h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Gooday Wazungu, StM and Bran,

Just a quick response to your request for info, Bran. The notion of the 'Nine Worthies' really took hold in the thirteenth century, and the nominated 'champions' were the subject of an impressive canon of art and literature. Variations on the theme abound, for instance there were later added nine 'female worthies' (who says political correctness didn't flourish in medieval times?). One list had eighteen names, and even the nine do vary.

But the 'standard' list is Joshua, David, Judas Maccabaeus, Hector, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, King Arthur, and Godefroi de Bouillon (Godfrey of Bolougne); thus three each of Jewish, Gentiles (or pagan) and Christians. In medieval times there was little debate about who was in the nine, but there was some disagreement about how they were portrayed i.e. Alexander on an elephant, Hector on horseback instead of aboard a chariot, and why some of the guys are shown with their feet in stirrups.

There are at least two lists of women, but the one that corresponds in thematic and programmatic terms to the men's list is: Hester, Judith, Jael, Lucretia, Veturia, Virginia, St Helen, St Birgitta and St Elizabeth of Hungary.

The 'lists' are sort of endlessly debatable - a kind of medieval version of 'name your nine favourite people in history' parlour game. For me, the interest in the 'standard' nine worthies lies in the fact that medieval society adopted them so to speak, and therefore this can tell us a lot about medieval thought and culture.

Shakespeare has some fun with the concept in Act V of 'Love's Labour's Lost', about half-way through Scene 2.

Must go - I've probably made some mistakes here, but you can suss the general picture I hope. Take care y'all

Walter.

Evening all

Your ma's bathroom sounds like a nautical extravaganza Wazungu. Ideas for the other wall: Captain Nemo, some nautiluses, an albatross, some iguanas, horseshoe crabs, a cycads, a politician walking the plank, a seaweed curry with poppadoms (gasp for breath). I expect I'm too late with my suggestions and the jobs finished. It sounds wonderful. Hope your mother can live with it. Otherwise she might consider getting one of those tin baths that you take in front of the fire. Only joking. I bet she loves it.

I would appreciate it if you wouldn't plant the idea of my seasonal beverages in my mind for about another 6 weeks. That's when it should be ready. Don't want to go drinking it before it's reached full maturity. Don't want to spoil the ship for a hap'orth of tar (just trying to get back to the nautical theme).

Another BSE story came up yesterday or the day before. Now a company has had to withdraw supplies of polio vaccine because it had given false assurances that certain cows wouldn't be used in making it. The company had lied and breached safety regulations. On and on it goes.

That programme was on again Walter. This is what they said, as far as I can remember. If Henry VIII hadn't wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon or if the pope had allowed him to divorce her then: America would be Spanish, England would be an obscure little southern European type of catholic country instead of a northern European protestant country with a language spoken only by it's people and Shakespeare would've been almost unknown. Mary I and Phillip II of Spain would've ruled England instead of Elizabeth I. We'd be a backwater of the Hapsburg empire.

Your surroundings sound like some classic idyll. It's probably a good thing that you have those spur-winged plovers to keep you in touch with reality. And Ben, of course, munching his way through all your little treasures. It's a wonder he doesn't get any splinters in his mouth - love him.

The floods seemed pretty bad to us Case, because we don't have many really bad natural disasters here. I don't think anyone was killed in the floods. A man from Uckfield was washed away but was found a mile or so down stream, shaken and upset but not actually injured. We're very fortunate indeed and the floods you mentioned make ours seem tame by comparison.

Your triple posting accident - I expect we've all posted one twice before now. The best thing to do is just post it once and if it seems slow or you get cut off for some reason, just assume it's gone through because 99% of the time it will have done. Go and have a look in 15 or 20 minutes and you'll find it's there even though you didn't think it got posted properly.

How could a person possibly forget their twin's birthday Bran? You'd have to forget you were a twin, wouldn't you?

