pap

Wasn't that the idea of Thomas Lewis Way? To provide another main route into town to relieve the Avenue? What would you give up for the proposed new roads?

He's not outed. Quite a few of us follow him on Twitter. Wouldn't. Tried my luck with a ginger lady and got away with it twice. Can't risk a Tory baby.

If your second sentence is justification for your first, then I can't agree. Easy to form that impression from seeing smashed students staggering about on a Saturday night, with their big words, bright futures and their undropped T's. "Those drunken student bastards! This all they do! Every day! Every f**king day! Well this, and Countdown, but still". The likely reality is that most of those people have probably just finished studying their figurative genitals off, and are out partying to celebrate. We all do it, except most of us aren't 20 years old and have learned to hold our ale a little better.

The first thing I noticed about Unbelievable Jeff was just how defined he was. Because his Twitter pic is very pixellated and blurry. Sorry, Unbelievable Jeff, it is. So Jeff and I meet up at Finsbury Park Station, along with adriansfc's mate. We walked to the Emirates unchallenged, taunting the bouncers with ripping lines like "will we get our heads kicked in if we go in here, mate?". They were obviously so scared that they responded in the negative. Sauntered in, ordered beers, before strolling purposefully to the smoking area, offering aht (when in Rome) the omnipresent Arsenal fans with throwdowns like "How do you think you're going to get on tonight? 3-1? We'll see.", again absolutely unchallenged. People made space for the three of us in the smoking area. We yarned about the site (as always), politics and I found out that DPS was an IT Project Manager. Programmers and project managers typically face off like mongoose and cobra, but I've learned to respect their shít deflection and filtration skills. Don't get me wrong; some of them are dogshíte, and could be made redundant with an Outlook rule (FW: Everything to programmer), but Unbelievable Jeff seemed to know his professional onions, and was probably grateful that I wasn't doing the typical programmer thing and stabbing him in the neck with a sharpened USB stick. Walked down to the Emirates and spent a bit of time in the very loud away fans bit. We were in different parts of the stand, so parted ways after that. But yeah, Unbelievable Jeff is your classic case of bloke who sometimes comes across as a bigger díck on here than he is in person, a trait I (hopefully) share. Intelligent and much less of a Tory than he'd like to be. You talk a good game on here, UJ, but your heart's just not in it

If they come out with a degree, they should earn more for the government; at least, that was always the old justification for bunging grants out to our young people, a valid one too. shurlock makes a valid point about the number of graduates in non-graduate jobs. I can think of three mates immediately. My bro-in-law is a trained teacher and can't get anything remotely local, two of my mates went to Uni together, did media studies, and were earning 11K a year working for a call centre. Fortunately, both of those have moved onto much better things since. A lot of people remark that too many people go to University. I have some sympathy with that view. A good 10% of my year in the Scouser Mickey Mouser Uni (LJMU) did not give a clean fúck; passing time. One bloke used to put his feet on the desk and read a newspaper in seminars, while a bunch of annoying scouse uber-geeks would invade the UNIX lab, play text-based adventure games and say hal-baaaaaaeeerd (halberd) loudly and a lot while I was trying to code C. We considered booting someone off a group project because he'd done the sweet sum of fúck all throughout. That said, my darling London-based money sink reports that at her place, people are intelligent, committed and friendly, with the exception of the Oxbridge reject crowd, who apparently believe that their failed applications to Britain's top institutions are in fact, tickets to Lord it over everyone Central Despite its shortcomings, I loved my time at Uni. Thrust into a new city with new people, it helped hone my initiative and self-drive (a must with a few of our lecturers, who were either barely intelligible or less clued up than the students). It gave me a piece of paper which translates into Samuel L as "TAKE ME SERIOUSLY, MUTHAFÚCKAS!! (Woah! Woah! Within reason, muthafúcka. It's only LJMU)". It was definitely worth the 9K in student loans, four years of relative poverty and sixteen hours a week of part-time work. My daughter won't pay off her much larger student costs within four years of graduation unless she gets a top job or bit of help. Not fair on the youth of today, and now that the direction of travel has been established, it'll be even less fair on the youth of tomorrow. A few wailing articles from cash-strapped vice chancellors in the broadsheets will lead to a series of little increases. Who knows, in time we could leapfrog our American cousins to "Most Expensive Education In The World". Dream big.

Let's put it another way. If you were a government and were told that by paying just shy of 100K, you could provide a complete framework for educating someone, after which they are far more likely to:- 1) get a job 2) earn more money in that job 3) earn more money for the country 4) take less from the state 5) spawn offspring of a similar mindset For likely the next forty years of his or her life..... Would you do it?

