mr2mk1g

'cept in this case the public is simply gonna vote the current PM back in again if they're given half a chance.

No, no - he's referring to the 2,000 troops France has in Afghanistan and 3,000 naval personnel in the Indian Ocean, together with a nuclear aircraft carrier group, all fighting the war on terror by going after the Taliban and OBL. Major appeasement there if you ask me... MAJOR.

Ever owned a digital watch?

Not yet... but I'm seriously looking at buying a Saiga 12k (http://www.rusmilitary.com/html/firearms_saiga12.htm - last on page) and what I've read about Saiga (the AK maker you reference) is seriously good.

Yup. Skyrad's text is a good explanation. These days Magistrates are all lay people. Legally trained people doing essentially the same job are called District Judges. It might sound odd, but it has its merits. The Magistrate is there to consider the facts of the case in the same way as a jury might. The Magistrate's Court's Clerk, (a qualified lawyer), is there to advise the Magistrate as to the applicable law, their powers under the circumstances and what the appropriate range of tariffs that might be applied should the Magistrate find on the facts that an offence has been committed. As pointed out by Skyrad's text, the cases that end up before Magistrates are only the most minor of matters. Any more serious cases either go straight up to the Crown Court, (full Judge and jury), or are triable either way, (meaning it's up to the defendant which court they want to hear their case, and depending on the case there may be tactical considerations for choosing one court over the other).

Oh, absolutely there is - it's one of the most deplorable elements of the whole situation. Not even the most stretched version of the freedom fighter/terrorist argument can be made for people who kill and maim simply because their victims worship the same God in an ever so slightly different way. No, but you "do support the cause". If you truly know the situation and don't simply comment out of ignorance, that really shocks me. I mean really. I simply cannot fathom why anyone would support the involuntary subjugation of an entire population. The very idea of someone supporting a movement whose goal is to annex a state by force, against the will of the overwhelming majority of its population, is quite foreign to me. 80 years ago the population of Northern Ireland actively chose to split away from the rest of the Republic. Today, the vast majority of the population of the province still does not want to be part of the Republic. Allowing them to continue that stance seems to me to be the very epitome of a democracy. I just don't understand why anyone would want to force such a change on a people against their will. They live in a democracy - if they want to be part of Ireland they're quite welcome to become so. As they don't, I think it only right that every proponent of freedom and democracy oppose anyone who wants to force such a change upon them. In this instance that means opposing people like the IRA. As it is, NI residents have automatic dual citizenship of either or both country that they choose and, if the murdering bastards in the IRA and UVF quit killing each other because of the way the other worships the same bloody God, they have their own parliament and the power to govern their little quarter of the world in whatever way they choose. Hell, they could even join the Republic if they wanted to.

Small point perhaps, but a magistrate is not even remotely similar to a lawyer.

The likelihood is that all the defendant has to do is raise it as a defence and then the prosecution has to disprove it... unless Herr Blair has done some very fundamental fiddling with the system...

Most anti-terrorism legislation was drafted by retards because retards thought it was necessary. The only decent anti-terrorism legislation took years to get through parliament against a hostile opposition. This all leads to robust scrutiny of the proposals so that any retarded crayon scribblings get taken care of before the bill gets sent to print. We had an extremely good set of laws in place curtesy of our decades of experiences during the "Troubles". There was no need to change them. In the aftermath of 9/11, politicians were so eager to make voters believe they were protecting them from terrorists, (and not standing in the way of the government who claimed to be doing just that), that they would have voted for a bill saying their granny had to be butt-searched twice a month if it made them look like they were doing something about the perceived problem. Under the legislation, if I send you an unsolicited copy of the Anarchists Cook Book... you've committed an offence. That law is an affront to a thousand years of legal doctrine. It needs to be repealed.

I think the article you link to is missing the best bit. It's being widely reported in the news on this side of the pond that the committee report indicates once and for all that the CIA believed there was NO link between Iraq and Al Qaeda before the invasion. You gotta wonder who in the hell Bush was listening to when he put it about before the war that the two were linked because we now know for sure that his actual military advisers were telling him there was absolpositively no link.

[surgeon] Let me see... I have my surgical tools... check. I have my diagram... check. Right then; everything seems ready for the operation! [/surgeon]

Who said anything about bolt action rifles needing to be only .223 over here?

My BREN was an English one which I bought including a spare barrel, cleaning kit, mags and everything the weapon was originally kicked out of a plane with, all wrapped up in its full para drop box ready for dispatch from a DC3. Now I've got into skydiving I'm absolutely gutted in retrospect that I got rid of it given its link to the paras. It would have made the perfect centre piece to a para related collection. My SMLE is a 1916 but I can't make out any distinguishable unit marks. Another SMLE that did passed through my hands was one manufactured in Oz, packaged up in grease and straw at the end of the 30's and shipped over here. From there it was sent to a warehouse and there is stayed... right up untill the point when some nice men at Witham Militaria in Colchester sold it to me, (they literally opened up the original crate for me that came over from Oz). That was a rather electric moment I tell you. I chose not to keep it in the end though... it was too pristine... to new... and was made with a light, sandy coloured wood; very different than the dark wood found on all other SMLE's I've seen. Somehow it just didn't look right, despite its immaculate nature.

