pap

One to show the kids, eh Dad?

Having trouble on the ol' money saving part. Borrowed more than Labour did in thirteen years, in less than five years, for less services? Bang up job.

Ah, look. "Me me me" CB Fry is doing the angry thing again. It's cute. As a bonus, check out its parenting priorities. Let's see that again, shall we. And it wonders why people accuse it of a lack of empathy.

Nah, it's the one that has the demons running around his head, acts like an utter c**t to anyone that disagrees with him and admits that he would put his own liberty above the safety of his hypothetically missing child. That'll be the one.

And yet, people keep asking the question. It's probably that whole lack of empathy thing. Most people are cured when they have small ones to look after.

May help....

Never worried http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?51097-Season-ticket-for-sale&p=2002854#post2002854

Re: pubs for home fans. Used to go the the Chapel. The Farmhouse is now my first choice, before and after. I was drawn in by the signage.

If nothing else, it proves that you can have life after Radio 1. Not much of a life, but there you go.

I've just phoned the office and told them I can't do any work today. I simply explained that I was going to spend hours of my time putting together a complete timeline and solution to a case which the UK taxpayer has already spent a fruitless 10 million, all for the benefit of a web designer that doesn't want to know anyway. I urge others to make a similar commitment.

Yeah, it's only likely to be visited by people interested in a popular football club that now plays in some obscure league. Premier, I think they call it

Google and frequency undo you, my good man. Not that I can be arsed searching it out, but feel free to find your bile and regurgitate it.

Is it? Here's the maths. 1) You persistently accuse someone of having a mental illness. 2) You persistently attempt to insult the person you accuse of having a mental illness. Something in this equation doesn't hold. There has to be another variable. Either your ongoing charges are entirely false or you think it's cool to abuse mentally ill people. Which is it?

I see. Some of your friends don't make the distinction. Tim is even capable of making remote diagnoses. He's suggested that I'm mentally ill or have a cognitive disorder several times. So if someone is diagnosed with a mental illness, then they're off limits. But if they're not diagnosed, and simply disagree with you, then they're nuts and fair game? I'm just trying to understand the mechanics of your operation here. I'm fairly capable at most tasks, but I feel that this is delicate work and would like to know more about the rough and tumble of ganging up with a load of similarly prejudiced mates and abusing the potentially mentally ill on account of them thinking different things. Please share. Most of us are getting too old to recall our first-hand playground experiences.

Nah, I agree. Just informed. I quite like the way you combine accusations of mental illness with sustained insults. I mean, if you all believe I'm genuinely mentally ill, then it does lead one to some interesting questions. How does it work in real life, for example? Do you all phone each other up and head down to the DOP? Find someone with mental illness and then let rip? What about ad-hoc opportunities, like when you see mentally ill people out and about in town? How does one balance the duty of trying to abuse the mentally ill with society's attitude at large, which is mostly tolerant and sympathetic?

If I had my entire posting style enumerated on a single web page, I'd probably try to rubbish it too

I've often wondered why would one be so offended with the contents of my head, especially since those that take the most offence decry me as mental all the time, anyway.

Mods, can we change the title of the thread please? Evidently, few are interested in the specifics of the McCanns case. The thread might get more traffic if people knew up front that it was just people coming along to have a judge. Ta.

Yawn. For the uninitiated. 8. Invoke authority. Claim for yourself or associate yourself with authority and present your argument with enough 'jargon' and 'minutia' to illustrate you are 'one who knows', and simply say it isn't so without discussing issues or demonstrating concretely why or citing sources. 17. Change the subject. Usually in connection with one of the other ploys listed here, find a way to side-track the discussion with abrasive or controversial comments in hopes of turning attention to a new, more manageable topic. This works especially well with companions who can 'argue' with you over the new topic and polarize the discussion arena in order to avoid discussing more key issues. 18. Emotionalize, Antagonize, and Goad Opponents. If you can't do anything else, chide and taunt your opponents and draw them into emotional responses which will tend to make them look foolish and overly motivated, and generally render their material somewhat less coherent. Not only will you avoid discussing the issues in the first instance, but even if their emotional response addresses the issue, you can further avoid the issues by then focusing on how 'sensitive they are to criticism.' 19. Ignore proof presented, demand impossible proofs. This is perhaps a variant of the 'play dumb' rule. Regardless of what material may be presented by an opponent in public forums, claim the material irrelevant and demand proof that is impossible for the opponent to come by (it may exist, but not be at his disposal, or it may be something which is known to be safely destroyed or withheld, such as a murder weapon.) In order to completely avoid discussing issues, it may be required that you to categorically deny and be critical of media or books as valid sources, deny that witnesses are acceptable, or even deny that statements made by government or other authorities have any meaning or relevance.

