mr2mk1g

If it makes you feel any better - the nice young ladies at a certain strip club/brothel in Moscow accepted US dollars...

Mate, come along to the AGM, your sure to have somewhere to stay. I've got a room you can crash in or Firky has a suite he's planning on "subletting".

Yes, businesses in the UK will still be able to refuse service to people for other reasons, (no tie, too drunk, abusive, wearing sports shoes etc etc). At present it is illegal to refuse service to someone because of their colour or religion. It is however, perfectly legal at present to refuse service to someone simply because they are gay and to tell them as much. This legislation seeks to normalize that anomaly and afford the same protection to sexual orientation as colour and creed already enjoy.

By the way everyone, I thought I'd just point out that where some uninformed vicars are claiming that this legislation is going to force them to perform gay weddings or to rent out church halls to gays. Well... to put it bluntly, they're talking out of their consecrated arses. Hopefully the below quote from the legislation is clear enough for most lay people to understand. If that's not clear enough, (as it patently isn't for most of the clergy), in essence it says that so long as the organisation is a religious institution, (rather than one with a primary commercial or teaching focus), then they can restrict their membership to non-gays, refuse to allow gays to attend their events, refuse to provide goods and services to gays, and refuse to allow gays to use their buildings, so long as such refusal is as a result of a conflict with either their religious doctrine or merely the views of a significant number of the followers. No church is going to be forced to conduct a gay wedding.

Nope, sorry - you can't ban Christians from your church event or even simply from your guest house - that would be illegal. Homosexuals though - well at present they're fair game. Why should the law maintain such a lopsided status quo? Protect religion but not sexuality? Guess some would prefer we go back to the days when signs like that which is attached were not only allowed, but were commonplace; (which, lest anyone get upset, has clearly been edited).

git

Christ John at least get the chuffing right country! This is news from SCOTLAND about what a SCOTTISH MP wants to propose. edited to add: ps it's a moronic idea. Glad it's not being floated in my country. That said - it has next to zero chance of making it through their Parliament.

Institute compulsory games of British Bulldog. Only the fit ones would survive...

No, it was the fact they were beating up un-born whales and clubbing seals with nuclear missiles.

Well news reports recon "surveys show" 95% of street prostitutes in the UK are drug addicts. I can't possibly comment on the voracity of that figure and who knows how they came to it but it is apparently the "official" figure. If girls here want to choose to become a prostitute and not expose themselves to the world of street walking it's really not that hard. Up from street walkers are brothel workers and then "above" them you have escorts who frankly, charge more by the hour than I do! Girls in this last category certainly are there by choice and I suspect much of the time not simply funding a drug habit. Street walkers though... I think the stat given above is probably not that far off. As for whether or not becoming a drug addict essentially preordains this choice for these girls... I make no comment.

Not if Satan looked like Liz Hurley... then I'd just be focused mainly on her boobies...

I must admit I get more than a little irked when I hear people these days claiming that someone is a hero just because they have served in the military – or perhaps that they served in the military in a theater of war or in combat. Those actions are vocational choices of the individual and/or the performance of a duty to which the individual voluntary selected to subscribe. Now when a soldier, (/airman/sailor/etc etc), exceeds the remit of their duties in some way then yes they might often be properly described as a hero, often a very great hero. To me, the automatic labeling of anyone who served in the remotest way as a "hero" merely cheapens in a most deplorable way a title which ought to be applied to only those who truly deserve it. It's kinda like advocating that everyone should get the Medal of Honor instead of an appropriate Campaign Medal – extremely disrespectful IMO.

Nearly suspended for the manufacture and sale of explosives... whatever...

Portugal: the only European country with which Britain has never gone to war.

Germanic tribes used to hang sacrifices from trees to celebrate Yule... hence the whole tree decorating malarkey.

"Stick shift" is easier for right handed people when on the left - it means your dominant hand can keep doing the important thing - steering. The £1 coin is universally accepted - our lowest "paper" currency is £5 - (equal to about $10). We also have a £2 coin which is less well circulated. I collect all of mine. I bought my first rig in £2 coins and since then have collected another grand's worth... still looking for a reason to spend them. Fish and chips are so 80's. The national dish is curry.

