chipdawg

I don't have kids so can't comment, but there's a beach and a theme park on underground routes. It's prob a little high culture/bar culture for young kids for an extended trip, but you could fill a few days for sure

But can you gaurantee that all the meat you eat is slaughtered in the most humane way possible, halal or not? I can't so I try not to criticise One thing that has struck me though is that the "85% of halal is stunned" figure seems to be a badge of pride, when it still means that thousands of animals every year are being needlessly put through a painful death. I'd apply the same logic to any cruel slaughter, I just don't have the stats!

But the vast majority of halal meat in this country is killed in pretty much exactly the same way as normal meat. Unless you can say, hand on heart, that you know exactly how every scrap of meat you eat (halal or not) is slaughtered, you can't criticise the halal process as it is in modern Britain. I don't go into Burger King and demand to know that the cows were treated with the utmost respect Where this thread actually started was in regard of Subway pulling pork products from 12% of their shops. I don't disagree with them using halal products, but I do believe that making pork products in unavailable is divisive and contrary to the idea of multiculturism. It would also really piss me off if I went to a store and they put turkey in my Italian BMT

Well we do have our very own 'FC Barcelona of The Conference', but as their Camp Nou is moving to South Glos and the beach at Weston is a bit further out the city than Barcalonetta, I'd say the Catalans win by a nose

The bars and the beach are two of the reasons it's the best city in Europe! Go back during La Merce in September- best piss up I've ever been to!

Love Barcelona, best city in Europe

Love that film. But a) same burger, different name and b) two different countries. Can you imagine the carnage if McDonalds sold beer over here?!

My assumption would be that because franchises buy in bulk from Subway, the pork products were hanging around too long and going off. As I've said though, the whole point of fast food chains like Subway is that their menu is homogenous and you should be able to go into any Subway and order the same product so I'm sure there could be a way around it rather than turning 10% of their stores 'pork free'

You were being 'ignorant' in the sense that you were wrong, like when you said "Indians aren't Muslims". I even qualified it by prefixing it with 'perhaps' and it wasn't me that brought the word to the thread but you still need to start an argument Do you really think that individuals of Pakistani origin who start restaurant businesses call them Indian Restaurants so they can secretly feed you halal meat in the hope you might catch Muslim, or is just that 'Indian Restaurant' is the social convention for such establishments, with a justifiable history and it's a commercial decision to stick with it?

In RedDaves defence, I think the point he is trying to make is that India has the third largest Muslim population in the world so to say that because someone is Indian they are by definition not a Muslim is slightly disingenuous. Similarly your description of the term 'Indian Restaurant' somehow being utilised to cover up the proprietors religion is just plain wrong and sounds a bit conspiracy theoryish. So ignorant perhaps, but I don't think you were being racist

Actually, the history of 'The Indian Restaurant' is more interesting and less sinister than that. The first Indian Restaurants spring up in the East End in the years immediately following the Second World War by men who'd been operating as cooks on cargo and military ships heading over from the subcontinent. These were mainly men from what is now called Bangladesh but then was just part of India. Bangladesh, as we know, is a predominantly Muslim area but as 1940s Britain was not known for its geopolitical accuracy, they merely became 'Indian Restaurants'. I think the first establishment to label itself as an 'Indian Restaurant' was in Birmingham in the early 50s, set up by Bangladeshi Muslims. So whenever you eat 'Indian' food over here, you're generally eating bastardised versions of food first brought over here by Muslims (there are many notable exemptions, for example Butter Chicken) or dishes that have been wholly dreamt up on these shores. It should be noted that most of these dishes were not 'Muslim' or 'Hindu' but specific to a given area. Obviously there are hundreds of restaurants run by Hindu or Christian or even Buddhist Indians, but the curry culture in this country can be traced back to those ships cooks from Bangladesh/East Pakistan (as it used to be known) And also, Pork not generally found (though certainly not excluded from) in Hindu curry either; it's mainly a Goan Christian thing and even then it was due to the influence of Portuguese colonialism rather than local custom

Yeah, I imagine they do but the article doesn't claim they all have, it specifically states that a certain number of them have, which is making me puzzled about what's gone on. It's still ridiculous that I can't enter any Subway in the UK and order the same sandwich; that's kind of the point, isn't it?!

