mockney piers

Snorky in 'laying down some kindling and applying flame' shock. Move along, nothing to see here. Not that my opinion counts as I don't pull in (grimaces even more than bob) 250k (silent 'darling' on the end of k presumably). Twonk.

good points Nero and pretty much bourne out by the fact that his administration are looking like they will be white political elites, many of them up to their neck in involvement with previous administrations. Perhaps sensible, but doesn't really smack of the promised change. Indeed some backtracking on promises re Iraq will likely be his first foreign policy decision. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122688537606232319.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

quite right. Plenty of places in t'interweb that do things better than others. Youtube fits the bill, but why not start a room in the lounge where people can link to the things you suggest?

The East Quagmire Forum The Lounge...Allright!!!!!!

will happily join up for a co-op session, as after 3 and a half hours to download demo (?!?!!) I got in 20 minutes before spooks, and was singularly unimpressed. Serious Sam set in Ravensholme. Not that SS wasn't a lot of fun, it's just that it was a lot of fun 9 years ago when a fast, slick, pretty Doom was acceptable. I'm hoping co-op will add a something that single player was missing.

...Giles. I'm 76 and a burlesque dancer. My account details are 10-11-23 43258117, dob 06/03/1932. mother's maiden name 'Maud'

Great news as head of ETA captured http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7732678.stm Mind you if he hadn't been a criminal, that mullet sure as hell was!!

It's when it's spin instead of substance that things are bad. I'd argue that that characterised Blairism. Obama has kept a very tight campaign, which was won despite offering very few solid policies, maintaining a tone of hope and talk of change. Only time will tell whether there will be substance to back up his words, but his announcement that he will shut down Guantanamo is a good start (no mention of the hundreds rotting in foreign prisons thanks to rendition mind) and from the roles he's filled so far he also seems to be fulfilling his right man for the job regardless of who, for instance keeping Robert Gates in the Sec Defense role.

Interesting article from Salvoj Zizek in the London Review of Books. http://www.lrb.co.uk/webonly/14/11/2008/zize01_.html

"John Major and the ICC in the same sentence I'd understand. As it is, I'm confused." LOL, fair comment, i refer of course to the International Criminal Court, not the International Cricket Council :) Sean, I think you huguenot and yellowhair are all pretty much saying the same thing. I agree that the British gov't should have stepped in long before things got so bad. It's all a hideous tragedy that the civil rights movement wasn't listened to, especially as it was a time that it a parallel movement was making great strides in the US. As I've said before the demands of the vast majority of the catholic community were so utterly reasonable, political enfranchisement and equality, it's just terrible that it all had to go down such a route. I will never and can never condone murder whether committed by a paramilitary or the state, and wish all those arrogant and nihilistic enough to glory in murder their own little corner in hell frankly.

"Funny you should say that because that is exactly what we know to be true of the UK." Well, yes and no. English history taught in school is certainly skewed and too often ignores the bad, but I'd hazard that if it does veer toward the self-congratualtory, it doesn't have a specifically nationalist agenda, though it certainly has a ridiculously unhealthy obsession with the nazis when we can sit there and say we did a good thing (carpet bombing of civilians notwithstanding). I'd agree that along with our role in the slave trade (which is taught) we need to focus on the dark side of imperialism (in Ireland, India South Africa and more recently in Diego Garcia) in our education. not in some sort of PC self flagellation as the Daily Mail would have us believe, but because in order to avoid mistakes in future you need to have a full perspective on the past. TB famously didn't care about history, if he did he may have found many lessons about previous imperialist adventures in Mesopotomia and Afghanistan!! Talking to many in the republic it's clear that schools have taught and continue to teach history through an overtly nationalist interpretation and that needs to end. My own dear wife (Mrs O'Mockney) seems to be of the opinion that Cromwell was some sort of global bogeyman right up until the 20th century. Perhaps it's time for a bit of perspective and a more global agenda in the education system, just as it's about time that this country got over the second world war. (Spain conversely actually needs to start addressing its past in history, some of the youngsters are barely even aware there was a civil war 70 years ago). And nice and good of Blair as it was to apologise for the famine I'd much rather he apologised for the repugnant things he himself did, ah well, maybe it's between Tony and his priest now, though I'd much rather it was between him and the ICC. And finally I'm not sure how you go about calling a 4 year ?400 million inquiry a whitewash. It was never intended to have teeth or result in prosecution, and it may have tempered its language somewhat, but it was always modelled on the truth and reconciliation committee in south africa. As stupid as as sending armed shock troops to police a civilian protest was, how much more stupid was it to fire at them? It'd be far too cyncial of me to suggest that the massacre proved the death knell of the civil rights movement and the IRA's great recruiting sergeant; men with guns who worship at the temple of blood would never stoop so low would they. Weirdly 26 dead civilians seems to be a just bad day at the office in Afghanistan, lets try and do something about never again actually meaning never again!

