threegee

I can't believe that in 14 days we've had only one application to help Miss V, and that application is from the member with the most ever warnings (none of which were issued by me - but probably for good reason nevertheless!). Come on people! Helping to run this thing doesn't involve pulling your back teeth. It won't cost you much in the way of time, and you don't need to be a "crusader" either! To volunteer PM me - or I will sulk, and may even tread that well-worn path of leaving Our Town (entirely and permanently) for warmer climes!

Everyone is innocent until proved Guinnessy! This is a plonk of (pre-Blairite) British Justice.

General Interest Forum Moderators Due to upcoming holidays etc. the board needs a couple mature and sensible moderators to join the team on a permanent or semi-permanent basis. We need people who have been members at least six months, and who have accumulated no warnings themselves. Preferably we need them to be over 30 and with a modest command of our mother tongue. Interested in Sport or Bedlington History? Additionally, it would be a great help to have single moderators to take over the Sports Club and History Hollow Forums. If you've an interest in either of these subjects then consider running these forums yourself. As you visit them regularly then it isn't likely to involve you in any significant work. In either case: Interested persons please PM me with your details: Name, age, how long you've been a member, which forum(s) you'd like to run, and anything else you consider relevant.

Don't think it was supposed to be a comedy! The classic - I can watch time and time again - is Fawlty Towers. It's not even that I particularly like John Cleese. In fact for the most part it seems he's not even acting or playing for laughs. Maybe that's why it's soo good? Was it a mistake to only make twelve episiodes? Difficult to judge without seeing what a second series would have been like. But probably less of a mistake than doing the format to death - like many shows go on to do.

Has it dawned on 39 Victoria Street that this would probably end Labour Party domination of one of their last bastions of mindless obedience? Would this be a bad thing for Bedlington?

What about the Pink Cadilac and the Pink Panther? And is that an Airplane!?

Surely it was Coneheads and not Conehead?

From the top I can see the B52s, but can a Led Zeppelin fly like that?

Not being able to correct mistakes both penalises, and discourages, genuine posters. Language replace is something that sounds great but is of no practical use on a board like this. Some posts don't deserve moderating and should simply be deleted. The warning system is there to use, and ultimately it will disable people who can't behave. I think you will find that you can stop individual members who abuse the posting edit feature. Will investigate.

God - by definition - started time AND creation (of the Universe) itself. Without God there could have been no creation, and before creation there was no time! 13.7 billion years ago by all accounts. http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060318/fob1.asp The really interesting question is what is the 96% of the Universe (Dark Energy and Dark Matter) we know nothing about.

Only if they have an affinity with Silicon(e) Valley.

As someone recently said to me: Just about the first thing anyone does when starting to use the Internet is to enter the name of where they live and see what comes up. Given that (and local word of mouth) I don't think any promotion is necessary. That's not to say it won't be appreciated, or serve to remind people. But, at core, it's another case of what a senior local politician said (quoted in an earlier post). Essentially, that a large percentage of the people who live in Bedlington only use it as a dormitory. They don't vote in local elections and don't give a damn about the local community, or about community issues! I leave it as an exercise for the reader to guess at the direction he was pointing (from the WDC Offices) when making that remark.

I don't believe that for one second! England has a law against doing just about anything - including standing still for too long! Tell the Cooncil to dust off their decibel meter and get some new batteries! There's a statutory requirement that they at least investigate. If they still won't cooperate then go straight to Bedlington Magistrates Court and tell them that WDC are not doing their job, and that because of this you want to take action under Section 82 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Ask them for help filling the forms in. Given a little help this should be good for a local rag headline, which could well mean that WDC might then discover the problem for themselves, and/or other complainants surface!

You mean like.. they could be converting them into an estate agent, or a building society, or a solicitor's office?

Yup, Bedlington r-e-a-l-l-y could do with another pub! We've got just sooo many Leisure Centers, Swimming Pools, prosperous small shops, etc. etc. that I'd simply scream if another one of those opened next week. More building societies and estate agents. More solicitor's offices. This is where the future lies! P.S. Thank you for closing down Northern Rock. The most positive move in years. I reconsidered closing my account but on careful consideration determined to leave £1 in it - just so you'll have the pleasure and expense of administering it for the next 20 years. And, your building has been re-occupied by something much more positive for the community - like... Oh!

