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Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I originally read that hashtag as milffandom. Ha Ha, best line of the thread so far :D

Tarot. I have two kids of my own and I regularly treat youngsters as part of my profession. There is nothing YOU can teach me about child psychology. Did I miss something, when as an undergraduate, I read all that research into sexuality and prenatal hormonal chemistry? And what about all the research into human neurobehavioral development? Tarot, if you can find me just one credible research paper providing a link between exposure to gay characters in soaps and development of sexual orientation, then I promise to stop treating you like a muppet.

The Police haven't asked for help though. One officer (who needs to question the job she's in if a dark footpath frightens her) made a comment at a ward meeting, I am assuming as part of a general discussion. Let's think about this. Who walks that path in the dark? Will lighting suddenly stop people trying to get into the reservoir grouds for the view etc? Lighting won't change a thing, but it will waste electricity and the money it costs to implement it. It would be different if it were a heavily used footpath. But it's not.

Louisa Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I'm guessing you don't want to borrow my Queer as > Folk boxset then? > > Louisa. Ha ha! Why didn't I think of that? The best that Tarot can do now is to defend him/herself by claiming persecution for being a heterosexual bigot! Tarot, you started the conversation. You might want to conveniently bury your head in the sand and pretend otherwise, but I remind you just one more time that you said that gay storylines before the watershed would damage children. YOU said that. If you are going to write stupid ignorant rubbish like that, defend it. Don't start playing the victim when people challenge you on it. Take responsibility for the crap that you type.

And Murdoch wonders why anyone would want to break up his newpaper empire?

Oh for heavens sake Tarot, are you for real? You justified your question by talking about watersheds and the imapct on children. Many people far more intelligent than you have pointed out why you are displaying signs of homophobia but you are too stupid to even know what they are talking about it seems. There's only one reason why anyone would mention children and watersheds. That reason is because you, in your total moronic ignorance think children can be turned gay if they see lots of gay characters.

The Beano is safe (I think)

Isn't it all just the result of major parties having reached a point of desperation? Instead of facing the truth, that neither Labour nor the Tories are popular enough, they are clutching at straws in a desperate attempt to avoid the inevitable hung parlioament. The media has also been totally complicit in pushing the SNP and UKIP into the limelight as well. For me personally, I have found the Tory behaviour quite off putting. They have been far worse than Labour with scaremongering and put downs. Cameron never answers a single question or point made about their failings over the past five years. I think that alone has cost them wavering voters. I've gone from abivalence towards him, to a total disrespect.

Heard that report on the radio too Laur. They are just too easy to steal. That's part of the problem.

I never understand the point of posts like this. We all encounter idiots on the road every day. Imagine if we all remonstrated in a public forum every time we do so.

As far as bots go, he's pretty good! :D

Are there any gay characters in Doctors tho? Don't they have magazines that are all about soap characters and storylines? As though it's real life? Who buys those?

LOL Louisa is back! :D

Is Tarot any relation of Louisa by chance? :D

I did wonder Otta ;)

lol Heterophobes! Do you feel presecuted now Tarot because no-one shares your same bigotted viewpoint. You haven't actually responded to a single point made, all of them far more sensible than your view that children can be adversely affected by seeing gay characters in a soap drama. Have ANYTHING to say about that? Head, cloud, cuckoo land comes to mind. Meanwhile, Dot I believe is an android. That's why she looks not a single day older from her appearance in the first episode.

A not very bright homophobe?

Yeah I agree Jeremy. That last post from you Tarot says to me that you are scared of gay people, and their representation in programmes your children might watch. If you actually knew anything about sexuality, and it takes many forms, not just gay or heterosexual, you'd know that most people don't choose how they are. Do you really think all those heterosexual storylines are what make children turn out heterosexual? Tell me, how did you CHOOSE your sexual preference? What is known from data, is that in the past, gay children suffered huge traumatic stress in having to keep their feelings secret. Imagine that Tarot. A world where 90% are gay and you are one of the 10% heterosexuals. You see no characters on TV like you and no-one ever talks about your straighness in anything but negative terms. Some people even wnat to put you in jail for it, or worse still hang you. See how ridiculous your comments are? But it seems you don't like much else on tv either. You don't have to watch. There are many other forms of content to watch. Netflix is very good.

lol true keeky :D But try telling the missus that! She watches everything.....

That's awful midi and it does seem as though insurers try it on in the hope they get away with liability. The message to me seems to be that if your fight your corner, they cave in.

But aren't we talking about gay characters over gay storylines? The only storyline I can think of that is specifically gay would be a coming out storyline. Otherwise we are just talking about storylines that could be equally asigned to gay or heterosexual characters? I think your gripe is more to do with the number of gay characters? And you might be right (I don't watch all the soaps) in that suddenly gay characters are featured in a lot of storylines. Soaps have a tendancy to follow trends in order to attract viewers. So if one soap does something, and gets its ratings up as a result, all the others follow, no? Personally, if I were a soap writer (and I'm not lol), I would be now writing a storyline around a jihadist grooming theme. THAT would be topical and bound to attract viewers and debate etc. I agree that a gay character is no longer controversial, but it's a good thing surely that soaps now think nothing of having gay characters. I was a young teen when Brookside made Beth Jordash a lesbian, and remember how ground breaking that was. Being a bloke I thought it was great of course :D But seriously, I want a world where soaps speak to everyone (no mean feat) and I think we need to seperate characters (and their characteristics) from storylines, because the two are different.

Hmmm so gay characters have changed soaps over violence, murder, tram crashes and all the other ridiculous storylines that writers dream up? Because they are just that - gay characters. There's no such thing as a gay storyline. There are storylines about falling in love, or out of love, or being cheated on etc. It just happens that sometimes the charracters involved are gay. Mostly though they are heterosexual. And it doesn't bother most people either way. The only fact is that you are bothered by it.

Is anyone else sick to death of all the heterosexual storylines on all the soaps,Emerdale,Eastenders,Coronation street. Do you have any idea how ridiculous your post is?

Also check out www.megatrain.com for cheap tickets. They definitely do Euston to Birmingham by both train and coach. A coach costs as little as a fiver each way.

That's a very sensible post Loz. Can't disagree with any of it. The conservatives have also pledged to take those on minimum wage out of income tax. Sounds good but equally problematic, when a salary hits the min tax threshold. And of course, for every penny lost through income tax receipts, we either have to increase tax elsewhere, or cut public services. So the poorest are screwed either way. I still think there hasn't been enough emphasis on helping small businesses from any of the parties. One way to beat multi-national corporations is to invest in home grown businesses surely? We seem to still invent plenty of things, but end up losing the technology to companies abroad who have the required investment to develop them.