saintbletch

Good question. I'd say more divided but that is going to change over the next 4+ years. But it seems that from your question you feel this is a bad thing. I'd suggest that their country needs to go through a wider division before it can start to come together again. Either that or the Republicans will spend a long time in the political wilderness. Unsurprisingly Obama attracted a large proportion of the non-white American/European vote. The reason this matters is that this demographic will increase at the greatest pace over the next 4 years. One stat I heard was that 50,000 Hispanic/Latinos reach the age of majority every month. Obama also attracted a large percentage of the youth and female votes too and got 93% of the male, black vote. The Republican heartland is getting marginalised. 50%+ of its target has the wrong chromosomal configuration. The white American numbers will fall as a percentage of the population. The rest is getting older and dying all the time. As a party they are in trouble if they can't beat an impotent President presiding over an economic backdrop from Hell. Unless they embrace racial differences, make theism less central to their world view and, perhaps relatedly, recognise that women have the right to control their own uteri; then they will be unelectable in 2016 (assuming the Democrats don't field a serial-killing paedophile).

Well you illustrate well the impact of a chip on the shoulder alpine_saint. You also illustrate well how you deal with defeat. From football to ideology, you are at least consistent. I agree with your analysis of the issues the US will face, if not the colour you use to describe them. But he's a f**king useless public speaker? Sorry apline_saint, either I hadn't factored in that I'm a f**king useless listener or you're confusing debate with public speaking. It would be interesting to put you or me on that stage standing behind that lecturn, script or no script. Would we be able to sell a message of hope to a divided nation and beyond to a wordwide audience? Especially after a long and gruelling campaign and when everyone watching already knows how impotent you're likely to be in the next four years - given that they've experienced the last four years. I couldn't pull that off. Obama did.

Four more years. Just watched his acceptance speech. He is one hell of a public speaker. The electoral college numbers make it look like a big win but it was much closer in the communities that make up those block votes. The US is massively divided now. I think I woke up hearing that 93% of the black vote went to Obama and a large proportion of the white male vote went to Romney. Add to that the animosity between the parties and it will make getting significant changes through their system pretty tough. That's going to store up problems. Good luck Mr. President.

It's a she?

That's right Toke. I've got a couple of folk tales lined up and I can't decide which would be best. I've been reading about The Redoubtable Hannya and the Grass-Cutting Sword which is excellent (thanks for the PM!). But I could also share The Benevolent Bear and his Japanese-Speaking, Penis Swallower. Hmm. Tough choice. Alternatively, you could just teach us some more Japanese. It's up to you.

Is this because I rebuffed your kind offer to dump DNA on my dirt-pipe in the 50 Shades thread? I suggest that you go and lookup unrequited, CB Saint. Move on. Anyway, think of my post as an ever so slightly verbose "BUMP", CB Saint. If I didn't post this sort of rubbish, Toke would let this excellent thread die. And on the theme of posting rubbish... Can I summarise The Crane Wife in one sentence? Well, I thought I had. Obviously not so I will hang my head low CB Saint. How about I explain it ? (albeit in three parts).

Well it's about time I outed you as the intellectual you are Toke. Carry on and I'll share some of the Japanese literature PMs we've exchanged. I don't mind you hiding your intellect under a Bearsy-shaped bushel. But don't make me out to look like some literature-obsessed tw*t. I can do that all by myself thank you very much. Right, I'm off to ruin your Learn Japanese (AKA spill something sticky over Hannah Minx) thread.

Same here trousers.

Seems like this has been an open secret for some years. Newsnight video and report now on-line here. More coverage here (names named). http://pebpr.blogspot.co.uk/ One of the abused, Steve Meesham, is shown in the video asking David Cameron to make good on his sound-bite that victims of abuse need to be believed. Surely, this was under Newsnight editorial direction. Clever, because Cameron could be forced to comment on the news report if public opinion gets behind it. So why sit on this for so long? is the BBC, or probably the Newsnight editorial team, hanging some Tories out to dry in retribution for the Savile affair? I can't see that any new information has come to light. Perhaps it is as simple as reviewing all old allegations in the light of public uproar over Savile. Perhaps it was Tom Watson's question in the 'Commons last week?

