Huguenot

erm... yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Social resources include not only man-made contributions such as roads and street lighting, but environmental assets such as clean air and water. If you have a large family and don't pay extra for increased use of social resources then you're effectively expecting other people to pay for your kids. Seems a bit rude? So in that respect, your indignation at paying higher taxes for having a large family seems a little bit misplaced? Childless individuals have been putting their hands in their pockets for families for years, and now families add insult to injury? Couples already do pay extra - their per capita rental/mortgage costs, heating costs, water costs, council tax fees are all signficantly higher than those paid per capita by a household with a larger number of residents. Three times higher than a family of six. Likewise if they're travelling into Central London as a couple by car then their congestion charge is 4 quid each, and your family of six people is currently 1.33 each. That discount is not in line with the cost to the environment of your emissions.

Ah okay understood, I thought I was confused. I understand where you're coming from. However, I don't hold much truck with the indignation. If you make the choice to have four kids, then there are heavier costs associated - bigger house etc. etc. One of those costs is a bigger environmental impact tax, because, wait for it, four kids has a bigger environmental impact. Your choices to do what's right for you have an impact on those around you, and it's only reasonable that you should bear a larger share of the costs for the increased impact on society.

I asked the guys who used to run 'Strands' barbers about the shop next to Blue Mountain a few years back. I was told that the people who used to run the shop there suffered a robbery which created some disillusion about retail in general. The shop remains theirs, but they refuse to open it again (or make available to other retailers) in protest about the crime. Strands claimed they knew about this as they'd requested to use the space for overspill during the Saturday afternoon rush for a trim.

zephyr.. ?? ::o Did I miss the irony?? You feel that a two-seater Porsche burning hydrocarbons and puking planet poison at an average speed of 10 mph is okay, but a 4x4 is not? You feel that Porsches sit in the same category as family estates? Am I pissed? I must have misunderstood? This was a tax on high emission vehicles, not Porsches. If Porsches are included it's because they vomit benzene not because the world doesn't like arriviste nouveau riches.

'Porsche wins victory'...? Work out the contradictions in this if you will... "the congestion charge was a major issue in the mayoral campaign and the candidate who opposed this extension, Boris Johnson, was elected Mayor" And "we are proud to have played a decisive role in striking down such a blatantly political tax targeting motorists" Little snots with round pink faces.

Oh bollogs, bloggsy. Now you're doing it. There simply aren't 'more robberies, more assaults, more car breakins, etc.' This is non-sense (literally), why are you saying it?

Can I add that I haven't laughed so much since I last read *Bob* and alan's face-off between the have and have-not of education. I'm still crying hard and my tummy hurts.

Oh pinkle pinkle. 8,000 miles gives you a hell of a perspective, as does living in Asia. Clive's points are well made. In a study made from the 1950s right through to the present day, 'society' was segmented into four groups, from disenfranchised and skint to landed gentry. A truly mobile society would suggest that 75% from the bottom quartile should have moved into one of the other quartiles by the time they were 35. For those born in 1953, the figure was 70%, and for those born in 1970 63%. To drive the message home that means that in small circles, 7 out of 10 people brought up in these 'tragic' environments find their way out. 7 in 10. I think that given those percentages anyone still there merits a school report of 'could do better'? Aside from these lazy arsed prats, it also gives us hope in that 3 in 10 landed gentry find themselves to be paupers by the age of 35 ;-) So I appreciate that it's not all fugging roses (and of course a few points lower than a truly 'mobile' society), but the point is, if you want to get off your fat arse and improve your lot there's few better places to do it than Britain. Use the data guys, don't speculate with prejudice. All the observations made about people who struggle are also well made, but the reality is that the problems suffered by the few hundred in care homes (ie. not all) that get thin end of the stick are not a good premise for making laws that govern sixty million. These are the focus for a few good people. The suicide rates are silly arguments - you're talking about 1 in 10,000 rising to 1.4 in 10,000. All deaths are a tragedy, but suicide is a plonker's way out. I had a mate who topped himself on whisky and pills, and I continue to disapprove in a nice way, but I would not recommend that you make political decisions based on his frame of mind.

