mr2mk1g

Perhaps ask if you need that much coverage? We get £2,000,000 third party cover. Trust me, you need that, in fact even that might not be enough if you only cripple someone rather than kill them outright and they can no longer work.

I'm struggling to even think of a single technology which has no downsides to it whatsoever. If I come up with one, it's probably only because there's a downside I've yet to see. Best go back to flint knives... damnit - no, the other guys over the hill have started tieing their flint knives to the end of sticks to create something they call spears - they killed one of our guys with one. We're gonna have to invent a kind of mini flint spear that can be thrown by a bit of vine tied round a bent stick... but I might accidentally hit one of my friends with that... damn you technology. Besides, think of the RSI people will get from all that flint-knapping.

But don't SSK own the patent on the CYPRES cutter?

I believe that is indeed one of the allegations and a potiential failure mode.

Bahrain, not Dubai. And one of the main sticking points so far with the no-fly zone has been getting the US on board. Britain and France have been pushing for it for some time - only now is the US agreeing to it. Remember, imposing a no-fly zone is not as simple as just sticking some jets overhead and saying "don't go near there, stay away from the river." "But Betty." (2 points for the film reference) It may well mean a week or two of hitting ground targets to knock out air defence systems. The Libyan SAM network is not to be taken lightly. That's not to say that it couldn't be dealt with easily enough by Western military forces... but it would have to be dealt with before trying to enforce a no-fly zone.

For the past 4 years, Britain's war dead have been repatriated through RAF Lyneham, not far from a small, provicial market town called Wootton Bassett. For the past 4 years, on 156 occasions, Wootton Bassett has come to a standstill, to silently honour 357 of our fallen. It has become a point of unwritten tradition that the entire town will turn out and line the streets to mark the final passage of our brave. In recognition of the way in which this small, sleepy town has honoured our war dead, the Queen has announced that it is to be renamed Royal Wootton Bassett. I'm sure this might sound somewhat archaic to our American friends here, but... well it's how we do things. We're proud of you Royal Wootton Bassett. Thank you. We're proud to honour you, as you have honoured our fallen. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5gLYrQQ7FPGilmLwzwPL_IX8OQ3Fg?docId=N0034371300277983412A

Disaster? Dunno yet, lets see how it plays out. Serious incident? Yes, definately - two reactor buildings have blown up ffs. Something along the lines of 3 Mile Island, for example. Where it goes from here, only time will tell.

You're right - might as well have just let him plough in.

Lol, I just watched the video giving the $7.5 mil claim. The wording used is "It could very easily be 7.5 million, if there is damage that has occured that we are unaware of". Of course there could be 7.5 mil of damage... if there's damage YOU ARE UNAWARE OF. There might be millions of $$ worth of damage to my local civic buildings... that I'm UNAWARE of. What an utterly meaningless comment. It could very easily be that I am dying, if there is a cancer that has occured that we are unaware of. It could very easily be that my car is on fire, if there is ignition that has occured that we are unaware of. My girlfriend could very easily be unfaithful, if there is sleeping round that has occured that we are unaware of.

No, that's because of the massive volume of immigration into the UK. 75% of UK TB patients are from outside the UK, with contact between UK born patients and immigrants identified as a major source of infection.

I dunno. If there's an intruder in my house I might well shoot him. I can even do so as a preemptive strike. I don't own a cricket bat.

Self defence is perfectly legel in the UK... no idea about defense though over here. Maybe that's where the confusion arises.

Take over?? It is in London you know.

SBS not SAS

Actually I heard on the radio the other day that we (well, Leeds at least) get's lessrain that Sydney! I suspect it's one of those 'massaged' stats mind as less rain doesn't nesc. mean fewer dry days - I guess it's likely that Sydney gets an absolute downpour every now and again whilst Leeds is drizzley rather more often.

It's very prevalent and increasing significantly for a number of reasons. One is the financial downturn. Another is Eastern European gangs moving across from the drugs trade in their own country to organised insurance in this country. It's more lucrative and far less dangerous. Some of the people involved are seriously nasty. The above case centred around 2 people who made half a million out of referral fees on the above cases alone then disappeared. Links to Spain, but beyond that few really know. It costs us all something like the first £60 of our motor insurance premium and the industry as a whole £2 billion a year.

