threegee

So what does everyone think of the HS2 project? An organ for growth or just a huge waste of money that, even if we have it, could be better spent elsewhere? We'll set up a poll after full discussion; I suspect most people are like me and quite undecided. Oops... almost forgot to post a link to the counter-case: http://stophs2.org/

To the contrary Swan's had rather good management - they underbid to get the contract in the full knowledge that the men from the ministry were clueless and the company could milk the contract for years. This they did in the full knowledge that there was no more profitable commercial work available, and that the best they could make of the situation was to keep things ticking over (and the core workforce employed) until something turned up, or market conditions changed. I was talking about North east shipbuilding in general, not just on the Tyne, and not just in recent history. We've even priced ourselves out of ship-breaking these days! Loads of industries are growing and the UK is up there with the best, if not leading the pack. I've put little bits of my pension in quite a few (full list available on request ). Just one would be http://www.iqep.com/ which - amongst other things - now has by far the most efficient photovoltaic cells in the world. I've backed them with probably far more than I can afford to for a decade now. Pity they are based in Wales and not the NE! Ah, "flooded with new unneeded equipment and deemed unprofitable". Isn't that what state planning does; invests in all the wrong things at all the wrong times, because it's the politically correct thing to do and buys votes? Politicians are like generals: always fighting the last war (with someone else's money).

I wonder what government oversaw the demise of our shipbuilding industry in the North East, the final chapter of which played out in 2006? Can you blame Labour for this? Of course not, it was entirely down to market forces. If Nationalisation is the solution to all our problems then please name one single industry that grew during the period it was nationalised? Just one? All the industries you mention grew through private enterprise, providing more and more jobs, then shrank during the period they were nationalised. The reason is easy to understand: they became bloated; had second-rate civil servants running them; weren't properly financially accountable to the stake holders (the taxpayer), so just kept on putting their hands out for more taxpayer money to build an even bigger empire, producing goods eventually no-one (not even other state industries) wanted to buy. Labour eventually got the message but the Soviets and Chinese probably beat them to it. It's no coincidence that the steady rise in Russian and Chinese economic power dates exactly from their embracing market forces rather than trying vainly to pretend that the state knows best. The state is a voracious consumer, and just about everything it feeds on is produced or was built by private effort. It exists because others make profits - you know, that dirty word that trade unionists spit before uttering. Profit is good because it means you are doing something well. If you can't make a profit that means that it's probably not worth doing because you are going about it in the wrong way. It also signals to others that here's real demand that you too could be meeting, and so promotes competition, even better was of doing things, and lower prices. The Market is the sum total of the people who buy whatever you have to offer think about what you offer. The Market is not how anyone feels things should or must be, it's how things are in the real world; it's people voting with their own money, not someone else's money! Even nationalised industries pretend to address market forces, and aspire to make a profit. But, they rarely do so because it's so much easier to promise jam tomorrow, and put your hand out for another large wodge of someone else's profit! There has to be what the economists call "moral hazard" for people to get off their backsides; lack of moral hazard is why nationalised industries (and other socialist ideas) always fail.

England shafted once again by our politicos! All the economic indications are that the Clyde shipyards are unviable, and BAE had obviously already decided that. But... blatantly obvious behind-the-scenes political interference dictates that 500 years of shipbuilding at Portsmouth has to end to buy the Scottish Independence Referendum! If Scotland thinks it can do better without us then let them get on with it; it would be a great day for the rest of the UK if greedy Salmond were to get his stupid way. He doesn't want UK military bases, so why should he have the industrial benefits of UK defence? If he wants his hands on those declining oil revenues, then how about paying the UK taxpayer back the billions they sunk into the rescue of Scottish banks? Shame on you Tory, LD and Labour schemers - you don't deserve a single vote between the lot of you!

Here's another sub-plot: Amazingly the printers of that volume are still in business http://www.butlertanneranddennis.com/heritage/ Although their potted history seems to have forgotten to mention the little local difficulty in 2008, when the business had to be rescued amid some very dodgy goings on: http://www.thisissomerset.co.uk/Butler-Tanner-bosses-banned-print-industry-440/story-18080607-detail/story.html#axzz2jih8vvrn I fail to see why people need to read/write fiction, when fact generally takes you in so many unexpected directions.

Gosh, so many editions of this thing, and a lot are undated. Here's a reference to your edition given as a wedding present in 1929... so 1920's not 1910's. http://simplehomecra...-every-day.html Amazing that she was only 28 when she died (6 February 1865)! The popular image of an elderly matron type doesn't quite hack it. And, all those endless royalties went to someone else! Of course there's the "Hollywood Version": http://www.amazon.co.uk/Masterpiece-Theatre-Secret-Life-Beeton/dp/B000PFUA7S

The exact title on the cover? It doesn't seem to have been out of print since Victorian times, but you'd think they'd have dated your copy! About 100 years old by the looks of the illustrations;1910 at a wild guess. A search on ebay.co.uk could locate your cover. --- The "all electric kitchen". So fast, so clean, so cheap. By the end of the 20th Century they'll have worked out how to generate so much of it that we won't even need electricity meters. http://www.britishpathe.com/video/the-atom-joins-the-grid

Any sort of date or provenance on that entry? Could be the only copy in existence. Anyway, this is likely what Morpethians are on at "Gathering" time: http://www.morpethherald.co.uk/news/gadgy-explains-duties-at-town-s-famous-festival-1-5680108

They struck me as far more scary than the Halloween costumes at the local Lidl.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-24784767 Do the Beeb journos ever read their own material? Anyway, wonder where you can buy those Panda costumes?

