Not if we construct a proper minefield and barbed wire border along Hadrians Wall and refuse to let the b*gg*rs in through other Points Of Entry…

That’s the West Lothian Question in reverse!

NO! If they want independance they’ll have to live with the consequnces!

Plus, I always wondered why they ‘let’ Taiwan have so much freedom without clamping down. Its almost as though they are slowly allowing freedom isn’t it?

Well there is the fact that the USA wouldn’t allow China to invade, and as with Hong Kong the nearby presence of the Running Dogs of Capitalism aids the Chinese economy.

I’ve just read this. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Maos-Great-Famine-Devastating-Catastrophe/dp/0747595089 It’s mind-boggling how any nation ever managed to recover from that.

I suspect that, as with the 1998 Anglo-Irish (Good Friday) treaty, anyone would be able to choose their own citizenship based on where they felt their affinity lay.

If the Partie Quebecois couldn’t get a majority for independence from Canada even with the far more radical seperatist tendancy there I dounbt if the SNP can get a majority.

Which is why I say give the rest of the UK a chance to expel Scotland!

Brainwashing from the bike mags and tubeless tyre companies?

I’ll always use tubes.

But the eye-poking hazard! Are they compliant with consumer safety standards?

The clamp did seem a bit small for the oversized bars that ST forumites use…

With a bit of fettling and a change of tyres it could ride the trails again!

Think of it as having the capacity to offroad should you need it.

It also depends on what the business is and how it will earn it’s money. Is the site in the small town the only source of revenue or is there the potential to sell it’s product/service online?

How much did the land cost?

If you are asking the question I would suggest that perhaps you may be a bit too squeamish for business.

Are you palnning to open a business in a small town?

Whatever you choose to do, I’m afraid that your father’s funeral is another hurdle you’ll have to get over. For me my Mum’s funeral was almost as traumatic as the first ice cold shock of hearing the news of her death. As the funeral began the church bell tolled the hour and it really did sound like the clanging chimes off doom. The last time that I saw Mum she was alive so it does come as a shock when they bring in the coffin and you realise that Mum is inside it. I felt so disconnected, numb with it all. It was hard for me to sing those half-remembered hymns from way back in the misty past of wooden-floored school assemblies as I was too busy crying, and I wasn’t ashamed to do so, in fact I’m watery eyed right now reliving it. I’m not religious in the conventional sense, and nor was Mum, but the vicar who was known to us did his best to have an uplifting service. Though at the end when he offered her soul to heaven I didn’t think in the words of the Beatles ‘All the lonely people’ “No one was saved…” I just felt that she’d already long departed to wherever she was going and is still.

Some general points about grief. You can’t hold it in, and it’s unhealthy to do so, so don’t be afraid to let it out, and you will, often and copiously. You probably realise this, but you are a different person as a result of this, accept it. They say that time is a healer, I’m not sure about that. Time does distance you from the rawness of the event but you’ll find that when you think that you have somehow learned to cope, the deep wound to your soul can open and become tender once more. I’ve found that you don’t ‘come to terms’ (what a ridiculous phrase that is!) with it, or ‘get over it’, but you do learn to live with it, to do as the chinese phrase says ‘eat bitterness’.

Everyone is affected by grief differently. I’d recommend reading this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Youll-Get-Over-Rage-Bereavement/dp/0140236082 as an antidote to the usual self-help volumes, get it out of your local library. Don’t be afraid to talk, or seek solace wherever you feel that you will find it.

The forecast is for cooler conditions over the weekend, but a freeze is unlikely at the moment.

Warfare by other means…

By imposing ruinous sanctions. How would the UK react to a threat to it’s oil and banking industries?

I don’t know why but it’s just that some combinations of goo and patch won’t work, a chemical incompatibility perhaps?

Agreed, but at the moment the latest war threat comes from the US and EU.

Yet the yanks fall for all the time! Mind you, we’re no better…

Live traps. FFS! KILL the little b’stards!

Plus there was the rescue of an Iranian crew by the US navy from Somalian pirates, a chance to ease up on the rhetoric from both sides.

You need to borrow a cat or a Jack Russell.

Consider a blocked or mined Strait of Hormuz, the Saudi oil terminals destroyed and oil at $350 a barrel. Perhaps the shock to an already wobbly western economy is what will deter the Washington warmongers…

…we hope…

I dread to bloody think where all of us would be if either Alex Salmond or George Osbourne had had their mitts on the controls when it all went pear shaped

They would’ve done exactly the same, bailed out the banks and made a private banking crisis a multi-generational public finance crisis.

Though Salmond wasn’t the only one who thought that salvation would be found that way…

We live and learn… well some of us do.

It would really be stupid for Cameron to force the issue tho

Pehaps DC is being canny as well by picking on what he sees as a ‘safe’ target? It’s a useful distraction from europe and the economy…

It was film; Doomsday.

Those few years we will give us the time to sow minefields near Hadrian’s Wall…

There’s something incredibly ironic about Cameron (who couldn’t get a majority under an electoral system especially designed to give majorities) trying to dictate terms to Salmond (who got a majority under a system especially designed to prevent majorities).

Who on earth does he think he is?

The same upper-middle class toff who dares to tell the poor that they are a burden on society.

Why only give the scots a say? As an englishman I would welcome the opportunity to be able to vote to expel the scots from the union and the english body politic.

Celebrity Scummer. A group of the most objectionable celebs are glued into S**th*mpt*n shirts and abandoned deep in Portsea Island. The winner is the one to make it out alive…

…if they make it out alive…

There won’t be a total extinction but global population may well fall back to pre-industrial levels

I think the expensive stuff was moved out and sold on.

Seeks.

My father has the same problem. Whenever his back goes he places a hot weater bottle against the offending area for relief.

ASDA.

From what I’ve seen of BHS I wouldn’t shop there, and there is no way I’d queue at 4am on a Boxing Day morn to have anything out of Next.

Judging by the way the developing world seeks to emulate western consumerism the answer must be everyone everywhere.