One should not base their current vote based on 'Maggie'. After all, she was going on two decades ago.

If you do use this as a criteria then you truly are bitter and twisted.

Really?
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That might be the case for some people – but others will just want to be sure that "Call me Dave" hasn't just slapped on some new make up and lippy over the old Tory values…
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It is actually important that the electorate understand DCs values and beliefs – and can see that he (and his entourage – most of whom are kjept firmly out of the spotlight) is sincere.
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I suspect that many people suspect the same old Tory values lurk close beneath the shiny facade – and that scares folks.

A tiny majority of parents can't manage to discpline their kids outside of the school gates, lets hope that their general lack of interest in their kids will mean they are unlikely to give up quality time watching deadenders to instead serve as school governors, PTA members etc let alone try and set up a school from scratch!

Agree with the sentiment – but a bit out of line with reality. Sadly a sizeable minority don't give a monkey's about supporting their kid's education…
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And Governors mtgs at Eastenders time of day? – I had to resign from the Board of Govenors at our kids' school because the meetings were always at 1530. The only folks who could attend the meetings were those who were at home all day 👿

will be voting for democracy – ie a random independant candidate solely to help them reach the threshold whereby they dont lose their £10K deposit

Errr – but wouldn't a vote for electoral reform now improve their chances in future elections??
That would be voting for democracy

Just try to avoid hypocrisy

I was set to vote Lib Dem until Clegg said he'd set up camp with Cameron. Seems like a daft thing to say to me, should have kept his mouth shut, I think lots of his potential voters want something different to Labour but don't want Cameron. Should have stayed neutral.

I think Clegg needs to show that he is willing to work with either party – otherwise he risks getting squeezed by both. If either Brown or Cameron need to enter a coalition with the LibDems, they will need to enter a dialogue (in Parliament and with the people) about the future of our voting system.
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ETA following grum's comment. And that would respect the will of the people

A vote for the LibDems THIS TIME will be a vote to clean up the future of politics… and hopefully make sure that conceited arrogance on behalf of the Labour or Tory parties can never hold sway over this country again – unless they have the mandate of the people.
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If you've never voted LD before and don't intend to in the future, I would still urge people to vote for electoral reform.
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The system is corrupt – a vote for Blue or Red will preserve that corruption. Voting LibDem will at least bring the issue of constitutional reform to the table.

Irrespective of political leanings – this thread confirms one thing:
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The 80's Tory Gov't was the most divisive in living memory.
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There's no middle ground on this thread – no posters saying "it wasn't too bad", or "could have been better". Some have positive memories and respect the legacy of "improved" (ie forced) industrial relations, but many have very negative and deeply bitter memories…
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Quite telling I think
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Someone above posted about bitter old men – get over it and on with you lives… As someone who "came of age" in the mid 80s I strongly refute that assertion. When it comes to Thatcher's Govt I am still an angry young man.
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And relevence for the election – I hope that the electorate will be able to discern the true values of each party and choose accordingly.
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If they choose Red, they know what to expect – more of the same with added austerity.
If they choose Blue – do they know what values they are signing up to?
If they choose Orange – hopefully there will be the chance to reform the whole shoddy system…

Depends if you like them a little chubby or not i guess.

Are you seeing the same picture – or do you like blokes???

She could do with eating a few less pies!

That must be the most absurd statement on this thread

Nonsense. Paying for Trident and the SSBN's they'll go in buys the UK more than you think.

Why would that be?

Dunno what all this havering about the Spitfire is for.

English insecurity

Do you think our German mtb friends have heated arguments as to whether the Bf 109 is German or Bavarian???
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most of what we have achieved over the last 200 years has been done collectively as Britian… so, as demonstrated above, it becomes farcical to try and split out the achievements of the individual home nations.

To say that the Spitfire is English is like saying the QE2 (or Queen Mary) is Scottish, the Titanic Irish or the Mulberry Harbour* is Welsh – nonsense.

They're all British. Were conceived, designed, built and paid for as British. The people of that time overwhelmingly considered themselves British, albeit with their own local identity

* Might have struggled on this one!

That's not quite true is it.

The way it was told to me it went on to a higher court?? – And anyway, my central point was that the claim of English Heritage (or not) was challenged, and the name of the organisation was subsequently changed to Natural England

FWIW – I don't generally see the point in getting hung up on all this stuff. Most of it is a response to the British / English juxtaposition and assumption.

is it English? A question as big and ancient as England itself..

British, like many of the other "English" symbols posted.

If your not convinced, I believe it was built by the "Britons" – a generic name for the various Brythonic (ie Welsh / Cornish) speaking tribes that inhabited this country before the Saxon / English invasion.

I understand that "English Heritage" was rebranded because of extensive "criminal damage" to "English Heritage" signs at celtic and pre-celtic sites in Cornwall.

