I'm sure you are sick of ampersand issues as I am

But...
 
While validating XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN
 
I have been going round in circles with my links
 
    <a href="foo.asp?cat=12&dog=13" .....> failed
 
I changed to 
 
    <a href="foo.asp?cat=12&amp;dog=13" ...>  and the validator still failed
with the same error message
 
so I tried
 
    <a href="foo.asp?cat=12&amp;amp;dog=13" .....> which is just being silly
.... but passed
 
 
The mail search on ampersand just brought up angry rants and no real help.
 
I think I have got round this by using %26 instead of &.
 
Then I hit another snag.
 
The inner html between <a ....> and </a> contained "foo &amp; bar" and kept
producing errors until I changed it to 
 
"foo&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;bar"
 
are you sure this validator is working properly ?
 
I get the same results submiting local HTML from firefox 2.0 or uploading to
my site and then pasting 'live' url into validator
 
You problem - or mine ? any clues gratefuly recieved 
 
 
Clive B
 
(Trying to be a good webmaster but getting baffled now)