dieseltaylor

Yosss I suspect that is because of the first past the post voting system. If every vote was counted and lead to the election of people on the basis of votes received then it would make it more likely for people to vote for what they believe. Currently if you do not vote for one or other of the leading parties then your vote is wasted. So if the two leading parties decide not to differ on a subject then it is irrelevant what large numbers of the public believe as it will not get aired either way.

I have been trying to think of an analogy and the best I can imagine is this: I want to race my horese against your horse and we agree to bet on the result. Now if I bet on your horse you might think it a bit odd. It also presents the problem that a bet needs two sides and if you and I are betting the same way ...... Fortunately for us there is a bookie [GS] who will provide people with the ability to bet on the race. Now the bookie knows that both the owners are betting against one horse but they do not mention that fact to the punters. In fact the bookie is also betting on the duff horse failing and is prepared therefore to give great odds about the race and leans on the tipsters [rating agencies] who are pressured to say that the race is going to be close and the odds are pretty good. In fact the bookie leans on three tipsters just to make them keen to be his favourite. After all a tipster likes to have inside knowledge to report and look good. SO how do I know my horse is not going to win. Well I have a friend called Paulson make up the feed for the horse and on the day of the race I am going to give him a fairly unhealthy diet. Its not like I have done anything illegal like dope the horse though. Of course if punters knew I was using Paulson feed for my horse they would probably run a mile as he has a really iffy reputation BUT if necessary I could tell them that Paulson is actually betting on the horse to win. To take it back to the mortgage market. Mortgages used to be held by a Building Society or a Savings and Loan. That was the two parties at the horse race a direct transaction involving two people who had a vested interest in the house and the mortgage being repaid. Then they invent the financial package where the loans can be bundled up and sold to another party. So I buy a bundle from your SL/BS for $10M covering 5000 mortgages and they service the loan and pass some of the interest on to me. Now I have been very cautious and I have only taken mortgages that have 10 years to run, there is lots of collateral and no defaults. Being thats pretty A grade then the SL/BS are only going to give me small interest - say 2% and keep the rest themselves. From the SL/BS point of view they get a wodge of cash and can do mortgages, earning more commissions, and growing the company so everyone is happy. They do the process again and other companies get involved. Mortgages become easier to get and house prices rise. Of course there are only so many lenders with a good track record and equity in the house. To attract new money to take on the packages the SL/BS pay higher interest rates. Of course higher interest rates may kill the market slightly but if the SL/BS offers some of the really good stuff and some of the riskier stuff overall with house prices going up buyers are still well covered by the value of the mortgages in the package. Now this is where it gets more fun. AIG will insure the package for me for added security and for very cheap rates. And if just one part of that package goes tits up then AIG will pay me and take the package out of myhands. Sweet, I would be an idiot not to do it. Analogy time. You buy a fleet of cars for $1M and rent them out. If one guy stops paying then you trot off to AIG and say here are the keys to my car fleet, its yours now as I want to collect on the policy. Now if your fleet value was going up good for AIG but if the value is tanking it is a disaster. I do wonder if I were unscrupulous whether I would pay off the AIG guy writing the policy to make it so one-sided. Or can I just rely on the pressure for him to meet underwriting targets and get bonuses. However there is another avenue I can use, I get a rating agency to confirm all the people I rent my cars to are leading members of the community to make it really easy for the AIG guy to give me a really low premium. There is two more major wrinkle. I have a friend and he offers me one of his old packages and I buy part of it but lay off some of the risk by going to IAG or similar saying this package was rated AAA in 2003 so give me a very fine rate. They go OK write some more business and pocket the commission. Now the really exciting part is I decide to average my risk out and sell my goodish stuff which was $10M spread over 5000 mortgages. I decide what I will do is take a bet on various bundles of mortgages so my risk is spread over 20 bundles of mortgages which contain 100000 mortgages - must be less risky! I can minimise my costs because there are companies offering me this kind of package. They will sell me synthetic bonds which are actually just bets on which way the market will go. This from Wiki So there you have it, a foreseeable result. GS incidentally had a lot of insurance with AIG so were really happy that the US Govt paid out 100cents in the dollar. It was going to be 60cents in the dollar but the head honcho at GS called the US Treasury Secretary Paulson [- ex-GS] four times whilst he was in Moscow and the AIG deal got done at the higher rate. Plenty of people were pissed at that. BTW there are two different Paulsons in this story ANd just to show how Bush bent over the US public for GS

