I have little time for her, a pushy self-publicist if there ever was one, but if she has the balls to give it a go good luck to her.

Have any of you ever met her? Unfortunately I haven’t, though a friend, when she worked as a child-minder, often did, as she had to look after Carol’s daughter. She says that, when she came to collect her daughter,she was just another “Mum,” with no side about her whatsoever, so maybe we shouldn’t always go by the public face?

As a child, I dreaded hearing my mother say, “We’re going to Oxford this afternoon,” since I knew this would mean being pulled away from looking at the delights of toyshop windows, while having to spend (seeming) hours, kicking my heels outside the windows of women’s clothing stores. My mother could never understand why I always wanted Oxford to lose the Boat Race, University cricket match, rugby match, anything.

After Farnborough had rebuilt an Se5A, it was flown during the SBAC show, and fired its gun(s?) with the bullets going into a sandpit in front of the bigwigs’ tent.

“Barnes Wallis’ Bombs,” by Stephen Flower, is worth the investment; it contains a graphic, at times amusing, story of one pilot’s first delivery of a Grand Slam. ISBN 978-1-84868-959-6.
Watten, Wizernes, Siracourt, etc., “only” received Tallboys; Grand slams were used on post-war trials, which probably explains why so few survive, and there were plans to use them on the connecting bridges on the Japanese mainland, which is possibly why there are some in Pakistan.

What is ponzi anyway ?

Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi, one of the biggest fraudsters known to man.

Are you saying that eyewitness statements from long ago, from the Bible for example, are not 100% accurate?

No, I’m simply saying that I don’t know, and it’s invidious to expect otherwise, since neither does anyone else, unless they have seen the evidence, written down as the events unfolded. I’m quite happy to admit that I don’t know whether there is a god, or not, but I get intensely irritated when I’m confronted by others (for or against) who will move mountains to persuade me that they know best (even to the extent of getting increasingly personally offensive, abusive and foul-mouthed,) when I know, perfectly well, that they really know nothing, and are simply trying to browbeat others to accept their point of view.

The dead messages of dead religions have no bearing on life today; only what the proponents of those religions do now in the name of those religions matters…
…that is how we will judge these religions and their proponents.

Your statement is a contradiction in terms; if a religion is dead, it’s dead, there can’t be any proponents, otherwise it would be alive.
Unfortunately for all of the “modernisers,” religions don’t work the way they would like them to work; you can’t pick out the best parts, and discard those little inconveniences that mean that you can’t do as you like.

Excuse me? A religion is its proponents!

No, it isn’t, it’s formed by its originators, in the case of Christianity, a man who lived 2000(ish) years ago, and inspired others to follow the same path; its proponents (and detractors) often misuse its messages, and intentions, twisting them to their own ends (our Bristolian friend is a classic example of this.) “Christians” have killed, and are still killing, in his name; Muslims are persuaded to commit suicide, while committing murder; the list goes on and on, but it isn’t the religion that’s causing the mayhem, it’s the greedy, grasping, manipulative hierarchy.

Yes, and sometimes there isn’t a ‘world of difference’.

Usually when the followers stick to the stated ideals, and treat others well.