St Landrew

Over the last few years there have been some very public child abductions. The latest one, involving an 11 year old girl, at the time of her abduction, called Jaycee Dugard, brings the crime back into sharp focus again. I find this particular crime absolutely sickening. To separate a yound child from his or her parents must be devastating for the abductee and for the parents. The psychological cruelty handed out by the abductor is something I can't get my head around at all. It is one thing to kill or injure, and those crimes are evil enough; but it is a diffrent kind of evil to inprison an innocent young child or person, continually depriving them of the joy and love of an upbringing. Nobody can give that girl back her younger life. She's back with her mother now, but what damage has been done..? To my mind, her abductor has taken a life.

The original product does have some quite corrosive agents in it, some of which can be harmful, but it does work very well indeed. I was curious and I did the coin test once with a drop of Cillit Bang in a spoon. 30 seconds later it was bright and sparkily coin.

Yeah nickh, don't be hard on yourself. If, in the future, there is another regrettable occasion, and you do hear the screams of someone needing help, I'm sure you won't ignore them. Nobody can be blamed for not having the hearing of Superman.

Didn't even bother to look at the link. There have been strange bikes after strange bikes. the other year there was the bike built from, what... 30 two-stroke chainsaws..? It was bloody ridiculous. A motorcycle is not about extreme amounts of horsepower, but what you can do with with it, and where you can go with it. If you want stupid thrills then have a turbocharged Suzuki Hayabusa. It's almost civilised, yet it's stupid enough with its ability to wheelie in every gear, including top. My VFR800FiY can do 155mph flat out, and the Hayabusa Turbo can wheelie under acceleration from that speed to whatever top speed it gets to. How much thrill do you need..? EDIT: OK, curiosity got the better of me. Wish it hadn't. Awful, simply awful. That's not a bike. It's a car with two wheels.

Yeah, I have. Most of the computer suppliers I've had problems with the product are perfectly ok to deal with during an after sale issue. Nowadays for example, Novatech, down in Portchester, are very good indeed. Generally the product is reliable, but if you have a problem, and report it through their problems procedure, they will deal with it effectively and pretty efficiently too. I've found that traditional electronic retail outlets like Currys, Comet, PC World, etc... will wriggle like mad, dig their heels in, or do whatever they can to put you off, if they can, unless the issue is cut and dried, i.e. there's no room to wriggle. The best after sales service, for a faulty item, I have ever received from an electronics product manufacturer [perhaps from any company] was Targa in Germany. My HDD/DVD recorder developed a fault in recognising blank DVDs about 2 years and 10 months into its standard European 3 year guarantee. I phoned Targa, explained the fault, and the woman on the other end of the phone was extremely courteous and sympathetic; took the details of my recorder, and apologised that the product had let me down..!!! :smt103 She then asked me to box up the recorder as best I could, which was easy as I'd kept the original box flat-packed in the cupboard, and send it to them. I asked about the postage, and she said they would incur the cost. The turn-around for the repair was meant to be about 14 days, but it was back within a week. They'd replaced the DVD drive, cleaned it, tested the whole machine, and popped a spare remote control in the box. I phoned them to thank them for the prompt service, and explained that they'd given me a spare remote control, and they said, that's fine, keep it if you would like it, and please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience of being deprived of your recorder..! :smt103 Can you imagine an everyday British manufacturer saying that..? And that repair carried its own guarantee too. Frankly, I'm happy for the thing to break down again. Sadly, it has been thoroughly reliable, ever since.

Gosh..! Well ok..! I didn't know that the subjest was such a serious one. I just pointed out that aeroplanes are not cars, bikes, buses or trucks, etc.., hence not exactly motoring. BTW, where is this mythical Eastleifg, in the mythical Hamshire..?

I think that just might be in your head only, TDD.

