If there are any significant amounts of water ice at the poles (and I don’t think people are sure) you can use it to manufacture rocket fuel. Saves the cost of lugging the fuel up there first.

Read up on the Battle of Agincourt for further reasons for the unsuitability of armour.

Unsuitable because of its weight when trying to move in a quagmire. Plate armour is actually quite effective against arrow strike until you get really close up. The only vulnerable bits on a fully armoured knight were his arse, his eyes and his arm pits. That’s one of the reasons why it gradually replaced chain mail, which, to an arrow, is just so many holes held together with wire.

Apple core, two months.
Interesting figures for those who said they’d take banana skins home but happily chuck an apple core…

I imagine that at the bottom of a hedgerow in lowland Britain, something larger than a microbe would come along and eat the apple core long before two months are up.

70s style OU – complete with kipper ties, brown shirts and serious amounts of theory to get your teeth into.

Wouldn’t be the same if you didn’t have to get up at 5am to watch it!

Not sure about Blake’s seven. I don’t think they could capture that proper 1970s English bleakness. The re-make of Survivors wasn’t a patch on the original.

Create that job somewhere in the world that will give others half a chance.

Or keep women in the Midlands working on less than minimum wage.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/22/cost-cheap-fast-fashion-workers-planet

“MPs found that the Modern Slavery Act was not robust enough to stop wage exploitation at UK clothing factories. There was a lack of inspection or enforcement, allowing factories – none of which are unionised – to get away with paying illegal wages.”

Why did ‘a norange’ (naranga) become ‘an orange’?

same reason as “a napron ” became “an apron”

She was riding sensibly and doing no one any harm yet I  had felt the need to moan.

Isn’t riding sensibly and doing no harm how (thoughtful) MTBers justify riding on footpaths?

If that’s what she was doing, why not live and let live? It would be different if she was tearing around and trying to run over the pedestrians.

One of the other weird things about this whole brexit debate is it’s ability to make people forget how to interpret simple language. It’s not like he’s using big words or anything

Another weird think about this Brexit debate is that people still can’t see how simple language is used to be deliberately obscure. That statement doesn’t really tell us anything useful.

You can do it using excel and the right bridging software (the bit that prepares your submission and sends it too HMRC)

I think some businesses provide free bridging software for VAT (most charge). There’s a list somewhere on the hmrc website.

HMRC provides it own free software for RTI

If you buy a tube of hand cream, and it blisters your skin, the manufactures will know exactly where and when any of the 20 or so ingredients in that particular tube came from. They’ll be able to work out which of the chemicals is dodgy and identify every tube that contains chemicals from the same batches.

Tends to mean their quality control is very good.

With vaping you are putting a cocktail of chemicals into a very delicate part of your body. What happens if a particular batch turns your lungs to jelly? Do vaping liquids have to conform to the same traceability rules as cosmetics?

Who would you rather have as head of state, living in the big presidential palace? Lizzie or Boris Johnson?

I went to the local Grammar School about the same time as Boris was at Eton. We used to do cross country runs through Eton’s grounds and up Eton highstreet, loudly taking the piss out of “the penguins”. Do you think Boris was traumatised during his school days by working class oiks? If so, I apologise :-(

You are left with Gaelic, Welsh, and cornish. What did the ancient britons speak>?

But they’re bloody European imports anyway. So you can’t use them either. Certainly not post Brexit.

In fact all modern European languages, with (I believe) the exception of Finnish and Basque evolved from proto-Indo-European which was spoken about 6500 years ago in the area north of the Caspian sea. All this borrowing words from Latin, celtic, Viking etc. is beginning to feel a bit incestuous.

Bollocks

or, for those who like their anglo saxon vocab in Anglo-Saxon:

Beallucas

Very little of Roman and Viking origin either, except in place names

I think the use of the definite article (“the”) was introduced by the Vikings. A small word but fairly important.

Also, I think the theory is that it was Viking incomers and English natives having to communicate simply with each other that was the point when English lost most of its inflections. Which I suppose is a fairly big deal.

So I suppose you could call Modern English a Creole.

Over 50% of Japanese words are of Chinese origin. A whole lot more are from European languages.

Based on what? Did you look up an academic study for that or just pull it out of your arse?

From the lady in question:

“350 people were there and only one person reacted that way. ”

“It’s more the behaviour of that individual. I want him to reflect on what he did and not do it again. Maybe he should go to anger management classes.”

The idea that a well trained police officer would have been more gentle appears comical to me.

A well trained police officer would (we hope) be acting within the law. That MP wasn’t.

Interesting that his excuse was “acting instinctively” and , for him, acting instinctively = resort to physical force.

Lets hope a foreign office minister doesn’t act instinctively when he makes all his decisions.

Does the fact she was in an evening dress make any difference? Why?

I imagine it would be quite hard to hide a Kalashnikoff, or a suicide belt, underneath an evening dress.

You’re missing the point. Boris Johnson is purely pro Boris Johnson and will say whatever it takes in the moment to advance his interests

True. I’d forgotten it was Rees-Mogg (and also my MP) who consistently voted against the WA and anything else that wouldn’t result in no-deal. Johnson changed his mind as soon as there was a hint he might become PM.

