threegee

My perspective is history! Ignore it and you are doomed to re-live it! Even if you trust the people in power now, these powers get handed on to the next lot and the next lot. Sooner or later they will be used in ways you could never have imagined. My bet is sooner!

Many decades back I asked why we only had an election every five years, and it was explained to me that it was impractical for everyone to express an opinion more often than that. A lot has changed since then, so I'd like the opportunity of asking the leaders of the main parties that question again. I figure the answer now will be along the lines of policy needs to be given a chance to have an affect - it takes a long while to turn around a big ship etc. Quite the reverse of what you'll be required to believe about this or that change having an early affect, and that this or that was due to them and not to a previous administration. But the fact is that there's no need for a General Election as such these days. A much more responsive system would be if MPs had to stand for re-election every other year on a fixed date. This could be staggered so some part of the country got a chance to vote every three or six months. No need for opinion polls then, we'd know for sure what people felt. Of course it's not going to fly because there is no incentive for the people in power to introduce this. But in some other countries the head of state might put this to a plebiscite. If this was the only thing Charlie did in his entire lifetime he'd go down as a great monarch. This would provide the needed wake-up call for failing governments like this one and prevent the PM from keeping the country in limbo until it had a chance to seal his fate. Cromwell changed the system, saw what an eternal talking-shop, and morass of self-interest he had created, and then tried to roll the clock back. So did lots of other people - who then tried to make him king. Great man that he was he refused. Sad fact is that incapable people still grab at power and capable ones - realising the real problems - shun it! Both Clark and Cable are very capable people, but both likely in the wrong parties! They could change places and wouldn't have to make any compromises. On paper Osborn should be a very good chancellor, he's a great academic, but so far doesn't have what it takes to lead. I think he listens too much to spin doctors and is too frightened to make a boob than to assert what he believes in, a few years on he might just be leadership material. Someone say something about qualifications? Any political evolution seems to have stopped about a century ago. Apart, that is, for the slowly rolling grab at power by the PMs office. It wasn't too long ago that governments outvoted in parliament felt morally bound to call an election. Or anything which touched on civil rights and liberties required a specific mandate from the electorate. And, even joining a non-political, non-federal, "trading block" required a referrendum. Now when you are in, you are in, and no one can budge you. Not a scandal, not even being caught-out in a blatant lie to the electorate (you were wrongly advised). Only one small step to calling an emergency and postponing the next general election until (you say) the emergency is over. Has Gordon considered this yet? There's plenty to call a state of emergency about! No one I noticed from outside the Tony Blair party! The way things are going we'll all be keeping sheep, and goats, and pigs. With a government permit and under CCTV surveillance of course!

It's been obvious for some while that when you go though UK customs your details are being logged. Only country in Europe to swipe your passport through a scanner in my experience - other countries have a written constitution with real safeguards on privacy. This just formalises what we already know. You are already being tracked, and who is with you, is being tracked! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7674775.stm I don't fear terrorism Mr Hoon, but I do fear politicians like you! Tell me who brought us this "Multicultural Society" in the first place? Power mad politicians like you, and mostly in your party! What a terrific excuse to roll back a thousand years of fought-for freedoms in a decade or two. And in just the same way as you lied in your teeth to get us into an expensive war which took more British lives than any terrorist could dream of doing. What's more in the minds of any thinking person your meddling war is in great measure responsible for your terrorism excuse! To say the two things aren't connected is simple nonsense; do you honestly believe this yourself? Let's stop kidding ourselves that Britain is the cradle of democracy. It's the rapidly becoming the cradle of the totalitarian state to end all democracy for good. No other state in history has had the breadth and depth of controls that our UK government is in the process of imposing. Eat your heart out Joe Stalin, you've been outclassed by the Brits again! As history teaches us: Totalitarian states start out only to protect those they rapidly enslave; when the general populous wakes up to the fact that they are in one it's far far too late to do anything about it. Anyone who does anything to oppose the power-mongers automatically becomes a dangerous dissident or terrorist. Wake Up, England - it's a lot closer than you think!

Food chain? I'd always imagined "public service" as a food trough!

