mockney piers

Thing is I've a very good i7 in the study for all actual computing needs, music, photography, skyping, gaming errr that's it. But my lad spends all day anywhere but my study and I have to leave him if I want to check anything out, plus it's kind of overkill powering up the lumbering beast to read a few feeds and pass some time. So something lighter and portable makes sense (though a lap/mactop/book is still ott), but the iPhone is a bit of a pain in reality, useful when you're on a bus, but plain wrong for home. There are those nethook things I guess, but they're a bit Speak&Spell truth be told. So ipad kind of fills a gap for me (I'd never have said this pre-home parenting6). Plus I get to play the trillion games I downloaded for my iPhone on it!! The flash thing though is a serious issue. Has Opera managed a browser yet?

Well now I'm grossly offended you're calling me English!!! Apopletic in fact.

Sooooooo. Errrrrrrrr. Mmmmmmmmmm. Soooooooooo, anyone errrr get one at all? Does flash work? No reason like.

How on earth is it 'grossly offensive'. I mean, it's not strictly speaking wrong is it. It was unnecessary given that the process is ongoing; why on earth an Irishman should be offended by it is beyond me. Should an Englishman be offended at the mere mention of Drogheda or Dresden? That's even weirder.

Ooh I missed that. Pseudo intellectual it may be but it's all my own* ;-) *though in fairness I am watching ALOT of CBeebies at the mo.

*shuffles toe in dirt with circular motion* of course I knew that ... ahem

In all fairness I don't think the semantic distinction between Sinn Fein and IRA could be any less political could it ;)

Not meaning to be patronising Keef, apologies, and nothing to do with disagreement, I'm pretty much with your friend on all points. It's just why the outrage, what were they expecting exactly? It just smacked of Private Eye 'cancel my subscription' letters ;-) And PCG, I grew up with that too, but I don't think it's PC to avoid using one term instead of the other, it's just that it serves no purpose with what is an ever stronger but still uncertain process, and to do so explicitly must be done so with an aim in mind. I just couldn't possibly work out what that aim was, it seemed a bit odd and unsettling. Perhaps I've just heard too many renditions of 'No Surrender' at too many football matches for me to avoid negative conclusions.

Hmm, ok then, but as a politician I'd have thought thinking before you speak should be second nature by now :-/ And yes, not just Northern Ireland but pretty much the rest of Europe, everyone keeps citing Italy, but it's a very particular country with it's own political complexities (Dark Heart of Italy is a marvellous read on that one); Spain for one certainly seems to cope fine with PR and perhaps could be a model for a fully elected bicameral (actually the senate uses a complex block vote system, am I the only one who actually likes an unelected upper house btw? We'll only end up with David Beckham in the Lords if we elect it) system with autonomous provinces!!

I think the key is in the word 'was'. If bitter enemies can put aside their differences to cooperate in peace, what right a councillor hundreds of miles away sticking his fingers up at the peace process when frankly it's none of his business. Pointless, petty and demeans the man and the position. That aside, I'm inclined to think that keef's mate is understandable but a tad naive. Lets be honest, noone votes Lib Dem in the hope they'll form a majority government do we. At worst we hope there are enough MPs talking sense and making decent (no, not that sense of the word 'decent') suggestions that it somehow elevates the whole. The best we could have hoped for is this, and I'm inclined to agree with Mr Clegg that the Tories had the strongest mandate and this was the right thing to do (though agree with Brendan entirely regards Labours failure and the absolute imperative that they be kicked out). The best we could have hoped for then is this outcome, and also in total agreement with quids that with the state the country is in, a coalition where both parties can finger point during the tough times ahead, thus freeing them up to actually make the really hard choices necessary to get this country out of the sh*t Brown has put us in (yes Brown, SUb Primes merely served to expose how bad he was) is ideal. Politics is nothing if not the art of compromise, and during the next few years I'd rather have a pragmatic government than an idealistic one, and this coalition definitely lends itself to that end.

"Why does Cllr Barber refer to Sinn Fein as the 'IRA'." Glad I'm not alone in being very uncomfortable reading that. Not sure what point JB was trying to make/score there, but thoroughly unhelpful stuff in this day and age.

cool. lets hope the sun stays shining

Watch it with some popcorn and enjoy. Dont expect it for a second to come up to scratch.

