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I don't know how many people here know this, but a UK citizen was arrested and sentenced in Dubai for 3 milligrams of cannabis. Once people can get arrested for microgram or smaller levels of anything, no one will be safe, since no one will be able to tell if they haven't been exposed at that level, and it will be very hard to verify that the vanishingly small evidence was indeed what was claimed.

I'll tell you why most people are not up in arms about these things, it's because during the recent economic boom years, the vast majority of people have been wealthy enough to put a roof over their heads and food on the plates of their family. Once those basic needs have been met, most of the 'proles' cease to have concerns outside their immediate social sphere, meaning they have less interest in what the government is up to.

The Government has cunningly used this time to introduce measures such as DNA Databases, extended periods of detention and anti 'terrorism' laws, all this following the media inspired frenzy after 9/11 & 7/7. The media is also far more widely reporting the rare occurrences of violence that are perpetrated on the streets as keeping us all in a state of fear obviously persuades us that, although we'd rather not be CCTV'd 24x7, we will put up with it 'for the greater good'.

The thing is, all this stuff is not making people feel safer, in fact they all feel far more afraid on the streets now than at any time in history, when the statistics show that crime and violent crimes in particular have been falling steadily for the last 20 years. The system is then abused by the relevant agencies and is used for trivial means, such as that pensioner being chucked out of some political party conference for heckling whoever was speaking at the time. The kicker was that the Police used their newly prescribed Anti-Terror laws to detain him. There was also a story recently about a mother whose young daughter dropped half a sausage roll in the street so she was fined £75 ($150 US) That's a sausage roll! Not even real litter like a chip packet, but a piece of food that would have been cleared away overnight by some animal or other! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-561762/I-dropped-morsel-girls-sausage-roll-litter-police-fined-75.html

There's example after example of this lunacy in the country and yet no-one says anything. It's outrageous, and every significant political party is in on the act, the situation will not change until there's a serious public backlash. I think we could be in for some interesting times if this so-called credit crunch bites as hard as some are predicting. People will let a litter fine slide when times are good, but when it is the difference between paying money to the government via their stealth taxes, and putting food on your kids plate, the public may not be so understanding.

This also looks similar to this special forces stealth wing glider that I heard about recently. The obvious difference is the jets.

Secondly, the BNP seems to be GAINING support lately, not losing it, despite constant media attacks.

Nor suprising when foreign workers seem to take priority over local citizens when it comes to hospital waiting lists, school placements and council housing. At this end of the social ladder, it is unskilled people on low incomes who find themselves being overtaken.

Brand New Leather Jacket

Nothing Bloody Works

And even if you are educated, you are only likely to keep your job until a foreign worker applies for it. This has happened to British trained doctors being pushed out of the way by graduates from India. The same has happened to the IT industry, and even the UK games industry. Fortunately, in the latter case, the experienced programmers can set up their own companies.

And at the same time, private pension schemes have been raided, taxes are constantly rising to pay for translators in every government department.. Not forgetting Do-Not-Resusitate orders on elderly patients

At the same time, immigration is running at 700,000 people/year, only matched by an equivalent number of UK nationals leaving.

Secondly, the BNP seems to be GAINING support lately, not losing it, despite constant media attacks.

Nor suprising when foreign workers seem to take priority over local citizens when it comes to hospital waiting lists, school placements and council housing. At this end of the social ladder, it is unskilled people on low incomes who find themselves being overtaken.

Brand New Leather Jacket

Nothing Bloody Works

And even if you are educated, you are only likely to keep your job until a foreign worker applies for it. This has happened to British trained doctors being pushed out of the way by graduates from India. The same has happened to the IT industry, and even the UK games industry. Fortunately, in the latter case, the experienced programmers can set up their own companies.

And at the same time, private pension schemes have been raided, taxes are constantly rising to pay for translators in every government department.. Not forgetting Do-Not-Resusitate orders on elderly patients

At the same time, immigration is running at 700,000 people/year, only matched by an equivalent number of UK nationals leaving.

You forgot to mention the Chinese sub that got so close to a US navy ship that they almost actually. Here is a link to it. I can't find the one link that claims a few US navy ships had to correct courses because the sub was in the wrong place.

Your right, this is a very real threat.

i suppose we're going to split up into morlock and eloi too?

You must have missed this. ;)

Plans for a robot that can crawl like a spider are 'well developed'

That's military-contractor-ese for "we drew you a picture..."

Anyway, city workers compete mostly with each other for the same kinds of property.

