thisisnotaspoon – Member
in the 4 months we've been together

You're thinking this after only 4 months?

Does it feel like a match made in heaven?

Be original

Do not use jokes from the www, everybody will have heard them, numerous times….

Rely on your own charm and wit -maybe an anecdote about your early days together, thank your new wife for accepting you, (maybe congratulate her on her good taste) and don't slag anybody off.

Plan out what you're going to say and practise a couple of times, but do not read it out from a script. Remember, nobody will know if you've missed anything out.

Unless you're good at it, don't deviate too far from your intended patter..

He was already a practicing Christian just not a Roman Catholic. I think the conversion may have been more to do with his Wife.

Converting from a fairly fluffy version of Christianity to an arguably more hard-line, medieval version does puzzle me though.

Doubt he had much choice in the war though. Bend over and do what our American masters want is more likely what happened.

…with the belief/faith that Saddam Hussein was such a bad man that he must (yer, know?) have something to hide -although without a particularly strong military after years of sanctions and air strikes- and that it was only a matter of time before this something was found and everyone would hail Tony Blair as a hero.

Unfortunately for Mr Blair, just believing something to be correct doesn't necessarily make it so and he is now widely regarded with suspicion.

Alastair Campbell may not have done god, but Blair converted to Roman Catholicism (something I completely fail to understand) very soon after leaving office.

I honestly don't think Blair is a liar. I think he is sincere. deluded and quite possibly dagenham but sincere

Quite possibly. He seems to believe that he is correct in all circumstances. I suspect that having prayed about, he's decided that his deity is on his side because, when asked, his god didn't offer any objections…

-and unfortunately Robin Cook, who's voice would carry more weight, isn't around to speak to the enquiry.

Tony Blair is a shrewd chap. He phrased his answers very carefully and referred to "what he believed/s". Who can say whether he did or didn't 'believe' something? He's also been practising his lines for a number of years.

As mentioned above, it's probably what he didn't say that is of more interest.

Tony Blair somehow always manages to give an appearance of confidence. I find it hard to believe that his motivation has always been purely philanthropic.

I hope that they do have him back and give him a proper grilling, demanding real answers rather than allow him to duck the questions.

As an observer, it would appear that the US -controlled by a bunch of nasty bullies & fronted by an absolute idiot- had decided to invade Iraq, Blair went along with it assuming that justification would be found. Either proof of "weapons of mass destruction" (-whatever that vague phrase really means) or an act of aggression by Saddam Hussein. When none of these were forthcoming, Blair's machine persuaded parliament to back him and so, in his view, removed the responsibility from him.

Iraq being such a strong, threatening nation meant that it took a very short time to over-throw not just the 'evil' government, but the whole civil service and infrastructure, basically destroying the place with no proper re-building plan. How could anybody be proud of that?

When Blair was elected leader of the Labour Party I remember thinking that he appeared untrustworthy, having the manner of a recruitment agent/estate agent/car salesman. Many years later I have same view, although now he's a recruitment agent with a history of war-mongering….

neither do we want to cause offence to the delicate clientele of high class establishments

No worries there then!

Advice for a Newcastle stag do please

Go somewhere else?

That's nothing, Tony Blair is the bringer of peace to the Middle East.

Thanks. That p*sses me off every time somebody reminds me of it.

The deluded, power-crazed smug git.

He never made it back to his beloved Quantocks – and on a fine day, up on the top, it often gives me pause for thought.

I can imagine.

As another family friend -also a paratrooper, but a medic- said when I asked him what he thought when he was told that he was going to be dropped into Normandy ahead of D-Day,
"We had to do it, there was no choice".

He was dropped into the marsh next to the Rhine in the dark the following year.

Both of these chaps were very modest, ordinary but fit, adventurous types.
(edit: They'd never have described themselves as chaps, as they were working-class scousers 😉 None of my pretientious ways)

If I'd been alive then I'd no doubt have been there too, as many of our friends/family all seemed to go to North Africa and then to Normandy.

west country farm lads facing battle-hardened Panzer Corps, over terrain reminiscent of an earlier war.

Yes. When the family friend mentioned above (a fairly tough paratrooper, possibly on his 40th birthday) arrived on the beach at Normandy and saw Caen in flames in the distance he said that he and the other chaps expected to die there. He survived until his mid-90s.

It also picks out Monty as a really quite poor military commander

Yes. That too.

He was apparently quite inspiring when addressing the troops, as a family friend told me having seen him in North Africa.

Beevor's books should be compulsory reading:

"Stalingrad" Is an epic account of a truly horrendous battle.

