El Pibe

I haven't had a drop of anything for over a month steveo. Swarfega's looking good to me right now!

for some reason I'm reminded of this

No worries AD, it happens to all of us every now and then. >> "cheep* drink will go up but who gets the extra revenue" Will there be extra revenue? Presumably the drinks companies set their pricing to maximise revenue and profit. If prices go up sales will go down. That surely is the whole point of the policy, or am i missing something? It is a bit nanny state, but the real price of alcohol has drastically plummetted over the last 20 years and, as seen in yesterday's news, liver disease is the only one of the major killers who's incidence is on the rise, dramatically so among those in their 40s, so it would appear to be a legitimate health issue thing, and thus probably comes under the heading of 'something ought to be done about it'. *I've a lovely image in my mind of people drinking beer from a feeder in a budgie cage.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4D19o7Wy3AE/T2mm8g8j-3I/AAAAAAAA5ZA/0wSoPK9ex38/s400/hablarIngles.jpg

Amen to that!!!

Otta Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Rio Ferdinand claiming City fans have come out of > the woodwork since they started having more > success. > > I suspect he's right to an extent, but that is a > bit bloody rich coming from a Man U player! Dammit Otta, where's the ↑ mark up button

I think it's a little bit like blind wine tasting. You get to wiegh up the different facets and try to draw a conclusion. It's fun. GB was the exception that proves the rule that if it's all too good to be true it usually isn't!

I'm just waiting for the use of 'libtards'. Is this where i say "jelly is Rick Channing" even if it isn't.

I think this thread may be going in circles now. SF, without any new evidence I think leave for appeal should not be granted ;)

Just on the point of beauracracies, I spotted this in Private Eye - ..has now launched a 24 page survey, consulting on the "code of practice on noise from ice cream van chimes etc" ... listing a number of ways the code could be tinkered with - including allaowing a slight increase in the maximum length of musical chimes to 12 seconds and permitting slightly later chiming based on anecdotal evidence that children now go to bed after 7pm as well as widening the rules slightly to allow other sellers of persiahable food to use chimes. Brussels "straight bananas" regulators going mad? Stand up our very own Defra. Eurocrats, beauracrats, councillors ... choose your poison; same shit different shit.

blah blah budget blah

Meh. I don't think that's really the case is it. I think they're mostly elected on the partisan nature of our politics. In fact I'm pretty sure that most people vote based upon what their dad did truth be told. If it was about manifesto promises then supporters of both coalition partners have a great deal more to complain about than gay marriage!!!!!

I actually suspect most people don't spare it much thought tbh and I strongly suspect the desire for a referendum would remain very low. If there was a referendum I have no idea how the country would vote, it would certainly be interesting if a total waste of time and money [by which i mean I'm happy for the government to make it pooilicy as our elected officials without recourse to a referndum, just like it does for 99.9% of our other legislation].

I don'tthink we can extrap[olate those stats nationally though. Can someone post up the same proposal on the Southend and Stevenage forums and see what we get?

Brendan - "Although I do have to admit that it is less tasteless watching people trying to justify self-righteous idealism and well meaning idiocy than prejudice and exploitation." (tu) seconded. The latter part might be a bit harsh though. I'd have gone with "self-righteous self-interest and exploitation".

This is just spam isn't it. Try one of these in future '?'

I'm just wondering why knobs should smell of roses!!

MP, I was echoing your list from a french point of view, hence the inclusion of battles, including those that every French schoolboy knows, never having heard of the likes of Crecy and Agincourt; it's how Countries operate (see also Scots with Banockburn/Flodden respectively). France went to war with all of Europe and won, redrawing the political map forever, but it was the first in a long line to discover the truism echoed by our very own Bernard Montgomery "One of the great laws of war is never invade Russia". Yeah we 'won' the boer wars insofar as we drubbed a people into submission through sheer brutality, I cited it because it was very poorly fought militarily. Sort of the opposite of Vietnam where we lost all the battles and won the war. I'll grant you the Maginot thing, but these things are easy to say with hindsight, one might equally say of the Russians (who taught the Germans most of what they new in the 20s and 30s) don't shoot or sack all your officers who know how to fight wars just before you fight one. Luckily they had long supply lines and winters to let them learn their lessons, France wasn't so fortunate. We of course were every bit as unprepared for Blitzkreig. Interesting what you say about not fighting world war one battles, as our great victory at El Alemain could have been a blueprint for the battles of 1918, but there I'm getting picky and we're boring everyone senseless. My point is it's stupid and simplistic to say things like the French are cowards when quite clearly they are not. Or to say we're brilliant when our history is littered with a vast catalogue of military incompetence and failure too. Noone comes up smelling of roses in this knob-length contest. The Republic of Ireland maybe, they've never fought lost a war ;)

Next Parliament wil probably be a lib-lab coalition if both main parties continue do to nothing to sway the electorate in either direction.

