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Rumours of tax rises are doing the rounds. Just what we needed. Now that food has become more expensive, petrol more expensive than ever, and energy prices attempting to land on the moon. When Tony Blair got Labour into power with white grins and visions and promises of turning over a new leaf, what did we get? A Labour Party with a sneakier gameplan. Instead of taxing people in their wage packets, lets spread the taxes into new territory like pensions, insurance, and travel. When we complained, they said there were plenty of areas left for them to extract our cash. But... Surely there's only so much money left in our pockets? Especially since like all Labour governments they take great pleasure in spending our cash on their own luxuries and pet schemes that get positive headlines and memory loss afterward. So much so that now life is getting hugely more expensive, our tax bill is comparatively worse, and currently we're being taxed more than ever before. Just in time to be taxed even more. A politician stood up and spoke at the Labour Party Conference going on at the moment and said "What do we have a Labour government for, if not to stand up to those who are greedy?" Agreed. So you're going to get rid of who exactly? Letter of the Week The letter was handed to me by my claims advisor when I signed on yesterday. She grimaced a little, a sure sign I wasn't going to like it. So I read the first paragraph. My quarterly interview at the Job Centre is due. Oh no!! Not my quarterly interview... Please no... Not more waste paper in my hands... I resisted the temptation to screw the letter up and throw it over my shoulder. My interviewer was watching me from a desk nearby. I resisted the temptation to wave hello. I'm such an impulsive creature.

Thats just political repartee. Any statistical approach has to be linked to other evidence or its presents a purely mathematical model of history that won't agree with findings from other sources. So who's right? Statisticians, scholars, or archaeologisits? None of them, because without applying their findings to information from the other sources you're ignoring evidence that may or may not agree. The 'truth' is that numbers are much easier to manipulate, which is why politicians like statistics. And yes, they do know how to.

Well... you stand to lose certain freedoms, not to mention more of your wallet, as people extract what they want from you under the guise of ecological responsibility.

The comparison pics are all very well, but that proves what? That the earth is too warm to sustain these glaciers? No argument at all, the same thing is happening around the world. Trouble is, its all happened before. The earth warms and cools to suit itself, not us. Its a dynamic and complex enviroment in which the amount of atmospheric CO2 is only another influence on climate. In any case, one small wobble in the earths orbit and I don't think you'll be lamenting the lack of glaciers. We humans like to point fingers. We want a culprit for these changes, someone or something we can blame. So we blame the internal combustion engine because the exhaust gases contain CO2, a (gasp) known greenhouse gas. There are other greenhouses gases too. Methane for instance, many times more potent than CO2 for a greenhouse effect and a by-product of grazing animals. There are worries that methane trapped in the siberian tundra will be released into the atmosphere in the near future. That would be 'not be a good thing' for human beings and their fragile modern world. Who is Bjorn Lomborg? Never heard of him.

If the emperors were already gods, why were they deified (or not) on an individual basis by an act of senate? The imperial cult isn't even a demi-god rather than living god status, and I don't see any evidence that the romans believed their emperors had divine power (at least apart from one or two emperors themselves). We have therefore an official 'cult of personality', used to reinforce loyalty to the one man who called the shots.

The figures for egypt are somewhat biased because of the different social mix that existed there, and although the amount of information is significantly better than other areas, on what basis do you make the claim that a social statistical picture is reasonable? Statistics can be used to prove anything and crunching numbers alone isn't a reliable means to reach conclusions. Peasants are normally at the mercy of the landlords anyway, we see that in all periods of history. Its interesting to note that the concept of serfdom (non-slaves bound to an area) was introduced into roman society in the late empire. Its also unwise to generalise about peasanty because their actual situation might vary considerably. Real slave societies existed everywhere in the ancient world, it wasn't a roman phenomenon at all.

