Don't feed the trolls.

Save your breath. There's no point asking Ajw a question, he'll just either produce a reply that ignores the question or not even reply to it at all.

You know physicists reckon that there's such a thing as dark energy, that's basically the opposite of gravity?
Ajw is to knowledge as dark energy is to gravity.


Give him a minute, he's just looking up his next reply on wikipedia, it's his one and only source of information.

Raymond Damadian can say what he want, in fact he did. Nobody listened. That's why Mansfield and Lauterbur have a noble prize and damadian doesn't.

Eli Lilly(the company) did do pretty well manufacturing others discoveries. But it's not difficult to make money when there is a pressing need, the state pays out fortunes to researchers, and a brave Genius makes his discoveries available for free. Especially when your capital was provided by selling sugar pills, elixers, and tonics. These days we call them placebos and we would refer to the Eli Lily company as snake oil salesmen.

IBM would have been nowhere, they wouldn't even have existed without the work of, Babbage, they would still be making punch card machines without the work of Turing.

I'm not sure what world changing discovery we are attributing to ICI, which bares comparison to the likes of Curie and Salk. Blacks discoveries simply built on his work at Glasgow University.

John Vanes work at wellcome foundation. A charity. Not Wellcome Burroughs the pharmaceutical company. Vane also spent almost all of his working life in academia.


Capitalism makes good doodads and whatsits if you want a gizmo a capitalist is your man. If you want world changing paradigm shifting research, the capitalist is counting his money and shouting at poor people and is nowhere to be seen.

Recent (as in the last 50 years) developments in combustion engine technology have not been driven by automotive manufacturers but as a consequence of goverment demands

Pay rises back then were, across the board in % terms, way way above anything we have now. Even attempts at wage restraint by governments meant they were after pay rises of less than 10% (not the 1% public sector workers are lucky to get today).

Inflation rate was 16%. Miners were also paid 8% less than other manual workers on average which Wilson used to in the election to make the Tories stance on pay re the minors look stupid. That is asking for a high % rise was not "printing money" but about parity at least in part.

So what do we end up with? In real terms a 6% pay rise for a dangerous job of national importance at the time.

In other words you are cherry picking one statistic and taking it way out of context.



He had to deal with the fall out whatever the reason for the decline in numbers. What he didn't have was an agenda to decimate the industry. Thatcher did.



To answer your last question I have always thought the considered opinion was because she never forgot what happened to Ted Heath in 1974. She blamed the miners for Wilson winning in 1974 when in fact it was Heath's fault he lost the election when he tried to stage it as one of "Who runs the country".

The sequence of events back then is interesting. The miners announced a strike with 81% in favour, three days later Heath calls an election on the basis of "Who runs the country?".

Heath saw an opportunity with Labour 4% behind in the polls to exploit the miners strike to win another term.

What then happened is Wilson totally out manoeuvred him on that one by not backing the miners! He was neutral in everything he said. He instead went on about negotiation and blamed the Tories for the confrontation (as well as slagging them off on the economy).

So back then it was clearly was [inot[/i the unions who brought the government down as you have argued. It was Ted Heath who sought to exploit the miners strike expecting Labour to back it outright which they did not, lost a 4% lead in the polls and basically screwed up.

And I suggest that coming from someone who only recently made a cack-handed attempt at harassment on this forum, time may be well invested in considering how much he actually wants to remain on these boards.

Harassment? I invite you to provide any evidence of harassment. Either publically on here, or in a PM if you prefer.

Eli Lilly discovered the ingrediant for and developed Prozac, one of the most used drugs in the world, Black whilst at ICI discovered the ingrediant for and developed Beta-Blockers again one of the most consumed drugs in the world. Who funded the Wellcome foundation? the same people that fund a huge chunk of research in unversities the good old capitalist.

My father used to work for ER Squibb when they were a decent company before they were gobbled up by Bristol Myers. They developed a number of cutting edge drugs - they funded and worked alongside academia to develop these products - it was a process of cross pollination as I would suggest is the case with most drug development. To say all the major breakthroughs come via the state is simply untrue.

Depends what you call dodaas - I would say printed matter is a bit more than a doodah - is transport a doodah?

There is a reason why The Wellcome foundation does the research it does, and makes the discoveries it does, and Glaxosmithkline make cold remedies and Horlicks, and has to pay out billions of pounds in fines for fraud, kickbacks, and hides research. Teva pharmacuticals are one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world, their entire company pretty much just makes cheap pills other people have discovered.

When Jonas Salk found remedies that didnt work, he told the world. When Eli Lilly found remedies that didnt work, they just pretended they did and sold them anyway. After all, their sugar pills were flavoured

I don’t think really you can look at ‘transport’ as a product of private enterprise, like there wasn’t huge amounts of state research in to flight, like the biggest ship and boat builders weren’t Navys. Like universities throughout the world don’t do huge amounts of research in to aerodynamics. like it didnt need government backing with huge levels of road building to cover for the motorcars failings. like it isnt government standards that have driven improvement.

Almost all, the vast, vast, vast majority of research which leads to major discoveries which change the way we see, use and look at the world comes from the state and academia. This will always be the case. Academia looks for the answer. Capitalism looks for the money.

An abusive post that was designed specifically to insult/offend.

A tactic used quite widely in an attempt to silence people – hence harassment.

You know entirely well which post I mean (I have retained a screen grab for reference). So I suggest again that you consider for yourself how much you want to retain posting rights to this site.

Additionally, it could be noted that Big Pharma currently stands accused of not revealing trial results – not least because it doesn't want any less-than-brilliant results to damage profits. Ben Goldacre's [iBad Pharma[/i is just one meticulously-researched and detailed examination of this.

Specifically, one could also consider the question of when and how cholesterol became a disease, and who has benefitted from this. And the relationships between big businesses with a vested interested in promoting/maintaining certain views on health even when they're challenged directly by research. I'm thinking specifically of the British Heart Foundation here, and Unilever, which owns the Flora brand, which has a link with the BHF.

He seems to enjoy being personal with regards peoples looks and even hints of weightism today...

I challenge him to put a picture up of himself?
I'll grant him an apology if he's half as handsome as me?

I suggest that nobody gets caught up in it.

I think you' ll find that it was Codpiece who was the guilty party who posted in another thread...[i"Allslop is correct in one respect though, there are millions who subsist on little electricity, there are also millions who subsist on a low-calorie food intake too, maybe if she followed their lead she could shift some of that blubber she's carrying".[/i

And in all honesty, who could be as handsome as you? Is not GOD both compassionate and generous? What he takes away with one hand....he recompenses with the other......wit and intelligence for an outstanding physique and George Clooney looks.

Oh, and I've absolutely no problem with sticking a photo of myself on here for folk to stick pins in if they so desire. All it needs is for someone to say it doesn't break an AUP regulations.....