tomatocracy

Yes - it's much closer to the original novella than the other well known stage/TV/film adaptations and the range Stewart displays (playing more than 30 characters) really does show how good an actor he was. Reportedly it was inspired by Dickens's own readings of the story in the 19th century.

I saw him performing this show when it was revived for a run at the Old Vic in London in 2005 and it was even better seeing it in person. I'm so glad I was able to do that, it's still memorable more than 20 years later.

I have used contact lenses in the past (though I didn't really like them for everyday use so I just wear glasses now) and/or a camera an optical viewfinder with diopter adjustment, which is sufficient for my long sightedness, but I'm lucky in that the eye I tend to use on the viewfinder is the "better" one as well.

You used to be able to get aftermarket eye pieces to attach the the camera as well which either put more distance between the back of the camera and your head in order to make room for glasses, or (more rarely) had or could accept additional correction lenses.

I'm not sure if those are a thing still for the newest cameras though - the move towards EVFs make it even more of a niche item.

That is partly true but it's a downstream consequence of the ultimate cause. Those running and pushing the project in the early stages desperately wanted it to be a 400+kph route for "prestige" reasons.

If they hadn't been so focused on that, they could have built the new rails largely alongside the existing West Coast Main Line which would have been quicker, cheaper and much less controversial.

But because they wanted those very high speeds, the route had to be flatter and straighter than the existing WCML, which means many more tunnels, longer and more complex construction, more people objecting, inconvenienced etc and ultimately much more cost however you look at it.

That's a different question though. It's in society's interest to ensure couples (or at the least couples who have children) are compatible enough long-term to not end up divorcing/separating.

The societal costs otherwise aren't just the obvious direct costs - there are other things like (in divorces where there are children involved) negative effects on labour force mobility.

Worth being aware that one of the potential problems with flooding (at least in the UK) is that it often leads to waste pipes or sewers becoming blocked and/or sewage mixing with flood water. This can still make replacing the building the most economic recovery option even if it's structurally fine.

Both the US and the Soviet Union actually experimented with "nuclear fracking" in oil/gas fields. The Soviet Union also used atomic bombs to put out fires in gas fields as late as 1981.

Yes, I do something similar (with Amazon SES in my case) but only for domains I know are problematic (Microsoft-hosted domains are the main difficulty - I've never had issues with eg Gmail).

That's (mostly) true for "primary legislation" (Acts of Parliament) but "secondary legislation" (regulations, orders, rules and so on) can be challenged and potentially overturned/similar in the courts. This partly reflects the fact that secondary legislation usually receives significantly less parliamentary scrutiny (and in some cases none at all). The legal challenge which Wikimedia brought here was to secondary legislation - regulations made under the OSA by Ofcom - not to the OSA itself.

Maybe it's a cultural difference but I remember before smartphones on the tube in London as well and noone talked to each other during the morning/evening commute.

I think the biggest difference is actually the lack of newspapers now. Plenty of people were plugged into headphones via iPod/Walkman/whatever was era appropriate. The people who stare at their phones today were staring at newspapers in the pre smartphone era.

The idea is that some of the current hereditary peers will be given new life peerages under existing rules which would enable them to stay in the chamber. Granting new life peerages is mostly within the gift of the Prime Minister (although there are committees which vet appointments and conventions about allowing opposition parties to nominate some), so this is not part of the legislation but a back-room deal by which the votes were secured by the government.

"Important" is quite a high bar in this case though if the House of Lords is insistent enough to actually vote something down. The cost in terms of parliamentary time for the government these days of using the Parliament Acts is very high (especially for things which government would normally do via secondary legislation), and it also requires at least a one year delay; by extension the potential political cost to the government of using the Parliament Acts to pass something unpopular or controversial is set at a high enough bar that it's an effective veto.

This feels like quite a sensible safety valve to me.

The thing is, the reason for the delays and inefficiencies is not really juries. It's mostly much more mundane things like the prison service not sending defendants to court at the right time, translators not turning up when they are supposed to, buildings which are falling apart, technology not working properly, and court time being double-booked. It's an administrative failure, not a problem with the system.

Alongside removing the right to trial by jury, perhaps more alarmingly the government are also planning to remove appeal rights from "minor" cases (from magistrates to the Crown Court). The current statistics are that more than 40% of those appeals are upheld.

The planned changes won't fix any of these things, but it will cause fundamental damage to trust in the system and result in many miscarriages of justice.

This is exactly how it works in the UK for purchases worth £135 or less which are shipped directly from outside the UK. The retailer has to charge UK VAT as if it were a domestic sale at the point of sale, and there is then nothing to pay at customs so no hold-up for that. It's only consignments worth over £135 where it ends up being stopped for payment at import.

On top of that, Amazon and other large online retailers also have a huge distribution and warehouse network domestically in the UK already so for higher value items mostly they import themselves to their warehouses before sale and then sales are purely domestic.