Those Viking enthusiasts must really get into it. I hope you don't furnish them with anything too sharp, in case someone gets carried away.

Now that we're interested parties, do you suppose we'll ever get to read the Tome?

Speak to you all later.
Sal

Good evening Walter, Sal, Bran and Case.

Walter, I remember jasmine on the porch........ and golden shower over the roof, bouganvillea on the trellis........ It made me feel really homesick reading that post except that it's not for home. No blackbirds 'tho. That sounds like another introduction. The equivalent bird would have been the layard bulbul. Same size and character, but not black.

Sal, the bathroom is not finished, it only gets done when my brother's down for the weekend. Which gives plenty time for planning (and for Mum to get used to it gradually!). He'll love the Nautiluses I think. An albatross is a must. And crabs. I think the politician would be vetoed!

I'd heard about the polio vaccine. I assume they get prosecuted for that. I heard something more encouraging this morning. Tony Benn said "The environmental movement is so strong it can't be ignored." on Radio 4 this am. I hope that's true. It was in relation to Tony Blair's speech today on the environment which I haven't heard.(Been out Scots dancing all evening.) Anyway it's encouraging.

I suppose you would have to forget your twins birthday if you forgot your own. I had never heard of the nine worthies 'til now. Sounds more like a set of aldermen and bishops than the likes of Hector and Charlemagne.

Case, like Sal I've found that once I've pressed the post button it does go through, even when I've been disconnected or timed out. But I always write long posts in notebook now and save them - just in case!

I think you can have a real influence on youngsters even just on a trip round a recreation area. If you catch their interest and sow the seeds of the basic ideas some will carry on picking up information, even without more formal education. That's needed too, I'm just saying that your "rudimentary level" can be valuable.
Until next time,
Wz

Evening again everyone,

Just a quick one - this is an emergency.

Wazungu CONGRATULATIONS! Your Sands of Forvie is on the front page. It's in the edited guide. I've just been to read it and leave you a little note at the foot of the page. It's a really good article and I enjoyed it very much. It's so full of your enthusiasm for the place that I want to go there. When ever I'm able to travel again, I'm going to collar my cousins in Glasgow and go bird watching with them. They WILL enjoy it!

Why is the politician out by the way? Is it the thing about walking the plank? You could always have him being dragged into the fathomless depths by a giant squid ... no? Ah well, just a thought.

I saw the item on Newsnight about Tony Blair's green speech. They had George Monbiot (I know that's spelt wrong) and Michael Meacher (that probably is too) interviewed by Kirsty Wark (and that). George was saying that Tony ducked the 2 main issues: GM/Organic farming and provision of public transport so that fuel tax could be raised with a clear conscience (excuse my paraphrasing). He said that the govt was spending £52,000,000 on GM research to produce food crops for which there was no public demand and that 70% of the public was opposed to. Meanwhile, it was spending almost nothing to help organic farmers who want to grow food for which there is demand - for at least twice as much as can currently be supplied, in fact. Tony Benn usually knows what he's talking about. I think he's right and Mr Blair had better wake before we get another chance to vote.

Good night all.
Sal

Greetings and Salutations Everyone!

Walter, I am as ever horribly impressed by the amount of knowledge you possess. Is this something that was just in your head? Wow. Thanks very muchly for the detail, it has been most useful.

Waz, I have just read your new article off the home page. Excellent work! A very inspiring and uplifting piece. Congratulations. How about one on Barra - or is this already in the pipeline?

Sal, you may certainly read the Tome when it is done, if you want to be inflicted with highly detailed and pedantic arguments about how Anglo-Saxons and British Celts got on with each other! Walter calls my writing "dense" - which I take as a compliment, but it is a little heavy. None-the-less, I am flattered that you asked, and shall endeavour, in a little under a year, to make a finished copy available somehow. I do plan to get it published when the dust has settled. It seesm to be the sort of thing that attracts interest from a range of people, so there might be a market.

Speaking of which ... back to it.
Cheerio
Bran.

