I was horrified two days ago when we tuned into SkyNews to hear about the Smacking vote at the House of Lords yesterday. They had a re-enaction of an adult moving forward to belt a 7-10 year old girl in the face, to illustrate smacking!

It made me wonder what others think what smacking entails? Do you see it as encompassing smacking a child in the face? Do you think it still permissable to smack a child over 7 years old? What about using a wooden spoon(or similar) rather than your bare hand?
And finally, do you think smacking should be banned outright, or should parents be allowed to decide?

I just received a new book "The Purpose Driven Life" by Rick Warren!

You might see me quote often from it.... it is a great book! It says...

"Knowing your purpose gives meaning to your lfie. We are made to have meaning. This is why people try dubious methods, like astrology or psychics, to discover it. When life has meaning, you can bear almsot anything: without it, nothing is bearable.

A young man in his twenties wrote, "I feel like a failure beause I'm struggling to become something,and I don't even know what it is. All I know how to do is to get by. Someday, if I discover my purpose, I'll feel I'm beginning to live."

"Without God, life has no purpose, and without purpose, life has no meaning. Without meaning, life has no significance or hope. In the Bible, many different people expressed this hoplessness. Isaiah complained, "I have labored to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing." Job said, "My life drags by - day after hopeless day and I give up, I am tired of living. Leave me alone. My life makes no sense."

"The greatest tragedy is not death, but life without purpose."

"If you have felt hopeless, hold on! Wonderful changes are going to happen in your life as you begin to live it on purpose. God says, "I know what I am planning for you.... 'I have good plans for you, not plans to hurt you. I will give you hope and a good future.'" You may feel you are facing an impossible situation, but the Bible says "God... is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of - infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, or hopes."

Hello people

My son's are off to visit family in SA for 8 weeks from next week Monday - now the question is do I buy travel insurance?

I went to direct line and was quoted £164.83 for the two of them as they would need to pay Adult amounts and because they are going for so long...

When I went to SA I never took Travel insurance and my reason for not doing so for the boys is as follows:

1. If anything untoward should happen to either of them, no amount of money could compensate for the loss

2. they are not UK citizens or even residents so a lot of the policies are not available to me - hence the hiked up price

3. If they should loose thier baggage then my ex-husband will just have to buy them new stuff - its not like he has paid me a cent since they left 3 years ago

4. The total cost of thier clothing and the suitcase does not even come to the £164!

5. I was rather pssssd off having to pay £1120 for their tickets as it is... another £164 will eat into my DIY fund for the flat! :p

OK - so, do I dig deep or pray like hell?

My son, who is 2 years old, had never been a good eater but has now been on a semi-hunger strike for several months. He'll eat little other than dry crackers. Our local nursery nurse has been visiting our home for the last few weeks now & is also having little success in getting him to eat. We've just got back from the baby clinic where he was weighed & he is almost 2kgs under weight! :eek: I've honestly tried just about everything - different foods & feeding techniques. This has now become a constant worry on my mind & I'm at my wits end! :wall: Can anyone please offer any suggestions?

Have you tried this recipe?

Mint jelly recipe


Try this great mint jelly recipe! Mint can be grown in your own garden and turned into jelly for canning.
Makes about 4 half-pints.


You'll need half-pint-canning jars with bands and new lids and a large cooking pot or canner. Sterilize jars while working with jelly mixture.


Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups of fresh mint leaves and stems, washed

4 to 6 drops of green food coloring

2 1/4 cups water

3 1/2 cups sugar

2 Tbsp. lemon juice (in the bottle)

3-ounce pouch of liquid pectin


*Make sure mint is washed clean. Chop finely. Combine with water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and remove from heat. Cover and let stand for 10 minutes. To remove the mint, strain through cheesecloth (triple layer) or jelly bag. Add food coloring.


Combine 1 3/4 cups of mint juice, lemon juice, and sugar in a 4-quart saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat while stirring frequently. Add liquid pectin and continue stirring until you return to a full boil. Boil 1 minute. Remove from heat and fill hot 1/2 pint jars with mixture. Do not fill to the top, leave about 1/4-inch headspace. Place hot lids on jars and screw on bands. Process in boiling water canner for 5 minutes.

Got a real nasty.....
3 of the user accounts have been hit with a home page hijack...
res://kencs....... have run cwshredder, hijack, norton......deleted all I can find relating to it in the registry and reset all the internet options but every bloody time you switch users or reboot the ******* is back. The real problem is it pops up content of an adult nature on my kids account....anybody else had this and managed to solve it?????

I wonder if any of the wise old persons... to be politically correct, can help.

I know a little bit about computers, all learning via trial and error.... Now, I have a friend, whom we shall call completely blond by computer standards, no offence to any blond persons..... so... I offered to help her out, and look at her pc. By the looks of things, I have to reformat her hard drive...which I also offered to do... :dazed:

My dilema is... I have recently had my own computer formatted, but when this process was being done, I was asked to get a cold beer from the fridge and I thus missed how to do this... well I know how to format, but I don't know how to reload windows and the other software etc...

Has ANYBODY out there got step by step instructions on how to do this without making a bigger mess? I have googled my question, but I cannot come up with a satisfactory answer yet.

ANY help would be appreciated.

:bashpc: :comp:

Why not try Adelaide? They are lowering the points system for certain areas...

Emigrate to Adelaide

It's a Wednesday night and you are at a church prayer meeting when somebody runs in from the parking lot yelling, "Turn on a radio, turn on a radio!"

