NJS

I first read of the religious element to the conflict in Hitchens' God is not great and thought he was probably oversimplifying it for effect - much like even I know that Northern Ireland isn't as simple as Catholic Versus Protestant - but the more I read about, the more I think that angle is fair.

I read his auto-biography/scrapbook thing a few years ago - an excellent read. RIP

4bn -> 40bn in 6 years?

One of my great "hopes" is that the more intelligent animals like Dolphins (which includes Orcas), Chimps, Elephants etc turn out to be a lot more intelligent than we think now - even approaching our level but just not being as nasty.

That was his follow-up to his original which did like.

Comaprisons for the UK to anyone else in Europe apart from France and Germany are completley pointless imo.

Morality aside, you have to say that is fucking brilliant.

I think they have changed - a lot of work has gone into species preservation and "enrichment" as they describe it which is worthwhile and I'd rather see animals in places like Longleat than in the old "cages" type of zoos. Having said that the "sea world" concept seems fundamentally wrong - despite the education angle - sea creatures like whales need somplete freedom imo.

I'll do a line by line later but Christ didn't exist and British soldeirs have only ever served the interests of the rich for starters.

I always knew that conditions for animals in circuses were shit but thought zoos in general were "better" but I think what really turned me off was going to one about 25 years ago with my niece who was 5 or 6 at the time - it took the innocent questions like "why does that lion look so sad" to really wake me up. In fact I think she was so upset that we left early. Places like Monkey World are a bit different but these places where animals are used for "entertainment" are fucking immoral imo.

I'm struggling to set the resolution. It should be 1920 x 1080 but it seems my graphics card won't support that. Which graphics card should i buy? I don't play any games, I just use the PC for Itunes, internet and email but i would like to edit HD video (.mt2s) in Sony Vegas. The monitor has an HDMI input to so I guess an HDMI out on the graphics card is called for too. You can get a decent silent MSI one for about £35 MSI N210

Best analogy ever.

I said that I had zero sympathy with that Yank who was eaten by his pet tiger a couple of months ago and this is similar for me. I know zoos/sea worlds have improved a bit in the last few years and I can see a case for them at some level but it still feels wrong and these incidents seem almost like "justice".

Norways doing pretty well. "After World War II, Norway experienced rapid economic growth, with the first two decades due to the Norwegian shipping and merchant marine and domestic industrialization, and from the early 1970s, a result of exploiting large oil and natural gas deposits that had been discovered in the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea. Today, Norway ranks as the wealthiest country in the world in monetary value, with the largest capital reserve per capita of any nation. In August 2009 the nation's sovereign wealth fund announced that it owned approximately 1% of all the stocks in the world, presumably referring to publicly traded stocks. Norway is the world’s seventh largest oil exporter and the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of its GDP. Following the ongoing financial crisis of 2007–2010, bankers have deemed the Norwegian krone to be one of the most solid currencies in the world." (source: wiki) That's because they didn't have a government who wasted the North Sea bonanza on giving money away to the rich. They also didn't abandon manufacturing in favour of a service based economy. thats right NJS, all of which happened after we joined the 'great european experiment'. No - post May 1979 - I'm sure you know the significance of that date.

Norways doing pretty well. "After World War II, Norway experienced rapid economic growth, with the first two decades due to the Norwegian shipping and merchant marine and domestic industrialization, and from the early 1970s, a result of exploiting large oil and natural gas deposits that had been discovered in the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea. Today, Norway ranks as the wealthiest country in the world in monetary value, with the largest capital reserve per capita of any nation. In August 2009 the nation's sovereign wealth fund announced that it owned approximately 1% of all the stocks in the world, presumably referring to publicly traded stocks. Norway is the world’s seventh largest oil exporter and the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of its GDP. Following the ongoing financial crisis of 2007–2010, bankers have deemed the Norwegian krone to be one of the most solid currencies in the world." (source: wiki) That's because they didn't have a government who wasted the North Sea bonanza on giving money away to the rich. They also didn't abandon manufacturing in favour of a service based economy.

I do but I nornally dress reasonably smartly anyway without going overboard and yes my bosses do care about what I do not what I wear. The fact is nobody would have even commented on Foot's coat if The Sun hadn't gone with "look at this tramp in his donkey jacket" - I'll bet you don't remember the coat - just the "Scandal" that accompanied it. I'll bet I could find photos of Churchill wearing similar coats but he was a "statesman" so nobody ever had a go.

Typical old generation crap - a man can do anything as long as he wears a nice tie - I'd rather care about what he says and does. The Queen should just be shot along with the rest of her family - I don't care what she wears to be honest.

I presume he means if anyone had 200m to invest then if the price is 100m with no strings attached, that would leave 100m for players. I'm not sure its that simple though.

He didn't have to - the mortgage on the stand was being paid for by STs and only had to be paid up on a sale. Of course that begs the question as to where the ST money goes now with no mortgage but that's by the by....

When he played SJP and the whole "Boss" thing was at its height, I did feel like I had to dislike him just from an anti-trendy pov. Since then, without really getting into his music, I've come to recognise he does deserve respect. I also think Born to run is a fantastic song.

I remember seeing a documentary a while ago about an American cruise liner and the cabin cleaners basically worked just for tips. What was interesting was that the woman they interviewed was It think Ukrainian or similar and ahe made the point that 30 years ago the cleaner would have been Black and 15 years ago she would have been Hispanic - basically the ethinicty may change but its always the "lowest" tier who clean up the shit.

The Sun definitely had a countdown.

I don't think you are and I don't think LM is - "cunt" to me implies nastiness and deliberate ruthlessness (and as such can be a compliment as well) which I think does apply to the Mail and its writers (and in the latter sense to Alan Shearer). are you saying that you are actually complimenting everyone who reads and/or who writes for the daily mail? I like your definition of 'cunt' btw. i'm now quite happy to be called that by you! No - it's about context. "Melanie Phillips is a cunt" is different to "Alan Shearer might be a cunt but he's our cunt".

I don't dispute that in 1982 they were pretty much unelectable - partly because Foot was stuck in a an older age where peoople cared about things - but the "donkey jacket" thing was just an excuse imo.

I don't think you are and I don't think LM is - "cunt" to me implies nastiness and deliberate ruthlessness (and as such can be a compliment as well) which I think does apply to the Mail and its writers (and in the latter sense to Alan Shearer).