klanger

I have uhhhmed and ahhhed about this very subject every time something comes to the news about the death penalty. I have to say I dont agree with it. Not that I am a do gooder, but just that as I see it that makes us no better, they arnt executed in the heat of the moment it is pure cold blood. That makes me feel very uncomfortable, and I start to wonder who is the animal/monster. I dont believe I am a do gooder for feeling and thinking this way, simply cos if I had my way prison's would not be the free for all holiday camps that they are today. I believe they should bring back the chain gangs, tax payers are already paying for their food and water, why shouldnt they work that off and cover the costs to tax payers for road maintenance. They shouldnt have any leasure persuits, get the gyms out of prison along with the colour tvs and all the other niceties that the free dont always have to hand. I dont think they should be bullied or beaten by the staff, but I also dont think they should have an easy laid back time in prison either. After all they are there as a punishment. Who knows, maybe if prisons were a horrible place to be maybe so many people would think twice about commiting the crimes in the first place.

I believe so yes, seem to remember them talking about it on the tv not long after he was caught.

I think if aliens existed they wouldnt want anything to do with us, to get here they would be clearly way more advanced than we are, which would automatically make them a threat to us.... what do we do to something that makes us feel threatened??? annihilate them first then ask questions. Being that they would be more advanced than us I doubt that they would be stupid enough to try and make contact.

Hey there Coral The incubation period for chicken pox is three weeks, this is before any blisters appear. So when your daughter broke her arm the virus was already working within her system, and her white blood cells would already be on the rise. At best guess I would say she caught the pneumonia because her little body had gone through two pretty tough incidents of mending and was naturally run down. The chicken pox wont have caused the pneumonia, and the pneumonia coming two weeks later isnt part of chicken pox in the way it was for me. In my condition the chicken pox and pneumonia were attacking at the same time because they were viciously linked. You are perfectly right though to ask that question, and the more people are aware of how quickly a simply childhood illness such as chicken pox can turn deadly the better. In the same respect though, people shouldnt automatically presume it will be deadly, but if they are informed, then they will be able to act much faster and possibly save the life of the person or even child that may be infected with both viruses. I gave a very acurate run down of the symptoms as they displayed themselves initially in my previous post. Before I caught my illness doctors were pretty much ignorant to the potential for it to go drastically wrong, it is such a rare condition and few doctors have ever seen it, something they maybe touched on briefly in their years as med students but have never actually dealt with. I am pleased to say though, that has changed . A good doctor will now ask a pregnant woman if she is immune to both german measles and chicken pox. If she isnt immune to chicken pox and its time for the rounds of that illness again (chicken pox seem to hit every 6-7 years) she will be offered an abortion if she has been in direct contact with it. That said, we all need to be vigilent to the risks, as I said doctors on the whole wont have had first hand experience of it at its worst, so may not automatically tell you of the risks when you go to them. I have endeavoured by word of mouth to inform people of this potential, so now more people know of it. With the internet however I have been able to reach other countries. Its now up to each and every one of you to pass the word along, dont scare people... this is not a common ailment, but to be informed so that they can act, if other symptoms present, within 24 hours of onset of the blisters. If for any strange reason, any of you out there have a doctor that hasnt heard of this, please feel free to quote my case. I know I made the medical history books of the Celle krankenhause. I dont remember a hospital number for myself but here are the details I do know if any doctor wishes to look into it. Name:....Katrina Pearson DOB.......7th Jan 1964 Hospitalisation..........17th Feb 1989 - 17th March 1989 Hospital.....Celle Krankenhause Place.......Celle Country....West Germany At the time I was the wife of a British soldier serving in Hohne, we were living in Bergen Belson.

