Westward

The 690 isn't my taste at all with that scarlet lettering. Keep in mind that for the first few years of production they still used the switchable ejector system carried over from the SV10 family. Same story with 692s - and those ejectors are famously troublesome! Ask me how I know. I haven't tried a 694 but some Fitasc shooters don't like the stock profile for gun down shooting, otherwise it's the pick of the modern 69x family sporters.

Of course I understand that blame avoidance overrides everything else including public safety - exactly as it does with the police - but I just enjoy a rant. p.s. I also understand the physics...

When it snows properly, the councils should do the same as every other civilised country. Which is to plough the snow and then grit the roads. What happens here is that any time there's the least risk pf snow, out go the gritters before the snow starts. Snow settling onto gritted roads is far, far more slippery, problematic and dangerous than snow melting from the top down. I'm not against gritting as such, only that the councils use it as a form of blame avoidance rather than try to use it effectively.

On average I'd say that there's about one night a year when gritting serves any purpose and in this county that's usually the very night they don't deploy the gritters.

Also they buy the grit ahead and it has a fairly short shelf life.

I don't doubt he slept with her, regardless of his pretence of not remembering, but I don't believe she was forced and I don't believe he raped her. Not in London or new York or on the island. I still don't reckon she'll go to court.

It's small fry compared with the hideous amount of taxpayers money spent by the councils sending out thousands of gritters night after night when, after weeks without rain, there isn't the slightest risk of ice. As soon as the temp is forecast to drop to 2 degrees or below out go the gritters burning through thousands of gallons of diesel and covering the roads with filthy slime. I'd guess the emissions would be pretty horrendous too.

Seems to me that standing up in court is his least worst option. After all it's still only her word against his, and assuming the picture is genuine, young Virginia doesn't look to be exactly under duress, quite the opposite in fact as she looks pretty pleased with herself. And then there's the testimony that she pimped other under age girls for Epstein and was presumably rewarded for her efforts. Was she "forced" to fly to various places outside America, knowing what she was going for? Why is she only suing Andrew since she claims she was trafficked to sleep with various other of the rich and famous? Okay, Andrew is a world class pillock who couldn't keep it in his trousers, but it's high time Virginia was placed under oath and cross examined - which I reckon is why Andrew's team want it to go to trial. I wouldn't be surprised if she changes her tone now and agrees to a settlement.

This bonkers new rule will undoubtedly lead to a lot more accidents involving cyclists. As said above, too many of them already don't care about little things like obeying the law or considering other road users. There must be an army of government mandarins out there with no function other than to dream up a continuous stream of tedious rules and regulations.

With respect Gordon it was not about the law, it was about possible ambiguity deep in the wording of the agreement which made it entirely a matter of his opinion. Another judge could well have found differently.

Ever since Weinstein and the "MeToo" campaign and now Epstein/Maxwell everything is stacked against Andrew. Now I have no sympathy with him, he's a fool, a waster, a long term philanderer and probably a liar too but as said above, Giuffre was no innocent child. She was 17, and whilst she may have been a victim to some extent, she was also a willing participant. Everyone's read the terms of the document Giuffre signed and it's solidly set in stone precisely to prevent this kind of civil claim, therefore it's pretty clear that, because of the prevailing attitudes, the judge has had to be "flexible" in his interpretation of the law to allow the case to proceed. There would have been a massive outcry if he'd found in Andrew's favour. Since the threshold of proof in a civil suit is much lower than with a criminal case and given current attitudes to sex abuse cases, Andrew has no chance in court but, this is a civil case to be heard in an American court and has no jurisdiction in this country. He can thumb his nose since his reputation is now thoroughly trashed anyway, but his family will surely insist on a settlement and despite Giuffre saying that's not whet she wants, history tends to suggest that's exactly what she does want.

It all plays well with the Russian people who love having their President playing the strong man by standing up against what they're conditioned to believe is the west constantly trying to undermine their society. In reality the west would more than happy to get along with Russia as a trading partner and perhaps even an ally in resisting the pressure from the real threat to the global power balance, China.

So would I. The biggest problem I see with their garden party is that it's handing the Labour fruitloops and the likes of the BBC/Ch 4 yet more ammunition to use against Boris & Co. Like most of Boris's bloomers it was all so avoidable. I find myself wondering why, right from the start of the emergency powers, Boris didn't inform all No 10 staff, as well as his members in both houses, that they must obey all lockdown restrictions at all times and that any transgressors would be instantly out the door.

The only person in either party that I would call fully equipped to be PM is David Frost and he's just resigned from the cabinet.

