Huguenot

Never thought we'd get a Tony.London etc. in here, but... "I enjoyed many a liaison in times of yore with Nadine from The Grove Tavern and Michelle from Berry Road and then there was that French bird from..........Sorry! I was just enjoying a trip down Mammory Lane!, she did havea great personality though.." [as it was written] ;-) Bloody marvellous :)

It's plausible. The USA is spread across numerous time-zones with programs running at different 'universal' times. Most Euro countries don't seem to have the obsession with appointment-to-view TV programs that we do, and meal times would be much more varied. I can believe it! I wasn't thinking of spikes in that sense though, just that in all countries demand varies with time of day and local renewables aren't very accommodating. If we could get large scale catalyst-based hydrogen production, then we could all have our own little no pollution household generators?

Aha Sean, this appears to be part of a timeless dabate beteen the Law of the Land, and Social Justice. Or in other terms, the association between freedom and responsibility in a civilised society. In this example, Estate Agents have the freedom in 'law' to park their mobile advertising hoardings (masquerading as business necessities) in any numbers they choose wherever legal in public roads. However, Estate Agents also have a responsibility not to abuse this freedom to disrupt and taint the local community. There is no doubt in any of your neighbours minds (and probably not in your own if you were honest) that Estate Agents have smugly followed the letter of the law, and stuck two fingers up at their responsibility to the community. In your mind's eye, this puts you on the high ground. However, this is feeble-minded: the law is a vehicle for social justice created for and by the people, not an end in itself. You may quibble about your rights, but you seem to be discovering that the punishment for abusing your priveleges is a lot more abrupt and discomfiting than you'd like. For the record, I'm no fan of this urban vigilantism, but I despise those who twist and tweak the law at the expense of society for personal gain. Urban planning laws would refuse to populate small suburban centres with this rash of advertising because of the blight it represents. For Estate Agents to squeak through loop hole is nasty and manipulative and deserves to be treated as such.

And another one... panties panties panties Oh, and in a moment's mild attack of enquiry, I've written to the airline for a clearer explanation of the soup issue.

I hadn't considered that, gets more mysterious doesn't it? I can't find any soups in 100ml containers online. I found some condensed shite, but that was in tins, and I can't see them breaking up in turbulence. Was this powdered soup? Nope. Curioser and curioser.

Mushroom Soup Terrorism

Was back only briefly last week, but I reckoned the palm tree looked great. Great explanation Tropica, and spot on in terms of the period feel. Those fabulous Victorians weren't all just workhouses and top hats. They were extremely woooo. I'm betting Tropica that you'd know how much the project cost....? I'm guessing that the installation probably cost less than 10k, but I've also got a tenner that says the consultation cost 50k?

That made me wonder too Jessica. According to this lady, the only real way of finding out is using a testing kit. Although she does suggest that after testing a few bits you'll probably be able to get a pretty good idea by holding and smelling it (?!). The best piece of advice appeared to be that since silver is so readily available, the real value in a piece of jewellery is the craftmanship and beauty of the item!

Yep, by all accounts we have zero options on storage for the kind of energies we're talking about. That's where the 'global grid' thing makes more sense. Instead of storing it, you sell it to whoever wants it at their time in the world, and then you buy theirs back when they don't want it because they're asleep. Interestingly we still tend to think of energy generation as a 'centralised' resource, where small numbers of very big power stations (whether fossil, nuclear or renewable) provide power to all. The ideal situation would be highly decentralised local or individual power supplies - they're much less vulnerable and more politically stable.

Good points Jezza. The price of energy from renewables hasn't changed much recently (although it has massively across the last 10 years), and won't unless we achieve major economies of scale. However, the price of fossil fuel energy has rocketed, and it's apparent that those countries that control these resources (e.g. Russia) are more interested now in gaining political as well as financial advantage. Interestingly, nuclear power is probably the most expensive of the lot, but the price is hidden through government subsidies (in other words we pay on the tax invoice rather than the London Energy one). In particular, fossil energy costs do not include the cost of clearing up afterwards, which is something once more paid through the public purse and hidden from the public eye. If you legislated that power stations could not indiscriminately release the amount of uncontrolled environmental pollution that they do now, you'd see fossil fuel energy costs skyrocket. So it's possible that in fact renewables are overall cheaper energy sources, but it's the lack of scale, consistency and political will that's holding them back. Totally agree with SMG.

Apparently That's strong enough logic for Bush.... 'We're off to Mars' 'Why? What's there?' 'Well we've already spent $40bn and finally found water' 'Haven't we got that here?' 'Erm....' Scientific advancement, like sporting prowess, also plays a political role by diverting the electorate away from expansionist foreign policy for a 'feel-good' factor. I prefer having all these entrepreneurial scientific types focusing on cold fusion, terra-forming, recycling and hibernation It's better than having them all trying to win $10m for a robotic car brain which will be installed in tanks to ensure it's only the opposition wot get moidered.

