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 ......