DJKillaQueen

I beg to differ ;-)

Apes are not the same as chimps Rosie lol but that aside.....chimps don't needs to buy a fur coat unless they find a bic razor of course and decide to experiment :))

Also it is thought that we evolved such large brains (which in turns makes us the intellectual species we are) because we began eating meat. Apes are vegetarian remember. And the entire food chain also works on Carnivorous lines. Sure there are vegetarian species but animals will just as easily kill for territorial gain as they will for food. I say all this because I've never understood the argument that humans eating meat is somehow immoral and it has always been the case that some humans would eat meat they didn't acutally kill. We like to kid ourselves that we are somehow humane as a species when it is no more in our nature to be so than that of a wild animal. Most of the reasons for poor farming practises around meat production are to do with there being too many of us on the planet. There is no option but for industrial food production and whilst it is absolutely right that unnecessarily cruel practises should be eradicated there's absolutely nothing wrong with using the fur and leather that comes from that food production. After all.....the by-products from the production of synthetic alternatives are not exactly planet friendly either.

And cider? :)

From Guardian.co.uk Britain is facing a dangerous collapse in adoption rates because of the prejudiced attitudes of some local authorities and adoption agencies towards white parents adopting minority ethnic children, according to Martin Narey, the outgoing chief executive of Barnardo's. The adoption rate of babies must increase fourfold, and the numbers of toddlers and older children placed with new families must also increase dramatically, he said in an interview to mark his resignation from the charity he has run for more than five years. He said adoption was at a historic low and had all but disappeared for babies, despite being a "vital tool in the child protection armoury", particularly for under-ones. "Only 70 babies were adopted last year compared with 4,000 in 1976. We need that figure to get back into the thousands so we need to quadruple it over the next few years ? and quadruple it again," he said.. Narey said the collapse in the use of adoption was perplexing. Citing evidence that it offers the best outcomes for children, he said: " Early adoptions are particularly successful and yet it remains out of fashion." He accused local authorities and adoption agencies of thwarting the law through a reluctance to allow white couples to adopt children from different ethnic backgrounds. The "prejudice" was so entrenched he feared it would not be easily reversed. He said: "The law is very clear. A child should not stay in care for an undue length of time while waiting for adoptive parents of the same ethnicity. But the reality is that black, Asian and mixed-race children wait three times longer than white children." Narey's comments come in the same week a survey revealed widespread poor practice among adoption agencies. The Adoption UK research found that prospective parents are frequently unfairly rejected or forced to endure waits of up to six months after their initial inquiry, three times longer than legislation demands. I think that the advance of IVF treatment has meant many couples who would have been childless in the past now have hope and wait until it is too late to consider adoption as well. This isn't helped by many adoption agencies refusal to place children with anyone over 40 years of age.

;-)

I refer you to the title of the thread. You are hardly devoid of energy yourself in attacking people in debates and are the 'king' of disdain on this forum (you really must get over this obseesion you have with me). I have very right to point out the poor service given by the previous Lib Dem council, and the money wasted.....and when a Lib Dem councillor makes points that are not the whole story then I think it's a good thing that he is challenged...don't you? It's called right to reply and democracy! Besides I think James is more than capable of holding his own.

How do you damage a non-entity? Ha ha.....good point...lol

The ridiculous thing though is that we are talking about a party that are never going to win an general election...a party that came THIRD but somehow think they have a right to be part of government...and a party that delude themselves that being part of government will somehow change anything for them. To pretend that issues such as tuition fees haven't damaged the image of the Lib Dems as a party is fantasy. They are a non entity in the landscapes of Brtish politics.

Welcome to ED both of you. Don't worry, you'll find Pearson with pipe, slippers and a greyhound in the corner of the Plough bearing a sign that reads 'Resident Grump!' ;-) ED has lot's to offer. You'll find lot's of things to do in the What's Section. Whether you are looking for sports, or social groups, or gigs to attend. And this forum has a forum drinks at one of the many pubs in the area regularly as well.

