There’s also the matter of capacity on the road network, a small drop in the percentage of vehilces using any given network can be the difference between free flowing and congested. So even, say, a 2% drop in traffic can make a big difference to road users journey times. The shorter journey times are what makes it appear that there are much less vehicles on the road than there actually is!

If you go through classical greek texts plenty of references to life only being tolerable with the aid of alcohol.

Nothing really changes does it.

This.

Yes, it takes the pain of existence away for a while!

Yes, and so you arrive at the same bottom line again and again – education.

You’re right.

But, some people need more than just education, they need to accept that education and act on it and in some cases need to be forced into acting on it. Behaviour change is a complex and so process (unfortunately) but eductaion is at the heart of it.

I think we’re going to have to pay more for fuel, power and goods before people (as a whole) start using less of them. But then we know this from the way the econmies of all the major markets have been progressing over the past few decades. Petrol use is only just dropping despite rising for 20 odd years, for example.

Molgrips – I think she was referring to the “makes everyone happy” bit rather than the “right thing”. Unfortunately the two aren’t always one and the same.

Of course, that’s aside from the intrinsic difficulty of “making everybody happy” and the moral and ethical quandries raised by doing “the right thing”. Those maybe lessons for another day though!

They loved it, are two bright and sensible girls with good road sense. They carried a mobile phone

This is the important bit, if you think they’re ready, they think they’re ready then they’re ready!!!

RE: Route choice: Have a chat to them about it, get them to think about the relative risks and figure out which is the better option.

Edited to add: Forgot to say, age is pretty much irrelevant. There are 18 year olds who shouldn’t be allowed out unsupervised and 8 yhear olds who could easily cope alone. No arbitary limit is required.

I do wonder how they sort it all out at the other end….

MRFs (Materials Recycling Facilities) are fascinating places, at least the fully automated ones are, loads of computers using optics, lasers and such like to look at all the stuff on a conveyer belt (no planes though), and then using a range of ways to separate them out including magnetism, centrifuges and compressed air blasters!

The non-automated ones are just a load of workers standing along a conveyor belt picking them out and sorting it all by hand, pretty soul destroying job I’d imagine.

Hello Kim Jong-un, would you like to play a game?

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

Whilst I broadly agree with those who suggest that the OP has to let things run their course, I wish this trope that ‘every parent loves their child unequivocally the second they see it’ would die.

It’s just not true, is it? There are many, many unhappy families around where one parent or both never reconciles themselves to the new addition(s). These can lead to deeply unhappy parents and screwed up family dynamics.

I’m not saying that the OP will never love his kid but blithly stating that they definitely will strikes me as unhelpful.

Obviously I don’t have kids though…

I do have kids, and you’re right. It took me a few months to bond with my first born, the second was easier though.

I was (and still am) sick of the whole “it’s different when they’re your own” b*ll*cks. It may be for you, but typecasting me in your role is a bit dense when it comes to something as important as this! Didn’t have the nerve to say that to my parents though.

I’m father of two, a three year old and an 18 month toddler. I regretted having the first (my son) for the first six months of his life.

I was pretty ambivalent about having kids, but my wife wanted them, and I knew I was going to spend the rest of my life with her. We were financially (relatively) secure and had space in the house. The pregnancy was a nightmare, morning sickness etc… the birth was traumatic, operating theatre and that. I didn’t bond with my son for a long time (as above six months) I thought I’d spend my life bringing up a child I didn’t really want or understand. Pretty depressing time to be honest. Hence all the regret None of this I relayed to anyone, just got on with it, it was my duty after all I helped make him.

Not sure what changed, or when, but after six months or so I suddenly realised that I was starting to enjoy spending time with the family, rather than just my wife. There was no epiphany, nothing dramatic, just a gadual realisation over time. Two years later and I wouldn’t want for a different life.

Interestingly, my daughter was an accident, unplanned pregnancy. Again it was a traumatic time, my wife spent a few hours in theatre while I had my daughter stuffed up my t-shirt in a maternity ward (skin to skin contact and all that). Maybe it was this, but I’ve found it a lot easier the second time round, despite being unplanned there were no regrets that time.

Sorry, bit of a tangent there!

Be prepared for copious amounts of moral hand ringing from parent friends (especially new members of the club) at your decision. It seems to offend them, even when you don’t make a fuss or try to justify it. For some reason they (a bit generalised) can’t get their heads around the decision that they think was right for them might not be right for you and also your decision is some sort of moral comment on theirs. Very weird but they’ll get over it.

