Huguenot

I didn't say it was an excuse for violence. In fact I don't think anything is an excuse for violence - perhaps except for self-defence. I'm just saying that we commincate an entire dictionary of things about ourselves by our dress style, and we shouldn't be surprised when we send out mixed messages that there are stupid people in the world that interpret that as an opportunity for direct action. "I don't know why people think I'm a far right white supremacist when I dress like a far right white supremacist" Kinda daft no?

Methinks it's not coin jingling, it's collateral damage from a surreptitious game of pocket billiards.

Silicone could probably work on the walls - I'd be very wary of using it on a floor though?

Frances Gabe. Seems a bit grim though...

No, no - I'm not a fan of fighting at all. I'm just thinking that moaning about people attacking someone for their attire is a bit wood for trees. The problem is that there's a culture that believes causal violence is acceptable full stop. I don't think it's likely to be solved by 'communicating' or 'gaining an understanding' with each other about the relative merits of a shaven head. I guess in one sense peaceful conflict resolution is a triumph of intellect over evolution. Hence most 'fighters' are (by definition) too stupid to do this, so rationalising with them is unlikely to help.

As a general rule of thumb the lighter it is, the more likely stains will show. Don't forget that travertine is porous anyway - so you should be sealing your floors at a minimum annually. Travertine tiles tend to hide stains well because the tile istelf is variable, so the eye is tricked into thinking a stain is part of the existing pattern: http://theheavenlyhome.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Travertine-flooring.jpg An alternative might be to get tiles that are so close fitting the grout is virtually invisible. http://www.bestremodelingkitchen.com/wp-content/uploads/Travertine_Stone_Tile.jpg You always need some spacing to prevent cracking.

I think most of us are aware that clothes carry a certain amount of symbology and associations. It's perfectly human that this arouses a strong subconscious reaction, that generates certain type of behaviours dependent upon your personality. It strikes me that if you dress in such away that you affiliate yourself with a far-right white supremacist group then you can't really be surprised at the responses you generate. In a part of society already pre-disposed to casual violence it's likely that this might manifest itself in physical attacks. I'm not sure what the story is here?

The only good advice is don't do white grout I'm afraid wod. Grouts are porous (like a sponge) so the stain is within the material itself. No amount of scrubbing the surface can remove stains like these. You could try for expensive non-porous grouts, but they're very difficult to obtain and have other problems, or you could try using a sealer like 'Grout Armor', or even sealing the entire floor - which will turn your kitchen into a skid pan. Most of these have odd chemical properties though, so spilling the wrong stuff on them or using the wrong cleaning agent will result in permanent stains anyway. You'll find yourself scrubbing the floor every couple of days, buying expensive steam cleaners for a slightly better clean - but you'll never be satisfied, it'll drive you nuts and break up your marriage. ;-) Don't do white grout on floors.

Vivien Leigh would be shocked.

It's difficult to be sure without knowing your daughter's age, but I'm not sure that banning her from using the internet is the right solution for four reasons: Firstly it punishes her for other children's bad behaviour, secondly it socially cuts her off from her friends, thirdly it won't remove the offending comments and finally it'll do nothing to lower her exposure to bullying - which she'll come across every day in the playground. You wouldn't stop your daughter from going to school because there's a potty-mouthed boy there, because it would do more harm than good. Likewise, so long as you are supportive, her experience with bullies is a part of growing up and most kids get over it fine. Try pursuing justice through the school? I'm afraid that most internet companies just aren't capable of addressing this problem easily. The reason why these internet service are free to you is because they have very few staff, and can just about be supported by advertising. Try some of the children's charities or anti-bullying hotlines, if they still exist?

Cross post

Nevertheless, ianr's point remains. It's not practical to draw binary distinctions between what is or isn't accceptable. Convictions, words, behaviours and intentions are inherently woolly concepts. 'Meaning' must be derived by social convention - and social convention relies on finding an appropriate balance between all these various factors. In the case DJKQ is referring to, it was clear that the 'racists, homophobes, misogynists, xenophobes' in question were none of the above. One isolated use of a multipurpose word had been taken out of context, and as the saying goes, those who seek offence will find it everywhere. I'm not sure that it's safe to assume that those people concerned by skinheads are necessarily associating them with racism - there were plenty of violent 'skinheads' where I grew up in the shires that didn't have access to non-caucasian targets, so they found plenty of others. There were also some very friendly ones too... ;-)

I guess it would be under the Rome statute of the ICC. 'War crimes' would be a daft charge. There might be an option under 'crimes of aggression', but I doubt it would stick. I also doubt there would be much support for it. The main question was whether an additional mandate from the UN was required for the invasion. The real answer is nobody knew for sure, and nobody can prove it was. I suspect a lot of countries publicly protesting about the invasion were secretly pretty relieved.

Can't remember, which thing? I have been known to nurse grudges, but must have forgotten one with Strafer ;-)

But isn't Roger Clark just a spitter for David Cameron, one of your politicians popular television celebrities? ;-)

The whole debate is petulant. If it was obviously a crime, then charges would already have been leveled. They haven't because it's not clear. Snooty bulletin board legal heroes may attribute this to the 'New World Order' preventing justice, but given the track record of European socialist litigants that's unlikely to be the reason. Trotting out definitions from Wikileaks is irrelevant. Last time I checked Wikileaks wasn't a global regulator, but a crowd of spotty revolutionaries with egos that eclipsed their intellect. That aside, arguing about legality is evidently fruitless when using it to judge issues of this import, actions of this scale, that are instigated by the same people who write the rulebooks. Why Piersy keeps pursuing this I have no idea. It seems petty. It feels like using 'law' as a comfort blanket. ;-)

Jeremy you can f*ck right off if you want to claim that I moved to Singapore to avoid tax or the welfare state. You have no f*cking idea why I make the choices I do, nor do you know how I contribute to the community. With that piece of pointless, gutless abuse from Jeremy I'll find better ways to spend my time than listening to cocks.