I think you're best off pulling up a copy of the Treaty on line and reading it, specifically paragraphs 11 and 12. The Treaty provided for a 32 county state encompassing both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, jointly to be called the Irish Free State. This state was to have the same constitutional status and powers as the other Commonwealth Nations of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Canada in fact, was the model. It further gave the counties of Northern Ireland one month to decide whether it wanted to remain part of the Irish Free State or if they wanted to withdraw from the newly created nation. If the latter, the Parliament of Northern Ireland, which was to remain in governance for one month only, was required to pass a resolution in favor of withdrawing from the Irish Free State. If no such resolution was passed by both Houses within that one month then the powers of the Parliament of Northern Ireland would cease and full control of the six counties would be handed to the Government of the Irish Free State. The democratically elected Parliament of Northern Ireland did indeed pass such a motion and duly withdrew from the Irish Free State into which they had been placed by the Treaty. This left just the 26 counties to which you refer.

Yes I mean counties not provinces but I'm attempting to translate here for the ease of our American cousins who will mostly read this. And as for the whole Island not being given its independence??? What on earth would you call the affect of the 1922 Anglo-Irish treaty? It was a treaty between the Irish Republic and the UK giving virtual total autonomy to the whole of Ireland; being entirely analogous to the legislation which created Canada, Australia or NZ. Yes there were provisions that those counties that wished to opt out of the treaty could do so, but that's what the majority of the residents of those counties wanted. As for the county's motives for the opt-out, I made no comments whatsoever - merely noting that the counties acted of their own volition.

Forgive me - I'm evidently too used to thinking of my home as my castle. A "yes" to my second question, (the non-facetious one), would have sufficed.

Why on earth would a Homeowners Association have a clause in it about whether or not you must support a particular war? Or do these things give carte blanch power to those who run the scheme to rule on anything they see fit?

Actually that's a very good point - and gets us back on track with the thread. The Irish regularly used to descend on Bristol and raid it for slaves during the middle ages. The city’s museum has a very interesting exhibit on the trade (I currently live in Bristol - SW England, a historic port and right on the coast, a nice short hop across the Irish Sea). This practice was so widespread and centred around the largest Eastern port city in Ireland of Belfast that it eventually lead to a large Anglo community living in the surrounding provinces - this being the embryonic community which later chose to become part of the UK and cause all the terrorist problems we've seen over the past century. We were essentially seeing the descendants of slaves wanting to come home.

The whole island was given independence in 1922 when the Irish Free State was created. A number of provinces decided they did not want to be part of a unified Ireland and asked instead to join the UK. So that's what they did - of their own volition. Today only 22% of Northern Ireland wants unification against 59% who want to stay part of the UK as they actively chose to do back in '22. This small minority has tried to use to use violence, terrorism and bombing to enforce their views over the rest of the population rather than engage in a democratic process. Today Northern Ireland has home rule, (once they sort their shit out), and everyone has automatic citizenship of both countries so they can go live where they like if they want to. I have virtually no sympathy. ...but we digress.

The current government came into being in 2005. Before that time it didn't exist. It had nothing to do with slavery. It cannot apologise for something done by an entirely different government more than 200 years ago.

I physically cannot apologise for something my grandfather did. I didn't do it. He did. If he was around I could bitch at him about how he should apologise because what he did was awful. If he was around he himself could certainly apologise for what he did. He's not around though – he's dead. I can say I think what he did was awful and express my personal sorrow that it happened. But I cannot actually apologise for it, just like I cannot sign cheques for him or take out mortgages for him. Only he can do that. Unfortunately he's dead, so he can't. If I were to take it upon myself to apologise for him it would be nothing but a meaningless platitude serving only to cheapen the whole concept.. (p.s. (for the dense), so far as I'm aware, my granddad did nothing worthy of such an apology... certainly nothing even remotely related to the slave trade before anyone starts whining for me to apologise).

Favorite shot so far was the other week on the polar episode. The aerial view of a polar bear swimming under pack ice. It swam just like a human.