pap

That is a good plan. County Road is mental enough on a normal day. Teeny side streets, etc.

I think we should start a syndicate. We recruit around 50 SaintsWeb members, rank them in the order of potential offensiveness, then get each to send a heartfelt email out to the young lass. We will start with the most offensive person on the list and more or less work our way up, strategically throwing in a couple of good applications to keep the interest up. Hopefully, she'll plump for the most charming basta*d on the list. We then split the $65mil. Plan?

Or accounted for your innate capacity for stalking.

I've seen you make this point a couple of times, Wes - but not really. Your Labour voter is getting bugger all in Kensington. Your Tory voter gets nothing in Knowsley. Even if the power of your mighty vote helps to dislocate a hated incumbent, you only get that opportunity on the election cycle. If we had the right to recall politicians, you may have a point. As it currently goes, we just have to wait until our representatives commit enough visible malfeasance, intolerance or ignorance before they finally bow to public pressure and get out of Dodge. Recently, even that isn't enough. I refer the jury to the case of Jeremy Hunt.

Hypo - I have done some research on your behalf. I visited the Facebook page. You're right. It exists. I see that he gives himself the "mean-something middle name", in the traditional Hypo "invents girlfriends" Chondriac style. He calls himself 'finch'. I took the trouble of looking this up on the finest slang dictionaries on the Internet. This is what I found. [TABLE] [TR] [TD=class: text, colspan: 2] The action of getting something taken from you by a "finch". This 'object' is generally something that is easily recognized as yours to everybody except for the finch. Before you even notice what is happening the finch will already be in possession of what was once yours. Finches are generally harmless entities. [/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] My working hypothesis is that the 'object' is your money. The "generally harmless entities" probably means that this bloke probably wouldn't do this to anyone else, just to you. He has probably read your posts.

He doesn't need a source. He has a longboat and a sharpened stick.

I can't really agree with that. It's the 1982 thing all over again. Ok, you could potentially argue that a poor 1982 graduate might have an overdraft to pay off - but that's really a personal responsibility thing. I think most people of limited means accept that they'll have to work a bit more than their rich counterparts. I'm not saying that's right, but it's a reality that gets dealt with. The point stands; back then people didn't go into Uni coming out owing 27K. I take your point that tuition fees are not the only thing that a student has to fork out for, but equally, I think you're ordering off the Lib Dem soundbite menu. I also think that some of the other points you've made, such as the massive increase in the number of Universities, are a little misleading. We suddenly had lots of new Universities in 1992, but they were all polytechnics beforehand. It was more a rebranding exercise than some epic feat of civil engineering. Most of the so-called second generation Unis existed as educational institutions in some form or another, usually offering a limited amount of degree courses. That said, there's no arguing with the numbers. More people went to University than ever before, and perhaps ever should have. However, I think the problems are a little deeper than people choosing soft degrees. I've got a couple of mates who used to fit the typical Media Studies graduate profile - earning the same amount of money as they could have as an 18 year old entry-level employee. Thing is, they're smart people. They could easily have done well in the media industry had the opportunities been there, but it's a highly selective industry. Problem is Andy, it's not enough to be smart anymore. You have to be marketably smart. To my simultaneous eternal credit and shame, I realised this when I was a nipper. Took Computing over English because, well, if I'm totally honest, was a bit scared of trying to make it on an English ticket. The computing gig is pretty good, but I worry that our degree courses are merely taking the direction carved out by corporate interests.

Ok, so it's up north, but it's not a bad draw, and we're not the same team that got battered there last season (and still came away with a win). I might go to this.

Is this a tax? This is more like taking a loan out for a specific purpose. Those who do not need to take the loan do not need to pay the interest. It's more of a penalty for anyone who lacks the essential 27K-ness to get into Uni. If the 9% is a tax, it's a mean-tested thing. You only have to pay it if you're poor.

