Huguenot

There is a peculiar element to this debate that assumes that the UK can act in isolation, that there is a national solution. It's a competitive world out there chaps, and brutally the UK isn't competing very well in any area except finance. Broadly it's because the UK salaries are too high, productivity is too low, and we ate our national resources between 1850 and 1980. The penalty of the industrial revolution eh? Everyone wants a piece of the financial muscle that the UK tends, and if johnny foreginer can legislate globally to make the UK unattractive they will. Not out of spite, but because for them there's only upside. I wouldn't worry too much about India, China or Singapore, I can assure you that they'll have their work cut out looking after regional economic growth. However, if Finance goes because you're all busy obsessing about middle-class angst, then the UK has nothing left but pomposity and delusions of grandeur. Don't bite the hand that feeds you etc. Alphacali etc., I do wish that a chap of your clearly talented insight would turn his mighty intellect to finding solutions rather than pointing out obstacles. It is most particularly chaps like you who need to get on board and apply themselves. ;-)

I wonder whether the question itself is oxymoronic? To be a 'great' surely you require the qualification of legacy - something you're unlikely to achieve in your own lifetime. More than that, can thought itself be great? Certainly linguistic expression and artful arguments can be great - but it's a learned skill not a talent - and doesn't necessarily require great thinking. And even then, what would make it great - that it is persuasive? That's one step further: an action not a contemplation. And then would the act of persuasion be great in isolation - does it need to be judged by history as essentially constructive to be 'great'?

I do think it's a wee bit naive to invest heavily in mediaeval/feudal societies. We did it with oil and reaped some unpleasant benefits. To a degree the information age has created a large number of societies with a veneer of progressive politics without any sense of the social responsibilities that go with that. Pumping megabucks into megalomaniacs like Kaddafi over solar power isn't going to help. Energy security is more likely to come from diversification and decentralisation? Wadaabout the spicks Piersy? I though Madrid was a 24/7 sunshine city?

On the Indians vs. Asians question - are you talking about Red Indians or people from India? The "Red Indians" sobriquet was coined by some daft buggers who didn't know how far around the world they'd sailed, and mistook the Americas for the same continent as the one with the Indus river. If you're talking about the land of the Taj Mahal, then 'Asian' refers to anyone from Asia (of which Indian is a subset). In much the same way you're probably English, British, European and Caucasian - even though you don't come from the Caucasus. I imagine the description 'Asian' arose as did the level of education, and knuckle dragging neanderthals discovered that just because someone had different coloured skin it didn't make them all 'Pakis'. 'Asian' is quite useful as a catch-all, because it covers such a diverse range of peoples that it's almost impossible to apply just one set of filthy prejudices. In doing so, it limits the ability of bigots to apply any (this makes the bigots frustrated). Clever eh? I think that globally one of the things that stands out most about people obsessed with the application of racial labels is that they're most often to be found creating areas of the world torn apart by mindless violence. Not so clever eh?

You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down the mill for fourteen hours a day week in week out, for sixpence a week. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

You were lucky to have a ROOM! We used to have to live in a corridor!

Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our Mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."

That's social workers for you.

Crikey, the EDF supports double byte!

つの食事を持っていなかった

Where are you coming from NQ? What is a decent postal service? 150,000 people walking the streets delivering junk mail that nobody wants for salaries that exceed the price paid? Are you saying that the post service is a government service that should be subsidised by tax payers to pay for direct marketers to send junk that we don't want? You want to subsidise private business? You may not realise it, but that's what you're proposing. The problem with socialists is they want everything for nothing, they hope to hide the cost in taxes. Please God, don't call me a capitalist w@anker, you'll only demonstrate how few of my posts you've read.

Well yes, Ian did "America the Wright Way"

"My brother gets mugged every day" That was irony right? ;-)

How terrible. Thankyou MissMack1981. Danile111, I hope you feel somewhat chastened.

I thought you meant Ian Wright, travel guru? He actually works with young offenders...

What did they say about Generation 'Y' - Generation Y-pay? If you want social services then accept either high taxation or low salaries in the public sector, you can't have both!

That's simply not the case Netquest. I know Adam Crozier, and he's a very astute businessman. The Royal Mail's in trouble because there is no requirement for the 1950's dream. These poor guys are hamstrung because the population insists that the deliver a pastoral service ("my lovely postie") in a world that has no need for it. We don't write letters any more, we have no need of it. So all they do is scrag along on junk mail and packages which are better delivered by blue collar unemployables and private business respectively. If you demand some Christmas Card emotional validation, then pay a quid for it, not a first class stamp.