Nah, nothing as complicated as that! It is simply the result of lack of sleep, realisation of the responsibility involved and jealousy of the spare cash and time that non-breeders have! At least it was for me anyway… …hopefully I’ve learnt my lesson!

“It’s better to regret something you have done, than something you haven’t done”

Except when it comes to having kids! If you regret having them then that’s several lives messed up.

Does this 60% go back into putting the roads in good order via our councils?

That’ll be council tax for your local roads. Trunk roads and motorways come from Nation Govt. so it could be that some of that 60% goes back into mitigating some of the damage done. You’d never be able to trace it though.

If the remote didn’t spill it’s guts then the energy would just go straight into it* and knacker the gubbins inside, spilling it’s guts is a way of expending that energy and still leaving you with a remote that works (once you put it back together again!).

Unless they make a silicone/rubber one which would bounce around the room and invariably end up knocking a lamp over/picture off the wall or similar!

One stance is belief in something with out proof, the other is not.

If this is the case (and I’m not disagreeing) then following scientific procedure one should come to the conclusion that Atheism is probably correct given the current information. However, should further/any subsequent evidence arise then that would be subject to scientific due process and any previous theories/hypotheses rejected as required?

In a roundabout kind of way then people following a scientific model should really be agnostic (because future evidence can never be discounted). Shouldn’t they?

Not wholly dissimilar to the creation of the universe, then.

Very true, mind you I come from the school-of-thought that believes knowledge is infinite, so what do I know?

Flitting between two threads Northwind? Also, I think I was quoting someone else! Nevermind, we all make mistakes, I went to Church once, and hospital, didn’t catch the plague at either though.

that would make Tesco value Horseburgers an ecumenical matter

Well, the ‘Co is the new house of worship. ‘Specially on Sabbath day!

Viruses are natural, we’re just on a larger scale. Think Gaia and it all makes sense.

Eventually the host organism either produces a suitable defence against the virus, or it dies. Either way life goes on, either the saprophytes get to live on a virus bloated corpse, or the virus ends up being beaten. Nature is great at stuff like this! We’re just a bit ignorant and arrogant as to how much power/influence we have… …except when it comes to destroying things that enable us to live!

so why does Islam ban pork, and the hindus have an issue with cows? why don’t we all sacrifice Chickens like voodoo? or excarnate the dead like the zoroastrians.

Surely a god would expect followers to follow similar rules?

You could be right. I’m not going to pretend to know how God (if they exist) thinks! It’s a pretty fruitless exercise anyway, if such a being exists then trying to fathom their reasoning is more than likley beyond our limited intellectual abilities.

Alternatively, it could just be a cultural thing rather than a religious thing. Kind of like how different Christians worship the same God in different ways.

and yet you canot even agree which god or gods it is – fact is most of you are wrong – you cannot all be right and yet you all have the same proof for your case

It’s all the same God, they’re just Schizophrenic, or multiple facets of the greater being if you want to get spiritual.

Frankly it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.

I don’t know about stupidest, but certainly requires an awful lot of doublethink to be able to tally up an omnipotent God with free will. The Jesus dying thing never really added up either… …all seems so pointless.

An Arch Bish or an Imam or the Dalai Iama himelf will says they don’t live there lives pefectly in the eyes of their God…. we’re all on a road trying to get there.

Yet the final destination (in this life at least) is unattainable. Kind of hopeless?

Christ, how the hell do you lot ride off road? Everytime you do, you’re taking risks that if you need rescuing, you will put someone else into a position that otherwise they wouldn’t have had to but for your selfish recklessness.

Yeah, but it’s a bit different when the weather is bad enough that the emergency services are already stretched. Isn’t it about the level of “selfish recklessness”? Particularly when the media are teling us all not to make journeys that aren’t essential anyway.

Listen to and read all the advice you can, but be prepared to reject/ignore 95% of it because it won’t apply, or will be significantly different to your own experience.

As long as baby and Mum are happy everything else is optional.

Cream mcrackers are pretty good for crumbs.

On the non food front, washing (laundry) powder tablets are prone to sudden and dramatic disintegration.

it’s capitalism working exactly how it should.

Nail. Head.

The question of whether it’s good or not is still open though.

But if no one can make money in town centres the land has little value, commercial property only has value if it can be used to make a profit.

True. I suppose the logical conclusion of that is then: let the market decide = let the highstreets die (from a commercial/retail perspective) and let megacentres and the Internet take up the slack.

