Robsk II

This is pretty cool:

Cool! Where did you get this? Is it from a collection? Who is it by?

I'm generally pretty anti-war where possible, but I have to say this sabre rattling crap is pretty pointless and stupid. Politicking ******s. Everyone can bang on about colonialism all they want, but some situations are too complex to change, some history too ingrained to effectively change. I feel a fair bit of sympathy with Palestinians on Israel (particularly the incursions etc), some sympathy with the ROI on Northern Ireland, but being dicks doesn't change anything. Take note, IRA. Sometimes a situation should simply be managed as well as possible, and that also applies to the 'invaders', so Israel really don't help themselves. Yet if the colonial arguments had any sense, half the populations of the world would need to go back to their countries of ethnic origin, native americans would reclaim the states, Argentina would lose much of it's population.. etc. It's just stupid, and all about oil and public jingoism. If the Falklanders want to stay British, I say we support them entirely, even if that means military intervention. If not, that's a different thing. If they feel British, and we want to retain the spoils of empire in any way, we are obligated to defend the people. Forget apologising for things that happened hundreds of years ago. The real price we pay for having been an imperial force in the first place is that of loyalty, support and protection to the places that still consider themselves, freely, under our influence, and one we should pay.

Evidently not, Gemmel.

If I was in the media, I'd pretend to fawn over the irish just to **** The "look at me, I'm in the navy" Dulldays up.

The fact is that Iran don't need nuclear warheads to defend camels and stuff. We need them because if we don't have them, Iran and others will probably invade using muslamic rayguns and rape stonehenge.

Half right. It's the A27 North of Bosham.. it was like that through the stretch from Havant to Chichester, as well as at other stages along the A27 East of there, and a whole load of more minor roads were utterly underwater yesterday. Crazy. Mostly better today but the run-off and so on has, once again, created lake Pulborough. Just South of Pulborough is a large plain, and it is.. well, a flood plain. This morning the water came up over the road in places, never seen it do that before there -but more impressive is the uterly vast area that is now just underwater. That bridge has water going up above the arch. The banks on either side are, accordingly, a long way underwater, and that is the level of these plains pretty much.

I'm in Sussex, one of the placest this has worst affected, and there were so many roads shut and floods that it was mental. Took me 90 minutes to do a journey that could take 30 this morning, and it took 2 hours on the way back once I'd diverted around various shut roads and sat in stupid queues waiting to go throgh lakes in the road. I saw one Ford Ka go through a 'puddle' with it's lights underwater - I can only imagine they got wet feet... This was just down the road, and was pretty widespread within a 20 mile radius or more of where I live.

This ref is a ****ing ****, how many obvious fouls has he denied England now? I make it 3.

Ooh, he sounds like an interesting fella. Your type?

Regardless of the facts here, you are a proper ****, aren't you?

There's never a simple or a single 'solution' to issues such as this. I've worked for a long time in jobs where I've seen the more extreme end of drug use and so on, and if there's one thing I've observed it's that nothing will fix everything. Education might work for some, but it doesn't work for a whole load. Kids have a lot of education around all this now, far more than I ever had, and it's usually more targetted towards the ones at higher risk or already doing it. For very many that makes no difference. As with most people in their youth, culture and peers are more important, and long term consequences don't seriously get taken into consideration. The vast majority understand, on paper, that it is 'bad for you'. Most young people could cite various reasons for this with some accuracy. They also understand the socio-economic impact of it in many cases - yet they still do it, often to what I would consider excess (a place where it has a very immediate and clear damaging impact), and it does affect them. The same problems apply with legality - for some, illegality works, but once more, it's not seen as that important to many, and the reality of things means that kids can essentially at least use it without much fear of consequence. On the other hand, some probably would find less appeal to it if it was legal - but not all. A lot of these things are like being a parent - you know, in the abstract, what it's meant to be like (in the case of cannabis, the potential effects and so on), but even being super-informed can't truly make you learn the lesson just because someone tells you. I think the only way you can do anything is to be practical - it won't be stopped. Accept that fact, and seek to limit damage. The glorification of drugs and violence etc in mass media coupled with poor parenting (ie casual exposure to whatever from whatever age, parents own behaviour and attitude towards the law etc) is a big problem for young people generally, but.. well, what can you say? That's a social problem en masse, and I almost feel we should have parenting licenses before people are allowed kids.. But you can't do anything simple or quick to make culture and youth culture more positive or sensible. Half the adults in this country are utter idiots, so it's hardly surprising their kids go the same way. Most grow up sooner or later, to an extent, and start to make better informed choices, use things more moderately etc... but only once they've found their own way there, once they have responsibilities and so on. The same applies to current kids, and stoppping that cycle is hard. That's where education comes in. If the current lot do it, basically they're ****ed already. But getting them to be a BIT more responsible as parents, be more positive role models and so on - that's how to affect social change. It's very 'creep'. For all those things, there are real advantages of legalisation. You could probably lower associated crime (which DOES happen, even for cannabis), regulate THC levels (which I think is a real issue), take the 'cool' factor away to an extent and recoup some of the money that cannabis abuse (different to use, arguably) costs. That's why there's less problem around alcohol and tobacco. let's keep everything in perspective, also - casual use still doesn't need to be seen as a massive issue (my mate still does quit a lot of it but has a PhD as well as owning, outright, a 3 bed house in central London), and alcohol and tobacco remain the most harmful drugs when looking at socil impact.

