Sogeha

Well this has been an enjoyable exchange. Thank you to all who took part, especially @HaydenM and @dieselpower. I think to continue would bore other members to tears and make us look much more divided and argumentative than we actually are to new members and visitors. It is time to place the emphasis back on the lamentable loss of innocent young lives. Peace, Paul

All true and yet there is no central authority other than the Quran in Islam, just as there is no central authority other than the bible in Christianity and both are open to different interpretations. As with the church that divided first North from South, then East from West, So too did Islam divide and has many, many branches and flavours. There isn't a Christian not under excommunication from someone and there isn't a Muslim not under fatwah from someone. As with all religions there are tolerant and liberal ends and intolerant extremists. In my home town the Jewish population has shrunk to the point it could no longer maintain a synagogue and were looking to move all services to Leeds. The local mosque heard of this and said, hold on a minute, our holy day is Friday. We don't use the place on Saturday, have your services in our building. This has been great for the community. Unfortunately it is not the kind of thing newspapers wish to print as they are looking for scandal to drive sales.

I have likewise read the Quran and Hadith as well as having a degree in Christian theology. Just because something can be found in scripture does not mean that a majority of adherents choice to take it literally. Take that as the illogic of religion or of the human condition as you will, but it is never the less true. Perhaps it is a good sign that more Muslims are choosing to not take a literal view of every word of the Quran, but instead take a more enlightened view. "The Devil himself may site scripture to his own ends". William Shakespeare The clip is funny because it is factually correct yet we choose not to follow it. The Old Testament is scripture to Jews, Christians and Muslims

Seconded. You might feel that it is your trade mark and you have every right to, but if you are happy to share more details, I would love to know the ins and outs

Well I think there is a growing number of Muslims both in the West and in majority Muslim countries who are openly saying this behaviour is not something they can condone or see as compatible with Islam. The figures of arrests every day in in the U.K., show that pulling them for acting on thoughts of terrorist activity are working. We haven't seen anywhere near a terrorist attack every day, in fact the authorities have been expecting one for two years. Generally it is computer surveillance that gets them often before their radicalisation is complete. On a number of occasions it has been the Muslim community or even their own families that have given them up to the authorities. On the other hand a policy of arresting and questioning people for being Muslim and of brown skin tone will only lead to mass alienation and drive willing recruits into the hands of these manipulative scum. We need to target the core of these terrorist groups and I'm all for using extreme prejudice there. On the edges of sympathy a hearts and mind approach will bring better results. I would urge everyone that if you see a person of different ethnicity to yourself on the street or cueing to be served, smile, maybe say hello or nice day. It will not change the mind of a terrorist, but it might just make someone feel less invisible and more included. Hell why even bother with ethnicity, let's just be nice to each other and demonstrate that our way is better.

On the clear understanding that this is nothing more that an interesting way to spend a coffee break, that I bear no malice against you or anyone else who disagrees with me. I long ago got used to being in a minority of one on many subjects. I will respond. I will accept your figures for the moment, though I believe that while one can reasonably argue any position in a discussion, facts should be established as such and statics are easily manipulated, so perhaps we should always question how objectively statics were gathered. My philosophy tutor told us to question everything, perhaps unsurprisingly I was the only one that asked why. The figures you quote are indeed alarming, yet let's look a little further. For many year science believed the adolescent brain to be essentially an adult one. Yet many parents over many generations have felt there was something seriously wrong with their children during this time period. Recent breakthroughs in neuroscience and neurology have revealed that the teen years encompass a vitality important stage of brain development. The adolescent brain undergoes among other things a period of "housekeeping" where redundant neural pathways are deleted. Furthermore synapses in a healthy adult brain which much like wiring, carry electrical charges and need insulating. In the brain a fatty substance called myelin fills that requirement. This is created over time taking many years. The process starts at the back of the brain and slowly moves forward meaning the frontal and pre frontal cortices are the last beneficiaries. These are strongly connected with insight, empathy and risk taking. The results are time honoured complaints against adolescents of untidiness, disorganisation, seeking of novelty, self discovery and of relevance here, mood swings, risk taking and aggression. All of the above is a long winded way of saying, if teenagers are giving alarming answers on surveys perhaps it is because they are immature, prone to giving answers that are aimed at getting a rise out of the questioner, generally more disposed to knee jerk reactions, violence and feeling alienated than older adults. I was by my own admission bat shit crazy as a young man, and also given to resorting to violence much more quickly than I would now, both on a personal level and advocating it as a solution to world problems. Currently the scum we are dealing with are largely from Muslim backgrounds, yet there are still other groups waging terror who are not Muslim. When I was young, we had the Red Brigade, Baader Mienhof, Basque Separatists and our British problem of the IRA. If the younger me had been asked about dealing with the IRA, the answer might well have involved strafe bombing the whole of Ireland and adding it the British fishing rights. Such is the nature of young men. Add to this that many young feel sidelined from society as do many Muslims, so if you are young and Muslim you carry a double load. In short if they say they support X, Y and Z, shrug and shake your head knowing that is how young people act. On the other hand if they actually act on these thoughts, then they should face criminal charges and in fact there is currently an arrest every day on terror related charges in the U.K. Many of those arrested can be and are reformed into reasonable citizens. Others, the more hard line need removing from society.

