mockney piers

Mr XKCD explains my pet hate better than I ever could.

yes he's a bit of a nob, but agreed that his sport column is very good. Plus 'es an 'ammer in'e

Seeing the words 'middle class' in a post. Doh!!!

Typical American!!

I've an unhealthy infatuation with the delightful Si?n Berry I'll vote for her greens any day err..that doesn't even make sense...

Carla Bruni looks better topless however

and yes my final paragraph is slightly reminiscent of a man...stuffed with straw... *edited for but you'll never know mwah ha ha ha*

*edited for can't be arsed*

Sorry, jeremy and mick mac, that was aimed at finklestein. Sorry MM, I wasn't having a go at you or jeremy, and by and large I agree with you both, i just think a degree of sanity needs to return. Just because good times made loads of money, we should be more cautious than to think a return to those ways will solve anything, it'll just mean having to deal with the same problems again further down the raod. Of course you can't stop speculation (what would quids do without coral?) but you should be able to limit the degree of exposure due to speculation of financial institutions that are gambling with their investors and depositors' money. Many investors may have signed up to higher risk strategies, but the depositors sure as hell didn't.

It was easy to rubbish because it was rubbish, it didn't argue for anything, just attempted to poke holes in straw men. For instance there is no such thing as a free market. there are import duties, and vat and health & safety and unions and laws, and unfair trading practices between rich countries and poor countries. It's a fallacy. So was finkelstein essentially advocating a free market as oppose to the regulated one we have today? Because the last time anything remotely like a 'laissez fair free' market it resulted in riots in manchester and London (proper ones) and famines in Ireland and India. Plus what the hell has banking regulation got to do with allocation of resources?

I've never disputed the fact that banking system needs to be saved, but when chucking good money at often literally bad (buying up toxic debts etc) is the long term strategy, not a short term goal, then we have a government devoid of ideas, and doubtless one who will listen to the arguments of light regulation lest we strangle the baby at rebirth. If that's the case we'll have lost a real opportunity to protect the country from the future mismanagement of greedy directors and shareholders the next time the good times roll and we banish boom and bust *hacking cough emerges* Plus getting the city back to a speculation footing isn't sensible; structured products need to be there to raise capital, and share burden, not simply to feed a fantasy of banished risk. That way lies the fantasy land that got us into this mess. You might as well say that the 17th century saw a lost opportunity to prop up the tulip industry.

Southampton seems to eb beating West Ham to the credit crunch punch. Sad day (well, except for Ratty)

Sky News in prescient reporters shock

Apologies then, I misinterpreted. Plus I get all ranty sometimes :-/

on a lighter note

Of course we could just tacitly allow and become world leaders (like we're not already) in money laundering and reap the rewards for all those drugs we buy and guns we sell, that'll make a mint.

The money's not exactly coming from the banks now is it. The City contributed some ?72 billion in Corporation tax since 1997, not even a drop in the ocean for the bail out let alone increased dole payments etc. Clearly if we can chuck billions into banks then the money is available, though with failing Bond sales the preposterous 'quantitive easing' it may be too late to find significant further funds. I'm not some rabid anti banker here, I worked in the city for many years in risk management (thus have seen first hand how little attention was actually paid to risk, and when positions were too extreme the central banks were often lied to, Iv'e seen this with my own eyes). I understand why we have banks, but I think tighter regulation and much closer inspection is vital for the future success of the city, You seem to think this was a hiccough, some minor blip, and people who don't 'understand' the city should butt out. But this was endemic practice across the city and that can never be allowed to bring down genuine people with real jobs (sorry mate, but 75% of what the city does is fantasy la la land) again. *edited for erroneous decimal point

Ahead of "US, Belgium, France and Spain" where political corruption is endemic. Hardly reassuring. There was a time we never strayed out of the top ten, I think we've every right to nip a consistently downward trend in the bud. Of course its FoI that's the problem, doh!!! Stupid me, stupid stupid stupid.

If the City is all the UK has to rely on then we're already up shit creek without a paddle frankly. There are ways out of this and endlessly propping up the banks while falling for the continued calls for light regulation as the way out (pure pure fantasy land) that I keep seeing, is as far from the right path as its possible to be. There is so much we do need to invest in, getting education right, pumping money into the universities, into the sciences, into research, into new technologies and the clean energy industry of which we could become world leaders, not to mention propping up our crumbling infrastructure which sooner rather than later will need to be done, and pumping tax payers money through 'private' enterprise so tah only shareholders reap the erwards of public investment is certainly not the way....grrrr....must....go....to....lunch...and ....calm....down Might jsut bash someone in a suit on the way though, just in case it helps solve global poverty ...or something.

Forever Young (bob dylan) - CitizenEd The Queen is Dead (the smiths) - Snorky Acid Tongue (jenny lewis) - *Bob* Love vs Porn (kevin drew) - BigBadWolf The Book of Right On (Joanna Newsome) - Sean McGabhann Wake Up Time for Freedom (the cult) - Leagle Eagle..ish Boring (the pierces) - Allfornun Wrecking Ball (interpol) - FelicityNormal/CrazyNurse/gawd knows what Spider Sense (lotus) - Daizie etc Bow Wow (fiery furnaces) - WoofMarkTheDog (who else really) Toasting the God of Graceless Living (bone box) - Jah Lush

Who's that Girl for Crystal Clear.

Likeable chaps, half decent comedy actors. Dreadful show, truly nothing to even raise a corner of the mouth. Less milking their fame than making very poor decisions about where to go with it. See also Lesbian Vampire Killers (or rather, don't)

Rio Palof

OK, to save you from yourself, how about the White Bear, which has RTE.

"says it all really" Ugh?!?! It says precisely nothing. It just tries to ridicule a legitimate philosophical and moral position (ie what lies behind consumerism, which involves the subjugation of millions of people in an economic system designed to allow us to shop while others are subject to war, pestilence, plague and famine, while our society loses sight of core social values, replaced by the emptiness of materialism) by reducing it to a complaint about shopping and the right to own a telly. Shoddy, shoddy journalism. Mind you I'm loving the positively surreal comment underneath: