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message 2701: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21810 comments With the CofE the rules are complex but actually quite simple, you've got to be married in the hours of daylight, the bride's face must be uncovered (so everybody can see what's going on) and it has to be in a place announced before hand, so anybody with just cause and impediment can turn up as well


message 2703: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21810 comments excellent


message 2704: by R.M.F. (new)

R.M.F. Brown | 2124 comments To the surprise of nobody, Cameron's EU demands have been watered down more than a can of cheap shandy.

Now he's trying to soft soap the British public with the spin that this is a good deal.

Can't wait to see the reaction of Tory backbenchers.


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments Compensation for Mr Assange?? I thought he bolted into the embassy of his own free will to avoid charges.


message 2706: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21810 comments Whilst some of the legal charges against him have expired, (except for the rape charge) it would be interesting if his victims were to bring civil charges against him in an English court


message 2707: by Will (new)

Will Macmillan Jones (willmacmillanjones) | 11324 comments As I understand it, the allegations of rape are a bit iffy, and appear to be lodged to get Assange into Sweden so that the US can seize him.


message 2708: by Will (new)

Will Macmillan Jones (willmacmillanjones) | 11324 comments R.M.F wrote: "To the surprise of nobody, Cameron's EU demands have been watered down more than a can of cheap shandy.

Now he's trying to soft soap the British public with the spin that this is a good deal.

C..."


I saw a report 2 days ago suggesting that the total number of immigrants in the Uk that would be affected by the proposals Cameron had agreed to would be... 80,000. Hum. Not the Millions the Daily Mail like to suggest then.


message 2709: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21810 comments Will wrote: "As I understand it, the allegations of rape are a bit iffy, and appear to be lodged to get Assange into Sweden so that the US can seize him."

The Guardian did a pretty full report on it

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010...


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments Well French politicians seem to seriously underestimate the number of people in camps in northern France. One report yesterday said they had halved. I honestly think they just don't know how to deal with that situation and are just deploying the ostrich technique.


message 2711: by R.M.F. (new)

R.M.F. Brown | 2124 comments Will wrote: "R.M.F wrote: "To the surprise of nobody, Cameron's EU demands have been watered down more than a can of cheap shandy.

Now he's trying to soft soap the British public with the spin that this is a ..."


That may be, but the negotiations have been a stage managed sham from day 1, and I doubt if the shires of England will appreciate the soft soap from Cameron.


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments I certainly don't appreciate his rhetoric, in fact he sounded like a parrot on the radiio a few minutes ago speaking in Poland I got the message and had to switch him off. They must think we are stupid repeating a key phrase about 8 times, it's boring and patronising.


message 2713: by Will (new)

Will Macmillan Jones (willmacmillanjones) | 11324 comments Will wrote: "R.M.F wrote: "To the surprise of nobody, Cameron's EU demands have been watered down more than a can of cheap shandy.

Now he's trying to soft soap the British public with the spin that this is a ..."


Oh, and the DWP have just admitted that they class as a 'migrant family' a UK citizen with an overseas spouse. At least 10% of those families classed as 'migrants in receipt of in work benefits' come into this category!


message 2714: by R.M.F. (new)

R.M.F. Brown | 2124 comments Lynne (Tigger's Mum) wrote: "I certainly don't appreciate his rhetoric, in fact he sounded like a parrot on the radiio a few minutes ago speaking in Poland I got the message and had to switch him off. They must think we are st..."

The papers were saying that other EU nations were 'unhappy' with Britain's 'deal.'

They must think we were born yesterday. I can smell phony outrage from a mile away.


message 2715: by R.M.F. (new)

R.M.F. Brown | 2124 comments Will wrote: "Will wrote: "R.M.F wrote: "To the surprise of nobody, Cameron's EU demands have been watered down more than a can of cheap shandy.

Now he's trying to soft soap the British public with the spin th..."


Don't get me started on the DWP. A shambolic department.


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments I sincerely hope that the judge in France in Boulogne today has a brain or it could be a nasty afternoon. The 80 year old General Piquemal (lovely name) is up before him this afternoon and there are a lot of retired legionnaires, paras and ex military intending to show solidarity. I just hope the goons that arrested him don't start cracking heads in a show of strength. I know they have a job to do but Saturday was disgraceful. Compared to the day the migrantsa got on the ferry and the municipal police actually ran backwards. Dragging a 4 star retired General the Foreign legion along the street might just have been a big mistake. If they come down tough this afternoon it just might be the catalyst that a lot of discontented citizens are waiting for. The videos of them gassing locals was really shocking. Full in the face of several people just standing there. They kettled them so they couldn't leave then arrested the General who had asked them to disperse. The difference in treatment of the French locals and the migrants and anarchist No Border agitators is so marked. It won't be long before it all explodes.


