it can hardly be attributed to an asian person becoming diabetic.

Yeah, I’d tend to agree, I think. Must be tough on your body though; especially if your someone (like me!) who’s body is used to getting an excess of nutrition. Mind you, I can see the argument that it balances things out a little bit. It’s a bit ‘binge and bust’ though, not probably an ideal solution.

Foul breath, chest pain, headaches, exhaustion, boils, spots, greasy skin/hair, sounds wonderful. I’ve a rubbish diet, but that sounds worse than a rubbish diet to be honest. Plus, I can understand the no food thing (to a point) but no water? That just seems dangerous and/or seriously limiting. Basically reduces you to a level of physical activity that doesn’t require rehydration. Can’t be good for your kidneys either. I wonder if Ramadan has anything to do with the higher incidence of diabetes in the Asian population? Or whether it’s just a general diet thing, or genetic predisposition.

Gonzy, all the best in your endeavour, I think you’re mad to put yourself through it, but I appreciate its really important to you.

Edit; what was that about not swallowing your own saliva? That’s bonkers! (And impossible, I think) where’d that come from?

So, if I’m in a hot air ballon, will I feel any wind against my face?

Ooh, ooh, I can answer this one from experience. You occasionally feel a bit as the wind changes direction as the inertia of the ballon is overcome, then no, no you don’t. 8)

In answer to Molls question about how does the float plane get to the landlocked airstrip, it’s sometimes this;

Looks iffy to me 😯

Is this the same MrsFry who does all the borderline inappropriate innuendo stuff <tries to muster up a rightful indignation huff; accidentally farts instead>

People are going to disagree with me and say my advice is outdated, but I’ve had a lot of luck (like, 100% success) with completely ignoring the private charge notices. I’ve had a few over the past few years. My entirely unverifiable theory is that if they are never actually sure that they have served any sort of communication on you, it isn’t worth the dosh/effort to get all legal on your (as far as they are concerned quite possibly non existent) ass, and are instead happy to just keep taking the easy money from scared rule abiding masses.

Of course, their odds change dramatically if they get a whiff that you exist, so ignore, ignore, ignore.

I’m confused why you agreed to go halves on the expense of flights, hotels etc if you knew she was insured and her insurance has coughed up for the whole sum

Yep, this wi’bells on. She doesn’t owe you £550, she owes you £1200, surely? Definitely worth pursuing in my book, although the dumping at the airport does weaken your case from a sympathy point of view. Your evidence for small claims court is a) that you paid for everything demonstrated by your CC records, and b) the fact that she has received a payout from insurance company. (Harder to produce, but unless she either hasn’t claimed or is willing to lie to court, proveable). However, if she is young and lives or is still heavily influenced by her folks, a nice chat to her whilst they are present might be the way to go; if you play your cards right you could walk away with a cheque there and then. If not, send a written demand, then a ‘letter before action’, then open up a small claim. It’s not very expensive. Also, try to save any corespondence that you have (texts, emails, faceache messages) between you that acknowledge the arrangement. These will strengthen your claim.

Link not working; try again? (I’m interested)

Sorry, you misunderstand me; I don’t mean both would happen, I mean you could specify; ‘if the circumstances don’t allow (a), then (b) should occur.

Maybe your wife has met some med students? I have, and I’m not sure if want some of them chopping me up for shits and giggles edumacation either…

I’ll identify the fact that if that’s your poo, you need to take a serious look at your diet… 😆

Dogs can (very obviously) read human facial expressions and body language too; and their ability to communicate with humans on a sub verbal level is probably what makes them such excellent companions.

Absolutely, I suspected that about corneas, but didn’t even know there was such a thing as femur or skin donation, fascinating! And well done for making the difficult decision at the right time. Chapeau.

No reason why you couldn’t choose both. The circumstances that would make you useful for (most) organ donation are fairly specific IME, limited mostly to a massive head to injury either traumatic or organic in nature that kills you off but leaves your body ticking over. This buys the harvesting teams sufficient time to ramp up, gain the various consents and organise the harvest. Outside these specific circumstances, I see no reason that your body would not still be interesting to a load of medical students.

He would be on the register if he was a UK Paramedic.

He may well be… Just not the HPC register…

😆
I believe ‘999’ is the answer. Now what was the question?

And how’s that train set of yours coming along?

