Late to this one but I have two “trail dogs”, two labs who can happily run along all day, very obedient, well mannered and great when running alongside me on my bike.

However, dogs like humans can be a bit thick at times and even though I trust mine 99%, that 1% chance that they will just stop dead in the middle of a trail and cause a nuisance is reason enough that they should not be at trail centres.

Surely just politely explain to her that it is a quiet carriage no?

Every case is different so go on your gut feeling, life is a bit too short to let it bring you down…however…I had something similar where a truck went into the back of me on a slip road as I was joining a motorway. Their version of events wildly differed depending on which way the wind was blowing they claimed I cut in front, I braked too hard etc etc, fact was it was a single lane and I was stationary due to an accident ahead.

Took 20months as they kept elevating the legal claims, first it was just for damage to the vehicle, then whiplash, then out of work expenses then I think he died….it got ridiculous. It is all designed to make you cave in and fold. I eventually got to the point where I instructed my solicitor to set a court date and to stop all discussions on blame.

2 weeks later they admitted liability and paid up.

I’ll take that as a yes.

I would offer up some advice, read through your contribution to the thread. Just read it. Not once have you contributed a fact. You came in half way through and just started attacking. You have done it to me and many others on a regular basis. I have provided factual based data on poverty gap, Medicare, Medicaid, university tuition, racial inequality.

Your main contribution was calling people stupid. Contributions like yours are the reason this forum has gone so downhill over the years, a shadow of its former self. I will let you have the last word.

JY, do you just stalk threads looking for an argument? It really is very odd behaviour.

Some good points above and I would second the comments made about Medicare and Medicaid, this is something most Europeans don’t understand.

On the tuition fees yeah they can be incredibly expensive in the U.S. There does seem to be more general access to charity and bursaries though. I know a lot of friends kids who pay nothing for tuition in the U.S. but also know a few who pay an eye watering amount. This is one of the very few areas where racial inequality is slightly improving with a huge amount of access to free tuition for minorities.

He was on the grassy knoll didn’t you know.

A kilo of strong stilton, that is how it will end.

I always sleep walk after eating blue cheese so he must too, so send it as a peace offering and then wait outside at 1:30am as he sleepwalks out in his PJs.

I have not taken anything personally, that is your assumption. I spend around equal amounts of time between the UK and US and they both have big inequality levels of a similar proportion.

No name calling, it does not promote equality.

no one is bashing they are saying what you said was wrong because it was wrong.

I will let you have that last word, I know how important it is to you.

I’ve said my piece, carry on with the bashing.

See there you go again, such an argumentative tone.

Ok so I will tell you that the level of service in a US doctors is significantly better than a UK doctors, based on personal opinion of course.

Yes, what tony said. Racial inequality in the US is a huge problem and is only getting worse.

A good example on cost is that the average tax contributions in the UK to the NHS are somewhere around 800GBP if I recall correctly.

The average monthly individual healthcare premium in the US Is around $250, so $3000 a year.

So as a direct comparison, that means that people in the US pay around $1800 a year in healthcare costs more than in the UK.

Now take into account that average wages are $15k more, average tax burden is 9% less and that your healthcare costs are also tax deductible, you can see that it is not as crazy as the media make it out to be.

Junkyard, as with most people on here I am not going to engage your constant need to antagonize people.

I don’t think the UK or US or other countries I have lived in are perfect, they are not by any means. I just take exception at incorrect facts.

You have to take into account that average wages are $15,000 a year more in the US with an average tax burden of around 9% less.

If you do a compartor of how much of your tax burden in the UK goes towards NI and NHS contributions then compare it to the average spend on private healthcare coupled with the overall lower cost of living it all evens out.

For every graph, there is another story..

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/may/02/uk-child-death-rate-scandal-poverty

I say plenty bad about the US, I live there for around 6 months of the year. Just take exception to incorrect facts.

Where would you like me to start? Standard of driving is awful. There, is that good?

Let’s not start down the comparison of NHS level of service to other countries. It’s not a stellar universal record that’s for sure.

I post when I want, I am like all others on here, take exception when incorrect information is being peddled as fact.

Using the two most common indexs

1. The ratio of the average income of the richest 10% to the poorest 10%

UK 14%
US 15%

As a comparator, Norway is 6.1%

2. The ratio of the average income of the richest 20% to the poorest 20%

UK 7.2%
US 8.4%

As a comparator, Norway is 3.9%

So no, not far far worse. Bad compared to Norway though.