Gooday Wazungu, StM and Bran,

Wazungu, what a little beauty! Editor's choice, I am so thrilled for you.

The bougainvillea; oh yes, and the flame trees, and the wisteria that looks so wonderful but chokes the life out the host trees. And jacarandas. And isn't there such a difference between the perfumes of hot-climate flowers and cold-climate flowers? And in hot climates the flowers are generally more gaudy, flashy. And the bulbuls, we have those too, but not I think in Tasmania.

StM, you are spot on about governmental financing of GE/GM stuff, when there is no demand for it, no better than superficial information and even less understanding of what it all really means, and when the population at large simply doesn't want it or doesn't approve of it. On the other hand, the demand for GENUINE organically-grown produce is staggering, far outstripping supply, and providing existing producers with healthy markets and opening up plenty of opportunities for new enterprises. Plus it is GREAT for consumers. A couple of egsamples (sorry). This State has been at the forefront of the fight against battery hen egg production. The response from a succession of governments (once in office of course) is that consumers won't wear the added expense of buying free-range eggs. Most days, you can't buy free-range eggs after about noon, they are all sold out. Same story with chickens for the table. We only buy fresh breast fillets that are guaranteed to come from free-range chooks that haven't been stuffed full of steroids, growth hormones, and all manner of other iffy things in their feed etc; you've got to be quick to get them, though. Same story with orange juice: a new, totally organic, totally Australian brand has recently come onto the market - we can't seem to find it on the shelves after about 9.00am, and believe me we've tried. I complained to the supermarket that they should be getting more in and their answer was that the producers had been compelled to 'ration' supplies because demand had just gone cosmic, far exceeding their capacity to produce. Sure, the eggs and the fillets and the juice costs an extra fifty cents or so, but people are more than willing to pay for great taste and peace of mind, and as a small but definite way of saying 'I do care a bit'. And none of these products comes in plastic!! What a long-winded way of getting to my point, which is: why don't governments put up for grabs JUST ONE PER CENT of the money they provide in research funds and tax breaks and incentives to GE/GM companies, and give organic farmers and producers some stimulus? I guess there will be pork (organic of course) in the tree tops first.

Just quickly: Bran is right, saying that his writings are 'dense' is intended as a compliment, in the sense that the stuff is chock-full of esoteric content, detail and meticulous research. You probably wouldn't swap anyone's thesis for the latest Harry Potter as a companion for a long train journey, but there is no gainsaying Bran's mastery of the subject or the quality of his writing.

Must get back to my jottings, so take care y'all,

Walter.

Good evening everyone,
Thank you for all the very nice comments on Forvie. I'm glad you liked it. I love the place. I go there whenever I get the chance to go to Aberdeen. I would like to do an entry on Barra, Bran, but there must be people who know a lot more about the island than I do. Shouldn't it be written by a MacNeil? I found writing the Forvie entry that there was so much I thought I knew but didn't how I knew it and had to check up on. I'm trying to get the facts about the village I live in for a guide entry. That's proving difficult! (Thanks in part to previously mentioned librarians.)Barra might in fact be easier.

Walter you are right about hot climate flowers' perfume, even at night, how about frangipanis and moonflowers .
I used to spend a fair amount of time up jacaranda trees. But even more in the mulberry trees with the weaver birds.


The politician Sal? How do you depict one without it being a particular one? There is no way my mother would have a recognisable politician staring at her from the bathroom wall. The more I think about it the more it sounds like a good idea! Which one? Tony Blair being eaten by a sardine tin shaped three eyed two headed fish with eight fish fingers and four tails? This morning I heard on the radio that the 100% sustainable, no carbon emissions diesel fuel for cars, being made from waste cooking oil, has the same tax rate imposed on it as normal fossil fuels. Even when it's not commercially produced and the oil has been collected from local restaurants who would otherwise have put it down the drain.