John Redwood I believe.

I can still remember the Japanese word for exercise. This remote learning using video teachers really works. Toke, thanks for the pointer with the Japanese poetry. But I've since started to investigate Japanese literature. Well, folk tales to be precise. Is it all about bestiality and forced labour and saving face? Have you heard the story of the Crane Wife? It'd be illegal here I'm sure. I can précis it for you. Man finds crane shot by an arrow, 'cares' for it for 3 days and then releases it, next day the crane has 'turned into a beautiful woman' (of course it did), so the man 'marries' the crane - I mean woman, whereby she locks herself into a room for 7 days at a time and weaves beautiful cloth from her pubes, sorry I mean from its feathers, which the man sells at the market, man told never to go into the weaving room during the 7 days does go into the weaving room where man discovers bird is a bird and not a bird so shame-filled bird flies away never to return. Moral? Never **** a bird, **** a bird? Face, is important in Japanese culture isn't it Toke? The Story of a Crane Wife (Tsuru no On-gaeShi) Once upon a time, there lived an honest young man in the countryside of Japan. One day, while he was tilling a paddy field, a crane suddenly came flapping down from the sky. It was a white crane with truly beautiful feathers. The bird was apparently wounded, and did not fly away, but came reeling towards the man and weakly fell to the ground. Wondering, the man checked the crane’s feathers and found an arrow stuck in the base of the wings. “Poor crane! That’s why you can’t fly!” So saying, the young man pulled the arrow out and washed the wound clean. The crane soon recovered and showed its delight by flapping its wings. “Now,” the man said to the bird, “be careful never to be spotted by a hunter again”. Thereupon, the crane circled over his head three times as if to express it’s thanks and then disappeared high into the sky after uttering a shrill cry. The young man resumed his work, deeply contented that he had done a good thing. At nightfall when the stars began to appear, he returned to his home. To his great surprise, however, he found a beautiful young woman, whom he never seen before standing at the entrance. She greeted him, saying, “Thank you for your day’s hard work”. Startled, he wondered if he was entering the wrong house, but the woman said with a smile, “This is your home and I’m your bride,” “I don’t believe it,” the man shouted. “I’m so poor no woman will ever agree to marry me. Besides, I have only enough rice to feed a single person!” “Don’t worry,” the woman replied. “I have brought rice.” So saying, she took rice out of a small bag and began to fix supper. The man finally consented saying, “How strange that you should force me to marry you! Well, do what you like!” and thus the woman came to live with the poor young man. Oddly enough, the small bag the woman had brought always provided the amount of rice they wanted, enabling the couple to lead a happy life. Time went by and one day, the woman asked her husband to set up a workshop for weaving. He borrowed money and had a special room built. Thereupon, the woman entered the room, saying, “Please never look in here for seven days”. And for exactly seven days after that, only the sound of a loom was heard from within day in and day out. The man felt as if he were waiting for as long as one or two years, but remembering her request, he did not peep into the workshop. The seven days passed and the woman came out somewhat haggard. Held in her hands was a roll of resplendently beautiful cloth such a he had never hoped to see. “Now,” she said to him, “I have woven a roll of cloth. Please take this to the town market. It will sell for 100 “ryo” (a big sum in terms of ancient Japanese coinage).” The next day, the man went to town and the cloth brought a surprisingly high price just as his wife had said. Startled and delighted, he hurried home. Upon reaching home, he found his wife already closeted in the workshop, and only the sound of the loom was heard. He wondered how she could weave such beautiful cloth apparently without treads. Soon he could no longer contain his ardent desire to see her, and stealthily peeped into the workshop, breaking his promise never to do so. To his great surprise, he could not find is comely wife there. Only a crane was weaving cloth with white feathers plucked from is body. Promptly realizing that the man was looking in, the crane stopped weaving, staggered towards him and said: “Well, my dear husband, you have seen everything. Now that you have found out what I really am, I can no longer stay here, to my great regret. I am the crane who was saved by you. To repay your kindness, I have so far served you in the shape of a woman. But from now on, please regard this half finished cloth as myself and keep it dearly.” The crane then flew up with her remaining wings and vanished into the sky, never to return to the man.