Unfortunately local politics, transport and communication links, commercial power and similar un-quanbtifiables distort the market quite dramatically. There’s also the human inertia element, people like High Streets, but also like the convenince of megcentres and how these two choices balance out from person to person and place to place is nigh on impossible to predict…

…basically it’s all very complicated, but probably boils down to High Streets have to offer something that megacentres can’t and vice versa. If they engage in out right competition then one will die, likely to be the HIgh Street…

Oh for a little congestion.. or even a couple of extra cars… please

Time to firebomb your nearest megacentre then!*

Alternatively, time to start moving the advantages away from the massive corporations and back to the smaller scale stuff. Trouble is, this would require a big change in society! Unfortunetly, the obvious stuff like free town centre parking effects short term advantages for longer term disadvatages. You can’t win.

* Not a serious suggestion

drives (literally) people to out-of-town megacentres. My local town has free parking on a Monday and the town is packed, why on earth they havent learned and made it free all week long is a mystery.

Because somebody, somehwere has to pay for the upkeep of those car parks (and building new ones if required).Out of town megacentres can afford to have free parking because the land is cheap and they make huge profits, town centres don’t have either of these luxuries.

Introducing car parking charges to out of town megacentres should be a priority*, not encouraging more cars and congestion into town centres that don’t have the infrastructure to cope.

*Not that this will ever happen, Tesco et al have more power over Local Authorities than they do over National Govt. and that’s an awful lot!

How about “tribe”?

I wouldn’t want to live in the past, it was kind of crappy for women in most countries. I’d like to see the future, when there’s flying cars, hoverboards, and more importantly (hopefully) a more equal society.

There must’ve been a time when the Patriarchy didn’t exist. When Mother Nature was the deity everyone worshipped and the Green Man was just the sperm donor! Maybe pre-Christianity, them Pagan’s seemed to be a bit more enlightened on the equality front.

Personally, I’ve always liked the Prohibition-era fashion. Although hanging around with the Pyramid builders in South America would’ve been quite interesting. The Vikings would’ve known how to have a good knees-up too. Or China a few thousand years back… …I need a time machine.

And anyway – significance is only a system of classification, a lazy and simple comparison between different things. Why is significance significant?

Significance has to be significant! If it wasn’t then the first stage in our functioning as a sentient life form would be screwed up. Anything and everything that our senses come in to contact with is primarily assesed by our unconscious brain into “significant” or “insignificant” categories, before moving on to more complicated things like “can I eat it?” “will it hurt me?” “can I shag it?” type categories!

Concerning our destruction tendencies….

Surely “destruction” as a concept is a human construct anyway? All the killing, maiming and suffering we cause provide benefits to other life forms or systems. If people weren’t getting killed left right and centre what would all the saprophytes do?!

Had the italian style ones from Domninos? I have, and I’ve also eaten from Italian street vendors.

Nope, last time we had Dominos the Missus ended up with food poisoning (suspected), odd seeing as she had vegetarian and I had ominvore. Anyway, haven’t been back to them since.

I’ll bow to your more in-depth knowledge though!

Pizza in Italy is awesome. I’m no dietician. I don’t know how healthy it is. But it definely looks way healthier than anything served over here. It tastes good too.

And funnily enough most Italians appear to be proportioned quite perfectly.

When I was there, it was sold by the slice from street vendors. Could be a portion size thing? Mind you the stuff they make compared to the stuff Dominos churn out are worlds apart.

I agree cycling and football is cheaper than Polo but even running requires shoes for the task [ apparently]

Not for Zola Budd!

Couldn’t we just get them running on treadmill generators? or bikes for that matter

Probably not as efficient as burning them in a gas-turbine style power station. Although I suppose a combined heat and power set up with them chained to the treadmill/static bike may work. Have to be a well insulated gym-prison though, you’d want to minimise any losses.

It’s just political posturing to keep the Argentinian proles voting for her. Standard sabre-rattling type stuff. I suppose they may also argue that if they shipped in a few thousand Argentinians then the self-determination argument would swing in their favour. Much like the British did when the Flaklands were last colonised. Not sure if there were any natives originally…

The Blues Brothers and Highlander, both have excellent soundtracks that complement the films perfectly. Or maybe it should be the films complement the soundtracks perfectly. Can’t decide which.

Oh yeah and Top Gun!

Darley-Dale, Measham, Droitwich, Grantham, Northampton, Shrewsbury, Cannock, Fenton….

Fair enough, I guess if it burns “white hot” then that could be a bit much for a domestic stove!