I can give you an example of chicken pox caught by an adult and why it can be dangerous. First the blisters come, nothing too bad with that, leave them alone dont pop them and you wont scar, dont pick the scabs and they wont scar. Within 24 hours there are cramping type sensations in your lower rib area, this is your kidneys starting to fail, but you merely show the signs of a water works infection. By the 36 hour point your chest has tightened and breathing becomes laboured. By the 48 hour point you are panting as you simply can not take in more air than that, your lungs are flooding your kidneys are in renal failure and your liver is no longer functioning properly, oxygen rich blood is no longer getting effectively to your brain. Your heart is taking a beating as it races at over 160bpm. This is a rare but fatal side kick of getting chicken pox as an adult. Most people dont survive it. I have never heard of a vaccine against chicken pox, it certainly isnt something that is offered here in this country, so when I found out there was chicken pox going around I made sure my children got infected by playing with the infected children. I felt that this was most definately the better option than hoping they didnt get it as adults. I never caught chicken pox as a child, I got it at the age of 25, the blisters showed on Tue 14th Feb 1989, by Fri 17th Feb I was in big trouble. I had been to the doctors in those three days a total of 6 times, and was constantly fobbed off and told to behave as children get it all the time its no big deal. On the Friday morning I was rushed to the local German hospital (my ex husband was in the army at the time). I was x-rayed and then rushed immediately up to intensive care, the x-ray showed next to no lung left. They had to restart my heart in the elevator as I was going up to the ICU. I was placed on a ventilator, had various drips and feeds going into my body. Having little in the way of lungs the ventilator pumped up my body like a balloon, my husband didnt recognise me. At 5.30 that evening they pronounced my baby dead (32 weeks gestation) and told my family that I would NOT make it through the night. In their history they had seen a few cases of what I had and none of them had survived. The doctors were amased the next day to find me still alive, from there they played it one day at a time. They warned my family that even if I did survive this illness I may not be the same due to the lack of oxygen to my brain, they didnt know what level of brain damage I may have gotten. Three weeks later I came out of the semi coma I was in and my breathing tube was removed. My muscles even in three short weeks had wasted away and I had to learn to walk again. My speech was slow, words no longer came easily. My long term memory was shot and my short term memory wasnt much better. It took me a long time to get over that illness, finding new ways into existing memories, possibly using different parts of my brain I dont know, I just know it was a long painful haul back to normalicy. The most basic of jokes would go right over my head. I already had one child at the time of this illness he was 2, I then went on to have two more children after this illness. I had chicken pox with viral pneumonia a rare but fatal combination. Do I think that chicken pox parties are ethically wrong? NO!

well yes that is true, a car is sold mainly on how low the mileage is. But that doesnt take away from the fact that we are charged over the top for petrol. Personally I think one way or another the government takes back more than enough tax from us in our earnings and spendings, if the extra on the cost of petrol isnt going directly to helping the environment then what is it spent on, it must be billions of £'s

LOLOL bettina, do you know that a few years ago hmmm probably 20 or so now, they tried to get birth control set up in some of the poorer countries to try and slow down the population increases. I remember reading a list of reasons given by women when asked about the pill and why it hadnt worked for them. One lady admited to taking the pill vaginally, another went through 6 months supply in two months, she had been poppin a pill for each of her three boyfriends, another took it just before sex and at no other time..... the list went on and on and was hysterically funny. I dont think it was funny to those women, but it gave me a good giggle, and I expect that pretty promptly after that someone made a point of having the pill and how to use it clearly explained to these people.

