bridge too far

I really wish I hadn't looked at that. Inhumane behaviour by those involved / walking by. There's not much that reduces me to tears these days, but that did.

Not sure if the Guardian article has been linked, but here's the opening paragraph "The families of the 96, mostly young, people who died on the terraces of Hillsborough have waited 22 years, not only for the authorities culpable to acknowledge their responsibility. It has also taken this long for the families' cause to be understood by the public, who were largely taken in by false stories of drunken and ticketless fans, on to whom the South Yorkshire police sought to deflect blame from their own negligence." http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/17/hillsborough-disaster-legacy-lies

It seems that one of the phew fans got the wrong end of the stick and it was, indeed, SC's press conference. Said confused fan then posted on the phew's message board that there was to be a press conference and they all started fannying about and getting excited (including Mr TF)

My source was my skate partner who amended his statement to '2 o'clock' and has rushed upstairs to watch SSN

Hmm - nothing yet. Not ANOTHER lie, surely

Press conference today lunchtime apparently.

Perhaps the 'ordinary people' can't afford the risk? OK if they don't get elected, they can carry on with whatever employment they currently have. But suppose they get elected in a marginal seat that might swing against them in a subsequent election? They'll be unemployed. Unlike a lot of current MPs, they might find it very hard to get back into employment. When you think, for example, that the new Defence Secretary has a personal wealth of between £7.5m and £9m, then you can see that, if he lost his seat, he'd still be very comfortable. The same can be said of Cameron (£30m) and Osborne (£4m). And top Labour and LibDem politicians would also be comfortable if they lost their seats because they'd be in line for directorships / lectureships etc. But the ordinary man / woman in the street?

Thanks R - I've just googled it (should have done that before )

First time in 8 years that Federer has been outside the top 3 so, yes, very impressive by Murray. I THINK (but I'm not 100% sure) that he's the highest ranked British player of the modern era?

See how much weight you've lost with my fitness regime, Ricke?

Which is more than can be said about your comment, you Philistine you!

I've just watched it again. Whilst I'm amazed at the gymnastics required to perform like that, the old traditionalist part of me thinks that there's more to ballet than just tricks. The artistry is missing I think - and I think of someone like Sylvie Guillem who was very, very supple but nonetheless brought such emotion and feeling to the role.

Thanks for posting that, MoG! Amazing!!!!!!

What a shame we've moved away from the original context of this thread.

Can someone give me a sensible explanation as to why some country's bomb is 'illegal' but other countries' bombs aren't?

What I'm struggling to understand is this. Why is unemployment higher here than it is in other comparable northern European countries? Can anyone give me a sensible answer please?

I wasn't suggesting it was xenophobic. Too many people from Europe in the UK - simple answer = send them home. BUT on the understanding that expats come back here. After all, those Europeans might welcome the chance to take on the jobs in their own countries that some of the expats might have taken. Now I'm not seriously suggesting this SHOULD happen, far from it. But a 'level playing field' policy should be instigated if this country were ever to impose such a law (they can't actually - European Directives [freedom of movement, competition etc] would forbid it).

You didn't. I was just extrapolating your 'theory' to its logical conclusion for you.

As long as ex-pats were required to return to GB eh? Only fair.

Rhetorical question - why doesn't Dave send all the Poles (and Spanish, French, German, American etc. etc. etc.) home then? It would solve his unemployment problem at a stroke!

It's called a Director's Loan and is a valid instrument.

Sorry for going off at a tangent, but there was a fascinating programme on BBC1 last night http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14459843 It's about babies born with an indeterminate sex. It's far more common than we might realise. The topic was handled very sensitively (none of your freak show treatment here) "A child that is born neither male or female is a rare occurrence but babies born with some form of Disorder of Sex Development (DSD) happens in one in every 1,500 births, according to the support group Accord Alliance." "In a major city as many as 100,000 people will have a disorder of sex development of some sort. Some DSDs are not obvious at birth because they affect the internal organs and can go undiagnosed for years."

15 for me but I guessed a lot of them. Still not good enough to be considered for UK citizenship.

There's another question too, although I think Werritty will be asked this by the Cabinet office or whoever. That is this. Who paid for him to go on all these trips. Apparently he earned only £20K over 5 years from his consultancies. Also, apart from Fox, other Tory MPs were shareholders in Werritty's now defunct health and defence businesses - Chris Grayling for one.

For those of you who like play on words, if you can be arsed to read the entries, there are some very funny captions here http://order-order.com/2011/10/07/friday-caption-contest-liam-fox-edition/