The Guardian's Steve Bell ( cartoonist ) with his observations on the Lib Dems. "The Lib Dems are in a death spiral" http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2012/sep/26/lib-dems-steve-bell-conference-video

I didn't get to go to Uni in the land of full grant student heaven, Andy - but I did attend during the transition era. The grant got smaller every year, but Hampshire County Council covered both that and the tuition fees. That was back in the day when this country thought it was a good idea to educate its citizens. We can start a lot later than 1982 if we're just talking tuition fees, but I wanted to hit a date when students had the lot; full grant, free tuition and all the discounts they can eat. A lot of people in Parliament were given money to go to University. Almost none of them had to pay tuition fees, if any at all. I'm sick and tired of the argument that you only start paying it back when you earn £21K. For starters, £21K is not a big salary - less than the national average, and not nearly enough to do anything sensible like get yourself on the property ladder. Second, salary threshold or not, it still implicitly creates a two-tier system. Even if the generous repayment terms only kick in when you hit that magic £21K figure, a poor student still has to pay it back. A rich student probably won't have that burden, as their parents will sensibly pay it up front. It is still debt, and debt will be a deterrent to some. Let's not pretend otherwise.

That article is hardly fair, is it? Why don't they do a comparison of say, the burden on the student in 2012 with those that got their degrees in 1982?

The man is done, in my view. Nothing he says is credible. Even the apology he made over student loans was half-hearted. He didn't apologise for tripling the burden on our undergraduates, just that the party would never promise anything they couldn't deliver again. That's a real problem for the Lib Dems; that's kind of their stock-in-trade. I do feel a bit sorry for him. The Tories have been masterful in hanging most stuff on him, but then, if he hadn't made so many stupid promises, they wouldn't be able to. Does anyone have any time for the Lib Dems with Clegg in charge? Would your opinion be altered if Vince Cable took the reins?

It took me about six weeks to fully understand the accent, a further three months to pick up on the dialect. Northern Ireland was harder.

Hmm. Arrogance isn't something I'd typically attribute to Everton fans from experience. I heard the "we're going to win the league" songs, but assumed that they were joking.

Was genuinely buzzing when I saw him get his dues on MOTD. Saints legend.

This. Deep down, I think they know they've voted in a load of sh!te. Ineffective leadership during crises, spent half their time in government stitching the Lib Dems and the other half stitching the plebs, all in furtherance of their mates on the boards of private health care companies etc. You'll have to forgive me for repetition, but they're a bandit government on a smash and grab. Time and time again they've demonstrated that they don't give a f*ck about the plebs. Fortunately, a plebs vote is worth the same as anyone else's, and there are more of us. Expect "pleb" to be a buzzword during the 2015 election.

Ah, Dog Market. F**k my capacity for useless trivia.

Certainly. I'd imagine that even with your "yes sir, spit or swallow, sir?" slavish deference to your betters, you would be higher up the food chain than filth from Liverpool, or indeed, dirt from anywhere. You may find your chart position dips when you begin to compare yourself with actual people.

He just knows his place. Deep down, he's scum from a Millbrook council estate, and everyone in authority is better and wiser than him, right, TDD?

Sort of like a "people's goalie"?

I stopped listening to Radio 1 after Mark and Lard left. I never moved to Radio 2. I know people that have. I was out for beers with a few of them on Saturday. I mention all this because compared to myself, some of them seemed a lot more middle aged. And fair dos, they are all about five years older than me, so we've got to factor that in as well. Even so, I had to drag the f*ckers out of Real Ale Tw*t pubs and remind them that there were "women" in the city. Now I don't know whether the prolonged chats about kids' education, the BMW "becoming almost the new Ford" or affinity with Real Ale Tw*t pubs is a direct consequence of them listening to Radio 2, but given the dreadful "bore potential", best to steer clear. Go to Metacritic, download any album that has an 8 or better rating ( and isn't some re-release that critics are fawning over ). That's your music sorted. You can get podcasts on pretty much any subject ( haven't checked, but there might be one for giant foam hands ). That's your "radio talk" sorted. Whatever you do, avoid Radio 2 until I've collected more data. I've seen what these people become.

"Best you learn your f****** place … you don't run this f******* government … You're f******* plebs" http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/sep/24/andrew-mitchell-police-log Personally, I think that the Tories should turn a problem into an opportunity. The quote from Mitchell works just as well when directed at the British public. They should use it as their 2015 General Election tagline.

That is true. Your genuine dune would have started threads about travellers or Gibraltar.