: ) 1. : ) 2. : ) : )

Some of you guys may know this but I was shocked at GenFranks. As a non-fan of Powerpoint and Excel graphs I cannot claim not to rejoice in them being slammed. Full article here, and its worth reading the links. http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=878&tag=nl.e589

This recent news makes me very very happy. A jury does the right thing http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/8652243.stm

I was aware that the German and Allied stuff was available but I hesitate to draw any conclusions from what is produced to what is actually available on a specific front line often thousands of kilometres away. The reason why I am cautious using statistics is someone once posted that it took x rounds of ammo to kill x people. This is something that commonly occurred from Napoleonic and ACW battles. Extrapolating this to something like the Polish Campaign I found hard to swallow and by some research I found the quoted figure of used [rifle calibre ammo of expenditure] was incredibly similar to the authorised issue at the campaign start. The assumption made was this was the total expenditure of ammo to get the kills. Dubious reasoning. So to revert to my point. What is produced and how fast it gets to the sharp end are something to conjecture with - I am sure in the Russian case the pointy end fighting the major German armour would have got all of the early supply. I know the Germans at the beginning of war were distributing munitions to main arsenals from factory and then moving it to lower supply arsenals for areas, then to formations ..... whether this changed or they ended the war with lots of ammo sitting in arsenals with no way to send it to the front lines I can only suspect. There remains one other sticking point and that is the Russian supply AFAIK was not above losing trainloads of kit. There is also the Russian habit of exaggerating production - now they may have improved for counting shell production : ) However for your purposes that could be irrelevant and depending on the scenario you are planning the load-out could be pretty much what you want it to be - allowing for some time lag from first production and what Front you want the battle to occur. I simply think that ultimately though you could average across the entire tank force that would be as wrong as looking at an individual tank/unit on a specific day and deciding that was representative. I think it might be possible to find memoirs where tankers get excited about their first special shells, or may remark how uncommon they were after introduction. Or if there was a maximum permitted number. Or the ideal loadout. But at end of day that is still only one unit.

However to carry the idea through one ought to consider if there are any practical limits to the theory. Amount of land per person, housing stock, effects of existing infrastructure etc. Its alwyas useful I think to start with the extreme view and work backwards. Unlimited immigration from anywhere into the UK. Obviously hugely attractive to people in war torn or economically poor countries. Particularly so if they are told the state provides free health care, housing and food even if you cannot find a job. On that basis we could expect many millions from Africa, and even some from Afghanistan, India, Bangladesh. Can the UK afford to offer this level of cover and how will it be paid for. Unfortunately when you have to be realistic you have to restrict the inflow to balance what the services can handle and the value that the immigrants add to the tax base.

There was a similar request but on US tanks recently. The feeling I got from the comments was that there was no correct load-out as such. The underlying reasons would seem to be applicable to both cases. On any given day the load ot would be a function of what the supply echelons had brought up. The fighting of the previos day or anticipated fighting of the current day would affect what commanders might load up with. After all if finding a German tank was rare but ATG's, infantry etc very common it would be reasonable to see the AP diminish s a %. That would be a general rule all other things being equal. Against that there might be STAVKA orders, or regiment orders. I suspect if a commander decided the correct loadout was x,y,z he would have the ability to enforce it. Special ammo, if in short supply, one would expect to go to where the need was greatest - so in late war around Berlin. And many units would never see the special stuff. Not very helpful I am afraid as I think there are just too many variables to allow one to be dogmatic about what was right or wrong. There are some good Russian sites where access to Russian memoirs might possibly give a snapshot of a loadout on a particular day for that tank/unit.

