mockney piers

So who is the eastenders equivalent of Kristin Shepard? I'm going with the Bradley's dog, snorbitt or whatever it was called.

Sounding horribly reminiscent of smacking threads, I went to a comprehensive and it never did me any harm.

Finally got round to The Road as I've given up on ever going to the cinema again. It's all a bit grey isn't it. Beautifully and poetically written though. A Wasteland for a new generation. Which thinking about it isn't a bad comparison. Whereas TS Eliot's masterpiece came in the wake of the great war and the death of optimism, McCarthy's comes on the back of climate change and that ever seductive idea to writers that the future is worse than past. Not sure what causes the apocapalypse though. Some suggestion of a nuclear war, is it ever really clarified?

Oh quids quids quids. That's what they want you to think. The lizards, they're in cahoots with the clowns.

But don't you just wan to put little Mark Owen in you pocket and take him home and put him in a little cage with sawdust and a little house full of cotton wool and give him some speech therapy ... Awwwwww ------------------------- Live and let die by Wings. Erm Live and let die by Guns n Roses.

If i can nominate five or six Take That songs do they still count as a group I don't like?

I think it might be a high horse. People on highchairs tend to be more concerned with 'i done poo poo. Other than that what strawbs said. Also on HAL's point I too have an extraordinarily high proportion of lesbians on my distaff relatives (including my mum, though she didn't work it out until i was in my twenties; don't know what took her so long, I think I'd known a good ten years before she'd worked it out) suggesting that genetics is at the least a strongly contributory factor.

Southend?

"Half man half biscuit" Wow, there's more than one of us...hurrah!!

quite enjoying Trine, oly 5 quid off steam at the moment. Sort of super mario meets braid, or Prince of Persia (original) gets graphical update.

Though Chrome is the browser made by google, if that helps. Google does now do lots of things other than a search engine. Google maps, the marvellous google earth, i think they're even branching out into phones now etc etc

Intersting comparison with the united states. As not so many people know that the first attempt was the confedaration of states which much more closely reflects our European union, with the states having much stronger sovereign power; it was politically weak and economically a disaster. The wonderful constitution and success of the united states was their second attempt at designing a country. I'm not saying we should though I am very much a pro-european (hardly surprising as a spic-brit-bosch) but in it's current guide I'm in favour of relaxing central power as it's largely unanswerable to the electorate and hideously wasteful and inefficient. A centralised federal version of the curret institutions would be a disaster. Maybe a completely redesigned attempt a la the US might work, did them no harm, and half a million well educated and dynamic people working together rather than against each other (or at least predominantly for their divided and local interests) would be an economic and political powerhouse indeed. Somethin we might need to consider in a world that'll have five or six superpowers within a century, struggling over dwindling resources. Britain will achieve nothing alone at any rate. Academic as the federalists have had their attempt to give us a constitution scuppered.

Of course I get your point Silverfox. Yes there is a great deal of good work done by catholic charities. The thing is you cant seperate it. Until the bad is acknowledged and changed the good is tainted. It's not unlike some oil company having all sorts of good works done by their charitable arms and donations. Water pumps shoved in villages, innoculation drives etc. But then they continue to meddle in the politics of unstable countries, through bribes and backhanders they keep the environment healthy for the kleptocracies to thrive. The catholic church is almost by definition regressive, it is by definition dogmatic. I they continue to believe that people are spiritually better off dying of AIDS than sinning by condom use then it undermines all the many good works. If they continue to suppress knowledge of rapists rather than accept responsibilty and offer abusers up for temporal crimin punishment then they will always be corrupt.