It's a lovely offer CB Saint, but I'm going to have to blow you out on this one. Have I? Oh, how embarrassing. If CB Saint had had his way, it would have been his pearlescent, people-progenitor. Actually, on closer inspection it turned out to be the remains of SuperMikey's scrambled Nutella eggs. Good tip SuperMikey by the way. Did I? I am mortified tpbury. Not only have I let myself down, I've let all of you down. And thanks for following recognised protocol by reporting it in a random thread in The Muppet Show and embedding it in another paragraph to which it seems unrelated. I think I should make it clear that my intellectual, language-obsessed alter ego is reserved for The Muppet Show only. Outside of The Muppet Show I'm just some wishy-washy nobody. In The Muppet Show I have a voice and am respected by all. What happens in The Muppet Show stays in The Muppet Show tpbury. Also, you went on to say that my heinous error in The Lounge is the most interesting thing about this book. The bear's magnificent octopus aside, I don't follow your train of thought tpbury.

I think you're misrepresenting me there bear. I was simply asking you to consider the SaintsWeb female constituent. On the 50 Shades thread you're obviously well practised at taking the metaphorical muscular and bevested dude in your mouth - and letting his voice become your voice, I simply wanted you to take suewhistle in your mouth and let her voice become your voice. As it happened suewhistle stated that she didn't want to be taken in your mouth and also made it quite clear that she didn't need any positive discrimination from this liberal (small ell). This is all very simple and straightforward bear. I'm not sure how you managed to get the wrong end yet again.

NickG, I think it looks like a cracking phone for the money (pap's caveat about the sd card aside).

[Layman's explanation follows. Apologies if this sounds like I think you are remedially challenged] Durleyfos, if you want your web site to do some of the work in getting you freelance CAD work then you're going to have to do more work and/or spend more time/money thinking it through. Getting a web site live is the easy part. Making it work for you and return you in the searches that your prospective customers will enter is the hard part. So, assuming that at this stage you only really want a place where you can refer people to if they want to find more information, I'd recommend taking a look at *WordPress. It's a very simple Content Management System. This means you create pages with an editor, link them together and then chose a design theme to make it look nice. It's all very straightforward, it's very popular, has a very active development community, good documentation and it's free. There are also thousands of free and commercially available design themes to choose from. WordPress doesn't create web page files that you then need to upload to a server, instead it stores the pages you want in a database and automatically serves those to visitors when they hit your site. So, to use WordPress you will need a server somewhere on the Internet where you can install it and have it serve your content to your visitors. There are many companies that will offer web hosting solutions that include WordPress. I have used a company called JustHost and it is a very straightforward but they have some pretty sharp practices regarding renewals and conditions of use that put me off. The best I've found for the sort of site I believe you're looking for is a small UK company called PoweredByPenguins (don't worry about the weird name, it contains a totally hilarious geek joke). They host one of my WordPress web sites for which they charge me ~£25/year. This also includes email addresses (which you'll also need) and lots of other good geek stuff. I was worried at first that for this sort of fee their service would be (understandably) non-existent, but you'll find them really keen to help and very responsive. No idea how they make money. A couple of other points. Firstly, you'll need some help/advise to point the domain name that you've registered to their servers. PBP will help you do this as part of the sign-up. Other hosting companies will give you generic instructions to follow that can be confusing. Secondly, if your site were to be incredibly busy or you want to use more powerful software then you might need to spend more, but if you just need an "I AM HERE" site with low traffic, you can't go wrong. *Other content management software exists and is similarly easy to use. You could instead think about creating a Facebook,Google+ (plus) page for you business. These are free, will be found in search results, but perhaps don't look as professional as having your own domain and they won't give you a durelyfos@durelycadservices.co.uk email address either.