message 2717: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21810 comments The perceived difference in treatment of residents and migrants is probably what gave UKIP so many votes in the last general election


message 2718: by Lynne (Tigger's Mum) (last edited Feb 08, 2016 12:23AM) (new)

Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments Its more than perceived. In January the prefect allowed a demo organised by No Borders. They were demonstrating Solidarity for the migrants so 2000 of them were allowed to march. The majority came from 'The Jungle' It was terrifying for the locals Some carried sticks etc. They broke down fences and got aboard the ferry. I think 2 No borders (Italian students) were charged and let off and 10 of the 100 or so migrants who boarded the ferry. their charges have been relaxed too. They were not charged with public order offenses just that they had not bought tickets!
The prefect refused permission for the local groups/ Pegida March on Saturday so certain Calais groups (not Pegida) booked a meetiing room which was cancelled by at the last minute. The roads into Calais were road blocked and cars searched and turned round to prevent an assembly taking place. So only 200 or so assembled including some Pegida. 20 were arrested and 10, including the General who was actually dragged a short way (he wasn't resisting) just being jostled along by about 6 police, were kept in jail. 5 are appearing before the TGI at Boulogne. The ratio of damage / forces used/ arrests is enormous. The 'Berets' are mustering. Last night the migrants totally blocked the lorry access road into the port. No arrests as usual
There's taxi strikes in Paris again and Brittany farmers on the offensive thisd morning. I'm getting nervous because husband is booked to go there next week. I'm not going due to commitments here.
The papers and mainstream TV haven't covered it well either but social media is really stirring it up.


message 2719: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21810 comments There are times when I feel the faster we get out of the EU, the better :-(


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments Me too, we haven't discussed it but if husband says he's selling the house there I won't be heartbroken.


message 2721: by R.M.F. (new)

R.M.F. Brown | 2124 comments Jim wrote: "There are times when I feel the faster we get out of the EU, the better :-("

What about the CAP money? I was under the media influenced impression that British farmers loved the EU because of CAP. Or am I horribly wrong?


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments Jim can advise you on that one but our contributions far exceed our receipts so it's not rocket science to use our contributions better for our own projects and people. If farmers had the same grants there would still be money over.


Geoff (G. Robbins) (merda constat variat altitudo) (snibborg) | 8204 comments The French farmers love the CAP.


message 2724: by Lynne (Tigger's Mum) (last edited Feb 08, 2016 11:00AM) (new)

Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments I'm right off the French at the moment, the bastards kept the general in a hangar two nights, cold and dehydrated he was taken to hospital and his case put back till May. Hollande is a joke and Valls is his henchman. Stasi socialists. Rennes was wrecked and no one arrested there are real rumblings about 2 levels of justice.


message 2725: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21810 comments R.M.F wrote: "Jim wrote: "There are times when I feel the faster we get out of the EU, the better :-("

What about the CAP money? I was under the media influenced impression that British farmers loved the EU bec..."


The big danger from being outside the EU is that the UK government might then become the purchaser of choice of all the cheap stuff the EU wants to dump. This happened before we were in the EU, Harold Wilson's government brought in butter at a price so low the East Germans were buying it to burn in power stations
As a general rule that isn't going to happen now because apart from minor fluctuations (1 or 2 percent shifts) we don't have world surpluses. Just world shortages of money. So currently the price of milk has been driven down because various oil states are no longer buying because they can no longer afford to feed subsidised dairy products to their citizens.
when this happened with Wheat we had the Arab Spring


message 2726: by R.M.F. (new)

R.M.F. Brown | 2124 comments Thanks for the lengthy reply. So, to sum up: if any pro-EU politician says that British farming can't survive without CAP, they're speaking nonsense?


message 2727: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21810 comments Farming is a political industry, prices are held down to ensure that everybody in a population can afford to eat. We never have a free market price in foodstuffs because a 5% under supply can lead to politicians been hanged by the mob.
So the fear among farmers about leaving Europe is not that we cannot survive without the CAP,it's that politicians will revert to buying any cheap crap from around the world and we won't have a viable UK agriculture.
It's not fear of lack of EU, it's just that our muppets were irrelevant within the EU and that meant farming could survive.

So for farmers as citizens it is a case of balancing the survival of our democracy over the survival of agriculture. We know we cannot entrust our democracy to the EU, but we don't know whether we can entrust our agriculture to the UK.

Having looked at all three parties, none of them inspire, The Tories fired someone who did understand agriculture and I'm not sure Jeremy Corbyn even knows it exists. Putting a vegan in charge of agriculture who wants meat eaters treated like smokers isn't a good sign


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments We had a Welsh labour agriculture minister who was a vegetarian, she got roasted at every rural show and then was sacked just before the Royal show.


message 2729: by Will (new)

Will Macmillan Jones (willmacmillanjones) | 11324 comments Yet the fact is that meat is the least efficient use of the ground, and produces considerably less calories per acre than cereal crops.

