mercuryg

They can. The very fact that everything they claim is based upon 'models' should give you a clue - man made global warmin is a theory that is being presented as fact. Alarm bells should begin to ring when you consider how much of the earths atmosphere is made up CO2. Many people will tell you it's less than one percent, which in itself sounds pretty light, but when you look at the true figure and find out that it's actually 0.038% of the atmosphere that is co2 questions have to be asked. The level of water vapour in the atmosphere is far greater - from natural causes - and is know to have a similar effect. Furthermore, contrary to claims the world has not been warming by any significant degree in the last twenty years; add into that that an 'average world temperature' is a quite ludicrous basis on which to propose the sort of inter-governmental agreements that are costing us a fortune now and things get even more cloudy. Yes, we have polluted the earth by using fossil fuels, but the presence of a determined and competetive race such as humans was always going to result in pollution. yes we can cut it down, but co2 is not the cause of climate change. Also, Venus is not the earth - the two are not even comparable; what happens there is completely different to what happens here.

Depends at what point they live; colder for some, warmer for others. 3G - the 'gentle climbdown' actually began a few years ago - the phenomenon has been widely labelled 'climate change' for a some time now, rather than 'global warming'.

What, now you reckon it's tesco's that keeps Bedlington 'alive'? have you been in? It's like a morgue, only a damn sight more expensive! My only thought, if - well, when - it goes is with those who make a living working there.

This was the same everywhere though, 3g, and has nothing to do with 'getting it wrong'; people simply didn't travel 'out of town' to the hypermarkets we have now because they didn't exist. I think Tesco's is an absolute abomination that has served only to destroy the spirit of the twon in more ways than one: Bedlington needs the likes of !*!@# Hat more than it does Tesco's.

Forget money, credit unions, vouchers, etc - what Bedlington needs is Naked Girls.

sir lickyarse Whay, for suggesting we should support local businesses? As someone who has spent the last year striving to become self employed - in truth I had little option - but in a less public way than the proprietors of Accolade, I know how the early stages are difficult. I also know how local support helps. You don't eat out - Monsta - and don't want to pay the prices, fair enough, but that doesn't mean Bedlington should be without a quality place to eat. It also doesn't mean it's going to fail - not everyone, after all, is like you. I eat there once a month or so - I do as Cympil says, too, and cook myself - and each time I get exemplary service and superb food, and all on my doorstep. What's not to like about that?

so you're talking 2.60 a pint, or maybe a bit more, in bedlington. Do you pay more in Morpeth, because its a 'classier' place? No? of course you don't, so why the 'but this is Bedlington, not bla bla bla....' attitude?? But you are. You're implying, directly, that there's no room for a quality eaterie in this downtrodden town, and that nobody would possibly pay the prices they ask because its 'just bedlington front street'. You don't know how wrong you are, do you? We should be wishing them luck, not taking bets on when they go out of business.

Not at all; i'm willing to pay for good food. What do you drink, and where do you buy your chips? let's look at this in all seriousness: I drink Smith's, Boddie's, that sort of stuff and expect to pay £2.50 a pint these days; I guess if I drink in the club I would pay a few pennies less. That's ten quid before you get your chips. Go to Moby's - tell me, honestly, how much is a portion of chips? Come on, really, how much? I didn't look when I was last in there, but you have to be talking a few pennies shy of a quid at teh least. For a couple of potato's, chopped and fried. Have you stopped to think about that for a moment? how much does a potato cost? Let's say you go to Verdi's - how much is a Pizza? It's all about what you want to spend, and on what. Your attitude that 'it's Bedlington so it's expensive' is the sort of !*!@# that keeps the town how it is - a run down !*!@# that has little to offer. It shouldn;t matter where it is, good food has a price, as does everything. Do I expect to pay more for my beer in teh hallowed halls of swanky Morpeth, or the town, as you clearly expect to pay more for your food in thsoe areas? No, do I !*!@# , so why should teh same apply to food? If you think £20 for a three course meal of that quality is expensive I dread to think what you believe is cheap. Here's a comparison - have a carvery and a pudding at the ridge and you're paying what - a tenner, eleven quid maybe? Have a main course and a pudding at Accolade and you pay £15. I know - without even hesitating - which is the better value; so do you. Really? Why? Are you party to how well they're doing? I'll tell you what - walk past on any Friday or Saturday evening, at any time, and count the heads in there - actually, it's probably easier for you to count the empty seats. The place is thriving, it's a massive hit. Just because you won't eat there doesn't mean it's not going to be successful. It's a pleasure for this town to have a good, quality restaurant serving good food. Incidentally, do you eat indian food? Try that restauarant on the front street, and find a three course in there for less than £20. really Monsta, you need to wake up a bit; there are people in this town - and in teh surroinding areas - willign to travel for a quality meal.

