jekkyl – What exactly is offending you?

Is it exposing the children to the poisons from his fag?

Or is it smoking in front of children will encourage them to smoke in the future?

Personally I think it is none of your business and would hope the bloke would tell you to **** off if you said anything.

This is outside yes?

FFS!

Willie Walsh just wants air passenger taxes scrapped

Exactly. The SNP has promised to at least half them and possibly scrap them.

So they are positive towards an independent Scotland.

Not sure what your saying there?

BA positive towards independent Scotland

That BBC never report anything positive?

Or maybe they just report when the big business has been saying, which just happens to be mainly negative………

So, exactly how do you imagine that a 30,000 tonne freighter would be able to drop it’s cargo fifteen miles inland after a massive earthquake or tsunami?

err…. How about a couple of Chinooks? Which could be carried by the cargo ship if necessary?

Please, this sort of vehicle has been in use for the best part of a century, it’s fuel consumption is a tiny fraction of any passenger jet,

How many? How successful? There has been numerous man powered flying machines in the last 30 years, doesn’t mean it’s a viable form of transport.
It’s fuel consumption is lower when comparing mpg, what about tonnes per gallon per mile?
What about the cost of the helium?

You cannot defy the the laws of physics. To fly anything will take more energy than moving it on the surface of the earth, so why not use ships? By far the most green form of transport available.

A super rich, aviation obsessed, rock star playing about is not going to solve transport problems!

Bruce Dickinson has released a hell of a lot of truly excellent music since the 80s don’t you?

That’s debatable!

Is it shooting off upwards into space or something once it’s released?

This.
It is so light and inert that it achieves escape velocity and escapes the atmosphere without reacting with anything which would trap it.

a maritime SAR assset on semipermanent loiter over busy seaways

So when it gets very windy and a maritime SAR is needed what happens?

whats not to like?

I didn’t say I didn’t like it. It just seems pretty useless and I don’t like the way stuff like this gets touted as environmentally friendly.

From the other BBC article

“We are jointly funding £2bn of research and development into the next generation of quieter, more energy efficient and environmentally friendly planes,” says Business Secretary Vince Cable.

Just to clarify on the load carrying capability.

The current aircraft can carry a load of 1225kg for up to 21 days, but on shorter flights could take up to 5 tonnes. Aircraft still on the drawing board may be able to carry 50 tonnes or more.

The 50t capability is just a proposed concept.

5t on shorter flights, so it’s a little bit more than a Black Hawk?

How would it cope with the recent high winds?

Badly.

I think one of the original uses envisaged was disater relief. It can get cargo to places where there are no landing strips and do it a lot quicker than sending a ship

It could? That depends really. If the thing is based in Europe and the disaster is in Asia, that’s quite a long leadtime before it gets there. Ships are common place and you could easily get some supplies by sea from a nearby Country.

However, even if it gets there quickly, it’s only 50t of cargo, about 1.5 artic loads. Compare that to a ship that carries 1000’s of tonnes.

Looks cool, interesting engineering but flawed and limited.

Going to Orchard Road isn’t compulsory? What about the Towers? :-)

50t a decent capacity? Compared to what? An aircraft, a truck or a ship?

What are you going to carry with it?

It can’t possibly compete with ships and if it is trying to compete with freight aircraft, most cargo carried by air is done so because of the speed. This thing is too slow.

Looks cool but pretty useless. More wasteful false green technology.

How can that be ‘green’?

How much resource to build it? How much manpower to operate it?

There is only a finite amount of helium available and we using it up all the time!

I agree with uphillcursing. I can’t stand the place.

Spent 2 weeks there with work last year and was desperate to get home after one.

A hot, humid, overpriced, crowded shopping centre.

Although I do love some ex pats who love it out there.

For example Tommy Sheridan is far from being a SNP fan:

Ben – Are you taking the piss? He’s a convicted criminal!FFS!

Why do you keep shooting yourself in the foot?

It’s marked as IN/OUT RGB

That would seem to be the video only, especially when you say it has an adaptor. Any pics?

If so then I would do as mikewsmith says above. But it’s not a very common output from a telly.

SCART is bi-directional. The sockets both transmit and receive signals, so it should work.

SCART

look at the companies who are moving production back to the UK. Cotic, for instance

Ben – You make some good arguments at time then sometimes you really seem to miss the point.

How many people are employed by Cotic? 10? 20? It’s a small scale high specialist manufacturer that sells £2000+ mtbs! It’s not exactly Trek is it?

Ben, you are not coming across well.

Why are Scottish stereotypes not fair game?

That thin about watermelon and haggis is nonsense. Your iconic Bard wrote a poem about haggis, you have a whole ceremony for haggis on Burns night and a lot of people find the ingredients of haggis a bit strange.

When it suits the whole cultural identity thing is celebrated when its mocked you call foul.

Pet passport.

You need to take them to the vets the day before returning.

The French don’t allow them on their beaches in the summer mind.