I like September. here in Britain under our ever-warming climate its become a respite, a chance to relax. The humid thunderstorms of the August rain season are passed, and the gales of October are yet to arrive. The air is cool and the sun warm. Its not just me. I do notice other people are more relaxed too. I pass employees quietly sitting in the sunshine outside their workplaces without any of the insidious mickey-taking of passers-by. i wonder if this has to do with kids going back to school too? But its not just us. I see cats and dogs taking it easy too. Only once this month have I been confronted by a yapping small dog. The bigger ones just trot by wagging their tails. I like September. Album Track of the Week Having discovered what a tuneful metal band Disturbed are, I was pleased to find a copy of another album of theirs in the shops. A Thousand Fists contains a small suprise too. They've done a cover of Genesis's Land of Confusion, which actually sounds not bad at all given the heavy metal treatment, and proves they're a band that likes to take risks with material. Now that Phil Collins is going deaf, perhaps he should have done it properly like Disturbed. Now if you'll excuse, I've got an appointment with an air guitar teacher.

The earth is going to warmer whether we burn fossil fuels or not. That part of climate change is natural. We haven't helped I suppose, but the effect of greenhouse gases is overstated and in any case the earth has previously coped with levels of CO2 something like six times what they today. Further, as I indicated, the current rise in CO2 began tens of millions of years ago. Ooh.. A link. Try wikipedia articles on paleoclimate. There's some eye-opening info there.

Not so. If the romans had used the slaves as cowboys then you would be correct, as the herds could be handled with a minimum of labour. However, slaves weren't likely to have access to horses on a general basis, thus the herds would be divided into smaller manageable numbers tended by larger numbers of pedestrian slaves. A point about Varro's assertion of slave profitability. How did he know that? Was he actually running his estate personally? A strange way to carry on for a wealthy Roman surely. More likely he was another absentee landlord, which means if he was running his estate according to standard roman practice then the slave managers were his slaves too. Since these slaves derived personal status and some power by their overlordship of their peers, it therefore stands to reason that they wanted to preserve the status quo and retain the current enviable position. Varro was, therefore, being told porkies. The cheap grain from egypt was grown from free peasant labour, not slavery. Further, the supply of pruduce within the empire was predominantly local, in that food was unlikely to travel far from its source. People were tending farms around the towns they lived in to support the population and make profit from excess. The egyptian grain is one example of an exception, in that the produce was earmarked for the city of Rome and delivered there by sea, a great deal easier compared to the limits of land transport. I do like your point about the loss of egyptian supply, but that does not account for the decline in roman population of the ciy of Rome after the money went east to Constantinople. Because the majority of food supply was local.

The problem is you focus too closely on details when questions like this are asked, so therefore you see nothing similar. A comparison between two empires/nations seperated geographically and chronologically are bound to differ, yet the fact remains that the american constitution was based on that of classical times, that they were a slave using society (albeit one based on race rather than status), that they are a cosmopolitan society built on many nationalities living under an american system, and that american culture is packaged and sold to foreigbn nations. The isolationism of the US is a fundamental difference. Because its a continental country almoist surrounded by ocean, the requirement to fend off foreign aggression is not so keenly felt, although the Cold War and recent Terrorism do create something of a substitute for that. Nonetheless, as part of its foreign committment and security policies, America is moving closer to imperialist doctrines, by necessity (as they see it) rather than territorial ambition. The parallels to ancient Rome are there. That doesn't ean it needs to be an exact representation of past events, just that as with Britain certain trends in human behaviour (and politics) produce similar development in society and its actions, and remarkably, in the case of the US these are partially by design.

It was quite a sight this morning. Further down from the library I inhabit is a hotel, a building that might not be the tallest in Swindon but certainly towers over everything else around it. There was a column of thick dirty brown smoke pouring out of a roof vent like one of those dark satanic mills the government banned so we could all breathe. Can you imagine booking a room there? "Can I help you Sir?" I'd like a room please. "Certainly Sir. We have accomodation in Admin, Mechanical, Technical, Production Line, and Service, all in single or double, plus the Managerial Suite is free until Monday. Tea breaks are half an hour, Lunch for one hour, and overtime is available on weekends." Uhhh... Right. Single in.. err... Admin I guess. "Of course. We do expect office attire at all times and if using our extensive bar facilities, high visibility tabards and safety shoes are required by health and safety. Enjoy your stay, Sir." I've worked in places like this. You can stay but never leave. Alien of the Week A special guest is to host a talk about UFO's in Swindon soon, 'casting new light' on these mysterious sightings. I'm way ahead of you mate. Today I was passed by an alien as it was carried in its mobility chair, pushed by its earth-woman slave. It was pink, about two feet or so in height, and protected by a woollen spacesuit. I know it was an alien because it was giving orders to its human slave. It spoke with a voice in some strange unearthly language that sounded like a cross between chinese radio and a child breathing helium. I looked down at astonishment that an alien creature could so brazenly wander about Swindon undetected, not to mention some amusement at its ridiculous voice. It looked up, saw me grinning, and then uttered the power-syllable. I tripped on the pavement. The slave woman glared at me for disturbing her other-wordly master with my puny earth humour. Now you come to mention it, there are a lot of mums pushing these aliens around town.... Keep Watching The Pavements....