Here we go with that old defeatist attitude again (and, incidentally, if you think you'd get a starter for a fiver at any of those two venues you must be joking - you wouldn't get a slice of bread); why shouldn't Bedlington have a quality restaurant, serving great food (and it is great, really)? Are you of the opinion that 'as this is Bedlington Front Street' we should be limited to kebabs and takeaways? Furthermore, how much is a Pizza at Best Bite these days? How much is a kebab at Moby's? Compare what you pay there, and what you get, with what you pay and get at Accolade and you have to be a fool to realise you're being robbed at four quid for a doner! Rather than dissing a place that charges what are - if you know what you're on about - very sensible prices indeed for excellent food, and rather than pouring scorn on a local couple who are attempting to make somethinf of themselves and move away from this 'but its only Bedlington' attitude, we should be championing a successful (very successful, in fact) and award winning business (best small restauarant in the north) that might just inspire others to open something that is not a hairdressers once in a while. If you're willing to pay more than ten quid for four pints, I can't see why anyone should turn up their nose at the same price for the best meal you'll find in the locality.

I'll second that - quality chef, quality service, quality food. Would recommend it without a moments hesitation.

We covered this ages ago. The few traders who are left aren't interested in moving to the front for reasons discussed before, mainly concerning the inability to take their vehicles on site.

Aside from the location problems I am afraid I have to agree with the 'reviewer'. A few years ago the Ridge was second to none - great food, really - but these days I am often disappointed. Veg is poorly cooked, meat from the carvery is Ok - but then that's a carvery for you - and the rest is so so. The Three Horseshoes is much better, the Swan too.

These teenagers - how old are they? No offence, but why pay KFC or McD's absurdly high prices when you can buy half a chicken in Tesco's for much, much less? I'm sure the cafe on the market place - Munchie's or whatever its called - willingly serves teens...

It's a trait of mine; left hand gets to teh (sic) e before right gets to the h.

Don;t think i haven;t suggested it - I want the little blighters out of my way!

I stand corrected; I had read recently that Ford was to abandon the hydrogen cell programme in favour of more viable alternative methods - I must have been dreaming. The greenhouse gases point is an entirely different one. If we want to go down that route we can turn back the clock and start again, but this discussion is about electric cars and their viability. I didn;t say it was defeatist; I said stating that there is no viable storage facility for electricity - and none on the horizon - was no more defeatist than stating that oil will one day run out. Both are facts. Tesla make very few, very expensive electric cars that are no more efficient and no more advanced than the mst advanced internal combustion engined car, which brings us full circle to where we began. Your method of discussion seems to be to attempt to 'score points'; I'm not interested in that, but in putting forward what I hav learned from my work in the field. You have chosen to ignore the clear and basic facts that mining for lithium and barium is just as destructive to the environment as non-efficient internal combustion engines are, yet these are basic facts that are part and parcel of teh problem for such materials are necessary parts of the battery construction and will remain so for the foreseeable future. You choose to ignore the fact that we cannot, at present, possibly create enough electricity to charge a nation full of electric cars - neither can many other countries - by renenewable sources, and will not be able to do so for a very long time as putting the infrastructure in place - shoudl it be made to work - will take a long, long time. You choose to ignore that in 100 years of research and development on electric motor cars we are little further forward than we were before, and you choose to ignore that very soon the internal combustion engine, running on synthesized petrol, will be a highly efficient low pollution device that is the acknowledged immediate future of the vehicle (immediate being several decades, not several years.) Why? had you come forward with a case that said 'these guys have developed a super efficient, cheap, battery that is safe and lasts ages, doesn't need recharging, is lightweight and ccreates no pollution without destroying the habitat surrounding the mining of the materials that it requires; I would hold my hand up and say 'hey, that's the future'. You haben't, you've simply reiterated time and time again that the electric car is great and so on. It's not, not yet, and not in teh near future, and this is something - i repeat - that we need to come to terms with. Back in the 1950's Rover experimented with alternative methods of powering cars; they produced a gas turbine car that was revolutionary and very impressive for the time. problem was the immense heat created by it would melt the garage before it emerged. Similar problems, although not as dramatic, attend every single revolutionary new method of powering cars, except the internal combustion engine. This is why the motor industry is spending hundreds of billions developing the next generation, and why electric cars will remain a sideline. It's a fact, and it's not going to change. back to an earlier point you made, perhaps we should all revert to the horse and cart.

