I live about 8 miles south west of a southern City. About 7 miles on the other side of it is my place of work.
If I go by car I will be there in about 25-30minutes.
If I take a bus to said City and then another to my place of work the journey would take about 90 mins if the buses connected. They don't. Realistically, you're looking at 120 minutes minimum to work.
On the way back its much the same. Throw in cancelations and the fact theres only 3 buses into town in the morning and 3 more home in the evening, you're looking at 4-5 hours of your day.
Go somewhere like The Fens or Devon and it will be worse. The bus services have been decimated.
I work from home as much as work will allow and use a car the rest of the time.
]]>The green stuff (physicist term for botany) has spread down the mountain - which spends a lot of its time in cloud cover and trails a clouds like Gibraltar does. Dew/rain collection on the mountain top was a major source of the islands water (pre desalination) and theres now a rather nice pond at the top - albeit you need industrial grade Deet as life is hard for mossies anywhere else.
We took pictures of a couple of especially pretty plants. One turned out to be from Madagascar and the other southern europe. They certainly seemed to have taken to the place.
I remember hearing - after we returned - that the runway was out of order for heavy lifters and awaiting repair. I don't know if thats still the case.
Most the housing has metal roofs, so its not uncommon to be woken by some stunt land crab the size of a dinner plate wandering around it at 3am. Unusually, the rental car insurance has a specific section on crabs. Punctured tyres caused by crabs were charged at £300 each - 10 years ago, the nearest stockist being over a 1000 miles away and delivery boats once every 6 weeks.
]]>Theres one car hire company with about 10 cars. 1 hotel, 1 publically accessible pub, not a lot to see other than cinder cones and the occasional antenna farm.
About 10 years ago I booked 2 of the 12 seats available to civvies on a flight from Brize Norton RAF base, and spent a couple of weeks there with my wife. All but 2 tiny coves are deadly for swimmers (snorkelling and fishing are good apparently) and the place is so dry the rabbits eat cockroaches. The hotel menu has 3 unchanging items so we stayed in one of the 2 self catering bungalows available.
Of course it does get the turtles laying eggs there, which was worth seeing and its always 30degrees (but with 80+% humidity) but after you seen the turtles, been up Green Mountain and gawped at the frigate birds, wall climbing crabs and kittywakes, you've exhausted the place.
I've been on Orkney mainland when a cruise ship docks and turns it into a mess - Kirkwall in the summer is more like Oxford St and the Ring of Brodgar seething. So I'm really not sure how cruise ships to Ascension would work - it not as if theres much to buy and theres no local culture, as there are no locals. Are you sure it wasn't the veg/supplies delivery boat from Africa to Ascension / St Helena?
]]>Secondly: Will we see any other known characters turn up in the book?
]]>109: Yep. 1 gran worked in a munitions factory the other went from home maker to accounts clerk. Aunty and mother were WRAF. One grandfather knocked 10 years off his age to sign up again (after being at the Somme you would think he would know better). Dad and Uncle were in North Africa. So a pretty even spread of women in our family involved in the War effort.
]]>Yes, France isn't England and Germany isn't France, but they share a region and (broadly) similar attitudes, ethics and morals. Would anyone say they are not European because they speak a different language and have significantly different cuisines. We're products of our shared pasts and the ideals we jointly espouse.
I'm not arguing, Iran has a majority language distinct from the surrounding countries, but does that stop the people of the country having a dual identity of Iranian/Persian and Arab? I'm British and European simultaneously and only the hard of thinking like Daily Express readers deny it.
Drop me off in downtown Oslo and I will recognise I'm in Europe. Drop me off in Cairo and I will pretty quickly come to the working theory that I'm in arabia or close by.
412: And I shouldn't write late at night and say stupid things. I understand why religion is a protected characteristic - dumb people from one sub group duff up/murder/oppress members of another sub group because of the religion their parents foist upon them. I just don't think religion is an excuse for being an arsehole and adopting hair trigger sensibilities/thuggery to force others to do what they want - in this case, personal is not important.
416: You can only debate the religion if you read it in the original. If you can't, you're just sermon fodder.
And if you take the Prophet's words as the basis for your life and the way your society operates, then do you not share a wider identity with neighbouring countries with a similar ethical and societal system? If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck we have to entertain the possibility that what we have is a member of the family anatidae. Yes, its a generalisation and poor labelling but most identities are.
Personally, I find it no surprise that the translations are watered down to take out the nasty bits and suspect the same is true of the Bible - certainly a friend learned Aramaic or Hebrew (I don't recall which) purely so she could read some parts herself for fear nuance had been lost in the King James. Its indicative of the filtering of message taking place in Christianity that (in the UK) we rarely hear sermons devoted to the Biblical instructions for how to properly conduct a blood sacrifice or how to treat your slaves.
]]>I just did my annual diversity and inclusion training at work and saying something like that of a colleague would be considered a dismissal offence.