Rambo culture is entrenched here but not as prevalent as the US, where survivalists and mercenary schools of variable quality operate openly and legally, something not tolerable in british law.

I would stress certain things if a 'Tom Clancy' approach is being followed. 1 - The Romans had no national army. Each Legion was a mini-army in its own right, not a regiment. 2 - Although disputed, there's no reason to assume that the roman rank system worked the same way as our modern one. 3 - Careers for ordinary soldiers weren't commonplace - it wasn't expected an ordinary grunt would rise above his station, and it would literally take 15-20 years for a man to ascend to the centurionate even after the Marian Reforms. 4 - Although subject to harsh discipline, the roman army was often less than loyal, with considerable gripes and in later years, willingness to mutiny to suit themselves. 5 - The legionaries, particularly in the later professional era, were strongly close-knit, a deliberate plocy to induce reamwork. The frequently refer to each other as 'Brother'. 6 - The Legions provided employment and security, but its members were not exactly behaving responsibly off duty, prone to violence, bullying, and outright theft at swordpoint if it suited them. Legal recourse was difficult and the civilian concerned might well fail to impress a military tribunal, and perhaps get beaten by the aggrieved soldiers mates for his trouble. 7 - The quality of swords was an important issue for legionaries, since they paid for them either through stoppages or by private purchase. 8 - Prior to Augustus, legionaries were 'brothers'. From his reign onward, they were 'soldiers'. 9 - The training described by Vegetius was an ideal situation. Not all legionaries received this rounded education. Caesar for instance had to deliberately find or train horsemen to complement his infantry from among them. Vegetius assumes this training was standard. 10 - Roman legions of the professional era always attempted to meet an enemy charge at the advance, for morale. 11 - Roman soldiers were taught to remain silent, to hear instructions. 12 - The oft=-quoted rotation of troops in the fighting line is difficult in practice, bearing in mind rough ground, bodies, or pools of slippery blood. A centurion for instance is described slipping over on flagstones as he charged the defenders of Masada. 13 - The roman leaders encouraged bravery and selfless action. {i]Coronae[/i] were awarded for things like being the first man through a breach (and surviving). 14 - Roman troops, despite their reputation, might easily become lazy. Josephus records how a suprise zealot attack caught legionaries away from their equipment. Manual labour was desirable to keep troops busy and prevent mischief. 15 - There's a continual view expressed on the invincibility of the legions. This is not so, they were defeated often enough, and much depended on the quality of leadership - something the average soldier was aware of judging by mutinies and imperial nominations. 16 - The legions were corrupt. Bribery was commonplace, although efforts were made to eradicate it. 17 - Chainmail is suprisingly heavy, the banded cuirass just as much so. Helmets aren't lightweight either. Pila, the roman javelin, aren't especially heavy although at times the romans experimented with extra weights attached to them. The Gladius, or sword, varies in pattern from time to time. The earlier ones with a longer point were better balanced and used almost exclusively in a stabbing attack ideally thrust an inch into the enemies face or stomach - a debilitating would was as good as a kill. Later shorter pointed straight swords (appearing from Claudius onward) were less well balanced but more often used in a hacking attack, hence the need for balance was less important. Hope this helps, and there's plenty of other info from differing viewpoints in the forums. Good luck with your story.

That gets my vote.

