hamleys the gentleman's toy shop

For anyone who doesn't know the store - this is probably the best toy shop in the world , situated in Central London. For those that do , read on
Hamleys issues discount codes for staff, corporate and a few other things.Someone got hold of 3 of these codes , each entitling to 20% discount on purchases.
These guys then input all 3 codes to receive 60% off their [xmas?] goodies. Fair dos.
so said Hamleys which agreed that it would honour those sales. [ they stated that it was a gaff in the coding]
Lovely, in the Chrismas spirit and cerainly with the famous stiff upper lip and all that :)
Shortly thereafter , it then announced that the sales would not be honoured as it contravened the ters and conditions of those sales.
Hmmm, so initially it agreed to be a gentleman, then found out it didn't have to as it was no longer legally binding, so cancelled.
The age of chivalry in retail is now officially dead ....

the new ripper and what to do

For whatever reason , a serial killer is rearing his ugly head and started killing 'easy' targets .
Presumably , he'll now target others now streetwalkers are staying away or change his area of terror?
Is it not time to stop this slaughter once and for all ?
Legalise prostitution and allow brothels . For those who think this would be LOADS of extra money for organised crime , then make the brothels council run .
For those who baulk at this , then the amount of drop of their council tax , would probabaly silence most of them -- and why shouldnt councils make a profit on some activities ?
For those that say hookers are all drug addicts then this would give local government a chance of monitoring that addiction and treating those that wished treating .
A further system of legalising all drugs [for everyone] would start to obviate that problem also - the extra money coming into the govt coffers could then be used partially [ government 'do' like their cut after all] to provide education into drug addiction is actually like and if done purely factually may start to deter some of those at risk .
Lets have some grown up government and have some democracy- let adults do what they wish , but safely

2 planes contaminated etc

looks like I was wrong and 2 guys have been poisoned with Po....
The Sunday times had a really good article yesterday- apparently this stuff is seriously hard to handle as its so energetic that bits spall off and jump around as it decays, which explains why so many places have been found to be contaminated with alpha emitting radiation , ie if its in the open air , then bits get out .
It follows that the couriers must have been contamimated also [ you can't enter a restaurant or wherever in full safety gear] .
As 5 rooms in a hotel have been found to be contaminated , one does wonder how - and stating the obvious - why the cleaner of those rooms has not been checked ?

2 planes contaminated with radiactive 'stuff'

having found a radioactive trace on 2 planes on the Moscow/London route , one has to wonder about this revelation .
Po is very energetic and could irradiate secondary material it's true . However the primary radiation emmission is alpha and so cant really penetrate even a piece of paper very easily . Thus , if this radiation found came originally from a Po source then it would have needed to be naked and if so would have been a serious health hazard not east to the courier [ who may not have made it to the rendezvous - which obviously didnt happen].
Secondly the lethal amount of material is less than a microgramme - it would have taken 1 courier only , so why 2 ? [ unless there's another target ? ] - sending 2 couriers in case one got caught just doubles the chances of one getting nabbed so that would nt be credible either . So if true there would be 2 targets - watch the news to see if this pans out.....
A more likely reason is this : Planes tend to fly at high altitudes [ the 10 mile high club springs to mind] . At this altitude they tend to get hit inordinately by high energy radiation much more so than at ground level and so would be much more likely than ground based objetcs to become in some parts mildy radioactive [ and from the quantities they are looking for , it couldnt be much above background levels] . It would be interesting to find what percentage of planes throughout the world have a small area which is slightly above background levels .
Someone somewhere is overreacting ----- or someone has been smuggling other stuff in the past ------ ouch ......

giant carp imported from OZ to UK

This made The Times newspaper last week.
Basically, some guys are importing carp that grow to 135 Lb weight into the UK to improve fishing. Some people are worried about them taking over from the indigenous strains or bringing in new diseases. fair enough so far, a worthy news item ,if not too important.
The item had an information box to its side giving details as to weight, and its history. This section said they were originally imported from the UK and is the same strain . They grow to a larger size due to the weather basically.
Nope it wasnt written on April 1st edition........... Looks like the Times has 2 reporters, one for the main story , the other employed to give extra snippets- and they dont seem to talk to one another......

Prescott and croquet

OK the fun's over now, but id just like to add my tuppenorth .
He was caught playing croquet while he was running the country
Shock Horror Probe !
Why the heck didnt Prescott admit that EVERY night he'd had the audacity to have a kip as well, much more heinous .
I bet Blair and most other premiers watch some comedy or something not related to runing the country all the time . Everyone has a bit of free time

global warming a myth ?

If you read some previous posts , you may be surprised at this one !
This has not been reported as an holistic item ,but the media coverage is well represented in its parts . I think no-ones really thought of it yet ?
It is simplistic itself . Global warming melts the ice sheets . This starts to shut down the Conveyor which moves warm water from the equator toward s the poles . This reduces the heat in the upper latitudes,cooling it .
I havent the mathematical model to show what actually happens as this is going to be a dynamic equilibrium [ and Im certain the experts havent put this aspect in their models either as its almost qualitative at present - the first report was last year when they discovered the Conveyor was down by 35% ].
The bottom line is that Global warming will heat up the tropics by a LOT , water levels will rise [ bye bye to lots of land- but dont know how much ] , but that a lot of the prediction will be less than thought as the rate of loss of ice pack will slow down over time. I still believe there wont be much left of the UK nor the large low lying cities in US/rest of world , but that mankind will survive [although probably not in India and those areas ] . i just wish id got the info to model it - would be good to know the expected level of rainfall in the tropics for instance - be HUGE!
So good news !

global warming and the USA

Well, its now out and in the media. The US govt has covered up global warming to its population over the last few years.
Bush an co have been consistent in denying it existed and have been editing technical publications to lay doubt on its existence , by for example replacing 'will' for 'may' in the sentence ' global warming will be a serious problem in the future ' Govt departments that tried to stop the cover up have had their heads of the section responsible sidetracked to other postings ,or had their contracts terminated .
Even last week Bush stated that the Gulf temperature was not responsible for the ferocity of hurricanes and im assuming that he left out the word 'totally' from the report he could say he got it from.
The water temperature is obviously responsible . You dont get hurricanes under a water temperature of [I think ] 25C .
Hurricanes use the water vapour pressure to grow . Im not a meteorologist so it could just be hurricanes just use the latent heat of the water to power themselves , in which case the power increase would be proportional to the water temperature . It is some form of function of the vapour pressure also [ie how easy it is to 'boil' the sea .
In which case the figures are :
temp pressure
0 deg C 4.6
10 deg 9.2
20 17.5
25 23.7
30 31.8
35 42.2 mm Hg [based on pure water not sea water, but the ratios will be the same]
in which case from 25C to 35 C implies a doubling of power .
The Gulf temperature is now the same as this time last year. [google gulf water temperatures for the govt publication] . So it looks like Katrina II could be on its way over the next few months .
Bush's stance is that his chums are in the energy business so he's got to look after them ,and its starting to look like it doesnt matter too much to him if the US loses a few cities in the meantime .
I hope im wrong , but it really does look as if New Orleans is going to be severely truncated as a city within a couple of years .

guantanamo bay suicide

3 guys committed suicide over the weekend .
US politicians had the audacity to say it was probably a publicity stunt !
These people could not really think they were dying in a war and as such they were destined for paradise . They committed suicide , their death counting for nothing in the actual act of strangulation. Thus they committed suicide , and in their own minds were bound for the Muslim equivalent of Hell, as the Koran specifically bans suicide .
In addition , although it was the first successful escape from the camp , many others have tried it but were foiled so we were told yesterday .
Suicide is much more common in prisons throughout the world so it cannot come as much of a surprise , although in that camp , they hadnt been tried , they didnt know the length of sentence they were serving , they have been denied most visitors , in short it must be a serious denial of human rights , whether they are guilty or not [ and no-one has said they are guilty] .
Couple this with the secret prisons elsewhere in the world ,which have recently been unearthed ,and you start to get serious question marks over the conduct of the USA . The populace is the same as ever , but the ruling party is starting to stink to high heaven. see next blog

car manufacturing lies

Well the sad demise of Ryton car plant in th euK announced yesterday was another plant going away from our country.
The reason ? It had the poorest productivity apparently of the other plants shortlisted for closure so it was the obvious choice .
The Ford plant at Dagenham was anounced the same when it announced its closure .
I dont know if the situation is the same , but could be .
Ford announced that Dagenham was going onto a 1 shift system about 2 years before its final statement. There was talk about how this would improve productivity by so doing . This was so obviously hocum , that I remembered it and expected it to shut , citing poor productivity . All manufacturing works best productivity wise by working as many hours/day as possible [ the capital employed becomes diluted] . Sure enough it did.
I havent heard anything about Ryton prior to this , but wonder if it , too , went onto a shorter working week [ in terms of hrs/day utilised] before this announcement .
In any case , it is very easy for a multi national company to load costs if it wishes [ and routinely does in terms of transferring profits from hig htax to low tax countries] so productivity arguments could easily be spurious

