Bath Saint

I knew you'd do that. Yep, the Daily Mail, along with several other right wing papers (such as the Daily Tory and the Torygraph) reported the same thing. They're misrepresenting the facts. Note that they mention 12 variants of Mohammed. Well, it transpires that there are 9 variants of Oliver - Oli, Ollie, Olly and a load of others. When you do exactly what the Mail did but with Oliver variants, you end up with Oliver (and variants) being several thousand ahead of Mohammed and variants. Nothing like facts, are there?

No it isn't. The most common name given to children last year was Oliver. The most common name in the country is most probably John. So, a case of getting your facts wrong, as usual. Oh, and I should hope you're not tarnishing a cotton material with a brush.

Just got back from having Sunday lunch there with the family. Yummy scrummy.

Don't, please don't do the open top bus tour. I'm sick of watching those bloody things clog up the roads. You'd be much better off taking one of the FREE walking tours that go from outside the Pump Rooms. They are very good and run by volunteers. No need to book and at this time of year, you won't be there with hundreds of others. Unfortunately, The Holburne at the end of Pultney Street is currently closed for renovation, but other things I would recommend: - Number 1 on the Royal Crescent to see a Georgian House as it originally would have looked. - Tea in the Pump Rooms - As you're staying over, go to the Thermae Spa at night. You can sit in the pool on the roof in any weather - the water stays a lovely warm temperature. You can chat and look over the rooftops of Bath. Sublime. - For something different, try the Museum of East Asian Art, the Herschel Museum of Astronomy or the Building of Bath Museum. - If you're feeling fit, take a walk up to Alexandra Park for great views over the city or, better still, follow the Beckford trail from the centre of Bath up to Beckford's Tower on Lansdowne. Other things already mentioned are the Theatre which is particularly good and gets lost of West End runs and a walk along the canal. Freshford Station is still a request stop and will take you into the lovely surrounding countryside. And, of course, we have quite a few excellent pubs.

I'd have no idea where to go.

How do you know this?

I am honestly amazed that Tommy Widdrington doesn't feature on that list.

Just got in to discover the news. Now, I haven't really got the time to go through the entire thread to check, but I wonder whether Tommy Widdrington might not be an outside bet. He would certainly get my vote!

Don't be such a music snob, Ludwig. Listening to a 'Best of' is a great way for manji to get into these bands he hasn't heard of before. manji, I would recommend 'Doppelganger' and 'Cuckoo' once you get a feel for Curve's more commercial stuff.

Something else worth adding, given your original question. Bear in mind that it is a very research intensive university. Given this, academic staff will be very focused on their research. While students won't be ignored, they are expected to get on with their work under their own steam and with less hand-holding than you would find at a more teaching-oriented institution. In many departments, they have some top academics, but your daughter can't expect to see them very often... In terms of accommodation, beyond year 1, it is likely to be in a shared flat in the middle of Bath or in one of the houses on one of the hills going out of Bath. Either option will be pricey and involve a hike into the university for lectures and tutorials. When I left, they were cracking down heavily on parking. There is virtually no parking for students on campus and the roads all around the campus are residents only parking. So, lots of walking coupled with the U18 bus and/or get a bicycle.

I used to be a research fellow there. I'm now at Bristol. Strictly speaking, it's a Plateglass University (as opposed to the older, Victorian Red Bricks like Bristol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_glass_university). In terms of rankings, it is frequently in the top ten institutions in the UK (i.e. very good and very well-regarded), but rankings only give you a partial picture. Academically, it really depends on the specific department and course. The institution is VERY sports oriented (as much, if not more than Loughborough), and is almost totally focused on sciences and engineering (with a small humanities presence and a large Management School). It is a campus university, stuck up on a hill a couple of miles from the city centre. In the winter, being on campus can be a bit of an isolated existence. Bath is a lively, compact city but very expensive. For even more of a lively feel, quite a few students commute to Bristol for clubs and shopping. On reflection, I would say that I found the sports orientation and dominance of sciences and engineering, coupled with the campus location, to be quite oppressive (ironic, given the very open, green setting). But, if you have a few quid to burn, don't mind going up and down the hill, and want a good degree, there are a lot worse places to go.

