El Pibe

I'm not saying it's fair but it's done by cultural goods and services as percentage of economy as defined in report below. This includes cultural tourism, ie cities, museums etc where Belgium will rank highly here. But more importantly it'll be a bigger relative sector than other stuff, so somewhere like russia that has lots of this but it'll be much smaller as a percentage compared to natural resources say, will rank lower than belgium. http://unctad.org/en/Docs/ditctab20103_en.pdf

mind you i'd love to know the nearest neighbours algorithm http://www.goodcountry.org/country/GBR

sweden sell weapons too and were invlolved in afghanistan. again small economy can punish as much as it can reward.

linky no work, i assume its these folk http://www.goodcountry.org/overall

It's weighted for size of economy which takes population into account. So Austria's patents and international publication in relation to size of economy are higher than US, and US makes life hard for international students and is duly punished; though of course the US is the number one science powerhouse. UK does very well at most stuff, we get punished for invading stuff and selling everyone weapons. We're also screwed on the climate because one of the factors is the sustainability of countries' demands on their natural resources. Given the UK will never be able to feed itself it will never do well here.

Monday 5th January 2015 Burnley 1 v 3 Tottenham Wimbledon 0 v 2 Liverpool Tuesday 6th January 2015 Everton 4 v 1 West Ham

bums, missed this. damn you busy new year period, damn you to hell!!!

Seabag hardly new. He's like a benign Wolfie, or politer snorks ;)

weird year, hope every one is happy, especially ye!!!!

lupine leinster?

Can't judge on the bar but I went to a wedding there just after it opened (groom was an architect involved in refurb) and it was a lovely place.

Political violence of any ilk is a sort of insanity if you ask me ('m a ludicrous peacenik though, jaw jaw* and all that), but I guess never underestimate human beings' ability to justify cruelty. And there is a sort of moral tit for tat in war, each terrible act pushing the envelope of what was previously unacceptable into desirable. And world war 2 was so terrible....and long.... But that doesn't mean people aren't aware of their moral qualms as they temporarily trangress those limits, I'm pretty sure people understood at the time, those bomber crews far more than most. But absolutely, it's very easy to judge, years later, in our safe world, sat on the internet our hyperbolic-judgemental-booths ;) *a quote attributed to a man who loved a good scrap, not to mention condemned 2 million indians to death by refusing to do anything about a man made famine, but that's another tale.

hell, s versus z is a political statmment. s'all politics innit.

There is no universal truth. Full Stop. Officiation and authorization are pretty subjective concepts themselves. And why does the idea that an authorised body legitmises violence acceptable? Again, its about labelling. Everyone likes to feel right, everyone likes to cloak themselves in legitmisation. The IRA, PIRA, Continuuity ad infitum will always dress themselves in military language, but then why shouldn't they, are they not fighting a war in their eyes; aren't al qaeda and their self defined cells?. Who gets to describe or proscribe the universal truth?

blah blah, you're right that context is everything but then you got all muddy. The context that davis is getting at is who is doing the labelling. In this case it's the British, the attackers and the attacked. I'm pretty sure there aren't any Germans who consider the RAF heroes and there are probably radicalised muslims who consider the 7/7 chaps heroes. There is a danger of strawman going on of course in that the moral issues of bomber command's strategic bombing are well documented and discussed and, apart from the sort of unthinking jingoists who share those stupid Britain First photos, most people will at best think of the pilots as brave chaps given a shitty job, or at worst war criminals; certainly that term is often applied to Harris.

ah yes, I've been there, marvellous spot. Be sure to wear some velour too!

ouch, still have memories of being stung for a supra ton round there!!

For something a little more unuaual, Courtesan in Brixton do nice ones. May not be central enough though. If central how about The Bedford & Strand on bedford st, just off the Strand, very good classic Martini!!

"Without so called terrorists the Irish republic wouldn't exist now." That's quite a statement given home rule would have appeared soon after WW1 and there's no way independence wouldn't have come after the dissolution of empire. It may have taken a couple of years longer, it may have come quicker; shooting at people tends to harden resolve, at least in the short term. Hard to say really.

cool, will check it out

that's a thought. I'm actually pondering turning one of the outhouses into a smokehouse, then i can use the other one for the brewery.

marvellous, I may well have to give that a go next year. The goose, cooked with more vanilla techniques, went down a storm here ,as did the goose curry the next day. Also got about 2 litres of good stock and 3 good sized jars of goose fat. Finally found a supplier of edible ham that doesn't taste of pure salt. It's a bit of a schlep (just outside dublin) but worth it!! Have a spiced topside of beef from them that I'm quite excited about, may do that today.

loath though i am to fall into the gingerbread trap, but the senses, they tingle so.....

and playing cheesey christmas pop on spotify

i logged on at half 8, all i had to do was email a data extract i, well, extracted i guess. That took me four and a hlaf hours. I've mostly been playing the santa tracker games on google with the piblets.