In the UK we have families from just about every european country living here along with families from most countries around the globe ethinic diversity has nothing to do with violence, if it did, then the whole of the UK would go up in flames! Where I work alone and its a small company with about 60 employees we presently have working in my area a: South African 2 Jamaican 1 German 1 Polish 3 Indian 1 philipeno 1 These are some of the people on the shop floor. For lunch I can pop over to the burger van and be served by a Turkish gentleman. For other places to eat here I can choose from Mexican, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Cantonese, American, Portugese, Greek,Turkish...... those are the ones I know about. We have also opened our doors to countries in danger and given them assilum, such as Korea and Bosnia. I think in the UK we are just as diverse as the states if not more so, though that may seem that way to me because basically the UK is probably no bigger than one of your smaller states, so the diversity of peoples hasnt been diluted down with distance. Basically for every nation/country you can name we have people from there here. Yeah we get bullying in our schools and this does get majorly out of hand at times, and people have been killed, but shootings are very few and far between. Then again we dont have a constitution that states we can take arms. My American husband has seen both sides of it, (diversity in the States v diversity in the UK) and says we have way more here than he has ever seen in his entire life in the states..... 38 years, and we dont live in London where things are even more diverse. LOL sooooooooo diverse that when me and my hubby went to Croydon to apply initially for his 2 year spousal visa we were met very agressively by an african man who told us in no uncertain terms (but with very very basic english) that he would not give us the visa as we had to go the states for it, when I started to say "oh but I thought..." I was emmediately cut off and told if I wanted to continue this he would stamp my husbands pass port declined there and then and he would never be allowed to live here. So we flew to the States and went into NY to the consulate and got the visa there, from what I saw while in New York they had no where near the amount of foreign nationals that we have here locally never mind in one of our large cities. My hubby was a army brat so well travelled within the states.

ouch!!!!!!!! lol YT2095

so in that case the taxes are used to ????? what is it the government spend those taxes on to help the environment?

I ended up going to the BBC homepage and searching oil prices. That gave me a few of the recent headlines in the news that covered the increase in the price of oil per barral. Looks like ed84c was probably right about the scaremongering. The chances are some of the local rags got hold of this information and blew it out of proportion. Or my colegues simply misread the headline, knowing how some of the rags word things, it is more than possible that they were simply trying to make headlines that would be eye catching. I havent bought a newspaper for years, not since they started hounding Lady Diana prior to her marriage. Some of these newspapers just dont seem to be happy unless they are tearing someone down. As far as I am concerned they played a huge part in her death. However, that would be a completely different topic.

Darth tater this is an oldish post on the net but will give you some idea of the taxes involved. http://www.nanlf.co.uk/concerns/transport/petrol_prices_and_taxation.htm

I cant find the origional piece, but did find an irish papers comment about it, where the increase (though it would now appear they have changed their minds) gets mentioned http://www.uup.org/media/media_03_12_04_armstrong.htm

#9 previous post was me lol .......... no I'm not blonde, hubby hadnt signed out and I didnt think to check

The press here in England in recent weeks have stated that the prices are going up considerably, the effect on the motorist is estimated at a £1 increase per litre, that puts our petrol/gas to £1.80 per litre that's roughly $3.40. That will increase the cost of filling up my car from £40 to £90. an equivelent roughly of $165. for a tank of gas Of course this will also have a knock on effect with increased prices throughout the country for food clothing and anything else that is moved by lorries/trucks to shops or workplaces.

I have just been upgraded with a newer system at work. I went from using Lotus software on Win98, which was a real pain in the bum, to now using MS Word on Win 2000. Now whilst the 2000 edition is pretty similar to the system I use here 98SE I am having difficulties with one thing and need some advice on how to go about changing something. On my previous system and indeed my home one, when I go to print something I have the option to increase the number of copies from 1 to what ever I need, and the printer duely prints my required number of copies. On my newer system at work however, the option to increase the number is still there but no matter how many copies I ask for it only prints 1. When I check the print section again, it has automatically defaulted back to 1 copy. When I tried looking at the various options within the print section my boss threw a dickie fit and told me never to do that as I may break the system!!!! lol she is old so I guess I can forgive her that thought process, and her solution to me was to just then take the 1 copy printed and go find the photocopier and copy it as many times as I needed. Kinda like doing a word document and then writing it out by hand in my books lol. There must be a setting within the print section of my system that has a default of 1 copy set in place, can anyone here tell me where it is or how I get to that information if its elsewhere within the system to change it, BTW all other workstations on the network are allowed to print numerous copies so I really dont think it is a glitche within the network printer itself or the network printer settings. (could be wrong there, dunno) And of course I will wait for a meeting or a day off by her to do the necessary evil deed

Hi When me and my hubby were dating over the internet, we would often go into pogo and play a couple of rounds of pool. We really liked playing that game, and though now we are together I have tried to play the real thing, I absolutely suck at it (no nice white lines giving me a clue as to direction lol). What I want to know is this, do any of you know of a site that two people sharing a computer can play a game of pool together? Probably doesn't exist, but I though that perhaps if it does you guys would be the ones to know.

