Merlin of Flyote

Was Jesus married, well Mary Magdalene is the person believed to be his wife. Were there female disciples, it is generally believed to be so. Is the bible the truth, probably not. The men that wrote it probably put in it what they wanted people to read. Does any of this matter, not really.

A sad day today. R.I.P. Neil Armstrong

Looks like a SNP website to me (very anti-english). When I was younger the National Athem had 3 verses but verse 2 was not sung, last time I looked it had grown to 6 verses. Of course the Queen is also queen of Scotland through James 6th (James 1st of England) and she is Elizabeth 1st of Scotland.

bbc.co.uk is showing olympics coverage as it happens. Four teams players have been disqualified from the Badmington for trying to lose thier first round games.

Over the centuries, knighthood has been bestowed for a variety of reasons. Currently, British citizens who achieve something on the world stage seem to get knighthood. There are various "orders" of knights. The folks in the UK get to decide who gets UK knighthood. Unfortunately it's not us folks that get to decide who gets knighted, but a government panel who draw up a list, and ultimately The Queen (or more likely her advisors) that decide. These are then usually bestowed upon the recipients in what is called 'The New Years Honours List' (along with OBE, MBE, CBE etc). The public can nominate people for awards, but these would normally be people who would not have caught the media's attention, like someone who has done outstanding charity work maybe. On Bradley Wiggins, if he does get knighted, it would be listed as 'for services to British sport' or something like that. Hope that's cleared things up for you. Also, I forgot to mention, Non-British citizens can be awarded on 'Honoury Knighthood', but I'm not sure if they are given the title 'Sir'. Like Ronald Regan. Actually The Queen doesn't decide, the government does, the Queen does as she is told (constitutional monarchy).

Here in south-east England it was drought conditions until March 2012 since then April, May, June and July record rainfall and floods. Jet Stream was too far north, now it's too far south (record rainfall in Cyprus). Dare I say Global Warming!

In Britain we don't now have Grants, we have Loans instead which have to be paid back when you earn over £21,000pa albeit at a reduced interest rate. The previous government wanted to get 50% of the population into university. When I went to school it was probably about 10%. There were many more apprenticeships. We have lost most of our manufacturing to China and others. We need to have a manufacturing base to make money and employ the people for whom academia is not the right choice. Service industries just move money around, manufacturing creates money. One problem we have is that "bankers" now encourage entrepreneurs to manufacture elsewhere because it's cheaper and they make more profit, although it's worse for the economy.

Today they have elimited 2 places from the 2020 competition leaving Tokyo, Istanbul and Madrid in the running. Wether or not the swimming pools, velodromes and halls etc. are used afterwards is down to the government, certainly it looks like it will be the case in London. Some of the events like Equestrian (Greenwich Park) and Shooting (Royal Artillery Barracks) are temporary and the places will return to their former use afterwards. Sailing is down on the south coast at Weymouth/Portland Bill.

Again, it depends on the jurisdiction. There are places that have laws that make it next to impossible to prove a pedestrian at fault. In Britain pedestrians have the right of way, drivers have to avoid them. You should expect that the pedestrian will step off the pavement onto the road and drive accordingly. That's the reason for a 30mph limit in built up areas. Talking of quiet vehicles in the old days trolleybuses were a problem as pedestrians sometimes used to step off the pavement in front of them because they didn't hear them.

As said in Britain Mothering Sunday is in March, we don't celebrate Victoria Day though. Also not everybody will be off work on the Diamond Jubillee weekend.

Sometimes places have different names according to which country you're in. In Britain we call it the Persian Gulf. Another example is the English Channel which the French call La Manche

Also mobile-phone theft is a growing type of theft. When you're not aware of your surroundings you not aware that you're about to become a victim until it's too late.

Lets not forget the value in rejuvenating a run-down part of a city. The Stratford area now has new transport links (both underground, overground and High-Speed rail),and a new shopping centre as well as the Olympic park, the new athletes accommadation will become affordable housing after the games, and it will leave many new venues for national sports and a new tower to rival the Eiffel Tower in Paris (at least in starting in the same vein). Add to that the proposed new river crossings including the Cable-Car from the Dome at Greenwich to Canary Wharf and the East London Bridge at Thamesmead/Dagenham and you can see a major update of the area taking place. All of this makes perfect economic sense for it to be hosted here, and it will be the first time London has hosted the games in their own right. Both 1908 and 1948 were last minute emergency measures, after a volcano in Italy and WW2 making the previously chosen hosts impractical.