They shouldn't! Never said that. Developing a low-cost British launch capability can make money for the country, create jobs, and save the govt a packet on military satellite launches etc. Others are tied into high cost ground rocket based systems. We can turn the 1970's blunder around and do a much more cost effective job. It only needs a tiny bit of encouragement - a tiny tiny sum compared with what is being wasted on the 2012 Olympics, and with a lot longer term benefits.

Yep, I think quite a few people noted that particular sound bite. But it seems to mean something quite different to Gordon than to everyone else. BTW did you notice that the strikes were sound bited as "the wrong thing to do!" But at least they produced a hundred or so jobs out of Total - more than the billions he's splurged on digging himself in deeper to crisis have. He doesn't even understand the basic strategy when you find yourself in a hole; those two words of sage advice everyone else can quote.

Here's the flaw in socialism. If you give someone something by right then they don't appreciate it. What's worse they don't appreciate other people's rights, and there's no responsibility attached to those rights. Even leftie politicians now appreciate this - hence New Labour's love affair with the free market. There's another angle and that's that the service providers themselves - doctors and nurses in this instance - don't have a real relationship with their patients; it's just production-line healthcare; counting numbers and targets. When patients don't respect health workers this only reinforces their disenchantment with their vocation. If you are not getting job satisfaction it's morally OK to demand more money and to stop trying. Add into the mix the politician's dishonesty in not telling people that resources are limited and that this or that simply isn't affordable without damaging the general economy and you have the recipe for a more and more expensive downward spiral. There is a solution, but it's not capable of being expressed in a sound bite. Some sort of voucher system has to feature - even the possibility of giving some of your vouchers to someone in more need should be considered. There's now value placed on the supply end of the health service but not such constraints at the demand end. It's human nature that people will only appreciate something they have to give to get. I'm not talking just about money here - respect has to feature too! Promise the earth to get elected then look after yourself and your chummies. How can we break this mould when the system desperately needs to reform itself and has no incentive to? That's the real question!

Our satellites! 'Cos it's cheaper than paying the Americans or the Russians or the French, and it would provide British jobs when we need them. Not only that but we could show them how to do it properly, and earn the country some money at the same time. I don't think you've been paying attention at the back! He can't, he's got them firmly in ours! He only takes them out to give multi-billion handouts to fat-cat bankers so they can pay themselves bonuses for bankrupting the country (It's called not rewarding failure). How else do you think he's going to get a fat-cat job on a financial company board when he gets booted out spring next year, and his own party finally gets up the guts to ditch him?

I agree having to approve members posts in open forums is a hassle. Will look into it, BUT it's not worth loosing much sleep over as new software is on the way. Not quite sure exactly how this will move things on, or exactly when, except that it's more "youtubey type" embedded video friendly. Very tempted to write our own gallery code as I'm not at all happy about the support for that module.

It HAS taken off! http://www.scaled.com/ There are a thousand young British engineers waiting to prove that they can launch a commercial satellite with it. All that stands in their way is a government bankrupt of ideas (and in this particular case money too), and clinging on to power for their own sad ends. "It's the right thing to do" Gordon!

Drivers aren't really a problem. If you've got fairly modern hardware the Linux kernel can generally handle it. I've only had one problem and that was with a wireless LAN card where the manufacturer wasn't particularly Linux supportive (note to self to avoid that manufacturer in future). The solution was to use the ndiswrapper around the windows driver. Easy to get it working but took me a few days to work out how to make the thing permanent - so I didn't have to keep reactivating the driver after every boot - but now it is and the hardware works just as well as under windows. Data compatibility is really a Microsoft thing. Once you break free from the MS stranglehold of only supporting exports in their own proprietary formats you can more or less say goodbye to any hassle. You'll note that it's always a lot easier to import data to MS software than export it in an truly open and properly documented format.

Anti-Social Behaviour Order The whole point of which is to name and shame. Rolling back the decades of namby-pamby treatment which encourages such brattish behaviour. Email the chief constable then. There's a high res version of the photo on his website - good re-publication quality for the media. The papers have used this; we haven't, but maybe we should? My personal opinion: This is a not unattractive young girl who is trashing her own life. Social pressure is probably the only thing left outside of constant detention. She needs a boot up the backside to snap out of it and realise her potential. Feather-bedding her isn't going to do this!

