The Phantom

There were armed police up in Mt Murray on Friday night. Seeing as two of the perps are from Santon this must explain it! Either that, or the Braddan/Santon turf wars on the estate have really got out of hand.

They were both in Portsmouth about a month ago. Thank god we have a method of deploying naval airpower again (soon anyway).

If they are going to build them from scratch, adding a couple of auxiliary sails to help out a bit wouldn't be such a ridiculous idea. With the predominant SW winds, surely it would help at least the crossings to the mainland. Bring the carbon footprint down and no doubt the Starship Enterprise would love to brag about it.

Really? I'll have to have a hunt for it. Dan Snow does some pretty decent TV to be fair. If anyone ever thinks Google/Facebook et al have some form of market/world dominance, they should look into John Company and see what that really means!

'The Company' is genuinely fascinating on so many different levels. Brutal and horrendous, but incredible how such an entity came to be created. At one point, it was richer, more powerful and had a bigger army than Britain itself.

There were actually comparatively few 'British' troops in India. The vast majority of the British Indian Army were in fact Indians themselves (Sepoys) albeit with white British officers commanding. However the Sepoys would not be deployed into their native area, but would often be utilised against other regions they generally had a beef with. Divide and conquer, exploiting existing regional tensions. It's very similar to what the Romans did by recruiting native 'Auxiliary Regiments' into the Legions. In my experience in India and East Africa, the really weird thing is that a lot of these ex British Empire places still hold a bit of a soft-spot for Brits, despite what we did back in the day! I've got a bit of family history from both regions and when there and I mention this, it genuinely seems to break the ice and create a better relationship with the locals I'm dealing with.

Just with hot women. But joking aside the comment regarding curving pellet was more to demonstrate the inaccuracy of the things.

Speaking as someone who has been knifed, had real guns pointed at them and with a martial background. I would 100% rather facedown a person with a gun instead of a knife (up close). I remember being shot at with one of them from about 30 ft away. I actually saw the pellet curve towards me.

Yep, I remember the same. Anyone remember Gat Guns and those painful little darts they could fire (in addition to airgun pellets).

Kid with a knife. No suggestion he tried to use it. Probably just brought it in to show off. By all accounts, a somewhat poorly adjusted young man from a pretty unfortunate family background. Unfortunately I'd imagine he will get expelled and make it even more difficult for society to try and straighten him out.

AND environmental - training/living at altitude plus a history of success breeding success. I read an article once about the dominance of Caribbean/American athletes at other sports that suggested it was a result of the slave trade. Only the strong survived and this was then passed down through the generations. Kinda makes sense, but also a very sobering thought relating to unintentional eugenics....

Frankly I wouldn't believe anything China tell you. The figures are more than likely much higher. We're talking about a country that bans Facebook and Twitter. I was chatting to a guy in Mombasa a few years ago who was involved in the Port there. As part of the Chinese imperial drive into Africa, they are building a Port in Northern Kenya, very close to the Somali border. Anyone heard anything from the Somali pirates recently? I wonder where they have all gone! The UK has got MI5, America CIA, Israel Mossad etc etc. Does anyone even know the name of the Chinese secret services, yet alone what they get up to.

It was pretty cool to look around though. I had one of the best random chats ever, with a Cosmonaut about smuggling vodka into space (apparently you get drunk alot quicker). Taking guns with them (in case the capsule lands somewhere with loads of Polar Bears) and best of all, the capsule actually had mounting points for 'Space Guns' - this was just in case there was ever a hot war up there.

There is some weird complicated formula that works out the amount each practice gets per person based upon the demographic of their catchment. It seems that the population of that area is quite young (I'm guessing no retirement homes, lots of flats etc) which means they get less money per patient. The rationale being that young patients don't visit as often and therefore won't cost as much. Seems that the figures just didn't stack up when potential GPs (who are literal partners of the practice) looked at the books and the costs per patient. They wouldn't get paid enough to make it worth it.

I know some of the employment agencies actually advertise that they use investigators to check qualifications. I recently had to supply all my qualification certificates for a job and these were then double checked by https://www.expol.co.uk/ Of course this is the private sector, I don't know if the Govt also undertakes such diligence.