Personally I’d rather we all did without regional assemblies, including the welsh and scots, as they’re just another tier of politicians feeding in the trough which ultimately we all have to pay for.

+10

The less of them the better.

What sort of bike is it?

LHS – That’s Scandinavian nothing to do with the Scots.

Ghalltachd refers to the lowlands yes but it means the place where they speak the foreign language {English} rather than place of the foreigners.

If they weren’t a separate ethic group/race/culture (choose whichever you prefer), why did they speak a completely different language?

It can easily be argued that the Central Belt had much more in common culturally with England, than with the Highlands. Right up until the 1700’s the Highlands were considered a wild place and nobody ventured there. The society was still tribal.

They were ethnically cleansed in the Clearances, this wasn’t done by just the English but their fellow Scots helped as well.

There is no common Scottish culture.

“Highland” culture are once again very well integrated and valued

I thought it was Sir Walter Scott that did that and the current image of the “Highland” culture is a very romanticised. Besides, it has nothing to do with the vast majority who are Lowlanders.

From Wiki:

The Lowlands (Scots: the Lallans or the Lawlands; Scottish Gaelic: a’ Ghalldachd, “the place of the foreigner”) are a historic region of Scotland.

The Salmander is a good pub.

Lots of good pubs in Bath. Wasn’t there a thread about some bike friendly one that had recently opened?

The Old Green Tree is alos worth a visit.

Scotland has two languages of its own plus English.

That’s very debatable.
To try and claim “Scots” is a language rather than just a dialect is like saying “Geordie” is a language.

fighting {successfully}against loss of language and culture

1% doesn’t sound very successful to me.

Languages evoke, change and often die. Why not resurrect Pictish as this was once the primary language in Scotland?

Listing governmental and council led contract cockups isn’t a great way to win the argument.

That isn’t the point of highlighting the failures.

It is a way of highlighting that you are simply replacing like with like at great expense.

I am more confused now.

Did he call him a clown or say he was talking nonsense?

Tha thu ceart gu leor Epiccyclo ach chan eil canan nan gaidheal air STW

He said nonsense.

Not according to an online Gaelic dictionary he didn’t.

I assume the other sentence is highlighting the ignorance on STW?

Isn’t there only about 1% of the Scots actually speak Gaelic?

Ruais

What? A French Filipino Beauty Queen?

Where does she stand on the Yes/No question?

The currentnew setup is biased towards the needs of SE England. the Central Belt Rightly so, because that’s where the bulk of the population is.

FTFY.

So you will be looking at Independence for the Highlands and Islands in a few years?

In fact, what material difference is there between someone from Glasgow and someone from Manchester?
About the same as between someone living in London and someone in Paris.

Which is not a lot.

Glasgow and Manchester
Same currency, language, climate, passports, TV and Radio broadcasters,tax rates, I could go on….

Similar sized cities.

The major difference is Manchester has a much more diverse population than Glasgow.

Ben, you are trying to debate with somebody who alludes to Scots being racist and tries to foist the Braveheart stereotype on anybody who doesn’t embrace the union.

Not racist but there is a long history of intolerance. You still have major sectarian divides.
Going further back, Culloden was more a civil war than a rebellion against the English.

Oh, and having claimed to have lived here starts a thread wondering why we don’t like being referred to as Jocks.

Why would I make it up?

(my personal feeling is we’ll do alright, probably about the same standard of living as every other Northern European country)

Agreed.

We would be governed by a government we elect, and which would therefore be more representative.

You currently live in the oldest democracy in the World. You did elect the Government. Until recently you had a Labour Government led by Scotsmen for a significant length of time.

Why do you think that shower in Holyrood will be any better than the shower we have in Westminster?

After independence, you will create a microcosm of the UK. An uneven spread of wealth and population, with distinct cultural identities within it and resulting problems these cause.

Why does the 535D exist,

a ‘sporty’ exterior (big wheels etc)

Sub 6s 0 – 60 and 295hp seems pretty sporty to me and it would need those big wheels to put that power down.

A big diesel in a sporty saloon makes a lot sense nowadays.

No 3 provides benefits 1 & 2.

That’s not by any means a given.

One day, all delivery companies will be like this…

Well done Ian!

Thanks for that Frank, great build up and then massive fail! PMSL! :D

We love British culture. We’re part of British culture

Really? How many of your fellow Scots agree?
Are Runrig British?
Rabbie Burns British?
I have rarely heard a Scot call themselves British. Normally only the blue wearing thickheads.

This isn’t about rejecting everything that’s British, it’s about where we’re governed from – that’s it.

Ben – Make your mind up.

I’m sure you stated you wanted independence because you were concerned the UK would leave the EU and the effect it would have on your business.
Then it wasn’t financial it was a matter of self determination.
Then it was making your country a better place for your kids.
Now it’s purely to get away from Westminster.

But, to be fair, they’ve also had a consistently higher public expenditure per capita than the UK average, by a broadly similar amount.

Good luck with getting any acknowledgement of that.

The Scots on here seem to be in denial that a lot of their economy and employment is built around public sector based jobs.