CD’s point is a very important one. My research into an article on the P-38 has opened my eyes to the real answer to so many enthusiasts’ ‘why didn’t they….’ type questions. Money. These are private companies with bottom lines, who are in turn paid by a department with a budget, who in turn are funded by a government with its own bottom line. Hurricanes were 33% cheaper, and Hawker’s were tooled up to manufacture in quantity even before the first flight of the Spitfire. The Spitfire had to be considerably better to have been ordered at all, and as alertken says, it was done with some trepidation.

John , can you please expand on your theory that UK housing became a traded commodity because of left-wing educationalists?

Or maybe save the G and T’s until after posting?

‘Europhile civil servants’.. you’d rather they hated Europe? Would that make them better civil servants in your eyes?

The civil service does not run the government, but it has been running the country for a very long time. It is what they are for. Governing where it is being run TO is the job of government, and currently it feels like there’s no-one at the helm.

In the meantime our Treasury and Foreign Office civil servants will continue engaging positively with the bureaucracies of Europe because that is what they do, and no-one has told them not to.

Food for thought, Paul, thank you.

While I agree on your last point, and I agree that John’s is a noble sentiment I suppose my doubt is whether actual sovereignity ever left our shores, whatever one makes of the ECJ. I certainly don’t get a sense of totalitarianism from Brussels.

Guardian doing itself no favours there. Fair point as an aside, but as an article it reads like being cornered by a tedious PC undergraduate.

Go on John, set it up there for you!

I sent my complaint to the generic enquiries email last week. No acknowlegement yet.

Nice piece..

There’s a Duxford disposal part of eBay? Help, I can’t find it!

It would be better if eBay allowed comments.

It is safe.

Contrary to a lop of crap out there cookies do not steal your email, or eat your firstborn. They are not traded for money (they are only little text files given to youtr browser by the site) and have nothing to do with dodgy activities or spam.

Most of the time they give you a randomly-generated unique ID against a site so that the site knows its you the next time you are on any page of it, so as to present more useful stuff to you. They CAN be used to target advertising (so they do have commercial value) but not increase the amount of it as that is down to page design.

Most professional sites use cookies. The general web etiquette is to announce the fact. And give the option of rejecting them.