Huguenot

The point I'm making minkturtle (and with your firm grasp of English I'm sure you've gathered it) is that you don't have to wait until you can read or write fluently until you can enoy and learn from Shakespeare. Shakespeare is a performance art that deals with people and personalities. In fact it's easier to understand out loud than it is to understand it written. Your insistence that they become technically proficient in written English before they're allowed to enjoy the chicanery of Iago or the hearbreak of Juliet strikes me as both spiteful and controlling. Conversely, it may just reveal that you never really understood what Shakespeare was all about either. Your choice to make personal attacks on my experience with education is badly judged. I merely need to highlight your own poorly constructed stream of consciousness babble as evidence that the authorities seem to let any idiot loose in front of children these days. No wonder the kids are struggling. For the record I come from a family of three generations of teachers, and about half my time is spent in educational work. Thankfully it's rare that I suffer semi-literate fantasists trying to take the higher ground with me.

Sue, I hear what you're saying, but somehow I suspect that even if both your own and jaybee's excellent recommendations were implemented that you still wouldn't have seen them. Just as a guide for me, you understand, could you possibly calculate how many people, man hours and other people's cash you'd like to pee up a wall in order to satisfy your stampy-footed demands? I think for a carclub space maybe we could really thrash out 60 grand, no? For 3,000 carclub spaces we could crap out a cool 180 million quid yeah? FABULOUS investment for a local council. *silly*

It looked like it was just an administrative mistake Narnia. Someone might have just left the wrong switch flicked? Did rubsley actually change his name anyway, or did he just create multiple log-ins?

Whatever your views on the banking crisis silverfox, it's clear that any link to the EC would be tenuous. I just don't accept that the world before social strategy and progressive politics entailed a society of happy-go-lucky hobbits basking in the late summer sunshine as their wheatfields swayed in a gentle breeze. The world before democracy entailed diseased indentured impoverished serfs who lived a life of indescribable malnutrition and slavery until they died before hitting forty. They would have hated it. Your comments on Ireland reveal a very poor insight into Irish society, and an almost delusional view of their history.

Teaching Shakespeare shouldn't be about reading, it's about cause and effect, about motivation, about chicanery, about relationships and responsibilities. I'd say it was a misinterpretation of English teaching at secondary school level if you imagine it's about technical execution. There's a satisfying if somewhat trite scene in an early series of Spooks where Keeley Hawes has to masquerade as an English teacher. The kids are trying to read poetry, but can't connect with the subject matter, so Hawes instead concentrates on a Dido song where the lyricist clearly is intoning the opposite to what she's actually communicating, so this becomes the discussion point. This is great English teaching. On the one world government I think you're being ambitious but somewhat myopic. Social theory tells us quite the opposite: that humans are essentially tribal and tend to work in social groups of less than 200 individuals. We know that society breaks down when access to vital resources become scarce. A viable long term social achievement for humanity is more likely to be the opposite to one-world government. It's more likely to be a decentralised arrangement of self-sustaining communities. We'd rely on technology to facilitate that.

Eh? What? When did a discussion of uncertainty become a proving ground for NLP? garden man, are you rubsley in disguise?

Or a wood chipper. Make sure it's not a flimsy one.

Apparently dropping Egyptian obelisks on them is very effective. You could carry one of these with you? Don't leave it in the car, you'd feel really silly when you needed it. You could also trap them in a pit of concrete, you'll need to carry one of these around too.

This poor bastard actually had first hand experience. "I noticed that in the headshot mutation, zombies can spawn without heads (but looks as though it was shot off) I believe they are spawning headless because in an incoming horde I noticed a zombie was headless, but nobody had shot at it yet. You can still kill them, but you cant shoot where the head would normally be, you need to shoot the neck." So he's pontificating about their provenance, but the guy's been a target, and found a solution. The neck shot, there you have it.

I don't think we should make any assumptions about zombies. I don't have nearly enough experience. However, this guy appears to be an absolute authority: "Headless Zombies may not be very strong or fast, but are very tough. They favor life over strength and speed, and are essential to have on some invasions because in invasions headless zombies can't see where they're going so they always head to the front, usually kicking out a zombie from the front line. Headless zombies are also very lazy so if a new headless can come in to take it's place it'll head to the back immediately and let he new guy take over. " I just don't think you can mess around with that level of insight.

*vaguely uneasy feeling that I've done somthing bad* *pulls squashed fez from under left buttock* *wonders if sinking feeling will go away if I have another pull at the Ricard*

No, I don't think so. Historians are more likely to reflect on the vicious hypocrisy of a British public who want a certain lifestyle and indulgence, but cannot admit or accept the things that need to be done to maintain it. The issue isn't Blair; the issue is about the vanity, ego, shallowness and venality of the British public. Blair was a product of the British mentality. All this 'Bliar' stuff and heated public debate about deception is nothing but emetic retching of a pathalogical denier who can't look in the toilet after they've 'done something'.

