El Pibe

If we didn't want it we (the royal one obviously) wouldn't have bought 5 million Suns every day and all those NoTWs. It's rather telling that no other paper has witnessed an inflated sunday circulation. It was obviously providing something the public wanted. And of course we learnt stuff! We learnt who to vote for. I'm currently assured by the Sun that David Cameron is a worthless twerp. Actually it's pretty spot on there. To be fair sky was always about the footie really wasn't it.

Fortunately for the world, I don't think any of Rupert's successors have the drive, ruthless or frankly psycopathic tendencies to want to rule the world, I suspect James would be much happier running something he has the calibre to cope with and make enough to take some fancy ladies out occasionally. Murdoch has helped transform the political fabric of this country from one of aloof arrogance to craven self-serving ingrates, and I'm not sure I want this new generation of politicians to win anything. As for the public, I'd love them to win but can't help feeling that our hunger from his mass market, lowest common denominator gutter reporting was the real reason he was able to do what he did. Everyone's a loser...huzzah!! I'd settle for some standards in the press and some idea(l)s in politics frankly.

I damn near killed a cyclist the other day in gloucesteshire swerving randomly across the full width of a country lane, oblivious to any traffic thanks to the headphones he had on. twunt.

I think the vulnerable road users was about AL's head's attitude to cyclists, not bus lanes.

It's far from perfect, but on the whole pretty good.

I quite enjoyed david mitchelss piss take http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/22/minicab-addison-lee-griffin-mitchell

I take it that's a rhetorical question. PEston has insinuated that Hunt may be investigated for breaking insider trading rules too. On a slight aside, I've literally just finished reading this http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/04/rupert_murdoch_-_a_portrait_of_1.html, the final sentence is a doozy!!

You sound like a victorian gerontocrat justifying why universal suffrage shouldnt be introduced ;) I think the point of the article is that the desire for democracy is neither islamist nor sectarian. ALl the naysayers and poopooers have been dissappointed by the lack of hand-chopping and burqas in TUnisia for instance. Indeed Libya may have deep problems to overcome, but thus far an islamist year one fundamentalist rule aint one of them. But in Bahrain, and indeed Syria, the attempts to sectarianise the struggle as a means to divide and conquer may well be shoring up their minority power bases (sunni and alawite respectively) but is backfiring by causing the opposition to sectarianise and become more hardline, and likely less forgiving come the revolution. here was a nice background piece on it Syria. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137407/leon-goldsmith/alawites-for-assad?cid=rss-rss_xml-alawites_for_assad-000000

Someone on our estate put a note on a car parked there threatening to have their car towed and 'disposed of'. Turns out it was her next door neigbour. Some people are just wankers frankly.

AM, the Franco thing was a one off after the war. God knows there were enough orphans to have made childless supporters happy. It was actually an ideological move to try to ensure that active the children of socialist families were removed to ensure they were not brought up with funny ideas. A rather brutally cynical attempt to stave off a future revolution or cycle of violence. They were either sent to families of supporters or more commonly to further fill the overflowing orphanages (have you ever wondered why Spain makes so many films set in them, it was the experience of many of its subsequent writers and film makers, nasty things civil wars). Heres some background. The issue above was a long term rather more insiduous affair where church institutions took it on themselves to do this sort of thing over a period of forty odd years. Otta, I've heard tell many anecdotal tales over the years, I used to do some voluntary visits to a mental institute and heard from the horses mouth from a couple of the inmates how they were sent there because they were unmarried mothers, had some pretty horrific 'treatments' and ended up institutionalised. But the children though removed were brought up by aunts or 'aunts'. I've yet to hear of instances where they were systematically stolen and sold, but I guess given the horror stories we've heard over the years we'd be a hard bunch to shock.

Execellent analysis of the situation in Bahrain suggest that regime intransigence is radicalising the opposition, spiralling violence looks inevitable if there is no political settlement.

never really found a problem with it, mind you there's rarely more than five other people whenever I manage a film. But ?4.99 each compared with ?12 at PH cinemas...can't argue with them numbers! ETS - unless the prices have dropped, which they seem to have. EATS - except at weekends, when memory serves me right.

I have just watched Peppa Pig pastiche Kung Fu. Wow!! "to jump in the muddy puddle I must think like the puddle, I must become the puddle" Cor, brill.

