Huguenot

"M" Burger? Really?

The pan should be really hot. I trashed steaks in the past because I thought you had to cook them and they dried out into nasty tongue-sticky things. Get the pan so hot you think it's going to go off in flames, and then BOOM, chuck the booger in. Give it 120 secs each side max. Get a marbled (thin lines of fat throughout) steak. Don't worry if it's going blue/grey. As Jah says, if you want to do a sauce then do it away from the steak. The steaks will cook afterwards whether they're in the oven or not. The sauce will need a lot lower temperatures, a creamy jobbie should be less than 40 degrees. Try putting red/white wine and mustard in and following up with ten seconds of double cream. Low low temp. For best results wear it.

:)) Nope, feel good

Great point well made Moos. Ol' DJ's playing the same moves as the guys who say "I've had enough, adios!" at the end of their observation. Too much tinkle and not enough tonkle. Even so, I used to find the TCC a little bit sweaty on the oil, and not enough sparkle on the salad. I went there thrice in three years and never left feeling I'd had a glimmer of the experience I'd like from a paid-for nibble. I'd like my tastebuds to tremble, and the TCC never offered that.

Here's some thoughts... "UK Councils Demonstrate Support for the Oppressed" "New Launch 'Magnolia' Appeals to Wide Customer Base" "95% of Maths Classes Meet or Exceed Expectations" "Government Trumps Merchant Bankers to Support Nation" "Squirrels Niggle Rats" "Base Rate Cut Supports Long Term Pension Provision" "Pedants Gain Revenge" I mean, crikey, so much doom and gloom. I thought Eddie Shah was targeting this?

Going to sound snotty here, but... weird one on immigration: The population of Singapore is only 4.5m, and the current business plan [sic] is to make it 6m inside 5 years. It's a very mixed bag with three major languages and many more religions. From a practical perspective it's as near a zero crime environment as statistics can get. Blaming multiculturalism for UK crime or benefit fraud is pretty infantile. Racism is peculiar in SG in that it's commercial rather than divisive (tribal rather than exclusive), and homosexuality is unfortunately illegal but sensibly never challenged (to paraphrase the government, 'this country does not have a view on private activity'). I should add that public displays of affection are discouraged whatever your orientation. I struggle to believe that the UK's perception of diversity is being met when the ethnic origin of the occupant of a council flat is necessary to discuss whether councils are paying too much? Wouldn't it be quite enough to discuss the family size and location?

:)) Just a bit of fun ;-)

Good heavens, I say that too. But I think it's the instructions for Catholics when making, you know, the sign.

Good heavens Jeremy, are you working for one of those oil firm PR lobbyists?

:))

Well, we probably shouldn't let the buck stop there. We can pursue tit-for-tat down there from Darius in 500BC, Alexander in 300BC, the Romans around 100sBC, Mahmud of Ghazni in the 1000sAD, Genghis Khan in 1200sAD, the Brits in 1800sAD, the Ruskies etc. etc. Bear in mind that it's a bit grim so no-one wants to stick around, and the proximity of the fertile northern India plains and mineral rich Middle East, and you have a recipe for diaster. Why blame the Yanks?

If she's been here seven years already then the Taliban would have been in power when she left her home country. She would have left because as a woman she had no identity or rights. She would not have been entitled to education, and neither would her female offspring. She would have been required to completely cover herself when leaving the house and be accompanied by a man (her owner) at all times, under threat of legal execution at the hands of passers-by. Had she been raped, she would have been murdered for her crime. In short, she was treated worse than a dog. It would have had nothing to do with western aggression, which only kicked off after 9/11 in support of an existing civil war and was limited to camps in the south known to train people who target civilians in pursuit of the above expansionist medieval doctrine. NATO didn't take control of security until 2003, and even then managed to create peaceful elections in 2005. The current security breakdown is realistically only a couple of years old, and is a reflection of Iran's increased desire to dominate the local political environment. As with UK commercial imperialism from previous centuries, Iran is aggressively expansionist (as their evangelical religion cannot exist without the fight of the faithful). Iran has merely taken advantage of the high price of oil and the balls-up in Iraq to start wars on three fronts: southern Iraq, Afghanistan and the Lebanon.

It was an aid flight on a Hungarian plane. It's been allowed to complete its journey to Afghanistan. I think it's unlikely that the US would want to provoke a war with Iran right now, and recently they voted down an Israeli resolution to bomb the nuclear facilities.

