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The American dollar takes a fall.


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Try something less, like $4 a gallon, I can't beleave people sustaining SUVs at such a price. I drive a Celica and get 30MPG, driving to work and back is 75 miles a day. It's taking a bite out of my wallet making only 16.50 an hour just only working 40 hours a week. Currently there is no OT so it's even worse. Bottom line with bills, car payment, home heating oil at $3.00 + a gallon, 10 grand of credit card debt acclaimed between jobs in the last 6 years. Nope we are all ready F%$Ked, the working poor the majority of the economic purchasing power. This country is going flat on it's face before it's over.

I don't want to gloss over the difficulties energy prices cause currently; I am just expecting worse, as explained in earlier posts. Right now we still are so reliant on moving goods by truck that there is a driver shortage. Throughout the first half of the 20th century it was the policy of the Interstate Commerce Commission to erase the respective cost advantages held by trucks for short-haul and trains for long-haul cartage. Then the interstate highway system provided a brand new right-of-way for trucks at minimal cost. Right now there are some rail corridors in development, as described in the Wall Street Journal; these are news items because it is so infrequent to have rail laid down rather than torn up. The rail net in the Northeastern US has been substantially shredded in the past 50 years, including the removal of the most direct route from Buffalo to New York City.

It takes 14 ounces of fuel to move a ton of goods 100 km by train, and about half that by large ship. By truck, 1% of the weight moved will be consumed as fuel every 100 km [Dunnigan, How to Make War, p. 311]. A doubling of fuel costs will be ultimately offset by substitutions, but there will be dislocations during the process because the penalty has to be borne immediately and the substitutions can only be achieved over time.

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...Fortunately the US is also home to good old fashioned entrepreneurs who are prepared to put their money where they think it will make a profit. At present there's a fair bit (nowhere near enough) of investment going into solar energy in the sunbelt states. The energy in the sun falling on just a small fraction of the unused land in Arizona etc is ample to provide ALL the USA's electricity with plenty left over.

...The energy left over could provide for a lot of heating and transportation needs that are currently served by oil.

To all red blooded Americans: where would you rather get your energy? From a bunch of unreliable Arabs or Russians? Or right in your own back yard, done with goold old American knowhow and investment.

Take a decent chunk of the US demand for oil out of the world equation and OPEC will be pleading poverty and begging for mercy.

Northern Europe doesn't have such attractive options - not enough sun. Southern Europe, around the Mediterranean and into north Africa has good conditions too. Though this is politically more fragmented than the US. Countries such as Israel, Egypt, Morocco have got plenty of virtually unpopulated sunny areas. Israel is starting to invest, I don't know about the others.

To keep America moving would require a trainload of tank cars filled with petroleum that would extend from Atlanta to Washington, DC - that's for one day! If we could get some head's-up thinking and actually build a solar grid in say, Arizona, that would take a huge number of those tankcars out of that very long train. Unfortunately, whatever anyone wants to try is probably going to be too little, too late. I mean like gas is already $3.25 at the pump and any meaningful solar power is years, if not decades away. ;) The same can also be said for wind power. The only other meaningful answer is to find some other way to power our cars. But with the price of oil headed for the stratosphere, we may all find ourselves walking soon. :cool1:

Keep on stepping,

Guy N. Heels

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Due to my close proximity to work I have always driven the "family car" a mini van with a large appitite for fuel (16mpg going to and from). So it takes a gallon to work and a gallon home (Yuk!). Warm weather looks promising though and as soon as the rain around here clears the motorcycle (70mpg! Yipee!) gets to spend the summer on the road again. Hoverfly I can understand your situation as that is how my wife wound up in her last job that gave her a fifty mile commute round trip. If prices keep going up you might want to check into a small motorbike or a large scooter (what I have) could save you a lot of cash in the long run. Just a suggestion though.

