pap

Schoolboy error. It's a constant battle between the sexes! Compliments? Pah. I know loads of blokes who kept an even keel for years, eventually let down their barriers and were sh4t on immediately afterward. It'll never happen to me

Deano6, do you want to swap lives for a bit? You come over here and raise my kids. I'll go over there and entertain lovely NY ladies.

I've spent some time in Spain. Had a Spanish girlfriend - gorgeous, naturally. But yep, noticed that phenomenon in older ladies too. Got a theory about that. Back in '94, I was stunned at the amount of people my age or thereabouts that were smokers. Many people who take up the habit think better of it in later life, only to find to their weight ballooning because they've got more of an appetite and less of a metabolism. Course, some don't stop at all - which also takes its toll on the ol' aesthetic loveliness.

I can understand why someone might believe that, but amazingly, I'm in your corner for this one. Sexism, as I understand it - is discrimination against someone based on their gender. Ok, people have expressed preferences and a couple of likes and dislikes, but I don't think anyone has said "women are sh!t because they are women" - and I'm pretty fecking positive that women also talk about the sort of men they like or don't like.

Article I found in one of my mailshots today:- http://sharecrazy.com/beta/daily/7321/uk-to-lose-aaa-rating-and-osborne-to-lose-his-job Excerpt:-

Loads of people, actually. Some succeeded, some didn't. There was a spate of suicides in a town I often frequent for work purposes, kids in their teens or early twenties taking their own lives. Don't want to be too specific out of respect for those left behind, but its heartbreaking to meet the relatives of those who have succeeded. As for reasons, well one nipper I know who took his own life left a fairly long note addressed to his mother. Blamed her for everything, and honestly, he was right. Poor f**ker never stood a chance.

Definitely agree with you there. Unintelligible in a couple of places.

More a case of not looking like swamp monsters.

Unless you have an "in" to the various executive boardrooms of multinationals, this is meaningless conjecture, Alps. It's further eroded by the fact that we have a lot of overseas companies here already, and sorta works on the assumption that labour unions only exist in Britain. You've identified some of the symptoms, but your diagnosis is unsubstantiated and way off the mark. Do yourself a favour. Leave the house and go stare at a billboard for a couple of hours. I think it's important you get to see at least one big picture in your life.

Haven't been single for a very long time. Gotta say, one of the reasons I fell in love with Liverpool was the relatively high quality of ladies compared to those down south. For starters, most of them make an effort when they go out. Additionally, the number of women I've met up here that were up their own arses on account of their beauty can be counted on one hand, whereas "six pinters" tend to think they're god's gift down south.

Was going to bang this into the What have you been reading thread, but it'll probs be better appreciated by the geeks on here. Just finished reading Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds. Loved it. Chapel End Charlie would be very pleased to see the sub-light speeds of the ships. Very interesting universe, almost entirely populated with the various offshoots of humanity. The march of science has essentially rendered humanity immortal, and the author deftly handles concepts like subjective time ( how much time has passed from a character's perspective ) and chronological time ( how many years have actually elapsed ). People spend a lot of time in reefersleep, this universe's version of stasis. There's one part of the book where two old adversaries meet after centuries apart. One of them has been awake for a great deal of that time, and another has spent the vast majority of the intervening years in reefersleep. Just that simple concept, "how long is it since we've seen each other", violated, and to great literary effect. Anyway, no further spoilers. It's great stuff, and I'd heartily recommend you get on it. I find a lot of sci-fi books hard to get into, and if I'm honest, this one took a while to kick in. I've taken to my second book in the same universe like a duck to water though.

Agreed. In pretty much every case, the sponsor logo is many times bigger than the club crest.

Problem is Alps, even if I took all of this at face value - the positive power of unions over the long term far outweigh the short-term frictions. Without them, you and I would not be having this conversation. We wouldn't have weekends, our employment rights would be next to nothing, and our kids would be getting chewed up in industrial machinery instead of doing the national curriculum. But apart from that, yeah, unions are sh!t.

