mockney piers

The Mr Aah is referring to me, surely Yahtzee resemblance is BN5 non?

Also, fellow escapist reviewer REbecca Mayes with her weird musical reviews can be as scathing in its own way http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/rebecca-mayes-muses/951-Overlord-2 You'll just have to watch it when you get home Mr Cat ;)

Yahtzee doesnt give FFXIII much cop http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1569-Final-Fantasy-XIII and 8 bit dark side of the moon!! http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/99604-Dark-Side-of-the-Moon-Played-on-a-NES

Come on Martin, a bit of gumption by god!! Oh, and a gin martini with olive whilst you're at it dear boy, there's a good chap. A guinea in it for you if you're quick.

weirdly beautiful http://www.whitevinyldesign.com/solarbeat/

Germany look a great bet frankly, I may head down t'bookies at lunch!!

Weirdly was reading this this morning about toll-bars in 1857 and also thought plus ca change. Change the year to 2006+ and toll gates to councils, parking schemes, speed cameras etc and this could be the forum today

I concur with Quids regards Rooney, I think I may have said as much in the other thread. Although not to win it, just to get past the quarter finals. England won't win it, they're hard to beat under Capello, but they still look outclassed every time they play a big side. Spain, easily my favourites, no surprise there, and they are a very strong side, but there are teams that can undo them. A horrifically negative Italy very nearly did so in the Euros. Obviously the old adages of tediously never writing off Brazil and Germany still hold true. I can't see Argentina doing it, unless Messi does a Maradonna circa 1986. He's perfectly capable of turning games on his own, but I don't think he can win this tournament. Prediction, traditional dodgy FIFA bias (see Italy and Spain in S. Korea) will see Ivory Coast ushered into the Semis and go on to win it fair and square, cue fisrt African winners, everyone happy (especially if they beat germany on penalties in the final).

rip them, play them on your ipod generic portable mp3 supported compression file format player. They pretty much all do that.

In all fairness I went to an Ashram and that perfectly sums up the experience. I'd also add that EVERYONE there was a bloody loon! Well done Bob you fascist WASP you!!

Cottages 4 u have a huge selection. The missus and I (with various friends dropping in) have twice been to this little one in the middle of a very picturesque steep valley in the west Brecons.

There might be a firefox extension that blocks downloads of oversized photos, or maybe a greasemonkey script that resizes them to a more reasonablely rendered size. I'll have a look to see if there's anything useful. But I agree with admin that there probably isn't one that stops unfunny links/pictures.

I guess we SHOULD now mention the pub as Man's greatest achievement, and there is no intended hyperbole on my part!!!

maayyyyyybe. The Cask on Tachbrook if you're passing by....and the Phoenix at 17:46.

we'll take it as read that there's drinking water, and sugar, and yeast. Excellent, what next? How about those transparent red plastic fish fortune teller things? Technology has rarely surpassed that!!

exactly. Again, let's for a moment imagine we have a couple of electrodes and an inexhaustible potato supplying us with all the elastic trickery we'll ever need... Handheld GPS with calorie counter and pedometer. I mean i don't want to get obese or let my at rest heart rate fall below the optimum do I. I want to be discovered before rickets has set in.

don't listen to him. Tell your boss hes a complete cunt and then get a job somewhere that your talents are appreciated, proabably a job where your ability to decide between ACB and BAC are key. Then when you are king of CABBACland visiting bossisatwatland, give him a pitying look, but don't talk to him or engage in any way, ooooh no.

Ok, taking Fire and The Wheel as gimmes, what are man(person?)kind's greatest inventions? I'll set the ball rolling with the airblade handdryer, I mean, wow, it just kicks the old proverbial rear doesn't it. And just a quick aside for all you OCD types out there. Her Maj has clearly decided that we-who-make-the-country-function types now have to decide between soap and water or anti-bacterial-alcohol-gel. Which is better, or maybe....both?

