nick

Sounds good, I spent more time watching/photographing birds when I was there than I did fishing. Just wish my car hadn't chosen to pack in couple of weeks sine or I would have been there. Have a good one!

That Judy is a bit like standing in the middle of Sheffield and asking which is best, blades or owls. You'll get a lot of people swearing by one and at the other, but the truth is Nikon and Canon both make excellent cameras and lenses.

I saw that too!

phone in the UK "optician" is general shorthand for the shop that does both. The one I use for prescribing lenses is pretty crap, but I also see a hospital based ophthalmologist every year and have done for 14 years since almost losing my sight after a particularly bad case of shingles (herpes zoster opthalmicus) took 3 years of pretty intense treatment to save sight in my left eye. So I'm pretty careful over my eyes, and actually had my annual screening for diabetic retinopathy last week. But thanks for the heads up. I'm so far not on meds for the diabetes, and I am currently seeing improvement in my blood glucose levels after making big changes to diet and lifestyle and generally ignoring the crap my doctor (general practitioner) tells me. Also buying a blood glucose meter has had a big impact as I am gaining a good understanding of how particular dietary items impact on my levels.

I am so pleased I decided to read back through some AN posts regarding diabetes! My optician thinks I'm stupid when I tell him my vision changes day by day due to fluctuating blood sugar levels, I have 3 pairs of varifocals and day by day the right pair changes, sometimes even during the course of a day. Thanks budgie for making me feel "normal".

eels on the fly? http://www.gofishing.co.uk/Angling-Times/Section/News--Catches/General-News/Huge-eel-caught-by-fly-angler/

smtp.freeserve.co.uk pop.freeserve.com and if you want something like outlook express or windows mail I like thunderbird, easy to install / configure, and customise as you want it

As far as I am aware Newt you and Jan are the only people that have travelled further than me to fish at Wingham, mine journey last time being a paltry 650 miles. I was hoping to increase that this year to 750 miles having now moved further north, but the LPG system on my car has packed in and is costing me my entire wingham budget (and plenty more) to get repaired so not trip south for me this year :-( For anyone a bit nervous of being out of their comfort zone, and scared of making a fool of themselves amongst the experts - don't be. Sign up and experience one of the best venues in the UK, all the natives are very friendly and helpful, and even if you don't catch the wildlife is worth the trip.

Sorry ayjay, Phone is right. Granary flour is a brand that belongs to RHM. However you could go to a shop and buy many different brands of flour which are made using malted grains.

a better question Chris is can you justify not having two :-)

he should have been given some gun education first!

employment levels are as much a part of the governments macro economic management tool set as is inflation and growth. It was once considered essential to have full employment. But has not been for over 50 years. It is the lack of a full employment strategy that allows the low wage economy you so desire. The corollary of a government policy which allows high unemployment and thus low wages is a high benefits bill because people cannot live without some type of income. If unemployment falls to low levels wages rise as the market responds to the scarce resource. Governments of all colours have accepted high unemployment as a price worth paying for low wages for many years, and also accept the benefits bill that goes with it.

Until such time as any government decides that the goal of "full employment" is one worth pursuing again, and working towards jobs for all we will be stuck with the need for a very significant benefits bill. But full employment leads to higher wage costs, and that is something that modern governments do not wish to see.

It's not a savings fund for the wealthy, it's a safety net for those in need. You "pay in" so that if you need it it's there, and to help out those less fortunate in life. The more that is paid out the more that all those in work have to pay in various taxes.

They'll be considering if any harm has been done to "society" if there is any chance he is likely to repeat the offence, whether he has done anything that society needs protecting from. Given the evidence introduced last time in the trial and the appeal I suspect he'll not be back in court...

nothing "baby talk" about it. Perfect description of what it's made from. "French toast" on the other hand, pretentious or what... Oh mater dear could one have french toast for brekkie...

Most of my native scottish friends call it eggy bread :-)

Not at all class war, the wealthier members of society as a generalisation (and I know that leaves lots of room for error) tend to vote conservative, and pensioners tend to vote more than younger folk. Ergo older richer folk are a large sector of the voters on whom the tories rely. And I don't think even Cameron would deny it.

No they should not, so the state should take action as they have against the very poorest in society and take away those ridiculous "universal benefits", not suggest politely that the rich may care to hand them back. Oh, but wait that would pi55 off the tory core vote!

I think there is quite a large slice of truth in the reports of a causal effect between the modern fad for anti-bacterial everything, and the obsession with cleanliness. Such as detailed here. We've never knowingly used any anti-bacterial product in our house, and the place gets cleaned on a when required basis. I've 4 kids between the ages of 6 and 16 and they never ail a thing, and not a single allergy between them. On a related sort of issue both my parents smoked like chimneys, and me and my three siblings were all asthmatics, all suffered hay fever, and were generally a sickly bunch. Coincidence?

Andrew, give firefox a try in firefox safemode, nice and easy to do. In firefox click on Help -> Restart with Add-ons disabled Give ebay a try, if no better just restart firefox and you'll be back in normal mode. Also what version of firefox are you using, what version of windows, and is it 32bit or 64bit?

well that's good, javascript is working! Worth clearing the cache, that way if you have a corrupt version of the page cluttering up you machine you will get rid of it. Go to Options, click on Advanced, select the Network tab. You'll see a section with a heading of Cached web content, and a button marked Clear Now. Click that button and then you will download new versions of the pages that might well be causing your problems.

You'll see I've edited my post and script, try it again, do you see a message saying : Congratulations, JavaScript is enabled and working! Hi If you can see the message about Javascript is working, try clearing your web browser cache

Hi Andrew click this link, it's a very simple script which will test to see if you have javascript working and therefore a problem with ebay, or javascript not working at all. http://thurso.org.uk/jscripttest.htm If the above link shows that javascript is not working do the following, only make the changes stated! type about:config in the firefox address bar and hit enter you should get a warning about voiding your warranty, click I'll be careful I promise there will be a search bar showing, in there type: javascript:enabled you should then see two lines, one will show: javascript:enabled default boolean false double click anywhere on that text it should change to true (if it is already set to true I would double click to change to false then double click to set to true) Then shut that tab. Then try the link above and see if you are now seeing javascript working,

Must try one in the Thurso River, would drive the locals crazy (and very likely me to jail!)