If TB supported the environment he'd cut tax on sustainable sourced fuel and VAT on organic produce.( Roseate Proboscidea first.) I think organic food typically costs about 30% more than non organic here but in the last few months much more organic produce has become available. Nearly everything I bought at Tesco today was organic. Consumer pressure seems stronger these days than electoral pressure. The only reason I know of for organic producers not getting the government support that GM research does is that they don't have the lobbying power of the businesses behind GM. So who runs the country, the electorate or companies like Monsanto (for egsample)? But then companies like Monsanto need consumers, which is us again. I think I've just proved to myself that the government is superfluous in this equation, which cannot be! So I'll stop writing anymore nonsense.
'til later
Wz.

Why are politicians always idiots? What is wrong with the democratic system - that there are never any good guys to vote for, or that the majority of voters are always too stupid to vote for the good guys?

I try to always buy organic foods. We have a store over here with a no pesticide, no chemicals, no GM rule, and we buy most of our food there. I only use the eggs from free-range chickens. And yes, they come in biodegradable cardboard boxes. It costs a little more, but I'm paying that extra money for two important causes: 1) the quality of life of the chickens 2) the peace of my own conscience. And an additional benefit is that I am sure that these eggs are more nutritious than those produced by the "battery" chickens who never get to even move in their lives.

We must encourage people to stop supporting the companies that have ecologically or socially harmful policies! Consumer education! If the consumers turn away from those companies, they're dead. They can do nothing if nobody buys their products. Inform people! I think I must do more on that front myself. I don't really talk to many other people about being "green" - over here, people seem to not care very much about that. But I'll keep on trying.

As for my trees and other plants, I still think that is the best way I'll be able to show people in a concrete way what beauty and biodiversity exists in nature. For many, nature is somewhere else, a far off reserve that they have to pay lots of money to go to. But they can have a lot of it in their own back yards. Wild African trees have simply never been widely available to suburbanites; they usually plant imported trees in their gardens, with the result that there is very little wildlife to be found there. But this is going to change. Me and others are now very enthusiastically propagating indigenous plants. That will be a first step in making suburban areas more natural - in my own garden, since I've been replacing the exotic trees with indigenous ones, I've noticed that a lot of "wild birds", that usually never come into gardens, have been arriving regularly. It is quite astonishing just how many "wild birds" there are - in the area of my town there are about ten species that regularly come into gardens, but about three hundred that don't. That's not to mention the insects. I believe natural plants in gardens might boost invertebrate biodiversity by a factor of a hundred or a thousand.

But after convincing people to use natural SPECIES I would still have to convince them about structuring those species in such a way that they will constitute a fairly well balanced ecosystem, providing the maximum of microhabitats. Not all ecosystems can be represented in gardens, but a South African garden can be designed to be similar to a "bush clump" surrounded by grass, such as is commonly found in the savannah. Bigger gardens can be made into open savannah parkland, or forest surrounded by grassland, or a small wetland. The goal would be to let suburban areas be ecologically continuous with surrounding natural areas. Just by doing that my country will gain a great deal of additional land for conservation. Even though big creatures like rhinos and hippos and leopards can't yet be accommodated in gardens, there is a vast range of little creatures that can: frogs, lizards, snakes, tortoises, shrews, hedgehogs, elephant shrews, bats, bushbabies, monkeys, mongooses, weasels, polecats, badgers, small cats, small foxes, pangolins, wild mice, wild rats, squirrels, porcupines, rabbits, hares, hyraxes, small antelope. Not to mention birds!

As for how to encourage people to buy organic foods, I don't know about that yet, but I'll be thinking.

Bye for now!
Case

Evening everyone

I thought I was going to be able to take my time and write one of those long messages of mine that probably make you yawn but are important for getting it out of my system. Fortunately for you all however, my chum is coming over to visit and put a spoke in my wheel and save you from my ramblings.

Wazungu, if nobody on Barra is a member of h2g2, the task will naturally fall to you. We know you have a talent for it. That entry on the Sands of Forvie was just great!