Meddling with the earths delicate balance is all going to end with tears. Roll with the punches or die out. Nature is quite adamant about survival of the fittest and for good reason, and as for any hopes of climate engineering, mankind seriously hasn't a clue. We're still arguing over it for crying out loud. I've always maintained that Global Warming is hype. So it is. People have created a growth industry out of it and some peoples political careers are based on the climate catastrophe that has been prophesied. I do not believe in Global Warming. I dislike the religious overtones of it and the manner in which activists and governments seek to inodctrinate us with messages of impending calamity unless we all obey the new rules. I certainly don't deny temperatures have risen, nor can I deny that humanity has played a part in it. I do believe in Climate Change. The Earths climate has identifiably changed since the Earth formed.. In Britain for instance, there are positive signs of carboniferous swamps, triassic deserts, jurassic seas, ice ages, and many other variable periods in-between. Arguably, the climate changes all the time, usually only in such a small way to escape our attention or our memory. Since the argument about our modern day is effectively based on a statistical study of averages, why has the sample been limited to recent times? Surely that distorts the image created by graphs showing dramatic rises in the last century? The data that the prophets of climate doom have used is recent. Whether or not its entirely accurate has been debated by experts, which I'm not, so I'll have to defer to their consensus. Problem is, they haven't reached one. Its still a matter of argument about the nature of climate change. The fact is they're using data compiled from weather stations, satellites, or information proxies such as tree rings to provide estimates of temperature change. That means the available data is not accurate at all, and our sample stretches back no more than 4,000 years with proxy information or to the last few decades for the world-wide coverage of climate data. As we go further back, it becomes more difficult to extract reliable information. However, its clear from paleo-climatology that changes in the Earths climates are nothing new, and that we're only focusing on recent changes to guide our understanding. Nonetheless, the long term history of Earth's climate has shown periods of change. Discounting the very earliest periods of Earth's past (whose atmosphere was quite unlike the one we breathe today) there are still long periods of relative stability. There have however been at least two, possibly more, colder periods which make the Ice Age look positively tame. The Ice Age itself was not a single event, but recurrent ebb and flow of glaciation with warm periods in between. In theory, thats where we are now - in a period of warmth before another glaciation which is estimated by some experts to be fifty thousand years away in the future. These variations in climate change during the Ice Age are of interest. Although there's a tendency for temperature to settle at a given average level, this average rises and falls forming smaller periods of differing climate, such as the so-called 'Mini-Ice Age' of the 18th century, or the Medieval Warm Period. The fossil record in Britain also suggests that at least one inter-glacial period was warm enough to sustain animals we associate with modern Africa. In fact, evidence suggests that around ten or eleven thousand years ago the mean temperature in Britain rose seven degrees in fifteen years, causing catastrophic melting of glaciers and inundating the Doggerland Plains that now form the bed of the North Sea. Clearly then, climate change can occur very quickly indeed - which is exactly the fear many people have of our own current situation. Obviously though these changes cannot be linked to human activity before our current industrialisation, urbanisation, and exponential population growth. But there's a curiosity in this assumption that man is entirely to blame. With wartime production in the 1940's at its height, with thousands upon thousands of vehicles, ships, and planes, many of which employed large powerful engines without any form of ecological sensitivity, you might expect some rise in temperature as a result of a much higher concentration of greenhouse gas emission. No such rise occured, and in fact, the temperatures fell. So perhaps we're guilty, perhaps we're not. The weather on our planet is driven and influenced by changes in the sun, possibly even interacting with the cosmic particles arriving here from the galaxy around us which ionise the air to promote cloud formation. The woobles on its axis too, the culprit behind our recent ice ages. Ultimately, this side of climate change is beyond our control. As yet, there's little if any real evidence that greenhouse gases have caused our recent upward temperature rise. Carbon dioxide is after all a gas that exists in Earths atmosphere naturally and for some previous ages in our four billion year history, the concentration of CO2 in the air was considerably greater than today. I also note the current rise in CO2 levels began long before the Ice Ages, thus the culpabillity of Humanity in causing this is suspect. Of course we contribute to thse levels with greenhouse emissions, but the percentage of these gases given off by us is not as great as compared to natural sources. Part of the problem is and always will be is mans arrogance. Not toward his enviroment, but to his own place within it. The human mastery over nature is little more than self-aggrandisement. It is true we can now manipulate the enviroment to a small degree, or create our own, but what we cannot do is contain the forces that nature can force upon us. The evening news demonstrates this well with images of storm damage, tsunami's, forest fires, and volcanic activity. Our own success as a species has brought about a change in that we are becoming more specialised. We now build extensive and complex nest systems (we call them towns and cities) whose infrastructure is very vulnerable and often built in convenient but very vulnerable places. This means in Darwinian terms that we have adapted to be more succesful in our enviroment, but that we're now more dependent on that enviroment for continued success. I must point out that the current upward trend in temperatures does not automatically mean the earth is heading for a greenhouse effect that will damage the planet irrevocably. With or without us, the Earth will carry on for another three or four billion years before conditions become impossible for life to continue.

