As posted above hard to imagine how you can spend £1-£1.4m on an inquiry in such a short period of time. I call b/s on that figure.

… but not on his being a lying little toady? Good-oh, maybe you can explain what’s heroic about telling lies and denying telling lies and keeping denying it until you get caught? Is that the moral code you live your life by?

Cameron Brig single grain, around £20 Nice enough drink and a bit different being not malt

ZM bureaucrats

Their ship got into difficulties somewhere in the north sea and a nearby commercial vessel made its way to assist. Unfortunately, the darkness along with poor weather and captain error meant that the much larger “rescue” ship crashed straight into the ship that was in trouble, ploughing right through it. The rescue ship then tried to get back to the damaged ship by performing a standard figure of 8 manoeuvre…unfortunately the figure of 8 was so accurate that they ploughed right through the ship a second time, sinking it.

Have you ever read about the Battle of May Island

Possibly the same guy that called me to say his external email wasn’t working. I asked him to print and fax me a couple of configuration files. Printing and faxing was too much trouble so he emailed them

Wow.. I have an Oric-1 in my loft. Looks like they are going for around a ton on ebay!

I had a look – bl00dy h3ll there’s a zx81 for £130

Sqdn Ldr Christopher Draper – the “Mad Major”

Scottish West Coast, Glasgow to Fort William or Mallaig. a day trip on the paddle steamer Waverley with it’s awesome triple expansion steam engine will keep both of them happy


Heading north and west, there’s Oben, a bit short of beaches but alovely place, en route to which is Ben Cruachan, the hollow mountain which has a 440 MWatt power station inside the mountain.
Ben Cruachan, outside

inside


Oban’s a gateway to the island’s and Mull’s nice, outdoorsy but nothing on the engineering front. You can follow the coast road from Oban to Ballachulish then to Fort William which is a nice enough trip, but taking the road across Rannoch Moor and through Glen Coe is awesome. From Fort William, a steam train can take you to Mallaig or you can drive. Either way, you pass the Glenfinnan viaduct and if driving it’s worth checking the Jacobite timetable to see if you can catch it crossing the Glenfinnan viaduct.

There are other works by “Concrete Bob” Macalpine on the route. The combination of scenery and rail should work for both of them. If you do this, I’d strongly suggest a trip to Rum and a visit to Kinloch Castle, still ful of state of the 18th century art building technology. Some fantastic beaches up that way as well

why should a defendant pay for the palaver of obtaining it?

why not? If he was right, he wouldn’t have been liable for the costs. Tried to weasel out, failed, tough titty, boyo

To give the English something else to whinge about.

£20k on ebay
People who looked were also interested in motorised curtain blinds

From The Grauniad

Some doubt now being placed on Dunnichen Moss as the battle site. It may actually have been at Dunachton near Loch Insh in Strathspey & Badenoch.

Can’t see that myself – the stone is marking something special, and very few invading forces would bother with the highlands. Even the Romans pretty much called it quits just below the highland line after Mons Graupius (I think I remember someone making a case for Bennachie being that site)

Not really the formation of Alba probably had more to do with the joining of the pictish and gaelic crowns along popularity of the church, along time after the romans left

Nope, Battle of Dunnichen Moss or Nechtansmere in 685 where the tribes (given names by the Romans as mentioned in Tacitus’ Life of Agricola) under King Nechtan against the Northumbrians, pushing them back as far as the Tweed to pretty much where the border stayed since. It also formalised the concept of a High King (Ard Righ nan Albaeinn, High King of All Scots, note king of the people not of the land) holding sway over the other tribal kings. At about this time the Scots were settling the west coast, eventually defeating the Picts in around 834. In spite of the move from Pictish throne to Celtic, they kept the same ruling structure which lasted till the fall of McBeth in 1057 which ended the High King/sub King ruling structure.

Stone commemorating the battle of Dunnichen Moss – no christian or celtic symbology

Not really the formation of Alba probably had more to do with the joining of the pictish and gaelic crowns along popularity of the church, along time after the romans left

Nope, Battle of Dunnichen Moss or Nechtansmere in 685 where the tribes united under under King Nechtan against the Northumbrians, pushing them back as far as the Tweed to pretty much where the border stayed since. It also formalised the concept of a High King (Ard Righ nan Albaeinn, High King of All Scots, note king of the people not of the land) holding sway over the other tribal kings. At about this time the Scots were settling the west coast, eventually defeating the Picts in around 834. In spite of the move from Pictish throne to Celtic, they kept the same ruling structure which lasted till the fall of McBeth in 1057 which ended the High King/sub King ruling structure.

Got a couple of these and very good they are. Sizing seems a bit generous but bamboo can shrink a bit so fine.

Haggis
Turnip

up till

but they were born into wealth and privilege and had the best education money can buy so surely they know what’s best for us plebes

Jim Murphy – and if he needs a reference I bet Nicola will be happy to oblige

Probably leaner,
Possibly more efficient,

Shave a few minutes off examination times,
treat patients less like people and more like cattle.
we’re getting there

Nurses especially like to moan about the NHS, the paper work, the stupid hours the unfathable directives, but they genuinely care about people and thier welfare so they’ll carry on doing what they do.

