pap

Yeah, plenty of people feel really bad for those vastly wealthy central bankers that tried to enslave nations over the pretend money it issued.

Here's Marina Prentoulis, speaking for Syriza at a Left Unity meeting at King's College. Good background on what has driven today's poll results.

And just like that, we've an anti-austerity coalition running in austerity EU. http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/jan/26/greece-election-syriza-victory-alexis-tsipras-coalition-talks-live-updates Deal struck with the right-wing Greek Independents.

It certainly will be. Proper left-wing coalition gaining power for the first time since neo-liberalism took hold. I think all of your points are arguably valid, except I'd probably go for "everything to gain" rather than nothing to lose. The refrain amongst the Greeks during the worst days of troika-imposed austerity was "are they trying to kill us?". Syriza built their support on grass roots solidarity (e.g. helping out those affected by austerity) and have become a bit of a model for left movements elsewhere. I've seen their people speak twice at Left Unity events, for example.

Nope. Commercial money supply is a load of arbitrary old bollócks, something that few on here have ever worked out. Greece should be celebrated for having the courage to say no to these c**ts.

It's not the plan. Syriza are resolved to staying in the EU and reforming it, if at all possible. The result is not a surprise. They've been getting ever closer to an outright majority, and were the largest party in the last set of elections. What is different now is the level of negotiation they'll have to do to form a government. They just need to keep the Greek Independents and the Communist parties on-board and they are good. I am looking forward to seeing how the EU deals with anti-austerity Greece. Bluff well and truly called by the Greek electorate there. Syriza have been making the right moves for years.

I left Apple behind a while back. My latest beast of choice is a Galaxy Tab S, rocking a 64Gb SD card and the proprietary keyboard. I absolutely love the setup. Sort of makes the laptop redundant for my purposes at least. I finally sent the iPad3 onto the hand-me-down Grey Havens. Juvenile Unit #2 is using that now. What tablet are you using? Share the fondleslab love.

Sorry for taking a while to respond to this, Phil. I read the article and delved into a lot of the links. There do seem to be rather a lot of people dying that either are involved with or could possibly have knowledge of this conspiracy. note that Leon Brittan popped his clogs while I was away. Couldn't say anything at the time with libel laws and all that, but he was reportedly caught by the OB after a young lad escaped from one of these rape houses and found half-naked on the street. The OB reportedly found Brittan on investigating the claims. Brittan was quickly shuffled off into relative EU Commissioner obcurity. He was the guy that the dossier was handed to in the 1980s. No chance of that ever being investigated. Of course, he follows Lord McAlpine, someone else that was named, seemingly exonerated after Steven Messham's incredible claim of mistaken identity and then suddenly died. Part of the problem, of course, is the way that libel laws, and particularly the differences in income that would allow people to fight the case, keep things hushed up. I know that I have had to be extremely careful in discussing those that are living, even though I have seen their names crop up again and again elsewhere. If Sally Bercow is going to have to pay a substantial sum just for a cheeky question, you'd worry about the prospects of someone that went into detail. I don't really want to talk individuals at this point, but to some broad questions framed by the article. 1) Have people been killed to maintain the secrecy of this conspiracy? Plenty, mostly the victims of abuse, but it would not surprise me if some of the names on the article, potential whistleblowers, have been killed too. The Dando case is particularly interesting. I was working in Fulham at the time, and parked my car in the same streets she was shot on. I think she uncovered something. The links with other players simply make the possibility too strong to dismiss. 2) Do the likes of Childline and Crimestoppers protect VIP wrongdoing? I used to think this an interesting, if wild claim. Post-Savile, it has a lot more credibility. Rantzen's reaction was grim. Green room gossip, she says afterward. Perhaps. The other thing that makes me treat this idea a little more seriously is the sheer volume of the abuse known now, versus what Childline managed to uncover in 30 years of existence. You'd have to figure that Childline would have been the first number one of these abused kids would have dialed. Why didn't Childline, with its free 0800 number, a hub of all child abuse reports in the country, uncover this vile practice?

Star Wars Rebels CGI Star Wars show set between Episodes III and IV. Follows the exploits of a renegade freighter, and seems very much like a cross between Star Wars and the A-Team, and also evokes a lot of Empire Strikes Back - a successful hyperdrive is usually the denouement of an encounter with the much stronger Empire. Star Wars I, II and III must be the only trilogy where the material built around them was better than the inspiration. Think most Star Wars fans would get a kick out of this, with the caveat that it is aimed at a younger audience.

There is actually a scene that deals with the issue of whether it is a confession or not. Gleeson goes to his boss, who reckons that it wasn't actually a confession because the bloke wasn't seeking any kind of forgiveness. Good movie.

I met Le Tiss when he was 17 at the Southampton Balloon and Flower Show. Was a nice nipper, played a bit of footy with him, just passing it between us, like. Great liar too. Was complimentary about my skills, which didn't really exist

Caught a great Irish movie recently; Calvary. Great opening. Brendan Gleeson's priest is confronted in confession by someone who says he first tasted semen at the age of seven, and was repeatedly raped anally and orally for years by a deviant priest from the Catholic church. The offender is now long dead, so the man in confession cannot kill him, but is resolved to kill Gleeson's character on Sunday week, even though no-one has a bad word to say about him, and he has done nothing wrong. More shocking, y'see. The movie tracks Gleeson's progress through what could be his last week on Earth. It's a dark, powerful and sometimes comic brew, featuring some of Ireland's best talent. Gleeson is excellent, and he's joined by the likes of Dylan Moran (How do you want me?, Black Books), Aiden Gillen (The Wire, Game of Thrones), Chris O'Dowd (The IT Crowd) and even the bloke that used to wear the "I Shot JR" T-Shirt in Father Ted (real fame, yo). It wouldn't be the fastest film out there, but it plays out like a whodunnit and pulls strongly on themes of death, suicide and the historical abuses of the Catholic Church. It also goes to show how far the ROI has gone in dismissing the influence of the Catholic Church, which was hugely influential back in the 1970s. I don't think such a critical film could have been made back then.

