Flatpackhamster

Mmm, but those aren't EVUL TORAYS and so we can gloss over their wicked crimes as amusing little pecadilloes. Because they've been corrupted by the system, see? It's not their fault, it's the system.

The civil service runs the economy, in the same way that they run the whole country. Look, your average minister is in place for 18 months, tops. He or she barely has time to get to know the ropes before there's an election or a reshuffle. Whereas your mandarin - he's had 30+ years of learning the system. He knows how everything works and how to get what he wants. A chancellor is often in place for longer. Clever chancellors, like Kenneth Clarke or Geoffrey Howe, bend the civil service to their will. Other chancellors - such as Gordon Brown - stuff the civil service with their cronies, which achieves a similar thing but also means that the Treasury is currently full of Labour staffers doing their damndest to shaft the Tories. Ministers sign what's put in front of them. They either have to be very forthright, devious or intelligent to get around doing what the civil service thinks is in the best interest of the country. A few manage it - Gove is a rare example in this parliament of a minister putting his stamp on a department (regardless of whether you agree with what he's doing, or, like MattX, have read in the Guardian that he's a bad man).

Oh look. A soundbite.

If you were capable of thinking beyond soundbites, you'd probably be asking the same question I was, which is "Why is it that the coalition and the Brown government's economic management are identical?" Chancellors don't run the economy.

Osborne is following the Brown government's plan for deficit reduction. Way to miss the point though.

Yeah, anyone would think that following Gordon Brown's recipe for running the economy would be a runaway success but it turns out that it's a total, total failure.

There's a pretty icing-sugar dusting on the high ground here, but nothing else.

We were given this one for our sprog which arrived in October. It seems to work very well. BT Baby Monitor Pacifier (058298) - BT Shop Seriously, though, I don't think you'll need anything fancy. Not even sure a monitor is necessary unless your house is colossal. The moment you hear a squeak, you're wide awake, any time of day or night.

How about stuff like this? Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History: Amazon.co.uk: Giles Milton: Books White Rajah: Amazon.co.uk: Nigel Barley: Books http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cochrane-Dauntless-Adventures-Admiral-1775-1860/dp/0747585458

You said he likes factual non-fiction stuff. What sort of stuff do you have in mind? History or science or art or wut?

Has he read Alastair Reynolds' books?

You may find that it doesn't cook evenly if you do that. I would be inclined to do the stuffing separately. Last year I did roast partridge for Christmas day, and you obviously can't stuff a partridge - well, not with much stuffing. So what I did was make a hefty 'sausage roll' stuffing, which was basically my stuffing mix rolled in to a sausage shape and wrapped in foil. I cooked it and when I served it I took the foil off and cut it in to rounds.

Turkey is a dry bird although the dryness tends to occur when you're cooking the whole bird, because different parts cook at different rates. A crown should be less of an issue. Is this the brining recipe?

Thank you for improving what I wrote. It's much more accurate. I trust that this satisfies those for whom a good time involves no direct social contact and no expression of festive joy. Next week, how 'Happy New Year' should be altered in order to satisfy both those of a non-heliocentric worldview and those who find the religious traditions of the Gregorian calendar an insult to their belief structure, or lack of one.

In my first post I wrote "Do it your own way". You ignored that. You're still ignoring it. Your post replying to mine was whingy and childish. If the cap fits... But no, I was just stating that I'm not judging your choice of lifestyle. It's not a religious holiday. There is no religious compunction to it. If you don't want to God it up you are not required to. It was a religious holiday. It no longer is. It is a state holiday, enforced by the government. No, people do those things and use religion as an excuse. Those people were good, or bad, before religion got anywhere near them. Sometimes religious fervour amplifies behaviour, such as the brutality of the Inquisition, or the brave men who refused to fight in the war but served as padres or medical orderlies. But it's the people, not the religion. So, we're still not getting 'Do it your own way', then?

Me, me, me. Because they don't throw their toys out of the pram when everyone around them is having a good time. And you think British muslims don't celebrate Christmas? I think you'd be surprised. The only ones who grumble are the religious extremists, and that's what you're sounding like. Militant atheism is as vicious and spiteful as militant Islam or militant Christianity. It's a sign of a closed mind. Firstly, it isn't a religious holiday. There is no religious compunction about it. It's a state holiday. That should cheer you up, after all, the government's in charge. You're treated differently because you're telling people to treat you differently. So they do. I'm an atheist and have been for 25 years. But that doesn't mean I stamp my little foot about how awful it is that there's still religious holidays. I respect other people's beliefs even though I know they're wrong. I embrace the spirit (my homemade sloe gin) of the season, I try to spread a little cheer and an awful lot of food and ale around. My wife will go to church on Christmas Eve and I'll stay at home with the baby and do some cooking, and feed the cat some roast partridge. We'll get together with my C of E friends and my catholic friends and my atheist friends and we'll drink and eat and wish each other a happy Christmas, because Christmas isn't about a Magic Sky Being, it's about people. You'd have a far more enjoyable time during your Atheist Winterval WorkBreak if you unwound your righteous indignation and just accepted that Christmas is going to happen all around you. I'm not the one throwing a temper tantrum because the world won't do what I want. You sound like you're nine years old. Me, me, me, I want, I want, I want.