It's a proper OS. In fact it's much more powerful than the likes of MSDOS or AmigaDOS of old. When the source code is available you'll find folks porting it to just about anything. Don't be fooled by the tiny screen, these are just presentation issues.

They already have. It's called Android. And lucky T Mobile users can get it right now. http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/t-mobi...7-33283585.html More phone manufacturers likely to take it up soon. Also Nokia are throwing [totally] open the Maemo platform from the next device (I use Maemo every day on my N800 - which is now thoroughly hacked ). In addition to that Nokia are pledged to throw open the Symbian platform too. All of which is great news for users and bad news for M$.

It's free - even the Windys edition! Just make sure you get it directly and not by a middleman. http://download.openoffice.org/other.html#en-US

How can you hate free software when you never pay for any yourself? You use Sun's java on your computer for free but you won't use their open source office suite - because err.. Bill Gates is so kind and needs the money. All sounds like double standards to me. So Sun should be punished because someone is trying to rip people off selling their free software, but Microsoft should be rewarded because they haven't got around to raiding you for pirating their products - yet!? Strange world you inhabit! :D

The same. This is exactly what the previous landlady of The Dun Cow - who is still a member here - tells us. If it's the same company as you say then she deserves every bit of support she can get.

Woah - that isn't a Sun site! Read the small print at the bottom. Some kind of con I think. As always on the Internet - beware!!

What 3.0.1 isn't the new version? I'm still using 2.4 and its fine. Just tried to download the .deb of 3.0.1 from the last link I gave, and it comes in no hassle. I can live with them charging windoze users - IF that's what they are really doing. But I suspect that's a free download from that page too. Pity!

That wasn't me. But he's doing a grand job. "It was the right thing to do!"

Are you sure that's not a Star Office page? Here is the download page for OO (and it says it's still free though they do tout for donations) http://download.openoffice.org/ Whoops that was Linux specific! The general download page is here: http://download.openoffice.org/other.html#en-US

One thread got moved because it applied to Northumberland and not Bedlington. The link to it was left to avoid complaints. One click - big deal!

Of course it's free! Best thing since sliced bread and open source. If you feel a pressing need to pay for support ($35) there's Star Office, which is a supported version of the same basic code. OO comes bundled with Ubuntu so you don't even have to install it. http://www.sun.com/software/staroffice/ Several (otherwise deluded) Windoze users I know use OO instead of shelling out a small fortune for MSO. Nor is it a second best! Can't understand why people continue to pay good money for MSO (or put themselves on the wrong side of the law by pirating it).

It was his decision to make a dumb political gesture to holiday there. The police want their expenditure back so why should the taxpayer pay instead? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england...olk/7866646.stm Really illustrates the futility of all this political posturing (they're all at it!). Oh for an honest politician who tells it as it is whatever the consequences! Doubtless it will be brushed off as another "it was the right thing to do!" Spin-doctorese for I can't be arsed to explain; your tiny mind wouldn't understand anyway; I can't make a proper explanation into a useful sound-bite; and if I did you'd likely see right through the con!

This is what the government should be putting a few tens of millions into, and NOT pumping billions of our future earnings into feather-bedding the banks! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7862827.stm It would save the country huge launch fees for civilian and military satellite launches, provide high tech British jobs, and encourage school leavers into science. Any one of those would justify the small government grant. Huge mistake to cancel Britain's small space program back in the 1970's because some dumb civil servant decided there was no commercial purpose in it. We'd already spent the money and so been paying for that mistake ever since! Here's a chance to correct that mistake at a time when we really need those jobs. Put VAT back up to 17.5% to fund it in the short term (though Gordon seems to be able to conjure astronomic sums out of nowhere when he thinks he needs it). In the long term this investment will pay for itself many times over. Does the government have that much common sense? Of course they don't; they'd rather splurge a couple of billion (probably ten times the amount of seed capital needed here) on trying to buy a few thousand dumb votes at a local election to prop up their evaporating power base!