saintbletch

Jaguar. Don't tell me what I am, Yoda!

I did AAT MANY years ago, and can wholeheartedly recommend it. I was developing accounting software at the time so it was really valuable to me, but the qualification is much more than accounting. It covers economics, business law, financial analysis, statistics, etc. If you think that you might find accounting interesting, (if that isn't oxymoronic) then AAT would be an excellent route. I agree, Deano. My son is in the final year of his degree, and he's just secured a position as a trainee actuarial analyst with a local firm for next year. Knowing how competitive these positions are, you'd have to be pretty fortunate/talented to find yourself even interviewed without a decent degree. Most of his intake cohort were from Oxbridge universities. Actually Deano, I believe my son's taking an investment route rather than (or perhaps in addition to) the typical actuarial qualifications. Either way, qualifying is going to take years. Oh, I forgot to mention that to be an actuary you have to be a maths bore too - just like Deano. x

Bentley. Did you?

P.S. Don't kill my thread 'burpy.

Watch as an 'oriental male' attempts to squirt white fluid down The Bear's throat.

Noel's Post-Apocalyptic House Party.

I don't know Toke, but Rosie looks like she might have been rag-dolled by the Somalis.

Susan Boyle desperately trying to open a packet of Hobnobs using the power loader from Aliens

In The Night Garden debauchery including horrific Ninky Nonk accident...

Awkward Star Trek orgy

Rosie and Jim on The Old Ragdoll being hijacked by Somali pirates

The very hungry caterpillar undergoing gastric bypass surgery

Crash Bandicoot at a speed awareness course with Mario Kart and Wacky Races characters.

Me too. This is what I got... ...and... ...and a discussion about D.I.L.Fs. Obviously I am, but do any other posters in TMS consider themselves to be a DILF?

Camp saint?

Did someone say long-winded and tedious? Here's a story of bletch and Blatch and Grom and Yasser and pox... As everyone knows, bletch is the third metasyntactic variable after foo and bar. Many years ago, a work colleague known affectionately to me as Grom (a contraction of his surname) christened me Bletch - well The Bletch Man to be precise. This was initially in honour of the third metasyntactic variable, but he also claimed that it was in some way a fitting way of describing my appearance. He was a keen illustrator so he created a caricature image of my head. This was before hair loss and the wig, and I sported a rather dashing flat-top and beard at the time. Dimensions and head shape mean that I am cursed with looking like a real thug, so he believed that if he drew a square and placed four slits inside - three horizontal and one vertical it would represent my unfriendly face. He then extended 5 lines vertically from the top of the box to represent my ephemerally lustrous hair, and five lines vertically from the bottom of the box for my stubbly beard. I don't know why, but the name and image stuck. I'll award a special prize for any poster that can accurately draw this image from my description. Toke/Bear - if you draw a cock and balls with gism, it won't be funny; just childish. [The spooky music from Danny Baker's saturday morning radio show is now playing in the background] A few years later, another mate (The Boy Blunder - he of the pissing on the landing incident) was at my house chatting with me and my Dad. At some point he called me Bletch. My Dad asked what he'd called me, and so I explained the Bletch moniker. My Dad then told me that when he was my (then) age, his nickname was Blatch. Apparently he looked like a film star called Blatch....something. I can't remember who. My Dad died a few years ago, and his mate from that time (Duke Darrington) still phones up and refers to my Dad as Blatch. How spooky is that? Anyway, it was shortly after this that I decided to change my real name to Bartholomew Stenchtail. BTW, Fowllyd, you don't have to invent a story to hide the shame of being born in "The Wales". So what, you've got 6 fingers? So what, you can't end a sentence without saying "isn't it?". Isn't it? BTW2, Fowllyd, do you fit Gerald tightly, or do you tightly fit Gerald? BTW3, my boss at the time that I worked with Grom was a complete funster. He is Jewish so we called him Yasser and made him wear a tea towel on his head when he got drunk - it seemed somehow appropriate at the time. He was also known as Bob Man. Anyway, I was programming at the time and I had managed to spread the use of the variable 'bletch' throughout our company's source code, but Bob Man ran a pretty successful campaign to unseat bletch as the third metasyntactic variable, and to replace it instead with 'pox'. As he was the boss, bletch succumbed to the pox. Presumably to this day, small businesses are running their accounting systems on code full of the pox. Toke's a ****.

Apparently they taste a bit like crab sticks.

Well it's far from scientific, but if these views of UKIP as a protest/tactical vote are mirrored across the country, then they might do far better than I imagined. What surprised me is those of a left leaning that are willing to vote UKIP.

Anyone else?

Iveta. Have you?

I'm guessing that by planning to gate-crash the post-match interview, he felt that he might reach a wider audience - and perhaps even find himself being discussed in the back-waters of a Saints' Internet forum. His actions got me to watch the Evan Davis' interview, so mission accomplished?

Remind me never to **** you off, Lord Duckhunter. Anyone that is prepared to wait 8-10 years to get what they want is a dangerous man to cross. But I understand, and actually relate to your approach. I too am thinking longer term in my voting habits. I come under the Eastleigh ward and as such have traditionally had a choice of Lib Dem or Conservative MPs. A vote for Labour is wasted here (I know, I know...), so traditionally it came down to local issues. I have found that the Lib Dems were always fairly attentive on local issues, so in addition to Labour I have stuck an X next to their candidate in the past. The last Bi-election started to change my thinking as UKIP has really shaken up the dynamic here; that and the fact that Clegg had the ultra-bright spotlight of power shone directly on his stomach, revealing what many suspected - that he is in fact gutless. Having kids of university age, and watching the volte-face on the principle of tuition fees, I'll not vote Lib Dem again until they have a deep look at themselves and their leader. So in the bi-election I wasted my vote on Labour, for which I achieved nothing. It's not like I think Labour is ready to get back into power, or that they even have credible people in positions of shadow-power (with perhaps one or two exceptions). So, looking forward this leaves a choice between Conservative and UKIP, which in turn for me at this time boils down to a choice between UKIP and not voting. So now I'm actually wrestling with my conscience; trying to see if I could live with myself for putting an X next to UKIP's candidate so that I might, in due course, help to bring about a significant change in the way politics is conducted in this country. The thought of sending a bunch of UKIP nutters into Westminster seems crazy, but it's the only thing that I could positively do that might give the rest of the funsters a wakeup call. The pay-off won't come for a couple of parliaments, but I'd like to think that by stirring it up like this, together with some form of devolved English parliament, then we might have a better system of representation in a few years. I'd love to vote solely on ideology or conscience, but with my ward, the current state of left-of-centre politics, and our FPTP system, I am just not represented. The danger for me of such an approach is of course that I might find myself struggling to sleep each night knowing that I might have helped to elect a dream team coalition of "dumb and dumber", or perhaps more accurately "Right and Righter".

Camp Bastian?

Ah, very good, Toke. I'm ashamed to say that I hadn't picked up on the humour the first time round. I think it's because I have to get my Enigma machine out to decode your posts before I can understand the point you're making. Reading some of your contributions (I'm guessing that you're in the toilet and " typing with one hand" while you post), is like sitting though Round Four of Only Connect - where they remove all the vowels from various phrases. Y CMP LT TWT! Then again, perhaps it's because you type with a thick, Scotch(sic) accent? TKSC NT!