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Douglas Adams. Arguably more popular than Pope JPII, and he did give us the answer to life, the universe and everything. More seriously, I'd agree with MPFC and his argument that those WTC deaths were the most significant of the past decade, for precisely the reasons he's given. Or summat. (Addendum: I voted for Muhammed Atta in the poll, BTW)

Arnold Ridley was excused for the final time on this day in 1984, aged 88.

...and now he has.

Believe me, if you have got the flu, you shouldn't be at work. Half the porters on our ward have got it because one of us - (no, not me) came to work when she had the flu. It shot round the ward. Wise words Dave. ...even if 5 months too late!

Five years ago, Dave Allen, aged 68. Goodnight, and may your god go with you.

The ones at Tesco aren't any different Sorry but I LOVE self-service checkouts. I quite like them too. Isn't love too strong a word to use in relations to self-service checkouts? Gravy they are not. Actually, as a rule, I quite like self-service checkouts; but these Morrison's check-outs have to be experienced to be believed. In my experience, Sainsbury's run a close second to Tesco. Morrison's are a distant 3rd.

Previous futile conversation abridged. Subsequent futile conversation padded out to ubertedium. Granted, the way you use the search function does list the posts individually, which if you are searching for a random obscure peleb then it's not going to have many hits. Trying Clive Dunn however is a different story. Which is why I like to see the threads first as it might jog my memory when trying to find a specific post and can eliminate some of the hits if I don't think what I'm looking for will be in that thread. After performing the search there is a need to wade through heaps and heaps of our crap (snip) So from the top, I pick a topic... (snip) Entering in the same search in the first thread I then meet Mr Flood control... (snip) And that is why I find problems with the function. Everyone else can wake up now. When I get to the 'Search Options' screen, I click the 'Show Results as Posts' radio button, bottom right; this gives the actual posts, rather than just the topic title. There's even more heaps of pages of results, but as they're in reverse date order (i.e newest first) and I can usually eliminate anything prior a certain date, I generally find it easier than just looking at post titles, thinking 'it might be in there'. It still won't let me look for Liz Smith however.

Morrison's. Specifically the self-service check-outs. More specifically, the self-service check-outs at the branch of Morrison's I use. If its not bad enough that the recorded voice repeats 'Please put the item in the bag' after EVERY bleedin' item, after every other item, the system hangs up and tells you to 'Please remove the last item' and 'Please wait, an assistant is coming'. It does this every time I use them, without fail. Today it excelled itself and told me to remove the last item even before I'd put it in the bag. At this point you may be asking why I keep on using them (I ask myself every time); its quite simple - i) even with all the stopping and starting, its still generally quicker than waiting for a manned checkout! and ii) its now my aim in life to get through without having to 'Please wait'. Once I've acheived that, I'll start shopping at Tesco.

The world's oldest African-American, Daisey Bailey has died aged 113. She was the world's 4th oldest person following the death of Mary J. Ray (for all of 20 hours).

Hey, even some of the native English speakers don't speak it perfectly!