Hamilton Saint

This is not the way narcissists operate. EVERYTHING is about them.

You do, apparently.

A few Vidal quotes I like: "As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests." "By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over." "I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television." "The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent." "What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions."

He used to be on the TV - the "chat shows" - quite often. He had quite radical political views and liked to take on arch-conservatives like William Buckley. Sometimes it seemed as though he was being deliberately provocative - just to be entertaining and challenge the consensus-view (what we'd call now a "wind-up merchant").

The issue is those parents who "struggle with the difference" between discipline and abuse.

The issue is what you do about it. Who is responsible for intervening?

Or the man who had been prescribed a month's-worth of suppositories to deal with a medical condition. After a few days he went back to the chemist to complain: "These things are useless - for all the good they do me I might as well shove them up my ar*e."

In this country teachers are legally obliged to report situations where they have a strong suspicion that a student of theirs is being abused or neglected. If they do not report, and it emerges later that a serious case of abuse could have been stopped if they had responded quickly, they are liable to prosecution. It can be a difficult call sometimes. Cuts and bruises would seem straight-forward, right? But what about a child saying that they "get bashed about by their Dad"? That would require reporting. The consequences can be traumatic. Teachers and parents can be dragged through horrible ordeals because of bureaucratic bungling. The system doesn't always process these cases wisely. But, all things considered, there have to be legal safeguards set up to protect vulnerable children.

In your opinion, perhaps, but there are some parents who just don't get it. For them, discipline = abuse. Children need protection occasionally from those who have no idea how to bring up children. Parental rights, therefore, cannot be absolute.

Yes, granted, but the state does have a duty - a legal obligation - to intervene when children are being abused.

"Nothing works better than Advil" - so, use nothing!

The word film pronounced as though it were a two-syllable word - filum. Where did that come from?

Yet another irritating example of using one part of speech as another - using a verb, here, as a noun.

This oft-expressed argument that 'My parents hit me and it never did me any harm is nonsense' - especially when it's followed by the statement 'So now I hit my kids, too.' The harm it did you was to persuade you that it was a legitimate and effective method of discipline. Think about it; the worst experiences you had in childhood with ineffective teaching were the ones where you were physically abused. [some of you may be too young to have had teachers who hit you, pulled your sideburns, threw chalk at you, etc.] The best discipline you received was not based on punishment and hitting at all, it was based on love, respect and knowledge. Good teaching and good parenting is based on respect, not fear and punishment. And, of course, pyschological abuse is even worse than physical abuse.

I suggest you begin and end those two paragraphs with quotation marks; that way, we know immediately that they're a quote from The Telegraph, rather than opinions of your own.

Another complaint about using a noun as a verb. "Hemingway's advice impacted on the writing of Martha Gellhorn." Impact is a noun. Write it this way: "Hemingway's advice had an impact on the writing of Martha Gellhorn."

If I may quote Monty Python: "You're a cruel man - but fair!"

"In the real world". You hear that phrase a lot in educational institutions - schools, colleges and universities. It usually accompanies a criticism or insult!

And, of course, when someone begins a statement with the phrase "to be perfectly honest", you know they're about to lie or disimmulate; and when they start an opinion with "to be perfectly frank", you know they don't actually believe a word they're saying. Honestly.

Let's face it, the rational view, in the long-term, is that dealing with environmental degradation is in humanity's self-interest. But that realisation is then trumped by the short-term self-interest of those pushing the current system - they're driven by greed and the lust for power. And the philosophy or religious view that underlies their attitude is that human-beings have dominion over the planet; they believe that humans have the right, even the duty, to exploit all other animals, and to exploit all the natural resources available - regardless whether they're renewable or not.

The least said about your language, mate, the better!

Absolutely. But at the end of the day, the bottom line is this, peeps will be effected by crappola they hear all the times in the media. Peeps brains have literally begun to rot - as the content of the media has gotten more crass and vulgar. Innit, mush?

That's a Jamaican idiom.

The word medal is a noun not a verb, as I mentioned in a different thread. What you ought to write is: "If Daley doesn't get a medal there ...".

Not relevant? I see Mitt Romney was speaking in Israel a day or two ago. He was essentially encouraging their regime to bomb the nuclear facilities in Iran.