Bran, you won't catch me shirking a read just because it's densely packed with information - so long as I'm not expected to write an essay about it afterwards. Perhaps you could get it on the net so it's accessible to a wider readership. I haven't forgotten that we're waiting to read your article in the e-journal, The Heroic Age, by the way.

Walter, Tony Blair changed his tune on GM slightly in his big green speech. He didn't say much but what he did say was that he was neither pro nor anti. That's a change. He was very pro up until recently. Still, just because a politician says a thing, doesn't mean it's so. Whatever comes out of their mouths seems to bear little relation to facts. Your politicians sound a bit more reliable than ours though, so perhaps I shouldn't tar them all with the same brush.

Trouble is, as you pointed out Wazungu, the government's policies don't reflect their stated aims, so how can you take them seriously. I think that's because their stated aims very often aren't their actual aims. They're driven by political ambition not altruism and I, for one, simply don't trust them.

I think the reason there are not many good guys to vote for, Case, is that good guys aren't power hungry and wouldn't want to get their hands dirty with politics.

It's not good, she'll be here any moment and I won't be ready. Speak to you all sssoooonnn.

Sal

Evening all,
Just a short post because it's late. I've been visiting rather than being visited Sal. And I was looking forward to one of your long posts.
There are some good guys to vote for. But, not being power hungry, they tend to belong to parties that haven't a hope of having power!
I still haven't seen TB's green speech, it's not the sort of news that gets into the local paper. Becoming neutral on GM is an improvement. Walter, you talk about Tasmania's government not allowing GM research. Is that a regional government? Are you independent of the Australian government?

Over here, Case, the organic movement has been helped by the growing distrust of statements that various non organic foods are safe. Beef and BSE being the obvious, maybe most influential, instance. But it started before that with, for example, cases of sheep farmers blaming severe illnesses on organophosphates followed by organisations like Friends of the Earth publishing results showing organophosphate residues in carrots. Now the Consumers Association, a very staid and respectable lot compared to F.O E., are also publishing test results on pesticide, and other, residues in foods.
I think if I had to identify my small garden with a local habitat it would be a hedgerow. A mature tall hedgerow with lots of undergrowth and very untidy. A perfect home for hedgehogs, so where are they?
'til tomorrow,
Wz.

Good Morning Everyone

Sunny, rainy, windy, sunny, rainy, etc, over here this morning! Ahh ... spring in Tasmania. We are about to go shopping so a quick post.

Waz, we have a three-tiered political system, so that we have (1) the commonwealth or federal government that is based in Canberra and led by the prime minister; (2)then we have state governments for the various states, such as Tasmania, NSW, Victoria, Queensland, etc, and led by a premier; (3) and then we have local government for "cities" or "shires" within the states, led by mayors or some other title. So, while we in Tassie are under the pressure from the commonwealth government in Canberra about GM and accepting all sorts of imported goods, the state government has refused to come to the party. Usually, the three levels of government are meant to have separate authorities and interests and powers, but they very often overlap, and this is one case where they appear to. Very confusing I guess ... you'll no doubt have to deal with similar issues with Welsh and Scottish devolution ... but I guess it keeps more checks and balances within the system. Walter would know more about all this and if I have made any errors in my description.

Sal, you may certainly read The Tome. The article in Heroic Age is not out yet, but thanks for remembering and I'll let you know as soon as ...

And I agree with you Sal that Waz is the best person for the Barra job ( Iseem to remember reading an entry last year that had Barra in it - might need to do a search to see). Still, any existing entry would be nowhere as good as Waz's!!

Best off and get ready.

Have a great weekend everyone.
Cheers
Bran.

Bran, if you don't mind me asking - what kinds of trees and other plants are there in Tasmania? Must be a lot of really fascinating stuff. I know there are southern Beeches (Nothofagus), but not much else. Are there Eucalypts? There are probably quite a number of tree genera that Tassie has in common with South Africa.