A whole shit load of shot guns, (I really love Damascus barrels). I sold most of my stuff when I moved out of the country into the city. The cool stuff all went before that though following 97. I only have a Martini Henry left now, (that saw action in the Zulu War - I always went for the historical stuff). The rest are still in my fathers name. I used to own a shit load of de-acts too (and I do mean a shit load - at one time or other I've owned pretty much half the WWII small arms you could name. I only have an SMLE MkIII* left now and I think that’s simply too beautiful to part with so I guess I probably never will. My BREN gun was the last to go before that – another fine piece of engineering, perhaps without the finesse of the SMLE. The bayonet collection is still pretty big mind… but since I just leave all those under my bed I guess you could say I kinda lost interest in any further acquisitions for the moment... 'bout the same time I started jumping come to think of it... I was getting into black powder muzzle loaders just before I moved away from the country too. I really mean to get back into that some day. Always wanted to own an original, (and still in proof), Baker rifle, (C1800 – first ever rifle to enter full time service, (save for the Ferguson of course, though that was more of an experiment... but I digress)). Almost guarantee I will some day. My next intended purchase is attached - again, fully legal:

The vast proportion of Brits would love them to do so... the problem is the Irish don't. Waaay back in 1921 when Ireland was in the process of emerging out of civil war, the English and Irish Governments got together set the whole of Ireland up as a "free state" – ie a completely new country, united and whole. Northern Ireland promptly ceded from that free state and joined the UK of it's own volition. Britain didn't want Northern Ireland. It went to some pains to set it up as part of a united Ireland - just as the murdering bastards in PIRA wanted. It was Northern Ireland itself that didn't want to be part of a united Ireland. It was Northern Ireland that ceded from the united state that Britain set up. They chose this. Now why in the hell should one and a half million people be forced by a bunch of murdering bastards to live under their rule when they have consistently decided THEY do not want that to happen? Why in the hell should the rest of the UK force people who actively chose to become part of this country to go against their will and live under the rule of a bunch of murdering bastard terrorists? Do you think that the US govt in Washington should force the residents of Texas to become part of Mexico again? Even if the majority of Texans don't want to be part of Mexico?? What if some Mexicans started blowing shit up, murdering school children, and kneecapping people who didn't agree with them? Is that the point that Washington should force Texas to cede from the Union? A little bit of bloody education would go a long way I tell you.

Which cause? The attempt to subjugate one and a half million people to live under their rule against their will? Seems like a pretty oppressive and totalitarian concept to me. No wonder they sided with the Nazis during WWII. Or do you support their ethos of killing Protestants simply because... well, because they worship the same God in an ever so slightly different way?

Depends on your point of view... historically China has consistently been at the "top of the world" for literally millennia... except for the extremely short anomalous blip of the last 200 years after we Brits forced them to buy all our opium…

I agree that's more likely - but the suggestion above that I was addressing was that the US should stop buying overseas oil and rely on it's own as a foreign policy tool, notwithstanding that price difference which you would normally expect to drive such a change.

Which would of course answer the question of whether or not they were soldiering at the time or conducting a crimial act... ie were they soldiers or criminals.

I don't claim to be at all authoritative on this subject, but how about this train of thought?: The US stops buying billions of barrels of oil from the world market and uses domestic oil which, being technologically harder to obtain is, relatively speaking, more expensive to produce, (though at the time of the switch perhaps no more expensive than global oil is to buy). Supply vs demand = price Worldwide demand just dropped as the US is no longer buying global oil, so the price goes down. The US is using domestic oil which can't be produced any cheaper than it is being. Everyone else is buying cheap oil on the world market. China is buying cheap oil. So is India. Russia is selling it. So is Iran. If any of that is remotely accurate... I don't exactly see it being a particularly good set of circumstances for the US to be inflicting on itself.

The fact that he's off is not by any means news to us over here... The fact that his party is tearing itself appart in the process is pretty funny however, and probably quite welcome for a large number of people.

By no definition were they even remotely soldiers. They were Christian baby-killing-bastard terrorists funded to a large extent by Americans.

A real pity. And before anyone complains - I'm sure he would have laughed at the pic...

This has been all over the net for years now. It's not a .50 cal. It's not even people that are being shot at. It all came out ages ago that it's just some bloke shooting prairie dogs with an ordinary hunting rifle and that it was originally produced as an advert for guided prairie dog hunts. On top of all that, this versions been edited since the last time it turned up to take out the sequences which were most obviously shots of animals. They were pinched from this website... in fact they still have some similar on their "scenes" page: http://rmvh.com/index.htm Sorry to spoil your fun... you can go back to your argument now if you like...

"I REFUSE TO PROVE THAT I EXIST", says God, "FOR PROOF DENIES FAITH, AND WITHOUT FAITH I AM NOTHING. " "But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't, QED." "OH DEAR", says God, "I HADN'T THOUGHT OF THAT", and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.