Wanderer Vagabond

Looking at this coverage map ( http://www.ukdigitalradio.com/coverage/postcodesearch/ ) your experience in Scotland seems interesting since most of Scotland (except between Glasgow and Edinburgh and up the East coast) doesn't seem to have very much coverage. Wales looks a bit of a desert as well. The issues I've had with DAB are also explained by the coverage map since the areas I've hired cars with DAB radio that was a waste of time was in Oxfordshire,Wiltshire,Dorset and the South Hams, all of which apparently have crap coverage. Given that they were supposed to have started switching off analogue transmissions in 2015 to have originally finished by about now, whereas they are now talking about possibly starting to switch off by 2020, it would suggest that take-up hasn't been as high as they were hoping.

I think that you rather miss the point in that, although the radio stations may be financed by TV licence income, none of that comes from radio listeners who don't have a TV licence, you don't need a TV licence to listen to the radio. Whilst I'm happy for these stations to exist, I don't actually listen to them very often. Have you tried listening to DAB on a car radio? absolutely crap. Rather than occasionally fading a bit as FM will do, if it loses any signal it just cuts out to irritating whines and squeaks. Internet radio quite simply knocks spots off it for clarity and since cars are now being made with available Wifi that is where radio will be going. I wouldn't waste any money getting a DAB radio which you say you can get stations that you can't get on other frequencies, with internet radio you don't even have to be in the area (or country) where the transmissions are broadcast (you could listen to Devon radio stations in Scotland). When they brought out DAB the intention was that by now we'd all be listening to it and all analogue transmissions would have closed down, that hasn't happened because it is rubbish and will now be superceded.

Whilst I generally agree with the financing of the BBC so that I don't have to suffer endless adverts for stuff that I don't want, but the method needs to be brought up to this century since the method currently used really belongs to the middle of the last century. The situation I have is that I live on the boat and my daughter lives in my postal address owned by me. She has bought a licence so that she can legitimately watch TV at the land based address, the licence is in her name. If I want to watch something on I-Player I am allegedly supposed to have a licence but since my postal address already has one licence registered to it and it is not a house of multiple occupation how would one be able to buy another licence to cover the same address and myself whilst on the boat? It is farcical. A far more effective method would be to be able to buy an internet only licence for which you could log on to your I-Player account to watch broadcasts. I wouldn't have thought it beyond the wit of those responsible for such things to make the log on only available from one ISP address (to prevent a licence buyer passing log on details to all their friends/relatives to all log on and watch at no further cost). I'd be quite content to pay for access to BBC broadcasts but, quite frankly, I cannot be bothered with trying to find a means of complying with their ancient system so now, if asked, I'm on a 'long' holiday on my boat and watching I-Player on the licence at my postal address. if Crapita want to make an issue of it, I'll be quite content to see them in Court. All of the enthusiasm shown for BBC radio stations isn't actually that relevant since I don't need any licence to listen to any of the stations, whether on the internet or on FM (DAB being a failing technology, rather like Beta video players, on its way out before it even came in).

We will have to differ on this since it is a rise of extreme right wing politics, the difference now compared to recent years is that it is internationalised, which is much the same as occurred in the 1930's with Mussolini,Franco,Hitler and others all achieving power through populist policies. The speakers at the Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley Lennon 'protest' came from a number of countries with a big input from the US. The 'opinions' cannot be countered by any rational argument since it isn't based upon any. One of the women interviewed insisted that all Muslims have sex with children which is about as rational as saying that all Englishmen are football hooligans. When you get a group such as this feeding their own prejudices, outside evidence will count for nothing.

Sadly, Brexit aside. we are looking at a repeat of history. The rise of right wing fascists precisely mirrors the efforts of Oswald Mosely . Watching the reporting on the London protest supporting the criminal, Tommy Robinson, they were spreading exactly the same crap that Mosely used to spout in his denigration of the Jews, this time the target is Muslims. Next it will be Romanys, then the Jews (the jews always get it in the neck). The Racists of the extreme right now (mistakenly) believe that with all of the sh*t put about regarding immigration following the referendum, they have 17 million supporters. They haven't, but feel a lot freer under current conditions spouting their racist crap.

This would be the 'useful idiot' who will be more than content to put what remains of our steel industry out of business with his tariffs would it? He has himself declared us to be an enemy (dictionary definition of 'Foe' = enemy) whilst Russia, with an economy about the size of Italy's, is a 'competitor'. Since his view of us it that of an enemy I'm quite content to reciprocate and view him as an enemy to be overcome. If he wants a trade war I'm more than content to fight it and boycott all American goods and encourage others to do the same. Politics with him in power has become an area of stupidity, so let's all act the idiot, shall we?