You mean you were actually ill with a desire for times past..? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia

Excellent reply - I know exactly what you mean. You came to the conclusion, which was... we don't know. We can't turn the clock back. We can't return innocence to children. Trouble is, we hand over some of the responsibility to institutions, like government, and schools, and shake our heads when they fail to come up with the goods. But we are all responsible. That is what makes it so difficult - to get everyone to accept their measure of responsibility and to cooperate. Children are now subject to a much wider influence of the outside world than they used to be when you or I were growing up. Children today are hardly able to be children any more, and parents face an enormous uphill battle against the outside world of influence. They haven't a hope of rounding out a childs personality, even if they can be bothered to. Kids witness countless things, first or second hand that were only considered of an adult nature just a generation or more ago. But children don't have the maturity to separate what is acceptable and what is not. And if, in their early fomative years [i'm thinking 3-7] they aren't corrected, hopefully in a constructive way, they will almost certainly not see the difference between right and wrong. Neglect and violence is what leads kids to put upon others what they have learned from their own experiences, and for themselves. These children are sick; not in the modern put-down way, but psychologically ill because they don't have the correct building blocks to fill out their personalities and equip them for life. We all fall short in some respect. None of us is the complete and perfect individual. In children, where their acts of committing violence is concerned, the short-comings are all too apparent.

Very nice to be wrong.

Not that I'm hugely interested nowadays, but fwiw, if it was any country other than Australia, England were facing, I would expect home cricket fans to be chilling the champagne and sparkling wine. It not over yet.

This has become the standard statement after every incident that shocks people. How many times is someone going to pop it out..? Isn't it about time people examined their own conduct..? We are all guilty of not respecting others as much as we might. We all have our own remarkably similar moral codes. Yet we choose to insult one another. We commit violence on the back of a sport or some other excuse. We condone violence by turning away from it, when it is going on right in front of our noses. And we sit back and happily watch violence on the media, knowing full well that it is fictional, but is helping to lay foundations in youngsters as to what is acceptable. And we know those foundations are way past our own, yet we allow it. Yes, we may need harsher punishments, but in a way, we shouldn't need them. What we really need is for people to learn that there is moral code to live by, and it is one where others are not harmed by their actions. Yes, those kids are sick, possibly born of sick parents. But although their actions are without any form of their understanding of the consequences, it actually doesn't surprise me in a world where violence is cool and peace is not. BTW, not knocking you personally SS, just using your statement to illustrate my point.

Sorry, didn't mean to scare you. I meant how using a single big vehicle cost you in terms of inconvenience and fuel, rather than hiring two smaller vehicles. Calm, calm.

Tell us all about the extra you ended up paying when you get back.

Hamster, you do realise that the ones you see nowadays are playacting versions of the ones from the dim distant past. They don't actually hold the carpet in place, and are much more of a showpiece than anything else. It's all tacked or grippered down, with the rods screwed into place as a bit of icing. Nice looking, but if they tried to do the job for real, people would be slipping down the stairs like Lord Greystoke on a tea tray. By the way, only proper stair carpet for stair rods, or edge bound good quality carpet. It's cheaper to just go full width, if less appealing.

Nice. Can I borrow that, as I couldn't have put it better..?

Bet that bloke's foot hurts.

You do realise that this is carpet fitter porn, yes..? I think an instant infraction/ban is in order.

A picture or photograhic proof. Basically, the evidence. There's loads of rules. Release too much nasty Rule 1 and you encounter Rule 303.

I have the Saints goals for this game on one of my computers. In fact, I have a heck of a lot of Saints goals on the same computer. One of these days I'll get around to uploading them. Then we can all get glassy eyed together.

I always get a kick out of the RLY Owls and Gulls though, so it has been worthwhile. Dog could have spared us the RULE 1 pic though.

So let me see if I've got this right. They want to pay a bit more for less convenience yes..? They say that only one car will get used. OK, hire 2 cars and use 1 of them. It is still cheaper than hiring a big people carrier. My guess is that as soon as they realise that several people can go out, and not confine the others to where ever they are staying, they will see the benefit. Just give them a scenario defining the obvious benefits of 2 cars [apart from it being cheaper anyway] and see if they have contorted imaginations to go with their flawed logic. If you are correct on the price, then the only scenario where their doubts are still valid is when all 7 people get in the one carrier, all the time, as one people carrier will use a bit less fuel than 2 cars being used all the time. Any other situation, and the 2 car option wins hands down.

Remember the goal. Nice to see it again. If I'm correct, and the free kick was indirect, like Ernie Hunt's Coventry City free kick a few years earlier, I believe it should have been disallowed, because the ball had not moved its circumference across the ground, from the pass by Osgood. Could be entirely wrong, of course.

A few years back I went with 6 others to Southern France for 2 weeks, where we had hired 2 new Renault Laguna DCis. Have to say that it was the best decision in car hire that I think I've ever been involved in. The Renaults were economical, swift and utterly comfortable.

Quite agree.