Verbal

Yep, we pay the jackass £400,000 ON TOP of his overblown salary as a reward for presiding over a share price dive of 40%, firing 3,500 staff (at a cost of god knows what in terms of lost tax revenue but certainly a LOT higher than 400k) - all because 'that's how it's done' among British bankers.

Well, only one of those options is really an option - and even that's debatable. Wealthy lunatics have either been wiped out by the credit crunch or have battened down the hatches for years to come. Cala only seems to fit, at most, one part of the above phrase, and it evidently isn't 'wealthy'. So toast it is. Probably by April at the latest.

This from what counts as an ITK in Portsmouth (I've corrected the English): We are still one of the top 20 clubs in England. Our potential is massive. Do Rochdale, Hereford and Darlington, to mention a few, get our crowds? Some of it is right anyway...

Well Hester certainly isn't. He's a public sector worker who's singularly failed to deliver. Share price down 40% in a year, 3,500 staff laid off, etc, etc. He's cost the taxpayer billions and has been awarded another million presumably just to rub it in that no matter how useless he is, bankers ALWAYS get their loot, come rain or shine, and especially when someone else is left holding the tab. Interesting comparison with Cortese: both have five-year plans. Cortese is clearly on target; Hester isn't even close, and maybe never will be. So it's weird that you defend the failing public sector worker and denounce the successful private sector operator.

Cala clearly doesn't think the same as you. Passing the FAPPT is harder, he says, than getting into MI5. Good grief. Makes you wonder what we DON'T know.

And too dim to take the test? Never mind.

36%. 'For you, Europe is an ode to joy but not necessarily with a happy ending.'

That's a stylistic choice more than anything. However, the absence of a question mark is unforgivable.

Ignorance is not a defence, and therefore probably not brilliant mitigation either.

If it made you chuckle it has no place in the Lounge.

Constantine, Constantine, Constantine! Yours ever, Dim Sum Il

Ahem, Constantine, comrade, Constantine! Never mind; you clearly can't face it. And so sorry that US intelligence, based on official German reports, and the FBI are not credible sources for you - or perhaps the elephant armour is obscuring your vision. Let's agree on this. Return the Duchys to common ownshership, chuck out the present lot - you're surely not so childish as to argue for the divine principles of accession are you...or to argue that they're anything but a useless breed? And let's have a version of the bicycle monarchy in Holland. Give them the average income of a British worker, an expenses allowance - and be done with that. We could also include some compulsory donor insemination to ensure a modicum of intelligence. There. A plan.

One other thing, Sergei, if it makes you feel better: I probably wouldn't so be opposed to the monarchy if it didn't consist of a cretinous, inbred clan from Saxony who couldn't keep their thieving hands off public and common land, and who then try to lord it over us with all the faux pomp and circumstance of a Colonel Blimp. If 'our' royals were more on the model of those in Scandinavia and Holland, fine. Still, as I say, as soon as QE2 is gone, and the mother-fixators have lost their object of blind adoration, the useless remnants of the monarchy will be swept away, as they almost were during the equally ludicrous George IV. Can't say fairer than that. Agree?

No, I didn't see it, but thanks for the tip Sergei! Did they include the infamous cable from the German ambassador in Lisbon, who, in July 1940, which read: “The Duke believes with certainty that continued heavy bombing would make England ready for peace.” Nice of the Queen's uncle to recommend the bombing of 'his' own people, don't you think? No wonder he was banished from public view by the British Foreign Office.

Thanks for this, comrade. I can't help noticing that the gaps between your replies are getting ever longer as you furiously try to google some sort acceptable, common-sense veneer on your quite funny argument. I notice you STILL avoid my King Constantine point. I wonder why? I'm sure it's nothing to do with the fact that it makes your proposition that monarchy is a bulwark against tyranny ludicrous. And aside from the fact that pap has already rather elegantly expressed the absurdity of that particular brainwave of yours with his elephant armour analogy, you should consider this. Let's assume Edward hadn't fallen for Wallis Simpson, and had remained on the throne in the lead-up to and during the Second World War. What a spectacle it would have been to have had a Nazi-saluting, Adolf-admiring King on the throne at a time when the very independence and freedoms of the country were at stake. Re: your suggestion that I am trying to argue that monarchy TODAY is a source of tyranny - don't be so silly! Read what I actually said and take those Alpine purple rage spectacles off. These were the words I used: You, on the other hand, decide to strain credulity by claiming that the monarchy is some sort of last bastion against tyranny, when the role of monarchies historically is to be the source of tyranny! As for the fossilised relic of an institution that it is now, of course it can't be that. And as for Hitler's dealings with Edward, are US naval intelligence reports good enough for you? They recount the details, lifted from a confidential report produced at a conference senior German officials in 1941. This states: When he [Edward] was in Germany he had contact with Hitler and he is the only person with whom Hitler would confer in any negotiations of peace or armistice when it becomes necessary. "Hitler well knows that Edward at present cannot work in a matter that would appear to be against his country, and he does not urge it. But when the proper moment arrives he will be the only person capable of directing the destiny of England." Fraternal greetings from the Socialist Republic of Fulham

