pap

Oh aye, I've met the girl twice and she's sound. I've also been around this dog and pony show long enough to know that the personnel can, and often does change. It's always amusing to see the new interactions

Bwa ha ha. I've been amused with this thread, and I am in two minds over hypo's recent input. Let me start by saying that I think it perfectly possible that hypo has had his nose put out of joint by the arrival of a few new posters, and that the comments here merely reflect his losing position in the ongoing war vs one of the forum's most prolific female posters. That said, I am starting to wonder about the day-to-day contact that some of my forum brethren have with females

Indeed, but should a party that claimed it was there to "govern in the national interest" really be sending the country into an economic funk for its own electoral interests? (After the taps have been turned back on, of course)

“Although growth resumed in 2013, real income per capita is only now reaching its level on the eve of the crisis, which means that Britain has had a much worse track record since 2007 than it had during the Great Depression,” he said. “Yet as Britain prepares to go to the polls, the leaders of the coalition Government that has ruled the country since 2010 are posing as the guardians of prosperity, the people who really know how to run the economy. And they are, by and large, getting away with it.” http://www.thenational.scot/business/coalition-record-on-economy-startlingly-bad-says-nobel-winning-economist.1770 “A nation’s leaders may do an excellent job of economic stewardship for four or five years yet get booted out because of weakness in the last two quarters before the election. “In fact, the evidence suggests that the politically smart thing might well be to impose a pointless depression on your country for much of your time in office, solely to leave room for a roaring recovery just before voters go to the polls. “That’s a pretty good description of what the current British government has done, although it’s not clear it was deliberate.”

I think you're dissing Smash Bros a bit there, KRG. If anything, the positional and situational awareness makes it the anti-button basher. The controls are simple and the cooldowns deter someone from spamming the same special moves. The ground isn't safe, or even guaranteed to be there for the foreseeable future. Instant death is possible at most points of the game. I love it because it balances risk vs reward very well, while providing a nostalgic trip down the back catalogue. Yes, you can try to make your way across the screen and get the hammer from Donkey Kong, and yes it will annihilate anyone it touches. But you may get your bottoms punched off en-route, or someone else may get said hammer and send you skyward. If you want bastard button bashers, try any muppet playing Eddy in Tekken.

Sarnia has dominated proceedings with his input each day, but the stuff that follows his posts aren't solely for him. We could have had Hull City supporters descending on this thread and thinking we were all rednecks. We've got the repute of the site to uphold! The individual experiences have been one of the better parts of this thread.

No, Nathaniel no, there must be more to life.

I'm not saying that this thread is bereft of decent input, rather that it has settled into a series of unqualified jabs from each side. I'm not sensing much that's constructive, more along the lines of "f**k you, you've got it worse". Yours is a decent contribution.

Dave Jones was bounced out of the club very quickly, still officially paid and all that. Fair point about the suspension mechanic though.

This is the beauty of having kids. If you need game buddies, you can just ground the sprogs That has not been necessary, tho' Zelda would never really be the jumping on point for me. Tends to arrive far too late in the cycle, and loads of other ace stuff is out by then. Smash Bros is just a fine fighting game, on Wii U or DS. I know it's not strictly Nintendo (HAL Laboratories), but it really nails what they're about. It's as much platformer as it is fighting game, really accessible yet bloody difficult to master.

I think the thing a lot of people forget is no matter what the US and UK might tell us, we still live in a multi-polar world. That's why I always found the OP's title so amusing. Well, that and the fact that people wanted us to bin one of the most important regions of the world (of all time) from the EU empire

I think they've known how many cards they've held from day one. The reparations stuff is just bad PR for Germany. I'd say that from a Western perspective, Greece getting sweet deals out of Russia is far more problematic. At a time when the EU is aggressively pushing east, there's one state, and ancient and culturally important state, that might head the other way.

Called it. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/07/alexis-tsipras-flies-to-moscow-speculation-greek-bailout-vladimir-putin Tsirpas off to Moscow.

Blimey. Tory non-dom "smoking gun" decommissioned immediately. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/08/labour-accuses-tories-of-editing-ed-balls-non-dom-video-to-mislead-voters Thought the angle was problematic enough, what with most people not knowing what a non-dom is. The wánkers actually had to lie to get it to stick

Well, frankly I'm amazed that Labour have chosen to put one of their preferred children into such an important seat. They do it all the time up here, knowing they've got a 10K majority cushion in a load of places. Marginals? Madness.

Finger on the pulse.... http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/12876418.Prime_Minister_under_fire_after__embarrassing__Southampton_seat_spelling_error/?ref=mmp&ref=mmsp

No comment of your own on non-doms then?

Do you think? Approach it a different way then. Take out all the posts where people are just linking a crime, take out all the stuff where people are jockeying with Sarnia. How much considered stuff is left?

