threegee

I know one shouldn't prejudge these things but his performance in court really is worth one of his namesakes. At very very best he's a dangerous idiot; at worst he's as guilty as sin, and today's performance compounds it! Can you get away with murder in the RSA if you are famous enough? Well we all know that you can in the USofA, and from my short while there I'd say that you probably could have - if you were white! Today, I think maybe not.

This report from the Aussies is a lot more believable than the Chinese leads: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/10748957/Malaysia-Airlines-MH370-authorities-very-close-to-finding-missing-plane.html The duration of the sounds and the likely gear being used lend it a lot more weight. Chances are now better than evens that the batteries will last long enough despite the low temperatures, but it will be a close run thing. Even so if this is not a false positive it will still have vastly narrowed the area of search, so that full recovery should be a matter of weeks and months, rather than years like the Air France plane. That deep the search effective search radius is shrunk even further. So, despite the excellent work a fair element of luck in this Aussie detection I think. Let's hope that luck holds!

Born: Joe Yule Jr., in Brooklyn, New York, 23 September 1920 Read more: http://www.filmreference.com/Actors-and-Actresses-Ro-Sc/Rooney-Mickey.html#ixzz2yClqtt7N Seems like he wrote the book Life's Too Short - in 1991! Another George Burns episode: if you want to see 100 years then don't write a book alluding to lifespan!

Not April 1st then? Someone should alert The Moos Quiz about this crime!

Somehow I think Milipede and Cameron are going to come up with any excuse to avoid any form of public debate with UKIP. Clegg did a tad better in the first debate as then he played it straight. Tonight he was quite transparently adopting carefully rehearsed tactics which didn't look at all genuine to anyone, let alone to the undecided. The result was he parted company with a lot of people who just might have bought his basic pro-EU message. In fact there were times he looked like an overgrown schoolboy who'd been caught out in a lie. The "Sitting Bull" thing fell completely flat. Whoever at LD central who came up with that juvenile stunt should be shown the door! Fit for the House of Commons maybe, but the British public were far more bemused at the behaviour of their Deputy PM than amused. Anyone who didn't know would surely have guessed that Farage was the deputy PM, and Clegg was the rank outsider. His days as LD leader must now be numbered! It's interesting that a full third of all declared LD voters polled thought Farage won. So, just when Clegg had calculated that he had nothing to lose - he did, and badly!

Quick, someone start a Facebeuk campaign to bring it to Bedders! A winning move, if ever I heard one.

I think any male with a hairdo like the younger guy on the extreme right would have been an object of extreme derision in 1958! I remember being mocked for having a rather nice, and quite modest, floral tie, not more than spitting distance form there right around that time! The location looks outside The (Old) Vicarage and the year must be in the 1960's. The lady to Harold's right would appear to be his wife Mary, who amazingly still seems to be going strong, having recently celebrated her 98th birthday. So... why doesn't someone ask her? Anyway on the quite sound basis that Labour leaders only came to Bedlington when an election was looming, and certainly not after they got elected, it's likely 1964, 1963, 1962, etc... in decreasing order of probability.

If this is true then there was no in-flight emergency, and the cause is entirely human intervention: http://www.nst.com.my/nation/general/font-color-red-missing-mh370-font-pilot-i-established-contact-with-plane-1.503464#ixzz2xAMFgdac It's also curious that in the final transmission to Malaysian Area Radar the frequency of Ho Chi Minh wasn't read back. This had been done religiously on each earlier hand-off. It's almost as if there was already no intention to change to it, even more than ten minutes before this pilot says he established contact.

Fixed!

Yes! And, they were at Front Street East before that, and of course 40c Front Street West since the early 1970's.

Which a guy on the Beeb says is just the right size for an ISO Container! I hope he's right because it would still hold out some hope for the relatives. No one is going to survive in those temperatures and that swell.

Well someone may not have "flown" it, but someone was around to enter the coordinates, and that must have been someone who knew what they were doing - those coordinates are precise regional aviation waypoints. Which rules out the loss being due to sudden decompression. i.e. why didn't they key in a workable altitude too if there was a general oxygen shortage? They didn't have time before they passed out too? OK, so how come they apparently did this at least *twice*?! This map was "leaked" from the investigators. The chiefs avoided all direct questions about the waypoint flying, and did the usual politicos try to change the subject. The explanation has to be a freak combination of factors, because no single explanation adds-up.

The old ones are always the best!

So what took so long? Apparently it's one in every 30 £1 coins now! Sounds like these are a boon for blind people too, who struggled to tell the £1 from a 2p.

If you accept the sudden decompression theory then why did the aircraft fly on to a designated waypoint by itself? Accepted logic is that this would require eight or nine accurate keystrokes on the autopilot. On top of this you are required to believe that the aircraft carried on on a straight course for full seven hours without anyone up there or down here noticing, and then somehow ended up in some "Bermuda Triangle" area lost to all surveillance. All the navigation/airframe electronics work, but all the autonomous communications ones don't! Both pilots don't get to their oxygen masks in time? If the pilots did have time to enter navigation coordinates they'd enter them straight back to departure point or a nearer airfield, not to a navigation point in the middle of the ocean. The odds add up to making the sudden decompression theory unlikely, and there's not much left to consider except a carefully crafted plan. If it was a decompression and/or fire then there are some serious design flaws and unforeseen interactions in the 777's systems, and it's imperative that the truth be known at the earliest possible moment.

