Brendan

PeckhamRose Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Marriage is not a religious thing, but I > understand was merely a formal arrangement to > protect the women when the fishermen didn't come > from from fishing trips. I think marriage may be a much older sociological phenomenon as it exists in hunter gatherer societies some of whom haven?t even invented fishing let alone boats, fishing trips, cooler boxes, beer and all the other things that go with them.

Great , thousands upon thousands of men women and children are attacked, raped and killed on South African farms and nobody in the western media even bats an eyelid. But the death of some fucking pantomime, neo-Nazi, that?s a news story worthy of debate.

A man far older and wiser than me once told me, ?Son, when a man reaches a certain age his hips start to spread and there?s nothing he can do about it.? To which I replied, ?Yeah dad, same can be said for some of the girls I know and their legs.? In reply to which he smacked me in the head and said, ?That?s the last time I try to pass on fatherly advice to you yah wee gobshite. Learn some respect for ladies.? ? And to think I paid for these pints.? I think he was just pissed off because he had reached middle age.

I?ve been trying to identify which news stories are April Fools hoaxes. So far I?ve narrowed it down to, Johnson wins backing from RFU Libertines pledge not to split before summer gigs Arsenal 2 - 2 Barcelona Clegg can win UK election And apparently someone has actually agreed to let them build this at the Olympic site: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/31/anish-kapoor-artwork-tower-london yeah right. But I?m pretty certain this must true though, Hadron Collider II planned for Circle Line

m7post Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hi Brendan > - and what is you like about the yellow ones as > opposed to the blue red and green ones? Well from what I can guage at the moment, they are the only party with a clear agenda to properly regulate the parts of the economy which are dangerously out of control and to withdraw the invasive ?social regulation? that is imposed on normal people. In the long run I feel they are the only ideological opposition to an ideologically vacuous status quo in politics. Of the parties which aren?t (I suppose yet being a caveat) owned by their backers they actually posses the skills to run a government. As an aside isn?t Tony Blaire piping up and calling David Cameron vacuous one of the finest examples of the pot calling the kettle black we?ve seen in a long time?

m7post Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Brendan and Bob - > wotsisname & thingy? You know, Wotsisname from Thingy. The yellow ones.

What? Not the cuntinarium?

SteveT Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Who would have thought it was soooo complicated > for such an obvious feature. I blame whoever it was who decided not to put a button on video machines that said, SET DATE AND TIME and did just that.

m7post Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > So for those of us who do want things to change > more than 'not too much' - how do we get a change ? Vote for wotsisname. I am.

Complaining, that?s my job. Fixing is another department.

Steve: Hi I?m looking for a ipod generic portable mp3 supported compression file format player (sic). Curries sales assistant: Wot?! Ey bruv I think dis man is sick. Steve: I?m looking for a ipod generic portable mp3 supported compression file format player. Do you have any in stock? Curries sales assistant: Nah dis is Curries innit. D?you wanna phone? For just 20 pound a month yeah I got this one wiv intergrated youtube happy salppin footage yeah. Steve: Twat!

Even I know enough about football to know that that is almost a guarantee of getting nowhere in an international tournament.

Quids, in your expert opinion would it be in bad taste to open a book on which country the first fan to get shot by the South African Police Services will be from?

Anyway the point I suppose is that a lot of the argument against the Conservatives is ad hominem (if that is the correct term) in the same manner (different reasons obviously) that much of the argument against the Lib Dems also is.

Marmora Man Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > On this Brendan we do differ - I have met many > Conservative voters and Conservative politicians. > They range from our local candidate - a deeply > moral man who has spent the last 10 years working > on a sink estate paid far less than the minimum > wage to help the poor, deprived, poorly educated > and other residents of his community in many ways > - including tackling drug and knife crime, to some > city "fat cats" but including on the way > university lecturers, school teachers, doctors, > nurses, porters, mechanics and engineers, chefs > and so on. I would like to think that you would > find all of them rational, sensible, caring and > thinking members of society with whom you would > enjoy a glass of beer or wine and find them > amusing and pleasant company. I don?t disagree with you. I do know some very decent Conservatives (some of the older members of my family for instance who routinely put the needs of others before their own) I also know some arrogant and unpleasant Labour supporters. I am perhaps a victim of my environment on this though. I spend my days surrounded by policy wonks (ie aspiring career politicians) and lawyers. So these are the fires in which my opinions have been forged and they have tempered them to an edge of barbed cynicism.