Yeah but James it never actually cancels each other out. I attended a lecture by AWICS on this recently in fact where there was a detailed account in pounds and pence of just what the council loses in terms of what it will be allowed to borrow. It doesn't get everything back. And I will try and find my paperwork on that to give you some figures. Personally I'm happy to see the end of something called a 'subsidy' when it's not, but the calculations given by AWICS showed that Southwark would lose millions in available revenue from the new system. And what happens if the government gets the calculations wrong? that was a question no one could answer. On decent homes, I absolutely agree with you that homes that are considered decent now, may no longer be so in ten years, but that is all the more reason to keep the programme adaquately funded and to keep the work going. In the worst cases, we are talking about homes that have had no internal refit in 30 years, with poor central heating, outdated electrics and so on. Some buildings are 80 years old and have never had any improvements made to them internally. Whether it takes five years, eight years, twenty years,.....it won't change the fact that money needs to be found to do the work. We have a government (the Tory part of it) that has no interest in social housing, so I think your eight years may well be dependent on a change of government next time round. On housing repairs....the important thing is that the system is now changed to make sure that all the problems are eradicated and that work is done to a good standard as well. It's not something that you as a councillor can be blamed for but the quality of workmanship from some contractors or some employees of contractors the council uses is awful and in plain terms is money down the drain. There needs to be a much higher level of quality control from the council and contractors that don't deliver to a standard need to be held to account. And also those managing contracts need to be better qualified and held accountable too. What I have found is that when something goes wrong with a major project, the council employee is moved to another department (doing the same job) and replaced by someone else in their former department, with no means for redress. Anyone trying to find out what has gone wrong and why is always met with the reply 'I can't answer for what has happened previously as I'm new'. All of these things are part of the same problem and it's something I've raised with my local councillors too. By the way, did you see the cover of Southwark News? It's that call centre again ;-)

All of that is true but it won't stop the West from clinging on to what it can...which is H's point. Note yesterday the annouced agreement between America and China.

Decent homes are funded by central government but what also has to be remembered is that from all the rents collected, central government creams off a percentage (just like tax). In other words, councils do not get to keep all of the rent they collect. In Southwark's case, if it were allowed to keep all the revenue, it would have enough to cover the running and repair of it's housing stock (repair being maintenance not major renoonvation). Previously the government then gave part of that money creamed off back, as housing subsidy - 'subsidy' being misleading as it is money originally collected as part of the rent (hence my point in another thread that low rent in social housing is NOT subsidised at all), and kept the rest. That is going to change into a system of loans (rather than subsidy) whilst the government will still cream of rents. And to be fair the change is something drawn up by the previous Labour government, being adopted by the new coalition government.

I have angst towards ALL politicians who mislead, and blow their own trumpets knowing full well they haven't delivered good service when their party has been in power. You are selective in what you answer too just like most politicians. 66% of Southwark council housing is reported as meeting Decent Homes standards - This isn't exactly a glowing reflection of your previous council is it either? In fact an initial report in 2003 estimated that at least 38% of council homes in Southwark required work to bring them up to decent homes standard. Based on that, means that only 4% of homes were done under your councils watch. That's terrible stat. Now that same report said that tenants believe that 50% of homes needed work (the difference being in what the council considered a decent home and what a tenant considered to be a decent home). But even taking that, means that only 16% were done, again a poor figure of less than a third. And in respect to decent homes, there are people employed by the coucil managing contracts and who are not fit for purpose. A report into the Larkenhall fire is going to show that alterations made to the building by the council reduced it's fire safety impact. Funding for all decent homes was pulled in order to bring all buildings up to minimum fire saftey standards. Someone in the council is responsible for those works on Larkenhall. Gross incompetance that cost lives under a Lib Dem led council. I will contuinue with the help of my local councilloers (who have been on board since their election) to expose those people, the mistakes they make, the money wasted and poor quality of work delivered. It's just not good enough. Hopefully Labour Southwark will submit a really good application. I am sure they will but please aknowledge too, that under the coalition, the money available for decent homes is woefully inadaquate, and that 80% of homes will not be done accross the country. YOUR coalition is responsible for that. So the service certainly made a step improvement but still has a long way to go. You are hilarious,. Contractors reporting they've caried out or completed repairs when they haven't is a step forward? The system of allowing contractors to electronically sign off jobs was something the Lib Dem council introduced. That same council then boasted 99% satisfaction stats which were nonsense all along. The call centre, a gross waste of money and only handling 20% of calls to the coucil, has driven many reseidents insane. Many residents have had real problems getting repairs done. Made worse by taking away the power of Housing Officers to raise repair requests on behalf of the residents they serve. Again something YOUR Lib Dem led council did. I can go on with many examples of where things have led to a nothing but a poorer delivery of service.

