Huguenot

I wonder what the law would be on posting that snapshot on the forum, just so he would be kind enough to confirm his identity and set your mind at rest?

That was 'very rude' to Brum?? Ha ha, you're kidding right! How do you describe it when I'm genuinely rude? Anyway, I wish you a fab Christmas also!

Oh really - some people are so quick to take offence! Sitting around in teepees being all respectful for one another might tick the 'worthy' boxes, but the world would be a bloody tedious place. Nobody's done any harm here, and certainly not enough to deserve some sonorously intoned portent about the the forum! If Wiccan's can't take some gentle pisstaking then it doesn't bode well for their religion.

I worry about walking under ladders, but I think that makes me completely rational! All good points shaman, I can understand your approach. I'm not sure you're talking on behalf of all pagans though ;-)

It probably is AM, I just don't think anyone's going to win a battle against Foie Gras based on arguments about eating animals in general. I don't need to be persuaded on Foie Gras either way, because I just don't like it. However, I can see the moral argument that if we accept the eating of meat in general, getting angry about force feeding seems inconsistent. After all, by that measure we're already committing the 'ultimate' crime by breeding them to eat their flesh. I'm also not going to stop eating meat for 'moral' reasons, because I regard morality vegetarianism and the application of human values to animals as a misguided intellectual conceit. That's not to say I wouldn't go veggie for sensible reasons like resource management ;-)

Some of the arguments about Foie Gras are a little confusing, as they apply to all farmed meat. Hoping that an animal tasted good so they didn't die in vain applies as much to burgers and cutlets as it does to Foie Gras? The only thing you can really complain about with Foie Gras is the force-feeding, as other complaints about battery farming apply equally to chickens or other fowl.

There are millions of other people who will also work on Boxing Day minder, tube drivers are no more deserving than them. Working on public holidays is what you do when you work for a public service. If they didn't want to work bank holidays they shouldn't have taken the job. Bank holiday working was agreed by the tube drivers over 20 years ago - that means that most tube drivers have always known that bank holiday working was part of the job, and it always will be. What they're doing is simply price gouging, holding the economy of London's retail industry to ransom whilst they extort money under menaces.

Hi Atticus, I'm not sure where you got the idea that I was saving special criticism for Wiccans from - I did say that I believed an omniscient God (judaeo-christian) was just as open to flak as spells and magick. Filling one's house with Celtic runes is just as nutty as filling it with crucifixes. I'm still trying to work out which Christian ritual has equivalence with burying your pee in the front garden. There will be one. Suicide bombers and vestal virgins have a special place in that pantheon of delusions - having made that noisome step from the ridiculous to the tragic.

Well you seem to have said a few contradictory things. If unions primary responsibility is pay and conditions of workers, then you can't claim they were altruistically fighting on the behalf of the nation in the privatisation battle. They must have been fighting for pay and conditions there also. Secondly you've said that striking on Boxing Day in particular would cost them a lot of money - this implies that their terms for working on Boxing Day are already very attractive and hence a strike is unjustified. Views regarding striking tube drivers are not motivated by Thatcherism, but by the view that tube drivers are already over compensated for the work they do for too few hours, with disproportionate perks in holidays and pensions. They are simply perceived as not giving value for money. Your views on the success or not of rail privatisation are unsupported by facts. They rehash propaganda regarding privatisation that don't take into account pre and post privatisation activity on an equal playing field.

I always get the willies when people decide to arbitrarily 'believe in' something. Hmmm.... What shall I choose to believe in today? It's also apparent shaman that not all Wiccans share your sense of inclusivity - hence the insults aimed at 'wannabe' Wiccans. Hardly the signs of an open armed welcome, eh? Wiccan, like most of the other religions involves rituals, tribalism, personal sacrifice and so on. They all seem to be about creating a sense of security from belonging. However, any religion that takes it self too seriously when talking about supernatural powers, be they omniscience or the power of spells and magick, deserves all the ridicule it gets.

Perhaps naming yourself after an electrical masturbation aid may have roused a little attention to you?

I'm not a moderator, but I do notice that you seem to have a vast supply of DVDs, BluRays in standard and 3D format, which possibly may have made people wonder about their legality? Are you an East Dulwich resident? The section is for East Dulwich residents and businesses only? Apart from that, did you check the rules at the top of the section? Were you bumping the thread or some other transgression? Most people who get their posted removed are aware why it has happened, they might just be trying to push the boundaries a bit - would that apply to you?

Another one added to the unemployment register then? After all, who needs someone else to fex us a pont if we've got one ourselves?

Never really saw libertarianism as a conservative ideal. I'm sure there are many overlapping objectivess which could make them uneasy bedfellows, but British conservatism is obsessed with natural order and hierarchy, authority and control.