Gaaah! Indie, say it like you mean it! :)) Tillie, the only thing I've learning from you is that kids make you spel bad. I'm wandering in the desert of existential angst here. If I don't have kids then what's it all for? If I do have kids, then really, for them? If I had any sense of responsibility then I'd never bring the little monkeys into existence anyway. If I hadn't been such a nasty little shit of a teenager then I wouldn't be such a reasonable bloke now ;-), but I've no intention of sitting a sprog in front of a Tandy shop window and saying 'go on, steal it, steeeeeeeal it.'. If I engendered a reasonable teenager then I'd be committing some other poor soul to a life of partnered penury. You mummies and daddies haven't though this through. You think you're clever, I think you're bloody insane. Mockers, can you two have some kids, Sean McG can dote on them, and I can twist their minds?

Mmmm... Chris Dickson

I'm not sure that it's being old fashioned lousiana, just a bit wierd. There's no conspiracy here, no government or BBC trying to pull the wool over our eyes be re-writing the rulebooks. There's no 'strange new definition' of children. Just a bit of reasonable journalism addressing 'babes-in-arms' scare stories. I'm sure if you have a look that you can get the figures for any other age group you choose. I think it's also just as likely that you'll discover that the facts surrounding knife crime are nothing compared with the hyperbole and headlines thrown at them. I'm sure also that you'll always find plenty of Cassandras out there screaming about fraud & lies, whilst they tear at their hair and rip at their clothes. In the end we just find that things aren't as bad as they seem, and knee-jerk reactions make for bad law.

There was a similar exchange in the West Wing - good ol' Bartlett :) Ah, er yes, Youtube's a bit slow to download over here. Edited for impatience.

So for all of those speculators, here's the data. I particularly note that this is based on hospital admissions, NOT the police data which some people are so convinced is corrupt.. "Between the years 2002-3 and 2006-7, the number of children admitted to hospital with knife wounds in England "almost doubled" we are told. From 95 cases to 179. A rise of 88%. "However, over the same period, the numbers of under-16s admitted to hospital with gunshot wounds has gone down from 253 to 181. A fall of 68%.* "So, 84 more children were admitted with stab injuries than five years earlier. But 72 fewer children were admitted with gunshot injuries. "If no distinction is made between knife and gun injuries, the headline might read "teen violence stable." "Now, every one of those hospital emergencies is an appalling incident. But if we are serious about tackling the problem of juvenile violence, it makes sense to understand what it is we are dealing with. "A trawl through the hospital figures for all age groups strongly suggests that knife crime is rising: a total of 5,700 admissions for "assault by sharp object" in 2007 compared with just under 4,000 a decade earlier. "Ninety percent of the victims are men and over 40% occur on a Saturday or Sunday night. There is more than a whiff of alcohol in these figures. "Given the particular anxiety over youngsters with knives, I looked at the most recent data for under-16s and spotted something quite surprising. Of those 179 children admitted to hospital last year, 72 or 40% were in London. "Knife fights appear to be a particular and growing problem in the capital. Juvenile disputes are too often resolved with a blade. "It is a different story in the North West of England. In Manchester and Liverpool it is gunshot wounds that the hospitals are predominantly dealing with. "Between 2002-3 and 2006-7, London doctors treated 33 children with wounds from firearms. In the North West, medics patched up an astonishing 251. "During the same period, London A & E departments admitted 225 children with stab wounds compared with 117 in the North West. "What do we conclude from all this? Well, I don't think these figures tell a story of increasingly ferocious juvenile violence sweeping the land. Instead, they offer clues to the nature of predominantly urban gang culture. "If you don't believe me, consider this. In 2002-3, not one school child was treated for a stab wound anywhere in central and south east England outside London. How many victims were there in this large and populous region last year? None." With many thanks to Mark Easton of the BBC for his detective work!

Tend to agree with you SQ - there's a lot of double-think on this issue. On the one hand there's people like me making a career out of the fact that a tiny nuance in an advertisement will change people's buying behaviour for life. On the other hand you've got film-makers and games designers telling us that blowing people's brains out and raping prostitutes for fun on screen hundreds of times a day isn't going to tarnish little Jimmy's psyche. It's just not plausible is it?

On a similar note, the word f****t I've never heard used by anyone but gay guys, and n****r by anyone but black guys, and I'm getting on for four decades now (usually describing someone else's comments of course, but I've just never heard it first hand).

