Verbal

A long way. Toronto is just a bit north of the American Midwest. You'd really have to go east for polar bears - and pack your swimming trunks, because there's precious little ice for you to chase them across.

You really need to be out West for the bear wrestling. Let me know how that goes.

But do you know when to put full stops inside or outside the brackets? (Answering this will give you a clue as to how the season will turn out for us.)

No, he said Hendrix was 'pathetic'. So clearly offended.

Why is Jimi Hendrix, for example, an 'pathetic' role model? As a musical genius who revolutionised electric guitar playing (and who incidentally served in the 101st Airborne), his accidental death (from drinking too much and mixing it with sleeping pills) was a tragedy and a huge loss. No one is belittling the deaths of servicemen - and frankly, looking at the appalling quality of 'front page' coverage of AW's and others' deaths, who the hell else would want it? So tell me more about how 'pathetic' Hendrix was. Really - I want to know. In what way did he offend you in life or death?

Speaking as someone who actually did an apprenticeship years and years ago, the irony about the new fashion for apprentices is that most schemes are only really sustainable with government financing - another example of the private sector sponging off the public. That is new - companies always ran and financed their own schemes. Now they know they can get some fad-driven government to pay for it, and so won't do it unless the taxpayer coughs up.

You have a way to go before you can appeal to 'reason'. Try reading and learning a bit what you think you're opposed to - then you might be able to argue against it with something resembling reason. Andy's broader point seems true enough to me. You have allied yourself with the 'reasonable' EDL. So did Breivik. I remember you even claimed you went on one of these so-called 'marches' (which are never more than an excuse for a bit of good old p aki-bashing). So did Breivik. The point is this: if Breivik's actions didn't give you a moment's pause, then you really have a problem.

Cripes! Really?

Or when in a hole, stop digging.

Of of which is really beside the point. Whether the idiotic holiday was the cause of a few lost sales and work days or not, the slide back into a near-flatlined economic performance is cause for great concern. As the economy falters, tax revenues fall. As tax revenues fall, the deficit grows. If the deficit is to be reduced by another wave of spending cuts, the knock-on effect is more falls in GDP. It's THAT cycle that Osborne has to address, and I frankly have little confidence in a government doing succeeding when it spends even a second trying to dress up the bad figures with an extra flag-waving public holiday.

I think we should all be ever so slightly ashamed.

Why has trousers' chicken stopped dancing?

That was made up!

There's always 5pm tomorrow. There's always a 5pm. The dream doesn't have to die.

Brilliant! JustWhatWeNeed.

who did we sign?

Now!

Why woooosh?

I'm going for yes. Sources seem impeccable to me.

In 15 minutes you will be soooo sorry you said that.

I'm going to hedge my bets on that one. Good question though.

5pm. Nailed on cert.

Shoo-in. And the Falls are a bit tacky - or at least the stuff around it is. You can stand alarmingly close to the edge though, which is always good to induce a bit of vertigo. Even better for that is the CN Tower, which, when you get to the top, has a glass floored section. It takes some nerve to step out onto it. Toronto is a city I really like, and spent three happy summers living there - although I'm not sure what's there for young teens. They'd certainly love riding the streetcars (trams to us), and the shopping is all underground (it's cold on the winter, to put it mildly) but pretty extensive.

Well this thread turned out nice again.

The very same apparently. Not a surprise really. If you actually look at the links in the OP you'll find such gems as this: Maslow studied what he called exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass rather than mentally ill or neurotic people, writing that "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy."[3] Maslow studied the healthiest 1% of the college student population.[4] It's the sort of thing that would have made Josef Mengele proud.