Brett

Good luck with the new job mate, was out of work for bloody ages not too long ago and it's so demoralising. I also know what you mean about the Job Centre not being the most helpful of people but if you look at it from their angle and the people that they have to deal with on a daily basis (not jobseekers, the people who are going in just so they can get their money and have no intent on looking for a job). Can be quite patronising. Just in time for summer :-)

osama was just the fall guy, a figurehead for americas hate. in reality he only has a small band of 'warriors'. Plenty more people who believe in the same ideals. Extremists aren't just going to give up because they have lost him, it's not a vampire story where everyone changes back if you take out the head vampire. Bet the Americans are pleased that they got him, if we had got him we would have put him in Belmarsh, worried about his human rights and apologised to Pakistan for trespassing... Nice to see that the conspirisists are already on the case too. Can't say that I'm happy he's dead to be honest but it will give closure for alot of families that have been directly affected with the loss of loved ones. I'm going to remain undecided about my thoughts on this until more details have been revealed.

Thanks folks, turns out I was violently ill with some 24 hour bug the night of my birthday so just tucking into some cidre now :-)

Thankyou all, I shall be investing my birthday money into a somerset company that presses apples to make some delightful drinks.

Thankyou kind sir Although I must have entered my DOB incorrectly when signing up and it's not my birthday until tomorrow so your actually early.

Interesting read from another forum The anomalies of a plurality voting system can be more subtle, though, as mathematician Donald Saari at the University of California, Irvine, showed. Suppose 15 people are asked to rank their liking for milk (M), beer (, or wine (W). Six rank them M-W-B, five B-W-M, and four W-B-M. In a plurality system where only first preferences count, the outcome is simple: milk wins with 40 per cent of the vote, followed by beer, with wine trailing in last. So do voters actually prefer milk? Not a bit of it. Nine voters prefer beer to milk, and nine prefer wine to milk - clear majorities in both cases. Meanwhile, 10 people prefer wine to beer. By pairing off all these preferences, we see the truly preferred order to be W-B-M - the exact reverse of what the voting system produced. In fact Saari showed that given a set of voter preferences you can design a system that produces any result you desire. In the example above, simple plurality voting produced an anomalous outcome because the alcohol drinkers stuck together: wine and beer drinkers both nominated the other as their second preference and gave milk a big thumbs-down. Similar things happen in politics when two parties appeal to the same kind of voters, splitting their votes between them and allowing a third party unpopular with the majority to win the election. Can we avoid that kind of unfairness while keeping the advantages of a first-past-the-post system? Only to an extent. One possibility is a second "run-off" election between the two top-ranked candidates, as happens in France and in many presidential elections elsewhere. But there is no guarantee that the two candidates with the widest potential support even make the run-off. In the 2002 French presidential election, for example, so many left-wing candidates stood in the first round that all of them were eliminated, leaving two right-wing candidates, Jacques Chirac and Jean-Marie Le Pen, to contest the run-off. Order, order Another strategy allows voters to place candidates in order of preference, with a 1, 2, 3 and so on. After the first-preference votes have been counted, the candidate with the lowest score is eliminated and the votes reapportioned to the next-choice candidates on those ballot papers. This process goes on until one candidate has the support of over 50 per cent of the voters. This system, called the instant run-off or alternative or preferential vote, is used in elections to the Australian House of Representatives, as well as in several US cities. It has also been suggested for the UK. Preferential voting comes closer to being fair than plurality voting, but it does not eliminate ordering paradoxes. The Marquis de Condorcet, a French mathematician, noted this as early as 1785. Suppose we have three candidates, A, B and C, and three voters who rank them A-B-C, B-C-A and C-A-B. Voters prefer A to B by 2 to 1. But B is preferred to C and C preferred to A by the same margin of 2 to 1. To quote the Dodo in Alice in Wonderland: "Everybody has won and all must have prizes." One type of voting system avoids such circular paradoxes entirely: proportional representation. Here a party is awarded a number of parliamentary seats in direct proportion to the number of people who voted for it. Such a system is undoubtedly fairer in a mathematical sense than either plurality or preferential voting, but it has political drawbacks. It implies large, multi-representative constituencies; the best shot at truly proportional representation comes with just one constituency, the system used in Israel. But large constituencies weaken the link between voters and their representatives. Candidates are often chosen from a centrally determined list, so voters have little or no control over who represents them. What's more, proportional systems tend to produce coalitions of two or more parties, potentially leading to unstable and ineffectual government - although plurality systems are not immune to such problems, either (see "Power in the balance"). Proportional representation has its own mathematical wrinkles. There is no way, for example, to allocate a whole number of seats in exact proportion to a larger population. This can lead to an odd situation in which increasing the total number of seats available reduces the representation of an individual constituency, even if its population stays the same. Such imperfections led the American economist Kenneth Arrow to list in 1963 the general attributes of an idealised fair voting system. He suggested that voters should be able to express a complete set of their preferences; no single voter should be allowed to dictate the outcome of the election; if every voter prefers one candidate to another, the final ranking should reflect that; and if a voter prefers one candidate to a second, introducing a third candidate should not reverse that preference. All very sensible. There's just one problem: Arrow and others went on to prove that no conceivable voting system could satisfy all four conditions. In particular, there will always be the possibility that one voter, simply by changing their vote, can change the overall preference of the whole electorate. So we are left to make the best of a bad job. Some less fair systems produce governments with enough power to actually do things, though most voters may disapprove; some fairer systems spread power so thinly that any attempt at government descends into partisan infighting. Crunching the numbers can help, but deciding which is the lesser of the two evils is ultimately a matter not for mathematics, but for human judgement