No worries, I in no way shape or form hold you responsible, I could see you were enlightening us as to how all forums are silly ;) *ETA* = Edited to add

X posted with you there Gingerbeer. Cherry picking history to suit one's point of view is a widespread crime GB (ooh i like the appropriateness of your initials considering your destination!!), not one exclusive to your countryment believe you me. Your quoted text is typical of just such historical liberties. As MP's list betrays, people bask in their self-reflected glory wilfully oblivious to their own copious historical failings. US military history is hardly one to revel in. Independent thanks to French support, miserably failed to take Canada a few years later and then littered with rather one sided expansionary colonial conflicts and genocidal campaigns. Timely intervention in World War 1 and finally in the second one a war that more or less fits the bill of just war and one all the allied participants have harked to ever since to portray ourselves as the good guys when we've all (Britain, US, France and Russia) spent the ensuing years figthing nasty little brush fire wars, proipping up murderous regimnes and generally crushing people's attempts at self-determination in one form or another.

What a very selective list. Agincourt wasn't a conflict it was a battle, part of a conflict we began to lose soon thereafter, and one rather short in glory despite the historical revisionism of the tudors, victorians et al, one where we depopulated large swathes of the country and committed wholesale murder. As for 'retreat from Moscow', having defeated every army Europe could throw at it the French overstretch and freeze/starve in the Russian winter. Poor strategy for sure but hardly bad at war. Waterloo, the combined armies of Prussia, The Dutch Republic, assorted huns and Britain very nearly lose to a hastily cobbled together force of veterans, the result hanging in the balance until the timely arrival of some Germans. Revolt on the Western front, a justifiable reaction to the million poilu who walked to their death like the proverbial lambs at Verdun at the behest of their vainglorious superiors. As for Algeria or Indo-China, it'd be an unwise American to have a pop at the French for failing at neo-imperial counter-insurgency. I'm no Francophile, but in the interests of baalnce a frenchie could justifiably call into question our military prowess with a similar list, saaaay Afghanistan (all four wars), Crimea, Gallipoli, Battle of France (1940), US War of Independence, Orleans, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, Medway, the Boer Wars..... *ETA that Trafalgar was very cool though!!!*

Here's some vintage mash that nicely sums it up http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/business/french-trader-was-forced-to-work-30-hours-a-week-20080125680/

They are indeed. I do find it weird when people say they like his Iain Banks books but not his Iain M Banks ones, as they're really missing out. Mieville is just superb. He just keeps getting better. His steampunkesque Bas-lag novels were entertaining if unfocussed, and then he flirted with being a new Gaimian with un-lundun and kraken, but he's really found a voice since then. The City and the City was fantastic and am currently reading Embassytown which is one of the best books, leave alone sci-fi, I've read in years. As a linguistics obsessive what's not to like in a novel about the nature of language and communication!!

I dunno about this French = Coward thing. It's been niggling me all night like a pea under a mattress. It smacks of a form of antiquity illusion, a mistaken belief that a linguistic concept is older than it really is. I'm trying to think what it might really be. We may ridicule the French, we may find them insufferable and unberarable, their fashion annoyingly chic (or daft), but one thing we'd never accuse them of is cowardice. We've fought against them more times than we can remember and fought alongside them at the Somme and at Pashcendale. I challenge anyone to read the heartbreaking accounts of Verdun and dare to call them cowards. Even in 1940 they lost 85,000 dead in the space of 6 weeks (that's 50% more than the losses in Vietnam over 10 years!!). You don't do that through cowardice you do that by fighting bravely in futile circumstances. I do think that the US has historically suffered a cultural inferiority complex as regards France. The French (rightly or wrongly) were so assured of who and what they are, so bloody superior. Britain traditionally had no issue with that because it had the quiet self-assured and god-given knowledge that it was in fact far superior*, the US has by definition had to carve out an identity and has never had a real bedrock, more like a cocksure teenager, to FRance's grizzled old man. Ultimately my instincts tell me that Chick has hit the nail on the head. It all came about when they refused to sign up to our dirty little war in Iraq. Besmirching the French national character made us feel better about ourselves as we launched an idiotic war rather than face up to the fact that they were actually being eminently sensible. By all means ridicule their 'seely leetle 'ats', but cowards? I think non. .... I'm overthinking things again aren't i!!! *Mind you I'm not sure this holds true for either of France or Britain as we struggle to find our roles in a post imperial world and what national identity is in a post multicultural age. I think the US will also have to come to terms with the former sooner or later but is better placed to deal with the latter as it is in many respects has by definition had to manufacture an identity and has multiculturalism in its very genes.