No, they don’t like to moan, they’d prefer not to, and saying they like to moan is fantastically disrespectful to people who do a tremendous job in spite the crap the government keeps throwing at them

och no, we’ll welcome them with some healthy nourishing food

er what that says about the English psyche. England seems to be becoming a scared and angry place, turning more and more in on itself. Depressing to watch.

You seem to have England and Scotland mixed up

From what I saw, the party of fear and anger was UKIP. You might want to have a look at how UKIP did in Scotland as opposed to Scotland.

am i right in reading that the british tax payer is propping up the french, dutch and german national railways, enabling them to offer 25% cheaper fares in their respective countries as opposed to here?

yes.

you can absolutely blame the improvement in the rail network since privatisation on privatisation and however much we’ve had to subsidise it by is a fraction of what a nationalised service would have cost

I’m not so sure about that – got any figures or evidence?

project – Member

When trains had locos on the front instead of truck engines strung underneath coaches, me and another cyclist walked to guards van at front of train behind loco, some trains had guards vans both ends for some reason, found doors locked so we put the bikes in the rear cab of loco and took a seat each, a few hours latter arrived at major station, much annoyannce from train driver and other official people,as we unloaded bikes out of cab, we just cycled off down platform being chased by fat train staff
You have an awesome imagination, have you ever considered writing children’s books?

With Miliband out, Labour cannot repeat such a pitiful campaign and will probably spend the next five years building a party people in Scotland can actually vote for again, then it’s game over SNP.

PMSL – Labour will repeat the mistakes because the arrogance of Westmonster will keep them concentrating on focus groups and marketing and not the electorate

So you think that renationalising the private sector railways will make them work at the same standard as the private sector airlines? How will that work then? Unless you meant to include additional legislation to change the way the railways work, but if that’s what you meant, why won’t that work without renationalising as, as you point out, the legislation works for the private sector airlines?

If an airline had overbooked, you’d be more likely to be upgraded than be booked onto a later flight and you’d definite not be forced to stand or sit in someone’s lap.

The rail service should be (re) nationalised in order to SERVE the public.
You mean the way the airlines are? Because if they’re not, that point of yours doesn’t make much sense Mr Farage.

You should really know what your talking about before posting a smart ass response.

You mean like being aware of…

National Rail Conditions of Carriage:

39. Travelling in first class accommodation with a standard class ticket
If you have a standard class ticket (other than a Season Ticket), no standard class
accommodation is available, and staff on that train give their permission, then you may
travel in first class accommodation (or the equivalent) where this is available without extra
charge.

I’d have gone postal

Really? Wrap yourself up, stamp yourself, get to the post office, chucked in the back of a van, delivered to the wrong address.. etc etc. Seems a bit of overkill when all you had to do was sit in 1st Class and be nice to the guard.

Current rules even have different companies working on different bits of large solutions, and they end up not talkign to each other and spending millions trying to determine the boundaries between each company’s area and figuring out how to get the bits to communicate. It’s a disaster.

To say nothing of the time and energy spent on not finding a solution but listening to the various “contributors” to the system pointing the finger and blaming each other. Put that much effort into getting it right and we might just end up with something that works.

16 yo Scapa is produced under the new owners (Pernod Ricard IIRC) The 12 yo was prior to the mothballing/change of owner, making it a collector’s item in finite supply, so will appreciate in value

Scapa 12 yo, Scapa distillery was mothballed for a few years then reopened under new ownership. The 12 yo was from the former owners and will now set you back around £100, in 18 years your pal can drink it or sell it as the price will rise.
My “special bottle” is a 16 yo first fill Aberlour, expertly bottled and labelled at the distillery by me, so if you’re in the vicinity of Aberlour, that’s something to check out
I’m all for getting naked with some booze, not sure I’d make it a family event though

“Everyone’ shugging”

Nearly FIFY

Debbie Does Dallas – everyone was best of pals

The hypocrisy is amusinghilarious, first it was ‘we don’twant the Scots to be a big part of the Westminster system’ now followed by this gleeful falling over themselves to be stop us being a big part part of that very system.

Italy isn’t great.

In February I travelled from Catania, Sicily, to Tirano, near the Swiss border. Night train from Catania to Naples, fast train from Naples to Milan and commuter from Milan to Tirano. Sleeper compartment was small but well organised and comfortable, fast train was very fast and comfortable with decent and not too overpriced food, commuter was fine. Excellent trip. And if you want to not use the fast trains Catania-Tirano with a sleeper compartment for the night section was from 50 Euro. Fast Eurostars are a bit more

When did 1st class become so stingy?

1st class on the east coast main line from London a couple of months ago, nothing stingy about it. Tea and coffee as well as beer wine and spirits as well as hot food, sandwiches and cake. Wine was jolly decent and flowed freely all the way home. All for about £20 over the cattle class price.
No problems with the staff either, friendly and helpful

Top Tip as a rail enthusiast, if you cant buy a ticket before travel or arrive at destination station and get told to buy a ticket at booking office, ensure you take the tickets off the clerk, if a return (2 parts) out and return , as what they will do is keep the part of your outward ticket eg from a to b, and then resell it as part of a return form b to a, to their mates at a lower price.And defraud the train operating company they work for.

Top Tip as a regular train traveller – you need both tickets to do a return trip and if you only need one, then just buy a SINGLE ticket.