Reported today, the case of a young fellow in a Young Offender's Institute, who attempted suicide, but was saved by the action of prison officers. He sued, and was awarded ?560,000. What is the...
A section of fascia-board, about 10 feet long, has been dislodged entirely from a typical 60s-built semi, due to gales. I need someone to get up there and nail it back into place. What would be a...
Does anyone recall an incident in the early / mid 50s. when a hospital in Whitehaven suffered from a real or threatened disaster ? Many elderly patients were evacuated to other hospitals as a result....
Have now tried this several times on my chess programme, all with disastrous results. Is there some continuation which will give White the edge? 'Tis obviously a very clever monkey which can recover...
I would find it most helpful if each question in a category were to be numbered. Trawling through a long succession of questions to find the original target Q. is a long-winded business, especially...
Can we assume that the recent explosion at a fireworks factory will galvanise the government into banning the manufacture and sale of fireworks ? These things are explosives, and have been used as...
Vaguely, I seem to recall that the directors/managers of MAN Diesel were, in Germany, strongly opposed to the Nazi regime, and thus formed part of the opposition to the 3rd. Reich, when it was very...
A current series from the USA purports to show, on TV, the reality of life inside U.S 'toughest prisons'. These do not show my conception of 'Super-Max' institutions. Am I watching pure Hollywood ?
Some places seem to have magic entwined in their very names. For me, these include : Samarkand, Bokhara, Biarritz, Isandhlwana, Lake Louise, Katzenelnbogen, Surabaya, Zanzibar and Valparaiso. Not...
Is there anyone else who, like me, bemoans the demise of entertaining, effective adverts on TV, such as those for Hamlet cigars ? No-one muted the sound, no-one turned them off. Come back, Hamlet,...
Last year the cost of the forthcoming London Olympic Games was estimated as ?3.4 billions. This year it has reached ?8 billions. By 2012 the estimate is ?10 billions - that is ?1 million repeated...
Is there any educationally sound reason why languages are taught in secondary schools ? Noam Chomsky pointed out that the LAD (Language Acquisition Device) is innate in all children, but fades to...
Can anyone stomach the recent Lynx antiperspirant advert ? Squirting armpits appear to have hit a new low in the annals of bad taste. My suggestion ? : Lynx stinx.
Daily Telegraph photo today of 6 soldiers bearing the coffin of a colleague killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. The Staff Sergeants and the CSM badges of rank I recognise, but one soldier has 3 stripes...
Anyone with any knowledge of a disaster (real or threatened) which affected a hospital in Whitehaven during the early/mid Fifties ? A largish number of elderly patients were transferred elsewhere,...
Any information please on a mechanism which converts the normal rowing action into forward thrust ?. The boat moves forward in the direction of the rower's vision ; is this mechanism energy efficient...
