DiegoDiego

I know the KY postcode area covers more than Kirkcaldy, but it's named KY after Kirkcaldy, not Kelty, no? Just in the same way ML is Motherwell, not Monklands.

Had a friend who thought similarly about Kelty, was taken aback when I suggested KY was for Kirkcaldy.

I will admit, if pasta came in packs of 400g, I'd probably eat 200g per serving. When I make a tomato based sauce I find that one tin of tomatoes to 250g pasta is a good ratio. f**k knows what those on 75g portions do.

That's not provable. Christianity has been the foundation of our society's ethics and morals for over a thousand years. It's impossible to posit a counterfactual with any certainty. That's kind of my point. Far less is available through other routes, so it's a good thing that religious groups provide that option for people. Nothing anyone does is 100% selfless. Again, it's impossible to say with certainty but in my experience most of those people are doing these things in a general desire to help their communities, rather than some nefarious back-door to power. You could make the same accusation about people who start food banks or any other non-religious charitable work. Religion is of course a powerful thing and in the wrong hands can be very dangerous, but so is any ideology. Look at the Khmer Rouge, for example. I don't think that characteristic is specific to religions. I think if you're arguing that religion is bad (fair enough), you should really broaden your scope to include a few other things. Agreed. Anyway, I've a busy schedule this evening so I'll leave it there. Nice debating with you, Mr Danger.

How many grams of dried pasta do folk on here have per serving? I've noticed that the packet I'm using says 75g, but I routinely have 250g, and I'm not exactly Angus MacAskill.

I'm an atheist and just can't wrap my head around the idea of there being a higher power, it makes no sense to me, but similarly my father thinks that I'm the one being illogical by thinking there isn't a higher power. There are a great many documented logical thinkers who believed in a deity. You've a valid point there which I tend to agree with, but I don't think we're at the point of QED yet. There have also been innumerable good things done in the name of religion, for example the Red Cross, which was founded on the Christian principle of helping those in need, regardless of their beliefs or background. I come into contact with quite a few Christian groups through my work and almost without exception they're incredibly nice people. My brother is just as atheist as you, but when he had a tragedy in his family the members of his local church went out of their way to support him. Religious organisations are increasingly important today when we have a crisis of elderly people who lack human contact, for many of them their weekly trip to church/temple/mosque/et cetera is the only socialising they manage. I'm not debating for a second that religious groups have done abhorrent things over the years, but I also think you also need to give credit where its due. As for your last paragraph, well that's not in the least bit surprising seeing as theism has been the dominant ideology for >99% of human history.

I'm taking about when the Albanian state were executing thousands of religious leaders, and demolishing thousands of religious buildings, in the name of atheism. This sort of activity from either side is simply about destroying an organised facet of society which could pose a threat to the incumbent's power. It has very little to do with actual beliefs. This isn't a problem with theism or atheism, it's a problem with humans when they get too much unaccountable power.

You'd think someone calling themselves Broomhill ultra would know how it works by now.

Think it was a tad more complicated than that, you could easily frame the US position in a similar way. Think your take has more than a hint of confirmation bias on this one.

They absolutely were in Albania. HTH.

Would a better comparison not be the Stirling-Alloa line, which has been a huge success? Westhill and Alloa are roughly the same size and the distances are also pretty similar. Okay, it's probably unfeasible to run a line out west from the city centre, but in general I don't think a fixed link from a growing town of 12,000 to a city of 200,000 via other unserviced parts of the city should automatically be a stupid idea.

Not a blinder over the whole course of the story, but the final trade seems a pretty good one to me.

Russia's played a blinder on that one.

Atheism doesn't have such a great record, either.

To the best of my understanding, in this sense okrug is probably similar to our council wards. Generally it's a subdivision of an oblast, sometimes with some level of autonomy. It's all a bit higgledy-piggledy over there though.