And while the church listens to a little transistor radio with a
microphone stuck up to it, the announcement is made: "Two women are lying in a Long Island hospital dying from a 'mystery' flu." Within hours it seems, this thing just sweeps across the country.

People are working around the clock trying to find an antidote. Nothing is working! California, Oregon, Arizona, Florida, Massachusetts. It's as though it's just sweeping in from the borders.

And then, all of a sudden, the news comes out. The code has been broken. A cure can be found A vaccine can be made. It's going to take the blood of somebody who hasn't been infected, and so, sure enough,all through the Midwest, through all those channels of emergency broadcasting, everyone is asked to do one simple thing: Go to your downtown hospital and have your blood type taken. That's all we ask of you. When you hear
the sirens go off in your neighborhood, please make your way quickly, quietly, and safely to the hospitals.

Sure enough, when you and your family get down there late on that Friday night, there is a long line, and they've got nurses and doctors coming out and pricking fingers and taking blood and putting labels on it.

Your wife and your kids are out there, and they take your blood type and they say, "Wait here in the parking lot and if we call your name, you can be dismissed and go home."

You stand around, scared, with your neighbors, wondering what in the world is going on and if this is the end of the world.

Suddenly a young man comes running out of the hospital screaming. He's yelling a name and waving a clipboard. What? He yells it again! And your son tugs on your jacket and says, "Daddy, that's me."

Before you know it, they have grabbed your boy. Wait a minute!
Hold on! And they say, "It's okay, his blood is clean. His blood is
pure. We want to make sure he doesn't have the disease. We think he has got the right type." Five tense minutes later, out come the doctors and nurses, crying and hugging one another some are even laughing. It's the first time you have seen anybody laugh in a week, and an old doctor walks up to you and says, "Thank you, sir. Your son's blood type is perfect. It's clean, it is pure, and we can make the vaccine." As the word begins to spread all across that parking lot full of folks, people are screaming and praying and laughing and crying.

Then the gray-haired doctor pulls you and your wife aside and says, "May we see you for moment? We didn't realize that the donor would be a minor and we need ....... we need you to sign a consent form." You begin to sign and then you see that the number of pints of blood to be taken has been left blank.

"H-how many pints?", you ask.

And that is when the old doctor's smile fades and he says, "We had no idea it would be little child. We weren't prepared. I'm sorry sir, we need it all!" "But but .. You don't understand."

"We are talking about the world here. Please sign. We need it all!" "But can't you give him a transfusion?"

"If we had clean blood we would. Can you sign? Would you sign?"

In numb silence, you do. Then they say, "Would you like to have a moment with him before we begin?"

Can you walk back? Can you walk back to that room where he sits on a table saying, "Daddy? Mommy? What's going on?" Can you take his hands and say, "Son, your mommy and I love you, and we would never ever let anything happen to you that didn't just have to be. Do you understand that?"

And when that old doctor comes back in and says, "I'm sorry, we've GOT to get started! People all over the world are dying.

Can you leave?"
Can you walk out while he is saying, "Daddy? Mommy? Daddy?

"Why, why have you forsaken me?"

And then next week, when they have the ceremony to honor your son some folks sleep through it .. some folks don't even come because they go to the lake or the seashore .. some folks come with a pretentious smile and just "pretend" to care. Would you want to jump up and say, "MY SON DIED
FOR YOU! DON'T YOU CARE?"

Is that what GOD wants to say? "MY SON DIED FOR YOU. DON'T YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I CARE?"

GOD'S BEEN KNOWN TO NIGGLE ------
by Max Lucado

EVERYONE LOVES WHAT Deborah Ricketts does. But nobody loves it while sheÂ’s doing it. Everyone loves the product, but no one enjoys the process.

She is an independent researcher for the film industry. Do you want your movie to be accurate? Want your facts to be reliable? Send a script and a check to this former librarian and watch the facts begin to fly.

A film set in the thirties needs everything to look like the thirties.
You canÂ’t have a person reading from a newspaper that didnÂ’t exist back then or a band playing a song that wasnÂ’t yet written. Such mistakes occur.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark the map that charted Indiana JonesÂ’s flight routed him over Thailand. Problem: The movie was set in 1936. Thailand was called Siam until 1939.

In Die Hard II Bruce Willis makes a phone call from what is supposed to be a Dulles Airport pay phone in Washington, D.C. No one noticed that the phone booth read Pacific Bell.

Deborah Ricketts lives to find these errors. She is on a scavenger hunt for flubs. She winds her way into props and sets and examines everything. Other peopleÂ’s oversights are her undertakings._

She niggles for the scriptwriterÂ’s own good. The process is not
pleasant, but the result is rewarding.

God has been known to niggle a few times, too. It’s not that God loves to find fault. It’s just that God loves to find anything that impedes our growth. Jesus portrays him as the Good Gardener who cuts and trims the vine. “I am the true vine; my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that does not produce fruit. And he trims and cleans every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce even
more fruit” (John 15:1–3).

Deborah Rickets studies a script and offers: “It’s good, but here are some ways to make it better.”

I doubt if itÂ’s easy for a scriptwriter to turn his manuscript over to
someone like Deborah Rickets. He knows sheÂ’s on the hunt for errors. But he also knows the end result will be a better story.

ItÂ’s certainly not easy for us to turn our lives over to the Gardener. Even now, some of you are hearing the snip-snip-snip of his shears. It hurts. But take heart. YouÂ’ll be better as a result.

Besides, arenÂ’t you glad he thinks you are worth the effort?