Beautiful Lancashire

[TSR2]

^ I love you too. christ he was lucky

[penelope]

He's gone to Scotland.......till he feels like coming back......

Och Aye!!!

[chassamui]

Keep up the good work Penelope.

[penelope]

Thanks Chass:-


MY DAY:-

>
> A day in the life of
>
> an old fogey
>
> ________________________________
>
>
>
> I decide to water my garden.
>
> As I turn on the hose in the driveway,
>
> I look over at my car and decide it needs washing.
>
> As I start toward the garage,
>
> I notice mail on the hall table
>
> I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car.
>
> I lay my car keys on the table,
>
> Put the junk mail in the waste bin under the table,
>
> And notice that the bin is full.
>
> So, I decide to put the bills back
>
> On the table and take out the rubbish first.
>
> But then I think,
>
> Since I'm going to be near the post box
>
> When I take out the rubbish anyway,
>
> I may as well pay the bills first.
>
> I take my cheque book off the table,
>
> And see that there is only one cheque left.
>
> My extra cheques are in my desk in the study,
>
> So I go to my desk where
>
> I find the cup of tea I'd been drinking.
>
> I'm going to look for my cheques,
>
> But first I need to push the tea aside
>
> so that I don't accidentally knock it over.
>
> The tea is getting cold,
>
> And I decide to put it in the kitchen to wash up.
>
> As I head toward the kitchen with the tea,
>
> A vase of flowers on the worktop
>
> Catches my eye--they need water.
>
> I put the tea on the worktop and
>
> Discover my reading glasses that
>
> I've been searching for all morning.
>
> I decide I'd better put them back on my desk,
>
> But first I'm going to water the flowers.
>
> I set the glasses back down on the worktop,
>
> Fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote.
>
> Someone left it on the kitchen table.
>
> I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV,
>
> I'll be looking for the remote,
>
> But I won't remember that it's on the kitchen table,
>
> So I decide to put it back in the sitting room where it belongs,
>
> But first I'll water the flowers.
>
> I go to pour some water in the flowers,
>
> But most of it spills on the floor;
>
> So, I set the remote back on the table,
>
> Get some towels and wipe up the spill.
>
> Then, I head down the hall trying to
>
> Remember what I was planning to do.
>
> At the end of the day:
>
> The car isn't washed
>
> The bills aren't paid
>
> There is a cold cup of tea sitting on the worktop
>
> The flowers don't have enough water,
>
> There is still only 1 cheque in my cheque book,
>
> I can't find the remote,
>
> I can't find my glasses,
>
> And I don't remember what I did with the car keys.
>
> Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today,
>
> I'm really baffled because I know I was busy all damn day,
>
> And I'm really tired.
>
> I realize this is a serious problem,
>
> And I'll try to get some help for it,
>
> But first I'll check my e-mail....
>
> Do me a favour:
>
> Forward this message to anyone you know,
>
> Because I don't remember who the hell I've sent it to.
>
> Don't laugh -- if this isn't you yet, your day is coming!!
>

[chassamui]

Brilliant Pen, just brilliant.

[TSR2]

Originally Posted by penelope

Don't laugh -- if this isn't you yet, your day is coming!! >

that was great I think! what did you say ah mmm p""" whats your name .must go now, cant think why, what time is it, what

[penelope]

OOooooh I am glad you're back Mathos!!!

[Mathos]

Thanks Penelope.

[Happyman]

Originally Posted by Mathos

Amazing contributions, thanks and please keep it up.

Having been away from UK for so long it is nice to dig around and remember what was drummed into me as a kid !!

As I have said before - look around - question anything that looks out of place and/or find out about things that interest you -just read the land - the answers are all there-but learn the language first
My mum was a good teacher !

Cheers

[TSR2]

Originally Posted by Happyman

My mum was a good teacher !

Thought it was your Aunty ?? Happyman

[Happyman]

^

My mother was an archaeologist and field guide for ancient monuments on the moor ( post #453)

---

--

open landscape is a book - you just have to learn the language it is written in !"

