Matt.
I suspect I may be a shade older than you, and in no way meaning to be condescending this fact has a bearing on why I wrote what I did.
I grew up during the cold war. In those days, the media used to find all sorts of inventive ways to inform us that we’d be toast by tea-time.
The Russians/Chinese/someone or other were always going to start something somewhere which would lead to conflagration on a grand scale and the end of mankind. This was very real to many. I remember a lad when I was an apprentice and we were living away from home, getting quite worried that we wouldn’t have a chance to get home if it all kicked off. I just rode my motorcycle faster.
Even today, I sometimes wonder if part of my somewhat fatalistic attitude is caused by growing up against that background–although it’s largely because I spend a large amount of my life fighting a form of depression.
Of course, as ever, nothing happened, and we all lived to tell the tale.

These days, after a very varied life, I spend my time running a small business. In the last week, it’s snowed, the pipes in my workshop are frozen, I can’t get bikes delivered or get paid by customers because of the snow, I’ve effectively lost a week’s work for the same reason, I’m trying to sell a house, and buy another house, my ex-wife’s (who still remains a friend) Mother has been seriously ill, my brother-in-law has a form of Leukemia and my sister is upset, I have elderly parents, my new partner’s son needs re-housing, and the liability insurance is due on the business. Then last Thursday just to cap it all nicely, I had a nasty depressive attack which laid me very low indeed. The only good thing about the last bit is that it coincided with the snow so, I have only really wasted one week and not two. Of course, non of this is hugely unusual in an adult life–and I’m not looking for sympathy. I know you all have your stories to tell, some many times worse than anything I’ve ever suffered.
As I said, China and Japan seem to me at least, a very long way from Bedfordshire.
If they want to kill each other, it’s their business, I don’t know any of them and care less about them. Personally I doubt they’ll go to war, and if they do, there’s nothing we can do about it.
Having been told more than once by the BBC that I was to be imminently atomised, I no longer believe them or worry about it.

Still, it’s not all bad, the Spring will be here in about fourteen months.

If I was fitted with a device best described as a ‘I don’t give a f*ck-o-meter’ it would currently be reading well beyond the red zone–off the scale in fact.
These are countries far away from Bedfordshire and if a load of orientals want to slaughter each other in droves, then as far as I’m concerned they can get on with.
Please don’t bother disturbing the rest of us though.

Charlie me darlin’.
What I actually think what we need is a society where people seem able to respect one another and have the desire to go about their lawful business without threat from anyone.
Sadly, we are a long way from that these days.
We’re an unhappy little island–my guess is that being crowded together and isolated on this ghastly little pellet of land makes us all fractious.
Up until recently, my sister lived near La Rochelle.
I could happily go out in the streets there on a Saturday night for a bite and a drink without the sort of scenes you see in almost any British town on a weekend evening these days. And La Rochelle isn’t alone, it seems universal on the continent. I’m not naive enough to say that Europe is some kind of utopia because it isn’t–parts of Paris can be a bit dodgy but….

They seem to retained something we have lost–Respect–is it..??

My own view is that these Shariah people are just filling in a vacuum left by the proper authorites and the fact that the rest of us have voted in successive governments with a creed of personal greed over any form of morality.
Welcome to Britain 2013.

Maybe we should all mobilise and go and clean the sh*t (both physical and metaphorical) off the streets.

Well I’m quite in favour myself.
If the intention is to drive the sort of sh*t off the night time streets that their handbill (pictured) shows, then I’m very in favour.
They can come round here and sort out Luton and Dunstable starting Friday night.
It’d be nice if people of my age (fifty) could walk out to a cinema or restaurant with a feeling of safety of an evening–without some nasty little f*ckwit stoked up on booze and drugs causing grief.
Let’s face it, the Police have failed, the authorities have failed and we’ve failed. I don’t blame people for taking the law into their own hands. I don’t care what religion/race they are–if they’re cleaning up the streets, they get my vote.
Unless of course you lot can’t hack the thought that the hated ****/wog/rag-head (please delete title as applicable to suit your own personal prejudice) is more proactive than you are.
As ever, I remain non-aligned.
Andy

There were all the Skyraider radial engines still in their shipping containers on the dockside in Vietnam, they were off loaded in the final days so refugees could board and simply left on the key side.

Yes, and we had another joker on here a few years ago claiming that he was popping over to ‘Nam to recover them.
He even tried to sell one to a mate who was operating a 3350 powered Sea Fury at the time.
Guess what came of that….???

Loons, the lot of them.

Andy.

PS. While he was there he also claimed to have found a French Bearcat.

If you click on that picture and then scroll down on the thread it mentions a remarkable woman:-General Valérie André

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val%C3%A9rie_Andr%C3%A9

Worth a read I think.
A.

Edgar.
Amen to all that.
When I’m in charge, the firing squads will be working 24/7.
When I listen to the stupidity of the way the Police act these days I could spit.
We’ve generated a country of bufoons.

Andy

Its a beautiful aircraft if only it could be seen over Old Warden!

Oh Yes..!!