300 million US citizenry (and 60 million UK citizens) have flourished under an era of cheap oil and cheap commodities based on the impoverishment and slave labour of 6 billion people in the rest of the world. Iraq (and many future situations like it) are created because none of you are going to let that go easily. That for me nails it. It is absolutely all about continuing the subjegation of these countries to the West.

Oh dear James...throwing a hissy fit at yet again having your bubble of 'the Lib Dems can do no wrong' being burst? Do you have anything to say about the fact that 80% of decent homes work will never get done? Or are you going to continue with the pretence that taking away the preference for Almo's somehow makes a difference? And why can you get away with using the forum for promoting your parties cause in general debate when one of my local labour councillors has been told she can not do the same? Of course I read the Labour leaflets....and your point is? Can you provide evidence that Labour in Southwark planned to merge services? My understanding is that the meeting is which merging was discussed related to borough boundaries where there is sometimes confusion over which borough is responsible and a merging of services for border areas might be a solution. If the Lib Dem leaflets were based on facts then why have none of the proposed claims on rent increases and housing management by the company that runs Lambeth materialised? Oh and then there's the false housing repair stats that the Lib Dems put out of 99% satisfaction, now discredited by Gavin Edwards report. Oldham is one by-election (and according to political commentators not typical of most constituencies...so doesn't really say anything) .......the Lib Dems are a minority party, who took an opportunist chance to be in government. The majority of the electorate never voted for ANY of their policies and don't kid yourself that they'll be forgiven by many voters for that act.

Was whisky involved? ;-)

I love Mackeral so will probably love this...will be sure to try it out......yum!

Also driving away from he scene of an accident is a criminal offence. Ireegardless of the right or wrong the driver should have stopped and there's no excuse for not doing so.

But just what threat was that? Iraq was never concerned with the US. Iraq was mostly concerned with the threat from Iran, her neighbour, that she had been at war with. As for Clinton, it's impossible to know but one thing that IS known is that Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9/11.

Unless you overwrite the files on your corrupte OS you won't lose your data. Personally I would attach another drive with an OS pre-installed or install one and then copy the files you want from your corrupted drive before reformatting that drive and reinstalling everything from scratch. But it seems as though you are on the right tracks.

Yes absolutely.....it's not black and white and there are more than enough shady dealings if you dig deep enough from all administrations. I do agree though that 9/11 presented the 'opportunity' looked for and without it the invasion would not have happened, but it was a gross mistruth by the Bush neo-con administration to use 9/11 as such. Remember how they confused their own population on that? 'The Power of Nightmares' was indeed a decent attempt (but agreeably selective) to simplify the historical complexity of the West's relatioship with the Middle-East. Oh and right now....any mention of the McCanns strikes the fear of the forum into me lol !

I know. That's my point. I was aware of the document 'Rebuilding America's Defenses - Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century' shortly after it was published as a then neo-conservative think tank policy. Makes you wonder how different things would have been if Al Gore had succeeded in proving that the Florida elections were corrupt.

I think that once the neo-cons were in power it wouldn't have mattered what Saddam said (bluff or otherwise). Saddam had very good reason to bluff, but not for the US and the UN, but for Iran, in which it had bankrupted itself after a war that the West equally had a dubious hand in - supplying arms to BOTH sides...hence the end of any friendly relationship Saddam thought he had with the West. The Unvasion of Kuwait was precipated by the poor economic condition of Iraq after that war...along with sanctions and the fear that Iran, growing in strength might try another war, one that Iraq would have had a real risk of losing. Even the loss of the southern shi-ite area of Iraq would have been disastrous, not only because of the loss of oil fields there, but also because it would have cut her off from access to the sea routes of the Persian Gulf. We can not keep interfering in these countries and then sanction them into submission when things don't go our way. Nuclear capability for these countries is seen as their only way out of the manipulation and bullying that America and the UN subjects these countries to. Pakistan is a very good example of that. But at the same time, the arms trade, which the West does very nicely out of, relies on these countries, run by military dictators for the bulk of it's sales. Totally hypocritical to the core.

Yes he had some serious health problems that required daily medication. If an air strike didn't get him then it's quite possible his general ill health did. I think if he were alive we'd have seen video after video of him. They've tried lookalikes. Why do that unless he's dead? On Tony B though....we've had so many inquiries that there really is nothing to be gained from yet another one imo.