Re: OT :I find myself agreeing with Conor. What should I do?

The only person I knew who lived in Callands moved to town!

Charlie's immediate family live in mid-California, the desert areas. But we do have some family in Northern California and it's beautiful. Warm, lush, green, pretty. That's likely to be our ultimate choice too.

I'm sorry to report that you should get a less pikey policy then...

By some, maybe even by yours, but not by all. Certainly not by all.

You can't judge all policies by your own.

Makes f*ck all difference if you're properly ill. Paul Hunter was on the same ward as me, with the same nurses, although he got a side room - that was more to do with him being well known to the public and stopping him being bothered by people. If I need a scan I get it, often within a week, definately within two - having private healthcare would make that no quicker heh. Where it comes into it's own is when you have something like a muscle problem and need a scan, because obviously, they're very low priority. Then your private care comes into it's own.

Although I saw a Bupa advert the other day talkin about their new cancer care setups, so maybe it's different now.

BUPA etc. just farm you out to an NHS facility for proper conditions.

(Not through experience of my BUPA policy, though experience of my mum's

Family Medical Insurance is a perk for the majority of jobs.

If you don't have private medical insurance, you're paying MedicAid out of your wages anyway so you're not completely without. MedicAid is regarded as a bit piss poor but the waiting times for treatment are comparable with the UK.

The way Medicaid is administered is not uniform across the USA though. Some states administer it themselves and some appoint a private company to do the work for them. I'm guessing, but one's experience of it would vary from state to state and probably hospital to hopsital.

Wait, "Warm, lush, green, pretty." - is that California or the family?!

OK, maybe certain areas then. All local shops have cards up "House swap wanted, clean well looked after house in WA* ***, for house in Callands."

Once upon a time Callands was OK, I enjoyed a nice view of Winter Hill. Then they built thousands more houses and the retail park got big. One day coming home from work I had to queue from the M62 virtually to my drive - that was the day I decided to get out ASAP for the sake of my sanity.

Warrington is a right royal PITA now with traffic, and if you happen to catch a boat passing down the ship canal.....

Julian.

I wouldn't agree that most Americans are as mad as hatters. In fact, the only Americans I ever dealt with in relation to guns were extremely careful, and at pain to develop the same attitude in others. When you are taught about them properly, you tend to have a respect for them.

And anyway, remember: Guns don't kill people, wappers do.

Most people are shot at ranges far lower than that. If you knew anything about pistols, you'd know they have piss poor accuracy at any range above 25ft. Your Average Joe if given a rifle, would have a hard time hitting a person at 100ft without being told how to aim and practicing.

Of course you can. It is extremely hard to hit a moving target, especially one thats moving from side to side. It's even harder to make a shot that'll kill you in one hit if they're moving. As your average criminal has probably had f*ck all lessons in how to shoot properly, they only manage to hit what they're aiming at because they let off 30 rounds and by chance one happens to hit the mark.

Statistics to back this up? - or did you pick it out of thin air?

So at least you can say "Haha you wasted 30 rounds to shoot me in the spine!".

Yea, that'd be a great comfort :-)

Oh, that's fine, then.

'cos unskilled gun owners aren't going to randomly spray shots around, are they?

I'm much happier that only a relative hardcore of criminals have guns in the UK - if only because it means an illegally owned gun is *less* likely to be used in anger.

Give everyone a gun and the criminals get itchy fingers for fear of being shot themselves.

I think he's referring to individual streets rather than all of them in a city.

It's not just a relative hardcore of criminals that have them though. If you exclude the offence of carrying a firearm from the "criminal" label, many young people carry them who are far from being classed as hardcore criminals.

Doesn't happen in Sweden and gun crime tends to mainly be restricted to inter-gang incidents in the USA...

So it was made up.

Thanks for clearing that up.

You'd need to be quite unlucky for that to happen.