Its one of those things I genuinely cannot grasp. Why would anyone think that the concept of royalty is anything other than abhorrent?

Because having a doddery old girl who means well and doesn’t have to worry about pandering to the voters in charge (technically) is slightly less dangerous than some of the alternatives?

We’ve done worse, many times.

Well personally I’ve never been into a school, shot some kids and burnt somebody alive, just to teach somebody else a lesson.

This is a act of terrorism in the purest sense – in that is object is to spread terror.

I’m shocked at the number of people on this thread that seem to condone terrorism.

I know its the Band of Brothers but there was a character/Officer who said he had gone the whole way through from Normandy without firing one shot.

He was the company XO, but I think he got shot AT quite a bit.

An acquaintance of my Dad was in the Red Army during its advance into Germany. He never fired a shot and never even saw an enemy soldier until one popped out from behind a tree and demanded he surrender!
(he was about 14 at the time, so I think the Germans sort of took pity on him)

Characters like Mad Jack are good to read about, but I wonder what the squaddies who served under him thought.

The sort of guy who would wade ashore an enemy beach carrying a claymore and a set of bagpipes sounds like the sort of guy who liked the taste of danger a bit too much.

I think I would prefer to serve under someone with the nickname “Sensible Jack”, or “Dull and Rather Tedious Jack”.

Le Français d’Aujourd’hui?

The family were the Bertillons?

OK, do this experiment.

Take a can and open it.

Take another can, shake it vigorously, and open it.

Is there a difference?

Same can, same contents..no?

It would be better to do this experiment

1. take a can and open it
2. take a can, flick it, then open it.

Is there any noticeable difference?

Last time I tried to watch something on terrestrial commercial TV at prime time, I counted 5 minutes of adverts in every 15 minutes of telly. A friend tells me this is roughly the ratio you get when you pay for SKY as well.

So 1/3 of your viewing time consists of people trying to sell you stuff.

And of course, if this is a documentary, they have to spend a couple of minute reminding you what went on before the commercial break.

Interesting – context is so much in these cases.

I’m guessing the local authority are paying for the child’s continuing care. If she was harmed by a criminal act, her continuing care would be paid for for the crimnal injury compensation fund (ie NOT the local authority).

Its all about saving budgets, shades of what to come when the cuts really start to bite after May 2015.

An alternative to a steel strung acoustic might be a classical guitar.

The action is slightly higher and the neck slighlty wider, but the nylon strings wont hurt uncalloused fingers as much.

Plus they can be played really quietly and still sound nice.

25% Google tax.

There’s bound to be a way around it. That’s something the tax accountants and lawyers will be playing with for a while.

I would have no problem at races where you expect this sort of thing, but at Swinley I would be wondering why a random fella was taking photographs af a shit rider on some shit trails.

And how do you make sure you’re not taking pictures of kids or vulnerable adults? – might lead to some unpleasentness if you’re not careful.

I had an old tourer where the pump peg was also an grease injetion nipple, to keep your unsealed, non-cartridge bearing headset nice and clean.

(you should hear my mum call people arsehole, nobody can put that much feel into asshole)

Yes, arsehole is a proper English swearword, as, of course, is bollocks. They should rank among our great contributions to world culture.

Starting sentences with ‘so’ when explaining something.

The first word of Beowulf is “Hwaet”. Literally “what” but usually translated as “so” or “listen”. So I think we are alright on that one 🙂

No. that’s what keeps those of us who know that information in work

Oh well, it was worh a try 🙂

SAP – More tables than a Lyons tea house, and never knowingly under-engineered.

@nemesis, you seem like a knowledgable fellow.

Can you point me to a (free) website that describes (in English) what particular SAP table are meant to do and how they relate to each other?

If I have a table name, http://www.se80.co.uk will tell me the table name and the fields it contains but it doesn’t realy explain waht the table is meant to hold or do.

I like people who post pictures of their meals on Facebook in the same way as I like people who repost Britain First crap.

It helps me with my insecurity problems by giving a fleeting (and illusory) sense of superiority.

We’re installing it as a banking platform, and it seems to get confused by the concept of interest, which is worrying

SAP was originally designed for manufacturers and box-shifters. Now those canny Germans are trying to take over the world. Im not surprised it gets confused by the service sector.

Wait till you get to play with worldwide implementations – when changes to a “minor” system variable in Schleiswig Holstien can result in whole transaction types disappearing in Hong Kong.

Mind you, oracle isn’t any better either.

I do think it’s relevant that they where not financial institutions from “the city”, ie the center of finance in the UK.

But you’re refering to just UK banks in the context of a global recession. Didn’t a lot of the US/International banks that went tits up have a big City presence? eg. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Lehmans etc.

And I don’t think Brown can be accused of casing the recession. It just happend on his watch. I thought the Yanks started it with all that sub-prime malarkey. (though my memory might be faulty)

bonanza of North Sea oil

Ahh, North Sea Oil. Apparently hardly mentioned in her memoirs even though, or probably because, it contributed to the myth she was econmically savvy.

Reading this thread it is apparent that one of the great Thatcher legacies is a universal, uncritical belief that big powerful unions are always bad.