I tend to concur with KB that at my school 'gay' was a general insult associated with ineffectuality rather than homosexuality. I hadn't got a real understanding of what it meant. Converseley though, 'homo' was rarely used and when it was it was considered fighting talk. It wasn't because of homosexuality per se, but more because it was associated with unseemly intimacy. As a teenage boy the biggest challenge was to create an identity for yourself, and that frequently involved eschewing all contact with others, including grannies, mommies, girlfriends and schoolmates. We were busy creating a pecking order which required independence and self reliance. On the racism side I really didn't have a clue. In suburban middle-England everyone was white, so the usual terms of abuse had no negative associations at all. They just described a type of corner shop or portable stereo - I never considered them to be anything to do with the people. To be honest, someone at primary school told me spunk was something you found in your shoe, and I didn't discover otherwise until I was well into my O-level year. Never found a reason to seek clarification really. ;-)

Although I've never had anyone flip me the bird and call me a 'fugging weaver...' let alone complimented me on my silky skills :(

DC, well put. You've made my day :)

Louisiana are you Fisking me? Not sure why, I wasn't saying the figures were good or bad - merely pointing out where you could find them ;-) I agree with you totally of course, some injuries won't be reported to the police, and if you travel in high risk areas at high risk times then of course you are under high risk :-S However, I do think we should keep things in perspective and comparative numbers often help. I don't believe in scaring people. Our victims of violence are only a fraction of those in other developed countries, and whilst it doesn't make any crime good, it does help us to build from a positive foundation rather than fear.

Whenever I see Otto sign off I get confused. The only famous Otto I know is Otto von Bismarck who observed 'better pointed bullets than pointed words' It doesn't seem to go with the 'xo' (kiss and a hug??) ;-)

For London you can get all the stats you want from the Met Last year's summary data Apr 07 to Mar 08 is here Or you can look at any particular month/year just here Don't forget to balance the figures against weight of population - more accurate figures are crimes per head rather than totalrimes as it gives an idea of 'risk'. Mind you, for the EDF risk is pretty nnon-exisent for being suject to a violent crime in the locality.

DC I was just sweepingly applying it to the Cosmos :) I think science came up with a few different theories, and hasn't discounted any of them. I recall the 'absurd universe' (that's just the way it is, so there), the 'multiverse' (all the other universes with different laws are also there, we're just not in them to see them), the 'theory of everything' (there's an underlying law we don't understand which makes it this way) and several others. Also within that list must be 'Intelligent Design' (someone set up the 'physical' rules, but please don't confuse this with arguments about evolution) and 'Virtual Reality' (we're all in a simulation like The Matrix). It would be illogical for an empirical scientist to deny either of the last two options alongside the earlier proposals, since there is no evidence for any of these solutions. The thing that I find frustrating about those with the religious bug is that in this respect science is warm and huggable. It allows for the existence of a 'god' (or a whole fugging pantheon if you want) with equal status alongside less spooky ideas. However, historically those with the god bug haven't returned the favour with a similar open mind, instead they'vew been down the DIY store looking for an accellerant. Who says science is a cold-hearted pursuit? Red-hot more like!

I always found it necessary to separate the god debate from the religion debate. The anthropic principle - that all the fundamental natural laws are so finely balanced at the point that they support life implies some sort of selection process - does seem to be intrinsically plausible. The scientific community sidesteps the issue by explaining that since the issue is untestable it isn't worthy of inclusion with their discipline. All a little bit convenient. In this sense a rational scientific debate would have to conclude that science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of a 'god'. Science merely suggest that if there is a god then he/she hasn't had their fingers in the pot much since they set the initial rules and regulations. Sod all to do with beardies and dogma. I think we have to ask ourselves serious questions about self obsession if we think that whoever this god was, that they were even remotely interested in appearing as a pater familias and sending their son to earth over concerns about our moral hygeine.

I always think it a misnomer to say UFO when we mean aliens. Anything up there you can't identify is a UFO by definition surely? I can see why the Apache didn't count though, if you look very closely you can almost make out his name on top of the helmet by the cabin light. No UFO that. On the subject of aliens, mathematics would suggest we're not alone - so I don't think heightened awareness is necessarily loony. The universe is too big a place. However, the same maths would suggest that since we've only be bunging electromagnetic radiation out there at the speed of light for less than a hundred years, and the milky way (for example) is 100,000 light years across, that to date we've only announced our presence to around 0.0001% of our own galaxy, and a ridiculously small percentage of the overall universe. So it would be exceedingly unlikely that the aliens would know we're here, and a wee bit self obsessed to assume that just because we've announced ourselves that they're going to come running. I have, however, painted 'mine's a pint' in modern rosetta-stone-stylee on the roof in anticipation of their arrival.

James Madison on government vs. referendum... "...an institution may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions.... ...there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion [Capital punishment??] or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men [Ganley?], may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. "In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind? "What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against the tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next."