Just how many people have been/are affected by that BSE beef? The newspaper of this morning had an article about it saying the estimates range from a hundred or so to two million. All that this tells me is that it is very difficult to estimate the negative effects that something might have, and therefore we must be very, very careful. We need better testing procedures, and we need politics that is sufficiently independent from business and agriculture that the politicians will not be influenced, and we need business and agricultural principles that go beyond the profit motive to public responsibility, a social conscience. How the hell do we do that?

I mean, just the POSSIBILITY that two million people might die because the politicians said everything was fine when everything was NOT fine is something horrible to contemplate.

But the Tasmanian system does seem a bit more balanced. I hope for their sake that it remains so. Nowadays big companies and other economic entities can be more powerful than the governments of the vast majority of the world's countries. They use brainwashing and bribery to entrench their power, and the common man is helpless against them. I hope we can soon manage to change that.

Greetings! (which reminds me, Shrewsbury put its Christmas lights up on Friday! And Halloween not yet passed.)

Shropshire today is soggy, no other word for it. So I've only been out for a quick visit to Nantwich. There is a collection of black and white half timbered buildings in the centre. I thought of you Walter, looking at them, - they were all rebuilt in 1584 after "the great fire". Tudor times. They're round the town square, reached from Pillory Street, passing the firmly padlocked stocks on the way. In the square today was a farmers' market, lots of local farmers standing behind stalls of cheeses, sausages, fruit, veg., cakes and Cheshire apple juice.

Thanks for the information Bran. I'd forgotten the commonwealth bit! That must be just about irrelevant now, isn't it? I have another, really tedious, question, apologies in advance - but which level of government has the real tax raising power? I know its very sad to want to know such a thing. We may have to deal with similar issues of overlapping interests in Wales and Scotland one day, but probably not until the parliaments there are taken seriously. Which won't be until they can raise significant taxes.

Case, they don't know how many may be affected by BSE. Its very difficult to diagnose with certainty without a post mortem and it can have a very long incubation period without symptoms. They were playing down the numbers but yesterday a report that an elderly man had died of new variant CJD (the one linked to BSE) suggested that a wider age group may be affected, than was previously thought. But they talk in terms of hundreds to hundred thousands, not millions, here. It isn't all due to politicians to be fair. Its apparent now that scientists and doctors were playing word games in the statements they made about BSE. They seem to have tailored their words to fit the objectives of the organisations asking for their advice. An accepted part of political life but not what I expected in issues where public health was concerned.
The BSE issue also goes back beyond those statements about the safety of beef. It goes back to the principle of feeding species of herbivores the meat products of their own, and other species. Questions on the advisability of this were brushed aside. In a similar way to the way questions on GM safety were to begin with. We need more Tasmanias. .

On your question about businesses and social responsibility, do you have an ethical investment movement in SA? I think the Americans call it something along the lines of socially responsible investing.

I must get something for tea. No beef! Until later,
Wz

Good evening sloe gin drinkers,
Did you know they found sloes in the back pack of the bronze age man that was found frozen in a glacier not so long ago? Just a thought, for next time you add the ice cubes .
Wz.

Good afternoon everyone.

I think you mean good afternoon Wazungu. You sent that message at about 4.45 pm. You've been disorientated by the clocks going back. It's almost pitch dark and pouring with rain here (just gone 5 pm now). I'm frozen to the marrow, just having returned from a dog-walk-cum-deluge. I hope you weren't implying that poor bronze age man suffered a sloe death, were you?

I'm going to do you another message in a few hours - when I'm warmer and drier. My brother will probably be here soon. He suffers from sad so-and-sos syndrome so as soon as the clocks go back he starts visiting me on a Sunday when it gets to dark to do any more gardening and I'm forced to sit and drink cider or wine with him to cheer him up. It's terrible really. hic.