Received an interesting judgment yesterday called Locke v Stuart. Very long story short, an "accident management company" seems to have been organising a bunch of mates in the Birkenhead area to go round and have crashes with one another in order to claim from each others insurance policies. A lot of evidence was actually gathered from Facebook to show links between 106 occupants of vehicles involved in 9 accidents (yes, the cars were always packed to the gunnels and were sometimes a mini bus). Several of the individuals were involved in multiple accidents. A telling section from the full judgment is: A pattern whereby the “guilty vehicle” has recently been taken on short term hire. It is then involved in an accident which is clearly 100% its fault. In the present case, the “guilty vehicle” was hired by James Stuart at about noon on the day of the accident and was due for return on 9th December. He had paid an additional premium for collision damage waiver so that he was not liable to pay anything in the event of a crash. The total cost was very modest. Mr. Higgins put it graphically as a means of turning £50 into £50,000. This involves assumptions about the numbers involved in the accidents and the size of their claims. One of those assumptions is that no claim is likely to be of such a size that it justifies substantial investigation. It appears to be a happy fact, if true, that no-one was seriously injured in any of these accidents. The total cost to the insurers of meeting these claims, and the costs of the solicitors (on Conditional Fee Agreements with success fees) would be very substantial indeed. iii) At the time of the accident both it and the other “innocent vehicle” should be full of people. Accident A involved a total of 20 people between the two vehicles, Accident B 9, Accident C 11, Accident D 10, Accident E 13, Accident F 10, Accident G 10, Accident H 11, and Accident I 8. This is a total of 106 people, of whom 9 were “guilty drivers”, leaving 97 claimants worth a total of £40,500 in referral fees at £450 each. The overheads would be limited to the cost of short term hire of the guilty vehicle. This selection of claims contains two where the guilty vehicle was insured by Equity Red Star and 7 where it was insured by the Second Defendant. If the allegations are well founded, it is likely that there were other claims addressed to other insurers which I have not been told about. The size of the alleged fraud is very considerable. Mr. Smith told me in evidence that the cost of motor insurance fraud was estimated at £2 billion a year which he thought was probably an underestimate. This fraud was a small part (but not an insignificant part) of a much larger problem. This exposes the problem behind referral fees as the accident management company itself only needs to sell the claimant's details to the claimant solicitors to make a massive profit. It doesn't matter if the claims eventually fail or if they're completely fraudulent, they still get their wad. This is a massive incentive for people in the industry to push through dodgy claims. The other problem is that "accident management companies" are virtually completely unregulated. I'm sure you'll all have seen those funny looking shops on run down high streets with "Compensation Recovery Service" or something written on the sign. No, they're not lawyers. They're probably (sweeping generalisation) recent immigrants. They're often complete shysters. The system needs to be shut down. Luckily, the govt is looking at doing just that - kill referral fees dead. Lord Jackson reported on the problem last year and the govt is just working through the final stages of a consultation process to get a new set of laws drafted. This will mean the end of conditional fee arrangements, meaning that a dodgy claimant can be left holding the can when their claim falls apart because its become obvious to all that they're just a lying scumbag.

I'm thinking of starting a blog or something to track the number of times I'm cut up by shitty drivers who can't use roundabouts. I'll call it "I was only cut up once this morning" and I'll post video of the people doing it. I deal with a shed load of RTA's at work and litigate roundabout collisions regularly so know how they're supposed to work in intimate detail. It's a shame so few of the general populace do. There's one busy roundabout I use daily to get into work - J3 on the M32. Generally around 60% of the traffic taking the exit I'm after are in the wrong lane. It's not that they're jumping a queue or anything though, as they are actually changing lanes out of my lane, queue and then cut back in to the correct lane after waiting a while. They just don't know how to use a freaking roundabout. It's not like it's hard - there are dotted white lines on the road and all you have to do is follow the right one and it takes you right where you want to go. Every morning there are queues caused by these idiots trying to barge back into the lane they exited on the approach to the roundabout. 2 - 3 times a week I have to lean on my horn. At least once a week there's a very near miss, involving either me or another motorist. Thanks to defensive driving (as I know what's coming and have one thumb on the horn), I only rarely have to swerve or brake hard. Some of the idiots in the wrong lane even use their horns at the people doing it right, as the idiots are such bad drivers they're convinced it's the others who are in the wrong. It's not just that roundabout either. It's all of them. I used to use a different route to get in to the office and that roundabout was just as bad. Last night on the way home I was nearly side swiped by a flatbed who just meandered from one lane to the next whilst going round a roundabout and then back into the correct lane as he exited, as if there weren't any road markings at all - never mind the garishly painted sports car to his right with its headlights on! What's worse is that when I come across roundabout collisions professionally, perhaps the majority of my opponents don't know how roundabouts are supposed to work either! Half my team's job is convincing their opponents that even on their client's own evidence, they're the one in the wrong. And it's clear this goes well beyond lawyerly devils advocate behaviour - they simply genuinely don't know how to use an actual roundabout. Where it's one word against the other (and it usually is), you've not a hope in hell of settling on anything other than a 50/50 basis and if you take it to a hearing you might as well just toss a damn coin... or you get a 50/50 anyway… and then only after you've thrown a bunch of money at the case. Because they don't know how to use a roundabout. Perhaps what we need are some big steel spikes which pop out the ground (bus lane style) so that drivers can only follow the lane they're in. They can shoot up and down depending on what the traffic lights are doing. Make them properly sharpened spikes too - not just bollards. That would show the bastards.