Really?. I've seen him on a couple of other interviews and he seemed a pretty decent chap. Maybe like some actors he has a chameleon like ability to adapt to his surroundings, and well, being on the Jonathan Ross show.... I thought last night's drama was quite enjoyable. It was total bunkum, it was predictable and utterly clich? ridden (I thought they could have called it Lutherl Weapon 6) but it was well executed, great cast and will probably grow into itself a little. I mean come on, it's from the writers of spooks so it was never going to be gritty and plausible was it.

Oh, don't, it's a happy(ish) event. a celebration. Better to tell someone how wonderful they are while they're still around and able to have a few bevvies and a boogie, rather than when it's too late.

Mondays are good. Can do this week too, though may be feeling a bit peaky on friday as it's my friend's final birthday party on thursday, which will be very weird and doubtless very messy.

Hmmmm, sudden spate of people people joining up with the sole purpose of knocking the forum, with the intellectual rigour and depressing grammar and spelling of your average sixth form debating society (or goose green squatter). Have our friends in Goose Green been talking to their mates by any chance? Actually a great deal of political smearing going on. Any of the new posters traceable to millbank towers (or wherever they are now)?

It's Sturgeon's Law isn't it: 90% of everything is sh!t

"For anyone who's done History, you get an upper second for just writing your name at the top of the paper" Oi, I resent that. I made it to at least two lectures. Anyway, what Bob said; I'm no Clegg fan, but Lib dem voters tend to vote for policies. Nitty gritty doesn't appeal to a goodly chunk of the voting population because they want simple soundbites, which is more or less what the three debates amounted to, a bunch of simplistic sales pitches. I was thoroughly bored by last night's escapades. ANyway, nothing the lib dems can do to get into power, in the past it hasn't really mattered that 20% of the vote equaled not many seats, but now thanks to decades of dodgy gerrymandering we face the very real prospect of 2nd place popular vote equaling not many seats. And 3rd place popular vote forming the government. Crazy.

According to someone I knew at Goldman Sachs 'You can work a double shift at McDonalds and be on 50 k', and if he said it it must be true, after all he went to public school. Therefore there is obviously no poverty in this country at all, it's just a ruse to get hold of our taxes...like global warming...i mean, did you see the snow this winter?!?!.

Mind you Russia seemed to go from Bankruptcy to Energy Superpower in a short time, perhaps its not a desperately terrible thing to happen; look at Southampton FC! Not that Greece has much energy to sell....lots of very valuable art and historic artefacts mind...

I have indeed read Mailer's masterpiece. My main issue with the situation filmed is it isnt really war is it. It's occupation. So you invade and occupy a country, install a client government, but do little to resolve the centrifugal forces unleashed by your actions. This incident it seems to me is more like a wermacht gunning down of russian men because they are either partisans, potentially partisans or aiding and abetting partisans and are thus the enemy, regardless of the fact they'd much rather not be the enemy but you had to go and invade didnt you (instant godwin). Plus, most people wandering around neighbourhoods toting guns in the fashion of some of those shot were probably just neighbourhod protection forces, defending their immediate community from bandits, criminal gangs and sectarian death squads. Seems doubly harsh to gun them down for doing their best to get through an awful set of circumstances you've created and then go 'down another terrorist'. But like I say, I don't know the ins and outs of that specific act.

I've just read Nathaniel Fick's (he's the thoughtful platoon leader portrayed in Generation Kill) Autobiography of his time in the marines and it makes for very interesting reading. He pretty much says what Huguenot just has that in war there are only bad decisions and worse decisions. His main motivation was to try and get everyone out alive and try to minimise the harm caused, but I suspect that he's something of a minority that way, especially in the marines which values aggressivenenss. Probably why he quit the military soon after. Anyway, it's borrowable if anyone's interested.

It it very disturbing and on the face of it wanton. But then we really have no idea about context at all do we, and without that it's nigh on impossible to be able to come up with any judgement on what the specifics of this particular situation (and there clearly are armed men there). What helicopters are doing raining large calibre fire into a densely populated urban area and civilian vehicles in Iraq in the first place is another matter, though the US fliers have a certain reputation for trigger happiness. As the Germans in Normandy used to say "When the RAF fly over we duck, when the Luftwaffe fly over nobody ducks, when the USAF fly over everybody ducks"

oh my.