T&H

"Look for the woman in the dress, if there is no dress there is no woman."-Coco Channel

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Due to my close proximity to work I have always driven the "family car" a mini van with a large appitite for fuel (16mpg going to and from). So it takes a gallon to work and a gallon home (Yuk!). Warm weather looks promising though and as soon as the rain around here clears the motorcycle (70mpg! Yipee!) gets to spend the summer on the road again. Hoverfly I can understand your situation as that is how my wife wound up in her last job that gave her a fifty mile commute round trip. If prices keep going up you might want to check into a small motorbike or a large scooter (what I have) could save you a lot of cash in the long run. Just a suggestion though.

T&H

I commute at least 28 miles on the interstate and the rest highway, car pooling would be an option, however I work second shift and nobody is going my way at that time. So scooter is out of the question, moter cycle........I swore off those things long ago to keep my self alive. Driving my GF Civic which has better miliage is also a possablity at times. No way in hell I will sell my Celica, half way through payments right now so I will wait to add an fuel mizer of some kind with 3 or 4 wheels, untill then I am going to have to suck it up.

Hello, :wave: my name is Hoverfly. I’m a high heel addict…. Weeeeeeeeeee!  👠1998 to 2022!

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My heart bleeds. In the UK (and most of Europe) petrol is the equivalent of around $8 per US gallon. Largely due to a different tax regime.

I'm not looking for sympathy.

Fortunately the US is also home to good old fashioned entrepreneurs who are prepared to put their money where they think it will make a profit. At present there's a fair bit (nowhere near enough) of investment going into solar energy in the sunbelt states. The energy in the sun falling on just a small fraction of the unused land in Arizona etc is ample to provide ALL the USA's electricity with plenty left over. Most of the kit is pretty low tech too, mirrors, boilers, turbines etc. There is some high tech trickery needed to give effective overnight storage of energy but it's becoming practical and economic now.

The energy left over could provide for a lot of heating and transportation needs that are currently served by oil.

To all red blooded Americans: where would you rather get your energy? From a bunch of unreliable Arabs or Russians? Or right in your own back yard, done with goold old American knowhow and investment.

Take a decent chunk of the US demand for oil out of the world equation and OPEC will be pleading poverty and begging for mercy.

Northern Europe doesn't have such attractive options - not enough sun. Southern Europe, around the Mediterranean and into north Africa has good conditions too. Though this is politically more fragmented than the US. Countries such as Israel, Egypt, Morocco have got plenty of virtually unpopulated sunny areas. Israel is starting to invest, I don't know about the others.

Thats a great plan. It's just to bad our USA politicians are involved in oil and do everything in there power to prevent this kind of energy from being produced. I have even seen cars run off water. Our government is NOT for the people as some of you from across the pond have been led to believe. They are out for them selves and thats it!

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Thats a great plan. It's just to bad our USA politicians are involved in oil and do everything in there power to prevent this kind of energy from being produced. .....!

Johnie, you and I are probably near opposite ends of the political spectrum - I'm fairly middle of the road in the UK = bleeding heart liberal, verging on dangerous commie, in the US. Let's hope that enterprise will win over government in the US on this one. The trouble is that it still needs a fairly small amount of government input, mainly to subsidise the grid interconnects, in the early days of big solar programme. The US power grid is close to breaking anyway and there is nithing like enough capacity to send all that power from the south to the north.

Also the conservatives won't like it because it's too green and Al Gore will like it:silly: That's why I made the case in terms of economics and energy security.

The US can put a man on the moon, design and make the chips that make all the world's computers tick and all sorts of other impressive things. There are few technical difficulties for the US to achieve energy self sufficiency by 2050 along with massive CO2 reductions. The economics are positive - GDP and standard of living should both be positive with massive investment in solar. But the technology isn't very sexy - lots of relatively small low tech units spread acorss the deserts - and the political will is severely lacking.