The vegetarian revolution is needed basically to stop the planet from starving, but as Jim said, politicians don't actually understand agriculture


message 2730: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21810 comments Will wrote: "Yet the fact is that meat is the least efficient use of the ground, and produces considerably less calories per acre than cereal crops.

The vegetarian revolution is needed basically to stop the pl..."


Tell that to Cumbrians, don't grow a lot of cereal crops in much of Cumbria, and you wouldn't eat the bread we could grow, because we cannot grow bread making wheat
Also every time you use margarine, or soya, or drink fruit juice, or use sugar, or eat pine apple remember that if it wasn't for the livestock industry you'd have to find a use for all the byproducts which are currently turned into high quality protein by livestock.
Actually the least efficient use of ground is probably lettuce and similar vegetables.

It would be very difficult to have an interesting vegan diet produced without foodstuffs flown in from abroad (vegetarian would be more possible, but remember for every lb of cheese you eat, you ought to eat a lb of meat as well, because meat is a byproduct of cheese production :-)

Don't worry, I've had fifty years of this stuff :-)


message 2731: by Will (new)

Will Macmillan Jones (willmacmillanjones) | 11324 comments I didn't say stop using livestock: cheese, eggs, milk are of course essential foods. It's farming for meat that's inefficient.

say 'No' to the burger. And the Southern fried chicken.


Geoff (G. Robbins) (merda constat variat altitudo) (snibborg) | 8204 comments Will wrote: "I didn't say stop using livestock: cheese, eggs, milk are of course essential foods. It's farming for meat that's inefficient.

say 'No' to the burger. And the Southern fried chicken."


But, as Jim points out, not using the producing animals of cheese, eggs and milk for meat will be less efficient. Prices for these items would soar, combined with huge costs for disposal at the end of life.


message 2733: by Will (new)

Will Macmillan Jones (willmacmillanjones) | 11324 comments Which is, i believe, a common argument in retaining inefficient production lines everywhere :-)


message 2734: by Patti (baconater) (new)

Patti (baconater) (goldengreene) | 56525 comments Thank gawd for bacon trees.


message 2735: by Jim (last edited Feb 10, 2016 03:08AM) (new)

Jim | 21810 comments Will wrote: "I didn't say stop using livestock: cheese, eggs, milk are of course essential foods. It's farming for meat that's inefficient.

say 'No' to the burger. And the Southern fried chicken."


But you cannot have milk, cheese and eggs without meat. Take milk for example. To produce milk a cow has to have a calf every year. Fifty percent of the calves are male. At some point the only contribution they can make to the food chain is as meat.

When we look at US feedlots, they look obscene, but remember, the cattle fattened there are from US range cattle, grazing where no crops will grow (or are allowed to be grown because it will lead to soil blowing away.) Then look at this description of the feedlots, especially the rations fed

http://www.precisionnutrition.com/cat...

Livestock rations are formulated to use the maximum amount of waste products, with enough high quality ingredients to ensure that the rations are balanced
For example in the UK a lot of cattle protein comes from rapeseed, which is what is left after the oil has been pressed out. There is a shortage of interest amongst humans wanting to eat the stuff, but plenty of people use the oil

The burgers comment is interesting. Back in the 1970s I can remember a New Scientist article which lauded to the skies a great new advance in 'green' environmentally great food production. Basically cattle are ruminants, this means they can break down vegetable protein. Actually it doesn't, it means they have captive bacteria which can break down vegetable protein (no mammal can) and they then eat bacterial protein. Researchers have known for many years that to bacteria, urea is merely a source of protein-precursors. So if you feed urea to bacteria they make bacterial protein (actually 'single cell protein' is the fancy modern name for this sort of thing, and is a popular area of research for meat-replacement diets).
Hence you can include a proportion of urea in bovine diets (12% is possible if they need that much protein) and they thrive as well as if provided with high quality plant proteins.

So back in the 1970s this was the great breakthrough, would make food production far more sustainable and efficient, and this was part of the answer to save a starving world.
Same with burgers, sausage and similar, they're a hungry person's way of using everything. They're the thrift food, using all sorts of ingredients that are perfectly fine in themselves but which people are too squeamish to look in the face. Think Haggis as a classic example.
As technology got more efficient, and as we got greener and less wasteful, we managed to salvage even more to put into these thrift foods.
But actually we're a wealthy people and remarkably squeamish and don't want to know.


message 2736: by Lynne (Tigger's Mum) (last edited Feb 11, 2016 03:33AM) (new)

Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments No wonder there are accidents, I just saw this from a haulier's site I used to work with
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U4rZqCY...


