benjii

I don't really see why child tax credits exist anyway? I appreciate that when you have one it is annoying to have to lose it... but, why should you pay less tax just because you've had a kid? If anything your family is now likely to be a greater strain on the public purse than before and you should pay more.

No, simply that castigating others for an "I'm alright Jack mentality" is hypocritical when the motivation for that ire is purely selfish. All of us in the Western world who sit on our arse all day tapping away at the internet, enjoying our heating, food, water, entertainment, security etc.. are the embodiment of the "I'm alright Jack" mentality.

Er, well no, you wouldn't. That's the point! 18 months for a minor physical assault is unheard of.

C) Can honestly say they would get the same crowd in our situation? If we beat Oldham this weekend I can see a crowd of 23,000+ for the MK Dons match.

I'm not saying you can't create a better society through democratic means and that our system is the best or that our society is perfect. There seems to be a swell of opinion on here though that we need to fundamentally re-adress the ethical implications of capitalism and that there is a viable alternative. My contention is that in a large scale society, there simply isn't. "Man was born free, yet everywhere is in chains" - Rousseau may have been correct but we're beyond the point of no return, save for some sort of cataclysmic paradigm shift that would only come about through large scale destruction / violent revolution.

It is shocking that someone would think it funny to do this but 18 months in prison is ridiculous. It is extremely unlikley that three cigarettes will cause this child any harm at all and there is no suggestion that she is now addicted to cigarettes. The guy is clearly a complete plank who deserves a public dressing down and the derision of us all but 18 months!! 18 MONTHS? You could go out and head-butt a complete stranger in the face causing a broken nose, scarring, mental anguish etc and you would only get about 6-12 months. You could burgle a house and you would probably just get a community order if it was your first offence and you had a decent enough sob-story. 18 months for giving a kid a cigarette is ridiculous. This is precisely the sort of crime for which a community order is appropriate.

Good job you're not a Saints fan looking at Pompey or you'd probably give yourself a hernia.

:smt041 Yippee! Seriously though, if you want to live in some sort or Rousseau-esque agrarian egalitarian lentil fest then move to a third world country or a commune in the outer hebridies. I happen to think that would be pretty sweet actually but I recognise I would need to actually make an effort and extricate myself from capitalist society if I want it to happen. There are 60million people in this country. Some will be better off than others. Some will have "earnt" this, whatever that means, some will have had it earnt for them by their parents, some will just be lucky. Some of the poor will be poor because they are stupid, ignorant and lazy, some because their parents were stupid, ignorant and lazy and some because they are unlucky. (and the notion of "luck" is actually a bad reference to use on my part. There isn't really luck involved; it's inevitable in a population of that size) Any attempt to even the playing-field in a drastic way by trying to implement some sort of paradigm shift in mass-herd human behaviour is just silly. People will always try to better themselves and look after their friends and family first. That is baltantly true and the hypocrisy of socialists is screamingly apparent. If you care that much about inequality then you should go to Africa and do charity work. You should sell everything. Renounce all materialism. Oh. You care about inequality.... you care as long as it's you looking up at others. Care a bit less when you're looking down.

Plenty IMO. In fact, I'm surprised he got that long.

No, I was there. It just seems that we are being a bit selective in somehow saying that our reason for not going was noble whereas Pompey's is derisory. Don't get me wrong, I think we are a bigger club than them. Maybe not over the entire lifetime of the two clubs but our general dominance over thirty years of the commercialisation of the game ensured that we are now.

Do I recall you saying somewhere you were a Spud? Did you pull the old cross-country trick of hiding in a bush and rejoining on the second lap?

Maybe that's the key! Football discussion should be reserved for fora on, for example, flower arranging and bell-ringing. Politics should be discussed on fora about children's TV and insects. Things would be a whole lot more civil!

Reminds me of the scene in The Simpsons where people are queueing for The Empire Strikes Back; Homer walks out of the cinema past the queue and says "who would have guessed Darth Vader was Luke's father?!"

There's no reason why our form shouldn't be in the top 3 in the league between now and the end of the season. I'm not sure if that would be good enough for the play-offs or not. If we win two out of our next three then I will start to believe in play-offs but at the moment I think we will fall just short.

Urgh, "dildo gags".

Ladybirds are brilliant. Give them time and leave them to get on with it and they disappear. If there is a God then ladybirds are his greatest achievement.

Er, ok. But what's the difference between "Branfoot" and "Sheikh Ya Booty"?

Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.

Indeed. If one were to conduct a tick box exercise in terms of the things that annoy them about evangelical religious behaviour then Dawkins would check most of them. That said, he does make a valid contribution and it's always entertaining to see his exchanges with religious figures. On a slightly different note, but very much in relation to the "human condition" (in fact the condition of all life) you might want to check out his "The Selfish Gene".

Just doing a bit of digging on the Common in general and came across this Management Plan. http://www.southampton.gov.uk/Images/Common%20Management%20Plan_tcm46-200138.pdf Have to admit, the table on page 25 did make me chuckle a bit.

Ahh right... probably not going to get much nostalgia w.r.t that then!

I'm always weary of people trying to befriend me on t'internet whether by proxy or otherwise.

I love these kinds of bizarre pounding exercises that religious types do. Wildly inventive!

Dawkins get my goat a bit. He is just as much a dogmatist as the religious folk he castigates and often glosses over the gap between "science" as a practical tool and "science" as an epistemelogical method.

Yes, that doesn't surprise me at all.