That's assuming everyone else wants Parma Violets, the rest of the world hates eating flowery girl sweets and couldn't give a monkeys about Parma Violets. It'll make no difference to the !*!@# we're expected to vote for. They're all products of the same public school system. We're better off voting smarties to save eating dog !*!@#, which is why conservatives got in, the public don't really want them but couldn't stomach another 5 years of !*!@# and voting orange is a waste of a vote

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-13070369

It used to be a massive event where pubs throughout the north east used to collect donated easter eggs on the route and the bikers would stop at each pub and collect the eggs on the way often going through seaton sluice to the Melton Constable and stop at the church along the south beach road and so on. Always a really good day out and attracted hundreds from all over. Seen an advert in the Ashington Extra for it but wasn't sure if it was the same organisers with the route being different.

Surely this can be more contained that what Cherynobl was though??? Still think the media hype about the whole situation has made people think that the effects of nuclear energy are devastating. The BBC reports were rediculous about it.

AA Pothole Assist

I for one would not be travelling to the depot in Gateshead to pick anything up! Just use private delivery for the extra £2.49, cheaper than the petrol....

* Bob walked into a sports bar around 9:58 PM. He sat down next to a blonde at the bar And stared up at the TV. * *The 10 PM news was coming on. The news crew was covering the story Of a man on the ledge of a large building Preparing to jump.* *The blonde looked at Bob****and said, "Do you think he'll jump?" * *Bob said, "You know, I bet he'll jump."* *The blonde replied, "Well, I bet he won't."* *Bob placed a £20 note on the bar and said, "You're on!" *Just as the blonde placed her money on the bar, The man on the ledge Did a swan dive off the building, Falling to his death.* *The blonde was very upset, But willingly handed her £20 to Bob. "Fair's fair. Here's your money." *Bob replied, "I can't take your money. I saw this earlier on the 5 PM news, So I knew he would jump." * *The blonde replied, "I did, too, But I didn't think he'd do it again." * *Bob took the money.*

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20110312/earthquake-shifted-island-110312/

Hover over to see before and after shots.... http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/japan-quake-2011/beforeafter.htm

hmmmmm trust the scientists

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/japan-tsunami-earthquake http://geofon.gfz-potsdam.de/db/eqinfo.php

more warnings for the phillipines and hawaii as well. Anyone would think that the earth was trying to fight back at the minute.

An elephant, an ostrich and a crocodile stop a bloke in the street. The crocodile pulls out a police badge and says, "We have reason to believe you are carrying substances of an hallucinogenic nature, Sir."

Welcome to the site Cherry and good luck with the business. I would definitely be interested in the service but it would be pretty dependant on the vegetables and fruit that is available. Is the fruit and vegetable available as an organic range or are they just locally produced? We tend to buy alot of organic produce but struggle alot to balance the produce with the price and sometimes can't justify organic produce but if this was available at a competitive rate then definitely would consider the service with a fortnightly/weekly delivery. Once again all the best for the business as I know there is a kind of niche for this as more and more people are getting into homegrown and locally sourced produce with things getting as expensive as they are. Brett

Two Radical Arabs boarded a flight out of London . One took a window seat and the other sat next to him in the middle seat. Just before takeoff, a U.S. Marine sat down in the aisle seat. After takeoff, the Marine kicked his shoes off, wiggled his toes and was settling in when the Arab in the window seat said, 'I need to get up and get a coke.' 'Don't get up,' said the Marine, 'I'm in the aisle seat, 'I'll get it for you.' As soon as he left, one of the Arabs picked up the Marines shoe and spat in it. When the Marine returned with the coke, the other Arab said, 'That looks good, I'd really like one, too.' Again, the Marine obligingly went to fetch it. While he was gone the other Arab picked up the Marines other shoe and spat in it. When the Marine returned, they all sat back and enjoyed the flight. As the plane was landing, the Marine slipped his feet into his shoes and knew immediately what had happened. He leaned over and asked his Arab neighbors 'Why does it have to be this way?' 'How long must this go on? This fighting between our nations? This hatred? This animosity? This spitting in my shoes and me pxxxxxg in your cokes?'