Didn't think you'd like mine Doesn't matter, it didn't strain me in any way whatsoever - because I'm not actually trying to find direct parallels given the differences in events, and circumstance. Its like this.... Pour two cups of coffee. If you focus hard in detail, all you see is random brownian motion that shows nothing but chaos and convection. If you zoom out a bit, its the same contents apart from some possible milk and sugar. If you zoom out further, you might have different cups placed in different parts of the room. Zoom out again, and you have two cups of coffee that go cold and eventually evaporate if left alone. So what's the difference? Essentially, only the details. So as far as I'm concerned, the parallels I draw are intuitively obvious. But then, I'm not writing a paper for a scientific journal or pouring scorn on others interpretation, so perhaps criticism can also be taken too far?

Its that tough guy image thats important. The programs selling point is these are not caring sharing cops helping old ladies across the road. They're no nonsense paramilitary troops responsible for administering violence to restore peace. Watching them overfly jungle clearings in Blackhawk helicopters armed with miniguns (heavy calibre gatling guns) does look a lot different from a pair of polite officers knocking on the door of a jungle hut asking "Excuse me Sir, we're just making some door to door enquiries. Have you seen any drugs?" The point is that the program is.. well, maybe not quite glorifying the violence, but certainly using it as a selling point for the series. There's a feel to that it that suggests if youu were a member of these ploice units, you too would be hard as nails. Thats a strong image aimed at would be rambo's.

Greece and Rome at War - Peter Connolly contains a series of maps illustrating Hannibals campaign, although they're not exhaustive.

I see Brown as a flop, but thats not the point. The current royal family are irrelevant since they only rubber stamp the governments initiaitives anyway - they have no ruling function beside that and haven't for a long time, further, the labour party has diminished their role further as a deliberate policy toward attaining their socialist ideal, which invoplves reconstructing british society. If you view the parties and characters involved as direct analogies of past influences then there isn't one, bevcause the circumstances are different. However, stand back, and view the changes without direct comparison. If we assume the Punic Wars were equivalent to WW2 for us, in that both conflicts involved multiple exhaustive all out wars, then it serves as a starting point for our current cycle. Punic Wars =WW2 Roman civic duty and moral behaviour = 1950's 'Leaving the door unlocked' and treatment of unmarried mothers. Marian Reforms/Augustan Reforms = Increasing rationalisation, professionalism, and use of mercenary contractors in the British armed forces. Increasing female influence = Womens Lib, equality legislation Decreasing moral behaviour (Sempronia et al) = Emanuelle, Swinging Sixties, modern *or*, rise of the paedophile. Increasing prevalence of violent entertainment = Politicisation of Olympic Games, modern action, thriller, and horror films. Mob violence on the streets of Rome = Gang violence on british streets Those are the equivalent changes that I could think of. I'm sure there are others.

