I bought one device where the call centre was actually in America, not only was the dialect and accent of the person there almost impossible to understand, the information was crap. Unfortunately his supervisor was also in the USA.

My previous post was really a message for Lighthouse who does not appear to have much that is illuminating coming from his top. Seriously I'm looking forward to the contest between Australia and the South Africans, it has the prospect for some great games.

No its not, if you read back. So a crap Emgland team got thrashed by an average Ozzie team in a contest that did the traditional fight for the Ashes no justice at all. I still cannot see the point in all the excitement about this mediocre contest when the teams involved were below average and well below average. You've also missed the point that I am English which makes your post even more stupid. I just happen to spend a lot of time in South Africa, where any cricket fan will soon realise why the Proteas team is the best in the World.

Just hope the Ozzies don't think the Proteas will roll over like England. It will be interesting to see how they perform against the World number 1 test nation. My money is on the Proteas - can't wait to see it. Suggest that Flowers stops off in South Africa on his way home to pick up a few tips from the Proteas.

I worked in Nigeria for a while and it is fair to say that in wide areas status as a Nigerian is measured by your success in the area if corrupt practice. Guys who send out these messages are pretty low down on the scale.

Clearly as the number one test side in World, South Africa have plenty of 'also rans' with some sort of claim to England, to let them go and play there. This morning I've got my tickets for the final test between South Africa and Australia in early March, by which time no doubt, South Africa will have shown Australia just why they are the best Test team in the World as they proved to India yesterday. 😄

Only a short time for Ozzies to gloat before coming over here to take on the Proteas. I'll be there at Newlands in Cape Town waving my South African Flag, St. George's flag and the Union Jack. Perhaps turning on TV today to watch the last day of the South Africa v India test will remind both England and Australia what test cricket is all about. Apologies to the Yanks who will probably not have understood any if this!

I suppose it’s inevitable that the pardoning of Turing would bring about a rash of comments, many of them uninformed. Whilst I fully agree with the pardon it is totally clear that in 1952 he was guilty of a crime that was on the statute books at that time. Furthermore neither the Queen or the House of Lords had anything to do with either granting or not granting a pardon to him Initiating this pardon was in the remit of the Secretary of State for Justice, which he did and which of course begs the question, ‘why did not of his predecessors take this step?’ The suggestion of a posthumous knighthood fails completely to understand the aims and objectives of this process.
Having studied Turing at some length over a few years and tried to assess him for both his contributions to the war effort at Bletchley Park and as a man, reveals some interesting facts. Undoubtedly he was an incredible man with an incredible brain and his work with Enigma was phenomenal. However those who lost their lives retrieving the first Enigma machine from a German U Boat in the Atlantic Ocean should not be forgotten. Turing, brilliant as he was, would probably not have had the early successes in this area he did, had it not been for those who gave their lives to recover the Enigma machine that was instrumental in him cracking the codes. Whilst his work may certainly have reduced the length of the war, it was only a throwaway remark to this effect by Dwight Eisenhower that has been picked up without any real evidence and could possibly have been equally attributed to the sailors who recovered the first Enigma machine from the U Boat in the Atlantic.
Despite his successes at Bletchley Park, it seems that Turing was certainly an ‘enigma’ himself and possible a very difficult person to like. Apart from his homosexuality which at the time was a big taboo, he was undoubtedly a suffer of Asperger’s Syndrome (an Autism condition), an illness, or condition that at the time little was known about, but even today, when it is understood, many people find it difficult to socialise with sufferers. He did not socialise well at Bletchley Park and accounts of his time there make mention of his high pitched voice, hesitating stammer, a laugh that would try the patience of even his closet friends and a habit of concluding any social interaction by sidling out of the room with eyes lowered murmuring something akin to thanks. He was certainly not easy to like or understand. Eccentricities he displayed for example were a claim that he had calculated the number of rotations his bicycle chain would make before it fell off, at which point he started pedalling backwards to prevent this happening and also pedalling around the Buckinghamshire countryside wearing a full gas mask. Just think how we in our lives today would respond to a person behaving like this. However the gas mask may have been worn to avoid attacks of hay fever. Turing was a really shy person and almost no one got to know him and thus have a chance of liking or disliking him too much.
It was certainly a tragedy at the time and even more so now, looking back, that Turing’s homosexuality undoubtedly contributed to his early death and it is so right that he has been granted a pardon even at this late stage. Not before time, many would say, and I would agree. However it would be wrong to blame politicians, courts or anyone else at the time for what happened then. Under the secrecy rules at the time, no one knew about Turing’s involvement with cracking codes at Bletchley Park. No one outside a small group even knew about Enigma and nothing about this work could be mentioned to the Courts in attempted mitigation, who then dealt with him in the same way as any others found guilty of this offence. To most at the time, certainly the Courts, Turing was just another homosexual who had committed a crime as a result of his sexuality and not a hero whose work had likely saved many lives.

It was the fact that the post appeared to be so untrue and so unlikely, that it prompted me to check it out. Whilst there are inevitably some people with some problems, it is us as voters that voted them in, so to systematically shred them, I don't think does any of us any favours. In the UK the last two members of Parliament for my area, both from opposing parties, were absolutely excellent and to tar them with the same brush as those that perform badly is unnacceptable in my view. Still, slagging off politicians seems to be a favoutire sport here, so who am I to comment.

The comments re statistics for Parliament is a hoax. This started off as a reference to the US Congress over 18 months ago and has since been attributed to the Parliaments of Canada and India before that of the UK.

It is quite amazing to be contacted by someone who has all the characteristics of rudeness, ignorance and being offensive all at the same time. Please accept my congratulations

No IDOLS, but so long as you guys (I guess most are Republicans) can't see when you're being baited and wound up and keep responding, I'm gonna continue dishing out the bait. The fact that you take my rubbish seriously and have the time to reply to it amazes me.

Yes, illegally ang dragged thousands of innocent solidiers to there deaths, pretty good action that was - bumbling fool!

Yeh, I remember Bush sitting at a school totally expressionless apart from a stunned look of confusion on his face, while terrorists smashed planes into US buildings. He just didn't have a clue what to do next.

I've got no axe to particularly grind either way, but I could not help reflecting what his predecessor, a guy who even with a speech written by him or anyone else still seemed pretty much unable to string a few coherent words together, would have done on this massive World stage. Nothing much I suspect from my experience of trying to decipher what he was trying to say on so many occasions when he was in office. Obama is not in the same league as Churchill as an orator, but most certainly he is not in the same league as bumbling Bush.