So, on the subject of zombies... I always thought Star Wars (which I may immediately watch) jumped the shark when it started crapping on about midi-chlorians. It was terribly unsophisticated and naive in a teen boyfried way to assume that everything needed to be 'explained' and 'true'. The removal of the mystique trivialised and embarrassed the series. Likewise, in an episode of the Walking Dead I've just watched, a scientist uses zappy technology to investigate the motivating force behind zombies. It transpires it's some guff about a hyperactive bacteria stimulating the brain stem. I mean, why fucking bother? They're just zombies right? It's a zombie, it's bad, and you just can't kill them. That's all you need to know.

*enters somewhat haphazardly, having missed the doorhandle but unable to check momentum* *right leg buckles somewhat as the left hand casts about in vain to catch the door before it swings back against the hinges with an audible crack, already several metres away by now* *brought up handily by the chesterfield, attempts a change in direction to the louvred drinks cupboard, but sways off course, leading with the shoulder, sporting the studied intent of a man determined but failing to take another direction* *grabs mercifully at the Ricard on the way past, captures it more by luck than judgement, and is finally laid to ground by the chaise longue with the oiled antimacassar caught in his spectacles* *swigs once at the neck of the bottle and pours a generous eighth down the chin* *balefully examines the other residents...* "Thish iszh the foreighn correshpondents club?"

Do I detect a whiff of snobbery?

Demon: What an excellent day for an exorcism. Father Damien Karras: You would like that? Demon: Intensely. Father Damien Karras: But wouldn't that drive you out of Regan? Demon: It would bring us together. Father Damien Karras: You and Regan? Demon: You and us. *slight tremor down spine*

Haha, if you hadn't brought that one up, I'd never have remembered it again. Burnt into the synapses of my long term memory, the experience was simply menacing my other thoughts, without ever truly letting on what it was. Did you really remember all of them, or did you have to look a few up? I have two pipes, but I seem to have lost my Church's slippers somewhere.

'Square bashing' in the army is there to hammer out any sense of individuality and ensure blind co-operation. It's sheer stupidity is part of the appeal - forcing grown men to do something stupid and pointless on the instruction of another, and get used to it. It strikes me that if you're gullible enough to believe the world was created by what sounds like a suspiciously cantankerous geriatric medieval misogynist control-freak with supreme powers and an unchallenged moral superiority, that you might as well believe that epilepsy is the devil, and a bloke in a stupid outfit can rid you of the affliction.

I'm with Plato. Only problem is that I can't identify any philosopher kings. Most people who think they are one don't realise they've already made a fatal error.

*kicks at mark on the floorboards, pushes hands firmly into pockets, and then glowers through the window at the threatening sky*

I'm not sure that any self-respecting pub crawl should entail walking past a pbu that you don't go into. A few of those routes look like they might do this.

Here in Singapore the government just made available $300m to any company that wants to create a digital product that will sell in China. In return the government get equity, but at better rates for the company than they'd get from business angels. I'd prefer the UK government to do that rather than give hand outs to the unemployed. Especially because there's a return to the taxpayer at a later date. Cameron doesn't seem to want to do either.

Nah, too much.

I don't think he's too much to worry about. He's been doing this for a while. He probably was envious of Ben Elton as a youth, and fancies himself as an acerbic wit waiting for a contract on a shock-jock show. He has a good delivery, nicely timed with a nice rhythmn to his speech, but he makes sweeping generalizations that probably wouldn't get the nod on TopGear. He prefers Daily Mail soundbites to insight and empathy, so do plenty of others. It's not healthy or accurate, but like I say, he admires celebrity more than pride or a contribution to society. I don't mind him doing it for his video camera, but would probably find it a struggle to talk to him in a pub. Just a bit of a Wally.

I don't want to argue from other side of the fence ianr, but the law in question is libel. Libel can only be proven after the fact, and defence relies on the initial allegation, whether positive or negative, to be proven accurate. That's unusual to the UK, in the US it needs to be proven to have had malicious intent. There is no law that stops anyone saying anything, or publishing it in their shop window. There are a number of laws that can punish you in hindsight - for example inciting racial hatred, or in this case defamation. There are varying degrees of punishment for this, some involving long stretches in jail. However, these cases would involve a plaintiff. A plaintiff would likely need an opportunity for successful defence. That makes this an unusually effective form of social justice if the miscreants knows themselves to be guilty.