pap

If you're talking about people topping themselves in the North West, Manchester is the place. Liverpool is unremarkable on the suicide front - at national average, the surrounding areas are up to 25% lower than the national average.

A piece in the Liverpool Echo concerning the three buys from Southampton. Hit, miss or maybe? Can you guess who got what? http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/hit-miss-maybe-how-liverpool-8686960#rlabs=1

Yes, you plum. We're not cutting carrots with sporks.

Completely different. Have you murdered any Portsmouth people? If you have, and were singing that song, and were filmed doing both acts, we might be comparing apples with apples.

ISIS (or IS, or whatever) didn't exist then. The Free Syrian Army did, including a known Al Qaeda element. Hague thought that we should arm elements of that army, or put boots on the ground ourselves. He was advocating that we plough in with an organisation that became part of ISIS. Frankly, with all of its supposed constituent elements, I'm surprised at how easily Verbal is able to dismiss the findings of the report. The Israelis themselves admit to medical support for injured civilians, although the monitors disagree and claim that material support was provided to military combatants too. Whatever else you may think about ISIS, it's a sh!tstorm near Israel's patch. Some level of involvement has to be expected, is confirmed by reports and not nullified with Verbal's recycled slights, or indeed, unqualified one line approvals of the aforementioned.

There is probably no such thing as a Jimmy Carr joke, except a series of tax returns.

I haven't conveniently decided to ignore anything. I find your points indefensible, either in context or as the evidence would be seen in a court of law. I've got a weird background which gives me a stake in the debate, and has probably influenced my thinking, but it would not enter my head to say those things out loud, nor deliberately stop a series of people getting on a train for that matter. The incident with the black dude cannot be dismissed as not-racist because it sits in the context of them preventing a load of people from getting on the metro. If they'd said nowt remoting to racism, you'd have a point. Forgiveness because it has its origins in a football chant doesn't quite work for me, because you still have to be a racist arse on some scale to feel comfy chanting that. Would you chant that, and if not, why not?

I think you have an entirely valid point on media influence overall, but these boys are bang to rights. And that's a valid point on media influence/coverage.

Your usual source contamination won't work here, unless you've got something in the scriptbook for the Jerusalem Post or the UN. Haaretz cover the issue too, but they're paywalled. http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/New-UN-report-reveals-collaboration-between-Israel-and-Syrian-rebels-383926 I really don't understand why an obviously intelligent bloke as yourself chooses to depict the world in such black and white terms. Fear and loathing in SaintsWeb's lounge? It's beneath you.

We are #7 in the Guardian's Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend. http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/feb/20/premier-league-10-things-look-out-weekend All about us too, which is nice.

Guardian interview. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/20/chelsea-paris-metro-victim-souleymane-interview-really-afraid

Unbelievable Jeff is still holding a torch for their potential non-racism. This is very confusing to me. I am playing with the following variables. a = Preventing a black man from getting on a train b = Shouting "we're racist, we're racist and that's the way we like it" at the same time c = Caught on camera It's been a long time since I've done actual algebra, but:- a + b + c = racist Innit?

I've been listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore Histories, which I thoroughly recommend, even if you have to buy the earlier ones. He expresses a view quite often, that in 1000 years when historians are looking back on this period, they're going to look at this entire period of 1918 to mid 2100s as the world finally sorting itself out from the effects of (drum roll) The First World War. It seems crazy, but history seems very compact when you're in it. Both you and I grew up with some of the consequences of the First World War, the Cold War being the most obvious example. From our perspective, the Russians have been enemies since forever. Over a wider timeframe, they've been rivals, but never the existential threat they were during the Cold War. The change in that country has been remarkable. In 1914, it was an autocracy on the verge of collapse, with a largely agricultural economy. In 2015, it is a democratic industrial nation with arguable super-power status. From tsars to communism to democracy, all within a century. I think it's inarguable that by subverting the terms limit with his little puppet, Putin is making something of a mockery of democracy. One wonders how much help he gets from former associates. Historically speaking, dictatorial phases of government are nothing new in democracies during times of major upheaval. The title was used a couple of times during the Roman Republic, but the custom was to give it back once the necessary crises were averted. Even if Putin were of that mould, he's surrounded by crap at the moment. I genuinely think that left to its own devices, Europe and Russia would probably get along fine. The situation in Ukraine was stirred up by the US (Victoria Nuland caught on tape in her f**k the EU moment) and the Germans, a very privacy conscious people after experiences in the East, already vexed about the Snowden revelations, are bloody annoyed at having to manage a situation where their US allies are arming the enemies of a historical enemy. The huge problem is of course, the potential dissolution of a US presence in the area if we all get along, or decide that they're doing more harm than good. That's probably why post-perestroika US foreign policy basically amounts to:- "That bear still asleep?" "Yup" "Poke it with a stick" "It'll wake up. It was real angry last time and had those big claws, remember?" "Poke it!" -- poke "Is it awake yet?" "Nope" "Poke it again" -- countless pokes later "The bear just bit me!" "It's trying to take over the WORLD!"