The statistics are somewhat meaningless without the context, and most of the comments made in support of the links are either rhetorical or redundant. Sarnia is in the wrong for not taking anything on board, but if all we're doing is bunging ordnance on the decks, then I can't really blame him for saying that people are just US bashing. Most people are.

I've been meaning to write something like this for the past few days, but as mental as Sarnia has been, the semi-regular bunging of gun-based atrocities over the parapet in opposition is in fact, little better than Sarnia's doomed quest to portray the UK as slasher central. Both sides are doing the same thing; referring to something nasty but relatively exceptional, effectively saying "that's representative". Neither side is correct.

Quite apart from anything else, what exactly does this kind of retroactive juvenile witch-hunt say to our own scions? I've got a kid reading history at the moment. She is also nineteen, and I have every expectation that in between getting her qualifications, she'll find the opportunity to have the time of her life. And so she should. Everyone deserves the folly of being young, inexperienced and stupid without the prospect that they'll be pulled up on it years later. Does anyone, for example, believe that Prince Harry actually harbours Nazi sympathies, or was his costume choice that night the provocative choice of a young man who wanted to push boundaries yet lacked the emotional maturity to respect the scale of offence he may cause? I think we've all put it down to the folly of youth, haven't we? It'll never be entirely forgotten, but it's always going to be seen in the context.

Bear, you're correct to question because although I'm an entrenched f**ker incapable of changing an opinion, I've got the details slightly wrong here. Rock got notice of his arrest and was allowed to resign the day before he was arrested. Day, not week. Bad pap. However, Cameron kept the story out of the news for three weeks. Backbencher John Mann MP said said it was “mysterious” that the situation had not emerged earlier. “There has been a bodged attempt at media manipulation which is wholly unacceptable from 10 Downing Street,” he said. “Of course they should have revealed it proactively.” And he told the Telegraph: “It gives the impression of a clumsy attempt at a cover-up. If Mr Rock was told [of the allegations] before his arrest it an issue, it would interfere with the justice system.” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/downing-street-accused-of-coverup-over-senior-aide-patrick-rocks-arrest-on-child-abuse-images-allegations-9169818.html

Given that post #1952 is essentially you deciding to take the man on instead of any of his points, I'm mildly amused at your insistence that I might make it personal. We'll leave that there. I'm not insinuating that most Tories are paedos, or indeed, that this vile behaviour is the sole preserve of the Conservative Party. I do think it's worth mentioning that one of the Conservative Party's greatest icons shielded paedophiles in her midst, and repeatedly tried to get the most infamous knighted, despite almost certainly having received informal advice about what he was. Some of the alleged paedophiles held offices of state which couldn't be more incompatible with their reported proclivities, and this was tolerated. More recently, one of Cameron's aides was arrested for having child pornography on his computer. In any other business where an employee was charged with such a crime, the likelihood is that the employee will immediately be marched from the premises and swiftly erased from company history. Patrick Rock was given a week to get his affairs in order before the OB even got a chance to arrest him. A cynical man might reflect that a week's grace might be awfully handy for limiting the scope of any incriminating evidence, but let's just leave such speculation aside and just say it was bloody irregular and that it wouldn't have taken the OB a week to nick a nonce on a sink estate. If what Verbal said about UKIP earlier is true, and that voting is about the company you keep, then surely that principle applies even more to politics when choosing trusted confidants, and even more so when it's the PM doing the choosing.

The way debate normally works is that you offer your own points in opposition to the argument you disagree with. Of course, some people are incapable of framing such an argument, and humourously throw their toys out of the pram, such as they are.

Well thanks, and I have no issue with the idea of getting behind a smaller government that spends less and is more hands-off, but that's really not what we've had for the last five years. For all the Tory bluster about economic competence, this government borrowed more dosh in five years than Labour did in thirteen, spending it on the likes of ATOS, specialists in telling people they're not really disabled. Throughout, we've had complete bastards like Iain Duncan Smith wage an insidious war on the poor, while doing worse than nothing to address problems with employment. They're giving hours away for free. So having already established a free-for-all where companies get free labour, and part-timers lose overtime, the latest talk is (get this, it's beautiful) about sanctioning people that don't work enough. They set people against each other, promote myths to suit their agenda and I reckon they've miscalculated the appeal of trying to get the general public to hate each other. The cuts have been crude and universal enough so that many people will know someone that has been affected by the sanctions regime. As I said, I can get behind smaller government, but that's not what this lot are. They've borrowed more, inflicted a great deal of misery on some thoroughly undeserving people, have made bad policy decisions at home and abroad, and I suspect won't rest until every little piece of this island is sold off to foreign speculators. These are not small c fiscally responsible Conservatives. They're a cabal of asset strippers getting away with it because their schtick appeals to the ignorant, who always suspected the poor were all c**ts anyway.