[RPRT – sorry weak attempt, not rising to that.]

I was making a serious point (originally), which is that arguments about whether or not groups of people are “offended”, or should be “offended” or might be “offended” at every opportunity doesn’t do much to help debate, especially as the “offender” seems to be in a minority of one and isn’t doing too bad a job of not taking offence himself.

Of course I should banned from this thread I disagree with the view of you and your fellow middle class “Liberal”.

Why don’t you try arguing the point instead of making wrong assumptions about “the sort of person” I must be?

THM

RPRT – not looking for another pointless argument here. Re-read my original post – ‘offensive to law abiding gun owners” not me. Its not necessary, simples!

So you’re not a gun owner, you just represent all of them?

SD-253

Tandem Tosser.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I can think of one ban I’d impose on you.

Calm down dear.

THM

RPRT – you can have a difference of opinion without insisting on imposing your views on others and questioning the morality of those who disagree.

Which was the bit that “offended” you?

I had’t really noticed that TJ has managed to “impose” his views yet.

So I guess you must be “offended” that someone might question the morality of gun owners.

Don’t go listening to the moral maze any time soon – you might blow a gasket.

SD-253

And you sound like the sort of person who would play that game as in I find hunting offensive ban it…..hypocrite

Is this your idea of debate?

You tell me what you think my response would be to a question you’ve not asked and then go one further by telling me that I’m a hyopocrite for holding that view?

As it happens I’ve no strong views either way on fox hunting, so would you like another go?

Gun ownership leads to less death not provealbe of course but I would suggest a high possiblty.

You mean “legal gun ownership” of course?

And where do illegal guns come from?

THM

TJ – the nonsense starts on page 1 and is frankly pretty offensive to law-abiding gunowners.

And I’m sure there will be many gun owners prepared to stand up and fight for your right to be “offended”

Maybe one of the problems with society, apart from gratuitous gun ownership, is that fact that people choose to be “offended” by almost anything anyone says that they disagree with these days.

What about accepting the result of democratic choice, even if it goes against your view?

That would be the democratic choice of a population that was alive 100+ years ago?

Don’t remember a referendum on gun ownership lately, or any political party even putting forward a policy I could vote on.

If you want to argue the toss with TJ, try coming up with something meaningful.

I hear they really like you :wink:

She told me what there break even price was, which I won’t repeat here, and that they used top quality materials.

Go on, we’re interested.

I’ve no objection at all to photographers charging what they like for their work, and I know that there are a lot more expenses than most people would imagine, but it’s the sales technique that I don’t like.

I imagine their break even price is so high because they’ve got all those sales guys to pay!

Is this true? Do people actually lose the ability to say no and walk out?

Daft question – if it were that simple then they wouldn’t be coy about giving their prices up front.

There definitely is an emotional hook for some people to buy pics once they have been made available. To some degree it’s the way I make a living doing event photos, though I like to think I offer reasonable value for money rather than trying to rip people off.

It’s also to some degree something that school photographers rely on.

As I’m a photographer, and unlike the cobbler who’s kids have no shoes, we’ve got loads of pictures of our kids that I’ve taken.

These are the latest, taken last week to send to the GPs at Christmas, but there are HUNDREDS of others.

Anyhow, when the note comes home to say that the photographer will be in school I never deny my kids the opportunity to get snapped, because all the other kids are getting it done, they think it’s fun and it is more hassle for the school to take people out of the class for the shoot than to leave them in – however, I have no intention of ever buying any, because it is something I feel I can do myself.

BUT – every time they send the proofs home, my wife wants to buy them! (so far I’ve always eventually managed to persuade her not to fork out £30 for something very similar to pics that we’ve already got – but it’s not easy).

Pay for your entire family to go to a CRC marathon event and ride around together, pausing only briefly to get in formation before you ride past me at the side of the track, where I will take your family photo. Do the same at the finish. A couple of days later you will be able to buy the jpeg pics for £7.45 each and have prints made to your specification on Photobox or elsewhere. It will still cost you much less than Venture and you’ll have had a day out too.

I don’t care what price they charge, but not telling people the prices until they are emotionally hooked in is disgusting when they are so high – rip off IMHO

BTW, you could probably hire a pro photographer for £250 for half a day + exes and have a shoot done wherever you like and get hold of a big selection of images from the shoot to use for any non-commercial purposes.

Also, I’ve just remembered and need to record for posterity an astounding bit of serendipity:

On the way to the beach we were listening to Junior Choice with Ed Stewart (in itself fantastic) and I remarked that I hoped they would be featuring Rolf Harris.

Despite listening to a couple of cracking records (Positive Thinking – Morcambe and Wise, Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah – Alan Sherman, My Bruvver – Terry Scott etc.) Rolf hadn’t appeared by the time we got to the beach.

However, JUST AS WE GOT BACK IN THE CAR… Two Little Boys came on! The last record of the show.

Couldn’t help but shed a tear.

I love Christmas.

Sorry to buck the trend, but just got back from my mum and dad’s after a brilliant Christmas dinner.