I haven't bought much vinyl recently, but I have a great deal from my teens and some I inherited. Within itself, it's somewhat hard to make a case for it, as it's less convenient, less portable, etc etc than digital music. Particularly since encoding quality of MP3s etc went up to a point where the old 'analog is better' thing went away somewhat. That said, the best set up I've ever heard remains a super high end record player and so on. If you've got everything set up to really appreciate it, I still think it's got more.. depth to it than anything else - but the truth is, realistically, 99.999% of people don't have a reason to have records other than nostalgia, 'cool' value or if they still mix properly.

Bad language, also.

The vast majority of problems in this country are essentially caused or hugely affected by bad parenting, from selfish ******s in businesses and banks not having any consideration for others, to violence, ignorance, etc. The sooner a political group has the ******** to not worry about losing support and actually tell the population it is our own ****ing fault the better.

Glad Huddersfield went up instead of the Blades. Don't have too much against either team, but Huddersfield have deserved it after last year as well.

For Dune's dearly loved female relations:

Why bother?

Harsh.

Agreed IK't - Talk about proving the doubters wrong. He's been excellent in the latter part of the season.

I, like most others, was ecstatic yesterday. I was unable to make the match, unfortunately, as I had to do loads of work. Thankfully it was 'work from home' work, so I was sat there underneath paperwork with a few drinks, watching it on the telly. It was an emotional day, after a long seven years. The match was good, the performance suitable, and it was a great way to seal it. I laughed at the announcement on the tannoy regarding staying in seats, as I knew that the fans would all enjoy a good run onto the pitch, as seems pretty fair. It was good to watch everyone pour on. However, I then saw that flare. My jaw fell, and my spirit sank. I felt sick. How could the actions of someone, one irresponsible person, be so entirely inconsiderate and rash? He could have killed hundreds! The day was ruined for me, in fact, the year. I'd rather have gone down to league two than face this disaster. I'm in crisis. I don't even know if I can carry on. My wife has left me, taking our son to a tropical island, all because of this. She said that her view of the world has turned sour for good, and she can't bear the thought of having to see another person ever again, knowing what humankind is capable of. Thanks a f==king lot, flare-****.

It might be something to do with the fact that one facetious comment, once in a blue moon, in no way brings me up to the level of bellend-ery accumulated by half the other dickheads on here. Food for thought. Plus, some of these manchildren need to be told not to be rude. A perfectly calm debate about 'fashion' turned into personal abuse. I'd rise above it, but frankly it's hilarious to watch the predictable little buggers bite.

Can't possibly say one, and I'd be stretched to try to narrow it to twenty. Silly question, I've come to think.

Can't deviate completely from red and white to one or the other. I'd say there has to be a vaguely equal mix as a general rule, but am also more than happy to mix things up. Stripes shouldn't be forgotten, but certainly variations on a theme will make things more interesting year to year. Some of the 70s and 80s kits were fun, the sash was good.. but I can't see why we'd have a 'fresh start'. That's just.. odd.

A good 80% of football fans, including saints fans, are cocks. That's what explains all this. To be fair, a good 75% of people at large are cocks too, so I'm not being particularly mean.