Huguenot

Well, not so much as a 'negative' aspect so much as just an aspect. It would hardly make you a shoo-in for a people facing role...!

I think there's a couple of things here. Sleeping in two foot of slime may fall into the character enhancement area, but I hardly think an afternoon of work for beer and rounders is about trying to make you a better person? Most people's daily interaction at work is fairly limited to professional chats; beer and rounders are most likely an opportunity to get to know people a little better. A little understanding between work colleagues goes a long way. If you reject the opportunity for mean spirited reasons that also says something about your views of work colleagues that will undermine the company performance. A boss would be within his rights to consider all aspects of your approach to work when considering their future plans. Without a doubt the vast majority of business revenues go in labour costs, not to the shareholders: you're making yourself wealthy.

Bloody hell annaj, crying at the prospect of rounders? That's extraordinary. I can see that ice hiking could be perceived as divisive, but if the prospect of minor social interaction and a stroll in the park isn't sufficiently inclusive, I don't know what is. There are many things I'm manifestly b*llocks at, but it wouldn't stop me having a crack at it with a smile on my face. Even if the odd idiot called me names, I'd rather conclude it said more about them than me. Please, don't stop the rounders.

What you mean that on top of all the other crimes they're responsible for, REFUGEES also throw our old people out onto the streets!!!!

I'd never though about it like that. In hindsight most of the ones I've been on have focused on teamwork and the ability to put the right person in the right role. None of them have been so strenuous as to differentiate between the sexes or the unfit, but I guess in some instances they could have isolated the infirm. But then it's a double sided coin: they might not have to do the sump-dive, but then they probably don't do the coffee or bacon sandwich run either.

happyman, research is good but not declaring an interest is considered very bad form. For example, had someone posted a negative review you may have challenged it. However, it makes a significant difference to how your response is interpreted if readers know you're the manager. Your opinion would hold slightly more weight if readers considered it independent. Traders know this, and try to post under anonymity to get extra influence for free. This would be quite simply trying to gain an advantage through deception. Because readers don't like to be conned, it would have a very negative effect on your business. However, it doesn't apply in this case, because you've swiftly moved to dispel any confusion. Well done!

Au contraire. In fact with much respect you're quite simply wrong on every point. There's not been one person who has suggested that the boys should be chastised because the government or the police said so. There's also quite simply no evidence of authoritarian aggression: the authorities are manifest only by the vacuum of their non-appearance. Finally, not one person has suggested that boys should stop practicing assaults on wheelie bins because it's not traditional or normal - although they have suggested that the abnormality may be a pointer to other issues. Everyone who suggested the boys should be collared have done so because the behaviour was threatening, showed a disregard for other people, and possibly demonstrated a willingness to progress to more violent crime. There's something quite disturbing, HAL9000, about how you've managed to reinvent these characters from something you initially found legitimately frightening, into heroes of some sort of working class anti-authority revolution. It shows a willingness to rewrite history to meet your own macabre ends. Very disturbing.

I think someone linked you to the original thread before. There's no fetish. Some months back we had a spate of curtain twitchers raising hell Daily Mail-style over clear and present threats to our society. It started with cyclists on pavements and progressed through dodgy housing estates and knife crime. It finally topped itself with the imprecation that there was a paedophile kidnapper circulating in the area dressed as a clown. It may or may not have been a joke, but the initiator wasn't famed for her humour. Regardless of this, it went beyond parody - and consequently it became a byword to highlight when threads of this type had become ridiculous.

I did once glam up a tin of cost cutter beans by chopping an onion into them. Proper cooking that.

Good points all, Jezza. My curtains are looking at me funny.