There’s a scary number of wannabe oddballs about, and some are more convincing than the borderline afflicted individual documented below. A strange obsession, for sure.

Shropshire is in the West Midlands region of England, as is Leek, as is Warwick, as is Stoke on Trent. The County of West Midlands is also in the region of West Midlands. Bit weird that anyone would pedantically suggest otherwise.

Source, a Shropshire lad who has worked in Staffordshire, Shropshire, Wolverhampton and Birmingham, all for West Midlands Ambulance Service.

This is an interesting topic for me. Our shoe is on the other foot, and it’s a size 13 belter. We are about to enter a letting agreement for a house with LOADS of lawn; sit on mower territory. Ironic seeing as I only bought a cordless Lidl mower a month ago. I don’t think it’s going to cut the mustard somehow. There’s no mower included, and I can’t afford to go out and buy a mower of sufficient heftiness straight away, what with all the fees, deposit and purchasing of a cooker and curtains and stuff. The place has been empty for six months, and is owned by a country estate; would it be unreasonable to ask them to continue whatever arrangement they had in place to mow the grass whilst it was unoccupied?

What was nice about this interminable STW religion;argue! thread is that everyone was (reasonably) polite to each other, not too many teddies were chucked (it was more of a ‘I’m getting nowhere, I’m going to put my teddy back on the shelf where it belongs’ type affair) and I don’t think there was much post moderation or banning going on. Some well considered positions on both sides and I actually saw people concede the odd point (a teeny bit). Well done STW, you’ve changed!

My favourite post was Cougar’s ‘Shedesis 1:1’

I’d be up for a theology/shed building ride and beers. In theory at least, practicalities may scupper it for me

I suspect the nice, decent people on this thread would be nice, decent people with or without religion. Likewise the dicks in the wider world would find ways of being dicks with or without it, too. These threads always end up making atheists look a bit mean; but that’s because in this environment, the religious are the underdogs. Generally, rational thought and evidence are the weapons of discourse, and they don’t have any. So it always seems a bit one sided. This makes claiming sympathy easy for the religious, and makes it easy to paint the atheists, militant or otherwise, as a bit mean. It’s a weird reversal of what has historically always been the other way around.

The only thing that I’m embarrassed about is getting into a ‘but someone on the internet is wrong’ type exchange (someone please post the gif). I should know when to walk away.

So;

You suggested that STW has double standards because a (not very) offensive thing was said about religion.
I said; it’s a valid opinion, and not offensive because it’s a thread about opinions on religion.
You said but what about the gays and the blacks?
I said; not the same thing; ones a choice, the others are characteristics.
You said; they are the same because the law says so.
I said; the law has said a lot of things, doesn’t make it always right.
You said; but, the law…
I said tell that to Rosa Parks.
You said; you’re embarrassing yourself.
I agreed; but not for the reason that you insinuate.

I’m paraphrasing, obviously. (And I’m out, for tonight at least. Sweet dreams)

Mefty, click here.

Chewkw – ‘Idiot’ can be offensive or affectionate, depending on the context. I wouldn’t go calling your colleagues idiots routinely (it probably wouldn’t be the wisest career move), but you could call your best mate an idiot for doing something daft with a smile on your face and it not be offensive at all.

It’s a multi purpose insult. A bit like ‘nob’. 😆

Disagreement is a fundamental part of academic life, if you find that offensive

😆 Yes, and so is EVIDENCE. That’s what’s missing from your aforementioned comparison. ‘That it is legislated thus’ is just a poor appeal to authority. Legislation has a long history of being found somewhat lacking.

as I have no need to offend people because of their race, sexuality or religion.

But you’re perfectly happy to offend people not in those ‘protected’ groups? Because the drawing of comparisons between genetics and belief offends me, (in a purely academic manner). It is comparing apples and oranges, regardless of legistlation.

The historical inertia that I refer to is the respect afforded to the religious institutions, just because we always have done, rather than because of any actual logic. See; tax breaks, special dispensations in law, etc.

Not at all, why would a country with an established church wish to protect other religions? We do though.

So as not to look complete and utter hypocrites? Seriously; that’s a side effect of having a working justice system, surely. I’m sure I KNOW there are MANY Christian types who would really rather not afford Islam (for example) the same protections afforded to CofE, but they have to be, because, equality. Infact, I’m comfortable with saying that it’s a crying shame that we have religiously funded Catholic schools in this country, because it means any nutter can open a school and base it on religious grounds. And there’s been some pretty dodgy religious schools around my neck of the woods recently. Couldn’t have happened if this country had the balls to kick all religion out of schools.