I'm getting a little bit sick of requests to sort people out who've changed their display name and then find that they have used up all their lives. This isn't what the facility is there for. It's for a properly considered change - to save work not add to it. Don't change your display name to deceive or to joke: So due to abuse the change display name is now limited to one change per month. If you change your display name you will be stuck with it. So think about it BEFORE you do it, else you'll have to live with it for a month. Display names with 0's and 1's designed to be mistaken for O and l; 4 for A etc. etc., and all the other ancient tricks, will be edited to avoid the intended or unintended confusion. Multiple Registrations: People who have made multiple registrations without a damn good excuse will have the most recent registrations trashed without any notice. Any warnings attached to those most recent registrations will be added to the original one. This particularly goes for those who have been warned in the past and promised to stay within the rules - their rolled-up warnings will be doubled! Moderator Warnings: Ten warning points and you are out - permanently! Don't test the system! But ALL warning points will be removed after a 90 day period with no warnings. Don't argue with the Referee: Abuse of the moderators will incur double warnings from me, and don't even JOKE about physical threats! Not only will you not be flying today, but you may find yourself subject to a lot more attention than you bargained for. The small town thing works both ways! The risks of sharing your connection or your computer: People sharing the same wireless router or computer risk getting their friends trashed too - or even their ISP contacted and advised of misuse. If someone is innocently trashed in this way we will need a lot more than an email request to sort. If you decide to allow your computer or wireless router to be shared with someone else, then it's up to YOU to decide if it's someone you trust. Pre-moderation of posts: Pre-moderation of posts will be imposed at the moderators sole assessment of the likelihood of future bad behaviour. It will apply to all people using the same IP or having used the same IP in the past. It will expire in its own good time and won't be adjusted on request. Don't waste the moderator's or administrator's time complaining. The moderators are admins are giving their time freely to help our local community. They deserve to be helped not hindered. Their decisions are final. Referees don't always make the right call, but for the game to go on everyone must respect those decisions, and the simple fact that they were made in good faith. Those are the new ADDITIONS to the rules, period! So don't throw your dummy out of the pram; no one will bother to pick it up and wipe it off for you!

"Marking, cutting and bruising" would always have got parents into trouble. We don't need a new set of laws, or a new government agency staffed by a new layer of jobs-worths. Nor do we need endless reports and surveys funded by the taxpayer (to produce the conclusion that the funder is expecting), and which no one will read anyway. What we need is the restoration of social pressures by imaginative means. It's the removal of those social pressures that have caused today's behavioural problems. I come from a generation where not only smacking but corporal punishment was the norm. You'll near universally hear from this generation that it didn't do them any harm at all, and in fact that they often deserved it. The problems started in the 1960's with the "Spock" type theorists who though that they knew better than generations before them. They didn't! Today's problems are to a great extent due to their pet theories - what they wanted to believe, and what sounded "fair", rather than what had always worked. The same is true of the education system. It's a shadow of its former self, and a shambles despite astronomic increases in funding. The problem with all these social meddlers is that by the time their dumb theories are discredited the damage has been done. By then they've taken their wad and disappeared!

I voted: Yes, Parents alone should decide the punishment levels and: Raised voice, stern look. Are those contradictory? Don't think so! What is wrong here is the attempt at trying to prescribe exactly what's acceptable and what's not acceptable. Good parent's themselves always know when they've gone too far, and so does (did!) Society. But a child should almost always be left guessing. Does this seem strange or unfair to you? Well that's the way it has always been done through history ...and you know what? It worked! When you draw lines in the sand children will test them. What they then learn is a game of testing the system rather than regulating their own behaviour. So... here I'm back on the old hobby horse of the evil of government regulating every aspect of our lives, rather than government doing what it should do: enabling innovation, creating an enterprise environment, and providing a safety net. P.S. Isn't this in the wrong forum? It would be a shame if it runs off topic.

Err.. no! I've made a habit of making my dreams reality. This is easily achievable. In fact the government doesn't need to spend a penny on the actual infrastructure or delay another week. All it has to do is specify minor ducting be fitted on every new road. Throw the whole thing open to competition and, instead of years white papers, pointless committee meetings, etc. enterprise will take care of the rest. There's no need to settle on one system. The ducting could accommodate several systems experimentally. Can you imagine where our mobile phone system would be today if it had been left to government to dictate standards, and only one system had been allowed? Technology enabling should be a function of government, not the poking of its nose into our private affairs all the time! But, we have a bunch of useless jokers running the show - paid astronomic salaries simply for bolstering the PM's ego! Not an original thought in any of their heads.

Ah! Reverse moderation? I meant bum-wiping P.S. You've got to put something between the ] and the [ for it to be size 3 and the formatting commands not to display literally.

This sort of thing could be eliminated with dirt cheap technology! It's 2007 - about time we had guidance cables under the main carriageways. Would cost about 1% of the cost of road making, save lives, save fuel and (with an open interface) could be made to do a lot of other things as well. Something any minister of transport worth his/her salt should be promoting. But we've got the usual Blair b** wiping timeservers in charge of the madhouse. BTW does anyone know who the Minister of Transport is this week? There was a time when he was never out of the public eye. Who can forget the glorious days of "Marples Must Go!". Come back Ernest Marples all is forgiven!

I'm far too busy fighting spammers on the "information super-highway"! Just keeping your mailboxes clean maaam!

What about a None of the above option: Innocent Until Proven Guilty! Seems to me you'd be good at setting up Government Plebiscites - the ones they only hold when they are absolutely sure that they'll get the answer they want. P.S. Where are the moderators with all this b** stuff going on!