mockney piers

Don't do it, you'll end up missing your creative and how simple everything was instead of fighting iTunes the whole time.

*tiptoes very quietly away*

Good points Louisiana. I'm often asked advice about Barcelona (I'm a Madrile?o, but what the hell, I've been there) and I say it's a beautiful city and a great destination, but for gods sake don't take valuables, wear a money belt and don't get too drunk. A friend of mine once got mugged twice between bar and hotel. As he obviously had nothing after the first encounter, the second gang took his shoes!! A quick look at my post "number of people I know who've been robbed, mugged etc in Madrid outweighs London by a country mile" Eek, terrible mixed metaphor.

Nice Sean, is that Claire Scott's perm from Grange hill? I never thought it was possible to fancy someone in wellies, but here we go. Feist - Feel it All Single take video, either brave, stupid or very very cheap.

Brilliant, an open fridge that flew like a gazelle and the earth shook!! Only sports commentary!

Ha ha, indeed it did.

Brendan, nothing idle about them. Surely some of the most pressing issues of our day? "One of the few noteworthy relics of a long forgotten, defunct empire?" are you referring to Krikkit?

"WE ARE TARQUIN" "WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN TARQUIN"

Just had a look at that advance wars. Thanks the lordy they got rid of the 'cute' annoying kids. It was long due some darkness, and finally a decent anti tank unit.

"Perhaps the Quiet room has reached maximum capacity" Amputee lions, eviscerated lactating donkeys, parliaments of owls, lazyboys, drinks cabinets, swimming pools, alpine scenery and billions of cast off Manolo Blahniks; it's hardly surprising really is it.

Robocalypse looks like it'll be well worth a look.

Come on ????, come along. It'd be great to have you there. I promise to leave my shiv at home ;)

"the choice to have unprotected sex" ..and we're pretty much back to the question first raised as to why this is happening. The science of economics assumes a perfectly eduacted and perfectly rational populace, neither of which, we all know, exist. Hence why economists are basically glorified guessers. I'm not getting drawn closer to the flame again, but I'll leave it at few, if any of us qualify to be studied by economists. So why on earth do you think mixed up, often genuinely ignorant teenagers are making rational choices?

So atila, are you saying that at 15 everything you did was entirely thought through, the consequences of every action. You never tried the whole fumbling each others bits thing, and had you got to the 6 yard box, so to speak, you'd have shot and scored, with er...rubber boots on? If so, how comes, did you have parents who taught you right and wrong, did you have a good school that had decent sex education? Perhaps we should just hang pregnant teenagers and shoot the fathers, that'd soon learn 'em.

Mind you having said that, just because Atila's posts are largely baseless, doesn't make them entirely wrong either, there are kernels of truth to be found in there.

Whoa, may have to check it out!!

"I just knew somebody would play the poverty, broken families, lack of education card" Ha ha ha, yeah, I usually find that gets stuck to the Lamborghini Countach in my Top Trumps set. Much as you'd like to think it is, world ain't that simple, it never ever is. If it's all so damn simple then why can't you offer answers? If you toss a grenade in then walk away, stopping briefly to turn and sneer how everyone else is 'talking bollocks' without the slightest attempt to justify, reason or back-up your assertions with thought nor evidence, then as far as I'm concerned that absolutely invalidates everything you have to say (see I can do sweeping generalisations too, fun isn't it).

Light the blue touch paper and stand well back. Nothing to see here people, just a flamer.

I still agree with Keef. Great as it is, it is still just television; it's worthy and it's in the canon of the great, up there with Spaced and the Simpsons. But I'm not going to rub my chaps excessively over it.

That's exactly it. Scenes flesh out characters, rather than characters driving plot.

Very vulnerable to fog for obvious reasons. We ended up being checked into an old double decker at the boarding gate on christmas eve and driven to the air strip at Southend-on-Sea. Very surreal.

I you look at my early posts Keef, you'll se I agree; it's different to the Sopranos and they're both hugely entertaining in their own way. The Wire has been very well researched. The writers spent a lot of time with the Baltimore police Dep't who apparently worship this programme as the only one who really tells it like it is. There is a fair bit of police politics in series 1, but it's ramped up hugely in subsequent series. Also it has an integrity of vision and breadth of scope i've not seen in any other long runner. Band of Brothers could easily be compared in terms of integrity and quality, but much easier to do that in 8 episodes than it is across 5 series. I love Heroes too, and though it's excellent at what it's doing, it's basically Rentaghost with megabucks thrown at it. Has anyone seen Jack Coleman and Harold Meaker in the same room together...anyone?

Well said DC, and quite right regards time and place too. It just one of my new bugbears. I was brought up on a diet of this truism about how we all dropped dead at 35, up to and including university level. It's not until I finally stopped and thought about the implications that it didn't make sense. I did some digging around and found quite a bit of writing that were exploring much the same avenues. I like a bit of revisionism me (as an aside, you must read The Origins of the British by Stephen Oppenheimer) Evidence is not great as our paleolithic-neolithic forbears weren't too hot on their paperwork or headstones, and decent bodies not in royal tombs aren't so easy to come by. Our medieval ancestors, if serf or in servitude were rather more likely than we to be worked to an early grave, so our medieval records are full of those who had a tough lot and hence where much of this modern misconception that we're the first generations to live over 40. Naa, we're just the first ones who can reasonably expect to!

Exacty Brendan. In fact still a few examples of mesolithic man in this world today (deepst borneo, darkest amazon), and you don't see them dropping like flies the moment their crystals start flashing.

"Because you died at 35" Oooh, I'm in a picky picky mood today. I do agree with you that that was the factor. Plus childbirth in later teenage years is just downright healthier for mother and baby. But the past wasn't Logan's Run. People didn't die at 35, life expectancy was 35, which is very different, particularly when you take into account the huge infant mortality rates you mention. In fact Mesolithic man was thought to be substantially healthier than modern man, thanks to diet and exercise and with luck would happily reach his 80s. Medieval times weren't nearly as bad as is usually made out, with a protein rich diet of fish, pulses and vegetables. Though I really wouldn't have fancied urban life back in them thar days. Of course had he had Huguenot's nasty recent botty trouble he'd have been a gonner at 37, keeping those averages nicely down in the thirties. It wasn't until decent sanitation and better medical practices (less bleeding, fewer leeches) that life expectancy began to climb from that in the 20th century. Of course if those that dislike 'western medicine' get their way....