You know, if there is one thing I really hate, it is people who grass other people up. Despite his frankly laughable attempts to alter his identity, clearly SRS is a grass. I'm afraid, Stu, that while you may alter your username, you can't alter your personality...

Surely the epitome of this is Joseph Heller's character: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Major

What were this guy's parents thinking? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Healey

As a break from marking exams, I thought I'd take an exam. Got 19/24 (79%) but several of those were lucky guesses. For example, I had no idea when women were allowed to divorce, how many muslims there are in the UK (2.7% it transpires) or how many kids there are in the UK. The rest, I either knew or took an educated guess. For example, you only need to go to Shepherd's Bush to see how overrun we are by Aussies and Kiwis. It's a veritable ghetto there. Frankly, the test is ridiculous and, on another day, I might easily have failed had I not guessed right. And why do they give candidates 45 minutes? It took me about 3 minutes. In fact, it probably took me longer to type this massage than to take that test. Oh well, back to failing students.....

He can't. He's only a registered user. He had to save his £5 (kroner or whatever comedy currency they have in Norwegianland) in order to pay for his hoard of offspring. As do I, I might add.

After removing the 'won't vote' and 'undecided' votes, I calculated that currently (12/04/10) the shares of the 'vote' from SWF are as follows: Labour 23% Conservative 32% Lib Dem 32% Others 13% Using this little tool found on the BBC website (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8609989.stm), this converted to the following number of seats: Labour 212 Conservative 264 Lib Dem 145 Others 29 What this suggests to me is that the voting system (first past the post) in the UK is totally iniquitous. If the BBC tool is correct, Then having the joint highest number of votes would still leave the Lib Dems in a distant 3rd place!

Hola. I got a really good deal with Avianca which flies via Bogota. Should arrive just in time for kickoff, then on the first flight back.

I don't think Ekelund got that many to be fair.

Being right wing is one thing, but Nazis are National Socialists, an ideology that incorporates elements of the far-left and far-right. Essentially, they're racists with a massive dollop of socialism (think of Hitler building the autobahns to provide work and Mussolini getting the trains to run on time). If they had their way, a kind of apartheid would operate in the UK, with the white 'Anglo-Saxon' (an odd turn of phrase, incidentally - I was just saying to my Anglo-Saxon wife the other day....) people taking priority over non-whites. I think the use of skin colour illustrates the essential racism (as opposed to nationalism). What some of the posters on this forum are bothered about is people with different skin colour sharing the same islands as them. They pounce on lies and exaggerations (in this case to do with the social security system, but whatever the topic, they will wheel out a Daily Mail-like 'example') to support their prejudices. They save their especial bile for 'Muslims', whatever this means. The Nazis picked on Jews. Not much difference, as far as I can see.

Absolutely agree and anyone with a history of organising football violence would definitely want to be there... or at home in their bedroom.

Oh, I see you finished it. Well, I would agree that it is a young man's book. I read it first when I was about 17 and again about 10 years later, when I guess it was as much nostalgia as anything else. I recently read a French Lieutenant's Woman, which I had avoided for years, thinking it to be a descent into romance fiction by Fowles. It is actually a superb read and I would recommend it to anyone.

It is a superb book. Stick with it. I would have it in my top-ten list of books that I have read, probably. If you need an added incentive, it gets a little bit saucy later on...

I would pretty much go along with JL on his analysis of the BBC output. For me, R4 and 6Music (plus occasional BBC2 and BBC4 output and the World Service when I'm overseas) make the licence fee worth paying. I also happen to listen to Radio 3 a lot but was amazed to see that their budget was more than Radio 1 A commercial radio guy was interviewed on Today the other day and said that if he had 6Music, he would just play the same limited play list right through the day. Sound familiar. I think you'll find that this is why 99% of radio stations are crap. Anyway, it would seem that the Trust is starting to backtrack a bit. Let's hope they back down. I would be very, very disappointed to see 6Music go. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8546696.stm

Having observed the progress of this thread, the irony is that Timothy is the one who keeps taking it off topic by reverting to pathetic attempts at put-downs rather than answering the perfectly reasonable points made to him. Repeatedly saying 'FACT' and attempting to belittle other posters rather than address their real facts just makes him look like a child. Timothy, I think it is time you said 'sorry', don't you?