Nice idea in theory, subjective mess in practice. Who would determine which jobs were most needed? If it is employers and business people, then why aren't they spending the money on training and investment? Why should the taxpayer subsidise what are arguably internal staff development costs for corporate interests? If it is the government, then we're talking potential changes of direction every five years - plus many of their requirements are going to be the direct result of their f**k-ups. Just think that outside of a planned economy (which consumerist capitalist certainly isn't), would be very difficult to implement.

Southampton is bloody poor on transport, but similar problems exist up and down the country. Too much demand for the available capacity. Southampton is certainly not helped by the poor public transport system; many have seen the light and know that as bad as the traffic can be, the car is still usually going to be their best option. Bus companies don't give a f**k. The train routes are poorly laid out and cause too much disruption to other, important parts of the city (as anyone that has been near the level crossing near the Farmhouse will attest). Southampton may only have a quarter of a million people living within the city limits, but it's part of a sprawling conurbation of 1.5m people. Those numbers rise to 2m if you include the Isle of Wight and New Forest. The council have decided that the car is the answer, but in a setup like ours, where so much of the traffic comes from outside the city, think an organisation at a metro level is best suited to determine transport provisioning. The whole area needs major investment in transport infrastructure, and I'd sooner see the money spent on major projects, such as a metro system and tunnels to places like Hythe and the Isle of Wight, schemes to keep traffic off of the roads - than more roads. Demand is something that should be welcomed and catered for, not a major cause of hassle.

Where's the blood, Bearsa?

I just mention it because that's the most common size out there now, what with Full HD being a standard.

It doesn't quite work. The Soviets used to pluck their gifted kids out and take them as far as they could. That wouldn't quite work either. They were in a stronger position than football clubs in terms of getting something back from their investment. No transfer fees to speak of, but not much chance of brain drain either. I'm not on-board with human capital contracts, but a scheme where the cost of fees is covered by the government when someone has paid a sufficient amount into the UK tax system, would be my preference. It'd go a long way to preventing or postponing the brain drain, it allows the country to make good on its investments and is a fairer deal for everyone, not just the less well off. "Go to Uni, get a job and make this country some money, and we'll cover the cost of your education" seems a far better proposition than the punitive system we have now.

Search for 1920x1080 and resize the image. Same aspect ratio, so you should have no issues.

It's a counter-productive aspiration tax targeted at the poor. The clever poor kid may still go to University, but that's because he or she is clever and will probably realise that even though they're getting shafted financially, it'll probably be worth it in the end. It's madness from a national interest perspective. What sort of football club would Southampton FC be if it erected these sorts of barriers to entry for talent? The club has a history over bending over backwards to nurture talent when it finds it, even takes risks when it is unsure. That's because the club realises that it is a decent investment, and they don't want to miss any talent for unimportant reasons, such as the kid's family finances or wish not to end up in a f**king boatload of debt. The country should operate on the same principles.

That's harsh. Danny Dyer is already bargain bin. I know people will say "pap, you can't say that! Moff from Human Traffic was excellent!". Yeah, maybe. The bit after that, where Danny lived on cable networks and went around with football crews pretending he was in constant danger, earned him the bargain bin tag. To any smart arse that says "but yeah, pap - he's in Eastenders now", I'll just say that virtually anyone could get into EastEnders. At one stage, you just needed footage of yourself attending Grange Hill Comprehensive. Footage! They weren't even asking for O Levels or GCSEs!

Sorry, other questions re: Bucks, the hypothetically treacherous bastard, him. 1) Is Bucks a girl? No. Previous speculation that Bucks might have been a bored female pornstar idling away the hours on SaintsWeb between takes was entirely unfounded. 2) How did reality reconcile itself with expectation? Well, after the back and forth on the PS4 vs XBox thread, I thought he was going to come dressed as the Master Chief. That did not happen. 3) Is he normal? Yeah, loads more than me. Looks like a typical mush going to football, talks about normal things (SaintsWeb excepted). 5) Does he have any facial tattoos? No. Looked proper out of place in the Farmhouse. 6) Did he bring any dangerous animals to the venue? No. 7) Is he a copper? I have reason to believe he isn't. Well, either that, or he's playing the long game

I'm not really up for bumming Bucks, Bear. I can answer your question in a different way, though. Another hypothetical situation. Bucks and I are both single, out on the pull with limited pool of women. Is he a threat to me getting my end away? Yes he is. (Fúck you, Bucks! I thought we were supposed to be nascent drinking pals!)