You haven't seen these cops then. They don't mess around

Funny you should mention that with a psychic fair here soon

I would definitely say not. We haven't reached the imperial stage yet with autocrats we can't vote out of office (though we came close with Tony Blair, and notice that Gordon Brown was given his position as prime minister without the vote of the british people, and steadfastly attempts to prolong his reign without having to do so. In terms of events, you may be right. In terms of societal development (surely a more accurate parallel given different circumstances) I believe otherwise. Gloves off Neil

On my way to the sports center I passed a billboard announcing the latest headline from our local rag - Man Accused of Pointing Gun At Policeman. Well I can understand his frustration, but its more evidence of the steady creep of gun culture here in Britain. Following the Dunblane Massacre, the government effectively banned the private ownership of guns, aside from shotguns but you still need to justify that ownership to the authorities. The sort of massacres we see played out in America are very rare here, and Dunblane provoked a knee-jerk reaction. That too is understandable, but all the government achieved was to create a black market of discarded weapons. Thats why the british police declared amnesties regularly. Swindon hardly seems the epicentre of gun crime though, comparing it to events in London and Birmingham. A recent petrol station robbery involved someone waving what appeared to be a firearm, and during one amnesty, one young gentleman calmly walked down to the nearest police station to hand over his Bren light machine gun. I remember back in the seventies a policeman showing me the photographs of the weapons made in a cellar just up the hill from where I lived (for no illegal purpose, it was someones hobby, and he hadn't realised it was illegal to do so). It seems as civilisation is crumbling around me, until I watch Vinnie Jone's Toughest Cops. yes, its the usual expose of hardmen in uniform, with hard stares from the presenter into the camera and no nonsense commentary. The two programs I've seen describe the activities of policemen of special units in Columbia and El Salvador, neither the most law-abiding nations of the world. The dangers these paramilitary men face on a daily business was self evident, and I guess I can excuse the slightly macho male-orientated approach, showing one officer telling the camera crew that he leaves the safety catch off in order to gain vital split seconds in a confrontation, or the close ups of a woman nicknamed Nikita, a police sniper. Chicks with guns. I can imagine the teenage fantasies going on in bedrooms. The reality of course is that these places really are dangerous. Although every policeman interviewed said pretty much the same thing - that they felt they had to do something to deter this level of violent crime - the truth is they also said they enjoyed it. The addiction to adrenaline is insidious. Its also a very inherent part of human psychology, and ultimately the reason why the gangsters continue to face off against law enforcement when they know that there's a good chance they'll lose. The program didn't spare you from a close up of the aftermath of a robbery in a roadside cafe either, with two workmen lying crumpled over the furniture in a pools of blood. So far, this doesn't happen in Swindon, so I guess the next time a young copper eager to make an impression starts throwing his weight around, I'll just grin and bear it. So far, he isn't going to pull a gun on me. Advert of the Week At a local hotel there's going to be a Psychic Fair, with clairvoyants, faith healers, etc etc. Obviously telepathy is a bit too difficult, or the advert wouldn't have been necessary. Telekinesis might also prove incapable of getting me there without any physical effort of my own, and as for hypnotism so far I've shown not the slightest inclination to turn up. Or act like a chicken.

Why is this such a suprise? History is intrinsically conservative for two reasons. Firstly, the hubris and vested interests of learned men who regard revisionism as an affront to their expertise, secondly, that history is interpreted according to personal experience which is for the most part always going to be within certain limits. Few infantrymen for instance write erudite volumes on roman legionaries. Few pokliticians describe the ramifications of republican events. These people deal with issues relevant or important to them. In the same way, how objective is it possible to be? How can we seperate our experience of the human condition from that described by roman authors, especially since there are bound to be similarities and parallels due to human behaviour, which hasn't fundamentally changed since roman times. As for postcolonial guilt, I think thats overstating it. Our colonial past has been extremely influential in moulding the british mindset, but rather than guilt it seems to reflect our modern inclination to see the success of our colonies as somewhat biased and self-important, which is what Mattingly has argued. Its the comparison between roman and british experience that underpins his reconstruction of the roman occupation, but he quite rightly points at the differences in circumstances.

My planet? It would be great without swindoners in it. As for life on other planets, the stuff of which it is made is plentiful and commonplace out there, but the enviroments for it to flourish must be incredibly rare. Life started on earth because the warm shallow seas were common after the 'snowball earth' of early ice ages melted. It was circumstantial. Without those conditions, all those chemicals were going to sit around doing nothing. It also appears that life made a 'false start', and started over after the second 'snowball earth'. Well - since vulcans and romulans have common ancestors and don't get along, you have to assume their just humans with pointy ears and clever philosophy.