That was told to me when I was about 10 years old by a dear friend of my mum - a writer and archaeologist specialising in the pre- Roman era - was in her 70's and could walk the hind legs off a donkey doing field work on earthworks - hill forts etc etc ! And taught me the language!!!
She needed a packhorse to carry her sandwiches and notebooks - ME!!

Finally drifted off this 'mortal coil' on a field trip at 85 in 1962 at 'The Walls' in Staffordshire ( hill fort) during a field trip lunch break - still talking - sandwich in one hand and a glass of sherry in the other!! (Post#477)

It was a team effort

[TSR2]

Originally Posted by Happyman

That was told to me when I was about 10 years old by a dear friend of my mum - a writer and archaeologist specialising in the pre- Roman era - was in her 70's and could walk the hind legs off a donkey doing field work on earthworks - hill forts etc etc ! And taught me the language!!! She needed a packhorse to carry her sandwiches and notebooks - ME!! Finally drifted off this 'mortal coil' on a field trip at 85 in 1962 at 'The Walls' in Staffordshire ( hill fort) during a field trip lunch break - still talking - sandwich in one hand and a glass of sherry in the other!! (Post#477) It was a team effort Happyman View Public Profile Send a private message to Happyman Send email to Happyman Find More Posts by Happyman Add Happyman to Your Buddy List

Originally Posted by Happyman

Finally drifted off this 'mortal coil' on a field trip at 85 in 1962 at 'The Walls' in Staffordshire ( hill fort) during a field trip lunch break - still talking - sandwich in one hand and a glass of sherry in the other!! (Post#477)

sorry not your aunt , but knew someone else contributed to your knowledge !!!

[Happyman]

Originally Posted by TSR2

but knew someone else contributed to your knowledge !!!

Shit ! My secret is out !!!

[Mathos]

Hope nobody thinks I am letting this thread slide in any shape or form.


I'm not. Obviously I'm just getting the Highland Thoughts thread into gear and hopefully I will be getting a day out either in the coming week or week following to bring some interesting attention to Spring in the Lancashire area at least.

I was talking to a friend today who reads everything he comes across with great concentration.

"Hey Mathos, have you ever heard of Cyronics?" he asks of me.

Cyber rubbish," I replied, "Storing dead bodies in ice boxes or similar like fish packed in ice, so they can be brought back to life when a cure for their ailment is discovered or similar."

"Something like that was his response."

Then he got a newspaper out, The Daily Mail would you believe!

All this rubbish about having your body frozen but many are into this Cyronics apparently.

Simon Cowell kicked off as big surge in the same.

£10..00 a week for the priveledge of being frozen.

Ah well.

It's rather like a Time Machine.

It cannnot possibly work.

I mean you might think you could travel back or forward in time, but it's wishful thinking..Isn't it?

Like somebody can be here now.

I can be here with him, but, if I travel back in time and kill his grandad, he can't possibly be with me now.

Surely the laws of physics and science in general rule the H G Wells dream out.

I think it all boils down to the desire to conquer death one way or another, but it wouldn't be at all practical.

Probably best to enjoy the limited time we have here as much as we can.

Whilst we can.

All this Cryo-Chamber stuff, Time Travel and living for ever.

Wow!

You might wake up in three hundred years time, turn the telly on and find Des O'Connor singing to you.

As for DEATH.

The Chinesre are at it in a strong way I noted from my mates newspapers.

There is a boom in the execution rate, for all sorts of crimes.

These include Tax Fiddles, Fraud, Drug Running and other crimes we normally hand out a smack on the wrist for.

They are now making biggger business out of the executuions than ever before.

Read this, it's crazy!

China makes ultimate punishment mobileUpdated 6/15/2006 5:06 PM ETE-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions |


EnlargeAFP/Getty ImagesChinese tycoon Yuan Baojing was sentenced to death by lethal injection after he was convicted of having an attempted blackmailer killed.

Yuan and two accomplices were put to death in March.

Enlarge

Jinguan Group

This is a "Death Car" mobile execution unit.

China is now executing criminals in these units.