Dragged away in the dead of night by Mrs and Mr Vic and fed to the dogs, that's what. Quite right, too. A good deterrent. i mean, how dare anyone voice a dissenting opinion! I like this site for its wide ranging views: Monsta with simple and straight to the point claims, Darn with idealistic romantic visions, Malcolm with an educated view that we should all take more notice of and the G's with their brand of well read opinionism. And me, with a load of nonsense. It works.

I think it's already happened, Malcolm. A few years back I got into a discussion about the Tesco store and was shot down in flames as I seemed alone in proposing that it was, in fact, the worst thing that could happen to the town. Bedlington has no through traffic, and tesco in the market place will never have enough 'draw' to justify its existence in teh long run. tesco opens and closes stores at will - it can afford to - and I remain convinced that the proposed development of the adjacent building will never happen, and that the store itself has a short life ahead of it. people were adamant that I 'didn't understand women' (something I found quite insulting to women) as they would 'flock' to this new store for the sheer excitement of shopping somewhere new. Replying that this was, in absolutel essence, utter b*llocks I was laughed at and told I would be proved wrong. I haven't been proved wrong - where is the megastore selling white goods and so on? Who the hell is going to go out of their way to come to bedlington to buy a fridge freezer? The smaller shops have already been driven away, the presence of tesco can't even justify the presence of one of the countries major banks - wake up bedlington, tesco will be gone by 2012.

Apparently the problem lies not within the school grounds but in teh mains outside, and the work involved in finding and rectifying the problem may be extensive.

No they don't, and neither do they have a hydrogen programme at the moment. Honda has a Hydrogen fuel cell car on the market right now as a trial. Spyker is a surprisingly forward thinking company that has a very high tech research unit. Barium is not a safe material. It's recovery is just as damaging to the environment as that of Lithium. It's not defeatist at all Monsta, no more so than declaring we'll run out of oil in XYZ years. It's fact. They're in development, not in general use. Narec is a stunning example, an excellent research centre that is at the forefront of research and one that we should be proud of. It's a research cedntre, however, and one that is bringing new ideas to the market. Ideas are all very well, but the simple fact remains that in over a hundred years of tryin we have still to come up with a method of storing electricity in a manner that will enable us to run cars efficiently. Darn's constant assertion that its all about money has some bearing - everything needs money - but there is more to it than that. We need to face facts - batteries are not efficient at the moment; they may become so in the future, but when? Not in ten years, not in twenty, not unless something absolutely radical comes to fore, and that hasn't happened in a hundred years - why now? This 'radical change is needed' is th problem: we see it, also, with the current hot air meeting in Copenhagen that is discussing a premise known to be scientifically flawed, we see it with many areas of industry that are politically charged. We're destroying this planet: yes, we are, we live on it, that's why. We reap its minerals (like lithium and barium and oil and coal) to a degree that leaves it damaged beyond repair - and for what? for our convenience. The answer lies, if there is one, in changing the way we view transport; we don't all need a car, but we do need to get from A to B. For now, the car remains, and it will do so - for our lifetime - as primarily a combustion engined device that is much, much more efficient than any electric version can be.

