mr2mk1g

I must admit I'm rather annoyed by this. Bush encourages Londoners to go back to work as normal. Blair says London's open for business as usual. Livingstone urges people to carry on as normal and use the public transport as usual. The bus and tube networks are back up and running inside of 24 hours. 7 million Londoners get back to their lives undaunted. And yet at the same time the US military bans 10,000 troops from entering London for fear they'll be caught up in an attack. Evidently the stoicism for which Brits and Londoners in particular are world renowned does not extend to our guests in this country. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200507/s1412734.htm

The drunk jumper we gaffers taped to a bench the other night after stripping him down to nothing but a cypres bum-bag didn't remember it in the morning either. That doesn't make the act itself any less cruel though. (what made it not a cruel act was it really really funny and he laughed his head off at the photo's the next day).

From your source (emphasis mine): I'll give it that - it was the first intending to produce total destruction. But the Germans certainly did target civilians during WWI with a number of bombing raids over mainland UK. There is clear bomb damage to the buildings of Lincoln's Inn to which I belong. Many times I have walked round the grounds and taken an interest in the pock marks and splinter holes in the walls. There's a plaque on the wall commemorating the raid noting the exact date during WWI when the bombs fell. There's also brass plaque set into the cobbles in the exact position where one of the bombs fell. This is just round the corner from Fleet Street. At the end of the road are the Royal Courts of Justice. There is no industry in this area and there wasn’t at the time the bombs were dropped – they hit the centre of the financial/legal district. The bombs were aimed at civilians; civilians who weren’t even contributing to the war effort. And your characterization of Zeppelin attacks as "nuisance raids" is something of an insult to the 550 civilians they killed during the First World War.

One other quirk that might catch you is that our repack cycle is 6 months unless packed by a foreign rigger in which case it is 6 months or whatever the foreign pack cycle is if that is shorter. So if for example a visiting American comes here their reserve is good for 120 days just like at home. If they have it packed here though it's good for 6 months. I guess this only makes a difference if NZ has a shorter repack cycle... which I don't know off hand but I'm sure you do.

Mine just died on me this weekend for no apparent reason. I get the same code. I figure I'm going to try the smack-the-hell-out-of-it fix suggested by the link above as I've not exactly got much to lose. If it works I'll let you know. If that doesn't work I guess I'll ring my insurers up and make them give me a nice new PC330 or PC350 or something... it is a "new for old" policy after all.

Personally I don't care what anyone else does to their body. I might think it's a bit odd if they decide to mutilate a perfectly good bit of themselves... but then Jacko's a fruit loop... never thought of yourselves as fitting in the same bracket as that nut job eh? As far as insecurities are concerned... remember... there are basically 2 countries in the world that do this - the US and Israel... at least the Israelis have got a reason that goes beyond fashion for doing it. Therefore for me as a Brit there were no insecurities – everyone in the shower looked just like me (just not quite as long or manly, haha). Like I said though - it's no skin off my nose what you do with your wang (pun intended).

Ah you know it's just that Tehran is sore they weren't picked for 2012.

The collision's new info to me. Do you know where and when that happened? I did wonder about the possibility of this being a or a number of suicide bomber(s). We don't have any bins or lockers or anywhere to leave things on our public transport systems following our experiences of living with the IRA bombing campaign for so long... we're also very strict on unattended luggage so London and the UK in general would be one of the harder targets in the world to hit like this (not to say it wouldn't be frighteningly easy in any case). Of course no system can be perfect and standards have slipped significantly since the IRA quit trying to blow us all up... but a suicide bomber would be the most effective way round the physical measures we do have in place.

One thing I don't get is why it is "particularly barbaric" that it was timed to coincide with the G8 summit" (Blair). It's as if it would have been somehow less barbaric had all these people been killed on any other day of the year.

I looked as hard as I could... but all I could see was boobies.

You can always text "Gay" to 87070 and you can have him on your phone...

You know me - Roy Walker's got nothing on me when it comes to saying what I see.

nope - 6 now confirmed to have traces of explosives at the site.

Ditto. A card came round last week which I signed as always with some short meaningless quip. I was one of the first to sign. Then a colleague brought it over again and said it was going round again as they had forgotten to include an envelope for donations. I told them thanks but I wasn't putting anything in. They looked me funny so I told them I thought the person leaving was a cunt. They looked at me funny and looked across to my team leader who added, "yeah they're a real cunt, I'm not putting in either". I think that did the trick cos they walked off and left me alone.

I don't know man... all it takes is a couple of people. No need for comms. outside of chatting together in a flat. There are plenty of UK citizens with ties to the middle east who might wish to carry out such an attack.

So you'd cut his toes off one by one till he told you some bullshit story about where the bombs were... making yourself a terrorist too will never save lives. We learned in the 70's and 80's that stooping to the level of the IRA didn't work. It won't work with Al Qaeda either.

find them guilty of terrorism and you can do what you like to them as far as I'm concerned... till them they're just suspects.

Get video of your landings the next time your at the DZ. Just do this even if you haven’t got anyone to show it to. You should be able to critique yourself if you're doing something majorly wrong - you know what other people look like when they flair, you can see how you differ. You'd be surprised how difficult it is to actually know what you're body's doing when it's running on autopilot or you're thinking too had such as during a landing. Video will show you exactly what you're doing and you might be surprised. Then track down a coach and show them the video too if you want. If you don't see an improvement from simply looking at your video yourself then definitely find a coach.

Well seeing as that was precisely the place and aircraft on which I experienced this effect, that's good evidence. I'd still be curious to see if the cypres fired 75ft lower than expected though... perhaps thinking the ground had been reset lower... then again logic would suggest it would take more than a simple momentary change to adjust ground level.

probably busy as hell right now if he's working in a radio station... edited to add: he's with the morning show isn't he? If so he would have been in work long before this thing kicked off.

From the pictures of one of the buses hit I think there has to have been numerous fatalities there alone. The thing was ripped wide open... those buses are absolutely packed at 8.50am. Reports describe the ground being littered with bodies... Not a nice day at all.

Washington post says: Blair urged Londoners to "stay where you are. All of London transportation is shut. Do not call emergency services" except for life and death situations. otherwise little new in the link http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/content/articles/london070705.html

yeah, me too, but I can't find that mirrored on the net anywhere.

Blair's making an announcement at noon... so presumably we'll see the text on the net in 15 minutes or so.

sorry - my use of the term "confirmed" is missleading. I ought to have said there were now reports of 20 dead.