Once they have moved into an area I would agree, but it's when a particular area changes character or price, it is obvious:

School lotteries in Brighton

240,000 Second-home owners targeted in bid to save rural areas from turning into ghost towns

Nottingham's forest of housing despair

But it is in Greater Nottingham "family areas" such as Lenton, Radford, Dunkirk and Beeston where buy-to-let blight has struck the worst. Estate agents turn what would elsewhere be a three-bedroom semi into a "five to six letting room property", and a four-bedroom house is marketed as "seven to eight letting rooms".

"Nothing is sold in the normal way," says Ms Fletcher. "With each student paying around £3,500 a year, landlords can earn about 8.5% on their investments. Even before tax relief, that's substantially more than the cost of borrowing, so they can outbid families. Estate agents have no interest in selling to parents with children. Investors pay more so there is more commission."

City chiefs crack down on buy-to-let

Even if people try and move to the other end of the country, houses in good area of the city are still expensive:

Highland House Prices

For Highland as a whole the median price for a previously owned house by 2006 was £136,000 - an increase of £33,000.

The Scottish figure was £114,000, a £24,000 increase.

Two of the most expensive areas for houses are Inverness Ness-side and Inverness South where median prices are about £140,000 and £160,000.

their anti-terrorism laws were mostly used for cases of minor frauds

Especially so in the case of parents falsely claiming the location of their home address in order to get their children to a good school:

Parents stalked for three weeks by city council spies

I wonder how long before we do that here to our police or air travelers?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=558597&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true

I guess we can change the motto to

The FBI lied, Rights died.

Send in the bailliffs :)

Customer sends bailiffs in to seize bank's computers

Of all the tanks of WWII why not a US Sherman tank.
Sherman tank does have so many curves so it would make a pain to duplicate neatly:
http://www.military-collections.com/Planes%20of%20Fame%20photos/ShermanTank.jpg

Panzer does have more flat areas so it would be easier to make:
http://www.worldwar2aces.com/tiger-tank/tiger-tank-images/tiger-tank-25.jpg

However someone else beat him to building a drivable tank (sans the shooter) for his son last year:
http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2007/04/driveable_scale.html
And this smaller verison of a Panzer in the UK:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_page_id=1965&in_article_id=485191

I built a 1:32 scale model tank in 1980 that shot BB's. Much fun when in high school and college.

Two things about that:

• Which is worse, overfeeding children to the extent of ruining their childhood and depriving them of the possibility of a healthy life, or rescuing them from that situation?
• Terrorism is the act of attempting to achieve political ends by terrorising people. Who is being terrorised? What political ends are being promoted?

Mind you, anyone stupid enough to pay attention to the Daily Wail is probably incapable of taking part in rational debate.

At the same time, UK Social Services is committing acts of terrorism (yes, kidnapping threats are acts of terrorism) against a family with fat children.

Hypocritical much?

That's funny, I was able to find all kinds of stuff about gangs in London with a quick Google search. Either you're a liar, or completely naive.

Mugged by gang:
http://icsouthlondon.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0550wandsworth/tm_headline=mugged-by-gang-of-thugs&method=full&objectid=18485578&siteid=50100-name_page.html

169 gangs currently active in London:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2007/03/14/gang_insider_feature.shtml

Islamic gangs in London have guns:
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/755

16-year-old boy murdered by gang:
http://forums.canadiancontent.net/news/64167-boy-skewered-death-railings-violent.html

Armed london gangs recruiting via YouTube:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=437617&in_page_id=1770

"London violence scarred us all":
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/jul/01/youthjustice.crime

Thug gangs ruining Liverpool:
http://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/blackpoolnews/Thug-gangs-ruining-Blackpool.3781214.jp

Have fun when you have children and they're forced to join a gang.

Here is a real world example which had tragic consequences:

Unmasked, policeman who gave two killers their victim's address after road rage row

Does anybody have any links to studies showing that streetlights reduce accidents or crime rates (and by how much)? I think the effect would be minimal, but I'm willing to listen to evidence to the contrary. A Google search shows one British town experimenting with turning off lights between midnight and 5 AM - it will be interesting to see how the accident and crime rates change.

The cat concentration camps in Beijing have already gotten some bad responses. They are basically culling cats in the city, and it looks like people are being encouraged to give their pet cats to teams who round up cats in the city. The govt says it is to prevent disease, but civet cats wasn't really the problem with SARS so this is just a campaign to clean up their image, which may actually be doing the opposite.

Has been used to help regerate small sections of missing fingers/toes etc.....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=437215&in_page_id=1965

AFAIK, there have been two infamous false-positive cases in recent years. These are just the ones we hear about as they are the most egregious. Despite all the other contrary evidence, the DNA 'matches' led the inquiry and resulted in the investigation and arrest of individuals who could not possibly have been involved in the crimes. It is a major concern that the compelling evidence of innocence (like being 200 miles away at the time of the crime) will take a back-seat to the supposedly infallible "DNA match".