...unless you were a reader of Private Eye!

Agreed, but I'm referring to use in national news gathering. They've also been used by smaller film companies getting maximum bang for production buck for quite a while too. I don't think any Beeb claim for first use in news gathering will stand up; likely other organisations just got on with it whilst the Beeb suits were in endless meetings and writing their rule book. I'm told by an "expert" that: "that's a zenmuse gimbal on a DJI hexacopter". So.. now you know what your licence fee is being spent on.

Actually it was out the other day when the news contained crime scene shots that could only have been taken by a quadcopter or similar. http://www.bbc.co.uk...siness-24712136 Next... the anti-surveillance copter copter (deploys smoke screen)!

Question: Do the free design files include one to print another printer? http://www.ebuyer.co...n-silver-381000

Saying "This image is copyright of ...... and must not be used without their express, written permission" poses the obvious question: well... do you have permission to use it? In fact any form of copyright notice without an accompanying date claim is legally meaningless - someone tell Microsoft this! The 1934 articles here are almost certainly out of copyright and in the public domain, though the dragline articles technically are probably still in copyright. Though fair not-for-profit usage is arguably acceptable, particularly in an educational context. We are talking UK/Euro law here which is markedly different from US law so often quoted on the Internet as all-embracing - well it isn't Mr OBarmy, so there! .

[/mediaSamsung pushed a new ROM to my new Galaxy Note 3 this afternoon, and fingers crossed there are no similar iBugs. It went surprising quickly and rebooted fine. But... my Lenovo A3000 Tab is certainly not as stable as it was before last month's update, though it's still quite usable. There does seem to be another Lenny update waiting, but I was put off approving it by a the backup warning - which maybe I should ignore, and just do it!

Ah! Thing on Beeb radio last night which recounted how Francois Englert the Belgian "discoverer" of the HB is being lauded in Belgium, with little or no mention of Seignior Heegs! It confirmed what I thought - the theories were sort of independently arrived at - and also pointed out that... umm... goodness, were they reading bedlington.co.uk theory of when the time is ripe things happen whatever? Or did the Beeb lady arrive at this theory independently?

Yet another cold case solved on bedlington.co.uk! I think we probably need a new forum for confessions. Maybe we could enlist some well-past-their-prime actors to moderate it?

My grandfather thought he'd once met Heisenberg - but he could never be certain about this. The old ones are always the best!

Probably only in The Journal! Correct me if I'm wrong but as I remember it he didn't "developed the theory with Francois Englert of Belgium". I think these were independent proposals for more or less the same thing - as happens so many times when the time is right. We all know about Charles Darwin but can anyone remember who Alfred Russel Wallace was? Anyway... the Higgs Boson only exists as a statistical probability - we can't be 100% sure it exists. Lots of people seem to be convinced by the current odds; but if you'd spent going on for four billion pounds over several decades - and dug up two country's landscape - you'd be under a tiny bit of pressure to come up with some sort of result. Will there be any practical benefit to this spend? Always difficult to say, but I think in the short to medium term we'd have been much wiser to put all those people and massive resources to work developing methods to control nuclear fusion. Not that we aren't spending heavily on that already of course... http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-23408073 If that one even puts us on the start of the path to pulling off practical controlled fusion, the engineers, construction workers, and even the tea ladies, all deserve a Nobel Prizes! And finally: Did you know that you can put your home computer(s) to work to help CERN? http://lhcathome.web.cern.ch/ When I last looked the Russians were well ahead, and UK home computers hadn't yet managed a prediction of the 3:30 @ Epsom!

Not THE Laura Cantrell at lauracantrell.com perchance? People who like Kitty Wells liked.. ??

Yes, indeed. This wasn't a problem because we didn't have H & S in those days - then we had something called common sense!

I will have you know that some of my best friends these days are fully paid-up SECs - the ones I small-trade with in Stirfry Wokland on Alibaba.com (a devilishly clever Chinese joke in itself)! Anyway, come the Euro-gestappo I'm planning to use the well proven Chinese tolerance defence. Like those jolly decent long-nosed capitalist Brits you can crack a joke about (and with) them without inviting mass hysteria, or worse: a death sentence doled out by an old geezer in a tea towel. There's still Guardinistas to reckon with of course, but they have no mass to their hysteria. On the other hand I'd imagine that it's a criminal offence to possess a German copy of MK in Greater Euroland, so I'm sticking to my English language - and thus partially sanitised - copy, danke mein herr.

The fact that we consistently buy more from them than they buy from us more or less guarantees this. All the politico's scare stories of jobs depending on EU membership are red-herrings. The only job losses will be in the political classes! Was there any noticeable increase in employment when we signed up? You'd be forgiven for believing the reverse, and that it helped fuel inflation. When we unwind the euro-legislation we will be free to produce what world markets want, and not what Brussels says we must offer them. We'll be free to conclude trade agreements on terms which suit us. If EU countries continue to demand this or that made to Euro regulation 3649/B2 then we can still oblige them, but they'll need to continue to pay for this privilege, and we will be free to supply other countries who don't want to pay for Brussels red tape. Unlike little Norway they won't be able to bully us into paying huge fees simply to be able to trade with them. If they do try this on they will loose, because they need us more than we need them! The sad fact though is that Cameron is entirely the wrong person to do our negotiating. They know he's a closet europhile and that he's simply going through the motions - he'll try to pass off a political bodge as a triumph. It's only if we field a negotiating team that has no idealogical hang-ups, and that is quite prepared to walk away, that we'll get a trading deal with the EU that is worth having.