Will he survive in the wild on three legs, or will he become a footflaps pensioner?

This forum really needs a “like” button!

mental breakdown and he spends a good while recovering in a sanitorium before reluctantly

Sorry to be picky, but its not a sanitorium – just the house of “some kindly people”, or that’s what is says in my version.

so that you don’t get a weirdly disjointed joint narrative told from 2 completely different people’s perspectives

I reckon the best way to treat War of the Worlds and still remain true to HG Wells’ vision is to ignore the characters in the book completely. Create four of five different characters who can witness the sudden downfall of the most powerful nation on earth from different perspectives and tell their stories instead. – that’s sort of what Wells was trying to do in the book.

We need Peter Jackson to make the pukka, definitive version!

Like he did(n’t) with the hobbit and LOTR?

Also, what was all that about the bloke trying to get a divorce? Is that in the book?

H.G. Wells is one of my favourite authors.

There are characters like those two in some of Well’s other books (the non science fiction ones) – but I doubt the script writers bothered to read any of his other stuff. I suppose they thought they were being clever and “woke” rather than referencing well known 1900s/10s/20’s social commentary.

I quite liked Robert Carlyle as a gay Ogilvy

But the Martian invasion bit just doesn’t feel right, and those flash-forwards wiht the re-head wondering around in a red landscape just don’t work.

And bodies floating down the Thames past Parliament – they would all get caught up in the locks and weirs up-stream.

THey built a flood relief Jubilee river for this. OK it’s Slough South

Jubilee River was to protect the rich residents of Windsor and Maidenhead. The main benefit for Slough is its a handy place to do drug deals, or commit suicide.

Wow, some of you really are amazingly skilled at making something that’s designed to be a bit of fun into something sinister or abject torture…

I’m glad you’re not my boss.

picking on the guy that doesn’t want to join in on the enforced socialisation isn’t really what I’d call team building!

That’s not a joke – we had something come round the other day pointing out that enforcing attendance at social events can amount to workplace bulling. You don’t really want to go there!

Assuming that Saturday and Sunday are non-working days, I think its a bit unreasonable to expect people to give-up their weekends for a team building event. Will you be giving the other folk a couple of days off in lieu?

They are dockless but the software has geofencing so there are areas you can’t leave them in

how does that work? what stops you leaving it anywhere?

They **** you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were **** up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.”

Nobody in the first book goes through a window to another world,

I read an article that said With 8 hours of TV to play with they’ve got room to add bits that are not in the books but “inferred”. I’d have to read them all again to work out if it fitted in. Mind you, I’m sure I saw that Magesterium bloke on a train the other day…

it’s not Mrs Coulter who reveals to Lyra about Asriel.

I think they’re trying to make sure you don’t just see her as a one dimensional baddie. One of the themes I remember from the books is that there a re no “good” or “evil” people – just good or evil actions that people do. They are trying to show she has her own past and is a damaged person – I don’t think hitting her own daemon is the book, but its there to show she is really screwed up in her head.

they just smile and think about their easily accumulated and retained wealth, comfortable standard of debt free living and the early retirement they’re still enjoying. Most of which I can’t really expect for myself or my kids in the future… Cheers Mum and Dad.

This sort of statement always gets me pondering. What could your mum and dad have done differently to make your life easier? And perhaps more importantly, in 30 years time what will your kids think you could have done differently to make their lives easier?

No, he looks around his classroom, and sees a rubber, a pencil case, a ruler…

What sort of raving **** imbecile decides that these are useful words for a kid to learn for everyday life…..

Isn’t the point of teaching languages all about grammar – how to decline your nouns and conjugate your verbs. The sort of thin English speakers like me are generally shit at?

Vocabulary’s the relatively easy part. If you can ask for one pencil case, or two pencil cases correctly in Spanish, asking for one beer or two beers doesn’t need teaching.

I always thought snowflake was just a modern acceptable term for someone who was a bit soft and easily offended. Nothing to do with their age. In the 70s you would have called them something a bit less PC.

When I was a kid there was a song on the radio called Six White Boomers, by Rolf Harris. I always thought it was about kangaroos.

I don’t normally like TV/film adaptations of books I have enjoyed, but this one seems quite promising.

although I can’t say I enjoyed The Book of Dust all that much!

I’m not sure you’re meant to “enjoy” The Book of Dust. As Pullman says – Lyra has grown up.

I see little sign of those in the majority of tories.

How many tories do you actually know?

Steady now! you’re almost at the STW event horizon.

I’d posit that perhaps it’s not really a fear of losing their job, it’s a fear of having to do some bloody work in order to compete with those wanting to do it.

But your rash generalization is better than his rash generalization?

Its not the first time its happened.

There were the 58 who were found at Dover in 2000 during a routine search – That must have been a terrible thing to find when opening up a lorry.

I believe the driver in that case was convicted of manslaughter.

I don’t understand the love for Salmon XA up there.

Worst walking/running shoe I ever owned. Fortunately they fall apart after a year so you can throw them away.

Was this the one on radio 4 where there were books in the staff room advocating beating children if they didn’t pray and insisting that a wife must always submit to her husband?

