mockney piers

Brilliant EDOldie!! Of course, in my day we didn't have all this google malarkey, we had a motorola 6809 and a dumb terminal and we were grateful for small mercies. Keyboards, keyboards? 10 hours a day punching holes in paper tape, and that was a luxury.

My god, when was the last time the French won a war?! The Hundred Years War?

It's jealousy, pure and simple, we still hanker for the days of the Raj, pink gin, the great game and pith helmets and damnable fine raiments. Mind you having met some of the Brits in Hong Kong and Singapore, clearly the message hasn't yet got out to all that the Empire's over.

in all fairness I didn't really read it, just had some nice pictures is all. Plus the CIA force fed him burgers on the crapper.

match report http://www.charlton-athletic.co.uk/newsview.ink?nid=32629

Gunboat, cruise missile. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose

I love it too, it looks so photoshopped, but it isn't. brilliant.

I gather it's quite the place to cut a dash

indeed

Mere Childsplay Brendan.

My God, all that talent and we're only 19th!! Good game at the Hamlets last night. Dulwich really took Charlton to the wire, and might have done it too, only fitness levels really told and went from a thoroughly deserved 1-0 lead to a 3-1 defeat, but proud of the job they did.

controversial......

Emmy the Great - Where is My Mind She's prettified well enough, but I can't help she's missing the point.

*ahem* waiting..... ;-)

politeness to waiting staff costs nothing, my photo friend Kathy expressing her gratitude:

It does rather suggest that most doom and gloom, the world's going to pot feelings are basically created and maintained by the press. "ooh, if it (shot in the head, cute kid kidnapped (or whatever happened)) can happen in paradise....I could be next...nowhere is safe, so many murders in london...*" And the press just have to keep rubbing the bruise. But then we obviously love to feel outraged and afraid or we wouldn't keep buying the damn papers and gasping "isn't it terrible" Not to say it wasn't a terrible and senseless event, but you know, I didn't know them it doesn't affect me" As it happens first stop on honeymoon is Antigua, but not that one. *

"essentially a decent people" doesn't mean that there aren't plentiferous sh!tty examples among the populace. But that's just human nature isn't, or back to the 90% of everything's sh!t?

It does, it will and it's cheap as chips, and now you can watch the game from the comfort of the bar (the windows used to be painted in) though it's a bit hot for that at the moment, but great n the coldest days in mid winter.

Oh and the whole the Irish have the right to hate the British thing, I've been saying in Ireland that this is just daft, British rulers were every bit as cruel to their own subjects (should we hate the French because those damn Plantaganets massacred Wat Tyler and his troop of good English men? - don't be silly). Those with power just happen to be bastards to those without, not just to foreigners, and then I read this wonderful article in the Irish independent. "more perverse was the general attitude that saw Ireland as being oppressed for centuries by the British, and especially by the English. In this context we see how language is abused: for "Britain" you should read "Britain's power elite". Innocent people grew up with the concept of one nation persecuting the other. Of course this is absurd. The seas between our two islands are not boundaries -- they are roads. For centuries there has been great coming and going between the two islands. The sweet music of the Gaelic language was heard in London in Shakespeare's time. Most of Wellington's army at the Battle of Waterloo were Southern Irish. It is said that after Gallipoli there was a crepe in every second house in the Coombe. I'm merely trying to say that these two islands have long been bound together. The British power elite abused their own common people just as much as they abused us. The eviction of the Highland Scots was an example of a people being cruel to their own. We will come nearer home: even in the worst times of the bombing in England by our "Freedom Fighters", there was no significant backlash. This proved, if proof were needed, that George Orwell was right when he always claimed that the English were essentially a decent people."

There are about a million origins of f*ck, alot of the like the one above or "Fornication Under Consent of the King", all of which are unfounded. Noone absolutely knows but the most convincing explanation is we got it off all our north sea neighbours, Dutch, Swedes, Danes, Germans who all have a similar word fokken, fukka, fikken meaning to thrust and by association, to bonk (you see what I did there?) and has been recorder in English since the 15th century, but is probably older than that. Snopes World Wide Words

Can you give us a taste (baddam tish) of your advice, call it a lossleader if you will, that demonstrates what it is you offer over and above 'moderation in all things' or indeed 'eat your greens', I'm genuinely interested as I've never before considered a dietary specialist whether of the BANT or NHS variety.

If thousands of years ago people discovered that by getting people to lie down, wafting pleasant scents and giving them some attention while popping little needles in them that do no harm, had curative effects, then that really was a good thing. If instead of using needles, they had sat them down, talked to them, listened to their problems, wafted nice scents and then prescribed them salt pills, because that way the essence of the salt god can enter the patient and reassert the natural energy flows of the body, then that would have been no less effective, and may have resulted, many years later, in modern westerners espousing the greatness of the salt god, while cynics scoffed. This would make the treatment no less efficacious, but, just going out on a limb here, it might not be the salt gods or the energy flow, it might just be the rather wonderful placebo effect, which, as you point out, is currently beyond the understanding of science, but it is acknowledged by science to have a demonstrable positive effect. They're just my last couple of penneth's worth.

Behold Commuting will be a breeze.

New ownership or management? Does that mean the forum can return without being treated like we were on the bottom of their collective staff shoe?

I'm with Jamma on this one Loz. There are no double blind tests which definitively prove the efficacy of Acupuncture, though there is a wealth of evidence such as yours that supports the effectiveness of acupuncture for low level pain and even mild depression. When Jamma says placebo, it shouldn't be taken as tricking a hypochondriac into feeling better, the placebo effect is a very real thing and has genuinely curative effects on the body, it should never be dismissed as a con trick. However until a study proves that acupuncture is definitively BETTER than placebo it will remain in the woo area. Here's the Ben Goldacre article on placebo, very interesting.