This seems to be something of a recurrent theme with him, basically he is a coward. At the G7 meeting he waited until he was safely back on his plane before coming over all the 'hard man' and criticising the other members. When he sacked James Comey it was by letter, when he sacked Rex Tillerson it was by Twitter, the man hasn't got the guts to face the people he is sacking or even disagreeing with, since it's obviously not quite like the reality TV show that he was probably best suited to. He also does the old 'deflect criticism' method of addressing embarrassing situations, boringly once again when with Putin he brought up the tired old subject of Clinton's e-mails, this is becoming a bit like his obsession with Obama's birthplace, he needs to know that no-one else gives a sh*t about Clinton since she isn't the POTUS; if we want to know about stuff that hasn't been disclosed, let's be having a look at his tax returns 😨

The EU hasn't failed Greece, until the bailout, Greece had failed Greece, they are now actually in a far better position following the tough medicine of the IMF and European Central Bank (well according to the Financial times https://www.ft.com/content/326f2c10-6807-11e8-b6eb-4acfcfb08c11 ). Should Italy fail, it will again be due to some rather stupid Italian national policies rather than anything to do with the EU. No rational government can promise tax cuts and pension increases, which seems to be what the Italian coalition is offering them. Why should anyone expect the EU to then bail them out when a clearly flawed policy fails? In Italy (much as in the UK) the coalition 'argument' is "This is what the Italian people voted for", well the Italian people are just going to have to wear the consequences when it fails (as it will fail). Where I would agree that that Italy has been let down is with the response of other EU nations (the UK included) to the refugee crisis. The Italians (and Greeks) stepped up to the plate and everyone else took three paces backwards with the attitude,"It's your problem mate, nothing to do with us". That is why the political party League made great gains in the last election, because the rest of us couldn't be *rsed to help the Italians out.

In fairness I think most people should realise that is what CRT are obliged to do. If you are trying to run a marina business and are being undercut by CRT, the people to whom you pay your NAA fee to, you'd perhaps be a bit miffed. To my understanding CRT set their fees to reflect the local average so that they aren't putting other local marinas out of business and thereby losing another significant form of income, the NAA fee.

Just how often does that really happen? Up against an enemy with an AK47 and I'll just fix me bayonet.

In your enthusiasm for the collapse of the EU (something you have in common with both Putin and Trump) you seem to forget that if the EU goes down, in or out, we go down with them. Our supermarkets rely on 'just in time' deliveries from the EU so you can forget about that. A lot of our industry relies on 'just in time' deliveries so that they don't have to tie up vast amounts of money holding stock, you can forget about that. Yes a crashing EU would send us pleading with Trump for a deal, any deal would do no matter how bad for the UK economy (and obviously good for the US economy). You clearly care very little for the future of this country.

Perhaps you'd better contact these 'girls' ( https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2016/04/meet-female-kurdish-fighters-battling-isil-160427072219348.html )and tell them that they aren't doing it right, they obviously don't know that eradicating Daesh is really a 'man's' job (shame they seem to be making quite a good job of it though). I would also suggest that the cattle farmer/fell runner (Nicky Spinks) I mentioned earlier would knock spots off most infantrymen (bearing in mind that she is 51 years old), in fact you might struggle to find a Royal Marine up for running a 116 mile (187 Km) technical mountain course over a weekend. Back in 2014 a team of marines recreated the famous 'yomp' across the Falklands, 120Km and it took them 4 days.

The fact that few women are in an industry actually says more about that industry than it ever says about the ability of women to do the job. Within the construction industry there are women bricklayers and, whilst on my travels I passed a house under renovation with two women roofers doing the job, so they are perfectly capable of doing the job. Women plumbers are not even a rarity now. As far as the armed forces go, the clue is in the title, they tend to be armed so are more than capable of looking after themselves. The taking hostage of any military personnel is a massive problem in places like Afghanistan regardless of gender. Odd that you pick the sexuality 'problem' regarding submarines and the navy since they have a long standing reputation of homosexual relationships, but of course that is 'different' and OK I suppose, isn't it? None of what you say gives any grounds for regarding the jobs as 'men's' jobs any more, this is Victorian thinking by those who feel threatened that women are coming to take their jobs. There is no physical reason why they should not be able to do the jobs.

Have to say it sounds like an ill thought out idea to me to have a referendum with three options on the table. The last referendum was bad enough with just about a bare majority but with a 3 way option, what constitutes a majority? 34%? 36%? 40% you are unlikely to get over 50% for any of the options since we only just about got that with only 2 options on the table.

Just to revisit an earlier post, could you perhaps list these jobs where this hypothetical man is going to be better equipped than any woman? The favourite is always going to be the so-called physical jobs, which are now pretty few and far between, but it was always more of a case that you didn't find women steelworkers, shipbuilders or coalminers rather than they couldn't actually do it. When you look at the achievements of the fell runner, Nicky Spinks,( https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/jul/10/fell-runners-116-mile-feat-adds-to-summer-of-sporting-triumphs ) I don't actually personally know that many (or in fact any) blokes who are capable of this sort of extreme running, so they are more than capable of extreme physical effort (Spinks is in fact a cattle farmer). So if we therefore ignore the physical side, what jobs can't women do? We have had two women Prime Ministers, so obviously not that one. There are a number of FTSE 100 CEO's that are women, so obviously not that either. Women airline pilots are now common and all of the emergency services employ women, so obviously not those either, can you help me out here a bit 'cos I'm struggling to find one🤔. I wouldn't describe it as sexist, it is just a lack of confidence in one's own ability to have to try to justify some jobs as 'men's' jobs when there aren't any, you now need to compete in the market against whatever gender. The sexism of Trump is that he repeatedly humiliates May by this hand holding lark (presumably because his own wife wont let him), like she is a poor unsteady old dodderer when in fact he is the dodderer at 72, whereas May is a sprightly 61 year old with walking as her hobby. This isn't being gentlemanly, it's being a knob.