There are reports that 1 in 8 DNA records on the database are incorrectly filed.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=519568&in_page_id=1965

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/28/ukcrime.forensicscience

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=528593

Cat cleanup before Olympics. Dont click if you love cats.

Yes, "sometimes"; else you may be faced with this!

That's good to hear, especially in the face of this tragedy: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=528694&in_page_id=1811 "The situation is very bad now," said Ms Hu. "When women get pregnant, the doctor will ask them if they have a cat in the house. If they reply Yes, they tell them, 'You must get rid of it, it will be bad for the baby'."

Sadly, the current Pope seems to favor "intelligent design" over evolution.

It's even more straight forward than this ... just fly empty planes around the globe ... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=493357&in_page_id=1770

We get the police to do that these days.

Yeah, I second stoolpigeon's request for a source on that. Until you can produce something to counter this story, (note the non-US military source) I have no respect for your opinion (free as you are to spew it) or those who modded you "Informative."

Depends on your definition of "no one" and "close".

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=492804&in_page_id=1811

Yes, complacency is comfortable isn't it? After all, the Chinese economy is booming while the US economy collapses.

      Chinese students have been coming to the US for years, learning HARD science - engineering, physics, math, analytical chemistry, etc. Guess what? They don't come here so often any more. THEY DON'T HAVE TO. Chinese universities are now more than adequate. Chinese culture is rich with a history of invention and innovation. And want to know the scary part? They are nowhere NEAR being a fully developed nation, and yet are now the worlds single largest manufacturer of ANYTHING.

      Sure, laugh, and be complacent. No way the Chinese will "beat" us. I'd say guess again. The US can't afford its own space shuttle, but it can afford to fight pointless wars on concepts on foreign soil. The US cut its national science budget. 20% of US citizens apparently believe that the sun orbits the earth. Sure, go ahead. USA #1 we rule. Right. Wait.

Will Prince sue over his "Planet Earth" album he gave away for free in the Daily Mail 'newspaper'?

Here's something really whack. Freedom and knowledge, two more obscenities in today's world.

I thought this sounded familiar, but with classical music and light that makes your acne look worse. It's still socially acceptable to stereotype, mock, fear, hate and discriminate against young people.

it seems to work for us... [Europe]

Does it? The last time I went to Europe (and mind you, I was traveling through fairly prosperous countries — England, France, Germany, Italy), I was appalled at the public squat toilets

Yes it's true that children will learn the rules and then apply them, sometimes inappropriately, until they learn the exceptions. I expect that your nieces/nephews who use "ran" have simply heard that word used more often in the right context and have therefore learned this particular irregularity.

My own son gave a classic example some time ago of a sentence showing he was part way through this learning process. I can't for the life of me remember what it was, which is very annoying, but he was using two irregular verbs, one correctly and one not. Along the lines of "The glass breaked when I ran over it"

The good news is that as language evolves, irregular verbs are gradually being "regularized".

Do you really think thieves would bother buying submarines to dig up fiber cable (and no, there isn't a great amount of expensive metal) from great depths under the ocean? Once you've got the stolen cable, you'd then have to melt it down and separate the metal you want from it. So the thieves are losing money at well over 10x the cost of the original cable.

I think it'd make far more sense for them to stick to stealing bridges. And even stealing 200,000kg of steel isn't the most lucrative crime in the world.

First of all religion is not an "affront to human dignity.

And then there's today's religious news.

...you were saying about religion not being an affront to human dignity?

Sounds legit to me. But what about this non-invasive infra-red hat: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=510172&in_page_id=1774 Same thing without all the blood? If infrared diodes boosts my momory, I want em implanted permanently under my skin!

...where the PSU fans for my PCs have gone! Are they there to prevent your brain cooking while being bathed in the infrared grill? ...here!

erm no. They spent it on secret bonuses for managers and directors. Who'd have thought!

Pope Benedict believes in evolution.

So it's perfectly okay for a Creationist to demand that he be allowed to give a speech at a biology department?

This has cropped up several times and is a fallacy. The pope, and the catholic church's official position is that god created everything through evolution. Pope John Paul stated it in 1996 and Benedict just re-iterated it again in 2007 as evidenced here. Please, get your facts straight before making emotional arguments.

http://www.muslimsforobama08.com/ <--- the truth is that ... Obama is for muslim terrorists of 9/11.

http://www.freedomsenemies.com/_more/obama.htm <--- 1001 reasons to be fucked Barry Soetoro (alias of Barack Obama).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=506338&in_page_id=1770

The americans want not a waste of time recounting the votes! The time is money that we pay everyones!

You'll never learn to drink responsibly unless you've drunk irresponsibly a few times when you're younger.