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A whole range of economic effects, from longer commute times to global manufacturing competition, are predicated on cheap transportation. If gasoline goes to $6/gallon, it will be economically very destructive.

It has been said before but where I live, gas is $9 a gal. And that is not a problem at all. Not to say that I enjoy paying $130 to fill up my family car, but it's an efficient diesel that runs 700 miles on a tank. Did you guys know by the way that diesel cars in Europe are typically more powerful and fun to drive than traditional gas cars? So you can have it both ways: cheap and powerful.

Same thing for housing, and I can compare now because I am relocating to the US. I spent the better part of last week seeing houses in NY and CT, and I was baffled how poorly they are built. $300, $400, $500 a month, on average, in heating bills seems to be common. Seriously? In Northern Europe, where the climate is a great deal harsher than in NY or CT, I don't manage to get even to $100 for a similar sized house. Sure, the isolation is over a foot thick, and it is heated by a geothermal heat pump, and although that has cost something the running costs are low.

So, don't worry about rising energy costs. It's just a matter that will take some time. It has been cheaper to heat and cool a badly insulated house, than to insulate it. Same thing for cars: there has been no need to spend $2000 extra on a diesel powered car since gas is cheap.

Now insulation will be something that you guys need to do as well, and think about more efficient cars with diesel engines (or hybrids, if you like that more for similar efficiency). For a country with $40k of purchasing power per head per year, $5k on insulation or $2k for a better car won't be a problem.

What's all the fuss about?

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Also in Holland the cost of gasoline is very high. At the discount station my last fill went for $ 8.70 the gallon. The only short term solution for this is to make sure you live very close to your work. This doesn't improve mobility in the job market, and when both partners pursue a career there is definitely a problem. There are two possible solutions: electric cars and hydrogen fueled cars. The problem with electric cars is that the battery technology isn't up to it. The problem with hydrogen cars is that there is no distribution system for the hydrogen. In principle one could fill a desert with solar cells and have them convert water into hydrogen and oxygen. Then transport the hydrogen to wherever it is needed and then use it there. But there is a vicious circle involved. If you can only buy your hydrogen at a selective number of pumps near some big cities and possibly along a few highways, everybody will be waiting buying such a car. But if nobody is buying who is going to invest in those pumps? In short: we have dug ourselves into a big hole. But something has to happen but the oil will be running out even further and the Chinese and people from India will be getting more cars while we are paying them more and more money because their products are cheaper than our products (are they really when we consider all secondary costs?). Of course it would already help to get a government that doesn't profit from the oil industry. Or the weapons industry that is very eager to let you spend 3 trillion dollars to assure an oil supply for a few more years. I wish you guys in the US a lot of wisdom in your next elections. The poor people who have to drive 70 miles a day just to go to work should consider their situation very carefully, because there are absolutely no signs that the things will ever go back to what we had a few years ago. Sorry to be so pessimistic. We will eventually make things better again, but it will take many years. Y.

Raise your voice. Put on some heels.

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...It's just to bad our USA politicians are involved in oil and do everything in their power to prevent this kind of energy from being produced. I have even seen cars run off water. Our government is NOT for the people as some of you from across the pond have been led to believe. They are out for them selves and thats it!

The bottom line here is: DON'T RE-ELECT ANYONE!!! ;):wave:

But then that still leaves to question of whom we can vote for that's going to be any better? :cool1:

Keep on stepping,

Guy N. Heels

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But then that still leaves to question of whom we can vote for that's going to be any better? ;)

If you knew your classics you would know the answer (see third volume of the hitchhikers

guide to the galaxy "So long and thanks for all the fish"). Why do people vote for the

lizards? Because if you don't vote for the right lizard the wrong lizard might get elected.

In short: we need a completely different way to select leaders.

To Cindy: It does cost a lot more nowadays to get the oil. With the prices this high,

it becomes profitable to get at the oil in the deep see, the north of Alaska, Sachalin

etc. Many of these fields wouldn't be operated if the prices would be lower.

