Jonathan Harston comments

"Celibacy" means not in a relationship. What you mean is "chastity" which means not having sex. Viz the contradiction of Kane Tobe in essence saying "I'm celibate, but have a boyfriend...." = "I'm not in a relationship, but I'm in a relationship...."

The following words all end in the same sound o: , Law, War, Four, More, Tour, Corp and For. Sorry, what?

+1

That should read /some/ /people/ /say/.... I don't pronounce Four and For to sound the same, or More and Tour, or They're and Their or Two and To. The answer to "English should be written as it's spoken" is "as it's spoken by whom?"

It's not just the smoke, it's the utter STENCH smokers carry around with themselves. Many times I've had to get off a (nonsmoking) bus because a (nonsmoking) smoker has got on and I'm bearly able to pevent myself vomiting.

.... or they even sit there playing with roll-up tabacco spraying tabacco particles into the surrounding air.

The London Boroughs, the Manchester Boroughs and the New York Boroughs were all seperate municipalities that were absorbed and consolidated as the larger entity expanded, surrounded and absorbed them. All three of these examples have constituents that have the same name as the larger entity. the City of London is within Greater London, the City of Manchester is a constituent borough of Greater Manchester.

In the English-speaking world they'd be called boroughs. London Borough of X, Manchester Borough of X, New York Borough of X, etc. Wards are subunits of local authorities used to elect the council.

Well of course the ENGLISH language Google maps show the ENGLISH name, just as ENGLISH language maps show the capital of Poland as Warsaw, the country south of Germany as Austria, the country north of Austria as Germany, the country south of France as Spain, the island group east of China as Japan. Gah! France maps show the capital of the UK ans Londres. So what? It's their language, it's what they call it.

I used to be a city councillor, we introduced a system of devolved Participatory Decision-Making by community assemblies. Unfortunately, the city council would keep grabbing back areas of decision-making, and the actual Community Assembly decision-making meetings were packed with Labour Party members rather than real members of the public.

I saw this on QI last week. It seems that if you're an actor or public speaker who is used to carrying on in the face of distractions from around you, you can carry on regardless as you even ignore your own time-delayed voice.

At least with the government puchasing the land rights from the private owners, any negotiation on their future can be done purely at goverenment level and without and private individuals or other juristictions getting in the way. I see this as a sensible move to parcel all the loose issues up into one piece. As with the Laincourt Rocks the government should now say: right, let's go to the International Court, there aren't any private landholding issues getting in the way, let's just get this all settled properly.

In my experience most people don't "try to conceive", most people "don't take measure to prevent conception".

But... there's an oversupply of men in China, the men should be competing for access to the undersupply of women. There's currently 30+million more single men than single women in China. All the women have to do is sit and wait, why should they compete with each other over the oversupply of men?

You're basing your interpretation on Republican politticians, a party that obsessively hates women and women's rights and independance. Try finding some normal Americans.

These islands are in Okinawa prefecture, surely if a government entity was going to buy these islands it should be whatever government area the islands are in, Ishigaki city, Okinawa prefecture or the national government, not the Tokyo government.

So, Osaka is Birmingham and Hashimoto is Joseph Chamberlain?

She should state that the US is officially dropping their objection to the 1956 Russa-Japan peace treaty, so then at least the Nemuro islands can be sorted out.

Japan keeps telling Korea they should go to the international court to settle this, Korea keeps refusing. From Japan's point of view, it would be win-win. If the International Court judges they are Japanese islands, Japan wins saying to the Japanese people: see, all along they were Japanese islands, and we've got the legal judgement to back it up. If the International Court judges they are Korean islands, Japan wins saying to the Japanese people: ok, we've gone through all the legal routes, it's all settled now, they are Korean islands, shut up and stop complaining. Once the islands issue is settled they can then get down to negotiating the maritime boundary through the Sea of Japan. Japan has nothing to lose from going to the International Court.

But if you stop working, you can't afford kids. But if you have kids, you have to stop working to look after them. Rince and repeat.

He ascended the throne on my birthday, something to remember :) He seems increasingly a decent ordinary bloke, who's probably resignaly fed up with obsessive "fans" putting him on a pedestal. Bit like the Dalai Lama in a way, "look, I'm just an ordinary person in an special job", decent bloke Tensin, likes a laugh.

Scote: Japan was on the point of signing a treaty with the USSR in 1956 which would return the Nemuro islands in exchange for the USSR keeping the whole Kuril chain, but the USA intervened.

Hasn't the Government said: Sigh! Look, let's just go to the International Court and settle all this! That's strong leadership in my book.

Here's an idea: why not use the islands themselves as the border point, Western Isle becomes Korean and Eastern Isle becomes Japanese, then each country gets exactly 50% of the surrounding marine resources. This was the solution used by Canada and Greenland/Denmark in the Nares Strait.

How does a computer (a search engine) know what is illegal content? That takes human interaction. As long as there are html links to illegal content it will be spidered and indexed, and the more links to it from other sites the more relevant it will be as a search result.

Oo, you strange foreigners. In the UK it's legal to drink alcohol in the home in the presence of a responsible adult from the age of 5. It's only buying alcohol that you need to be aged 18 or over.