Ratzinger's word do not imply approval no, they do certainly imply a criminal obstruction of justice. Again, unoriginal, low hanging fruits. How either of these assertions somehow wipe clean the stain or dismiss the church's many crimes is beyond me. "ohh, everyone knows they rape children and then cover it up and move them elsewhere to do it again, but it's not all of them, plus some of them are nice and help people" And not distributing condoms and discouraging the use of condoms based on bad science and threats of eternal damnation are two very different things. Most revealing of all "However it cannot claim to be the guardian of spititual truths and at the same time bow to the latest whims of popular opinion or the preceived wisdom of pressure groups." Well that rather sums it up, all it can claim is to be the guardian of spiritual truths. It doesn't bow to popular whim at all, hence the condoms issue and why saving the souls of people is more important than saving their lives, hence his 'lesser of two evils comment' The debate was quite clearly that the Catholic Church is a force for good in THIS world. However well you may think it serves to protect everyone in the journey to the next one (and remember, they made up limbo (actually they've now disowned that one finally, perhaps on a whim), purgatory and hell) it's on balance a not a force for good in this one, the good it does is outweighed by the bad. Therein lies the essence of the question; you think the scales tip to the good, I think they tip the other way. On that latter point belief in the historical character Jesus, and appreciation of his teachings (or at least what was finally written down decades after his death), and belief in his divinity are entirely separate questions I would have thought. But you're right, it has always been clever and cunning and bent on survival and it will outlive me for sure.

The facts of Ratzinger specifically saying that truth about child rapists must be suppressed on pain of excommunication wasn't much good for you then? Or Ratzinger saying that AIDS deaths is, and I quote, "the lesser of two evils" or even lying about the efficacy of condoms, just opinion? As for the 2000 years, so what, syphilis has been in Europe here for 600 hundred years, and like the church is becoming less harmful than it was. Still doesn't make it on balance a force for good does it.

I definitely saw an African nun clapping at the end there. Clearly she felt there was a great deal of truth in what he said too, hardly a like minded audience, more a persuaded one I reckon. . When something is simple, obvious and undeniable it's hardly going to be original is it, but then so what. The irony of an institution representing a religion based upon poverty, charity and love being powerful, wealthy, dogmatic and invidious has been pointed out for centuries, mostly by voices from within the church, often quashed, many times labelled as heresy and killed. I don't see anything twitterish about that.

I definitely saw an African nun clapping at the end there. Clearly she felt there was a great deal of truth in what he said. When something is simple obvious and undeniable it's hardly going to be original is it, but si what. The irony of an institution representing a religion based upon poverty charity and love being powerful, wealthy dogmatic and invidious has been pointed out for centuries, mostly by voices from within, often quashed, many times labelled as heresy and killed. I don't see anything twitterish about that.

Ali Campbell. His performance on the Andrew Marr show was absolutely sickening.

I'm glad to hear it sniffy, we try to play nice here, doesnt always work of course ;) but you know ... TE44, you can relax, i wasnt referring to you. The Saxon genitive was before, not after, the s.

I was a BBC owner, but all my mates had zx81/speccy/commodore 64 (apart from poor rich stuck with his vic 20). Of course they all had Kempstons, terribly middle class you know. Plus the keyboard would only last 3 minutes of Daley thompson's decathlon without the kempston.

Fuss and nothing. Quids don't rise to the newbie's poor show. Sniffy, try being nice.

This isn't chrome specific it's to do with your ip address. It's the bad address blocker in action, and the very reason I can access forum from work; clearly someone at the ministry of justice has, ironically, been a naughty boy. Have you go chrome set up using a proxy address or something?

Snes super mario world is gaming gold by the way. Close to perfection!! As was zelda on the snes thinking about it. Much as ocarina blew me away and the gamecu e one looked great, I think I've finally had enough of playing the same game over and over again. I'd ask nintendo to innovate or let it rest on its laurels.

Wipeout as retro gaming. Dear god I must be older than I thought. Try this for some proper old school: http://www.zxspectrum.net/

Went with a Norwich mate to my first ver visit to the Den. Hmmm, nice friendly attractive ground with all those narrow grey spike fenced herding the fans. I've seen far worse Norwich games with him though, and fans apart ;-P , Milwall were an ok team.