Verbal

The party has a long history of that. And why not? Unless you somehow think it is simply impossible to think outside of your own class interests, which would be a truly odd idea.

This is a joke, right?

He'll be happy to hear that. He's from a family of rather daunting intellectuals, and the idea that he has any plebeian - ie working class - qualities is miles from the truth. He will, though, win his first of many by-elections tonight against an enfeebled and unpopular coalition.

Wrong trousers (assuming trousers is your surname?)

This takes us happily back to the various intelligence debates. The left=cleverer/right=dumbass equation seems incontrovertible, based on the thread so far. I wonder if there will be any more confirming evidence any time soon..?

Very, very good.

Ed is not a natural - at anything really, as far as I can tell - but he comes from a good lineage. His father Ralph was one of British Marxism's most respected political theorists. So I still have high hopes.

I agree. The only thing that could have been worse is that he killed someone - like Ian Tomlinson for example. Luckily HIS killer also is now also in jail. Right?

Me too. Much better to pay less and travel on those lovely comfortable slam-doors rather than the nasty new plastic carriages with no seats.

So you haven't travelled by train recently.

Great! Send c/o Turkish Towers.

Oh that it explains it! My apologies. Turkish feebly copied the beginning of my post so I thought it was me.

Have I ever replied to one of your posts?

How tediously predictable to pick up on this case to vent your irrational hatred (aka profound envy) of students in general. Your assumption - to dignify it with the word - that he is some rich kid seems somewhat undermined by the fact that he is a pupil at a state-funded sixth form college. His mother was the one who encouraged him to own up to the police - hardly the actions of a parent gilding a child's upbringing. Face it, students in general are cleverer than you. This one wasn't. Well done for finding one.

Yes. I hope he's learned his lesson and next time kills a newspaper seller instead.

And so the other shoe drops. How sadly predictable. I would have thought you of all people - who by comparison makes Jared Lee Loughner sound the model of clarity of thought - might pause, at least for a moment, to think (you know that word?). But no: on you steam, brain clearly disengaged by overuse of your internet right hand - blissfully unaware that you are a kind of laboratory specimen, a worst case scenario, for Nicholas Carr's argument. Dune, in all seriousness, switch it off and don't turn it on again. You may actually learn something, and improve as a human being (long shot, I admit). It's a wonderful thought, no?

Exhibit A And, just like the inadequate bully you evidently aspire to be, who slopes off behind the bike sheds and strikes a pose to impress his (invariably single-sex) mates, you evidently think your purpose in life is to label and sn igger at people as this and that, best and worst, most annoying, (ad nauseum) poster. The irony is that you have failed to follow the argument that the net reduces your ability to follow an argument.

...and everything else on the net - for your own good. 'What the net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether online or not, my mind now expects to take in information in the way the net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.' Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: what the internet is doing to our brains So if we delete the internet, Saintsweb included, we'll all be better thinkers, less stressed, more able to absorb information in a meaningful, considered way. More human. With one or two exceptions...

Are you too thick to understand?

Well you and Karl Marx at least agree about something.

So religion is the opiate of the people then?

It's not about 'views' though, is it? When the Head of the Civil Service is challenged to say how much as been saved by the bonfire, and he doesn't know, even after going away to think about it and ask all the other civil servants, then it's beyond 'different views'. It's a disaster - as the leading coalition govt MP was the first to say. You can't have it both ways - demand the bonfire on money-saving grounds and then not be concerned that no money can be found to have been saved.

Highly-strung sporting egos and New Age claptrap. Who'd have thought it?

Yes. Tell me what he says.

Listen trousers: you're either a football fan or you're a Tory. It's your choice.