Ah, those pesky unions, trousers How dare they earn 100K+ for representing the interests of tens of thousands? How dare we give £113M to subsidise their scurrilous activities? We could buy around 1.2 Royal Yachts with that money! And we only gave the banks £45Bn. It's a disgrace ( millions ARE bigger than billions, right? ).

Collective decision-making might have historically been true, but don't forget that Blair's New Labour government dispensed with much of the cabinet government we used to know. Taking a look at the disjointed package of measures of the current Government, there doesn't seem to be much collective thought going on at all. However, as to your question, would a different chancellor make any difference? I think it probably would, for the following reasons. First, a great deal of the economy is based on confidence, people and institutions parting with their cash because they believe that the economic conditions are good enough for them to earn it back. I'd argue that from that perspective, Osborne is dead in the water. He has failed to deliver results. In any other line of work, he'd be out of the door. Not only that, but he has publicly pursued other agendas ( such as trying to blame Balls for the LIBOR scandal ) at a time when his full focus should be on improving the economy. Osborne is like most of us, a product of the things he has said and done. He has championed austerity enough times to paint himself into a political corner. Of course, the irony of his austerity plan is that due to our low interest rates, we could actually borrow more for growth and fix some real problems in this country - but with Osborne in play, not going to be anymore than lip service. The chancellor has staked his political career on austerity being the ticket out of this mess. He's wrong, of course - but is now travelling so fast along austerity highway that he'd be unable to U-Turn even if he wanted to. Quite weird to refer to a multi-millionaire as "austerity personified", but that's exactly what Osborne has become. He's a political albatross hanging limply over the shoulders of the Conservative party. Until they deal with that, the seas of the economy are going to be becalmed - because he really doesn't get it and clearly never has.

George Osborne "under pressure" (Boom-boom-boom boom-de-boom-boom) http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jul/25/george-osborne-under-pressure-economy

Yes, 110% is so last decade. We deal in multiples these days.

trousers is a waste of space as a right-winger. Can't insult people when they have a better point than him, crap at straw man arguments and is all too willing to accept a situation is ridiculous when it is actually ridiculous. I'm not necessarily saying trousers is going to be storming up the Thames in a contemporary Potemkin anytime soon, but it's surely just a matter of time

I would rather be Scum Army instead of Saint Army. They gave us that name to p!ss us off. As a group of fans, how p!ssed off do we appear when we say "yep, good name. we'll have that"?

Still think we're in with a shout of getting Lens, despite the Trabzonspor interest. Didn't I see figures of 10M euro knocking around a little while ago?

Nothing wrong with adopting a term of abuse to defuse it.

Naturally it's a ton easier if you don't have the bambinos to think of. If it's just you and your missus, then you'll just be converting your current relationship to a long-distance one or at least, something resembling one ( less contact / extremes of one kind or another ). At the end of the day, mate - you've got to do what you've got to do, weighing up the short-term hassle versus the long-term benefits. If this is a genuinely good opportunity to improve your long term future, go for it. If you're just going for it "because it's there", I'd seriously reconsider.

Stand at the front of the room and say the following. "It's a very difficult job and the only way we're going to get through it is if we all work together as a team. Now that means you do everything I say!"

I've broken bad with this week's episode of Breaking Bad. This week is a Mike-centric episode, Mike being a former cop turned hit-man for the drug trade. The character was nowhere to be seen in the early days of the show, but has become a staunch fan favourite during its run. I keep saying it, but some great character moments again. The actors in this show give top-notch performances. The writing and directing team have fallen into this really nice habit of having killer openings to their episodes. The only downer about watching this show is that most other crime shows feel positively formulaic by comparison. Breaking Bad feels organic because a good part of the show is about our protagonists getting themselves out of bother, plus the writers have no problem in making permanent changes in their "universe". Reset button doesn't really apply here. Vince Gilligan, creator of the show, says his mission is "to turn Mr Chips into Scarface". We're not quite there yet, but it's a genuine case of "so far, so very good".

I feel partially responsible. Introducing Randy Bender into the proceedings sent the mods over the edge, I feel. Sorry, saint_sinner.