Stevenage 2 points clear in the play off zone, woo!!!! Dulwich in Second spot, yeah!!!! West Ham two points off the promotion zone if we win tonight woo!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15335899 for the stuff about spain. AM, I guess stuff like the sheer extent of the findings of the commission into child abuse in Ireland, might give rise to people conflating the two. Certainly the levels of influence of the church both on the government and in deeply entrenching a socially conservative society were very similar in both countries, as was the instituional power of church in education, social provision and health care where the privileged position was open to and often abused.

"This is an old story and relates to the Franco regime" Actually this practice continued well into the 90s, it wasn't the franco regime as much as it was the institutions of church and the state (by which i mean beauracratic institutions), often this distinction was blurred, hence why seperation is a good thing!!!!. There was a documentary about it not too long ago. The precedent was set after the civil war where some children were taken from families of political prisoners and gifted to party members. The practice was widened to all sorts of 'undesirables and babies changed hands for cash, payments for which could last many many years. The practice referred to in the OP was not actually state policy, but was done by a slough of Catholic medical institutions and medical individuals. It was done with the usual judgmental self-righteousness of the fanatic, so a baby born out of wedlock may be taken from a 'prostitute' etc safe in the knowledge that you are doing a good thing, not an evil thing after all, for reasons of salvation. God it makes me want to puke when I think about it. Typical targets were single mums, socialists, women with jobs and immigrants. That it went on so long smacks of collusion from both the Church authorities almost certainly and those in the civil service undoubtedly, and at best a blind eye from successive governments. I found watching it particularly chilling as one of the examples in the documentary was in a case in a hospital in Madrid where I was born, in the same year I was born in. My grandfather spent some time as a political prisoner of the Franco regime and my father could best be described as an outspoken critic. I'm pretty sure if it wasn't for the British citizenship of my parents (my father left in the 50s and became a naturalised brit before returning in the late sixties) that that could easily have been me on the screen. 300,000 is very much a finger in the air, due to the intrinsically fraudulent and criminal nature of the practice records which were routinely doctored (ho ho), faked or destroyed, so we'll never know. My gut is that that is probably rather high, but the people have a right to feel utterly betrayed by those who were supposed to be serving the people. COUld it have happened in Britain, never say never, I can certainly believe that a religious or political fanatic may one day have been found to have secretly sterilised women or somesuch, but routinely and institutionally presenting a dead baby in a fridge then faking certificates and passing children on, all as State policy, absolutely not. I don't think the church was in a postion to do so and I don't believe it's something the sate would have done. Britain did however do some pretty unconscionable things http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/bindoon-boys-town-the-sad-truth-behind-britains-lost-children-1782544.html

Older posts in the non discussional threads (sale, what's on etc) get cleared down regularly whenever space on the server is running out. This usually accouns for missing posts.

In all fairness, they would have been a bloody liability back then!! http://www.yourvintagewedding.com/_files/image/Victorian/victorian%20era%20fashions.jpg

"You can't argue one outmoded view without the other, else you should argue neither." I don't think i did, did I? My original point was that it was a lack 'elf and safety rather than class war.

Oh she wins hands down on that one for sure!!! Here she is, honest guv, celebrating getting our company another filler mention in Your Money Are Belong To Us Weekly. http://i.istockimg.com/file_thumbview_approve/17815065/2/stock-photo-17815065-your-business-victory.jpg If we were on a sinking ship and it was sinking slowly enough for people to nominate who they'd like to have saved, I would be doomed.

To play devils advocate, the first part of the equation in "women and children first" is down to an outmoded view that women are lesser/weaker creatures in need of protection and men are chivalrous and noble. Thanks to feminism such ludicous stone age thinking has gone for good. Surely now in such a situation it should be "children first" or at least "pregnant women and children first" shouldn't it? I'm not sure why Claire form marketing should be automatically assumed to be more worthy and deserving of life than I?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-17756036 Assuming that whoever commissioned it had no idea about the anniversary when they did so, this can best be described as ironic and perhaps a little unfortunate. If it was the 25th anniversary of the Herald of Free Enterprise more sensitivity might be deemed appropriate (in fact that was a month ago, did anyone notice, was it up then?). But... Offensive. Really? It does beggar belief what offends people these days.

If it has no inbuilt digital tuner you'll need to get a freeview box, just plug it into your telly via whatever connection you have (10 years old, probably scart). You can a box in sainsburys for about wtenty quid.

The squeezed middle. Plus ca change......

Yeah, I'm on the third set of levels and it's still very forgiving. I'm laying down a couple of markers for you all to enjoy. Oh, and the icarus skill game, launch yourself off your bike and flap your arms with two planks tied to them to see how far you can fly. Brilliant (and yet to get gold on that). They've even bizarre mini game like marble madness on it.