Yup, just seen a Tory MP on Channel4news complaining that none of the candidates are really pro-Brexit

I always though Johson was as pro-brexit as they come. I suppose the closer you get to being the person that has to actually make that decision, the more of a bad idea it begins to seem!

Perhaps he’s having second thoughts about his “technological solution” to the Northern Ireland border.

The US have got footage which they claim shows Iranian revolutionary guard removing a mine from one of the tankers.

Twenty years ago I would have believed them without too much thought. But who’s to say it’s not the American trying to de-stabilise the area. They do have history for this.

To me the footage just looks like some men in a boat. Could be anybody, including the CIA,

Sounds like there is a lot of difference between teaching secondary in Scotland and primary in England.

Another example from England.

A teacher I know teaching year 2. School tells her there is no money to buy basic teaching resources next year (ie. colouring pencils etc.). Without those resources the kids won’t be able to meet their attainment targets (e.g. they have to learn how to colour between the lines). But If they don’t meet their attainment targets, the teacher will be blamed and put on capability review. The heavy hint from the school that she will be expected to fund those resources herself.

Not surprisingly she will be another teacher leaving the profession.

Go to several schools (both good and bad) and see what it is like

But be careful how you define “good” and “bad”. An “outstanding” Ofsted school is not necessarily a good one to work in. Likewise one in special measures my not necessarily be a bad place to work for a classroom teacher.

I’m told that once you make it through two years life starts to become a little easier and you get a bit of a rhythm to it and can reuse previous materials etc.

Hmmm… I think what tends to happen in most primary schools (IME) is that you only teach one year group for a year or so and are then moved on. By the time you get back to that year, any materials you saved will be well out of date.

Every primary school teacher and head-teacher I know (and I know quite a few) has suffered mental health issues as a result of their job.

If you’re young and you don’t mind about work/life balance you may enjoy it for a few years but, even in the best schools be prepared to work under constant pressure with minimum support.

One thing worth doing – keep an eye on your local authority job site where they advertise teaching vacancies. The frequency of job adverts for a particular school will give you some idea of how bad it is to work there!

We once (in sixth form) went to the pub for lunch to celebrate the end of term. About ten minutes later a group of teachers arrived to do the same, saw us and walked out

Used to drink in a couple of pubs in sixth form blazer and tie. There would often be teachers in there and some times they would join us for a pint (and blag rollies from the smokers as well).

Times have changed since then

I urge people to read up a little on what he has done with his life.

I think there are some who suggest that Rory Stewart has rather over egged the Rory Stewart story, probably more a result of the standard public school belief in one’s own abilities and importance more than anything more malicious.

Still, he does seem the best of the bunch.

you could pick any large, famous battle and say that bit over there was worse than the Somme

I think I worked out once that if you wanted to be present at a really famous battle, the “safest” would be to be British sailor at the battle of Trafalgar. Can’t remember the exact figures but it was something like 30,000 seamen present with about 1500 casualties (killed/wounded). Of course, that ignores the fact that a sailors life was so hard they rarely survived into their forties anyway.

Remind me again what the ‘spare’ £4m left over from reduced purchase cost will earn when invested…?

£4m might be what you would need to fix the rising damp and leaky roof on some of those old listed Scottish piles. :-) Still, if I had the money . . .

The problem with that Scottish property isn’t so much the purchase price though. It will be the ongoing costs for the upkeep of the house and estate.

That £7 million house is real pound shop bond villain. Sandbank obviously appeals to a certain type of millionaire.

The majority of these would not have seen combat and would not have seen a combatant enemy. I can’t remember the figure that John Keegan (iirc) quotes but only a small fraction of serving soldiers ever fired their weapons.

Max Hastings quotes some interesting figures in “All hell let loose”. I think he said that a British rifleman who came ashore on D-Day had a one in six chance of becoming a casualty before the end of the war. I can’t remember if that was killed or killed/wounded but either way, that’s pretty grim. However, most servicemen weren’t at the sharp end and if you look at their casualty rates they were roughly similar to comparable occupations in the UK – still dangerous by 21st century peace time standards, but no where near as bad as if you were facing the enemy every day.

Is plastic grass water permeable?

if not, what happens when it rains? Do you end up with something like a huge paddling pool?

Just so we can be amazed.
Can those saying that climbing everest is too easy / not worthy of bothering / not their cup of tea.

What the ****’s wrong with saying that climbing Everest is not your cup of tea?

Best mountaineering book I ever read was Annapurna by Maurice Herzog. It was in 1950 so it took two weeks to walk in to base camp and two weeks to walk back out. He spent most of the journey out strapped to a donkey and having his fingers slowly and painfully amputated bit by bit. Proper grim!

Aren’t red trousers in town now ironic hipster?

Was chatting to a guy once who said “just because I’m wearing red trousers doesn’t mean I’m posh”. No, you’re posh because you inherited half of Herefordshire.

I used to use deep section road rims on my (non aero) road race bike. They gave a noticeable advantage once you got over about 25mph. It made keeping up with the bunch a lot less effort. Below 25mph they was no noticeable difference on the flat and up hill they were a bit slower (even carbon fibre weighs something).

Unless you are planning on riding everywhere at 20+ mph on your gravel bike, I would say stick to lighter non aero rims.