Well a 1 in 6 hit rate would be around 16.7% rather than 3.125% I can see the 1/2 life argument. It would be as if, upon a 'no-show', the pants became half as lucky each time as they were the previous time. In that case you'd only need to wear them five times to deliver a pair of pants that was 3.125% of their initial beaver-magnet quality. If you assume that they only suffered the collapse in fanny-fetchability when they were discarded after a fruitless episode, then you could indeed have pulled on those pants six times and have them at 3.125% effectiveness. Mathematically this could be written as 1/(2?(n-1)) where n is the number of times you've pulled them on. This state of play would only exist until you took them off. At that point, dependent on the context, they would either suffer another catastrophic fall in their pussy-pulling rating, or a dramatic climb. Much like Schroedinger's cat, engaging with the pants causes them to collapse into one state or another. Until that moment, these are neither lucky or unlucky pants, they're merely cotton briefs.

Once in 32 sessions eh? Consecutive or intermittent? Washed or aired?

A wee bit Lounge, but that notwithstanding... Beware the Jabbyfinger, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the keybud bird, and shun The frumious Proberdythred!

In order to understand the Return key, one must envisage the jabby finger transposed from garden fence to back bedroom.

Right wing backlash? What utter bollix As Pēteris Stučka would have you know, the socialists believed in "the creation of popular, informal tribunals to administer revolutionary justice" In other words the left wing reaction would be pitchforks and torches, and they'd have hung the bastards out for their pelt to tan in the wind. To spot the pinkos as appeasers and the right-wing as law and order is simply delusional. If you reckon you're a leftie you'd have descended on the perps like the wrath of heaven and had them ploughing for pebbles for thirty years in Ekibastuz. I bet you can't even spell Solzhenitsyn.

Marvellous, doggerel still lives!

I suspect not with antijen - but glamorous nevertheless.

Oh Gallinello, too many 'el's But oh, I suppose she was ugly; she wasn't elegant; I hadn't yearned for her often in my prayers. Yet holding her I was limp, and nothing happened at all: I just lay there, a disgraceful load for her bed. I wanted it, she did too; and yet no pleasure came from the part of my sluggish loins that should bring joy. The girl entwined her ivory arms around my neck (her arms were whiter than the Sithonian snows) , and gave me greedy kisses, thrusting her fluttering tongue, and laid her eager thigh against my thigh, and whispering fond words, called me the lord of her heart and everything else that lovers murmur in joy. And yet, as if chill hemlock were smeared upon my body, my numb limbs would not act out my desire. I lay there like a log, a fraud, a worthless weight; my body might as well have been a shadow. Too much humour I fear.. My bad, I didn't credit, but you know where it's from don't you?

Is that your own, antijen? Very good Gallinello, although I'm not too familiar with it. So much for armed revolution: Move him into the sun -- Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown. Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now The kind old sun will know. Think how it wakes the seeds -- Woke, once, the clays of a cold star. Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides Full-nerved, -- still warm, -- too hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall? -- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all? With thanks to Wilfred Owen

Well this one's just for you immaterial, from Ovid's Metamorphoses.... Once a noisy Nymph, (who never held her tongue when others spoke, who never spoke till others had begun) mocking Echo, spied him as he drove, in his delusive nets, some timid stags.-- for Echo was a Nymph, in olden time,-- and, more than vapid sound,--possessed a form: and she was then deprived the use of speech, except to babble and repeat the words, once spoken, over and over. I trust you'll note my use of brevity for added impact.

What, you can't defend communism, so you pretend I'm having a go at democracy and defend that instead? What kind of argument is that? Don't stay in school kids - with thanks to Nathaniel Spengler I wish I could grow up dumb No belief in an education With one hand firmly on the bible The other hand on a Gun

HAL9000, you've made me sad. Your observations speak of a cynical abdication of responsibility for our erstwhile society. 'Tis not so much a "fcuked up society", so much as one that kindly folk in their forties have rejected in favour of self-centred navel gazing. Because I feel poetic (and having exceeded myself in snooting at poetry on another thread), I offer... Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. See, I have a heart! No Tin Man I.

You honestly believe that 'Communes' are the solution, and you use poetry as a tool of persuasion? Hah! What a belly laugh. More rhymes please! ;-)

CrystalClear + Gender Issues = I thought you'd changed your username?

NO!!!!!!!!!! Mockers, you weren't Batdog????????