But ALLLLLL property is theft brendan. I suppose the debate is about the bit between the cracks. Do we have absolute equality for all. An equitable access to certain rights (food, shelter etc) equal opportunity as theoretical concept or as a genuinely practical concept. That was meant to he a sliding scale but didn't turn out that way, and I'm at the pub on my leaving do so am unlikely to clarify. Brendan can you do the honours.

I think a pint in that great force for social cohesion, the local pub, is in order. Did I mention how much I like you and erspect your intellect quids? Quick, reeducate him ;-)

It was poor though quids, even by the standards of the wind ups from when you first came on here. The fact is we'll never know whether Communism was viable as the countries it was intended for and who met the preconditions for a successful introduction (Germany, France, Britain) never went for it, and it became seen as a panacea for the oppressed in countries that simply were not in a position to apply it correctly, ie backward, largely agrarian economies with enormous landowners crushing the vast majority of effectively indentured labour. We'll actually never really know whether the Soviets could have been more successful as their attempts at social engineering were by and large scuppered by the ploughing of resources into the Red Army, Navy a space race and a stupid missile gap. However you view the rise of modern Russia as an oligarchal energy superpower, the gloss of the beautiful people swanning around in designer clothes and maseratis in St Petersburg (and lets face it, they just use to swan around in better boiler suits and zils) can't detract from the fact that the vast majority of Russians in rotting cities like Gorky and Valdivostok are worse off and reminisce about the old USSR, and you can be damn sure that those in our new best buddies the central Asian republics are faring much worse. Yes it was inefficient, yes it may have been unworkable/unsustainable in the long term, but everyone was educated, everyone was fed. Having been to Cuba, it is a listless society, and one where people are often tempted for that dangerous crossing to Florida in search of those streets paved with gold, but it's a society with genuine cohesion, mutual support and respect, utterly devoid of real poverty and racism, where ingenuity is poured into projects like the market garden project, making do uot of very limited resources*, and where people are genuinely afraid for the consequences that rampant commercialisation will have in terms of inequality and exploitation. I think to dismiss this by bringing up Mao and Pot and Stalin is a bit ruibbish. I assume you refer to these, as post destalinisation USSR wasn't as bad as our pals Chile or Brazil and leagues ahead of staunch allies Shaist Iran or Indonesia in terms of political oppression and murder. I suppose you could bring up Hungary, but I'd counter Suez, you could mention Prague, I may be tempetd to cite Vietnam and even Cambodia where Pot was able to come to power as a direct result of western policy in Indochina. Anyway, a terrible strawman cannot detract from the qualities of social democracy like Holland, Denamrk and yes Sweden, no matter how dismissive you choose to be about it. *and believe you me post peak oil we'll all be learning a thing or two from them when the lack of opportunity to make it richj will be the last of our worries (hopefully not literally), though you can be suer people will make it rich exploiting the terrible problems we face from climate change and the drying up of natural resources.

whoops, bad link here you go http://godxiliary.com/alienvspooh/

Interesting post on how the Chinese language itself is changing to give expression to dangerous political ideas. It's newspeak in reverse, fascinating. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2206

Alien vs Pooh == genius ...

As a side point "comprehensives" were intended to be just that, comprehensive education, looking at all aspects of growth (pracical, social, even spiritual), not just academic. Of course in practice this was rarely achieved especially as they were under-resourced from the start. I went to just such an institution as described above, a decent stab at comprehensive education with streaming in maths, science and language, but not in humanities and practical subjects, and it seemed to work pretty well (though having shut two of the schools in the town and turned the remainding two into underfunded super-shools I gather things are significantly worse) Now they just tick boxes to egt through ofsted inspections and to watch their place on national leagues. Rubbish. If we're serious about education (especially in the wider sense) then we really to have to prioritise the funding for it. Education to produced a better, more competitive, more entrprenurial and more engaged populace, ultimately is the only way to move towards a fairer and more equitable society. It really is 'education, education, education'. If only he'd meant it.