Kevin's Watch

Personally Id retrieve the broken bits and make a mural or there are a million things you can do to repurpose it. And the china sounds perfect for such a project

Avatar wrote:Haha, sucks to be you. The wife will not let this go, and I speak from experience.

--A

This literally made me laugh out loud .. like lose my shit laugh out loud

Sorry matey .. thats probably as emotionally available and supportive .. it .. gets

Oh this is good value funny ... this is going to amuse the fuck out of me for ... oooh ... ever ____ ______

The sun still rose today.
Pete, you were right. I looked in the bin and it was a delft type design vase, with a floral and leaves arrangement going on. I don't know why I thought it had dragons on it.
Sky, If I use the pieces left in the bin I reckon the wound will never heal.
The hills are alive, with the sound of schadenfreude!
Oh well. I offered to buy a replacement but have since been told that it would be an excuse for dear wife to go shopping. It might cost me a quid alright.
The sooner it happens the better.

Have a good day all.

All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well

Ah, that's life. Years later, there are occasions when the GF mentions something that is immediately followed by "which you broke..."

--A

I think whats most important here .. is how much fun we get from reading each others individual experiences re our respective lives.

I tell ya .. you just cant make up some of this shit

You could, but nobody would believe it.

--A

And to top the last week, my car is still in the garage. It is not the low pressure fuel pump, and they will be testing the high pressure pump tomorrow. They have had it for a bloody week!
Seriously, I am gonna start reading my horoscopes for inspiration at this rate.

I better be careful. I once told a sticky beak who asked me what I do for a living that I wrote horoscopes for the local newspaper under a pseudonym.

meh .. a week is not that long .. when we hit a roo .. the car was in the chop shop for over a month ..

Do they give you a loan car?

Hey Sky, no loan car. It got towed away last week and I got a lift home.
They are saying now, after testing everything they could think of, that they think it is a fuel quality issue.
So having drained 70 litres of diesel out of the thing and replaced it with a smaller fresh batch they had it running again last night.
Albeit on 5 out of 6 cylinders. Touareg me arse. I hope to get it back today.
Having no car is a pain in the backside. No sympathy from dear wifey at the moment. Though I sense the start of empathy!

Well good .. and yeah .. she will come around .. has she had her spending spree yet?

Sir Phillip Green (not a man who elicits great feelings of sympathy it has to be said) has been named in the House of Commons as the individual being referred to by the Telegraph as being under investigation by the police following a series of accusations of sexual impropriety. The paper had been running the story for some days, but had been under court injunction against naming him personally and instead had been referring to the "retail tycoon" at the centre of the accusations. In the name of "clear public interest" Labour MP Peter Hain defied the anonymity ruling of the Judge who had agreed to the injunction and named Green in the House where under the shelter of parliamentary privilege he can avoid retribution for so doing.

Yesterday's headlines were predictably full of condemnatory finger pointing and glee at the fall of the less than popular magnate who oversaw the rapacious stripping and subsequent sale of the C&A shop chain (for one pound), and who could blame them, but of course things are never that simple. Thinking this through at a slightly deeper level the cracks in the apparent 'justice' of Hain's parlimentary disclosure begin to appear. Firstly, for all his sins, Green has not been tried and proven guilty. There are family repurcussions to consider here, and the effect on the possibility of him getting a fair hearing (should the police decide to place the matter into the hands of the public prosecution service) of a barrage of negative press coverage prior to a hearing. But further than this, the constitutional implications of such a disclosure should be considered; Hain's actions effectively set one arm of the British constitution against the other, the legislature against the judiciary. A Judge in Court, sits and considers the case and judges that it is an appropriate case for the much vaunted freedom of the press to be suspended - and then an MP who cannot be called to account for his actions defies this Judgement, in so doing undermining one of the foundational relationships upon which the constitution is based and at the same time quite possibly abusing the privelage under which he is sheltering. Finally one must ask what, exactly, 'public interest' was served by this disclosure, other than the prurient interest of the media and public alike into the unpleasant underbelly of the rich and famous's activities?

Are you concerned what this exposure will do for his reputation and life more generally?

I have to say there are a number of issues here .. so there is an investigation underway, the news got hold of it and published it, causing embarrassment for him and his family... all not good things.

But as to the trial .. that is within the courts jurisdiction .. and I believe the media has little impact on a trial itself.

The police would investigate only if the allegations involve a criminal offence and then the same presumption applies, and he will be judged by a jury of his peers. Who indeed may be affected or effected .. I can never remember which is which .. by the publicity .. but some of the jurors would be weeded out prior to selection anyway .. and blaah blah blah


If "impropriety" means not a criminal offence but office type harassment or bullying then that is a different matter again.

Do you know any more details.

If its being pursued civilly .. then a jury of his peers doesn't decide, magistrates do .. and the standard is lower .. so is it conceivable on the balance of probabilities. Also if you guys have a fairly conservative judiciary .. its likely he has nothing to worry about .. with the raw exception of the knock on effect on his personal relationships and his .. mmm .. good name

Sorry Sky - I don't know the details of the story, not having read any of the articles themselves, but Hain has been strongly criticised today by a former Lord Chancellor who said that use of parliamentary privilege to flout the rule of law was a serious breach of protocol (or words to this effect). I have little sympathy with Green himself - his activities in respect of the C&A pension holders, who very nearly lost their long term contributions as a result of his double dealings, were morally reprehensible to say the least, but the Law is the Law. I often disagree with decisions made by Judges, but I respect the need to abide with their judgement as part of the social contract we buy into. Hain, in disclosing that which the Law had judged should not be, overstepped the mark and I think abused his privilege to the detriment of us all.

I've been thinking about Radiation Pressure:

P = F/A = dp/dt/A = 1/c.phi E

trying to understand sunlight radiation in a vacuum as a viable idea.

When the vacuum of space exerts pressure on the Sun, (imagine juice being squeezed from an orange), the amount of pressure needed to generate light is not universally constant.
A star such as Betelguese, with a diameter of 7,500 times the size of the Sun and a temperature of 4000F lower than the Sun, might not be quite what it appears to be. Depending on the vacuum pressure around the red giant being vastly greater than the pressure around the Sun: hence the lower temperature and darker light emission -
so that, when the pressure and force of the Sun equal an equilibrium, the light (not called light for nothing) creates life.

I've even thinking about the weather - as in, why does it keep going the way it does? I mean why doesn't it just equal itself all out and then stop? There are areas of low and high pressure aren't there; well, all the air could just shift from the high areas to the low and equal the whole thing out and just, well, stay there. Clearly the revolving nature of the planet, the inertial 'drag' of the atmosphere, the heating and cooling of different areas causing the air to rise and fall as the sun passes overhead, must all be of significance in making it keep going. Add to this the chaotic nature inherent in the course of complex systems as they progress (imagine a vast pool table with the number of balls equal to the number of atoms in the atmosphere) and I think you understand why i) it just keeps happening and ii) why the forecasters struggle to predict what the future program of events will be.

peter wrote:i) it just keeps happening and ii) why the forecasters struggle to predict what the future program of events will be.

And a very gruesome Halloween to you too

peter wrote:ii) why the forecasters struggle to predict what the future program of events will be.

Too many variables.

--A