Verbal

Trolltastic!

Oh, hence the name.

The one with the squid face?

Then consider your forelock tugged and your knee scraped.

The 'et' is presumably redundant, or pronounced silently.

You haven't made a point of any substance.

To be fair to Cameron, it wasn't a U-turn - just Gove being a dickhead.

Better idea: give them Britannia back (which is sinking) and take them on a tour of Italian islands.

We're just waiting for you to learn how to spell.

trousers, ask yourself where the royal duchys came from. They were landgrabs, largely of public (ie our) land, privatised for the benefit of our dumbass royals. Your (oddly American) YouDune does of course gloss over this. Chuck the royals out, exile them back to Bavaria, and open up all the castles, grand houses, to the public and turn over the Duchys to the National Trust. We'll make just as much money and likely more. And the latest news is Cameron has junked the idea, thank ****.

Off with their inbred heads.

That is pretty shocking. Arrest on the way I hope.

For about a minute. In a crap film.

Okat then, how about buffers at the end of the runway? Or inflatable ejector seats?

The fix is longer aircraft carriers. Seems simple enough.

Possibly, but Moneyball is all about how the A's were to survive the next season, after having all their great players swiped by the Yankees and the Red Sox. So the question was: who to buy, and with much less money? Their answer to that question has been hugely influential in baseball.

You should all pack yourselves off to see the movie, Moneyball, and see how a small baseball team, the Oakland A's, managed to take on the big money clubs. And the A's actually did it by CUTTING their spending on importing players. It struck me, watching it, that Brian Clough and Peter Taylor's Nottingham Forest were way ahead of smaller clubs in US baseball in realising that club management too often look at the wrong things when they consider which players to buy. I'm not saying it's THE way to go - just an interesting perspective.

Harrison Ford's objection was more about quality than quantity. He said: 'George, you can write this sh!t, but you sure can't say it.'

I'm sorry to hear that, SG. My condolences.

Thanks for that.

Can we please forget Alpine? I'm not in favour generally of ignoring anyone, but this was an engaging thread until he came along and turned it into a thread about him. Again.

Just as Assad would never tolerate any opposition, nor Gaddafi tolerate even a whisper of dissent. And Mubarak will simply murder any rebellious Egyptians. As for Tunisia - not a chance. BTW, this is the last response from me to any of your posts on this subject. You're really beyond common sense.

The end-game in Iran is regime change. But various American-led 'coalitions' have tried doing that with invasions and occupation, and finally hit upon a formula which kind of worked in Libya. (Kind of...) Any direct outside intervention in Iran cuts the 'green' opposition off at the knees. And that opposition is deeply rooted in a sophisticated, very well-educated, consumer-oriented, civil-rights-conscious middle class. So it's reasonable to assume that strategists in the West would advocate actions (or the lack of them) that buttress that opposition. There are a number of policy interventions that suggests this is the case, from sanctions targeted at regime frontmen to additional funding for the BBC's well-regarded (and much hated by the regime) Persian Service. These interventions also include very carefully calibrated contacts with key opposition figures like Mousavi. As far as Israel is concerned, I'd disagree that 'the West' is unambiguous in its support. The US, certainly. Europe, not so much - and it's that equivocation that buys political space for interventions that don't squash the opposition in a 'it's-us-against-the-world' reaction that would necessarily follow overt aggression from the West. PS: if you want in a very small way to support the opposition in Iran, go and see the movie "A Separation". Not only is it a great movie; films, which Iran is excelling at right now, are a key way of disseminating opposition ideas in the country

The reality is that Iran isn't going to start lobbing nuclear weapons at Israel, whatever anyone says. If you've been to the Middle East, especially around the Israeli, Jordanian and Saudi borders, you realise how TINY the place is. Even the smallest of nuclear warheads targeted at Israel would wipe out millions, Arabs and Jews alike. And as for the rhetoric, yes, it's true that Ahmadinejad did not say '...off the map', but even if he had, it doesn't mean he's going to do it. Just as with the American politicians in the US primaries, you can say something for one audience which will go down badly with another. It's all part of a political calculation. I do expect there to be trouble in the Straits. I do not expect a war. It's in no one's interest.

Nope. You really have lost a grasp of simple English. I give up. You're a waste of time, sadly.