William Rose is the bookies up by the Plough right? I suppose if he wants to bone peasants it can be arranged from there.

Well you could argue that a relaxed attitude to society with a properly regulated economy bound by law (i.e. the exact opposite of what our current government does) would go some way to addressing it. But please tell me how you separate social equality from equal opportunity.

???? Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Moving to Surrey is probably high up in the list > of what middleaged people do. I prefer to think that it will come the day I stop skateboarding regardless of which county I live in. But who knows. It?s all fields around there anyway. No concrete in sight.

???? Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Gordon was going to > ditch him and had his rotweillers brief the press Or as put by his wife when she heard of the plots to axe Al, ?The fucking cunts are trying to stictch up Alistair! The cunts! I can?t believe they?re such cunts!?

And therein we have the problem with ?New Labour? they are a vote winning factory and their policy therefore reflects what they can do to win votes from where in order to keep themselves in power with bugger all joined up thinking or regard for what may actually be best for society

It?s started when you turned 29. You?ve pretty much had it by now mate.

Marmora Man Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Quids - I wouldn't argue that the Conservatives > tactics in the run up to the election have been > poor (and personally disappointing) I still > believe hey are the only option. They do have the > policies, they do have the plans and they will (I > am sure) deliver a better Britain over the next > five years. Regrettably, they haven't given me all > the ammo I need to argue that convincingly. > > What I can argue convincingly is that the > caricature of Conservatives and Conservative > policy as portrayed by the likes of Ratty and > others is plain wrong. I don?t disagree that they will probably take things forward better than a labour party government will but I have genuine concern that they will, as Vince Cable said last night, ??get their noses in the trough and reward their rich backers.? And there is nothing that they are showing us that indicates to the contrary. They are keeping their cards very close to their chest. We don?t know if this is because they realise that they are going to have to do things which will upset their traditional supporters or because they don?t want to frighten off swing voters by saying that they intend to protect the rich in this their time of need. On your point about the caricature of Conservatives and Conservative policy being wrong maybe I can explain where it comes from; You have just in your last paragraph unintentionally displayed one of the attitudes which spark these caricatures by saying, ??they are the only option.? This echoes George Osborne?s closing comment last nigh, comes across as dismissive of the other options and belies a certain arrogance which people find objectionable and which makes it very easy to form negative opinions. There is a reliance on this dismissive arrogance in both the Conservative and Labour campaigns because it is their only argument that are any better equipped to run a government than the Liberal Democrats (an aside regarding my current political decisions) when the only evidence for this is that that they both have more money for a bigger PR campaigns. This further seems to indicate an attitude that representation should be directly proportional to how much money you have. But this is just one example of where this caricature of conservatives comes from. My own experience, for what it?s worth, of people who support the Conservative Party in the uk is that they display little of what I believed Conservatism to be i.e. a belief in good values and personal responsibility but rather they delight in the arrogance of wealth and the only thing they seem concerned about conserving is privilege. All you need to do is have a few chats with people in the City and around Whitehall to see this. This doesn?t come from some entrenched political prejudice I have but just from the observations of a man who over the last 7 years has been trying to make sense of the political landscape of the world he?s found himself in. The type of comfortably disconnected and sometimes willfully mean spirited views that seem to go hand in hand with British Conservatism really do exist (perhaps not amongst all but they are evident I many) and are what the (in some peoples opinion, unjustified) caricatures are based on.

She got pregnant and grew a moustache?

I know that rubbishing Labour?s proposals is easy but it seems to be the only thing the conservatives are doing, gleefully and in their specifically arrogant, bombastic manner.* So instead of pointing out to me what everyone already knows why not tell us what the conservatives can offer? Not just that they are the better and only alternative to Labour, because they aren?t. *Which only washes with a certain type of person but most of us find distasteful and goes some way to explaining why so many people won?t vote for them on principle.

The latter LB, L'homme de Chine.