Squeezing more oil from a given field is also requiring more technology, like injecting

steam etc. On the whole the oil companies make more profit, yes, but it is far from

all profits between your 40 ct per gallon and $3 per gallon. And if the US government

would charge the Iraq war to the oilindustry......

Y.

Raise your voice. Put on some heels.

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In short: we need a completely different way to select leaders.

How? What would you suggest?

To Cindy: It does cost a lot more nowadays to get the oil. With the prices this high, it becomes profitable to get at the oil in the deep see, the north of Alaska, Sachalin etc. Many of these fields wouldn't be operated if the prices would be lower.

Squeezing more oil from a given field is also requiring more technology, like injecting steam etc. On the whole the oil companies make more profit, yes, but it is far from all profits between your 40 ct per gallon and $3 per gallon. And if the US government would charge the Iraq war to the oilindustry......

There is an article entitled "The Truth About Oil" in the April. 2008 issue of Popular Mechanics that pretty well outlines the current petroleum supply situation and difficulties with production. The bottom line is that, in terms of global supplies, there isn't any "shortage" and reports on the advances in exploration and drilling techniques that are available today that weren't available back in the 1970's. It's interesting and I would suggest anyone that is interested in petroleum's future, read it.

Being mentally comfortable in your own mind is the key to wearing heels in public.

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The energy industry would love to do more exploration devlope alternive sources and build more refinerys. The problem is government REG's and each state local government blocks any initiative because they don't want a refinery or other energy related industry in their back yard but they want the taxes, then there are the enviromentlist that try and stop all energy devlopment, their aginst wind turbines nuclear energy or even water produced energy. Now I am not aginst protecting the environment but there is a line you have the world demanding energy and a few who try and block any production so noting gets done.

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How? What would you suggest?

Well, this was a problem that the ancient Greek already worried about.

Their democraty didn't work that well in the end either.

The best they could come up with was what we would call 'enlightened despotism'.

Clearly that hasn't worked 100% either or the words tyrant and despot wouldn't have

such a bad fame nowadays. It seems to have worked rather well many times though.

The current way of elections in which it is more important that a person looks perfect

on television and what he says is hardly relevant looks like a recipe for disaster.

This is already described in fahrenheit 453 (or whatever the number was).

Years ago there was a scientific american article analysing the performance of

English kings with those of American presidents. There had at that time been roughly

the same number of them. Ranking them good, mediocre, bad etc. it turned out that

the number of good ones of each was roughly the same. Idem bad ones.

I guess the only thing you can say against the kings is that some of the better ones

got to power in a rather violent way.

I guess I don't know what would be the best system. I am happy that I don't qualify

for the US presidency..... (in case they make that like jury duty).

Y.

Raise your voice. Put on some heels.

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The problem with the American democracy is that it is more a perception of democracy rather than an actual one. Anyone who has been doing business in the States knows that Americans pick up very easily on new ideas, but are also the first to dump something when they are not repeatedly told that it is something good to sustain. This applies to products, services, ideologies, and politics. The way that you communicate with the average American individual is through advertising. If you have a message to get across or a product to sell, the way to do it is through purchasing bandwith on one of the few established channels: TV, radio, print or online. In the US, perception can be created by spending a certain (usually large) amount of money and systain it for a certain amount of time. It has been proven a thousand times over that for most products there is a direct, mostly linear, relationship between ad spending and consumer demand. For a new consumer product business, it is really hard to break through the ever-present cloud of advertising that is kept up by the established players. In the US, it is really possible to create perception. The cellphone carriers are a good example: AT&T and Verizon are the biggest ad spenders in the country, and is in the billions each. But the actual service quality level they provide, it might as well be Albania. Cell coverage in the US is really abysmal, behind any other developed country in West and East that I have been to. Still - the average revenue per user is higher than anywhere else in the world. What politics are concerned: if you tell people often enough the same message, they are more likely to remember it. And this is where the problems start: succeeding in US politics requires a gigantic amount of campaign money, which makes is cost prohibitive for a challenger out of the well-financed Republican or Democrat camp. And of course the Republicans and Democrats understand this very well, and they manage the communication so that there are no obvious holes in their strategy that someone without a large budget could punch through. So, the suggestion from an outsider: limit financial campaign support somehow, so that the perception creation game towards the average Joe can be done on a more equal footing - without having to purchase prime-time TV for example. When candidates compete purely on ideological merits, the duopoly is very likely to be broken and true democracy with representation based on people's opinions is likely to result. PS: this is not a problem exclusive to the US.

