Loz

drew Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Its like Sydney can never be London. Good. Sydney is a vacuous bint of an Australian urban centres. The Paris Hilton of cities. > London will be back: you cant kill the City. Some people certainly sound like they want to try. "Let's tax the banks until they squeal" "Make the banks pay" Yep, until they more somewhere else...

I wanna know how *Bob* got to be head of two departments.

To be fair, at least they are trying to make cuts at the middle class/richer level. Previous governments have been scared witless to go anywhere near them. I just amazed that Labour are trying to oppose them on the Child Benefit cuts. I had hoped that, after his speech, Ed M would have been above this sort of thing.

Bah humbug, Bren.

Hooray! Eater81 is back and as miserable as ever. If they ever want to do a remake of "One Foot in the Grave" they won't need to get an actor in!

Osbourne's action will have nowt to do with it - good, bad or otherwise. Just as in the last 'dip' it will be where the world's economy takes us. Brown's budgetting left us with the big deficit, but you can't exactly pin a world-wide recession on him. The only way is to do what Australia did - get as close to China as possible, economically. And that was accidental, rather than planned.

mockney piers Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I did have some smoked lager the other day, and it > was surprisingly quaffable. Mind you it was 7% so > you had to take it easy. How the hell do you smoke lager?

This is true, but can you suggest a fairer, cheap way of doing it? Look at the mess tax credits became.

I've been to the Whippet Inn. Known for it's fine Whippet Inn Cider.

Nor are they easy targets. Not at all. If carousel fraud could be bought down, it would. It costs governments across the EU billions each year and is run by criminals. Avoidance of corporation tax would take rewriting the corporation tax law. I believe the current guide runs to over 10,000 pages. That's due to government after government tweaking laws. Make taxes simple. You create less loopholes. I'm sorry but I have never believed in this self-congratulatory 'my kids are the future of this country' b'locks. People have kids because that is the lifestyle choice they have made. Yes, some will grow up to be the next doctors/nurses/bus drivers but that's a) a side effect and b) not always - in fact rarely - the case. Where do you think the next generation of burglars are coming from? Kids get free schooling, subsidised bus fares. free meals. I'm fine with all that - states should provide services, not cash. But, no, you want a few grand on top. Because it is 'a nice thing to do'??? Anything else you'd like? Gold plated cutlery all round? Handouts are for the poor and the needy, not because it's a 'nice' thing to do. That applies double in the current financial state we're in. Personally, I'd means test child benefit at a much lower rate and limit it to two children. All the middle class whining in the papers in the last couple of days has really annoyed me. Can't cut benefits, can't cut arts budgets, can't cut medical research budgets... the list of the self-interested goes on and on. All of them saying "we do need cuts - but nothing that affects me, please". I don't much like Cameron and Gideon, but if they've got the cojones to see this through then all credit to him. Sadly, they already look like they are starting to waver.

Back when I was young, children who took seats at the expense of adults were expected to pay full fare. Fat chance of that ever happening.

From the Beeb today... "Sick PCs should be banned from the net". They were talking computers, rather than pervy policemen.

Why does Tony Curtis look like Graham Norton?

The problem is, PR, how do you apply it simply and fairly? Every system has it's quirks and loopholes. Look at the right royal mess the tax credit system has become.

Tsk. Bad dog.

That's not right. Child benefit for the first child is ?20.30 a week, or just over ?1000 per annum.

It could indeed, Silverfox. Though there is a little difference in that once you draw your pension, your income generally stops. Assets are a slightly different argument. But why should the government be giving 10K a year (or whatever the state pension is) to the recently retired chairman of Megacorp, whose gold plated pension is bringing him in six figures?

It's not just reproduction; it's survival as well. For instance, the Peppered Moth. It also shows that evolution is not usually a long drawn out process, but a series of short bursts of change/survival caused by environmental change.

Pumpkinless and door-answering-less. I either get lots in and nobody shows (causing untold damage to my waistline) or I forget and the entire contents of the local school descend on my doorstep. Bah humbug. I think I am at the point of applying for the next series of 'Grumpy Old Men'.

Moos Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > You're looking at it from a human perspective > where you need to think like a gene. Your genes > don't give a shit if you live in misery and die at > the age of 30 - they define success by solely your > ability to mate and reproduce. That was my point > in responding to MM in the first place - he asked > for a genetic explanation, but the explanation > (although I think valid) basically renders him > completely ineligible to be alive at all any more. > > > So the pauper who has 15 children, 6 of whom live > to adulthood, is far more successful than Bill > Gates with his miserable 2 kids, or the total > non-achiever Wolfgang Mozart with no children at > all. > > Do we define success, happiness, humanity in > genetic terms? Of course we don't. It's not > enough. But Moos, I am thinking like a gene, but I'm also considering the outcome. The point of evolution is pass down the best genes for the environment. You sort of skirt on this by noting that Gates and Mozart had a much less of an effect on the gene pool that the pauper. Let me put it another way. Most of the more intelligent end of the spectrum are arguably the successful ones in society. The less intelligent, generally the less successful. But, the more intelligent/successful are not breeding. Are we getting less intelligent? Darwin would suggest we are. Studies indicate quote the opposite - IQ scores are constantly having to be rejigged to hold the mean at 100 (The Flynn Effect). For instance, I am rather short sighted. Nature would have seen me off by age 12, eaten by something or other. But, instead I wear glasses/lenses and have made it happily to middle age and I am holding down a decent job mainly because I am literate and numerate. Maybe the human race has surpassed evolution.

[lights blue touchpaper. stands back] Darwin's theory of evolution says that the 'fittest' (i.e. those that can best succeed in a given environment) survive and breed. If you look at all the 'successful' people, in the western world at least, they are the ones that will have the lowest reproduction rate. Is the human race de-evolving?

mockney piers Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Actually fish is the plural, fishes is the third > person present isn't it? I'm having a grammatical > nightmare today. Fish is the plural. Fishes refers to a number of different types of fish. I think. Two fish, two species of fishes? But as I wouldn't know a 'third person present' is anyway, what do I know? Is it like a third party policy?

And I thought Gamu's, like totally relevant, ability to sing with a look on her face like someone has just tried to steal her chips was going to be a complete winner.

Playing devil's advocate with a Daily Mail version to match Sean's Guardian outlook. Two people wash up on an island Both of them notice a pile of wood. One builds a hut, using all available material. The other prefers to sunbathe and sleep on the beach. Winter comes and one night it rains. Do they tell the other person to sleep outside in the pouring rain or do they share the shelter? There are, of course, many shades of grey between Sean's and this version.

I disagree, Jah. I've seen many other more pointless ones. In fact, this one's title was, quite literally, to the point.