The problems with wave energy are scale, maintenance and consistency. In fact the UK has both the largest current wave farm being built (in Scotland at 3MW or about 1,000 houses), and the largest planned (in Cornwall at around 30MW). The Salter's (bobbing) Ducks were fantastically efficient but bloody complex and weren't considered scalable. Saltwater is fantastically corrosive and this is having a major impact on the development path. The other thing with wave energy (as with all renewables) is that it doesn't reach its peak when we want it to, and we can't have the UK with the lights off in December because of a calm day on the west coast. The answer would be a 'global' energy/electricity grid but I guess that's probably a 'pipe' dream.

I rather thought the idea of of science was to investigate the world around us to look for opportunities. I don't think you need to go in for these things knowing exactly what you'll get out of it. Had the moon been made of cheese we would have had a global restructuring of the dairy market overnight. On a macro level instead what we got were things like computers, multi-channel TV, mobile telephones, weather forecasting. A lot of materials technology that's used for everything from jet engines to that wierdo metallic foil they use after marathons wouldn't be with us were it not for international scale research. International holidays anyone? On a micro level we've got remote communities benefiting from clean water supplies as a direct result of space technology for astronauts to drink their own wee, innumerable medical tools, lightweight spectacles and even LCD televisions. Solar energy panels (our future may depend etc..) We even got hydroponics for Nunhead's cannabis farms. ;-) NASA actually run a division (the Innovative Partnerships Program) whose only task is to bring space technologies to market. If anyone's a real freak, you can enjoy publications such as Spinoff which cover space-race related technologies over the last thirty odd years.

Hmmm, I think that depends upon your initial answer to a couple of questions: - Do you believe that society should continue to develop new technologies? - Do you believe that humanity should continue to strive for greater understanding of the universe in which we live? - Is there a benefit to working together to meet these goals? If your answer to those questions is either not at all, or only a little bit, then you'll never see any benefits in the LHC so you can pretend it's anything you want - jobs for the boys, euro snouts etc. etc. The Large Hadron Collider LHC essentially breaks down the building blocks of matter by hammering them into each other at high speed and seeing what the fragments look like. Whilst this is interesting from a purely scientific point of view, it will undoubtedly lead to new technologies and applications that help us all. Key questions they are looking to resolve are 'what/why is mass (weight)?', 'what is the missing 96% of the universe made of?' and 'where is anti-matter?'. You could expect answers to these questions to have a major impact on long term strategies for energy and transport. Intriguing questions that may be resolved include where are the missing dimensions...? Doctor Who anyone? Its construction has cost us each 35p a year for the last 12 years. Not exactly breaking the bank. If anyone remains to be convinced, then you should be aware that the internet was created at the same set of laboratories that are giving us the LHC. This is a copy of the world's first ever web page. There's proof of the benefits if ever you wanted it ;-) If anyone's still not convinced, you should probably join the neo-Luddite movement. There's looms and threshing machines out there waiting to be destroyed...

Hmmm... "I believe that the best way to minimise the threat of war is to have our own state keep out of any dispute that does not immediately concern the integrity of its own territory" He said that right at that start. Now since 40% of our fuel is gas (with no other options on the table at the moment), and the majority of that comes from Russia, and Russia have a pronounced tendency to shut down supplies to those countries with whom they have a political dispute, and Georgia and it's adjacent states are a key alternative to our fuel needs... Isn't it really much much wiser to take an interest in these events now, rather than waiting until you have no options? To suggest you just hide behind the sofa with the lights off because the mob is turning off the electricity at the other end of the street (at the moment) is simply pathetic. I disagree with PR, I find that most wars are about resources, religion is often a vehicle and testosterone is the fuel. Resources are poorly distributed around the world, so until we can resolve critical needs independently then we'll have wars. The irony is that consequently the ability to end these wars is in our own hands. Pay a premium for non-carbon energy derived from wind, water and the sun, support genetic modification of crops to improve yield, conserve water, reduce your use of the car, own only one house at a time.... ;-) Reducing demand has the sames effect as increasing supply and takes the pressure off. Hmmm. Ending wars doesn't seem so sexy now we have to do something about it :(

