Posts by Peter Ashby
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@Craig
If you had been reading the online British press (non tabloid version) you will discover that GB is the living dead because he is still the only big beast in the party. Nobody else has the remotest chance of garnering anything like enough votes to challenge him on their own. Which means any contest will be crowded and so with the anti Gordon vote split they will lose. Alan Johnson's decision to join the Govt and then appear on TV telling blatant untruths ("I fully support GB" "I have and have never had, any leadership ambitions) have scuppered the biggest of the minnows being backed.
Add to all that that the tentative signs are that the tanked economy might show some life next northern spring before the next election must be called. Labour MPs are clinging to this slimmest of hopes since if it comes to pass they will be able to claim they fixed the economy and Cameron's policy of do nothing would have been catastrophic. Whether this will help them is unknown but stranger things have happened. John Major got re-elected remember.
The reality is if they go to the country now on the back of the expenses debacle they face electoral humiliation.
BTW ignore hysterical articles about the 'rise' of the BNP. Their share of the vote in the recent elections did not change. They prospered because labour's support stayed home so the BNP's share of the diminished vote increased though their absolute numbers did not.
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@Kyle Matthews
I remember as a kid in the '70s going on a special train to the Manorburn (sp?) dam to skate on the frozen dam. Skate hire was included. I remember it clearly because it was so very much better than doing so on an inside ice rink. It's strange but I feel pointless going around and around an indoor rink but no so outside on a frozen dam.
Of course you can't do that now, not in a train anyway. Come Peak Oil tearing that track up will seem silly. At least the trackway has been preserved so it could be put back.
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Paul remind me, was there or was there not an election between the mooting of the stadium and its acceptance? If the good people of Dunedin did not wish it as you contend then they had an opportunity to elect candidates who would stop it. As an ex and hopefully future, ratepayer on that fair city I am in favour of abiding by democratically arrived at decisions. Bear in mind that majorities can be silent or uncaring on many issues in between elections, that does not mean they do not matter.
I sometimes despair of the lack of vision of modern people. The City Fathers of Dunedin invested in:
The dam at Waipori that provided the majority if the city's power for many years.
The water supply from Deep Stream to supplement the Ross Creek Reservoirs.
The draining of Lake Logan to make the park that is still there.
The building of Carisbrook back in the day.
Are we to add nothing to this? is our vision so stunted that we cannot provide facilities appropriate to the times to the benefit of the city ? When I come back I will gladly help you pay for it. Stop thinking of yourself and think about wider and longer things for a change.
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And can I as a Scotsman have a skian dubh down me sock? and if so do I have to be wearing the full gear? and what is the full gear? Here in Dundee the young guys are into boots, long socks (with a skian), kilt and a tight t-shirt.
If I can ever afford my own kilt (Dunedin tartan naturally), I fancy it with one of those loose shirts that lace up to the neck.
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Having watched both the new Reggie Perrin and the new Red Dwarf I can tell you not to bother. The RD was weak and the cast clearly were going through the motions, it was also not funny, in the slightest.
Martin Clunes is manifestly not the right person to play Reggie, I presume he got it after his performance as a grumpy country doctor. But Reggie was not just grumpy, not just fed up, he was incandescent with barely controlled fury at the pointlessness of it all. He actively schemed to bring it all down but was undone by his affection for his family and his colleagues. Therein lay the comic tensions that made it both very funny and scathingly satirical about modern life. Clunes is simply too mild, he comes across as simply bemused and that is not enough. It also is not funny.
Over here we live in fear of a rehash of Fawlty Towers. We have got the American disease, the commissioning producers are too scared of funding unknown novelty that they cling to remakes of old hits. Just look at the US film industry endless remakes and ever decreasing sequels. On their TV they buy in show ideas and scripts from the UK like The Office. Where are they going to go when the UK's comedy disappears up its own fundament?
Any culture that sits around just rehashing the classics is one that has ceased be interested in itself as it is and thus will miss important movements and developments.
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And is there a word for the sin of pride in one's own comprehensive ignorance?
I knew Mr Laws slightly at Uni, he was arrogantly leaving as I arrived and his arrogant ignorance was on fine display in the debating society. Part of the reason I gave it up as a bad joke early in the year. 'Twas ever thus.
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Well back at Otago Uni 89-91 my wife was the only woman in her CompSci courses, and many of her maths ones to boot. That at least would tend to imply that the supply of women for internet startups was not likely to be large. I'm not saying there weren't any, but compared to those of us over in Biology that side of the University was VERY male, just not as macho as the MinTechers (RIP).
I also did a doubletake on the 20year thing being sure we had internet access through JANET before '89. Home access though, that was a different thing.
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"The 1918 virus was different from this one, however, because its H surface protein was from birds."
Some ways to go before we all get too concerned, me thinks.
That it is porcine rather than avian tells us nothing about the likelihood of it having pandemic propensities. It is far from that simple unfortunately. Time to watchful. Don't stock the larder yet unless it is with things that will keep and you would eat them anyway for eg.
Oh and people washing your hands is only half the battle. They have to be dry as well. Viruses last much longer in wet conditions than on dry surfaces, which includes skin. Wash and dry your hands before eating by hand etc. Good practice in the normal flu season iow.
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Why do so many of you think that offsetting is a really good idea? The whole offsetting industry is an absolute mess, see New Scientist's reporting on the issue. The companies selling offsetting for plane flights for eg can't even agree on a standard price for the same flight. There are no international standards, or monitoring of schemes. There is nothing to stop a forest planter in the 3rd world from selling the same sapling many times over then in 20years time when people have stopped looking chopping them down for firewood then starting again.
There is no alternative to properly renewable energy. Offsetting is simply a salve for Western consciences so we can continue to use profligate amounts of on renewable energy and not feel bad about it.
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Paul I know exactly of what you speak and I concur. Something nicely condensed like <i>The Metamorphosis</i> can stay in the mind far longer than some tale stretched to mediocrity by a publisher's demand for 'a nice trilogy'. There is pressure on authors for 'more of the same' too and rejection of books seen as too different from their previous works.
Amazon et al were supposed to free us from all this but instead they charge publishers vast sums to even list their books meaning what can turn an easy buck still rules supreme.