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I really enjoyed the style of this post, but can't really agree with the substance. You paint a picture of a world in stasis, when the reality is that the world is fundamentally unrecognisable from where we were a century ago. Even in the last two years, we've seen unprecedented events; the conflagration of revolutionary sentiment in Arab states through social networking tools. We in the present are always on the frontier, and life has changed immeasurably for all of us in my relatively short life time. If there is one bet you'll never collect on, it's putting money on "nothing ever changing". Happens all the time, and you don't need psychiatric help to be able to acknowledge that.

So this effectively the Southampton FC Show. I can live with that

According to @Lardmeister on twitter:- "Nigel Adkins is the guest on The football league show,Sky Sports 1.17.30 today...nice."

However, one door closes, another one opens. The ebook revolution opens the door for a lot of people to self-publish in a way that wasn't possible before.

Agree with saintbletch on Kindle's suitability for a lot of non-fiction 'professional' books. One of the first things I did was snaffle some computer programming books. Really doesn't work too well for that sort of book ( code samples splayed across the page in odd ways, etc ), and I invariably end up relying on the weighty printed volumes. You can get slightly better mileage out of these books by reducing the font size or rotating the page, but it is a pain in the arse. Moving on though, I would expect all of those problems to be addressed. e-readers are still very much in their infancy. The tech will get a lot better.

I don't think so, CEC. The British public are broadly apathetic rather than stubbornly resistant. Turnout figures for recent elections back this up. And constitution? What constitution? You can't bin something that has never been written.

Columbo is charming, but you're right - it's formulaic. Every episode, Colombo essentially badgers someone into a confession. He's the proto-stalker.

For clarity, I wasn't making the link between the Royals and freedom of speech. Sergei was using the fact that you can call the Queen a tosser without being thrown in the Tower to demonstrate that we have a working democracy. I think we should expect a little more.

An "entry" in Liverpool. They also say "lolly ice" instead of "ice lolly". I am fond of the way they put a -y on the end of everything, though. "You been down the Kwikky, lad?" = "Has young sir just returned from the local Kwik Save"

Mate, really I've lived away from the city since '94 - some of the edges of my accent disappear at times, but whenever I go back to Southampton I can really hear the accent, in a way that is pretty distinct from other southerners. I know quite a few people from up and down the south coast, and there are definitely differences to be heard. The shift in the accents up here in the North West are much more pronounced, though. Right where I'm sat, it's 100% scouse, zoom out 10-15 miles to places like St. Helens, Leigh, Warrington and Wigan, each place with its own accent. Just amazing, especially when it comes to local dialect. Know what they call a cut-way in Golborne? A gennel. A f**king gennel

I don't know why you got lambasted - it's a perfectly reasonable argument backed up by tons of evidence. You only have to look at the attention Paul Lambert is getting for achieving back-to-back promotions with Norwich, or the amount of successful young managers that have left for bigger clubs. I hope the vision of Cortese and the owners is attractive enough to keep him around when he inevitably gets suitors.

I couldn't begrudge him it either. Might be worth a punt at the bookies, to lessen the potential pain

What is the record signing for a Championship club? Matt Mills for Leicester at £5.5M?

Lord D's point about being hereditary succession is well made though. The last Labour government was successful in lowering the number of hereditary peers, and was rightly praised for it. If we don't think it's right that members of the House of Lords should be determined by bloodline, it seems odd our head of state is determined in that way. I'm not disputing that we have freedom of speech, but that's a long way short of being a legitimate and competent democracy. We get to choose an MP. Once they're returned, they'll mostly do whatever the party leadership tells them to, frequently against public opinion. We get to see the odd u-turn, such as we've seen with Michael Gove, but the big stuff, like going to war, or not having a referendum on the EU, seems to go through pretty smoothly. I wouldn't be surprised if the Tories were using Gove as an autonomous gaffe factory. "Hey kids, it's Michael Gove. What will he dream up next? (don't ask us about the economy, or why some of your anti-EU MPs turned coat and denied you a referendum)"

Both of those interviews were very good, perhaps the most human I've seen Nige. Bit worried about his evident love for Liverpool, though. Mad King Kenny will eventually be deposed - after the success Nige has fostered at this club, I'd say he'd be in contention. Keen too, judging by this evidence.

Not sure he'd be interested. Despite them nipping at our heels, they are not playing great football under Big Sam. Don't take my word for it - the West Ham forums are full of people bemoaning the playing style.

Actually, the only NI accent I don't like is the Belfast one. There is a surprising amount of deviation in that very small part of the world. I can do the scouse accent to a standard that would fool most southerners, but few actual residents of the city. Yes, but the reverse applies too. London accents on women sound dodgy.

Nope, I cannot - was all over Twitter the morning I started the post.

See, I'm the complete opposite on scousers. I actually like the 'punchy' version of that accent. It's the whining drone variant that I have trouble with. Literally lose the power to listen to it after about 30 seconds, which is something of a disadvantage if you live in Liverpool

Hehe. Been through that twice, once in Liverpool and again in Northern Ireland. Wore off after about six weeks. More recently, I have come into increasing contact with Indian accents in a professional capacity. They are hard work, particularly on conference calls etc when you have no body language to work with.

Accents are a weird and wonderful thing. While any 'A' Level English Language teacher will insist that technically, there is no correct accent, many accents are either close to unintelligible or really get on your teats. Any accents stick out for you, good or bad? Don't feel restricted to people from this country either. Some of the worst crimes against the spoken English language are often unwittingly committed by those who do not have English as a first language.

Well, if he's here, Saints are obviously going to be 35Million lighter. Why didn't we just go for Tevez, ffs

Am I alone in enjoying MLGs English lesson?

Very interesting, Guan 2.0 - just did a spot of reading on this subject. Found out about the concept of Crown Immunity while reading up. The monarch can commit no legal wrong Perhaps even more alarming, it is a power they can theoretically lend to ministers, effectively servants of the Crown. That is actually rather worrying, and you're right - it has no place in a democracy. Do you think it has been used lately?

Dalek, your specificity on Daleks (and not aliens) reminded me of this gem from Craigslist