Ok, so it is just about feeling better about yourselves. Understood.

The US has Medicaid and medicare. No one slips through the net.

The mis-information peddled in the UK media that people don’t get treated and die in the US is about as accurate as the crap that is peddled in the US media about the NHS.

Don’t believe everything you read.

The total lack of a safety net is just barbaric in a supposedly first world country

Same can be said about the UK. You pretend that the countries are very different yet they are not.

You use income inequality as a good example, but based on the UN figures the UK and the US are roughly the same.

Again, there seems to be a fascination / obsession in the UK to sling mud at the US yet the big stick in the eye at home is not being addressed. Very odd behaviour.

What I am trying to say is that you are taking what you read in the press and inaccurate polls and stating it like fact. A bit like what Donald Trump does. It simply is not like that. One thing that you find incredulous is normal to other people and vice versa.

Don’t me misled by inaccurate facts, that is the downfall of meaningful conversation.

A good example is the above regarding destitution for the poor and how f$$ked up America is, yet according to OECD and World Bank figures, the US and UK both have 15%, the same level. So whilst pointing out that one country is f@cked up, the one you are living is no better.

A better question to ask would be why does Italy have 30% of their population living below the poverty line?

People in glass houses should not throw stones. I have had the great fortune to live in 4 very different countries so far in my life and by far none of them were perfect in anyway whatsoever. However to believe what is written in one survey and to ignore the huge problems in ones home country is very naïve.

It is easy to bring the attention of a speck in another persons eye than it is to deal with the large branch sticking in your own.

Funnily enough working in America everyone over here thinks that Europeans are overworked, underpaid with a dire quality of life.

Your assumptions on how Americans are is very different from reality, as there’s are about you.

Do not make the mistake of taking note of polls, as has shown recently most polls are complete and utter crap.

The OECD put the quality of life of the UK significantly behind that of the US in their most recent survey.

Don’t take this out of context. This was all related to the Keystone XL pipeline which has high political rammifications. They voted that climate change is not a hoax. Good, but voted that the Keystone pipeline would not adversely affect climate changes (i.e. man made). It was highly political aimed at this one contentious subject.

I’ve just given the bestman a heads up not to do the gag about how he got her phone number.

As the others state do not do LA.

Road trip suggestion:

San Diego – Joshua Tree National Park – Santa Barbara – Monterey – San Francisco – Napa – Yosemite – Vegas / Grand Canyon

I currently live next to the busiest land border crossings in the world – San Diego / TJ.

Over 70,000 people make the crossing from Mexico into the US each day, and over 70,000 go back again.

They all come to work, they earn their money, then they go home again.

The crap you read in the press is just that, crap.

The way that we categorize Gender, identity, sexuality etc is already obsolete. We have evolved from acceptance of heterosexuality to include bisexual, homosexual and more recently transexuality. But those categories are not correct. Gender / identity / sexuality is a very long sliding scale.

Some identify themselves as male, some as female and in-between those two is a huge scale. Same on sexual preference.

Eventually distinguishing anything based on sex will be defunct.

Delta have recently been overhauling their aircraft and have upgraded their entertainment systems. I used to avoid them but flew to Connecticut with them 2 months ago and their service was much much improved.

There is only one you need to consider..

I can’t imagine it is worth buying anything right now with the exchange rate as it is. Remember to add sales tax on the prices you see too.

In the past I have taken a strip of metal plate and screwed it down to the wooden door frame so it overlaps both the door and brick wall (door opens inwards). Depending on how your door opens this will work the best. This provides no access to either side of the wooden frame to jimmy anything open.

Have you thought about electrifying the door handle?? :wink:

The last trip to the states had the air of war time and fear

Funny, living here and that is not the case at all, just a minority media making it seem that way. Don’t believe all the crap you read. :roll:

30% of Republican voters…

Already done.

Who’s the idiot now?

One in four? Yet more anti-American nonsense. They polled 540 people out of 600million who you can bet your ass were targeted to get the answer they wanted to their question.

i’ll take one for xmas

I got suspended from my C of E school for the last week of school for not singing Christmas carols. I had a teacher scream at me because I was pointing out the basic errors in the Christmas story to the whole class. I asked the teacher why he was screaming and he just walked to the headteachers office and told the headteacher that I had called him a Fing C and asked that I be removed from school, which I was.

I was a little prick at school but that teacher was a monumental bellend.

Got that off my chest, saved me $3000 with my shrink.