What's all the fuss about?

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Portions deleted to conserve space.

The problem with the American democracy is that it is more a perception of democracy rather than an actual one...

...Wh(ere) politics are concerned: if you tell people often enough the same message, they are more likely to remember it. And this is where the problems start: succeeding in US politics requires a gigantic amount of campaign money, which makes is cost prohibitive for a challenger out of the well-financed Republican or Democrat camp. And of course the Republicans and Democrats understand this very well, and they manage the communication so that there are no obvious holes in their strategy that someone without a large budget could punch through.

So, the suggestion from an outsider: limit financial campaign support somehow, so that the perception creation game towards the average Joe can be done on a more equal footing - without having to purchase prime-time TV for example. When candidates compete purely on ideological merits, the duopoly is very likely to be broken and true democracy with representation based on people's opinions is likely to result.

PS: this is not a problem exclusive to the US.

Arctic, you've put your finger precisely on the problem. Americans do not elect the best leaders, almost invariably we elect the ones who spend the most! Therefore, we can reasonably say that our leaders are not elected to office - they buy the office. Then an additional problem is the matter of people running for re-election. Or to put it another way, the space between a "campaign contribution" and an outright bribe is only a matter of angstroms.;)

Keep on stepping,

Guy N. Heels

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Screw the environmentalists. There is enough oil in Alaska to last us forever here in the US. I say GO GET IT! and if the environmentalists don't like it, MOVE! Don't get me wrong, I like clean air and everything that goes with it same as the next guy but with the technology today, there is not that much risk of destroying the environment as back in the 70"s. We have to draw a line somewhere. We do not have to depend on foreign countries for oil. Bring our troops home, put a couple thousand tanks on the Mexican border and drill Alaska! I'm tired of trying to solve the worlds problems. We got enough right here. We also have the resources to fix it.

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Screw the environmentalists. There is enough oil in Alaska to last us forever here in the US. I say GO GET IT!

It's great you are so confident - but the problem is not so much the supply of oil. The issue is the consequences of burning it: If you lived in New Orleans, you would agree that an increased occurence of Katrina style phenomena is not a good thing.

I like clean air and everything that goes with it same as the next guy but with the technology today, there is not that much risk of destroying the environment as back in the 70"s.

Is there a possibility you don't quite understand the nature of the problem? The seventies issues were of totally different nature. The greenhouse effect has nothing to do with pollutants, as a matter of fact most greenhouse gases are harmless as such.

We also have the resources to fix it.

That I agree about. But the solution is not about drilling more.

What's all the fuss about?

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It's great you are so confident - but the problem is not so much the supply of oil. The issue is the consequences of burning it: If you lived in New Orleans, you would agree that an increased occurence of Katrina style phenomena is not a good thing.

Is there a possibility you don't quite understand the nature of the problem? The seventies issues were of totally different nature. The greenhouse effect has nothing to do with pollutants, as a matter of fact most greenhouse gases are harmless as such.

That I agree about. But the solution is not about drilling more.

Thats for sure.....

In my opinion the solution is birth control. We must get a grip on the population.

Hello, :wave: my name is Hoverfly. I’m a high heel addict…. Weeeeeeeeeee!  👠1998 to 2022!