The one where they insist they are only open for a 12 hours a week, but the time tables on the wall added up to 31 hours a week?

No it really isn’t.

So what is?

mid-50s, the reaction to these 20s+ women passes. Not only do they not notice you, but you stop noticing them.

Not quite true – you just start assuming anyone under 30 is about 16 years old, and wondering why their mother lets them out of the house dressed like that.

Odds of any one bond winning in any month are about 25000 to 1

That bond has only been in 660 draws. So you’re pretty lucky!

A friend of mine was once “spoken to” by the police for planting trees on an embankment of the M62. But that’s a different matter.

They’ll need to be big enough that they can’t be mown over.

if you do it properly the guys with the mowers might think the work’s been done by another section of the council.

On a similar topic –

I understand that our current system of having standard clothing sizes “off the peg” was a result of factory mass production of uniforms for the north during the American Civil war.

MOdern toilets have a short and a long flush button depending on what you deposit

I think the short flush still uses more water than a modern urinal.

I thought that, per piss, urinals use less water than stalls. Unless you only flush after a crap.

So shouldn’t we all be using urinals for number ones (ladies included)?

Did this a few years back. Like others say, its not difficult but it can take time and you need to be methodical.

There is a lot of online guidance, and all the required forms have detailed guidance as well. I can’t remember if this is the right link, but you might want to start here:

https://www.gov.uk/when-someone-dies

Compounder’s licence

If you distinctly alter the character or flavour of a spirit with another substance, other than water, but don’t use a still to do so, you need a compounder’s licence.

This doesn’t include mixed drinks solely for consumption on the premises, for example, cocktails.

Not sure if that applies to making Sloe Gin and stuff like that.

From gov.uk

Redistilled or mixed spirits

If you redistil spirits or compound spirits by using a still, you must have a rectifier’s licence.

If you mix spirits with anything apart from water, but don’t use a still to do so, you must have a compounder’s licence.

So I think you might need a rectifiers license?

This one is even more blatant!

Multipurpose Usage – there are many different ways to use our Moonshine Alcohol Still,home distiller can be used for seawater distillation,steam distillation and for distilling alcohol.According to your favorite,you can make different kinds of items in the moonshine stills such as Alcohol, Ethanol, Whiskey, Water Distiller, Wine Making, Essential Oils, Hydrosol,etc.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stainless-Distiller-Alcohol-Moonshine-Spirits/dp/B0163B8ZKQ/ref=pd_sbs_201_1/260-3949896-6432403

Round here its the all houses being built on green field sites plus the loss of existing garden hedges/trees that’s really shafting the bird population (and deer, and hedge hog etc.)

That’s odd, mine let me check mine and now Just says Sorry you haven’t won. Did I even check for September!?

The current draw will be October. Results won’t be up yet

But what does any of that have to do with immigrant workers?

Nothing as such. Molgrips was talking about (or I thought he was talking about) under cutting market rates and implying (or I thought he was implying) “so what?”

Hmm. That raises an interesting question. What defines ‘the going rate’? In most businesses, the rate is set by supply and demand. How is this different? There are lots of jobs that don’t earn enough to support a family. Why are plumbers any different?

This is partly devil’s advocate but partly not. I mean everyone should get a living wage. But at the same time we are a market economy and it has to function as such to some extent.

OK, to play devils advocate to your devils advocate.

Its easier to undercut the “going rate” if you work longer ours and accept a lower standard of living.
Its easier to undercut the “going rate” if you are supporting a family in a country where the cost of living is lower than here
its easier to undercut the “going rate” if you don’t declare any of it.
Its easier to under cut the “going rate” if you do a shoddy job.

Could be any or all of those reasons. But for all of them, to shrug your shoulders and say “its a market economy” is more than a little bit hard line Tory.

Anecdotal, but many I spoke to were pleased to have trades from the EU, because they actually answer the phone and turn up when they say they will.

I know someone who voted leave for exactly this reason – he was fed up of loosing out on jobs to eastern Europeans because English employers assumed they would work harder for less money.

Depending on where you live, your vote at every other national democratic event can be totally ignored

care to explain?

First past the post innit? Unless you live in a marginal constituency your vote is not going to change anything.

It also depends on individual experience.

My Dad came to in England in 46 or 47 with just the clothes he stood in. He’d had a bad war and was old enough to have experienced some of the shit that went on in Eastern Europe in the 1930s.

For him, post war Britain was a really nice place and a land of opportunity*. After some national service working in mines and forestry, he got a job in a factory and educated himself at night school. By the early 1950s he was aspiring to a lower middle class lifestyle** . He opened a bank account, bought his own house and was the second person on his street to buy a motor car.

It wasn’t exactly a land of milk and honey, he had to work hard at dirty jobs and there was a lot of ingrained racism about. But nobody was trying to kill him and even when the authorities did tell him what to do, they did it politely.

*he actually wanted to go to America, but was working for a Major in British intelligence who sponsored his application for Britain.

**ie, still dirt poor by today’s standards, but way better off than most of the population in the 1950s.