As Lou gave me such a decent write-up, I have to agree. However, I can see where this is going, and as a fellow male, have some sense of where my male colleagues are coming from. Sorry it has to be this reductive, Lou. I feel it would save a lot of time. 1) Is Lou a girl? Yeah. Previous speculation that she was a moustache-twitchin' trucker was entirely unfounded. 2) How did reality reconcile itself with expectation? After finding out that she wasn't a trucker, everything was a bonus. 3) Is she normal? No. She meets people off Internet forums. Fúcking weirdo. 4) Where does she rate on your recently invented "would or wouldn't" metric, assuming some sort of hypothetical scenario where ms pap has seen finally sense and bin-bagged you and Lou has inexplicably developed a hobbit fetish? Would. 5) Does she have any facial tattoos? No. 6) Did she bring any dangerous animals to the venue? Bucks was fine once we put the muzzle on 7) Is she a copper? I have reason to believe she isn't. Well, either that, or she's playing the long game

I'm not sure there's a more dangerous or subjective word in use than our current application of "terrorist". It's dangerous because there is separate legislation for terrorist offences, and as I said before, it's subjective. There's the old saying. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, something we saw a lot of during the IRA's campaign within the UK. The IRA a lot of their finance from sympathetic Irish Americans, who knew full well what'd happen to the money, yet were vilified by many Brits here for the atrocities they committed. A lot really depends on what bubble you're living in and whether you can see through it or not. The other problem I have with the term is that it's a crude simplifier, and explanation in and of itself. That's certainly the way I understood it as a child in the 1980s. Terrorist = bad person, especially the IRA. It wasn't until later on that I saw both sides of that story. I don't condone any of the atrocities carried out by either side, but I have a better understanding of why things got as bad as they did. As for it's application in this case by Islamic groups in America, I personally wouldn't agree with their sentiments (subjective!) but I understand the reason it has been used. It's a weaponised term, which has been bunged in one direction, sometimes in a far too general way. I'm entirely unsurprised it has been tossed back the other way.

I'm out for the next couple of home games. Business trip, so have handed the ST to baby bro. More than happy to sort something after tho'. Plus, you could always have fun without me. It's both permissible and possible.

That's shockingly crap, Tim. I am glad I never had to deal with those bastards for very long.

Available for most browsers. Like browsing the Internet before capitalism took hold

There used to be a dude that hung around the New Kings Road in Fulham, accosting people as they disembarked the District Line. Unfailingly, he told complete lies but I nearly always gave him money, because he'd say things like he was using the money to take over the world, etc.

I'm going to agree with GM for a bit. I think that your really important mates can be counted on two hands. Most of my best mates date back to secondary school; I've known my best mate for 31 years. I've obviously met loads of people since, and there are people I can drink in Liverpool with should I so wish, we frequently do and while I'd call them mates, they are not people I'd feel comfy calling in a crisis, whereas none of my school friends would think twice about doing that. There is absolutely no substitute for years. That said, I'm obviously coming here for a reason, and like many others, spend far too much time on the forum. None of us are visiting the site to admire the design work or the paging metaphor. We're here to interact with people, and I agree with nemesis Tim that it's weird to spend so much time in a virtual world committing thousands of words to express thoughts and feelings so that others can read them, and spending lots of time reading the opinions of others, while simultaenously holding the view that it would be weird to meet people that you interact with all the time. I admire a lot of your work, and I'm not just talking ground-breaking revelations; I like the way a lot of people conduct themselves on this site. Wondering who is behind the words is a perfectly natural reaction; meeting people gives you better insight still. Everyone I've met off this forum that I didn't know before, that's five by the way, has been sound in person, even Barry Sanchez. We barely fought after meeting up, same thing with DPS and Bucks on a much smaller scale. We've had some ding-dongs in the past, and I'm sure we'll all debate seriously in the future, but one thing that I suspect will always exist amongst the "meeters" is a respect for each others' views, which can be in relatively short supply at times. We all unwittingly build composites of people based on the fragmented bits and pieces they choose to share, and that's true in real life too. However, I don't care how good a writer you are; you lose so much information in this text-only format. 45 minutes chatting the cheese gives you a sense of a person that'd normally take months to acquire on a forum. That bit of extra understanding generates the respect, I reckon - just that sense of knowing where someone is coming from makes all the difference.

Covered in previous post to deano6, I think.

No, sadly you make neither Brigade. I work in mostly the same way. The difference is this; the pair of us can trust ourselves not to completely lose our sh!t over an Internet post. We are capable of reading, comprehending and thinking "that's nice, but I can't be arsed". This contrasts with those that use the Ignore facility, which is all about people not having the self-control to moderate the maelstrom of emotions they feel when they read a post they don't like. You are fine, deano6.