Just for you Bon3yard Dead Space savaging. Mind you Fable 2 fares worse.

Firstly I by and large agree with you yellowyail, if you've read me before on these boards you know my starting point in politics is jaw-jaw before war-war, and that political elites in all walks of life are by and large scum. So I'm really just going to be my usual annoying historical pedant and pick you up on "The day England (and it was England at the time) took Ireland, it picked a fight, it got a fight" I'd take issue with that, it was actually the Normans who took Ireland,and far from a fight, the Irish largely acquiesced in the face of their military superiority, as by and large did the English after Hastings (though they had a good crack there). Nothing to be ashamed of, pretty much everyone lost to the Normans, nasty bunch, but very good at what they did which was to thump people and nick their land, ask the Sicilians! Given the aristocratic connections between the norman rulers both sides of the irish see it comes as no surprise that genuine English barons ended up owning Irish land over time, mostly through marriage, but proto imperial rule can reasonably, be said to have started with the Tudors who did indeed send armies to hold on to rule rather than back up dynastic ambitions. The war of the three kindoms (english civil war) was actually started by the Ulster rising, wholesale murder of protestants (Irish and settler alike, it was a religious persecution) with the professed intention of supporting the Stuart king of a unified crown, but not yet united kingdom, against the perceived republican tendencies of an upstart and godly (their own title, actually what we would these days call fundamentalist religious) parliament. As mentioned before the protestants in the north were immigrant settlers from Scotland, not England, and they supported a man at the Boyne who wasn't English, but a dutch prince on his way to usurping the English throne. None of this is to say that the English never did bad things in Ireland, far from it, it's just that history is never very kind to simplistic truths once scrutinised. Much of Irish history has been reinterpreted in the 19th and 20th centuries for political reasons of nationalism, when actually nothing remotely resembling a genuine nationalist movement had actually existed prior to that time.

Quite enjoyed his Sunday Bloody Sunday. Ay chihuahua. The comments do support the XKCD theories of youtube comments however.

If it's your own photo then upload the file as an attachment, then look at your post, click on the attachment copy the url and repeat as above. As you can see I've an attachment below which and my picture below points to the picture using the insert image url icon (the little landscape thingy) Just a screenshot I took that proved that bon3yard's naked piccies are naughty.

Marvellous, I'd never heard of Richard Cheese before, but this made me chuckle, Manilow's Copacabana covered...ish with the story of Star Wars..ish The Star Wars Cantina

Richard Cheese does his Aperitif for Destruction with a cover of Welcome to the Jungle

tish? *3 more* Ooh, text size has gone

errrr......

baddam

Depends how hungry you are.

He wants that 5000 posts accolade I reckon quids!!

i like it, and great quote. Today's mash has a future classic with Nothing to fear from German economic collapse

I thought everyone was just being diplomatic, keeping the matches away from the blue touch paper. Nothing to see here, move along..... But yeah, my first thought on reading the OP was Rose McGowan too.

loved this on the guardian obo. ""I'm reading this in Johannesburg where the summer has started, apparently, with a lot of turbulent weather and not enough blazing hot sunshine. I thought India were tremendous against Australia and I'm really looking forward to seeing England do a job against them. Don't be too tough on England early-doors, OK; give 'em a chance..." Tim they've already had their chance. I'm an English sports journalist and, as befits the heritage of my trade, I only have two gears: England are either the greatest team on earth or the shabbiest, there is no middle ground."