We as a nation do well and therefore we have to pay more. Does this system work in reverse ?

I think it does, if you are Portugal, Spain or any other former peasant economies. It might be rough in Greece, but they aren’t starving in the streets or carrying around mountains of bizarre hyper-inflated currency in wheelbarrows… yet.

When I was in Slovakia I was shown, with great pride, the shiny new motorway bridge erected over housing at the edge of the town I was staying in. This allowed Skoda cars, built further South, to be transported into the heart of Western Europe as quickly as possible. That wasn’t possible until Slovakia entered the EU! Some of the older residents still kept pigs in their back gardens and did their own butchery, and still stocked enough chopped logs to get them through winter. Luckily the EU also payed for triple glazing to keep the constant background rumble of car transporters down. Quite a leap forward for a country that still referred to ice cream as ‘Russian ice cream’ until very recently given the novelty of the chilled dairy product in those parts as recently as the early ’80s.

For my sins I once tried to get my head around the concept of the ‘pillar’ or ‘annex’ classification for countries in the EU family. Those like the UK and Germany feel the full wrath of environmental regulations, whereas those in the second tier got off a little more likely and are allowed to foul up both the air and water (shared goods, so we all suffer regardless of the pollution source) to a greater degree. We are all equal, but some are more equal than others.

Meddle,

Have I made a cringing misjudgment of your politics ? I had you down as a founding member of the Trotskyite Appreciation Society. Also a luminary of the Socialist Workers Party. Looks like I’m wrong on both ! Blimey.

I’ve never been a member of either organisation and never will. During my brief stint in the Royal Mail I was exposed to more than enough of that. :highly_amused:

I’ve heard that IDS isn’t popular even within the conservatives. Having said that, I have no problem with him cheering on economic policies that he believes will do a lot of good. Claiming that he is cheering because said policies will somehow hurt the poor seems to be a bit of a stab at his character.

What angered me more was the protestors that appeared as soon as the budget was announced. I find it hard to believe it was a spontaneous affair, so therefore it must have been organised purely because its a Tory budget, and we probably won’t like it. Bad timing of course, to snarl up inner London further on the same day your subterranean train-driver mates decide to go on strike!

Bit like the EU and its members ?

What is the common resource in this scenario? I can see it applying to fish stocks in the North Sea, to give one example.

From Google:

The tragedy of the commons is a term, originally used by Garrett Hardin, to denote a situation where individuals acting independently and rationally according to each’s self-interest behave contrary to the best interests of the whole group by depleting some common resource.

The Gatwick Herald looked rough in 2010, so I don’t think it has an especially rosy future.

Didn’t a freeloader get upset last year when their airshow photos were used by another party, who had quickly erased the watermarks first? Perhaps I just have a taste for schadenfreude.

It might be worth getting some of that DNA water that councils proposed using to identify fly-tipping. That way missing goods can be identified in the future.

Two things spring to mind;

1) Shack blades must be quite big? Around 6 ft or so? This must narrow down the number of opportunities the thief, if this is the case, had to remove them. They must have needed assistance?

2) Who would steal Shack blades? Either an avid aviation fan or somebody wanting to make a quick buck from the smelters. Is there a cache of Shack blades anywhere else in the world? Some low-time blades in South Africa maybe?