I'm pretty old now and I can reasonably say that for at least 40 years the NHS has consistently bleated about staff shortages and, by implication, lack of adequate funding by tory governments. And it's exactly the same story with the police. These inherently left leaning vast monolithic organisations need to focus more efforts on their own internal efficiency and less on playing politics and constantly shifting blame onto the tories.

Trouble is, Packham's got a lot of knowledge about wildlife but very little understanding of the natural world, which makes him the biggest troll of them all.

Years ago I was having a cup of tea at a layby burger van just outside a small village. There were a couple of police there too. A plain blue estate car went hurtling past at considerable speed (40 limit at that point!) with the sirens and blue light going, so I asked one of the cops if he knew what it was but he had no idea.

Agreed. And I think there's more to come out because there has to be a reason why Giuffre wasn't called by the prosecution to give evidence at the trial. At a guess I'd say it's because they didn't want to risk her being cross examined by the defence.

It's got to be cross dominance if he's right handed. It is more common with women but plenty of men are cross dominant too. The usual approach is to close the left eye or use something like tape or a dot on the glasses. There are also gadgets to fit on the gun too but longer term it is possible to train the eyes to overcome the problem and shoot with both eyes open but it needs a lot of commitment.

A couple of years ago there was a TV news documentary about Epstein and several women mentioned how when they were themselves being abused, Maxwell/Epstein encouraged them to find other underage girls who would like to make some extra cash. One of them is a lady called Carolyn Andriano, who gave evidence against Maxwell at the trial, and is now saying that when she was 14, the then 17 year old Giuffre talked her into visiting Epstein at his mansion to give him a massage for which she was paid $300. More here: SARAH VINE: Prince Andrew's an oaf - but his accuser has questions to answer too | Daily Mail Online

They left my motor cycle option on the licence but took off the option to drive a 17.5 ton van.

My guess is that parenting was generally pretty slack much as with the girls who get groomed over here. Epstein's girls appear to have been mostly harvested from West Palm Beach which is very much the wrong side of the tracks. Virginia seems to have bragged about this stuff with comments like "I got to sleep with Prince Andrew", and she probably made better money from being in Epstein's pay than she'd have got at at McDonalds. I believe there's also evidence that she (and other girls) groomed some of the girls herself, which may explain why she didn't testify against Maxwell. Like many, she may well have come to regret her choices in later life, but underage is underage and still a crime.

There are so many variations of the specs on the Silver Pigeons that the you can only be certain about the ones you or your mates own. For example, from the early 2000s the versions were Silver Pigeon 1, SP2, SP3, SP4 and SP5. Everything above the SP1 was designated 687. The sporters had Optima barrels and the game guns had Mobil barrels. Then there was the 687 Gold Pigeon and topping off the range the 687 Diamond Pigeon. The main differences between them all were cosmetic as the 686 & 687 share the same action although the Diamond Pigeon sporter has the same barrels as the 682 Gold E competition gun. The Silver Pigeon 3 has been re-released and the Diamond Pigeon seems to have remained in production too. All the rest were canned around the time the current 686 Silver Pigeon 1 was released. They're all pretty reliable and durable and there are plenty out there still going bang after many years and many thousands of rounds.

Not sure that qualifies him as successful except in his own eyes of course. From the mid nineties the tories were sufficiently dysfunctional as to make them unelectable. Much like Labour for the last 12-13 years. Blair didn't "win" three elections, the tories "lost" them. The smartest thing Blair ever did was to pick precisely the right time to step down so that Golden Brown had to carry the blame for losing the next election. What I most dislike about Blair's tenure is that he - or more probably his puppet masters - realised that government can create statutory laws for more than just making the country safer and more secure. What they started and what is still happening is using the law-making process to control people's behaviour by progressively removing our long cherished freedoms and at the same time handing ever greater powers to Brussels. Never mind party politics, I so miss the personal freedoms that we used to have in this country and that I knew throughout my childhood and formative years. Blair & Co with their "New Labour" pretext weren't new at all, it was just window dressing. Behind the façade it was Old Labour with the all the traditional socialist's fear and dread of the people having too much freedom - so, with the willing help of the EU, they set about removing it.

The "S" stands for sovrapposta which is Italian for superposed which is the word Browning coined way back for over/under. IDK the exact number but there were various versions of the 686S including a multichoke sporter. Sometimes badged as S686 + a name like Special or as 686S the main action and barrels were much the same During the 1990s the 686S guns were rebadged as the 686 Silver pigeon which again came in various versions such as Silver Pigeon S or C or SC... I doubt if anyone has a conclusive guide to all the variations of the original 686 Silver Pigeon but about 10 years ago the Silver Pigeon 1 was released with modern barrels and in either game and sporter configuration. The action design has hardly changed since the 686 was born, but they moved from forged internal parts requiring some hand fitting to investment castings around the time the Silver Pigeon came along.