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments It starts off badly but I can see how a stressed driver reacts like this if they have to run this gauntlet on every trip. Once they slow down they are so vulnerable. As an ex importer I am serious about what foodstuffs I'm buying. I know how many loads I had condemned because of contamination of packaging. This is serious.


message 2738: by R.M.F. (new)

R.M.F. Brown | 2124 comments I don't know about Cumbria, but up here in Scotland, it's oats, barley, and potatoes, which is fine by me.

On the subject of spuds, growing them is a hobby of mine, and all I can say is thank God for blight resistant breeds. The wetter climate these days is not helping the potato industry, or me!


message 2739: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21810 comments Blight can be a nightmare, and remember that Scotland is the home of the best seed potatoes because you have more wind and less blight than the rest of us!

But yes, a traditional Cumbrian diet would be much like the Scots diet, your carbohydrates from oat porridge with barley beer or spirit and to provide the variety. Potatoes are almost a novelty but they're still just carbohydrate (and less protein than the barley)
For protein you would have some peas and beans, but to get enough food grown you'd probably use them as a break crop for the cereals and much of your protein will come from mutton (the sheep you need for wool anyway) and beef


message 2740: by R.M.F. (new)

R.M.F. Brown | 2124 comments Jim wrote: "Blight can be a nightmare, and remember that Scotland is the home of the best seed potatoes because you have more wind and less blight than the rest of us!

But yes, a traditional Cumbrian diet wo..."


We do have some good potato seeds up here, but there are a couple of Hungarian breeds that are equally good at stopping blight. Canny bunch those Hungarians.

On another note, Jim, If Scotland went independent, I'd happily roll down the border to include Cumbria - you're closer to us than London, but that's for the good folk of Cumbria to decide :)


message 2741: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21810 comments I don't think there would be much interest in 'Cumbria' moving north as such. There was a little talk from what you might call the 'excitable' left wing of the Labour party. But the Labour Party as such in Cumbria is heavily working class. Trying to convince South Cumbria to move into a Scotland that doesn't want Nuclear Power or Nuclear Submarines wouldn't happen. These are the only decent jobs we've got and with Sellafield being decommissioned and replaced, West Cumbria is going to be OK for a decade or so. And Jeremy Corbyn has promised that Barrow will build the worlds most expensive troop transports so we're OK under him as well.
North Cumbria looks to the North East and Newcastle, and South Cumbria looks to Lancashire/Manchester. If you tried swallowing either of those two areas the Scots would become a minority group within Scotland.
Mind you in a couple of years there might not even be a Cumbria. As an administrative area it doesn't work, it isn't a cohesive whole, and is the sort of entity that could only be created by a distant capital.


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments What's happened to the Carrs biscuit factory Jim, is it still not back in production. There's a serious shortage of ginger biscuits.


message 2744: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21810 comments Lynne (Tigger's Mum) wrote: "What's happened to the Carrs biscuit factory Jim, is it still not back in production. There's a serious shortage of ginger biscuits."

I'm not entirely sure, I've not met up with Carlisle friends for some months, partially because of the weather. But I know they got some lines back in production in December but it might be time before they're all back in production. Also stock may have been lost


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments Rosemary (aiming to misbehave) wrote: "http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/...

Ughh"

Hes one of those men in public life who scare me with his too bright fixed starey eyes. It's a bit maniacal that look.


Geoff (G. Robbins) (merda constat variat altitudo) (snibborg) | 8204 comments The Great Custard Cream Famine is starting to bite (or not) now. Hotels everywhere are on short rations.


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments My dogs don't rate malted milk as much as ginger nuts either.


message 2748: by R.M.F. (new)

R.M.F. Brown | 2124 comments Ought to be a law against malted milk. Evil, evil stuff.


message 2749: by R.M.F. (new)

R.M.F. Brown | 2124 comments Well, it looks like the phony war is almost over, and a date for the EU referendum is imminent.

It's funny to see people who made a career out of being a Euro-Sceptic fall into line behind Cameron. I wonder how their local Conservative branch will react?

For me, this deal has been a theatrical sham from day one. The supposed burning of midnight oil that paints Cameron in a positive light, the plucky underdog standing up for Britain, and the so called 'interventions' from other EU members, is nothing more than an orchestrated PR move for Cameron's benefit.

They must think we were born yesterday.


message 2750: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21810 comments Certainly I cannot see the 'agreement' actually offering anything that this country really wants/needs
Problem is, the sort of improvements to Europe that would convince people to drift from being skeptics to being in favour were never going to happen and were never even on the agenda because they are inimical to the whole concept of Europe as driven by the commission


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