On February 13th 1989 I was a 25 year old mother of one 32 weeks into her second pregnancy. The following day I discovered a blister on my body and within an hour had several, I had chicken pox. My doctor assured me that my baby would be fine, so I carried on as normal. Within three days my chicken pox had turned into a deadly but rare condition of two diseases, chicken pox with viral pneumonia. I was put on life support systems due to being unable to breath for myself. Sadly my baby died that same day through lack of oxygen in my blood, it seems that when faced with extremes like this, your mind takes total control, oxygen rich blood was re-routed to supply my brain only. All my internal organs went into failure and as far as the doctors were concerned I was not going to survive. One month from the date I was finally strong enough to take a trip to the morgue to see my babe, a 5.7lb girl. Well as you can see, I made the medical history books by being the only person to survive this particularly aggressive illness in the history of the Celle Krankenhause (German Hospital in Celle). The loss of my baby to me was huge, and for quite a while I blamed myself, after all it was my mind that re-routed the oxygen. What does this have to do with poetry? Getting there lol just needed to give you a little history so that the two poem's I wrote four and five years on would make sense to you, so here goes. Cassandra Jane 17th Feb 1993 Time heals the wounds or so they say though long ago, feels like yesterday the pains so strong it wont go away I miss you like I'd miss my heart the ache of an empty space where once you lay trusting me to do right by you and keep you safe I let you down now I must pay till the end of my life where we'll meet once again I promise you my dear sweet babe that when we are as one I'll never let you go again to spend your time alone You have two brothers a sister too she is the living image of you I vow to you to keep her safe as I know I should have you My little girl 20th August 1994 Tonight I can't sleep for thoughts of you they why's and if's I wish I knew it's now five years along the track and still so desperately I want you back I never held you close and tight on that cold February night when you needed me where was I sleeping drugged up floating high I wish I'd given you something to wear and placed beside you a teddy bear instead you went just as you came no goodbye kiss.... its me who's to blame I never shall forget your face the feel of your body my fingers traced the sleepydust in the corner of your eye my life was so shattered I couldnt even cry Poetry isnt something I have studied or do particularly well, however I found it a very useful tool at time of great happiness and sorrow.

And I think a smack on the hand or bottom is very effective. According to the list of abuse data that Coral posted way back in this thread, bruising is the lowest form of abuse leading up to extremes. A smack doesnt leave a bruise. When you get down to the nitty gritty of it all would you sentence a parent to prison for smacking their child after having been told again and again not to do something dangerous? If the answer is yes then fair enough, but please be aware that that particular parent may well be spending time in the same cell as another parent who for no other reason other than wanting to be big and strong regularly punched burned starved and damaged their child. As far as the other inmates are concerned all they hear is child abuser both parents if released into general population will be killed. I am sorry but that seems as extreme to me as say a mother on very little money going into the local store stealing nappies (diappers?) for her baby being sentenced the same way as a person going into the local bank armed with a gun.