Anyone following the disappearance closely may find this rather interesting: http://keithledgerwood.tumblr.com/post/79838944823/did-malaysian-airlines-370-disappear-using-sia68-sq68 It's the only theory I have heard that makes any sense. That's if you believe that the military in this area are even half competent. Some really good planning capped off with a bit of luck that another 777 was in more or less exactly the right place at the right time. Maybe this couldn't have been pulled-off before ADS-B? Doesn't explain who and why of course, but if it's even half the truth we are sure going to find out!

Sad news, but he'd been seriously ill for quite some time. He visited Bedlington many times in his long career, and will likely be seen in several pictures in the Gallery. Although many of his views were totally wrong-headed he was a great asset to - the Tory Party; a fact no more readily appreciated than by his Labour Party colleagues! Though - like a stopped clock - he was spot-on once in a while. An idealist, a true socialist, and an eccentric. No one ever doubted that he believed what he was saying though, and that's where the present lot part company with Tony's generation. Often wrong, but still very worthy of respect, you are a sad loss Tony!

And... hardly a month later (4 March 1974) the appallingly incompetent Edward Heath (the second worst Prime Minister in UK history) was booted out, and pipe-smoking Harold was back. Like many other thoroughly bad things that were foisted on us undemocratically (the EU included) Ted the Incompetent was right behind The Local Government Act 1972. Mind you it was also backed by Labour, though like many things they really didn't know if they were for or against it, or indeed what day of the week Tuesday was! The irony of all this was that Heath was the first leader the Tories ever elected "democratically". Sort of suggesting that a bunch of time-served old codgers in a smoke-filled room was a vastly better system of choosing a national leader than electing the ex-public school twit who (at the time) had offended the least number of Tory Party members!

Not the kind of illustration the author intended methinks! More an illustration of why pinning your hopes on any mega-project (particularly one that is government/EU funded) is a chimera. Put away the begging bowl you local politicos, and start doing things that are actually business friendly! Particularly things that are friendly to local entrepreneurs! They are the ones that have strong ties and base loyalty to the area. All you've been saying for decades is that we resent your enterprise, so b-off - so they do!

Even simpler! Thatcher era: 5% of UK population lives in the North East - 5% of all UK high earners live in the North East. Post Blair/Brown/CamClegg (& "Things, can only get better!"): 5% of UK population lives in the North East - 2% of all UK high earners live in the North East. Longhirst Hall closes.

Put them on the town calendar - it's easy, and help is always available (just PM Malc )! BTW I've seen the future of the calendar (spanking new software in test), but my lips are sealed!

I'm not talking about the cosmopolitan elites, and even if I were there's the argument that any sane person legally minimises their tax liability (unlike some of our own legislators - mainly Labour - who illegally minimise theirs!). It's the game everyone plays, including the champaign socialists, and has its good side too, because it tempers greedy politico's power. Look at how French high-earners have raised two fingers to Hollande's loony stuff, and have forced him to backtrack. He has now imposed those taxes on the employers instead, so they are now relocating across the channel in droves! No, what I'm talking about is the people who earn more than average from UK based jobs. There are far more of them than the elites, and these are the very people that create jobs, and create wealth. Constantly trotting out the tax cuts for millionaires party line says we don't value you; we regard you as a plain cash cow; in fact we despise you! The plain fact is that this is purely for the audience; essentially the usual socialist ploy of buying votes with other people's money, and without regard to the true consequences. The collateral damage from this kind of anti-business rhetoric is immense. It's the usual: talk ourselves into poverty because it makes us all feel better about things and about "the evil system". Lets live life as it should be, not as it is! Let's impoverish everyone because we have b-all enterprise or ability ourselves! Selling jealousy and envy to people who can't see past the next state-handout can be very profitable in itself, and is self-sustaining! It's actually contemptuous on their abilities, and any aspirations they may have.

Where do I offer support to the good riddance campaign? It would be the best thing that ever happened to the North East! Well... maybe second best, after local people starting to use their brains, and not allowing us to be taken for granted by the Westminster champaign socialists!

Oh dear! This is what happens when you don't give those "tax cuts for [Morpeth] millionaires" Mr Miliband. Jobs go, and/or those people do, and everyone becomes impoverished. The sad fact is that we are already tax top earners more than any other country in the world except Italy and India. And.. I can tell you first hand what this has done for the Italian economy! So, next time you hear the standard "tax cuts for millionaires" trotted out by your local Jealousy and Envy Party candidate, remember that UK governments of all political persuasions appropriate half of all top earner's income. Everyone benefits from this, and it's only because we present a favourable climate to business, and a reasonably equitable legal system that they bother to patronise us and create jobs. So many times in our history has Labour greed, and socialist dogma, caused a loss for everyone that we simply can't afford the likes of Red-Ed Miliband to provide the last straw that breaks the camel's back - again! There you are - rant over - but it makes my blood boil when a couple of minutes into any debate on anything Labourite drones trot out the party-line stock phrase to attempt to rubbish anyone's pro-business initiative! Just heard it yet again on the radio! Oh, and here's what the same dumb vote-buying logic is doing for the Indian economy: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26385545