BrandNewGuy

... change my name to 'Quimby'.

minder Wrote: > a measly ?52K from Peckham Rye. Yeah, it's easy to call ?52K of someone else's money 'measly'. I still think this is an extraordinary figure for what the event actually was...

Well, that's probably because it cost an eye-watering ?52K - God knows what for... on that basis, I'm glad it's not being funded any more.

... but in the Alice In Wonderland world of educational standards, "satisfactory" ended up meaning "unsatisfactory", so they scrapped it as one of their standards. It's all bizarre to me...

Sanne Panne Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > People with umbrellas. > Umbrellas. Especially golf umbrellas... Are you playing golf (which in itself causes me irrational rage)? Oh no, that's right - you're going to the bloody office, among busy rush-hour crowds, making sure no-one can walk within three feet of you without being spiked. If you're going to use an umbrella, get an ordinary small one, you selfish eejit.

A big light show on Wednesday evening to mark the "digital switchover". Could be impressive....

Not so - and the French agree.

James Barber Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hi Nick1962, > Love or hate the UK monarchy conceptually or > practically I suspect some of your information may > not be correct. > > UK tourismstates 2010 25M visitors to the whole of > the UK. But Paris tourism alone is stated at 42 > million visits. > So its not clear having a monarchy makes a big > difference to tourism for London or the UK when > compared to its nearest city state rival located > within a republic. Well, UK Tourism is doing itself a disservice, then. These figures on Wikipedia, claim that the most-visited city by international visitors is indeed Paris, with 15.2 million, while London comes in at 14.7 million. And Paris is much easier (and cheaper) to get to for other Europeans, so that's not a surprising figure. Having said that, I suspect that many visitors want to see the trappings of monarchy (Buck House, the Guards, Windsor etc) rather than the royals themselves.

Letter Never Sent - R.E.M.

Song For Adam - Jackson Browne

Nottamun Town - Bert Jansch

The Green Fields Of France - The Men They Couldn't Hang

Ghost Of Travelin' Jones - Ryan Bingham

Blue Bleezing Blind Drunk - Rachel Unthank and the Winterset

Dulwich Hamlet have gone top of the table!

The Day John Henry Died - Drive-By Truckers

Thanks A Lot - Johnny Cash

Lollipop Man - Mariah Carey and Tom Waits

Pretty Boy Floyd - The Byrds

In 34 pages, there were just two mentions of "resources" (one in relation to water-scarcity conflicts and the other concerned with education), two of "energy" (only one in the main body of the report) and one mention of "oil" (concerning oil-rich countries inability to generate significant numbers of jobs)... It seems to me that this is a wilful blindness towards the greatest challenges facing the world which are to do with energy and resource depletion. Blithely (or blindly) to assume infinite substitutability of stuff that will allow us to grow and grow is to ignore the hard physical finite limits to resources that are vital to an advanced industrial world. The rest of it - nano-bots curing cancer etc - is all hot air if these challenges aren't faced.

jelly Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > ...their chauvinsistic, Stone Age > culture. Entirely agree about the twisted use of 'honour', but talking of being careful with words, it's perhaps not helpful to use 'Stone Age' in a derogatory way. It's likely that pre-farming hunter-gathering tribes were more often than not highly egalitarian, non-chauvinistic and given to sharing. Post-Stone Age agriculture and urban development, however, gave rise to notions of wealth, status and honour of which extreme chauvinism and murderous family violence are cruel descendents.

I'm A Hog For You Baby - Dr Feelgood

Chippy Minton Wrote: > Shame someone else feels they have to leave the > forum because they had the temerity to say > something someone else didn't like. Yeah, amazingly thin skin...

Miracle Man - Declan McManus

James Barber Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hi BrandNewGuy, > Goose Green School arranged some numeracy events > at their school earlier this year in the early > evenings - my kids and I were enthralled. Fine, but that's an educational event, not a community event. Wrong budget, isn't it?