I wouldn't mind too much if we were in a recession of 7% growth. Why am I not surprised that a banking sector worker doesn't grasp the definition of recession?

Why? Is he mooning?

Only if it sails too close to Italian obstacles.

Exactly! So India has to somehow scrape by with a growth rate of 7% this year, China 8%, 'Developing' Asia 7.3% Russia 3.3%, Mexico 3.5%, Sub-Saharan Africa (!) 5.5%, etc, etc. Are you REALLY trying to suggest that they are all - and many others besides - part of a 'global' recession?

Bang! Your argument's dead.

But the world economy, if it includes for example Australia, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, China, South Korea, etc, etc, continues to grow, albeit more slowly. Europe is not the centre of the universe.

But it hasn't.

Missed that. Sounds like a Robin Day/John Nott moment.

Good grief you're getting desperate. Everyone else I know who defends the monarchy in Britain is happy to leave it with some waffle about being good for tourists, and how foreigners love the 'Windsor'. You, on the other hand, decide to strain credulity by claiming that the monarchy is some sort of last bastion against tyranny, when the role of monarchies historically is to be the source of tyranny! As for the fossilised relic of an institution that it is now, of course it can't be that. But nor did monarchy remotely get in the way of the junta in Greece (funny how you keep avoiding the subject), and, worse than that, was browbeaten (no worse) into signing away Greeks' democratic rights and instituting a vicious reign of terror (of which I can only assumer you must have approved, since it was all signed off by one of your beloved monarchs). You've googled yourself into a deep hole with this one and made yourself look a proper Charlie. The Comintern wasn't an ideology; Edward not only discussed reinstatement with Hitler himself but gave him -and was photographed doing so - a fulsome, enthusiastic, bolt-upright Nazi salute; and your reading, if that's the word, of Hitler's relationship with the Wehrmacht defies any historical account I've ever read. But worst of all, you've put yourself in the embarrassing position of appearing to argue that the monarchy - defanged, reduced to waving stiffly at 'subjects' prepared to give them the time of day - is some kind of bulwark against the forces of anti-democracy. That somehow, after centuries of undermining democratic advances, it is revealed as something it has always been: a shining beacon on the hill of modernity and reasonableness. What utter, utter nonsense. Tom Paine had it about right: Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.

How very odd. You give a hypothetical scenario and I respond by showing historically how that's not been the case. And you simply ignore it - for the very good reason, no doubt, that Constantin vs the Greek junta did not end well for the royal, who was forced into the humiliating position of having to sign the decrees that undermined the Greek constitution. I was trying not to bring Hitler into it for precisely the reason you mention. However, since you've wandered aimlessly into that territory, you should surely know that Hitler's rise to power, while predicated on undermining the Weimar constitution, required that he subjugate the will of the upper echelons of the Wehrmacht. Once he had succeeded in that, all else followed. (I know books bring people out in a rash on here, but try reading Ian Kershaw's superb and authoritative biography of Hitler for plentiful evidence of this) The constitution, whether republican or incorporating a useless monarch, would have made no difference. And Hitler is your worst enemy in other ways: as he planned the invasion of England, he planned to re-instate Edward VIII as a puppet monarch. So I suppose in that sense, monarchs have their uses - they can be herded around to legitimise even Nazism. But once again, there's an obvious and self-defeating flaw in what passes for your 'logic': the assumption that Weimar = republican = weak against the onslaught of anti-liberal forces. By the same token, Constantin = monarchical = weak against the Greek junta's anti-liberal forces. If you were true to this weird way of thinking, you should be arguing for neither. The Comintern perhaps?