Ken L

Yep, the link has changed but if you follow the link anyway, click on the video panel (about the abuse of army recruits at the moment) and when this opens, you can click on the bottom left panel entitled "Extreem Cause" Sorry but the BBC don't seem to want to make it any easier to link to none current content than that.

How's your neck ? All that star gazing just has to be bad for you

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/default.stm# Click on the "BBC NEWS: VIDEO AND AUDIO" link in the bottom right hand corner of the page. It lasts about 5 minutes.

The problem with Tiny was the reputation that they picked up for building overpriced unreliable PC's from the cheapest possible parts. The next one to go will be Morgan. They advertise themselves as the KwickSave of the PC marketplace with end of line gear stacked high and sold cheap. In actuallity, most of the stuff that they sell can be had cheaper without even going on the net. I saved 40 quid on the price of a Freecom external hard drive by bying it from PCWorld instead of Morgans. I could have saved more but I didn't fancy buying a HDD only to have it bounced arround in a Parcelforce office. Like the man said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time..........."

But it isn't and you have to deal with reality as you find it.

I'm perfectly happy to admit that I an a product of the comprehensive education system. With 5 GCE's, I was in the top 5% of achievers within my school. If digging deep and paying £7000 a year was the olny way to avoid a school like the one I atended for my own kids, I'd be digging deep. I very nearly ended up putting my hand in my pocket to help out my own parents with my sisters education when she was place in College High School in Birmingham with Stockland Gren School as an alternative. Fortunatly, after hours of interviews with the education authority and several letters, an alternative placement was found without the need for costly alternatives.

Now that's what i call a bait boat !

Each to their own. Most of my chubbing is on rock bars and I can only base my opinions on what I see and feel whilst fishing. Unfortunatly, weed hasn't exatly been a big problem on the Severn for a few years now so I've never had to develop specific strategies to deal with it. In some circumstances (e.g. lot's of little perch arround) I do prefere a single but as said, I can't be getting on with circles. Interesting comment about carp and barbel anglers. I seem to remember Newt saying that he'd had problems when trying to use circles for species with soft pretudable mouths.

Excellent. Thank you. Strange that it didn't sort itself out when I hit "Restore defaults" though..

Another pointless death. It looks like a phone call was made from the idiots calling him names to the scum that carried out the attack. All the police had to do was check with the mobile provider for a list of calls made within that "cell" at the time in question and then trangulate the poitions of the suspects phones - hey-presto, two arrests. I just hope that they've got the right people and that they have a hard time in nick.

Davy, you may be overestimating the level of protection aforded by a Marks & Spencer sweat shirt Seriously though, clothing is a significant protection against slashing attacks but anything other than the heaviest of winter coats (preferably of the sort of heavy material that duffelcoats are made up from) is unlikely to make much difference to a stabbing. Don't believe me ? Try it.

Take a large piece of meat with the skin on - a joint of pork is good. Either place it on a board or hang it up. You will find that if you act like you mean it, you can ealily inflict what would be a very serious stab wound with any knife from a scary pointy one to the dullest table knife. You can even do it with a toothbrush ! Thin stilletto/filleting type knives go in with almost obscene ease. I VERY much doubt that Ian has a knife that "would be impossible to penetrate a human body with" unless it's a spatchula ! Insert Mustard and honey into your stab woulds and raost slowly

Circle hooks may be OK on bigger baits intended for pike but on spinners, they're a waste of time. I've watched any number of chub hitting my circle hook equiped spinners without hooking up or even giving me any felt indication that I'd had a bite. There are singles available with an oversise eye that allows then to swing freely on a splitring but I got mine in the far east and I've never seem then on sale in the UK or on the net. If you're building the spinners yourself, go for hooks with a straight eye and an inward curving (Kirby) point. After trying singles for a while though I'd say they're usefull if you're wanting to experiment with bait tipping your lures with worms (for perch) but on the whole, a quality treble wins everytime. When I swapped back to trebles (Mustad ultrapoint triplegrips) on those chub, my catch rate improved fourfold - and that was not just the same swim but staight after having fished it for five miutes and spooked half the fish in there.

I must be odd then. I stick the pointy end into a tomato when I cut it and definatly go for the sharpest pointiest knife I can find when I whant to bone out a joint of meat. Quite apart from anything else, unless the would be victim is wearing Kevlar, rounding off the point of a knife is going to make very little diference to its ability to penetrate somebody.

On the Avon, they do that with caravans

I agree that the so called "faith schools" need to go. Quite apart from anything else, their selection policies are overtyly racist ! But not perhaps in the way that you might at first think. In my area, there are several Catholic schools that produce very good accademic results but given the nature of the local community, people from all races what to send their kids to the successfull school. If the kid is from an asian background, no questions are asked but if they happen to be white, they have precicely zero chance of getting in without a letter from the parish priest confirming that both parents are good church attending Catholics. Not a good situation. Personally though, I'd get rid of the sunday schools and mahdarases for all kids under 12 as well. Clerics in hospitals is a difficult one but I'd certanly say that they should only be at somebodys bedside if their presence is specifically requested by the patient.

I use Virgin which is about the cheapest arround at £14.99 a month. I'm paying for 500KBS but an actually getting 2.2MBS at no extra charge. The modem and two ADSL filters were delivered free. There's no contract so I can cancel my subscription anytime. The only time I ever had to use support was on startup and they responded to my e-mail within 6 hours and solved the problem in one hit. No complaints from me but wait and see what others have to say about thir providers.

Can't say I'm suprised by the lapsing numbers. Chances of getting picked up on a comercial water are slim. The severn suffered a massive weed kill about five years ago that dramatically reduced invertebrate life and has resulted in a major downturn in the fishing for every speciec other than snail munching barbel. The EA have not so much as acknowledged the problem. There are Zander in the canals and what do the EA and BWB do to the one worthwhile sportfish in these waterways - yep, they kill em. Why bother buying a licence when the money raised won't be used to protect or improve the environment and may be utilised to activly destroy your sport ?

They also got it right when they separated church and state, when they chucked the catholic orders out of the schools and hospitals and more recently when they bought that tradition up to date by banning all overtly religious atire from schools. Shame about them being such smarmy gits though [ 31. July 2005, 01:08 PM: Message edited by: Ken L ]

Getting the crud out of old bottles that haven't been cleaned before being up aside for six months is one of the crappiest jobs ind wine and beer making. There are some good (but expensive) proprietry products to help with this but a good soak in a solution of biological washing powder is on a par with any of them - Just make sure you wash it out thourally before you start bottleing.

Oops ! I've been playing with some folders and bugg3red something up. When I click start and select "my computer", I get a list of drives to look in but the pane on the left of the screen with the "Move folder" "Copy folder" etc options in it has vanished. What have I gone and done and how do I get it back ?

I reckon it was taken by someone lying down and looking up, the three lines are power cables and the photo is upside down. Nice shot of the sky though. [ 30. July 2005, 10:33 AM: Message edited by: Ken L ]

It's hard to look up to a martyr who's in prison for life, has been force fed pork on many occasions and has an ar5ehole that's considerably bigger than it was ever intended to be.

Nah ! The maggotts would trickle down your sleeve....

So now we get to pot for the big ones and get a tasty meal and there will be an explosion of little ones that the fish can eat to get bigger and stronger. It's a win:win situation unless your style of fishing happens to involve sitting arround waiting for a ledgered bait to get picked up by a fish before the little nippers tear it apart.