The judge dismissed the criminal damage cases on the basis of the defendents claims that celtic sites in Cornwall were pre-English and therefore had no right to be badged as "English Heritage"

Stonehenge – In England, but is it English?

rkk01 I may know a little about the Navy, I went to the Falklands in 83 (after Maggies defence cuts) and we were basically f***ed if it wasn't for the Hunter Killer subs and merchant navy we would have more than likely lost. Cutting UK defences isn't the way forward IMO and like it or not Trident is a deterrant that I feel we need, we can't leave it all to the Yanks to sort out they'd probably hit the UK in a friendly fire inocident!

But your points are a good reasoning for spending money on strong conventional forces and logistics support – no relevance to nuke missile subs. The argument here is to cut the IBMs and spend the money elsewhere.

The hunter killers (2 were deployed I believe?) kept the Argentinian navy in port after the Belgrano was sunk, and the diesel powered Onyx supported the special ops (remember footage of here returning to the UK flying a Jolly Roger with dagger). The merchant boats were indeed vital to our ability to go to the Falklands – my father worked in Devonport to convert Atlatic Causeway, Atlantic Conveyor and Rangitera for the Falklands conflict

A good friend was in the S Atlantic on Brilliant – he came back hating Thatcher because of the defence cuts… didn't have the kit needed to properly fight the Argentinians (familiar story today??)

It's about time we learned to stop being so tribal,

Doesn't work like that – although our rational brains (for those that have them) will try to construct the entirely reasonable argument that we are all the same.

I believe that we are all the same (well similar :wink:), but tribal instincts are genetically hard wired – they can be overcome by societal vaules, but still lurk beneath.

Dawkins work on altuism in animals is interesting – our (and I include animals here) altuistic behaviour works at first to defend immediate blood line (direct genetic descendency), second to defend relatives, and third to defend tribe

friend of mine in Oz once remarked no-one would claim to be English if they could claim to be Cornish. (He wasn't biased, he was Cornish)

There is a large Cornish diaspora in Aus because of the mining industry

Who's our 'proper' patron saint?

St Edmund – St George is Patron Saint of "places that can't think for themselves"…Georgia excepted!!!

From Wiki

Saint George is the patron saint of Aragon, Catalonia, England, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal, and Russia, as well as the cities of Amersfoort, Beirut, Fakiha, Bteghrine, Cáceres (Spain), Ferrara, Freiburg, Genoa, Ljubljana, Gozo, Milan, Pomorie, Preston, Salford, Qormi, Rio de Janeiro, Lod, Barcelona and Moscow, as well as a wide range of professions, organizations, and disease sufferers.

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From an Orthodox website

Although St Edmund has been the patron-saint of England for well over a thousand years, he has gradually been sidelined and today, in this land without saints, he is almost forgotten. Indeed, ever since the definitive establishment of the Normans in this country in the twelfth century, he has come to be neglected. Just as the Normans attempted to replace popular veneration for the Righteous English King Alfred with their fairy-tales and myths of the Non-English King Arthur, so they also tried to replace the memory of the English St Edmund with their crusaders' version of St George.

Edmund (Eadmund) was born on Christmas Day 841. Christian from infancy, in 856 he succeeded to the throne of what was perhaps the cradle of the English Nation in East Anglia. During his brief reign he came to fight alongside the future King Alfred in order to defend England from the invasions of the pagan Vikings. In 869 a great Viking army landed on the shores of his kingdom and Edmund marched out at the head of his army to defend the realm. The King was defeated and captured. In captivity he was ordered to renounce his faith and become a vassal of the heathen Danes, orders which he stoutly rejected. Repeating the name of Christ with his heart and his lips, he told them: 'Living or dead, nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ'. He was tied to a tree, tortured by being shot through with arrows, and then beheaded. His martyrdom took place on 20 November 869 at Hoxne in High Suffolk and his body was buried in a small wooden chapel nearby.

In 902 the relics, still incorrupt, were translated to Bedricsworth, at the very crossways of the four counties of Eastern England – Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire. This town soon came to be called 'Edmundstowe', 'Edmundston' and finally was renamed Bury St. Edmunds. From this time on St Edmund became a local, and soon, national patron. In 929 the humble pilgrim King Athelstan founded a community to care for his shrine. In 945 another royal grandson of King Alfred, called Edmund, gave them further lands. St. Edmund had become the ideal English hero, a king and a martyr. The last purely English King of England, Edmund Ironside (+1014), was also named after him. In 1020 a monastic church was built over his shrine by King Canute and this was served by monks from Ely. Even after the final Viking Invasion and Occupation of 1066, the martyr's relics were placed in a refurbished shrine in a new church in 1095 and they continued to be a place of national pilgrimage.

