote]
I agree with Pachapapa. This is more serious than bullfighting because it may well be training tomorrow's thugs.
I abhor bullfighting, which I consider to be sickening and depraved. But cagefighting is using children as surrogates for their parent's (usually, I dare say, the father) anger and violence as public entertainment. I doubt the children involved are allowed to express their own opinions about this activity and instead of being nurtured are being brutalised at the age when their social values are developing. They may well grow up believing that violence is legitimate.
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[quote user="Benjamin"]
Clarkkent
I hope if I disagree with a point of view I have a modicum of intelligence sufficient to express a counter point of view.
The word was used since you had decided to introduce the likes of Gaddafi, et al, into a thread merely to attempt to classify those posters who felt they had every right to defend their property, into a group almost universally despised. I don't belong to that group just because I feel I have a right to defend myself.
[/quote]I have clearly caused you offence, and in that case I apologise. I had not intended that people defending their property should be so classified, but I had perceived a tendency in this discussion towards a view of society in which individuals considered as evil should be destroyed as a generality.
I maintain that we do not have the right to deliberately and calculatedly kill anyone who has caused us harm. That such people may be killed in the heat of the moment, in the act of criminality, is understandable and excusable. As part of the compact that citizens have with a civilised state, retribution is administered by the state not by individuals. That does not take away from individuals the right to defend themselves but it does remove any right for revenge. Vigilantism and summary justice harms us all: it gives others the perceived legitimacy to exact vengeance on us if they believe that we have wronged them.
If the citizens feel that the process of justice is inadequate in the way it deals with miscreants then, in a democracy, we can canvass our representatives to bring about appropriate change. That this process is slow and cumbersome is regrettable.
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Interesting thread.
Why should anyone believe that bottled water is pure?
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Well, this has got people steamed up!
To Benjamin's claim of "claptrap" (I assume that that is a shorthand way of saying that he disagrees with me) I would suggest that it is quite possible that people with Jacob's particular ... er ... skills would have been recruited by despots like Gaddafi to help them in their quest of eliminating their opponents.
To DerekJ's question of whether I bothered to read the article he linked: Yes, I did bother to read it. Jacob's burglary victim did not know of Jacob's previous at the time of the burglary, though. As it happens, the burglary victim appears to have done the world a favour. (Though, who knows, had he survived Jacob may have eventually seen the error of his ways and reformed and opened a donkey sanctuary in the Shetlands. Then again, he might not ...)
Steve's and Sweet's responses raise the problem of "proportionality". This is perhaps the most difficult part of this discussion. It appears to be a principle which the police and the prosecuters consider important. If Sweet hits a burglar three times with her umbrella and disables him sufficiently to allow an effective arrest ... that is one thing. But is she justified in hitting him twenty three times and causing irrepairable brain damage, or killing him, after she has already seen that he has been subdued? (There was a case a few months ago involving two men, after a burglary, who went after the miscreants with a cricket bat, found them and killed one of them. Does anyone know how it has progressed?) Proportionality seems to have developed from the biblical injunction of "an eye for an eye". Often misinterpreted, this is a plea for restraint: you may not do more damage to your assailant than he has done to you - if he has damaged your eye, then the most you may do is damage his eye in return.
I think that what concerns me most about this thread is that it shows how fragile is the Rule of Law in some people's thinking. If we expect the Rule of Law to apply to us, we must allow it to apply to everyone else - scumbag or not. I would like to see prison used more effectively. I think that crimes against the person deserve stronger sentences than crimes against property. And I saw little point in sending the miscreant MPs to prison. They were shamed, their careers destroyed, six months doing community service wearing day-glo jackets in full view of the public would have been more appropriate. (Thought - prison doesn't seem to have done Jeffrey Archer much damage.) I also think that for first/young offenders there should be restorative justice: they should face their victims and make amends by repairing damage and giving over earnings.
The danger with "scumbag" thinking is that it can lead to vigilantism. Or to the sort of behaviour in Brazilian slums where feral youths are regarded as fair game by gun toting adults.
Right. You know where I stand now. If you disagree with me, then so be it.
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[quote user="Chrissie"]
Agree with you totally, idun! (Good heavens.)
Something I feel is terribly lacking in today's society is the idea of accountability and consequences. [/quote]
It isn't any lack of "accountability and consequence" that I am arguing about, it is the idea that the first and only consequence of breaking into someone's home should be DEATH. Is your flat screen tv, or the key of your Skoda really worth killing someone for? Do you really want to feel that you should have the unfettered right to kill intruders? Where does this savagery come from?
Defend your property, defend your loved ones by all means, but don't set yourselves up as judge, jury and executioner. You'd be no better than Gaddafi or Bashar al-Assad.
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[quote user="PaulT"]
And yesterday there was the poor judge - this has gone through umpteen courts and now he wants more information.