Also, the standard of debate is awful.

Finally got around to watching The Wolf of Wall Street in the past couple of weeks. It's a masterpiece, and confirms Scorsese's reputation as one of the best directors of all time. It is an absolutely adult movie. The version I saw on the plane was cut to ribbons. The version I saw on BluRay not only kicked arse, but snorted coke out of it. DeCaprio is amazing. What Ray Liotta possibly could have been if he'd been interested in doing big pictures. Margot Robbie would rate double hand amputations on the Last Boy Scout's "finger scale". Most of all though, loved how candid and subversive the film was, especially at the beginning and the end. Belfour's mentor Matt Hanna lays the stock market bare in his "hmmm" lunch. Keep 'em on the Ferris Wheel. We make cold hard cash. The final scene is killer. Best movie I've seen in the last couple of years.

I'm sitting in North Carolina getting ready to depart for our clement shores. This is probably the tenth time I've been over to the US, all in a professional capacity. I went to lunch with a couple of buddies today, older gentlemen, and mentioned this thread to them. First, it's a brave politician that goes up against the might of the NRA. When they do, they typically lose. Illinois tried to ban concealed carrying. The Supreme Court overruled their decision and at the eleventh hour, concealed carrying was once again legal in the state of Illinois. People like their guns. Need their guns. The question is why, and the real answer is not a pleasant one. Let's play with some others first. A lot of times, gun ownership is tied to hobbies. People still seriously hunt here; a colleague of mine has all kinds of pictures of him conquering various animals with a big sh!t eating grin sculpted from perfect teeth. His family are farmers and he personally breeds cattle. That could be unpleasant, depending on how you feel about hunting. Personally, I'm not that bothered. Then you've got the prescribed reason that Americans have guns; to be able to overthrow a tyrannical government, or one operating against the best interests of the nation. Good luck with that. You may have the civilian version of the M16 or an actual AK47. It doesn't even stack up against what the police have, let alone the National Guard. The police have been hugely militarised. No chance. So let's get to the actual reason. Americans just don't trust each other. Don't feel secure, and don't want to be in a situation where someone else has a gun and they don't. The media certainly don't help in this regard, peddling fear 24/7, but it'd be overly simplistic to lay the blame entirely at their feet, particularly as the vast majority of output is either external (CNN is basically the Terror News Network now) or frivolous (DeflateGate). There is almost no examination of what it means to be an American. There is little that binds these people bar business, pop culture and consumerism. My lunch companions actually tried to make the case that guns, and specifically the concealed carrying policy, keep people polite and stop fighting because you never know when someone is going to have a piece on them. Perhaps, that's true, but it's also true that we don't have very many massacres (Hungerford and Dunblane being the obvious examples) while they seem to have them year after year. This spate of children killing other children or themselves? Can't remember a case in the UK. I can't help feeling that the proliferation of guns fuels the mistrust. You go out in the UK, and you have an expectation that you'll make it home alive, that your life won't be in danger and even if you do get beat up or stabbed, there will be a free hospital that'll try to fix you up. A US citizen can't be so sure. It's self-perpetuating, self-validating and ever growing. It's tragic. What's wrong with America? It's afraid of itself.

Yanks is hugely imprecise, to the extent where you would offend half the country. Get it?

They still do nothing about the tits on the outside. The ones that read it.

Such an utter fear monger. Behave yourself.

My colleagues did that this weekend. However, they are clean living so didn't fancy it. Will probably do it in the summer if I come over. In Winston-Salem at the moment which is arty, but still caters for rednecks.

Or getting shown up I look forward to your impending essay on the subject. Top work, teach! Maybe you should switch over to home economics. You might learn to save your own bacon then. I keep meaning to get out of town more, but yeah, nice part of the world. I think Asheville is first on my list.

There was this bloke called Jimmy Savile kicking around a while back.... Robbing your kid's compensation is an extremely shít thing to do, but get some perspective.

The only thing that we did differently was not just sack the man without a replacement waiting in the wings. Was it the right footballing decision? Yes. The correct business decision? Yes. He might not have known when the final nail was going to be hammered in, but he could hear the banging on the coffin at the end of the previous season. He was given a chance to show his Premier League mettle and failed. That's no disgrace; plenty do and some, like Neil Warnock, have failed repeatedly. If you were running a business and you knew that someone had to go, how would you handle it? In serial, starting your recruitment drive only after the person had been sacked, or at the moment you knew he was going to be sacked? Yeah, it looks utterly ruthless and calculated under the glare of the media spotlight, but this sort of thing goes on all the time in business.

From Neville's perspective, he's got to make a call either way. Saying that Saints won't make the top four is a far easier call for him right now than sticking his neck out and saying they definitely will make the top four. Personally, I hope he's wrong, not only for our sakes, but also to see him have to admit it year after year. Don't think anyone will top Hansen though.

You could say the same about your post. I've referred to the post-match Coventry interview loads and have never had the bother you've got for it. Alright, hindsight shows us that neither Gray nor Wigley had the chops for the top job, but at some point they were considered decent enough to do it. Something was definitely off in that interview; a lot of people at the time didn't want to hear it. The capitulation of the top spot to fúcking Reading irked me. Having West Ham breathing down our necks on the last day of the season was never going to be seen as acceptable by Cortese, or indeed, many of the fans. So while I don't agree with all of your post, I think you make some valid points.

Just be aware that saying you are just a player in bletch's solipsist universe is NOT a defence in court.