However, in 1199 the French King of England, Richard I, was to call at the tomb of St. George in Lydda, while on the Third Crusade. Invoking the saint, he won a great victory and consequently placed himself and his army under St. George's protection. St. Edmund, however, remained the national patron. Thus in 1214 the future Magna Carta barons, in opposing Richard's younger brother, King John, rode to Bury St. Edmunds on St Edmund's day to make a pledge at the altar of St. Edmund to strengthen the national cause. In 1215 the Magna Carta was signed by King John in the water meadows of Runnymede. As a result of this historic event the motto of Bury St Edmunds remains to this day: 'Shrine of a King, Cradle of the Law'.

However, in the dynastic struggle after the hated King John's death in 1216, nearly all St Edmund's relics were stolen by French knights in 1217. They were taken to Toulouse in France and here they remained until 1901. The first consequence of this loss was that three years later, in 1220, St. George, already the personal patron of the sovereign, was inserted in the national calendar by Richard I's nephew, Henry III (1216-1272). Although the banner of St. Edmund was still carried by English forces in battle, by the time of Edward I (1272-1307) it had been joined by the banner of St. George.

The eclipse of St. Edmund continued in the reign of Edward III (1327-77) with the founding of the Order of the Garter dedicated to Our Lady and St. George. The English veneration of kingship allowed St. George to usurp the national patronage, although his title was never patron but 'specyel protectour and defendour of this royaume' (special protector and defender of the realm). However, even as late as the reign of Richard 11 (1377-99), a fine representation of St. Edmund as a national patron was made in the Wilton Diptych. In this he was accompanied by Edward the Confessor and St. John the Baptist as personal patrons, and there was still no sign of St. George.

Although in the reign of Henry VII (1457-1509), St. George was still only designated 'protector of the realm', it was under the Machiavellian tyrant Henry VIII (1491-1547) that St. Edmund became totally eclipsed. Henry actually removed St Edmund's name from the litanies of saints venerated in England and in 1539 he had the monastery at St Edmundsbury dissolved. Indeed after the Protestant Reformation, St George came to be one of the few saints to be at all known to the Protestant Church in England. Most of the relics of St Edmund (not the head-relic) were returned to the Roman Catholic authorities in England in 1901 and they are kept locked away at a private Catholic chapel in Arundel in Sussex.

It is our belief that these relics will not return to their home-town and their rightful veneration until English people return to him and all the values for which he stands. As Orthodox, with a history going back not only beyond the 469 years of the Protestant phase of English history (1535-2004), but also beyond the 469 years of the Roman Catholic phase of our island history (1066-1535), we believe that it is time for us to restore St Edmund to his rightful place in our history and in our hearts. He is the Light from the East, the gift born on Christmas Day, the defender of England and the defender of the right, the miracle of national unity and the revival of Christian Orthodoxy and national patriotism. His name, meaning 'blessed protection', recalls to us the words of his ancient hymn:

Seems to me like he fought for England and died for (and in England) – Unlike St george, who never* set foot in England
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* Probably

British Cornish.
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Kernow bys vyken!

But I'm not celebrating some bloke called George. It's merely a day to celebrate being English, and the (what should be) proud traditions, mythology and cultural heritage that goes along with that

St George has Nothing to do with the mythology of these islands.

English identity needs to be reinvented and focused on "Englishness" – you could all start by reinstating your proper patron saint rather than some invented bloke from the eastern Med.
The number of dissenting threads should illustrate how people feel about the English subsuming everyone else's identity and using British / English as interchangeable – they're not.

Nothing repreents this arrogance more pointedly than the playing of the British National Anthem for the English team during the six nations.

Get a grip, get out on your bikes and stop arguing over history.

As is often demonstrated on STW – no politician or party in living memory has been so divisive and engendered such bitter memories as Thatcher and the Tories did during the early – mid 80s.

Oh Trident we will scrap that just as Iran are getting the bomb..

Please explain how Trident would represent both good value to the taxpayer, and an appropriate defence system in the case of Iran (or North Korea, etc)????
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What do you suggest – have a boomer lurking around the bottom of the Atlantic / Pacific / Indian Ocean ready to nuke Tehran if they start getting uppity???
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What a total load of horseshit – even senior members of the General Staff are saying we need more flexible weapons systems than Trident in the current military – politico and financial climate.
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The LibDems aren't suggesting that we unilaterally disarm and get rid of our nuclear deterrent, just that we can't afford and don't need Trident.

Patronising, supersilious, obsequious, c[]nts.

I was doing A levels at the time of the miners strike (coal industry, obviously) and went on to study geology and mining geology, so a personal interest in mining.

When I finished my mining geology masters I worked on the closure of the last Cornish tin mines – The Tories refused to give a £5M grant to Wheal Jane to keep the pumps running after the collapse of the tin price from $10,000/ton to $2,000/ton. (I don't think Thather could see that tin mining and coal mining were different beasts in terms of economics, unionisation and private sector operation – it was all miners and unions to her)

So, no grant – The pumps were switched off and the mine flooded – sterilising the remaining tin reserves (and natural resources are an asset of UK plc), loosing the remaining 400 or so jobs – some of the only well paid jobs in a low pay economy, and causing one of the UKs biggest ever pollution incidents.