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I agree that the supply of oil is not the problem. It's the price and the greedy people, like our very own government that keeps us in bondage. If we didn't have to spend so damn much on trying to fix the rest of the world and concentrate on our own land, the money saved just by bringing our troops home from all that BS in Iraq would be more than enough to solve disasters like Katrina, hunger, homeless, social security to name a few. It's all about greed in our own back yard (USA) and if you haven't figured that out yet, O well. It has everything to do with oil prices!

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A friend sent that to me last year.

Whats wrong with it?

Our govenment won't profit from it like oil so they don't want it to happen.

There isn't a thing wrong with it. It is just that everyone would like to find an alternative source of energy and there are several alternatives already available.

And, you are correct in your assumption that the government, at all levels, won't profit from it. After all, how does one tax something that is readily available for free?

I can imagin, however, a interruption in income flowing into government coffers because they can no longer collect taxes from the sale of gasoline.

Being mentally comfortable in your own mind is the key to wearing heels in public.

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I envision we will be hit with our road taxes each time we take the car in for our yearly inspection. Someone in the government will figure out how much the road tax is worth per mile and we will have to pay it before we can get our new plates:mecry: .

T&H

"Look for the woman in the dress, if there is no dress there is no woman."-Coco Channel

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I envision we will be hit with our road taxes each time we take the car in for our yearly inspection. Someone in the government will figure out how much the road tax is worth per mile and we will have to pay it before we can get our new plates:mecry: .

T&H

Don't give them more ideas. They will think of it soon enough.

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The fall of the dollar? I definitely blame the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and it's superior office for the fall of the dollar.

Back in 2003 all 50 U.S. states filed lawsuits against sub-prime lenders. Some states filed collectively, while other states where even more aggressive in that they created new laws that protected the consumer from sub-prime predatory lending.

Instead of supporting the states, the OCC created new laws that prohibited the states from enforcing their laws against national banks, many of which were guilty of predatory lending.

It would be nice to see if there was a way to sue the OCC for negligence, but then the OCC's hierarchy would trickle upward. The upward spiral would end in a classic four letter word starting with B and ending with H at which point all respect for the Rule Of Law would be lost anyway.

Feminine Style .  Masculine Soul.  Skin In The Game.

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I envision we will be hit with our road taxes each time we take the car in for our yearly inspection. Someone in the government will figure out how much the road tax is worth per mile and we will have to pay it before we can get our new plates:mecry: .

T&H

True, that!

Being mentally comfortable in your own mind is the key to wearing heels in public.

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I envision we will be hit with our road taxes each time we take the car in for our yearly inspection. Someone in the government will figure out how much the road tax is worth per mile and we will have to pay it before we can get our new plates:mecry: .

T&H

All ready being considered in some states because the of increase of hybrids on the road. One way or another you will be paying a new tax when the use of oil starts to decrease. Personaly I perfer tolls, pay as you go.

Hello, :wave: my name is Hoverfly. I’m a high heel addict…. Weeeeeeeeeee!  👠1998 to 2022!

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All ready being considered in some states because the of increase of hybrids on the road. One way or another you will be paying a new tax when the use of oil starts to decrease. Personaly I perfer tolls, pay as you go.

Only problem there is that every road would become a toll road.

They will probebly just require the cars to be fit with some elaborate filling device so we have to buy the "fuel" at an autherized reseller. After all hydric acid (water) is a real hazardous substance.

Reminds me of the time when we had a tank truck over turn on the highway and they closed it down to bring in haz-mat guys to clean it up and all it was, was vinegar.

T&H

"Look for the woman in the dress, if there is no dress there is no woman."-Coco Channel

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if its vinegar, i'd take that with a pinch of salt.... ...and put it on your french fries.... see us guys in the uk wanna participate in the way we know best eg humour.... half baked it may be... or even cheesy.. but this one wont jacket in.... we just keep chippin away.....

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