Whitey Grandad

Because you are already paying a much higher amount of tax than people on lower incomes. Where would you stop? Should those who earn more pay more for their bread or cornflakes?

No need to apologise, but I do think that this proposal is a ridiculous idea. Penalising people who have tried that litle bit harder than most to get an education, who may have stayed in studying instead of going to the pub, who spent years in higher education whilst their contemporaries were out earning money and getting on to the career ladder, who put money aside when possible to save for a rainy day, is sending out the wrong message to society. Try to look after yourselves and we shall take money away from you, **** it up against the wall and we shall give money to you. There are plenty of other areas for making savings. How about the £8billion foreign aid money, some of which we give to China? And why ring-fence the NHS? Doubling their budget maid only a 30% improvement so cutting by 10% would never be noticed. I can think of a much fairer proposal: how about taking Child Benefit away from smokers?

It's a life-long contract.

Because we are all equal. The tax system already takes account of the differences in earnings. To take away these other 'benefits' amounts to yet another marginal tax. Where is the incentive to save for old age? Anyone with any sense would buy gold and keep it under the bed.

Because the costs to 'society' are a lot lower if everybody lives in nice family units.

Yes, I honestly know. But only because it was once in a question on 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire'.

I'll be there, if I remember.

Don't be silly. Even they are not that stupid.

Obviously Saints fans are not human.

There is also the possibility that we could face all these restrictions and it won't make a blind bit of difference to the climate.

That's a fair argument, but let's be clear about the reasons. The problem is that by restricting technological growth now we may delay the development of clean technologies. We need nuclear fission elctricity generation within the next 50 years or so.

I have no lack of education. For me, the problem is that the science has to explain also the changes in the climate going back over the last few thousand years. The little ice age, for example, seems to correlate very well with the Maunder minimum in sunspot cycles so we can infer from this that the solar activity has a very strong effect on our climates. There is also evidence that the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere is a consequence of higher temperatures rather than a cause. Climate science is not exact and much of the early alarmist reporting ignored many factors which we now know to be significant, such as the degree of cloud cover, so I take a sceptical view of the latest prophecies. There are a lot of hidden agendas when it comes to energy use and we have to be careful to stick to the core issue which is, 'how much effect do man-made CO2 emissions have on the climate?' In my view, changes in solar activity far outweigh any savings that you or I might make. The govenment view has been, we don't know what effect we are having so the safest thing to do is to reduce emissions in case they might cause an increase in temperatures. It also suits them to raise taxes on fossil fuels and restrict travel. When I was a young boy the big fear was that another Ice Age was on its way. We are overdue one by several centuries. Now that would be really bad news.

That's mean. Talk about kicking someone when they're down.

Sorry, Dune, at that time I lived in Fareham and then Chandlers Ford. I had a wife and two young kids at home so I didn't go out much socially. I used to go for a drink in Romsey on Friday nights with my business partner until lung cancer got him.

A lot of the town/country difference is down to sociological reasons. If you're waiting for a bus in London you might chat to the person next to you but you probably won't ever see them again. The same goes for the tube. Even people you work with will live in a completely diferent suburb and so you wouldn't see them in your local area. In this situation people shut themselves off from the outside world and hide behind their newspapers.

I saw something about this a few years ago. I seem to remember that there were going to be some test holes bored in Norway but I don't know what happend to the proposal.

It's a common method of begging. There was a bit in the paper recently about Interpol looking for someone doing the same sort of thing.

The pub always used to close on Mondays. Something about previous owners dying on Mondays.

I know Crawley. I worked at the IBA from 1974 to 1982.

Whoever wins the toss has choice of ends, that's all I know.

Before the Scots start a war, I think it should be 'Scottish'. Scotch is what you drink.

Hampshire folk are very friendly. We noticed this when we moved down here in 1971.

Apparently this is a true story. In the European parliament a French delegate explained that 'ce probleme sera solu par "la Sagesse Normande". The translation came over the headphones as 'this problem will be solved by Norman Wisdom. The French couldn't understand why the English were falling about laughing. (In France the Normans are famed for being wise).

I went to a lecture on this very subject last Saturday at Cambridge by Dr. William Peterson. He said that it was like 'Murder on the Orient Express' They all did it.

Part of the cause, but by no means the only one. There were plenty of other contributory factors.