why does this newsgroup have beasts

I won't be leaving the transit area - the flight to Melbourne takes off a couple of hours after my flight from Dubai arrives. Time enough to wander through the duty-free shops and decide wheterh my mother needs a year's supply of fresh peppercorns. Spices do seem to be Dubai's unique selling point.

Yes. We like their "special business class" - only cheap when compared with real business class, but (just) within our reach - and we like EK406 and EK407 that go directly to and from Melbourne without passing though Singapore, using the Airbus 340-500. Sadly, EK406 doesn't work from Dusseldorf - it sticks you with a 10-hour layover in Dubai.

On Monday I'm on EK404 on Monday going via Singapore, in steerage - my youngest brother is getting married (again) on Wednesday, and that was the only booking I could get that would get me there in time when he and his partner finally got around to choosing a date.

My wife is skipping the wedding, which let her wait until a "special business class" seat was available (next Saturday).

At least we go back on EK407 in a fairly new 340-500.

What did your previous car have? Pedal steering? A robot driving system? A chauffeur?

Are you flying with Emirates then ?

I was sadly not that impressed with my flight via Dubai to Mumbai in view of their extensive UK advertising. Not esp keen on 777s anyway and the A300 on to Mumbai wasn't exactly in its prime.

Graham

No wheels.

A skeptical war reporter 1st used the line, referring to Vietnam. (The source of the "quote" cannot be verified.): http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:L4DiU5P2Do8J:

I can't find anything explicit. This survey below seems to suggest that there are no malnourished children in Australia, the U.K. and the Netherlands, and relatively few in the U.S.A. - you have half as many as Swaziland, marginally fewer than Columbia, though you do perceptibly worse than Chile.

What I could find suggested that under-feeding in the Netherlands is only a problem amongst the demented elderly and anorexic girls. I'll be interested to see if you can do better.

No? None? Zero?

John

I don't think Sloman has a true country. He's purportedly Aussie, but apparently he lives in the Netherlands on welfare.

...Jim Thompson

And you would be too ignorant to attempt to chastise us thus, if we did not publish these facts ourselves. What is the data in your own country?

I don't know, but his hobby is certainly trashing the USA. Sounds like he works hard at it.

John

The URL I quoted had some comment about the reliability of the numbers they quoted - they'd probably reject one or two per year in a population of around 18 million (Australia and the Netherlands) as statisically indistinguishable from zero incidence per 100,000. I'm sure we get occasional incidents of starvation amongst the mentally disturbed who don't get institutionalised, and manage to starve, rather than beat up, their kids before the social services wake up to them, but these are isolated cases and the media make a huge fuss whenever such a story gets out.

I've never claimed that we were perfect, merely that other people do better than the U.S.A. does, often despite having less in the way of resources to throw at the problem.

Disliking the USA seems to be your religion. How tedious it must be.

John

Nothing purported about my Australian nationality. And I don't live on my unemployment benefit (though I could) but sponge on my wife, who now earns much more than I ever did. We moved to the Netherlands so that she could take up her current job ...

not

Do get it right. I don't dislike the U.S.A.

I do think that you haven't got it all absolutely right yet, and I would be delighted if you managed clean up those last few remaining details and turned your country into a paradise on earth for all your citizens, but that falls a long way short of dislike.

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Nice try Bill, but that's not how it works. You can only like the U.S.A. for a full 100% and nothing less. No bargains here. Show that full 100% of blind admiration, eh, I mean adoration. Eh, make that ADORATION. Plus a full commitment to the LEADER. The one and only LEADER. Join the herd of sheep and follow the LEADER.

You've been listening to too much Jan Pieter Balkenende

not only Prime Minister of the Netherlands. but also the winner of the Dutch Harry-Potter look-alike competition. Pity he doesn't command the magic that might make him look like the leader he desperately wants to be.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen (but safely out of reach in Melbourne, Australia at the moment).

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of

Would you mind giving me an early warning when you start talking about Balkende. I have a rather weak stomach, and now I had to throw up my coffee and breakfast.