It’s a sort of only half accurate folk memory as a result of good PR by Westminster politicians who have a vested interested in making you believe it. Between 1945 and Thatcher, a lot of politicians from all parties thought it natural to work with the unions (and the other parties) to reach a consensus, rather than impose their view at all costs.

So Thatcher smashed the unions. She also smashed local government and increased the power of central government. This centralization of power has been going on all through the Major and Blair years and is continuing.

So now we have a country where all aspect of your lives are regulated minutely from a Westminster run by a few control freak suits with no experience of the real world and whose only interest is remaining in power. And this is seen as good and natural.

I hate them all (including Scargill).

The last decent politicians we had were Clement Attlee and Winston Churchill.

My understanding is that one of the main reasons for our current predicament is that the last government spent and borrowed when we should have been saving and accumulating. I know that Brown had a lot to do with that

I think Brown was the only chancellor since the war to pay off a large chunk of the national debt? Funded by the sale of 3G telephone licenses?

Its a film of a childrens book.

The book’s not bad, mainly because its short.

That film couldn’t decide what it wanted to be.

Well that article is bollocks. Bonfire night celebrates the failure of religious maniacs with explosives.

So another thing the British aren’t very good at.

but as a British cycling member it would get 10% off

I think most cycle shops will often give 10% off a new bike, if you ask nicely. So don’t make this your only buying criteria.

You can still get one bedroom houses in Basingstoke for around 150k and flats for less. Although I doubt they are in particularly nice areas.

It’s about an hour from Waterloo and the riding round about is quite reasonable.

At the same time, I’m sure others would argue that employers should not be rewarded for understaffing, ie employing nine people to do the work of ten, because they save on holiday pay and taxes.

With this ruling, would there come a point where it would be cheaper for a company to employ more people on a baisc wage to avoid having to pay existing empolyees overtime? Or do the other employment costs always outweigh taking on extra staff?

Well if you do that then you’ll see it was never mentioned that she was a Virgin.

Well Luke 1.27 in the King James Version describes her as a virgin. The earlier(?) Greek version of Luke 1.27 describes her as “parthenos” which apprently means:

a virgin; a woman who has never had sexual relations; a female (virgin), beyond puberty but not yet married

Why do you say she was never described as a Virgin? do you have an earlier text/better translation?

Never knew that either!

“The word ‘virgin’ did not originally mean a woman whose vagina was untouched by any penis, but a free woman, one not betrothed, not bound to, not possessed by any man. It meant a female who is sexually and hence socially her own person. In any version of patriarchy, there are no Virgins in this sense.”

Where’s that link from seosamh? I’m not convinced.

Also, you’re looking at a modern English word translated from medieval Latin, translated from classical Latin and possibly translated fom the original Greek.

You need to look at how Mary was described in the oldest possible version of the story.

You can carry a thin sandwich between the crown of your head and your helmet.
Keeps it safe too..

DrP

And don’t forget that if you substitute steak for your chamois pad, it will be nicely tenderized and part cooked by the end of the ride.

Unless you’re fairy heavy you don’t need that much pressure in a 35c road tyre.

I meant 75-85psi. But the question is the same. Will the higher pressures used mean the tyre pops off the rim?

I assumed that higher pressure would help evrything seal better.

Still, I’ve ordered the rim strips, so I’ll see of it works.

Does tyre pressure make a difference then?

To avoid winter punctures I was thinking of trying tubeless on some 700×35 at 75-100 psi. Will that not work?

The same sort of places cycle tourists have been carrying stuff for the last hundred odd years.

ie. various combinations of jersey pockets, saddle bags, bottle cages, panniers

With no anaesthetic bar gin and beer – would have been a long 7 minutes for the patient.

I don’t think they used alcohol as an anaesthetic (at least not in Nelson’s navy) as they knew it thins the blood. Therefore you’re more likely to bleed to death.

Apparently amputations on warships had quite a high survival rate. The figures for HMS Victory during Trafalgar, where it suffered heavy casualties, are something like 24 amputations of which four died.

We do sometimes use Frontline spot on but I think the stuff from the vets is different to what you can buy over the counter.

A vet told me that you can now get Frontline over the counter rather than only from the vet because it no longer works very well.

But I suppose they would say that.

So, marketing aside, what is the difference between a perfume aimed at women and a perfume aimed at men?

What would be a “masculine” scent and what would be a “feminine” one?

ninfan – Member

<Cynical>

Perhaps a deal behind the scenes, EU agreed to announce this and then back down, allowing Dave to look tough and like he’s taking on the EU, thereby keeping us in and preventing a referendum ever really happening.

</Cynical>

I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist, but looking at the BBC headlines, the same thought just crossed my mind. It all seems a little bit too convenient.

My personal opinion is that this whole strategy is borne out of an expensive court case DCC had quite some time ago. The wheels will have been in motion for years (pun intended)

Is that something you can elaborate on?

Because the new ‘ultra fast’ smooth sections are so much safer for all users?

Obviously not, but you can’t sue the council for not maintaining the surface. Hitting a walker because you are going too fast is your problem, not the councils.

Its only a thought, but something similar happend to some of my local trails. The landowner was confronted with a five figure compensation payout from an MTBer. So they sanitized the trails and posted warning notices. Now there are more accidents, but less compensation claims. Its depressing.