My children are fine, they talk with me about a whole array of subjects and always have done. They ARE free to discuss something that I may have done or said without fear of reprisal, if I am wrong about a decision then I am big enough to swallow my pride and admit it, and work with them on it. They are NOT my personal slaves nor do they behave as such. They all have good solid grounding they know right from wrong. I have never measured the time a mark fades, because until recently it was never a issue, and as I said before I haven't smacked them since they were about seven years old some 6 years ago. When they did get a smack it was on the bottom over clothes, I was in control of my anger at all times, my hand never hurt and when I checked there was never a mark. But the point had been made and they didnt do 'whatever' again. Yes there have been times when they have done something that has angered me, my temper has been there in plain view, but I have never launched a smack at them at those time, they can see my anger they dont need to feel it too. I being the adult walk away and calm down before going back to them and discussing it. When they aren't out playing with friends they are cuddled up to us watching TV or playing games with us. They are'nt afraid to speak, to joke to have fun with us or even at us, and we all laugh. None of them have a nervous laugh or a nervous tic or a stutter. Yet according to what you class as abuse I must be an abusive parent. Funny that I had imagined children that are abused to be withdrawn, with no friends and spending undue amounts of time in their own bedrooms. I have never pinched or twisted an arm, never shaken them. When they were smacked as I said before it was on their bottoms over clothes, or on the top of their hands as toddlers. I have never slapped their faces or hit anyother part of their body. I have never played mind games with them, threatening them with another parent or telling them they are stupid and such like. They have never been punished by isolation from me and my love for them, within minutes of any punishment I have always gone to them and told them that I love them and hugged them, and discussed with them why I smacked them, and yes they have been two way conversations. As far as the social services are concerned. Before smacking was banned they were overstretched underfunded and undermanned. Hundreds of children regularly being abused went unchecked, some even died before the social services were able to intervene. The social services are still all of the above, but now.... they have the added lists of kids claiming abuse that are'nt being abused, they just want to try and control their parents teachers and anyone else that is authority over them. Funny how a child that gets into a fight in the school ground doesnt go running to the child lines, yet will threaten their parent with that should they have done something wrong. So what happens? Even more abused children go unattended because the service is swamped with dummy calls, and the people are out questioning none abusive parents instead of focusing on those children that are really in danger of their lives.

I dont see the connection between disciplining a child and beating a wife. There is no lesson to be taught to the wife other than an overbearing husband that wants total domanancy. Disciplining a child is not about who is dominent, it is about ensuring your child doesnt grow up to become a thug that kills indescriminately, or thinks that you working and earning money means they can take it from you. Even in Educated countries where beating a spouse is a crime, it hasnt stopped those crimes taking place. Why? Because making something illegal doesn't make those sort of people comply. The wife/husband is still just as scared of their partner as they were before, the abuser is still just as controlling if not more so. In england too we have that law as you stated Coral, however the difference here is that you can leave a reddened mark as long as it dissappears within an hour, how can you measure that kind of smack? You cant. So you let the child carry on as they were and hope that by some small miricle they grow up magically knowing right from wrong? The long and the short of all of this is simply this: Good parents that don't "beat" their kids are being forced to comply because of the few who do. Will those few stop what they do? Not at all, they will simply find others ways of torturing their kids without the trace of marks, those kids will still be too scared to do anything about it, some of those kids will still die at the hands of evil parents. In the meantime the rest of us are being forced to sit back and watch as some children turn into something that even your worst nightmare cant conjure up, whilst preying that our own children don't give in to peer pressure and join the ever growing ranks of out of control children. After all it takes alot of self disciplin to do the right thing when doing the wrong thing is way more fun. Where does that disciplin come from in the first place? It is certainly not self taught, when a mother tells her toddler dont do that and then allows them to continue unchecked it doesnt teach the child not to do that, so when that toddler grows up a little and walks out into a busy road, why on earth would they take any notice of mum saying don't do that, when it has meant very little in the past, and had no repercussions. No one should beat a child into submission, no one on here is advocating that, but to not discipline a child at times when discipline is necessary, is also a form of abuse in the form of neglect.