Birbalsingh is an idiot.
Its the sort of thing the Mail and Express would say, but they would see Christ as a loony lefty, bleeding heart commie subversive who should be deported to Rwanda - preferably after getting a good kicking.
And no, the sarcasm was not obvious. I work with Muslims, born agains, normal Christians of various flavours, one or two jews, a Flying Spaghetti Monster adherent and atheists. And when someone with an adams apple, stubble and deep voice turns up in a dress and has changed her name from Jim to Jenny, we really don't care.
Personally, I only have an issue with people who want to control who other people sleep with or kill them if they say something nasty about their own preferred sky fairy.
Religion is just a lifestyle choice no different to supporting Arsenal rather than Spurs, and just as unimportant. I'm not sure why it is a protected characteristic. No one gets arrested for saying Arsenal fans sleep with sheep.
]]>My understanding is that according to some Islamic Scholars, arabic was the language chosen by God as the only language on Earth via which his message could be conveyed.
Additionally, there is an obligation upon all devout Muslims to learn arabic as the holy text should only be interpreted directly from the arabic (which didn't have standardised punctuation then, so good luck with that) and not via a translations. So, immediately arabs have a favoured position as they naturally speak the language chosen by their God. Arab speakers are, in effect, a favoured people.
The "Holy" sites are mainly on the arab penisula and the major festivals take place there. One of which all adherents are required/obliged to attend during their lives, if at all possible. To be in the lands occupied by the prophets and his associates during Ramadam is to be considered blessed. So, basically its a special place and the origin of their entire world view and system of ethics.
However, I an not convinced by the ethnically/geographically derived basis of identity in all contexts. I know British Citizens who speak urdu and chinese as their first language. Should I say they are not truly British because their language of choice is not English? Identity is more complex and words morph.
I would mention the Arab Springs, which wiki refers to as happening in all along the north coast of Africa from Morocco to Yemen ie Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan and a bunch of others to varying extents. Similarly, the Arab League covers 20 something countries and 470+ million people. So, I would contend these countries are self identifying as Arab in the same way the EC countries self define as European. Both groups of countries share similar beliefs and attitudes, many deriving from their religions. Europe had a stricter religious approach at one time but the enlightenment hobbled that centuries ago in Europe leading to a greater tolerance of secular ideals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arab_League_countries_by_population
Egypt isn't on the arabian peninsula, but it in the Arab League and so self identifies as arab. Like Iran it has an astonishingly rich preIslamic culture, but that does not preclude them from calling themselves arab. A similar logic could hold for Iran - though it is not currently a member of the Arab League, but thats mainly because the rest of the League wouldn't trust them as far as they can comfortably kick them plus some simmering Sunni/Shia tensions. Also Iran is just across a small stretch of water from Saudi Arabia and adjacent to AL member Iraq. So calling it arab is hardly a stretch.
I suppose my view would be that the long term cultural influence of the religion, non-industrialised nature of the countries, the tendency toward autocratic regimes and shared history of the Middle East and North Africa area is pervasive, encouraging the perception that they share a mindset associated with and derived from the arab peninsula and hence could be viewed as arabs, in the same way people from Spain through to Greece can be deemed European.
]]>Its the Islamic Republic. The Revolutionary Guard were formed to protect the Revolution and ensure the country adhered to God's laws. Secular society was blasphemy and when they had a referendum it wasn't even on the ballot as an option. Since then its been a theocratic state where politicians who dissent get pushed to one side and protestors imprisoned and/or shot (by the thousand).
As the truly devout (with a large side order of thug) they view their country, their friends and their families as of secondary importance to their religion and the Supreme Leader.
What matters to them is that Iran maintains an arab styled culture, defined by an arab prophet in the language of God - arabic. It shuns outside ideas. They want what they euphemistically think of as a return to the true Islamic state ie emulating Mecca circa 700AD - after pick and mixing some of the more sexist and intolerant options and ditching the heretical Sunni aspects. Nothing else matters. They want to be the true preservers of that sacred flame.
If no religions were present I would agree with you but given that one is, all bets are off.
]]>Its noisy, has an thriving moss collection along the back windows and a tad sluggish but just keeps going.
As its cambelt probably needs replacing, I will shortly move over to a 1.6l Yeti which does better mileage and is slightly easier to get out of.
]]>I assume they already have lobbiests out all over Asia and Africa telling governments not to bother to invest in green power generation just yet as 1, the price of PV/turbines will drop further still and 2, the glut of oil will lead to record low costs for fuel.
That will probably stave off real change in those areas for a decade.
I never understood why, with the huge surpluses they had to hand, the Saudis didn't set up a huge PV/wind turbine industry 10 years ago and position themselves to help keep the world dependent on them after oil. Are they lazy, thick, arrogant or just too busy slicing up dissenting journalists?
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