pap

You should probably find out what LOL means at some point, though.

What's prompted the question, Hypo? Future-wife refusing to take on the moniker? "I love you, darling hypo, but I do not wish to be Mrs Shufflebottom"

The kids both got my name, eventually. In the early days, Juvenile Unit #1 had the missus' name, for no other reason than we didn't know whether we would last the course. We ended up having to get it legally changed by deed poll. Doesn't really matter in the long run. I've never had any expectation of the kids keeping their names, but ironically, can see arch-feminist Juvenile Unit #1 insisting she keeps her surname in any future union. Which she got from me. A bloke

Possibly, but the advantage of going Pi 2 is not having to be (more of) a big f**king hypocrite by giving Amazon my cash.

I did the Computing A Level before dropping out of Tauntons. Did the BTEC National a year after at the Tech. Awesome course, more technically advanced than most of the stuff we ended up doing at Uni. It did not hurt that the girls who did hairdressing were not far away

'It's all in your head,' and I said, 'So's everything' But he didn't get it I thought he was a man But he was just a little boy How'd you like them (Fiona) Apples?

I've got a super-power. It's called reading people's posts. Makes me less of a moron.

solentstars voted Tory in the last election.

How is your personal recovery going? http://www.whatrecovery.co.uk/

My feeling is that we're told one thing while another happens to be the case. One of the cases I often make is that true power persists, which is something that the monarchy certainly does. Every PM has had a weekly meeting with the Queen since forever. If the role of the monarchy is purely ceremonial, what does the PM need to consult the Queen for? For anything?

I love what Juvenile Unit #1's mates said to her when she got to Uni. "Did you go to a comp? What was that like?" tbf, I did send the girls to Catholic school, which tend to be a bit better in terms of results up here.

Whatever. It's all on the wrong side of the Test and all f**ked whenever there's a problem on Redbridge Road.

I didn't put any stock in that stat, trousers. However, the direction of travel is unsustainable and I'd argue we saw elements of that in the recent riots. People who don't give a f**k because they're never going to have a stake.

Yes, I do think we should completely change the world we live in. I'd go further. It's almost nonsense to believe that we can't. I'm only an amateur student of history, but I'm confident enough to characterise this entire period we've been living through as something of a blip; we happen to have an unfortunate blind spot by virtue of being in it. Concepts that we treat as immutable, such as the global financial system, are going to be looked on as laughable by future generations. I wonder how our "mission" of "make, make, make, sell, sell, sell" will look to our resource-strapped descendants. I'm betting on "f**king madness". The other thing that you learn is that most empires are ultimately brought down from within. External forces may deliver the final blow, but it's the internal struggle of rich and poor that does much of the damage. It's certainly what brought the Roman Republic to a close, and I'd argue that we're getting near to that point ourselves. Saw a stat that at some point this year, the richest 1% will own more than everyone else combined. No idea whether that's true or not, but the present direction of travel is not sustainable. Everything will change at some point. Always does. The only question is whether we've got the wit to recognise the problems and remedy things ourselves, or we wait until the inevitable moment, maybe hundreds of years down the line, where it all kicks off and changes in a chaotic and uncoordinated fashion.

Yeah, but having spent a fair amount of time in both places (my old man lived over there for a number of years) I know who was right

Not exactly fair though, is it? I mean, those rules put rich-but-thíck c**ts ahead of poor-but-useful types.

Frankly, the opinion of many Sotonians, myself included, is that all of Waterside/New Forest is a bit backward. My mate was written off at Hounsdown, made to do CSEs, and ended up re-entering education as a mature student and graduating Uni with a 2:1.

Super. Because house prices were getting way too low. At one point this year, the average house price was only 6 times the average salary. Let's spend taxpayer money keeping those properties out of reach of people by keeping prices high.

One thing that's very interesting is matching posters to school reputation. Or in other words, is that all you've f**king got, Barton Peveril and King Edwards?

I've just finished putting together my Raspberry Pi 2 setup. This is the fella. http://cpc.farnell.com/ucreate-mediakit Came with everything I needed, but I decided to flash OpenELEC onto it instead of using RaspBMC. Details for that are here. http://wiki.openelec.tv/index.php/HOW-TO:Installing_OpenELEC/Writing_The_Disk_Image Had to download a couple of files and needed a computer that could take a MicroSD card as input, but no uber-techy skills involved and I was done within half an hour. The remote control just worked like a champ off the bat. The only thing I plugged a keyboard in for was to setup external sources.

I think Imperial for a seven stretch puts you in the "top learners" bracket, if nowt else. We have a Russell Group University, people! (we may have had one before, idk)

Smug? I went to a former poly, FFS. Smug is the next generation.

I love Nigel, but cannot let my affection for the man get in the way of a new word I've invented, precisely for this sort of thread. nadkins Talking soppy old nostalgic bóllócks about our former promotion winning manager.

Yeah, and I like that sort of post. I also enjoy a nice ambiguous statement without smilies. It really messes with the Bear.

It's an election year. Expect news of lots of free stuff. Free stuff wins votes.