"Berlin" is quite unpleasant, due to the accounts of atrocity after atrocity carried out by both the Germans and the Red Army in revenge. Heavy going. If anything is going to persuade you that war is futile, this is it.

"D-day" is Fascinating. What stood out to me was the fanaticism of the SS. It sounds trite, but so much destruction could have been avoided if they'd just given up earlier.

If you're over about 18, then just get over it.

Adults seem to place too much importance on birthdays these days.

Personally, I couldn't care less about my birthday.

Consider this:

A lot of people do little more than go to the office, drink beer and watch TV.

Taking that as a 'norm', although I'm not world class at anything, I'm inquisitive and will have a good go at most things so reckon that I'm not crap.

I doubt that many others here are either.

We do educate the population.

School education is free at the point-of-use in the UK and there are various schemes for adult learning, which is a good thing. I hope that people make use of them.

Sending everybody to university isn't the answer.

Healthcare is also free at the point-of-use, but that doesn't prevent quite a number of people failing to take their children for immunisation, health checks etc. -As a result, we have people who go to the homes of these 'difficult to help' people to try to carry-out the various health procedures.

What kind of society do we live in where people are attacked for trying to do better?

That's the underclass for you….

No, that's the 'difficult to help' class. I don't think that throwing money at them is the answer though.

It would probably be political suicide to say that it was a waste of money.

with enough money and finance these problems could be overcome

How do you propose spending the money then? Brain washing?

When you see documentaries based in developing countries, there appears to be a far greater appreciation of the importance of a good education and a willingness to learn than appears to be often seen in this country.

Exactly. Wind back the clock a few decades and I suspect that you'd see the same sort of situation in the UK.

Taxation is a tricky issue.

I do think that some people can't/won't be helped though.

But who could afford to buy its own anyway.

So, you penalise the people who have just a bit more than the poor, who then become poorer?

The people in the upper-lower/lower-middle range end up losing out because it is they who are paying for the government haemorrhaging money into schemes that are having no benefit to them or those extremely 'difficult to help' people.

Truly rich people wouldn't notice the difference, but then again where is the boundary of richness?

It is a case of vastly diminishing returns though. At what point do you stop pouring money away?

For example, I think that "Sure Start" is a great idea, but who generally use it?

-Respectable/middle-class people who travel to the centres from further afield. It suits my family, but doesn't really help the target groups, ie. those people who are 'difficult' to help. I think the Tories (not a party I generally like) might have mentioned something similar recently. Do you suggest compulsory attendance at classes that will benefit families/children?

In a variation on what I said before, you can take a horse to water, but making it drink a litre of water might require wasting 10 litres of water taken from another horse, who might have appreciated it more.

When questioned about this on 'Today' a few years back, Alan Milburn(?) suggested that a lot of people had been helped out of poverty and those that remained were more difficult to help. I think that there may be some truth in that.

I think unless you've seen generational poverty first hand its very hard to get a grasp of.

Having grown up in a typical northern post-industrial town, attended a comprehensive and having relatives & a wife who work on th ground in 'social' occupations I'm not that ignorant of what you are talking about.

One swallow doesnt make a summer

Indeed, but if say 60% of the UK people once lived in slum squalor and now very few people do, that huge number of people who got out of that squalor must have had something different about them to the ones who remain in a state of poor/poverty.

Could Attitude (or 'intelligence') have something to do with it?

As Zulu-Eleven quoted(?) above:
You are left with the problems of human nature…

social mobility would appear to my view to be the biggest problem, having worked as a teacher in a very socially disadvantaged area I've seen how hard it is for kids to break out of generations of poverty

2 generations ago, my family were fairly poor. 3 generations ago, they very poor. Before that ancestors died in the work-house and were buried in mass, un-marked graves.

My family had a sense of 'pride', and a strong wish not to appear 'common'. I suspect that this was significant for the following generations.

HoratioHufnagel – Member

I would rather be living now than 40 years ago

Won't people also be saying this and making similar arguments in 40 years time?

Hopefully. And?

I have seen people sifting through rubbish near slums and people washing/taking water from sewage-polluted water-courses in poor countries. Those people are DIRT POOR.

In a country where almost everyonehas the opportunity clean running water, food, clothing, healthcare & education I have difficulty with the concept of 'poverty'.

40 years ago ordinary people, amongst many other things, did not generally have central heating, double-glazing, 2 (or even 1..) cars per household, home telephones, they did not routinely go on foreign holidays. Social mobility was more difficult. Shops did not sell the range of foods that they do now. Televisions were a luxury. Clothes were expensive.