Argentina has caused outrage by releasing an advert showing an Argentine athlete training on the Falklands including doing step exercises on a British War Memorial. It was filmed without permission early one morning. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-17948710

Best to sit at the back. You've never herd of a plane reversing into a mountain. Russian planes on test flights, reminds me of Concordski (Tupolev TU144?) Seriously though, I used to have a business which carried Russian school-girls from school to and from Heathrow airport. They would try to avoid flying Aeroflot and try to book British Airways mentioning the state of the Russian planes.

The UK had a government of National Unity during WW2 NOT a minority government.

Interesting program on TV (BBC 2) at 9pm last night, about this subject bbc.co.uk/iplayer. It is amazing how the people of both Germany and Greece still want to keep the Euro despite the difficulties it causes.

Car ferries only connect to other car ferry terminals, passenger ferries only connect to other passenger ferry terminals. You need at least two of the same type with power. Ferries will cross boarders to adjacent city tiles.

Might be likely to result in the break-up of the Eurozone with countries like Greece having to leave. I think the election of the far-right is a protest and I'd be surprised if it gets carried over to future elections.

Yes, because that's why we created the UN. I bet Mr Cameron sees the Security Council as the proper forum to spank Ms Kirchner. And making sure his top level diplomats bother their American, French, Russian and Chinese colleagues with ad shooting permits. Actually the British Government is playing down the issue and will not be taking any action. It's the people who are outraged, as most of us don't take kindly to people disrespecting war memorials. People who have done so in the past usually end up with a prison sentence.

The coming week is the anniversary of the begining of the Falklands conflict, which began with a Vulcan bomber raid on Stanley Airport, to render the runway unuseable for Argentine aircraft. The Vulcan bomber was a 1950's designed aircraft to deliver Britain's nuclear bomb. Accuracy wasn't an issue and the plane was due for imminent withdrawl. Parts had to taken from other scraped aircraft to fit it for the mission to carry ordinary bombs and drop them accurately. It flew to Ascension Island (a British island in the Mid-Atlantic) to start the mission. In order to fly to the Falklands they needed to re-fuel in Mid Air 7 times and devised a plan to use 12 fuel tankers which needed to re-fuel each other to get the one Vulcan plane to the Falklands. The RAF didn't have any maps of the South Atlantic so the crew had to turn a North Atlantic map upside down to plot the mission and the plane had to fly low for the last part in order to avoid Argentinian Radar. They then had to climb as they got to the Falklands and dropped their bombs whilst climbing. One bomb hit the runway, others hiting to the side of the runway and some destroyed aircraft. The Vulcan then had to fly back, meeting another re-fueling tanker just as it was about to run out of fuel.

I'm trying to keep things factual and historic for this 30th anniversary post. If we fail to remember we could repeat the same mistakes again.

Not a very nice way to describe Mrs Thatcher Who was talking about her? The Lion is Britannia! She only got to use the prod to get up a growl. Damned good for her it didn't have a horse's head handle. Albert didn't get away. The Royal Navy lost HMS Sheffield 30 years ago this week(Monday), the first loss of an RN ship since WW2. It then sank the Argentine Ship "The General Belgrano" a former US ship which survived Pearl Harbour.

Also making silly decisons. Sending 4 helicopters south on the same ship (Atlantic Conveyor) they only managed to get one off before the ship sank. That left the army without helicopter coverage and so they had to walk to Stanley (The Yomp).

Just to clear another muddied water, the entry in Stratford upon Avon's parish record for Shakespear's baptism is:- 1564, April 26, Guilemus filius Johannes Shakspere(sic) It is pure speculation and fancy to think that he was born on St. George's day (April 23rd) as his date of birth isn't recorded. The idea comes from an "old wives tale" that people were baptised 3 days after birth, although there is no evidence of any truth in this tale.