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Perhaps someone with a better knowledge of the way the law works will correct me, but if the travellers go to law now, it must be on the basis that they are using a legal argument that has not been uswed before. Therefore there is no appropriate existing information. The judge will have to consider the new argument and research statutes and precedents before telling them to vacate the land.
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I'm probably in danger of being cast as the forum's woolly liberal, but should life be this cheap?
If a child of yours fell in with a gang, and after a night on the Buckys, in a drunken haze, decided to invade someone else's property, would you consider it appropriate if he (or she) were killed? Do you really think that society would be better for everyone carrying a firearm? I recall a few years ago seeing some statistics about death from firearms and the figures for the USA were frightening.
I am all in favour of defending home and property, but that is all it is ... property. I know that there is often a feeling of invasion, of being defiled, and people feel unable to continue living in that home. But if you consider someone else's life to be cheap, don't be surprised if someone considers your's to be cheap as well.
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From the Press Association:
Sex-free British passports could be brought in to allow transgender people to opt out of identifying themselves as either male or female under plans being considered by the Home Office. Under the proposals, the UK passport could have a single box marked "sex", which could be marked with an X.
Does anyone else consider this to be ridiculous? Pandering to the insecurities of a very, very small proportion of the population. I can see that such people may be unwilling for their true chromosomal sex to be shown, but if they have (through homones and surgery) assumed a gender and an appropriate appearance should they not just accept the consequences of that?
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[quote user="Clarkkent"]
Earlier this year I was selected (apparently at random) while in line waiting for the ferry at Newhaven. I had to open my boot for inspection. As it happens, I don't travel with a suitcase but carry things in large, flat, transparent plastic boxes and it was very easy to see what I was carrying.
There were two men, one wearing customs officer's uniform and one with a dog. The only comment I received was for my taste in wine, since I had a dozen bottles of Buzet rouge.
[/quote]
That should read "ferry for Newhaven".
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But it doesn't appear to be so, Val. These states have very high murder rates which the death penalty threat does not seem to reduce. And in any case, the people who are executed seem to be mainly poorly educated, impoverished and mainly black. Middle class, white educated killers seem to manage to buy their way out of the death penalty.
I don't think that anything deters a criminal hell bent on doing his dreadful deed. I think that many crimes are committed by people who see only the "reward" of accomplishing their short-term goals and are oblivious of the long-term consequences.
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A very large travellers' site in Essex. The High Court has determined that it is not legal and the local authority (Basildon, I think) is now trying to enforce the court order.
One of the complexities is that the travellers have been led to believe that they have a distinctive ethnic identity and are claiming racial discrimination. I have heard some of them speaking and they sound Irish to me.
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Opas
I like the idea of hot water - I have thought of this if ever I were to find myself in this situation.
Or better still, a bucket filled with substances discussed at length in another current thread ...
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[quote user="sid"][quote user="Clarkkent"]
[quote user="Quillan"]I can't remember the names of those involved but when that farmer, Martin was it, shot the bloke in the leg and got sent to prison they interviewed the Chief Constable for that region who said that when faced with a person who is burgling your home and/or threatening violence towards you or your family you shout shout at them as loud as you can which should scare them off. Well if it were my MIL it probably would but for us mortals I would think it would be as much use as a chocolate teapot, stupid man. [:@][/quote]
Mr Martin, who was banned from owning firearms, shot an intruder four times in the back with a shotgun of a type not legal in the UK. The case was not one of simply defending one's property, it was far more complex. A jury, who heard all the evidence, convicted him of murder. This was later reduced to manslaughter on the grounds of his mental condition. Few people who actually knew him shared the Daily Mail's heroic view of him.
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Thanks for the summary, it's certainly given me new insight; I know now that the burglars are just misguided and I shouldn't worry if I find one in my house; he's only trying to earn a crust. [blink]
Get real! Chop their bl00dy hands off!
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I think it is you who should get real. You are clearly an admirer of Sharia Law, perhaps you would like to live in Saudi Arabia?
I have no time for burglars and I support the right of houseowners to defend themselves and their property against intruders. I am, however, fed up with people who consider Tony Martin to be some kind of folk hero. He wasn't.
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Mrs Murdoch demonstrated some spirit.
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CherryB
Just to back to Japanese toilets. Europe is clearly in the Third World.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3358291/Japans-hi-tech-toilets.html
EDIT
Is it still the practice in Greece to put used toilet paper in the waste bin?
Do you drink wine every day?
in French Food and Wine
Posted
[quote user="Joe"]What has the ex PM to do with an English pub for goodness sake?[/quote]
In the interests of "competition" she made breweries dispose of their tied estate. An ill-considered assault.
Whereas brewers often had used pubs to generate turnover, the property companies who acquired the estate wanted profit. Many breweries, without their tied outlets, themselves became unprofitable and merged or sold their brands to rivals and then closed.
Pubs became restaurants because food generated greater returns than drink. In the current economic climate, pubs are closing in droves and being sold off by property companies with restrictive covenants preventing their buyers from re-opening them as pubs.