But one could end up better informed : ) It is amazing how much has happened in the field of drivetrain under the impetus of pressure brought about by concerns on climate change. Rather than the world economy spending inordinate amounts of consumer crap there is a lot of money going into effectively infra-structure for the future. What I would call a good war Ambrrose. At a loose end I actually was reading the two Ambrose books I have been lent. Some of the anecdotes he relates are quite moving, then followed with the chill feeling - are they true. A Renault tank turns up and fires its 20mm gun!!!! What is it with Ambrose and getting details right. I am also getting the Ike asked me up and we discussed bit. The man seems to have strung together peoples reminisces of which I am sure most are true basically, and got a reputation as a historian. Incidentally Mulberries are disposed of summarily with the throwaway that only 15% of the supplies were landed over them. You may well ask 15% over what period - 6 months. Two weeks. Or might one say 15% of total tonnage but 95% of all tanks and vehicles landed. What a wanchor.

Yep the jury is going to represent public opinion. Thats great isn't it.

Its probably the hypocrisy of talking to someone nicely and complimenting them and then rubbishing them as soon as they are out of earshot - annoys most people. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8649448.stm This is against a background of stacking "public" appearances with Labour Party members. I think this has done incredible damage to the Labour support.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8649853.stm Looks like time to bet on the election!

Kidding ME just kidding. SS-Kommando , well you could tell us why you decided on your name. ANd also post your query to the correct forum

: ) Thats really funny.

Pancake, I would have thought Fruitcake if I were being rude. Does Pancake equate to Fruitcake in Oz? I always thought this was a great made up name : ) Elmar Bijlsma

On June 10 AFP Greenpeace was fined 4,000 Euros Under a new Danish Anti-Terror Law for using an anti-GMO protest as a means of public intimidation. Some, including the author of this piece, Lawrence A. Kogan, believe other countries should follow Denmark’s example to discourage what UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s previous government called 'economic sabotage'. http://www.itssd.org/Publications/Rural%20News%20--%20Rural%20News_co_nz.pdf It seems funny that destroying the US economy is not actually judged that harshly. Now it is being treated as a by-product of unfettered and uncaring capitalism and the penalties are civil. Consider if you will if the people carrying out these deals had been founsd to be agents of another country/countries. Would the US public be happy with hauling them in front of the SEC and Congress. I think not. Were these people playing the game smart enough to figure out the endgame. Of course they were. Deliberate or collateral sabotage of an economy deserves much more rigorous penalties. And I have no problem with retrospective legislation in this case if nothing is currently on the Statute books.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2010/04/26/100426ta_talk_rayner someone should start a thread on it! ooops! http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=91835 BTW I borrowed a couple of Ambrose books from a friend just to remind me why he is not on my like list. It even has the Panther with the 88mm in it uncorrected.

Posting on CMBB would not be a duplication really as many just look to the relevant forum. I assume you have already done the searches by now on the CMBB archive. I cannot recall it ever having come up in any detailed manner ever. As you now are at the Gerneral Forum where we are a curious bunch it is interesting to consider why people choose various nicknames and what they are trying to get across, or if they have thought about reactions at all. Interesting because most of the long termers use variants of their names. My own was because it is fairly memorable for being oddball. Petrolhead would not work it needs to be discordant to be memorable , but not too long. Imperial Pantyhose would be memorable : )

And note the armoured horse suggestion at the bottom of the article! http://www.theengineer.co.uk/in-depth/the-big-story/the-future-of-military-tanks/1001769.article Sample

WOw this is just the food side of things. What I would deasrly love to see added is the punishments meted out. The death penalty is a good place to start. Adulterating food becomes more of a risk than reward proposition. Rather galling is to see a multi-national involved - Heinz.

I did wonder if the term travelled! You persuaded me to look it up!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_in_Australia interesting read. : )

? Have you considered that gamers and manufacturers interests are not necessarily compatible. I also play boardgames with a group of friends. I buy Nuns on the Run game and I can play it anywhere anytime and through my heirs to Doomsday. I buy a CD I can play it anywhere there is a player and put it onto what I want for my personal use. With alternatives for my money and leisure time why do I need to buy into some mono-culture system. BTW do you not think Steam may become the MSDOS of the gaming world able to squeeze game designers/manufacturers AND gamers as it becomes the default distribution system? Apparently not aware of Anartica's special status ... : )

Of course I remember the Pueblo - it is the fourth-oldest commissioned ship in the US Navy, behind USS Constitution ("Old Ironsides"), USS Enterprise (CVN-65), and USS Cleveland (LPD-7). : )

But if it were an American ship I would have to point out there is no oil in North Korea : )