DaveR, apologies for the careless short hand regarding the term 'debt', I think it's persistently clear in the thread that I'm referring to the ability of the Greek government to balance its incomings and outgoings (in other words budget deficit). I totally agree with you that investors were more confident in the Euro than the Drachma - investors built misguided confidence that they were no longer risking devaluation as a form of managed default. As they discovered, avoiding devaluation was no better guarantee against default in Greece than simply checking whether the nation was credit worthy. It wasn't. The fault doesn't lie with the Euro for this: the Greek government deceived greedy investors.

Isla, my first post was hardly 'taunting' was it? That would be silly hyperbole on what was never more than a wry aside. By making such an exaggerated claim, it's you that's polarising the debate and fuelling the flames of 'unpleasant stuff'. I don't know what you mean by 'not paying off the loan' - a debt write off is the same thing (often referred as 'taking a haircut') and that has already happened once, and probably will do again. Whether the Greeks will be in the same place in 10 years time is entirely up to them, not the common currency. They will need to balance the books between government income and expenditure.

DaveR, the primary engine for overblown Greek debt wasn't the Euro, but that it quite simply lied on it's self-certified credit assessment. In 2009 the new government announced debt was 12.9% of GDP, not the 3.6% the previous government bad claimed. In other words it had persistently deceived banks about its ability to manage debt (and the size of that debt). It was this deception that created the crisis - date quite clearly to October 2009 - not the low interest rates achievable with the Euro. It was immaterial what currency that deception was played out in. People are trying to rewrite history to claim the single currency was at fault. It wasn't. In the aftermath the single currency certainly made it impossible to devalue - a strategy that would have been used historically to manage the situation (but then devaluation is financial nuclear war anyway, so the Greeks would have been no better off). It also made it more difficult to balance the economy internally by manipulating exchange rates to drive internal productivity.

No first mate - as I said, it was from an amicus curiae perspective. I don't necessarily believe that a local interest has to be a delaying tactic, I just think that the locals are trying to do the job that they pay planning officers to do, and elected the councillors to oversee. In order to do that it would clearly take a long time for dilletantes to get up to speed. In my own company if I see this taking place - particularly sales people trying to do 'operations' roles - it's both disruptive and counter-productive. The way to judge the performance of the councillors in relation to planning activities is at the ballot box, not by trying to do their job for them.

Another personal attack then Quids? Unable to answer a critique of your position? *sighs* This is it, the intellectual depth of your argument?

Ridiculous of grown-ups, which I'm sure you all are, to blame the credit card company if you find you've borrowed to much. (On the subject of grown-ups DaveR do you really think your inability to address this debate without a tirade of personal abused aimed at me is a positive reflection of either your maturity or the soundness of your argument?) It's derived from a desperate desire to see Greece as a 'victim' to suit an anti-Euro political agenda rather than take responsibility for its own actions. The Euro did not create the Greek crisis any more than the Bank of England is responsible for Comet going bankrupt. Both may have 'facilitated' debt by delivering the medium of currency, but neither are responsible for financial malpractice. Believe it or not, your interpretation of events is by no means a consensus amongst economists significantly more qualified than any of us. Either way, as I said before, your arguments come to naught in the face to an increasingly positive outlook for the political determination to succeed. You can talk about your theoretical 'proof' that it isn't working in much the same breath as you can deny gravity - the reality is that all evidence is to the contrary.

What's the difference between a soundtrack and a score?

Well I guess that would require 20 libraries to reach 4,000? We've got two in ED so it seems possible?

Quids has been insisting that anything European, and mostly the Euro itself, has been doomed to failure within the next 'xxx months' for the last 5 years. He saw the Greek crisis to be created by the Euro and destined for failure, followed in quick succession by Spain and Italy. The evidence is starting to harden that it's quite the opposite - resulting in an affirmation of ECB support for Europe, and the willingness of member states to bail each other out. It's not because these Europeans are 'monstrous totalitarians', but because altruism, collaborative action and recognition of the demands of a world stage are proving much more prevalent than Quids in his cynical world view would have us think was possible. I have been pointing out that the current crisis is simply teething problems and the currency would muddle through. The improvement in Greece's rating is a validation of my much abused observations.

That's true - and the people tasked with making that review are the elected Planning Committee, not joe public. We don't try and run government by referendum, and we shouldn't do it to the planning process either. It's called representative democracy. If Joe public wants to interfere in that process (without legal influence) then 3 weeks is quite enough time to form an opinion and send off a letter.

I love this phrase 'enjoy owning guns' - I'm wondering what form 'enoying' a gun takes?