Verbal

Sergei is the lab rat for Lord Tender's hypothesis. So yes.

It's possible, but Pakistan is gossipsville in my experience. Secrets are very hard to keep. FWIW I always doubted he was in the tribal areas, and thought he was more likely to be somewhere like Swat Valley, where rich drug lords' houses are plentiful, and a comfortable existence was possible. I was wrong, but not by that much.

And every serious climate scientist you've ever read or talked to (!) is wrong.

Dune would look fetching in an orange jumpsuit, I think. My two trips through Abbottabad were in 2007. There are quite a few expensive houses there and further north, mostly owned by a combination of drug lords, living off profits from the trade in Afghanistan, and senior army personnel (bear in mind that the Pakistani army is the largest landowner, by far, in the country, and routinely rewards its senior staff with large swathes of property). So it wouldn't necessarily mean anyone in the Pakistani high command knew. But I bet they did.

Clearly a fake, and clearly NOT released by the US military after yesterday's action.

I've been through Abbottabad. It's a HUGE military town - several barracks and military schools. Very odd.

It's your lookout. I'd be amazed if those sites weren't being closely watched right now.

Not a good idea to post that link dune. It'll look to MI5 that you and dozens of other Saintswebbers are Southampton jihadists

If true, it's astonishing that he was found so close to the Pakistani capital. There will be almighty trouble.

Who?

I look forward to it.

Why wait?

Is it, oh great One, because you are not humble, useless Sergei, but Nostradamus?

Come on Lord Tender, you're better than that. Aren't you? And when are you going to give up your exclusion of the possibility that a reason people will stay away from voting yes is their general disenchantment with politics - the kind of disenchantment that has been charted by psephologists (presumably except from your 'most eminent' colleague) for decades? There's a danger yours is a self-fulfilling argument: FPTP, with its encouragement of safe seats and other forms of disenfranchisement leads to political disenchantment with the political process; therefore any attempt to offer a change is met with the same disenchantment. Furthermore, if the turnout is as low as it is on the 5th, your self-satisfied conclusion that 'therefore everyone is happy' might be stretched a little bit - unless you really want to argue, like those aristocratic nobs who defended rotten boroughs on the same grounds, that the sign of a healthy democracy is that few take part in it.

But why the need for anyone? This is not directed at you, but I do wonder whether many 'monarchist' supporters of Liz (and her half-witted offspring) have a serious mother fixation. Chuck the royals out of their palaces and vast estates, plonk them in a semi in Penge or somewhere appropriate and get the tourists into Balmoral, Buck House, etc.

Yes, it's dumb. By far Britain's most famous republican is Thomas Paine, a touchstone thinker for American Independence - hardly a hard-left socialist. His put-down of the whole idea of monarchy, particularly in Britain, still reads pretty well: "...the most plausible plea which has been offered in favour of hereditary succession is that it preserves a nation from civil wars; and were this true, it would be weighty; whereas it is the most barefaced falsity ever imposed upon mankind. The whole history of England disowns the fact. Thirty kings and two minors have reigned in that distracted kingdom sine the conquest, in which time there have been no less than eight civil wars and nineteen rebellions." And that was just up to the 18th century! So they were dangerous when they wielded actual power, and now useless when stripped of it.

Quite. William and Kate have done nothing more to earn their 'celebrity' status than did Jade Goody. Gushing feebly over the wedding of two dubious celebrities therefore makes no sense, unless it's somehow thought to be a good idea to have a collective emote over these self/family appointed celebs. It'a all just a bit pathetic watching grown-ups acting like weepy nine-year-old girls addicted to OK Magazine. Good luck to anyone (and that includes, I suspect, the majority) who used the occasion as nothing more than a good excuse for a p!ss up.

Deppo, is that you?

What? This pantomime today was a 'duty'? and don't forget, Wills is not doing ANYTHING yet. We've all got his dad to put with before that.

"We happily put up with invaders, lunatics, serial philanderers and Germans who spoke no English so long as we could have a monarch while everybody else quietly ditched theirs. We call this perverseness tradition - even when they are socialising with colourful characters, as was Princess Margaret in the 1970s when she mixed with [notorious gangster] John Bindon, or enjoying dubious parties with oil-rich sheikhs or wealthy US paedophiles, as the Duke of York is alleged to have done." Professor Clive Bloom.

You need to swot up on the republican history of this country.

And there we have it. The final retreat into a thoughtless, obsequious kneeling to monarchical dictatorship.

No, not at all. I think loopy King Charles sounds fine. I heard the reason those trees were in the abbey was because he was asked to invite 20 of his best friends.

I bet you can't wait for Prince Andrew to get remarried. What a party you'll have.

Thank **** for that.