Generally, passing a full control check should mean landable but not necessarily always. Some line overs for example, may on a lightly loaded canopy seem stable enough, fly ok and pass a control check... but who knows if that will continue to be the case? What happens if that changes at 200ft? Something to consider. I've landed a jammed steering toggle and a pc caught in the lines (old spring loaded one). Stuck toggle was easy enough as at my loading I knew I was safe enough with a bit of a rough no-flare landing. With more exp. I could perhaps have elected for a rear riser flare if nesc (though this can have risks if you don't know what you're doing). The tangled pc (as a student) I learned after landing that the drill my dz taught was half turns only so as to reduce the risk of the pc tugging the canopy into a bow tie (first I'd heard!). These don't tend to happen though with un-sprung pc's and I can't see it usually being a problem with a collapsable pc even if it did happen. Many things like this some don't even consider 'mals' but nuisance factors... I'd say that's perhaps more of a question of semantics. I'd simply say that the full question is not just 'does it pass a control check' but 'does if pass a control check and is it highly likely to do so throughout the rest of my flight?'. If you don't know, it might be better to err on the side of caution. Bear in mind with a step through the pos of a brake becoming jammed 'on' by the lines twisted round, potentially causing a spin if you don't correct it or reducing your ability to flare. Otherwise I'd probably land a step through, in fact I have once before.

On DSE's above point - re chest strap loosening, I would expect most should be able to do that with toggles in your hands while maintaining fairly deep or at least half brakes. I guess that may not hold true with some high performance canopies or if the stall point is high in the toggle stroke but it works for me and means I don't have to let go of the control system at any time meaning quicker response should any traffic be spotted.

1 out per pass on the first few jumps (though that went to 2 per pass when we were using a bigger, faster aircraft). That wouldn’t have helped in the Spaceland incident though as they were well past that stage in their training. Orange boiler suits and retraining before every day whilst a student? Already done often (and the retrain bit is a BPA requirement, boiler suit colour varies between DZ's). Continue to drum 'head on a swivel' into everyone? Again, should already be done if everyone’s doing their job right and we've no reason to believe they weren't at Spaceland. The BPA system also provides for next step after A license being a general canopy handling qualification which must be the way forward to improving safety in this area... but were the Spaceland guys not doing something similar and looking at accuracy? Perhaps that actually contributed as there is speculation that they could have been target fixated? If there's a risk of that of course that risk must be mitigated through training and even acute attention to exit order/delay/deployment altitude if necessary. Perhaps multiple targets could be used – I don't think I've seen a DZ with more than one accuracy pit – perhaps there could be 2 or 3 some distance from one another and students be required to nominate prior to boarding which they will be going for and actively demonstrate the ability to remain out of the airspace of the other targets – it's all practice and proof of canopy control and flying a pre-determined pattern after all. Perhaps not all DZ's will have the space for this and other measures will have to be emphasised.

I would have though google would take a very dim view of any bogus rating reports... at least, any site that places any emphasis on feedback ratings does so I'd hope they would... Letting google know about sham feedback can only be a good idea where it is evident.

Yes, always, but as per above it must come AFTER control checks. Too many times I still hear of deaths and incidents caused, in part, by people failing to do what they were taught on day one and do a control check as one of the first things they do post opening (not cause they fall out of a container, but things like stuck toggles which only come to light after they've already passed through their hard deck). Control check first, then move on with the rest of your canopy ride which for me includes loosening off my chest strap. Slightly off topic I guess but it still seems it can't be repeated enough.

Just looking at the $ amount... administering the draft itself must also cost millions more than the costs involved with hiring contractors, even if everyone you wrote to turned up on day 1 and that never happens. You also have to provide health care, pensions and bereavement benefits etc for wounded/killed conscripts – contractors will presumably usually have to provide themselves with all of that privately/through their employers if they want it, though how much of that is taken into account in the above referenced study I don't know.

They don't have any gays in their country of course so they're probably just pissed it's in pink. There's no doubt however, that it is a crap logo. In fact, when you consider it cost £400,000, it's a spectacularly crap logo.