Reminds me of the old Tommy Cooper gag - "I'd like to die the same way as my father, peacefully in his sleep and not like his passengers - screaming with terror"...

@#12 Too right! Most important to me is that the artist gets paid - if they get their money then they will continue to produce the music (or books or TV) that I love. Hence I buy music , and I donate to podcasts I like. This is purely selfish as I want them to carry on producing the goods !
What does annoy me in this digital age is the trend in the UK for music to be played on the radio and then not released for download for anything up to six to eight weeks later. I am baffled as to why this is done because by the time the music is available to buy I've heard it enough to not bother getting it! Equally annoying is finding out that a song you like is not available at all in the UK - I'd encourage all musicians to have their own sites where their music can be bought DRM-free regardless of the purchaser's location.

Hmm, what if you like to use shop window reflections to spot if someone is following you ? I suppose it is possible to use the system to detect if someone is looking at a reflection rather than merchandise.

If so I suspect the logical extension (for our paranoid masters) would be to look out for people looking at relections rather than the goods on display. This would trigger an alert to the local security authorities with video evidence etc. After all if you are not shopping you must be up to no good.

This question may only make sense if you are familiar with Desert Island Discs - I wonder what his eight records, book and luxury item would be ? Kirsty ought to get him on the show double quick.

I was trying to decide whether one would have to be a lunatic or a genius to attempt such a feat. Then it occurred to me that he is pretty much certain to have a more fulfilling 300 days than I will have during the same time at work. So hats off to the guy for having the balls to attempt it...though I do think he must be at least half mad for not taking more survival gear...

#22 Fnarf is so correct.
As a Black Country boy who moved south I can testify to the fact. Our pint glasses were oversized (i.e. "pint to line" and a pint being 568 ml ). Banks's have used oversize glasses and electronic pumps for at least 20 years to ensure that you get a full pint every time and allow plenty of space for a big frothy head on your cold pint of mild. It was also fairly weak at 3.2% Down here in the south of England the bog standard bitter tended to be stronger and served warmer and flatter. I always thought it reflected the differences in industry and work - the Midlands was an area of heavy industry. After a heavy day at the foundry, a couple of cold pints of mild and a bag of pork scratchings was just the job.

Sadly over the last decade or so many of the regional differences have been smoothed out. Lots of the medium sized breweries have consolidated.

Back on message £3.50 for a pint glass - that's way overpriced. I can get 4 for a £1 at my local supermarket, and you can get them for free at the pub as long as you are happy with a Fosters logo on your glass.

Yuck - shouldn't have read this whilst eating breakfast. Reminds me of an exhibit I saw in the Science Museum in Florence - a collection of models showing all the different ways that pregnancy can go wrong.

Ground floor coming up !

Snoopy as Rorschach, that has made my day.

#14 - another fine story that has a Particle Accelerator causing shenanigans is Walter Jon Williams' novel "Days Of Atonement". Not on quite the same scale though...

My own pet theory on this (and I confess its just based on my own observations of the world) is that the T5 project is demonstrating why modern project management techniques cannot substitue for clever people who understand the job being done being empowered to set up and run the systems in hand.
I'd love to know what the staffing profile of the T5 operations team is like. Want to bet there are lots of MBAs and Project Managers in there? How many of them have worked check-in or baggage handling for 10 years and have experience of what to do when excrement hits fan ? I would guess that not many have. As far as I am aware "Baggage Handler" has never been a greatly respected profession , and does not have a great career structure. So as others have said already,
1. when trialling the system operational and training problems reported by those on the shopfloor were not passed up the chain, and
2. then on the day when off-duty staff were called in to help fix things, they contrived to be elsewhere. What goes around comes around. After all what respect had their employer ever shown them.
The shame of all this is that the customer is the one who gets it in the neck.

I'd like to say that this reflects a greater malaise in British society as the people at the top work the system to make sure all the rewards go to them rather than fairly compensating those who do the work, but I would be here all week and it would be severely off-topic.

Well he might be an idiot but he's our idiot. Its not like we've given him the Trident launch codes or anything. Compared to some of the tossers actually running Britain he's a beacon of intelligence and tact.

You will get people who will try to kid you that this castle's about freedom. It isn't. Its about money. According to the press it cost him £50K to build. Depending on the size (and from the photos it looks pretty big for a uk house) if it were legal it would sell on the open market for at least 10 times that. Plus in theory he could then push to get his land re-zoned as residential. Residential land in Southern England usually costs £1million an acre upwards (about 20 to 50 times what it is worth as farmland).

The south east of england is a crowded place. we have to have strict rules on what gets built where else we'd end up with even more hideous sprawl than we already have (and we have too much already).
He could of course go live somewhere else where the rules are more relaxed and build what he likes.

Hmm, bit difficult to know the truth about this with all the exaggeration. I want to know whether the British consulate in New York was informed as it should have been up to them to sort out the care of the children shouldn't it? Us Brits (usually) pay a lot of tax so our diplomats should have been doing their job. I'm certainly going to be more reluctant about travelling abroad with my kids if the first reaction of the UK diplomatic staff to any emergency is to pass the kids straight to the local authorities.

Heathrow is a pit, a hole a dump. Sadly it is my local airport and my heart sinks whenever I have to travel from there or return there. It is an embarrassing advert for the UK , especially if you have come from Dubai or Singapore, or any other airport where they don't treat customer service as secondary to profit.