Badgers dead on the side of the road, which always gets me thinking how they actually got there??????

I think you know exactly how they got there, sadly. And the object that ended them hit them a darned sight faster than a car ever would, I’d wager.

Yet we have discrimination laws in this country that pretty much do that.

What else would you expect in a country that still has automatic places for clerics in government.

Seriously though; if you think about it, that’s more to do with historic inertia and the difficulty in arguing against a law that protects any group of people from abuse, than any kind of logic whatsoever. I’d rather they replaced ‘religious’ with ginger’ in that specific piece of legistlation; at least that would be protecting people who had no choice in their genetics.

I guess some people choose to be religious. For others, they don’t have the choice

This is true…

I see both your points, but respectfully disagree. Religious belief is forced upon many people in this world, and it’s entirely understandable for the people in these situations to go along with it, and just ‘believe’. However, history is littered with the bodies of people who chose not to conform to the status quo; to their great detriment most often. So the choice IS there, as unpalatable as it may be.

The Bible is not the whole of Christianity. You are lamentably poor at this…

To be fair though, it’s kind of a fact that Christianity kinda, you know, wouldn’t exist without the bible. And the years of ‘study’ that you allude to really just boil down to layer upon layer of opinion on top of a foundation of sand. There can be no logical outcome when the very basis is a story without evidence.

To be fair I think shagging another bloke is irrational.

😆 Well I suppose that would very much depend on what you were hoping to achieve by it!

You are lamentably poor at this as your knowledge of the book is risible

And that’s just one of ‘The Books’ 😯 and indeed 😯

@Mefty
Putting religion in the same category as being being gay or black is patently ridiculous; religion is an irrational (in the strictest, non offensive sense) belief, the other two are unchangeable characteristics that describe individuals.

People change their religious status, they don’t change their skin tone or their sexuality.

Do you lot have Asperger’s Syndrome or something?

I see what you did there; very good. 😆

Your lack of understanding would appear to betray you, I think.

in what way? Have you not actually got a shed?

Yet it is not removed – of course there are no double standards.

because it’s an opinion, on a thread asking for opinions. Funny that.

It’s even possibly quite a justifiable if extreme opinion, in pure logic terms, and there’s absolutely NOTHING wrong with having a mental illness anyway, so it shouldn’t even be offensive. It’s like someone saying; “looks like you’ve broken your arm mate” when actually an X-ray reveals that you’ve just it a funny shaped arm. Or something.

That’s not what religion says though

Oh come on; it mostly is. To stretch your shed analogy to an inch of its life; it’s like you’ve built a good shed that is agreeable to most people, but only by ignoring the bits in the instructions that said thing like “burn the heretics” “marry the woman you rape, and pay her dad off and it’ll be okay” and “gay people are proper wrong’uns hmm’kay?”

So well done on your great shed, and I personally respect your semi permenent garden structure building skills. But you’ll have to excuse me if I think that’s largely down to you being a good erector who knows what’s right and wrong when it comes to building tool stores, rather down to those bloody awful instructions from Abe’s Sheds. I’ve seen a fair few people interpret those shed instructions a lot more litterally than you have, and their sheds are terrible.

Fair enough, Mol. Your perceived context is evidently somewhat deeper than mine. I have a fair bit of trouble remembering who said what. I do remember that you like Priuses though… 😉

BenCoopers comment is a) not specifically aimed at anyone, and b) not particularly controversial. It’s also c) within the context of a thread which is encouraging people to openly discuss their attitudes towards religion, so is ENTIRELY appropriate. In fact, I’m more offended by VickyPeas flounce and Mols attidude towards BenCooper than I am about anything Ben said. (That said, you’d still need a very sensitive offendometer to pick up a reading from me; in fact it may just be wind)

Saul is kind of the antithesis of a lightweight padded out spin off… I reckon it’s actually more cerebral than BB, it certainly has a different pace and depth. Love both.

Don’t completely write off GoT. It’s not really about dragons, it’s about power, politics and corruption, with a fair bit of sex and violence thrown in for good measure. It’s proper gritty, at times. For delivering those ‘shit, I forgot to actually breath’ scenes, it’s every bit as good as BB.