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16 years ago @ West Ham Till I Die - Stanislas - Right, Lef... · 0 replies · +1 points

Glad to get a little debate going. The point of the post wasn't to get everyone agreeing with me :)

Just for a full picture though, Hull have drawn 4 (31%) and lost 9 (69%) of their 13 league away games this season, including draws at Man City and Spurs .

16 years ago @ West Ham Till I Die - Stanislas - Right, Lef... · 6 replies · +1 points

Hi Iain. Not sure how interested you'd be in this but I've recently started a new blog aimed at using statistics to predict likely results. It's a little bare at the moment (ianssportsblog.wordpress.com), but for this week I give West Ham a 61% chance of beating Hull. Hopefully that gives you a reason to be extra-optimistic going into this weekend :)

16 years ago @ Dizzy Thinks - Time for emission equa... · 0 replies · +1 points

And the dealership can connect a computer to the car and download some software from Volvo that lets you turn the lights off. But you're right, it's not about the environment. It's about finding new ways to tax us.

Actually if you want a net zero-cost solution you can just put 10p extra tax on a litre of petrol and diesel and scrap VED altogether. You'd bring in about as much in total tax but people would pay proportional to the amount of CO2 their cars emit.

16 years ago @ Dizzy Thinks - Time for emission equa... · 1 reply · +1 points

In a similar vein, there is great unfairness in VED as well. This is now claimed as an environmental tax (drive a greener car and you pay less tax) but the fact is that a person who drives 30,000 miles per year in a Prius emits more CO2 than someone driving 12,000 miles in an X5, yet the BMW driver pays £200 more in car tax.

Now, we can argue whether it's right to base cost on CO2 all day, but if we are going to do that to try to reduce CO2 emissions it would be better if the cost was actually proportional to emissions.

16 years ago @ Dizzy Thinks - Gordon "pants on ... · 0 replies · +1 points

Isn't there an old children's logic problem involving meeting a bunch of people and one of them says 'I always tell the truth'?

Anyway, if it's true that he never lies then does that mean that all those years that he said borrowing would go down and it in fact went up he was simply incompetent, rather than untruthful. I don't know about you, but I think I'd rather be seen as dishonest over incompetent any day.

16 years ago @ Dizzy Thinks - Amending the Smoking Ban · 0 replies · +1 points

I'd have to disagree with you (breathing in lots of smoky air cannot be good for you after all), but I think the risk is massively overstated. The way anti-smoking campaigners say it you'd think that everyone who has ever come within 100 yards of someone smoking will die of cancer.

Before the ban, I spent many hours in smoky pubs and clubs and never felt any after effects once I'd had a shwoer and got some fresh air into my lungs. If I should develop lung cancer eventually I am sure it won't be because I used to hang around in smoky pubs.

Unfortunately, as with global warming, the voices of those who should catastrophe are heard louder than those shouting realism.

16 years ago @ Dizzy Thinks - Jacqui Smith - I won&#... · 0 replies · +1 points

Jeez. If Mrs Thatcher has been anything like the current crop of Labour women we'd have been banned from calling her the Iron Lady ("No, no, no, no. The Iron Person, if you please").

Smith, Harperson etc need to get over the fact that they are women. Nearly everyone else judges them by the quality, or lack thereof, of their work, and those who judge them for being women arne't worth listening to anyway.

16 years ago @ Dizzy Thinks - The few in the many · 0 replies · +1 points

I think he means that Woodward doesn't have an overdraft of £300,000, as you say in your piece.

So he's paid £21k interest on a debt of £300,000 that isn't an overdraft.

16 years ago @ Dizzy Thinks - Timewarping expenses c... · 0 replies · +1 points

Interesting. Best keep an eye out on the Telegraph over the weekend. That might shed some light over this one.

Maybe it's something to do with the think-tank Demos?

16 years ago @ Dizzy Thinks - What do you do when yo... · 0 replies · +1 points

My MP kindly charged the taxpayer for £180 worth of air filters for a BlueAir 402. I guess the air quality in her £1,100 a month home prevents her from completing her duties as an MP.

She also charged us nearly £1,700 in 07/08 for food (ten months worth, apparently the other two months she kindly paid for her food herself). That's only just less than I spend on food for myself for a whole year, except mine isn't a tax-free benefit.

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