The inventor of the Harley-Davidson motorcycle, Arthur Davidson , died and went to heaven. At the gates, St. Peter told Arthur. 'Since you've been such a good man and your motorcycles have changed the world, your reward is that you can hang out with anyone you want to in heaven.' Arthur thought about it for a minute and then said, 'I want to hang out with God.' St. Peter took Arthur to the Throne Room, and introduced him to God. God recognized Arthur and commented, 'Okay, so you were the one who invented the Harley-Davidson motorcycle? ' Arthur said, 'Yeah, that's me...' God commented: 'Well, what's the big deal in inventing something that's pretty unstable, delivers all that noise and pollution and can't run without a road?' Arthur was a bit embarrassed, but finally spoke, 'Excuse me, but aren't you the inventor of woman?' God said, 'Ah, yes.' 'Well,' said Arthur, 'professional to professional, you have some major design flaws in your invention! 1. There's too much inconsistency in the front-end suspension. 2. It chatters constantly at high speeds 3. Most rear ends are too soft and wobble about too much 4. The intake is placed way too close to the exhaust 5. The maintenance costs are outrageous!!!! 'Hmm, you may have some good points there,' replied God, 'hold on.' God went to his Celestial supercomputer, typed in a few words and waited for the results. The computer printed out a slip of paper and God read it. 'Well, it may be true that my invention is flawed,' God said to Arthur, 'but according to these numbers, more men are riding my invention than yours'.

Local Estate Agent! That's an outrageous bit of wool pulling! With inflation at 4.5%, then over the next five years houses would have to grow by 25% just to stay level. Anything less than a 25% change in price would be a drop in value!

Not sure what Local and Ellwood are getting at here? Is your angle that crime is everywhere, all the time, the police are corrupt, everyone is lying, ED is worst, and..... what? We should all go kill ourselves? We should sack all the police? Lock ourselves inside our houses with shotguns, crying all night?

I'd bet the maths doesn't work on that one Rico. Remember that at first most of your mortgage repayments are interest not capital. If the interest component is higher than the subsidised rent, and the house doesn't acquire significant additional value over the next say ten years, then there'd have a better net return staying in subisidised housing. I'm not sure whether this is CWALD's position, but I would consider this to be a crime against welfare ;-). The rent is subsidised against tax payers, so effectively it would be the tax payer paying for the property in France, not CWALD.

Hmmm, given the track record of Frenchmen, I'm not sure they'd give a monkeys about your landrights if the shit really hits the fan ;-) However, it's a fun idea. So how about instead of banks, investing with these fruitcakes

TLS, why does this matter? What does this prove? Let's say that Afro-Carribeans are disproportionately represented in the first 1,000 finishers, and you announce with spectacular bathos that this means there are genetic differences... This gives you the right to do what? Call big-eared people Dumbo? Call big-nosed people Nellie? Call victims of Thalidomide Stupid Flids? What on earth are you getting at?

Sorry Jeremy, not alluding to anyone in particular. I was observing that it would be neanderthal to characterise any one individual because of a flimsy statistical correlation with an imagined 'brotherhood'. This debate started off with a pathetic verbal attack on a vulnerable minority based on supposed racial characteristics. It then wandered into 'you can make racial generalisations 'cause afro-carribeans kids is fast, innit'. Since both seem to be making sweeping assumptions based on statistical likelihood I find them both unreasonable, and one of them abhorrent. The fact that the latter is only a small step away from justifying the former means that whatever your views on its veracity, it may be a good idea to steer clear so as not to egg on the wallies.

The way this conversation appears to be developing Taper, it seems that you are supposed to ask your PE teacher if racial prejudice is justified by sporting prowess? The point being missed here is that whilst it is perfectly reasonable to recognise that athletes of an afro-carribean appearance appear to be successful athletes, it is not reasonable to assume that because someone is black that they are consequently a good runner. Whilst the athletic debate could be considered humdrum, it becomes a problem when this neanderthal logic is transferred to other issues. For instance, you may not treat youths of particular racial groups as criminal simply because their particular demographic contributes a disproportionate number of crimes. Likewise, depriving people of their pride and individuality by shouting nasty names at them in the street as they walk home alone is a particularly unpleasant form of racism. It can't have escaped the victim that horrific assaults are usually preceded by escalating bouts of jeering and stone chucking as these screwed-up retards egg themselves on to bigger and more brutal attacks. I doubt that knowledge had escaped the abuser either, who probably thought that the cowardly humiliation of strangers increased their social status.

Bah humbug, no socialist me ;-) I'm all for equality of opportunity, not redistribution of wealth. ::o Oh, no, not the bloody third way again....! I may be wrong, but I could have sworn Alan Dale was on here 18 months ago claiming 7% annual rise per annum was a resonable forecast of house price growth for the foreseeable future. At 30%+ off course, where is he when I need someone to throw all these eggs at?

Crawthew Grove? Do Scots call it Cray-thur?