Using public roads for commercial storage (of vehicles) is against the law. You could investigate this. It's worth considering that this business is going to be the owner's livelihood. They're likely to be very upset that you've taken the food out of their kids' mouths so you can park closer to your door ;-)

Some of Paul Theroux's stuff is very enjoyable to me as a late thirties bloke, and there may be one that's appropriate to your destination? More up-to-date I enjoyed David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas for the second time recently.

Sorry eater81, you're seriously suggesting that we should pay for you to travel around? Are you 14? Edited for speling.

Do you know, you can't get any of these t'ings in Singapore?

Slow to respond, other side of the world an' all that. Well put SMG. MR, total sympathy. Points taken both..... but what a couple of inconsequential examples. Women didn't get the vote because of Pankhurst and horse races. They got it because they weren't prepared to work in arms factories without it. The cotton pickers didn't get emancipation because America got liberal, they got it because the Amercian Dream doesn't work when the means to production is on a go-slow.

90% of murders are committed by men, mightyroar. Are they victims of the gene pool? You make my point quite well, because in the end you're quibbling over the stats. People pour enormous amounts of time and energy into trying to prove that their tribe is the most hard done by, they they deserve more, that anyone who says otherwise is lying or cheating. It's the politics of victimhood. What are you going to do when I provide the source, question its validity? If men are accused more times than women is that because they're more guilty of the crime, or less likely to report their womenfolk? Who knows? I wasn't attempting to put the argument for men - I was illustrating that there's always another way of looking at things. What surprises me is that given that all of these hate crimes are disproportionately represented amongst the economically disenfranchised and poorly educated, we haven't cottoned on yet? I guess it's not tribal enough? Maybe, possibly, these issues aren't about homophobia or sexism, maybe they're about poverty and ignorance? Polarised politics is about pitchforks and torches. There isn't a politician in the world who wouldn't observe that the best way to unite a tribe is with a common enemy, and this is what single issue action groups generate. They distort perspectives. They create icons and badges, flags and pink bras to march behind. They leave reason and inclusiveness trodden underfoot. It's neanderthal. In the end we generate a nation of warring factions where compromise is considered weakness, and being satisfied with a solution just means you didn't set your targets high enough. What a miserable existence. Give me well-informed convergent concessionary politics any day.

Whilst an outrageous 1 in 4 women report suffering domestic abuse, a surprisingly unspoken 1 in 6 men also report similar attacks. Do we have a genetic prejudice that men are dishonest? 22% of women charged with domestic abuse remain unconvicted, whereas only 6% of men. Does this mean that men are subject to prejudices about guilt based on their gender? Around 75% of murder victims are male. Presumably they were behaving in a manner consequent to their genetic inheritance at the time, and were subject to their attackers' genetic prejudices. Does this mean they were killed for being men? All crime is terrible, and single issue action groups seem to do little to further social integration. They divert time and resources from the real causes of violent crime - economic inequality, lack of education, lack of opportunity, social empowerment etc.

So is this the derivation of 'coochie coo'?

Hmmm. Motorsport, at night, through a wire mesh. Must try harder.

Being the kind of loser I am, I was going to create an argument here for Why McCain. Just for the hell of it you know. ;-) I am, however, utterly outraged that I couldn't find a single argument out there to use as a foundation. I even went to the monkey's own website here. It's utter bollocks. Complete testicles. If anyone votes for this guy they need help. However, around half of the US (150m people) actually are going to vote for him. How insane is that? These are people who think Spain is in Central America.

Very much agreed SMG. Interesting points from others though. I often hear 'girl' or 'woman' used as a word meaning shit - "don't be such a big girl", "he's being an old woman". On recent review I probably hear it more often than the term 'gay' as an insult, which TBH I simply very rarely hear. But then I don't listen to fat prats on the radio. Did you know that 'prat' actually means the female front bottom? Did you also notice how I turned 'fat' into an insult when these poor guys are just victims of their metabolism? I could have said 'berk', but that also means female front bottom etc. etc.

I have nothing but love in my heart for Chav, and Snorks is spot on. Ontopication - why do we think this was an immigration raid? For the observers who feel this was heavy handed for immigration, maybe it wasn't? Offtopication - how great was Chav's comment on colonial corporations? Because I'm having a dull Friday evening I looked up the Dutch East India Company. Do you know it was the first corporation to sell stock?