How can I forget Toke? Once every 24 hours I get a sonic rectalarm*. *That's a portmanteau word Toke.

I agree Window Cleaner. Although my brother-in-law, who is a Man Utd. fan (born in Leamington, but that's OK because he supported them when they were s**t), will tell you that statistically that's not the case. I regularly tell him that he can stick his statistics up his arse because my gut-feel tells me otherwise.

Don't know about Mikel, but yesterday morning Twitter (I know, I know.) had him calling Mata a "Spanish tw*t". I think Chelsea might end up in a spot of bother over this. Allegedly, a group of Chelsea officials and players went in to the referee's room after the match and a shout of "I'm gonna break your f***ing legs" was heard. It appears that this made it into Clattenburg's match report. A steward was injured and taken to hospital following a push from a section of the crowd that was throwing stuff at the Utd players who were celebrating a goal. Add to that having two players sent off, which means they failed to control their players and I think Chelsea might face some action. Clattenburg will be exonerated I'm sure despite having a nightmare of a game. Sending off Torres for simulation when there was contact was a mistake and Utd's third goal was offside. I suspect he'll be tarnished by this though. He might also struggle to get a gig refereeing Man Utd. or Chelsea for a while.

I've got S3-envy because I 'only' have an S2 NickG. The S2 is excellent but looking a bit dated now. I can wholeheartedly recommend it for each of the things you say you need it for. And as I'm a big bloke and also a grown-up, I can use the phone with one hand. If you're not an extra from Life's too Short, and you haven't got Jeremy Beadle syndrome, then you'll be fine with the screen size. The only problem with getting an S2 now is that you're likely to see two new revisions of top-of-the-range Samsung phones over the next two years (assuming you'd be tied into it for a couple of years), If you think in two years time you'll still able to suppress your S5-envy, then you won't regret getting an S2. And the upside is that you should be able to get a good deal on the S2.

They're using the balance of probabilities Cheese on Toast. As you admitted it, it's your word against the word of kpturner and you. BTW have you already got a spare username for when you get your next ban? Two strikes and yerout.

But if Apple gave its users an extra column of icons to go with the extra row, they'd only be able to sell it to people with long thumbs. The iPhone 5 is the Peter Crouch of smart phones. Undisputed quality,fantastic at what it does, but the more you look at it, the more you think someone really messed up the aspect ratio.

Odd. Why would asterisk out the word "good" Essruu? I knew we'd start to win you over.

There's an app for that Essruu. And it's free. I haven't given that issue a moment's thought since I ditched the iPhone for an SII over a year ago. Besides, the standard phone memory is big enough to not bother moving apps to the sd card unless you want to. I use it mainly for media. #desperatetojustifyapremiumprice? Welcome to dark side pap. You'll miss the build quality of the iPhone - if that's important to you, but you'll love the openness of the Android hardware and software platform. Buy yourself a spare battery for about a tenner and it instantly transforms your old iPhone mentality of not turning on all the phone's features if you're going to be using the phone heavily in case the battery doesn't last. Then you quickly realise why the case is designed the way it is. Otherwise changing batteries/sd cards would be more difficult. I just hope your thumb is able to reach the top of your vast screen in one move. This, we are told is important.

Not even when your carer posted on your behalf Cheese on Toast? I cringed that day. I actually, nearly literally went bright red reading some of your carer's posts. I thought Nige was excellent - although he could work on being more faithful to the poem's metre. He made it sound more like a limerick.

Well you've convinced me. Have you convinced you?