Verbal

I said STOP generalising your life to the rest of us!

Ok enough! Could people PLEASE stop generalising from their own tiny personal experiences - as if their lives were some kind of scientifically representative sample of the universe and everything in it.

I take it you are long-term unemployed.

No, it makes the case for meritocracy - not the atrophied system that selection at 11+ had become.

Wrong. Deppo works for me. His job is safe - for now.

Yes they are a drain - a very severe one. PFI companies raking in huge contracts and defaulting; pharmaceutical companies vastly overcharging the NHS (ie us); defence contractors ripping us off to the tune of billions PER CONTRACT; multinationals moving HQs and money offshore every five minutes to evade paying anything but the most miniscule amounts of tax; banks going bust and being rescued by taxpayers...etc, etc. God the list is endless. Ethical capitalism is one of those oxymoronic pipe dreams in the modern world of the large corporation. They won't 'save this great nation' because they don't give a flying **** about this nation. National borders faded long ago in the headlong rush to bilk the British taxpayer.

Has it only just dawned on you that your lords and masters, on whom you fawn so abjectly, are from a world you could only dream of but never really aspire to? And you certainly wouldn't be allowed anywhere near... The political class live their lives in complete security knowing that there are enough unthinking, obsequious dunderheads in Britain to go around propping up their lives of unearned privilege and power.

The problem with the hope that apprenticeships will be the answer to all ills is that whereas companies used to run these at their own expense, it's now common, if not almost universal, that companies expect the government to 'subsidise' apprenticeships schemes, so that the cheap labour becomes all but free. The sponger mentality runs deep among our thrusting entrepreneurs.

I think you are about to be teased a little bit.

Not even THEY are stupid enough to say 'it was just banter'. I guess that will always fall to you.

Don't be such a baby. Gray and Keys were out of control. They bullied and got away with it - until their behaviour slipped into public view. Show trial my arse.

Not at all. I don't think you can build a socialist nirvana with those two.

If he acted illegally I expect it would. Get some perspective and common sense. If you spend your waking hours intimidating and bullying your work colleagues, and you get found out abusing perfectly competent officials on grounds of their gender, you don't really deserve to be paid £1.7m a year for your opinions.

How OLD are you?

Thinking this and insulting someone do not necessarily go together (I accept, however, that it is your default position, given your dismal politics)

As it turns out, their recorded comments are just the tip of the iceberg in an office culture at Sky Sports of persistent bullying and intimidation. Is that something you approve of? Perhaps that's acceptable in Redondo Beach, although I doubt it. Here it's against the law.

Dream on Johnny. Your Tory Party would NEVER allow Clarke near the Chancellorship. Yes, of course Clarke had the intellect and instincts to be far more impressive than Brown. He was just in the wrong party. I'm no fan of Brown. PFI was a disaster he enthusiastically endorsed. Anyone who experienced the utterly reckless London Underground PFI schemes will tell you that. He also raided private pensions in a way that turned all but a few final salary schemes into unworkable monsters for companies. He just figured basically: why shouldn't the government rather than these over-rewarded pension funds reap the benefits. Of course, even the best of intentions - and this wasn't one of them - could have disastrous unintended consequences. Brown was by all accounts warned loudly and often, but wouldn't listen. In a government increasingly arrogant and adrift, he was a terrible choice for Chancellor, let alone PM.

Yeah but don't overdo it. The object is to kick dune out for the weekend.

But do you not find it at least mildly ironic that the crudely magic wand to DISGUISE higher public spending - placing it 'off the books' - was a TORY (Major/Lamont) invention? Just as Thatcher's (or more strictly Howe's and Lawson's) little innovation was to disguise RAISING the overall tax burden, and shifting it onto the poor with MASSIVE increases in indirect taxation? For all Brown's faults, I would rather he was there than dear, dumb Norman Lamont, who, caught in the headlights of Black Wednesday, blew £27bn in government reserves trying and completely failing to prop up the pound as it moved swiftly to the ERM exit. And for all of the horror in 2008 of unimaginable quantities of public money being shovelled into propping up banks whose behaviour was by wide acknowledgement disgraceful, at least the bailout WORKED, in the sense that we are all still here, and there remains an even chance that the funds thrown at them will eventually be recovered. God help us had Osborne been in charge then. All the Tories have are smoke and mirrors - not very good ones, of course, but good enough to fool the gullible and the venal.

Exactly. As Bunuel famously said: 'God and Country are an unbeatable team; together they break all records for oppression and bloodshed.'

This is pathetic. So you would happily watch people starve to death - happy in the knowledge (such as it is) that their deaths and suffering would make your life more comfortable. This place occasionally hits a low in moral turpitude - but you really win a prize. It's also ignorant. The country with the highest population in the world isn't one that's going to fall victim to starvation anytime soon. In fact, it's the one that will very soon crush you and the dominance of the West in general - as it has many of the countries you THINK you're talking about.

I suspect there may be something in this. Gray should go, clearly. (Hell, even TDD - no lover of women - agrees!). But the way his offences have been leaked and broadcast suggests some degree of corporate malice and revenge directed at Gray for raising the issue of phone-tapping. He was just an idiot for giving them such an easy, oafish target.

Well nor is Mars! If you've gone through all the trouble of going there, you're probably going to go to bits where water (ice) is available, especially if you're colonising it. There is plenty of speculation, incidentally, that there are substantial quantities of subsurface water on Mars - and some evidence of this from the photographs and samples of recent landers.

Fresh water, yes.