altus

It gets worse that that: If we ignore the last 3 as indistinct, we have 44% who believe that Jesus was the son of god and 49% who don't. Isn't believing Jesus was the Son of God pretty much THE fundamental requirement for being a Christian?

There's also christian as an obsolescent and rare alternative to christen: It's the second edition - the CDROM one from about 20 years ago. The definitions for christen include but there's nothing about a Christian being someone who has been christened. That makes sense. You can make someone drunk by pouring alcohol down their throat - it doesn't mean they will stay drunk forever. Just because you christen someone, it doesn't mean they will continue to believe in the Christian god. I'm not sure arguing definitions from a descriptive, rather than proscriptive, dictionary is useful in the context of a thread discussing a survey that shows 6% of people who claim to be Christians admit to not believing in god.

My copy of the OED doesn't say if you've been christened, you're a Christian. So you'd argue that someone christened as a baby because their parents did so, despite not believing themselves, because it was the done thing and that child growing up not having a Christian upbringing and later deciding to be a Muslim is actually really a Christian?

Whilst religious leaders are entitled to their opinions and to express them to governments, the problem is that they argue that those opinions are all supported by people who ticked a box on a form. The survey shows that those who ticked the box don't necessarily support those views.

I especially like the bit when he asks Dawkins to name the full title of the Origin of Species at about 2hrs 25 mins, it was quite a struggle for him. I think you've missed the bit about the survey being of people claiming to be Christians. Here's a quote from the survey results Question 19 is the one you want. That means 6% of people who claim to be Christian don't believe in God!

How much notice should the government take of officials of a religion who claim, based on the ticking of a box on census forms, that X number of people automatically support everything they say? e.g. How many Catholics do you think support banning contraception?

It was an opinion - I'd have thought the rest of my post would have made that obvious. mj.scuba said you can be a Christian without having being christened - which is true. You can also have been christened but not be a Christian - either because you lost your faith or, as in my previous post, because you were so young when christened it can't sensibly have any real meaning.

Christening doesn't count unless an adult chooses to undergo it. A ceremony conducted on a few months old child that is incapable of understanding what is going on and would be unable to prevent it even if they were is not a sensible way to define someone's religion.

No. The conclusion is that what people put on a census form about religion shouldn't have any influence on public policy.

If you are not used to cycling in traffic, I'd advise getting a copy of the Cyclecraft book. It's the book for the government's cycle training scheme and has lots of useful advice on riding techniques.

It's got the ESPN logo in the background - might it be someone related to sport?

You do realise that if everyone lived in social housing, as you seem to wish, they'd still be "landless peasants".

Then you buy it from Tesco instead and the money disappears from your local community.

Threads do get moved if they are created in the wrong place - I suspect that happened with this one.

I doubt it would satisfy the car nerds.

Sorry, I've seen so many people argue VED = road tax = cyclists have less right to the roads than motorists that I obviously saw the last stage where it wasn't present. VED isn't a road tax though and, yes, we know that most motorists have to pay it and cyclists don't. I'm not sure why you think that's relevant though if it's not part of some wider point you want to make.

Yes, everybody understands that. What they object to is you insisting VED is a road tax and then arguing that drivers should therefore have more rights to the roads than cyclists. The very fact that VED is payable for certain types of vehicles and not others (cycles, low emission cars, etc.) is proof that it is not a road tax - however much you might want it to be.

It's given them an excuse to claim they were censored by the UK government to their home audience. That is what they really wanted and is why they refused Ofcom's offer of help in getting a license for their Tehran office so they could continue broadcasting.

That's my point. Even if you were to ignore the fact that cyclists already contribute to road maintenance, if all road users were charged based on how much damage they do to the roads it would mean it would be uneconomic to collect it from cyclists.

I disagree. The table on page 10 of the ICO's guidance under the heading "Activities unlikely to fall within the exception" has "Cookies used to recognise a user when they return to a website so that the greeting they receive can be tailored". That's more similar to what AlexAtkin is doing than a shopping cart that needs to record choices though a site but does not need to keep them once the user leaves the site. AlexAtkin's site can use the default preferences where no cookie is set and still function so they are not 'strictly necessary'.

The ICO reckon their web site conforms to the rules and they don't have a splash screen where you have to click on something to look at the site. You can find the ICO's guidance here if you haven't seen it already. There is an exception for where a cookie is strictly necessary for the functioning of the site. Wanting to remember a user's preferences between visits would be unlikely to be considered a valid exception though. Displaying a header when the cookie is not set, as the ICO do, is not going to ruin the user's experience. If the user has a do not track header set, you can assume they don't want to be tracked, unless they also have your cookie set indicating otherwise, and not display the header.

You mean StalkStalk. They are still launching what are effectively replay attacks on web sites their customers visit.

On previous thread he says he's got a HTC Sensation - so it will be Android.

That's as daft as saying cars should be banned from cities because they cause traffic jams.

BT ran (illegal) trials. Virgin Media and Talk Talk were talking to Phorm and waiting to see how the trials went. When BT got into trouble Talk Talk announced they wouldn't implement such a system. VM got cold feet as well but, as far as I know, have never said they wouldn't implement a Phorm like system.