Wll yes, d_c but people don't get paid when they're striking so democratic rights are balanced by personal responsibility. I'd argue that an efficient postal service is an anachronism in the modern age. An email has equivalent weight in law, read or unread (just like a mail). So what actually gets delivered? Junk and packages. Mail is dead! Privatise!!!

I don't think that's happening either. The tube is part of a huge transport infrastructure that needs comprehensive management - but it's offtopication. My point is that whether it's the Royal Mail, the Tube or the Miners, striking has a massive social impact, is rarely well thought through, and often counter-productive. The Royal Mail can't be saved by strikes, and doesn't deserve to be saved by money.

I don't think it's as easy as that NetQuest. Let's say that each tube strike costs the economy 50m a day... In financial terms, the drivers would initially go on strike indeterminately as soon as the subject of driverless trains was suggested. Since the process from initiation to completion would probably be around twenty years, that's 365 billion in lost productivity just to start off with. You'd have a breakdown in faith in both London and the UK on both economic, trading and tourist terms - perhaps 20 trillion? You'd have wildcat and sympathetic strikes in other industries that restricted productivity - another 5 trillion? Mass unemployment from the consequent economic downturn would cause huge civil unrest, rioting and a general breakdown of law and order. So yes, I guess it's that simple really ;-) That's why nobody likes a breakdown in labour relations.

Echidna was almost genocidal, you name a baddie, and they sprung from her fowl* loins... "a daughter of Tartarus and Ge (Apollod. ii. 1. ? 2), or of Chrysaor and Callirrho? (Hesiod. Theog. 295), and according to others again, of Peiras and Styx. (Paus. viii. 18. ? 1.) Echidna was a monster, half maiden and half serpent, with black eyes, fearful and bloodthirsty. She was the destruction of man, and became by Typhon the mother of the Chimaera, of the many-headed dog Orthus, of the hundred-headed dragon who guarded the apples of the Hesperides, of the Colchian dragon, of the Sphinx, Cerberus, Scylla, Gorgon, the Lernaean Hydra, of the eagle which consumed the liver of Prometheus, and of the Nemean lion. (Hes. Theog. 307, &c.; Apollod. ii. 3. ? 1, 5. ?? 10, 11, iii. 5. ? 8; Hygin. Fab. Praef. p. 3, and Fab. 151.) She was killed in her sleep by Argus Panoptes. (Apollod. ii. 1. ? 2.) According to Hesiod she lived with Typhon in a cave in the country of the Arimi, whereas the Greeks on the Euxine conceived her to have lived in Scythia." *see that egg laying reference?

It may be that this study tells us a little about the psychology of the situation... Only 47% of people think that a nurse persuading an elderly and infirm patient to change their will in the nurse's favour was dishonest. So what proportion will believe that persuading a chronically ill person to 'end their suffering' and advantage themselves is also not dishonest? If people want figures to support my concern about abuse of legalised suicide being widespread, they need only consider the 53% of people who would take advantage of the ill and infirm with a clear conscience.

I can assure you that there's absolutely nothing trivial about flipping a switch.

If no-one's responding Laurie, it's because interest is low. In that case what you're doing is simply spamming the forum. It pushes high-interest items down the page and as a result sours the forum experience for everyone. As a prospective council candidate I'm sure you don't want to develop a reputation for riding roughshod over the needs and interests of you constituency, so best drop the bumping ;-) Best of luck, of course.

Not at all PGC, as you said I'm not trying to be christian about the death penalty, just pointing out that the protagonist has decided that human life is forfeit to meet their own ends. It is only reasonable that such a point of view should be respected and apply equally to the criminals themselves. It's their decision, not society's. I'm sorry about your mum shosh, but your description is telling: "watch your 56 yr old mother vomit diahharrea and writhe in pain and then let's discuss it again" You see that comment's not about your mum, it's about you watching your mum. It suggests that euthansia is more about the viewer's own discomfort rather than the poor victim. I'm sure you didn't intend that and I apologise for highlighting it, but I believe that's dangerously close to a lot of people's views on euthanasia. We perhaps want to allow people a lifeline from their misery because of ourselves. I watched my own mother die over a painfully long ten year period that left her mentally and physically incapacitated. Myself and my siblings eventually switched off her life support for many reasons, but I made absolutely sure that none of them were about myself.