Well, I hate to break it to you, but the 'religious holiday' that's 'forced' upon you was around long before you were and will be around long after you're dust. So you can either ignore it or you can enjoy it, but either way, it's going to happen. Getting your knickers in a twist about how people aren't respecting your right to be miserable isn't going to change that. As for the 'obsession with gathering' - nobody's saying you have to get together. I haven't said you 'should' enjoy Christmas with others. If your idea of a good time is sitting in your mum's basement for the whole of December, hating the world, eating cheesy wotsits then knock yourself out.

There's your problem. You're getting your views from a bunch of po-faced misanthropes who, with luck, will be first against the wall when the revolution comes. Christmas is a good time. You don't have to run around spending money you don't have an talking to people you don't like. Do it your own way. Switch off the TV and watch a film on DVD instead. Go to the pub. Spend some time with people you haven't seen for ages. Help someone out. I love to cook for family and friends, I love to make mince pies and sausage rolls and my boozy christmas brownies and hand them out to cold carollers. I like seeing friends, and drinking too much. This year will be my baby daughter's first Christmas, and while she's too small to appreciate it, it's an added bit of joy for us. Sitting around whining about how awful Christmas is instead of making it a good time for yourself and your loved ones is your problem here. If it's a bad time for you, make it a good time. If you've nobody to enjoy Christmas with, find some other people who are in the same position and get together and all make lunch together and share that time.

I have 3 Shuttle XPCs in the house. The newest is mine, and that's about 3 years old - a Quad-core Q9300 with 4GB RAM. The bootable drive is a 120GB OCZ Vertex SSD. It runs XP Pro. I've got an Athlon64X2 running Win7 Pro (unstable) and a Sempron running XP Pro (semi-stable). Otherwise, a pair of NAS drives, the main one being a Netgear ReadyNas Duo with a pair of 2TB mirrored drives in it. And I've got an ancient P4 15" Dell Latitude laptop, which also runs XP, and still works fine. Finally got the TV (Panasonic 42" plasma) connected via a Wi-Fi card to the network over the weekend. Call myself a geek? Only just, looking at the lack of funky gadgetry in my house.

The Continentals on my Focus cost £190 apiece to replace. *sigh* They're a bigger tyre because I went for larger wheels as an optional extra. The car looks prettier, but my wallet is an awful lot lighter.

Including how many people had to service her before she worked properly? Shame on you!

That isn't just a technicality. It could just be that Mattx was trolling since he must know the difference between avoidance and evasion.

It's certainly lost on me.

Apparently Witch was dirty when they got their hands on her. I'm shocked.

It's still in deficit and it will remain so and that deficit will be paid by taxpayers like me who can not afford to save for their own retirement but are expected to featherbed public sector workers. I find it extraordinary that people who are nominally of the Left and who claim to be so exercised by 'fairness' are prepared to defend a brutally inequitable scheme. And this is exactly the problem. The attitude is 'oh, it can be dealt with later, it doesn't matter'. We've had 13 years of that attitude and I'm fed up to the back teeth with it. Public sector pensions deficit? Oh, leave it for later. State pension deficit? Oh, leave it for later. PFI? Oh, leave it for later. EU rebate? Oh, leave it for later. Thanks to Bodgit Labour's "Fix it later" attitude we're spending the equivalent of twice the defence budget servicing the interest on our debts. Those debts don't include PFI, of course, or the public sector or state pension deficits, because all of those are 'off book'. This country needs fiscal discipline and it needs it yesterday. HAahahaha. Anyone opting out of a state pension system would be barking mad. Even with a decent level of contribution such as you'd pay in the private sector, there is no better, safer place for you (as a public sector worker) to stash your money. That's what we call 'gambling'. Given the state of the global economy for the foreseeable future, it's a recipe for disaster. No, the shortfall must be made up by contributions or it just won't happen and in 20 years' time we'll all be saying "Oh look, a huge public sector pension deficit". That brings them close to the situation felt by the private sector. Except the private sector don't have a secure pension and private sector salaries grew slower than public sector ones. In fact, by 2007 the average public sector salary was higher than that in the private sector. Oh, that sounds like such a small sum, until you remember that over half of local government workers are part time, a majority of them have not contributed for their whole working life, and it's paid out every year for an average of 30 years and that, to achieve that pension pot a private sector worker would have to put away something like 25% of their salary. Yes. If the unions are happy with that deal, it's too light.