To a large extent I'm with @Mike on a bike if our political leaders who are to a man (or woman) doing such a jolly splendid job elsewhere, were to stop playing both ends against the middle the solution would be more simple. Rats are intelligent creatures, there is much I admire and respect about them. In the distant past I have had one or two pet rats I was very fond of. Yet if I get rats in my barn or worse, my house, I don't agonize over what to do, I don't consider over much where the rats came from, what motivates the rats. I eliminate the rats because they are vermin and I do so with any tools available. A few rats, I might take the BB gun out, or send the dogs in. More rats, traps and poison go down. There are I think about 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, including a good few brothers on this here forum and my daughter. She is a neurosurgeon by the way and her best friend is Jewish. If being a Muslim was that big a problem I think we would know about it. The unreligious of all shades account for only about a billion, so the vast majority of the global population are religious. it is not 1.6 billion Muslims that are a problem it is a few thousand vermin. Oh and did anyone notice that 68 schoolchildren died in a school bus bombing yesterday which was carried out by the same species of vermin?

Just found this, it's rather lovely

@alligoat I followed the link. I wish we had haborfrieght, it's awesome. Anyhow i've got a press like the 20 ton one, do you think it will get the job done???

Jesus refused to be drawn on the subject and never claimed to be the son of god in the sense that anyone else wasn't. In the original Greek it is abundantly clear that Mary is described as a young woman, not a virgin. In Jewish society of that time one wasn't really a man until married and it is doubtful anyone would have listened to a boy preaching. All pretty mainstream Christian theology and has been for the last hundred years or so, yet it will come as news to many. Then again Jesus wasn't a blued eyed blond and Christianity is a Middle Eastern religion. I don't care what anyone believes, my father is an Orthodox priest, my eldest daughter is a secular Muslim like her mother was, I'm neither. We can sit down and talk, laugh and love together because that is what decent sane people do. If you can't do that and have to kill for your beliefs, I still don't care what you believe, to me it is irrelevant, you are murdering scum

An entirely different magnitude granted, but both violate the right to life of others

Well you may not agree with me, but I agree with that. Yet there are millions of people in the world follow a,religion to a greater or lesser extent. They may agonize over how thier food was prepared or if they committed some minor sin, they don't use it as an excuse to commit atrocities. On the other hand nobody has dedicated a war to the greater glory of atheism

I hear you brother, but I wouldn't give these scum the legitimacy of religion. The prisons are full of people who heard God tell them to do it, nobody takes their statements seriously. They are murdering scum who are mentally abnormal and whom society needs protecting from, so are this lot.

David Niven. I know, I know, not part of the franchise, but who are we to be critical of knock offs?

His Bond was of the time. How many guys our age are called Jason because their mums had a crush on Jason King. Two of the original Austin Powers characters.

I have every James Bond film, but I think I will watch "The Man Who Lived Twice" tonight instead.

No, genuinely posted at the same time, we will leave both threads or merge them

Sorry seems we were typing at the same time.?

Many of us are Rolex and James Bond aficionados and will be saddened to learn of the death of Roger Moore. Opinions are strong on who was the best Bond, but he did do a lot of good work. UNICEF Ambassador.. RIP

Ssteel is from the UK, but lives in Finland. Postage to any of the European modders/watchsmiths will not be a problem

http://www.jewelryandwatch.com/

I'm not completely certain, but we might have breaking news on this later today. While in no way trivialising the pain and lose suffered last night, it is worth taking a moment to remember more Muslims have died at the hands of these vermin than Westerners, a few were both. Spare a thought for Ahmed one of the French police killed in the Charlie Hebdo attack for example

Confirmed 19 dead

The anti terrorist squad is in and treating it as a possible terrorist attack. I would imagine they have grounds for that. Whatever turns out to have happened, it's every parent's nightmare. Confirmed 19 dead

Young teenagers.