We took the kids for a walk on the beach this morning then drove 15 minutes to the PUs’ place for prawn cocktail, turkey, christmas pud and trifle.

The only disappointments of the day were that the christmas pud wouldn’t catch fire properly and that my 6 year old was far too competent at constructing the Lego Hogwarts to need as much help as I would have liked to have given, so I was forced to drink slightly too much and fall asleep on the sofa instead.

Kids now in bath playing with some whistles that they got that you can fill up with water to different levels to change the pitch – but they’ll be in bed soon – lovely.

Just wrapping the last of the kids’ presents and the church bells have started ringing in town.

Nice.

Just went to a crib service in the local church – admittedly only because my daughter was reading, but it was packed.

Whoops. That was because I thought the bottle of Sauternes was £15 then remembered it was £16 half way through typing – not because I drank it already.

£21 for 4

That was £6 on a bottle of Prosecco and £16 on a half bottle of Sauterns to take with us to my my mum and dad’s house :D

I win.

They won’t like this because it has strong flavours, but how about a salad of warm grilled halloumi, beetroot and watercress with a caper dressing – V yummy and can be done delicately.

If they/you are gluttons – how about eggs benedict? That’s what we generally have on Christmas morning, but could be a starter for fatties.

Parma ham with melon – as Michel Junior would say – deeeeeeelicious.

I did this a while ago and to make it look more interesting I did 2 types of melon (canteloup and galia – orange and green – cut into segments) with a similar sized slice of mango with a few salad leaves and a bit of slightly sweet chilli/mango dressing.

And on that note:

Bah Humbug!

Where in the bible is Father Christmas?

Lets just turn that round:

Where in “Father Christmas” is there something to do with Christianity?

(I’ve made it easy for you)

The holly and the ivy

Isn’t that the one about the blood of Christ?

So you’re singing the songs, following the traditions, using the symbols, following the moral code. How do you tell the difference?

I expect he had his fingers crossed.

You can’t actually believe there’s a correlation between celebrating christmas and being christian though.

I think you probably can.

It might not be 100%, but I suspect that you actually would find a fairly good correlation between celebrating Christmas and being a Christian.

@5thElefant

Keep up – I said that the marriage, Christening and funeral services that most people have follow Christian tradition.

almost all the symbols are the pre christian ones.

Apart from a few trivial ones like Jesus, Mary and Joseph of course.

teh only thing that is Christian about it for most is the name

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re right, that’s the only thing.

Tradition.

Or to put it more fully and more correctly:

Christian tradition.

Of course, to make it really fair, they should ask everyone the question “what is your religion?” just a few minutes before they died – that would give them a whole lifetime to make up their minds and would iron out the distracting “I want to die before I get old” macho posturing period.

All of this “it’s the way you ask the question” stuff isn’t really very useful in thinking about this.

If you want to look for a bit more evidence outside of the census – why do people get married in church? why do people have their children Christened? why do people have church funerals?

All of the personal as well as state/societal big occasions are still by and large conducted in Christian ceremonies. And guess what, they’re not compulsory – that’s what people choose to do – even after they’ve had time to think about it.

TJ, when you say [/quote]missapropriated

do you mean it is wrong?

Do you think that everyone who has ever celebrated Christmas without covering themselves with woad, tucking into a delicious meal of a bit of burnt wild animal and some nettles, washed down with some psychotropic mushroom juice and then spent the night outside in the freezing cold near some big stones is just not getting into the right spirit and failing to fulfil their authentic proper British (although obviously way before anyone even considered the concept of Britain, England or the UK) role?

ive no time for christians- they always seem to be full of judgement not love

Do you know any?

I know loads (though I’m not one myself) and they all seem quite nice.

@Northwind

Did you see the BHA counter-survey that came out shortly after? The sample group was asked the same question, and over 60% of people said they were Christian. Then they were asked “Are you religious” and only 30% said they were.

And did you see the question at the top of the thread?

Was it : “Is the UK a Religeous Country?”

You’re the one asking (answering) the wrong question.

I refer you to the census figures given earlier.

Odd that we were celebrating it before the [alleged] birth of christ.

The use of the “we” there reminds me of the Mitchell and Web football sketch.

You’ve got a good memory. That’s fact is it? All of the pre Christian Britains (whoever they might have been, can you trace your ancestors back that far?) were involved in the winter solstice?

An orgy of food, booze and stuff

Speak for yourself.

Er…. i think quite a lot of folk might just see themselves as Church of Scotland and the Catholic Church, let alone what those recidivists in Wales worship…

Population of England 50 million +
Population f Scotland 5 million +
Population of Wales 3 million +
Population of N Ireland < 2 million

Most people in the country see themselves as “Church of England”

Regardless of one’s personal religion it is hard to argue that the UK isn’t a Christian country.

Most people in the country see themselves as “Church of England” and church and state are pretty much inseparable given that the Queen is head of the church and our constitutional monarchy is totally bound up with the church.

Looking at it from the other direction, how is the country organised and run? At the lowest level of organisation the country is divided up by Parish

And why are we all having a few days off next week?