Well I know as much about this 'meat-ban' as is in that Daily Mail article, but I do know that most if not all of the Subways in the UK are franchises, which is probably why only a certain fraction of them have made this change. I have no idea how much control Subway PLC has over their policies toward halal meat, I shall enquire in my local Subway post- haste! (And probably grab an Italian BMT while I'm there)

Subway is, I believe, a franchise-based business so I guess it's down to individual branches/outlets whether they do this It does seem slightly ridiculous that any branch would do this though as you could quite easily stick the halal meats alongside the non-halal meats and please everyone. Unless, I suppose, the vast majority of your customer are Muslims and the non-halal stuff was going off and being wasted

I was indeed making a quip and it was probably inappropriate. I was merely pointing out that underestimating the number of people killed in the holocaust is classed as holocaust denial in a number of countries. Inappropriate, but unintentionally so. Apologies On the kamikaze point, I was pointing out that the use of planes as weapons dates from at least the Second World War

Well they weren't 'removed' in the way you imply, they were voted out by MPs in favour of the terms of a bail out package; one if which was to install an economist in charge. Still, I won't argue that it's a troubling precedent Careful with that 3,000,000 figure SX225; that classes as Holocaust denial in much of the EU and extradition is at present very easy! Genocide had already long been part of the human condition, but I still find it hard to comprehend what went on during that time 20 years? kamikaze pilots in WW2? I do take your point in that it's something that has been publicly mentioned, I just think that we're so far away from it that it's a rather hypothetical stick to be beating the EU with at the present time and in the current political climate even the Lib Dems would probably seek a referendum on a constitutional change that significant

I don't think Greece staying in the Euro is a product of their pride, more the French and German desire to protect the project. At the root of it though, is endemic corruption, incompetence and waste entrenched within Greek society. A more pertinent question in their case might have been why they were admitted in the first place

Do you not think that's a touch paranoid? The point is that it couldn't happen without a lot of song and dance, almost certainly a referendum in the current climate (I think all the major parties have at least promised a referendum in the event of a major treaty change) and therefore ample opportunity to debate the pros and cons. I think (and as someone who is 'pro-Europe') that there are better arguments against continued participation in the EU than a European army that couldn't happen under current laws/rules/treaties

I did google it and there does indeed seem to be support. But it would require a whole new treaty- probably on a greater scale than Maastricht and the I can't see that happening in the near future Something I regret?! What, like voting for UKIP? I might be desperate but even a desperate man has his limits!!!

I guess whether I'm alive or not will depend on whether I'm conscripted to fight the Russians in 10 years time! I appreciate you were simply postulating a scenario, I was just trying to demonstrate that a hell of a lot would have to happen (including treaty changes and probable referendums in various EU countries) before an EU military could even be considered. Despite my support of EU membership, if I was asked whether we should stay in the EU if it meant signing up to an EU Military force, I'd probably (reluctantly in the wider picture) vote No One other thing I do agree with Nibor on is that it doesn't really matter to me at the minute who makes the laws, I feel no more connected to Westminster than I do Brussels. Perhaps if someone or something can make me feel part of the social and political machinations of this country again, I may feel differently about EU legislation

But the EU doesn't currently have the power to conscript and, perhaps more importantly, doesn't have its own army. There isn't even a binding agreement for an EU military policy, as demonstrated in differing attitudes to Syria and Libya across the big players in the EU. So unless there's significant change in the current EU make up, your hypothetical example is impossible

I reckon that's a bit extreme, but with the Power of Hindsight it probably would have been better to let the first couple of organisations (Northern Rock and B&B was it?) fall as a warning to the rest. The government could have underwritten the value of savings for customers. It probably would have modified the behaviour of the others and might have made a difference. Certainly wouldn't have made things worse

Apart from when she said there could be EU reform? http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26362034 French don't seem keen though