I don't claim to be an expert, but a coupel of years bacck I had the great privelege of researching and writing a piece on the future of electric vehicles for inclusion in the publicity material for the Spyker car company and F1 team ( I was, for a short period, their UK press officer.) It involved talking to the CEO - Muller - and a number of his engineers about future engine technology, and about the pros and cons of battery technology over the IC engine. To a man, while each engineer harboured a desire to seek the future of efficient battery technology, they all agreed that the immediate - foreseeable - future for everyday, mass produced cars (and supercars) lay in the super efficient internal combustion engine that is to be seen on teh market within the next few years. This wasn;t because of the pressure of teh oil companies, or because of a fear of change (indeed, Spyker had a hydrogen fuel cell prototype running at teh time - not sure if they still do) but because all research shows that it is the way forward. The technology you mention above is, quite clearly from that article, very much in its infancy; as a writer and journalist i can see the trepidation and concern between each line. What's more, the technology relies on something even more worrying than Lithium - Barium! Bloody hell that's dangerous stuff! This is the problem - each and every way of harnessing electric power for vehicles that are not connected to a direct supply is faced with one problem: storage. This isn't a myth, and it isn't something that can be overcome in a short time - it's a fact. It always has been, ever since that record breaking run a century ago. We are still, one hundred and more years later, facing immeasurable problems with storing electricity efficiently in a manner that is necessary to adequately power personal motor vehicles. Furthermore, super efficient barium batteries or not, we are faced with another problem: generating enough to charge them all, all the time, every night. It is simply not possible - not now, and not within the next twenty, thirty years. I'm not saying the electric car is not a viable proposition for future generations of drivers - it is; but that's in the future - a long way in the future, well beyond our lifetime. Should we cease development? no, of course not, we should keep at it, and hard. But we have to accept that, if we want to own cars and drive them at will, we need to focus on making the current method more efficient, more viable. We need to take what we have and make it better, and that is what is happening. It's no myth, Monsta - 'unlimited' electricity is a thing of pure science fiction. Why aren't we all utilising the sun, the wind, the waves? It's simple - because we can't, because we cannot get enough that way.Perhaps the answer lies in us revising how we live (I don't drive a car - i'd love to, but I don;t need one at the moment; how many others could live like me but choose not to?) but at the moment it doesn't lie in electric cars.

Some of the synthesized petrols are made from a concentrated method of distilling oil. Others are being developed that are chemically created in laboratories. No, they are not unlimited, and neither are the substances that we need to make batteries. Over half of the Lithium deposits known to exist are in a particular part of Bolivia. this area has now been ripped to shreds to the poin that no life can exist there, the local infrastructure is ireeversibly poisoned, and so on. The concept of 'unlimited' electricity is a myth; renewable energy sources exist, but we are a long, long way from developing methods of creating enough via these sources to power our country (and others) let alone our cars.

Those bio fuels are not what i'm talking about, and are another red herring. I'm talking about synthesised petrol, which can be made in different ways. One is by a form of effectively concentrating the amount of oil needed to make the fuel, thus reducing vastly the amount of oil needed to create petrol and the rest are pure, synthetic, fuels using other basic ingredients. Furthermore, your picture of the orang utan is great and has a point (albeit one that missed the target) but have you seen the damage to the environment the extraction of Lithium (which, incidentally, will also run out - like oil - what then?) causes? It creates deserts where there were non before, making the environment devoid of life, it's just as destructive. Why haven't you highlighted that? Why has that escaped your comments? I'm not having a go at you - far from it, it's a viable and interesting discussion - but to throw up the plight of the orang utan and miss the fact that the mining of a substance essentual to th viable future of the electric car poses one of teh greates ecological rapes this planet has seen is somewhat curious. e

They are. their uncles aren't.

I wouldn't hesitate to agree that battery technology has advanced greatly in recent years, and will continue to do so, but we're talking about batteries to power personal road vehicles for everyday use, all the time, by the vast majority of the population. Electric cars didn't stall because people were only interested in the alternative, but because the alternative was - and still is - vastly superior in every way, shape and form. The idea o cars fitted with solar panels has been tried - it doesn't work. Fitting windmills is a classic idea - but how do you then incorporate the extra weight and gubbins that come with the charging devices? Has it occured to you - and I mean anyone touting the electric car as the future - that these ideas have all been broached by some very bright and forward thinking people, over a great deal of time? There is an inherent problem in political thinking that seems to think radical change is the answer to roblems such as this; why not concentrate on what we have - the increasingly efficient (and with the technology upcoming ever more so efficient) internal combustion engine but using synthetic fuels? most everyday cars now run with synthetic oil as a lubricant and, as I've said, synthetic fuels are well on the way to being readily available. If the alternative is to change the entire fuelling infrastructure of our cars to accomodate electronic charging points and/or Mr darn's battery exchange stations, what's th point in spending all that extra when we can simply switch fossil fuel for a synthesised variety? It makes no sense.