So what happened next? The NRA (then EA) realised that they would have to keep the pumps running anyway, and research, develop and install a new minewater treatment system.
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The mine closed in 1991….
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…Because the Tories wouldn't keep the pumps running until the tin price recovered.
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The tax payer has had to pay to keep the pumps running ever since anyway – but because the mine flooded, there's no (economically viable) way to get back at the tine reserves…
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I don't know how much the EA has paid to pump and treat the minewater – I have heard £100M – certainly the treatment plant is estimated to have cost £10M
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ALL FOR **** NOTHING (except political dogma and indifference)

No jobs,
No tin,
And loss of another engineering / technical skill base.

Oh, and the tin price has been over $20,000/ton for years, and is currently $28,000/ton. (with $10,000/ton still reckoned to be viable)

What have you cleaned the rotors with?

I normally use acetone, but have been considering soldering flux (phosphoric acid), followed by warm water

Merlin are doing a full set of CRs for under £200 too!!

That might settle it then!!

Had another play with the front Mono M4 last night.
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It feels like there is too much fluid in the system – the lever is very hard to pull, and also there is no bite to the brakes as the pads contact the rotor.
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Cleaned the rotor with acetone and sanded off the pads – both were dirtier than they should have been – but that doesn't explain the wooden lever action.
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Close inspection of the caliper shows that the pistons are advancing at different rates – and not small pair / big pair. At least one of the smaller pistons is sticking in the bore. Won't pump out, and then when it does, doesn't want to retract.

Brakes were installed in 2004, but the levers and calipers have been rebuilt over the last year. New seals in the caliper bores have made no difference and neither have phenolic pistons.
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Is it possible to polish the inside of the bores?… and would it make any difference?

Get the talc out?

Binners – Your clue is in your question…

Can someone explain why similar action is beyond the wit and wisdom of every other constituency in the country?

Pretty sparingly allocated within the tabloid reading voting population

read of one interesting scenario in which Labour & Tory agreed to form a government, to keep the LibDems from power. After all, LAb & COn are both Thatcher-Blairite in ideals.

Then when the LibDems are excluded, call another election without the threat of proportional representation

That's a very interesting idea.
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I wonder if Cameron and Brown would have the balls to pull a stunt like that – I almost hope that they do.
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It would p!ss off the electorate so much that it would be the final nail in the coffin of the already highly disrespected elctoral and political system in the UK.

County / Administrative boundary

ETA – Ah yes, didn't see CP – County Parish… an invisible mark of much powerfullness. Can magically shrink bridle paths into footpaths…

Point for debate…?

Let's imagine we're in the mind of one of these clerics….
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could they actually believe this – as in, I have spent a lifetime in study of the holy scriptures, and the unavoidable conclusion that I draw – is that earthquakes are caused by promiscuity????
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Or are they more like our politicians…
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OK – No 10 PR boy, what shit shall we brief the media / proles with today to keep them in check

When's the next debate?

not really sure why everyone is so scared of it here

Because it is not (and post-war, never has been) in the interests of the two main parties to encourage anything other than an outright win…
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…. and those two parties dominate political reporting and the language used.

Someone should take out injunctions against the media using the term "hung" parliament – it is pejorative, derogatory and potentially very suggestive to people in their voting intentions.

Kindly explain???

Presumably as in – the Tories get most of their national percentage from safe leafy shire seats where the vote is "wasted"….?

Libs dems have consistently ended up with a far lower percentage of seats vs national vote throughout my lifetime.

Tell the rider to "look up" – picked this up from slow speed control m/c training, and used the same idea when my daughter was transitioning to ride without stabilisers. She was looking down at the front wheel and kept folding it under – by looking up and away from the front wheel she immediately got her balance right.

Just shows what an utter disgrace our parliamentary election system is…

Use the last 3 poll results to set the percentages and compare the number of seats 👿 Democracy my @rse.

If nothing else comes out of this election it should be a massive, populist push for better representation

Lots of Local Authorities are doing this at the moment.

Several of the Authorities that went unitary last year are skint now and have made everyone re-apply for their jobs.

One LA that my wife did some supply teaching work for brought in a rule that teachers would be dismissed if they had two periods of sick leave within one 12 month period.

It's pretty galling that a public body behaves in this fashion, but during my adult working career I have increasing viewed LA's as the weak spot in our democratic and administrative process. They tend to be a law unto themselves – and largely unfettered by any shred of competence.

Even where council officers are diligent, competent and professional they are time after time let down by grubby little councillors / members who rarely look beyond their own self interest