Same thing that goes on in any large organisation. People get approval for the work they do, especially when that work is public facing and could affect the reputation of the organisation. I believe that newspapers have people like editors to decide that sort of thing, whereas it'd be a not-as-sexily-titled line manager for the rest of us. What do you reckon? Is print and broadcast media is a meritocratic guardian of democracy, in which every altruistic journalist is allowed to publish whatever he or she desires, without any kind of copy approval at all? Probably not, especially if the lurid accounts of entirely unreasonable editors that appear in Street of Shame are halfway accurate. Would you go against your editor's wishes and publish a story for the good of the people regardless? If so, how would you manage that exactly? So while we all enjoyed your "seamless" segue-way into the unrelated conspiracy stuff, it's really more about how large organisations operate than anything else.

Ah, so the only real difference is whether someone else labels the event a conspiracy theory. Right-ho! Where does our invasion of Iraq fit into all of this, then? Giant conspiracy involving willfully lying to the British public, key whistle-blower found dead. If David Kelly hadn't have spoken out, it's very likely that those events would have been another giant, difficult-to-understand conspiracy. As it is, we got proof that David Kelly was telling the truth. The dossier had been sexed up, much of the justification was lifted verbatim from a fkn students' dissertation. If your main objection is that "good" governments like ours would never do bad things, then you probably need a history lesson, particularly in relation to us Brits.

I'm interested. Qualify the differences. To me, the tactics in the media are the same. The key point of difference is how seriously the events you mention are taken. All the other charges, such as the triumph of spin over evidence, are still in place.

Yeah, I'd probably prefer that people stuck to my account of my feelings. Better written for a start. Before we whack the straight-jacket on, maybe you'd like to point to a news story of international importance that contains absolutely no spin or agenda.

I gave an answer to the question if you read between the lines. If everything is worth putting through a bullshít agenda filter, then everything is worth questioning. If Gemmel's question is "has there ever been a news story that you believe is 100% accurate and a proper account of the truth", then generally, and especially on the big stuff, it's a no. That's not to say that these accounts are worthless, but at the same time, neither should they be pored over like they've arrived in tablet form, fresh from Mount Sinai.

Interesting question, Gemmel. I don't really want to use this thread to widen discussion into other areas, particularly other topics that people might consider to be conspiracy theories, but I did spend some time considering your question and can't really provide a complete response without providing a couple of examples from the news. The proposed action in Syria last year is one, if only because we're taking such a different course now. We were told that Assad was definitely responsible, that we had to go in and prop up the rebels that were currently fighting Assad's forces. A year later, we're sending planes in to bomb the same people the likes of William Hague advocated fighting beside, AFTER we got special dispensation for the EU to flog them arms. There was no evidence that Assad ordered the chemical attacks, and as was said at the time, it made no sense for him to order them. The US had already flagged chemical weapons attacks as a red line ahead of time, Assad was winning. The only thing his regime had to gain by orchestrating the attacks was international condemnation and/or action. Zoom back to 2003, and it's a depressingly similar situation. Military action being called for on the back of unproven and/or disputed evidence, with the whole thing turning out to be a lie afterward. That's over a million people dead as a result, most moral authority lost into the bargain. 2014. Western media tells the world that MH370 has crashed in the sea, based on no evidence. Tells the world that MH17 was shot down by Russian forces, again without credible evidence. We live in an age where presentation beats evidence. Even open campaigns like referenda are run with a huge degree of spin and skulduggery, so it's not like you need to put on a tinfoil hat to see evidence of a controlled and biased media. Personally, I reckon every news story is worth whacking through the bullshít and agenda filter.