I bought a friend a ‘cheap & cheerful’ DAB for about £40, and everything about it (bar looks) is much better than the Roberts. Which is sad . . . I feel that Roberts trade on the stylish looks of the products, and their past reputation, but the build & radio quality are not good enough for the price.

I have now got Teora’s englez-roman and roman-englez dictionaries by Andrei Bantaș. A friend sent me these from Romania.

I will certainly check out your recommendation for the Levitchi.

I’m finding Dex Online to be very useful. I go there for conjugations etc. I’ll have to check out dictionare.com.

Learning Romanian is hugely enjoyable for me as it is such a beautiful language.

Teora’s individual englez-roman and roman-englez dictionaries by Levitchi are superb. They have detailed explanations of many words, including expressions and colloquial uses.
The only problem is gender is not given in the englez-roman.

I would recommend dictionare.com as an online dictionary, I find it more useful and comprehensive than the Bantas NTC dictionary, which I first started out with. Not as much depth as Teora’s but some expressions and set phrases are given which is very handy.

(however, you may find the Bantas suffices, Teora is great for me as a Romanian degree student. But I swear the Manolache would seem primitive in comparison to Teora!)

Although the use of CGi it is really a character driven topical format. It is the writing and the commentary on where we are at today. The relationship between Cptn Jack and Ianto did play a meaningful part in the story. It normalises a gay relationship that you rightfully found to be boring and that should be the same for everyone watching it. I get bored with love interests in films where it is about the action. Watching a couple take time out to exchange fluids and pillow talk for any coupling is superfluous. Russell T Davies os making a point, heavy as it appears to you, but I believe he is saying ‘get over it’ for the puritans and homophobic viewers.

Peter Capaldi gave an excellent performance in a production that was evidently on a very very tight budget. So it was the story. The writing was what I enjoyed, the premises, the observation on today’s reasoning and personal and national politics. I especially loved the Whitehall meetings. The line about what school league tables are really for, when having to choose the children to be sacrificed. Loved it. As someone who came to this country to widen participation in higher education it was a howler.

The big issue is Torchwood has a simple format. Something that tries to be sophisticated and thoughtful, like a lower quality version of House of Cards, directed by Paul Seed (who was coincidentally originally an actor, well known to Doctor Who fans for his portrayal of the Graff Vinda-K in the Tom Baker story, The Ribos Operation)
So who is the real audience it is targeted at. The American market. There the audiences are bigger, more involved (with their Torchwood Conferences) and they spend millions of $ on this sh*t. The BBC are securing a source of income when the Tories/New Labour eventually pull the licence fee on them.
To emphasise my point..
http://www.bbcamerica.com/content/262/index.jsp
compare it to the bbc.co.uk website on Torchwood
Now the American audience are diverse and require a big common denominator, simplify the plot and the story. Although I do enjoy the quality US stuff like Scrubs and The Wire. Both on HBO not general terrestrial (sic) tv.

I liked Torchwood. But I appreciate and agree with some of your criticisms and the obvious flaws. But the more they produce programmes where the things audiences today are surprised or note same sex couples involving the protagonist, or throw our language and subtexts into our ears and reveal our hypocrisies, and where help for London can come from Wales can’t be a bad thing. Besides the English (or British, if you like) love to grumble and whinge. Read Jeremy Paxmen’s “The English” or Dara O’Briain’s “Tickling the English”. It is in your blood.

All the best

Simon

PS: By the way, I enjoyed your website.

I got the jacket direct from Carradice.

Whereabouts did you get hold of the jacket?

If you put your finger over the text you’ve been typing then you will see a magnifying glass of the text immediately where the finger is. In the magnifying glass you will see that you can put the insertion point where you like.

It does take a bit of time to get used to the iPod Touch

I’m glad you’ve liked my articles. I have more which are in gestation at the moment. When I get the time I hope to finish them

The APB I use for commuting isn’t separable. The APB’s were available as separable and non-separable. In fact, if I recall correctly, the standard price was for non-separable then you added a bit on to the price for a separable frame.