Oh, oh, by the way Wazungu, a nice young entity called Minesweep Goddess was recommending your Safari Tips article over at Peer Review last night (early hours of this morning to be more accurate) so I had the pleasure of informing her that she was quite correct and it was an excellent entry and already in the edited guide.

Speak to you all later.
Sal

Evening, well night really.

Yes Sal, it was afternoon. But this time of year what's the difference! Hope you've dried out, (referring to surface water there, not implying anything about wine and cider ).

Thanks for telling me about the Safari entry, there shouldn't be any more confusion now.
Speaking of guide entries, have you read Case's Okapi one? It's excellent. It reminded me of the "Fish Caught in Time" story.
Until tomorrow, (17 minutes away! I wish they wouldn't mess with the clocks here).
Wz.

Evening all

Another quick one. The problem with the good politicians is that they're in parties that probably won't get elected, like the Green Party (of which I'm a member). If they ever got to a position where they were likely to get into power all the rotten, power hungry, megalomaniacal types would leave the less electable parties and join the Greens. Probably.

I'll go and have a look at Case's Okapi entry shortly. If it's anything like his Giraffe piece, I'm sure it'll be very good. I've just got galvanised again. I'm putting the finishing touches to my Bacteriophage article. I've been researching for it since I finished the Cicada entry. If anyone has any suggestions for its improvement, while it's still undergoing modifications, you know I'd be pleased to receive them.

Speak to you all later.
Sal

Good Morning Everyone

It is a stunning day today ... clear blue sky, sun streaming in the house, heading for a top of 20 celcius or so! It is this sort of day that makes me come over all motivated and happy!

Good question about taxes Waz. This is where I would really need Walter to check up with. But, as far as I know, it is the commonwealth government that has the lion share of the tax-raising powers: income tax, GST, company tax, etc. The states do raise taxes in terms of tariffs and duties I expect, and they used to have a cut in sales tax I think (until GST came in in July), but I am not sure exactly what states can tax. The states get money from the commonwealth - there is a premier's meeting every year where they fight over it. So, in that sense, the true power is with the commonwealth.

Oh, did any of you hear about some damage that has occurred in Cornwall to two of the ancient stone monuments: the Men-an-Tol and Lanyon Quoit? I had heard that someone covered them in petrol and set them alight. Can anyone confirm this appalling bit of news?

Must off to the seventh century.
Cheerio All
Bran.

Good evening again,
Here we've had a stunningly damp day again. Drove home through the flood jams in the dark. It's this sort of day that makes me feel like hibernating! Shrewsbury's Christmas lights look a little odd hanging over deserted flooded streets.

Thanks for the taxes information. I think I get the picture. The state government level sounds like our county level but must have a much higher profile. No county council here could declare themselves GM free zones. Although some of them used to declare themselves nuclear free. There must have been some sort of planning approval needed where radioactive material was concerned or they couldn't have done that. We'd need planning rules for GM to go GM free a local level. Would you trust your local councillors with GM decisions Sal?

BTW congratulations on the bacteriophages, 4 days from peer review to recommended is good going. And your answer did make sense, thanks.

I hadn't heard about the Cornwall story Bran. But that doesn't mean anything. The Shropshire Star wouldn't write about Cornwall unless they needed to fill up a bit of space. I was going to see if the BBC website had an archive for news stories but haven't had time tonight.

For Walter.

*Potato Competition Newsmash!*
The Ash Millennium Potato Competition is coming to the boil! (Or descending into half-baked farce.) Some results have been leeking through to the pub, (where a right meal is being made of running this event). One entry was reported in at 35lbs. This has now been (s)mashed by a 40lb result from Pete-of-The-Croft. Not all results are in however. Pete may yet be chipped at the post by the very competitive Camelot gardeners.

On a less appeeling note; a very depressing lack of competitive spirit has led some competitors to eat their entries. Without the physical proof, their reported weights will have to be disqualified as just so much moonshine.

Well enough of all that, 'til later,
Wz.