An update in the case of the alleged Shetland Pony botherer. On January 30th, he was acquitted of having sex with a Shetland Pony. This carried a maximum sentence of two years. He was convicted of outraging public decency, which carries an unlimited sentence. He was jailed for four years. It's your classic "would you rather?", really. Would you rather be a publicly acknowledged horse f**ker and do two years on nonce wing, or just be outrageously indecent in public and go down for four? Will he still go to nonce wing, I wonder? Does the inmate community take a shanking stance on Shetland Ponies? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11380250/Man-jailed-for-sexual-incident-with-a-Shetland-pony.html

Over-exposition has been with us for decades, hypo. Remember the A-Team, where after any explosion or crash, the camera would pan back to a bunch of bad guys dusting themselves off? I admire stuff like Breaking Bad for weaving such a tight script full of Easter eggs and stuff built for rewatch, but they're not having to simulate a zombie apocalypse every week. Thought Morrissey did a nuanced job on what was a very extreme character. He does far worse harm to Michonne in the comic book universe; the retribution was similarly fierce. His arc works well enough for me in both stories. Were his final plans mental and unhinged? Damn right, but from his perspective, they'd taken everything he'd built, everything he'd hoped for and maimed him in the process. He was never that smart to begin with; his big ideas were that you'd stay on top by eliminating anyone that stood in his way and provoking the fear of the other with his own people. A demagogue on a small scale with an axe to grind.

"Free stuff" is and will continue to be the SNP's future. Free stuff is very popular with voters.

Interesting backdrop to all this. The US wants to arm Ukrainians at the exact moment France and Germany are trying to cool it all down. There was talk last week in some of the commentary pieces about France and Germany's bi-lateral action (e.g. not involving the US) being a potential sea change in European politics. Putin made comments about the key decision maker in Western European foreign policy having "no border with any European country" recently. That must have rankled, because it is true. Personally, I think our policy toward Russia has been disastrous, such as we've let it be decided by our friends in NATO. We keep talking about the value of perspective. I'm sure that we all see the accession of member states like Latvia and Lithuania as wondrous expressions of democracy, fruits of the West winning the Cold War. From a Russian perspective, it looks like naked imperialism eating into a historical buffer zone, particularly when NATO bases and artefacts of the missile defense (sic) system are being established in them. If Merkel and Hollande weren't already appraised of Putin's perspective, I'm sure their recent meetings in Moscow would have borne this out. Personally, I wonder how much we need NATO anymore. It was established to protect the West from Soviet aggression and the very real threat of Stalin's brand of communism from propagating all the way to the Atlantic. Communism is over in Russia, and one would guess permanent worldwide revolution took a nosedive with it. Are Russia's objectives the same as the Soviets? I'd argue no. Why bother to occupy Western Europe when there is no need to? There isn't a Hitler or Mussolini on the continent, Europeans and Russians have seen enough of general war and even the EU combined would be mad to have a go. There is some form of democracy stretching from Brest to Vladivostock, and while some of those democracies are definitely more corrupt than others, and Russia would be high on that list, it's a different world. We're more valuable to Putin as customers than we would be as occupied and resisting subjects. On the bombers, think this might just be Putin reminding us how fragile NATO is atm.

If this ever went to court for some reason, a jury would convict based on the evidence. Of course, it won't go to court. They are bang to rights.

His counterpart in the comics is even worse. What is it you find ludicrous about him? His behaviour may seem extreme for us, but it's nowt compared to some of the crap real life humans have pulled over the centuries. Men doing bad things in the name of what they believe is good? That's most dictators, isn't it? That is what he is supposed to be. The whole point of the Walking Dead is not the zombies, it's how humans deal with life outside of consumerist and easy society.

Who knows what ISIS are? Just a year and a bit ago, we had William Hague telling us that we were duty-bound to fight alongside them (including some former elements of Al Qaeda) if we were going to stop the threat that Assad posed to the world. We knew then that elements of the Free Syrian Army were being financed by the likes of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Consequently, the news that Israel is co-ordinating with ISIS isn't new. It's just not being widely reported.

Then earn it, muthafúcka!

A super-sect involving both Muslims (or at least people that claim to be) and Israelis? Let's go with news burying.

Sorry mucker. As I said before, from the perspective of the victim, it really doesn't matter. Looks like a racist. Acts like a racist. Prevents black person from getting on train while claiming to be a racist. Yes, yes, we could crawl to some quiet corner of their minds and determine that they quite like Chinese people on Tuesdays, but it doesn't really have any bearing on anything.

Not much to add to what I've said, really Tokes. ISIS are portrayed as the biggest Islamic extremist baddies on Earth, committing atrocity after atrocity. At best, the Israelis are using their connections to kill them more efficiently. At worst, they are involved in directing acts of terror.