wow radio 4 asked for stats anomalies .
im sending this to radio 4 , but it wont be mentioned ..... [ i reckon]
Iraq invasion UK decision - ' quote 'its a real and present danger....' I forget the rest but was talking aboutdanger to UK .
Iraq had missiles that could reach 120-170 Km so could devastate British tourists in southern Turkey so we had to stop that ...... why did the media not mention that ? it was the main reason we went to waR

fox hunting update

Um , now that the debate and law about fox hunting with dogs has been laid to rest , an update .
Firstly , we were inundated with the fact that foxes were vermin and as such should be killed , so why not with a Hunt ?
If you think about it , foxes tend to eat already deceased wild animals , rabbits and the odd pheasant/grouse .
Game birds tend not to be hugely prevalent in the countryside , apart from areas where they are gonna be shot in season - so its not just that .
So foxes eat vermin such as rabbits , and as such are vermin and as such should be hunted ................. ?
Its about the correct argument . Not so fifty years ago , though maybe when chickens were part of their diet . Unfortunately chicken farms are very unlikely to be infiltrated by foxes .
So the arguments about whether hunting with dogs should be allowed because foxes are vermin is fatuous in the extreme IMO anyway .
Secondly ; Hunts seem to be very good at losing the scent already laid , and instead seem to be excellent at finding live foxes. It's another silly law - it didnt have enough ground support so was always unlikely to be enforced

Peerages for money in the UK

The story is basically as above , problem is that the Labour Party has kept it quiet and not told the overseeing body as they are claiming they didnt need to as the cash came in as commercial loans - thereby obviating naming the Partys' benefactors .

The story appears to be a storm in a teacup at first sight , although the Press is having a bit of a field day about it .

The story that will be emerging soon , however, is how many of these 'loans' were forgiven and thus never paid - The Media has to be asking these questions soon and they've years to investigate . Its curious how many MPs are saying NOTHING isnt it ?

news casts in Cuba

Well, giving news to guys in Cuba via the embassy - its got to be one of the dumbest things Ive ever heard .
For starters , it'll get the backs up of the authorities ; it will infuriate the locals [I reckon] and it will create a horrible precedent for use by other embassies .
This has to be the work of Bush- its got all the hallmarks of neanderthalism - it creates nothing and destroys lots and needed a seriously dumb intellect to devise it .
For the world, however, it could give us a boost. Why cant Cuba throw all US citizens off the island in retaliation for this US propaganda ? That includes Guanatanamo Bay personnel of course .
If you think I'm off my trolley , think what would happen if Iran [say] did the same in your capital city ? and how you'd feel ,of course.

USA almost gets Top Al Qaida Leaders

Well The US found some leaders were in a village in Pakistan/Afganistan so they bombed it.
They killed women and children to try to do this assassination .
Isn't this terrorism ? If not it's murder ......
We are allied to this monster .....

bird flu update

well earlier last year now, I was complacent about the bird flu epidemic , and the publicity started dying down as soon as the media worked out that 60 deaths in 9 months didnt constitute a crisis .
Now however, things are looking a tad worse.
With about 5 deaths in about the same number of days in a relatively localised area of Turkey - something has changed ....
Either the virus is now easier to get passed on from fowl to human , or else it's finally maanaged to go direct from human- human ?
I'm not a medical guy, but to my simple mind, if its 'just' easier to get from fowl-human , then this MUST mean that the virus is nearer to becoming a human pathogen and so MUST ? be now slightly possible to go direct human-human , or if not ,its a gnat's crotchet away from it [as they say]
Let's hope it stays that way , or if not that it becomes seriously less lethal in it's end form .
On an end note : virus' dont 'stay that way'
Im sorta glad I live in the countryside now [albeit with 6 hens next door]
Why is it that the media blew it up out of all proportion last year , and now are reporting it, but downplaying it ? It smacks of government guidelines somehow ...