VAN SPECSCost: $37,500 to $75,000, depending on vehicle's size

Length: 20 to 26 feet

Top speed: 65 to 80 mph

THREE SECTIONS

Execution chamber: in the back, with blacked-out windows; seats beside the stretcher for a court doctor and guards; sterilizer for injection equipment; wash basin

Observation area: in the middle, with a glass window separating it from execution area; can accommodate six people; official-in-charge oversees the execution through monitors connected to the prisoner and gives instruction via walkie-talkie.

Driver area

Production to date:

At least 40 vehicles, made by Jinguan and two other companies in Jiangsu and Shandong provinces



By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY


CHONGQING, China — Zhang Shiqiang, known as the Nine-Fingered Devil, first tasted justice at 13. His father caught him stealing and cut off one of Zhang's fingers.

Twenty-five years later, in 2004, Zhang met retribution once more, after his conviction for double murder and rape.

He was one of the first people put to death in China's new fleet of mobile execution chambers.


The country that executed more than four times as many convicts as the rest of the world combined last year is slowly phasing out public executions by firing squad in favor of lethal injections. Unlike the United States and Singapore, the only two other countries where death is administered by injection, China metes out capital punishment from specially equipped "death vans" that shuttle from town to town.


Makers of the death vans say the vehicles and injections are a civilized alternative to the firing squad, ending the life of the condemned more quickly, clinically and safely. The switch from gunshots to injections is a sign that China "promotes human rights now," says Kang Zhongwen, who designed the Jinguan Automobile death van in which "Devil" Zhang took his final ride.

State secret

For years, foreign human rights groups have accused China of arbitrary executions and cruelty in its use of capital punishment. The exact number of convicts put to death is a state secret. Amnesty International estimates there were at least 1,770 executions in China in 2005 — vs. 60 in the United States, but the group says on its website that the toll could be as high as 8,000 prisoners.


The "majority are still by gunshot," says Liu Renwen, death penalty researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a think tank in Beijing. "But the use of injections has grown in recent years, and may have reached 40%."


China's critics contend that the transition from firing squads to injections in death vans facilitates an illegal trade in prisoners' organs.

Injections leave the whole body intact and require participation of doctors. Organs can "be extracted in a speedier and more effective way than if the prisoner is shot," says Mark Allison, East Asia researcher at Amnesty International in Hong Kong. "We have gathered strong evidence suggesting the involvement of (Chinese) police, courts and hospitals in the organ trade."

Executions in death vans are recorded on video and audio that is played live to local law enforcement authorities — a measure intended to ensure they are carried out legally.
China's refusal to give outsiders access to the bodies of executed prisoners has added to suspicions about what happens afterward: Corpses are typically driven to a crematorium and burned before relatives or independent witnesses can view them.

Chinese authorities are sensitive to allegations that they are complicit in the organ trade. In March, the Ministry of Health issued regulations explicitly banning the sale of organs and tightening approval standards for transplants.

Even so, Amnesty International said in a report in April that huge profits from the sale of prisoners' organs might be part of why China refuses to consider doing away with the death penalty.

"Given the high commercial value of organs, it is doubtful the new regulations will have an effect," Allison says.

Local executions

Makers of death vans say they save money for poor localities that would otherwise have to pay to construct execution facilities in prisons or court buildings. The vans ensure that prisoners sentenced to death can be executed locally, closer to communities where they broke the law.

That "deters others from committing crime and has more impact" than executions carried out elsewhere, Kang says.


Jinguan — "Golden Champion" in Chinese — lies an hour's drive from Chongqing in southwestern China, below the green slopes of Cliff Mountain. Along with the death vans, the company also makes bulletproof limousines for the country's rich and armored trucks for banks. Jinguan's glossy death van brochure is printed in both Chinese and English.
From the outside, the vans resemble the police vehicles seen daily on China's roads. A look inside reveals their function.


"I'm most proud of the bed. It's very humane, like an ambulance," Kang says. He points to the power-driven metal stretcher that glides out at an incline. "It's too brutal to haul a person aboard," he says. "This makes it convenient for the criminal and the guards."
The lethal cocktail used in the injections is mixed only in Beijing, something that has prompted complaints from local courts.

"Some places can't afford the cost of sending a person to Beijing — perhaps $250 — plus $125 more for the drug," says Qiu Xingsheng, a former judge working as a lawyer in Chongqing. Death-by-gunshot requires "very little expense," he says.


Qiu has attended executions by firing squad where the kneeling prisoner is shot in the back of the head. The guards "ask the prisoner to open his mouth, so the bullet can pass out of the mouth and leave the face intact," he says.

No debate

In the United States, some death row inmates and death penalty opponents want the Supreme Court to declare lethal injections cruel and unusual. A recent lawsuit claimed inmates suffer excruciating pain during executions because they do not get enough anesthetic.

There is no such debate in China, which uses the same three-drug cocktail as the U.S. federal government and most U.S. states: sodium thiopental to make the condemned unconscious, pancuronium bromide to stop breathing, potassium chloride to stop the heart.
People's Daily and other state media describe the mix as a "non-virulent drug," bringing about "immediate clinical death while inflicting no physiological pain."


"It doesn't matter what method you use," Qiu says. "If someone is convicted of a capital crime, they should be executed."

Chinese prisoners condemned to death are not offered a choice of injection over gunshot, but Qiu and others suspect wealth and connections can buy the newer method.


"It is a real phenomenon that gangsters and corrupt officials are killed by injection more than gunshot, so their bodies are intact, and death is less painful," Liu says. "But I doubt it is government policy. These criminals are usually held in cities, where the injection is used. Common criminals are held in county-level facilities, where shooting is more common."

Tycoon Yuan Baojing was executed in March in a death van, in northeast China's Liaoyang city. He had been convicted of arranging the murder of a man trying to blackmail him for attempting to assassinate a business partner.


Sixty-eight different crimes — more than half non-violent offenses such as tax evasion and drug smuggling — are punishable by death in China. That means the death vans are likely to keep rolling.

"If we abolish the death penalty, then crime will grow," Kang says.

[Happyman]

Originally Posted by Mathos

Wow! You might wake up in three hundred years time, turn the telly on and find Des O'Connor singing to you.

I would settle for death now then - given the choice.

[TSR2]

Originally Posted by Happyman

I would settle for death now then - given the choice.

You mean you would rather miss Careless Hands !!! etc, SHAME on you

[dirtydog]

Originally Posted by Mathos

The switch from gunshots to injections is a sign that China "promotes human rights now," says Kang Zhongwen, who designed the Jinguan Automobile death van in which "Devil" Zhang took his final ride.

I obviously have no conception of human rights then, not that I am against the death penalty for certain crimes, but I just can't see much difference between a bullet, injection or even a guilotine, they all end in the same result extremely quickly.

[Mathos]

Originally Posted by dirtydog

I obviously have no conception of human rights then, not that I am against the death penalty for certain crimes, but I just can't see much difference between a bullet, injection or even a guilotine, they all end in the same result extremely quickly.

It passes an extremely winding road DD the execution programme in China.

There is massive demand world wide for healthy organs. Killing people with bullets and time not being available to remove the organs and keep them in a 'healthy mode' available for transplanting is an issue.

The real use of these vans has nothing what so ever to do with more humane methods of execution (not to a government who will shoot a criminal through the back of the head, remove the spent bullet with a hammer and chisel and charge the immediate family of the executed soul for the same) they are not interested in humanity at all.

The organs:- Heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas, eyes, probably more than I have listed, are a valuable source of reaping in high bucks.

Recipients of the world unite,
You're organs on it's way tonight.

You can't have it if you pray,
You can only have it you're going to pay.

You can't have it if you're broke
You can only have it if you've got the poke.

[penelope]

What a pity that with all our research and technology, we haven't learned how to give an injection of compassion. We haven't really evolved at all have we?

Not a useful comment...but heartfelt.

[Mathos]

Originally Posted by penelope

What a pity that with all our research and technology, we haven't learned how to give an injection of compassion. We haven't really evolved at all have we?

Not a useful comment...but heartfelt.

Accurate too Penelope.