And therein lies the redundancy of your argument SJ - you can think of no other way out of this impasse than 'people who have money cough up before the whole market crashes good and proper' And what do you think is more likely to create a market crash than taking the cash out of it and bunging into government?

"a system that rewards the few and enslaves the rest" Oh please. What bollocks. Modern UK has no idea what slavery is, people coming out with that should get around more. The greedy motorists of East Dulwich are playing their part in destroying half the planet and half the rest are really enslaving Bangladeshis for cheap trainers. Perhaps they should think about what's right for the community? People in glasshouses etc. "I don't give a hoot for 'isms', just for balance, fairness and a cohesive and healthy happy society" I don't want to call you naive, but have you never noticed the pecking order and physical justice generated amongst the working 'poor'? That's human nature that is. Whatever happens we live in hierarchies, 'La Revolucion' just swaps one set of petty tyrants for another. I don't want yours much either thanks.

Who know's what's right for the community? Do you pay them welfare or facilitate jobs? I know where my belief lies, but I can't do anything about it if you've taken my cash. There's two ways of generating more cash for the public purse - you can either asset strip those who still have any cash left, or you can get out there and make some more money and raise tax revenues that way. There are undoubtedly those that simplistically believe that the only solution when their wallet is empty to say 'who can I rob to fill it again?'. There are others that argue that instead, we should be thinking about how we can get out there and generate some wealth. Perhaps it's the latter option that is actually 'what's right for the community' Jeremy? It is a mark of the moribund nature of British society that when under pressure the best of us can only roll out tired and unproductive Robin Hood arguments about taking from the rich to give to the poor. If Robin Hood had any sense of responsibility he'd have been less of a parasite. In its empty desperation British society is willing to destroy the incentives and motivation for the brightest and most capable people to get them out of that hole. More fool Britain...

D_C, you're making the same mistake as DJKQ in making this a cartoon style argument between the rich and the poor, and charity and indulgence. It's a simplistic argument which contributes nothing to the long term debate. As for the ad hominem attack - really? Isn't that a little below you? I don't have a plight. I was just pointing out that assuming rich people are thieves and the poor are deserving victims is to fabricate a back story that has little basis in reality, but gives moral justification for what is actually a smash and grab raid otherwise known as a forcible redistribution of wealth. I made no claim about "a philanthropic rich who, if left to their own devices, would donate loads to charity", so knocking this down is a straw man. Wealthy individuals will do whatever is right for them - and that involves investing in companies that generate wealth for their employees. Your fierce rejection of this I'm sure is embedded in some socialist conviction that either the workers or the state should own the means of production and that we'd be better as a result. There's no evidence that this is the case. Once again, your argument about the additional 10% rate misses the point - as I've said before, the complaint is from people who seriously question whether continuing to wank more money into the government is the best way of solving our problems. Yours is simply an ideological position. You think that if you take rich people's money and give it to poor people everything will be alright. This is not sound reasoning. By and large socialists lay claim to a moral argument that redistribution of wealth through taxation is the solution to society's problems. This is fatuous. All the evidence is quite to the contrary.

That's just got an almost comic-book simplicity about it's assessment that makes it meaningless. Contrary to popular belief, 'rich' people don't just take in piles of money and sit on it - they reinvest the money to create millions of jobs. Most of the high earners who are questioning higher tax rates are not trying to keep the money to themselves, they are arguing that they are more likely to benefit society by investing in growth in the economy, than the government is going to generate through inefficient public spending and welfare payments. In that sense it's feck all to do with 'what's mine is mine'. They argue that it is excessive welfare payments and an entitlement pathology that has created the wealth gap - because the welfare payments trap the poor in a situation where there is no incentive to work, and no investment in business to generate the opportunity. They may well be right. What I do know is that your world of rich people who are greedy thieves stealing from the deserving poor may work in children's books, but it doesn't even sniff at real societies or economies.

Ha ha - I was just putting a perspective against this relentless attack on wealthy people that presumes they 'owe' more tax, and are greedy if they don't pay it. I have no idea how people make their money, but the assumption that they don't deserve it and are either avaricious or thieves is completely inappropriate. I'm sure there are some people that don't get the opportunity and maybe in that context a social safety net is a resposnbility that the more fortunate may have a moral obligation to take on. However, for every one of those I reckon there's five that had plenty of opportunity and just didn't fancy knuckling down, didn't fancy taking the risks or putting in the hours, and are now getting all hoity toity that 'rich' people somehow owe them money. I can smell the sour odor of middle class self-righteous entitlement...

It might be greed... ...Or possibly it could be resentment at the abuse they get when they already pay more tax than the average person by several orders of magnitude, and it was them that risked everything to launch their own company, it was them that worked 14 hours a day, it was them that had no weekends, it was them that got ripped off and had their employees steal from them... I worked throughout my university years, and went straight into full time work before I'd finished my finals - I didn't even get to collect my degree because of work commitments. Most of my mates pissed off for a couple of years then before starting work. Then quite a few got snotty because I got paid more than them, said I had to pay more share of the rent etc. So they get to pay less rent because they had a five year holiday? Fu*k off.

It sounds like you need to look at the contract emc. I'm sure it'll be pretty clear within it. I'd assume that it was a share at current value, and then anything else will be upside!