Of course, some people are poorer than others, but there are complex issues involved. Mental health, medical health, intelligence, addiction, peer group etc. etc. all have an influence.

Is giving people money for nothing a good solution? I don't think so.

Work-fare/job creation/new deal schemes are good in theory, but like SureStart, many of the people who make best use of them are people who need the help least and those that need the help most often don't take the opportunities offered to them.
-You can take a horse to water……

I don't know about anybody else, but I would rather be living now than 40 years ago and I really do not care how much wealth 'the rich' have. If I can drive a Mondeo, I do not care that Simon Cowell drives a Maybach.

I heard the commentator mention the F1 thing too.

thisisnotaspoon – Member

We were modifying ski's during my research project at uni, only where the KERS system gains fractions of a second, we were looking at 2-3 seconds over an olympic run!

I'm intrigued. What were you actually doing to the skis? Was it varying the stiffness as discussed above

The F1 cars use re-generative braking and then use the stored energy to propel the car forwards. Slightly different with skis…

I should have pursued a career in what I wanted to do rather than what I thought I should do.

Although I have been all over the world, I should have travelled more when I jad no responsibilities eg. A long overland journey by car/bike/moto, but due to work/career issues didn't feel that I could leave it all for 6 months or a year and pick up where I left off.

With hindsight these were excuses and I should have travelled, come back and started again at something different.

All in all, I have had a good life so far though.

Howies were good at one time.

Why can't you (and your ilk) show some respect and tolerance for peoples faith

I tolerate people worshipping Man Utd (or any other footy team), but don't particularly respect it. Likewise for religion.

Growing up in the UK, with its established church, 'ruled' by a monarch who is keeper-of-the-faith (to whom's family we must all defer) and having bishops in the House of Lords (despite the fact that the majority of people have no involvement with the C of E or any other church) it is difficult to avoid religion.

footie as a game is fundamentally good

Yes. It's the fanaticism about OTHER PEOPLE playing the game that is odd.

Some atheists seem to be more obsessed with religion that some believers.

Enough to carry out a suicide bombing or start a war?

I agree about "Football Fans".

Worshipping a group of blokes -from various regions of the world who play for often enormous wages- for a not-always-local club, until they move to another club for more money and then become figures of hate.

Abusing/hating worshippers of another (often local) team for no apparent reason. What is that all about?

Other groups that mystify me:

The Religious -Motivated by fear?

Royalists -Motivated by the need to feel inferior?

I think that it is very unfair to God that various cranks around the world declare that their particular set of medieval values is the correct one, that God agrees with them and is the only way to salvation.

How can they do this when God is incapable of speaking to them?

assuming Question Time hasn't got there first!

Unfortunately it would appear that many of the great unwashed felt that Griffin was being victimised on QT, rather than just being contradictory, puerile and completely unpleasant.

I received a BNP propaganda leaflet through my letterbox the other day.

I felt defiled.

Oh, and apparently the Nazi nasty scum won't raise taxes.

As somebody who has never had any sort of constipation and has a frequent, regular 'toilet schedule', I struggle to see the benefit of hosing-out by lower intestine. I find it hard to believe that substantial volumes of solid waste are stored for long periods in the gut.

It all seems a bit Gillian McKeith to me.

As such, it is filed in the placebo/bullsh*t section in my mind.

It is, and is worth a visit.

There are a lot of attractive ladies in Russia, but I'd be very wary of any of them and suspect that, even if not actually hookers, they'd be extremely high maintenance.

As above, the sleeper trains are an experience. The carriages are run by scary Babushkas who keep an eye on the Samovar and the other passengers are very "Russian".

The Kremlin is definitely worth a visit.
"the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy, VDNKh" is also worth a look, although it has now become something of a capitalist flea-market.

What a great use for Titanium!

Going to Russia is a good experience.

In the cities keep looking over your shoulder, keep your pockets zipped up to foil pick-pockets, don't step-in to help victims of violent muggings and don't look too closely at the groups of large chaps (in expensive suits with pistol-shaped bulges near the shoulder) who sit at the next table to you at restaurants….

You'll be fine.

For going native, check out Yolky Polky, it's a sort of Russian Beefeater eatery chain with good food and a great salad bar.

Red Square is an unusual place if you grew up before the 90s. I half-expected to see tanks and ballistic missiles on trucks driving past.

I suspect that a large proportion of their call-outs are for flat tyres.

I've even heard of MEN calling-out the RAC/AA to change a wheel for them 😆

Changing a wheel should be part of the driving test.