Yes I can see that, but that still leaves the "power" firmly in the childs hands. Children of today are fully aware of their rights and whether using the child line as an idle threat or not, the threat is there. No parent wants a social worker round their home because of the stigma attatched to it. There will be a record of the visit and word very quickly gets round that you have had 'social' on your doorstep, which immediately makes you look guilty to those around you. We already had a thread on this site about assuming the guilt minus the evidence, and unfortunately this is something that is practiced on a daily basis by the miss-informed and un-informed. The power and authority of the parent with regard to children has been taken and put into the hands of the government. We now have children being raised by the government in effect as they have the ultimate say so. No matter if the childs complaint is valid or not the authority has been taken from the parents, ultimately giving the child the power. Do you really want the government telling you how to raise your child? You are not physically damaging your child, not banging their head against the wall, not taking tools to beat them with, not starving them cos they upset you, not leaving them for hours unattended at night so you can go drinking, not using psychological abuse by telling them they are a failure or they are disgusting or stupid or a waste of space. You are guilty of merely trying to teach them right from wrong, and sometimes they may do something so dangerous or outragious that it warrants a smack, and yet you will still go through the same run of questions as the parent that did do the real abuse as mentioned above. Further more you will be tarred with the same brush as the abusive parent, in and around your neighbourhood and within the system too.

There is and always will be a fine line between abuse (physical and mental) and discipline. In order to discipline any one child or adult you need to be in total control of your own feelings, to discipline when angry can lead very quickly to abuse. I was disciplined as a child and other than hurt pride at the time, it never hurt me everlastingly. The discipline I got was a smack and back in those days rarely with the hand, usually a wooden spoon or leather belt if I had got really out of hand. I went on and had my own children, full of the usual "I am not going to do that to my children!!" indignation that most of us have felt and said at some point in our lives. When they were crawling and becoming more mobile though, I found myself in the situation of, do I try and reason with a child that has no grasp of the language I use or do I tap their hands if they persist in trying to stick their hands in the video machine slot, or continually try to grab things from tables, ornaments drinks what ever came to hand, or do I child proof the whole house and have everything four foot off the floor. Well the latter is unreasonable, the child needs to learn not to touch those things or at a later age on their first school outing they are hands on with everything they see, causing annoyance to others and possible danger to themselves and those around them. So I tapped their hands, and they quickly learned that certain things were out of bounds, and as they got older and could understand more, they were able to see why those things were out of bounds. I continued to discipline my children, mainly in their early years up to the age of five. I then noticed a big gap and their behaviour was really good right up until they were each about the age of seven, which is when they again tried the boundaries that I had set out, and pushed the rules laid down, and then they got their bottoms smacked (with my hand). I haven’t had to smack them since. When each of them got to about the age of 13 they again tried the boundaries and strutted their stuff, much as adolescent foals do, and as the parent, I pulled them back in line, using other forms of discipline, like loss of privileges. I have three pretty well behaved teenagers that have a firm understanding of right and wrong. They are well adjusted young adults with a healthy respect for authority. They aren't frightened of me or feel they have been treated wrong, we still hug each other and say "I love you". Yes I still get the occasional moment with them, but on the whole they are good kids. I get praise from outsiders on their politeness and willingness to help. I do see an awful lot of children and teenagers in the Town where I live that have had no discipline what so ever either at home or at school. These children really have been "spared the rod and spoil the child". They are vulgar, abusive and have no regard for other people's property or belongings. There is a huge increase in young offenders here and repeat offenders and in most cases violence is their main stay to keep anyone from spoiling their fun. These children are in part the result of the abuse crusaders, who stopped discipline firstly within the schools and swept across the country in a bid to outlaw any parent that smacks their child. Are we proud of the way things turned out by taking one extreme method of abuse and trying to levy it at the doors of those who discipline their children using a smack? Abuse is a dreadful thing but abuse these days swings both ways. We now have children who regularly abuse adults and scream 'child lines' if the adult attempts to defend themselves. A child can go into any shop they please and threaten people and steal or damage goods and the police are called. If the child doesn't want to go with the police to the police station and the policeman lays his/her hand on their arm to take them, the police are in the wrong and are prosecuted for child abuse. What is really scary though, is that these children will one day have children of their own