Verbal

Were you the only one in the village?

Alcatraz Island is run by the California Parks Service and they haven't done a good job. The place is crumbling badly, so see it while you can. The best way to walk around the island is to see it and imagine it as it was for the prisoners - those who were stuck there and those who escaped. I worked on a film there three years ago, and was allowed to follow the exact route taken out of the cell block by the 1962 escapers (the one made into the Clint Eastwood movie, Escape from Alcatraz) - up through the back of the cells, on to the multi-tiered internal cell roofs (where, amazingly, a raft and other escape equipment were assembled, undiscovered, over several months), and then up onto the roof itself. Actually one of the reasons the Parks Service is so bad is that they allow people like me to do this kind of thing. It's also quite something to travel to Angel Island and look back to Alcatraz - because it's across that stretch of water that the escapers either made it or drowned. Angel Island also has a beautiful deserted beach - and a spectacular view from it across to the city and the Golden Gate.

As dune's alternative log-in, I can confirm that.

I work in the private sector and have done since 1982, and as an employer since 1995. I wouldn't dream of voting for such utter, sponging trash as the Tory party. While you slag off the public sector, you might consider how it is that you're able to go on to the www to write your nonsensical twaddle. The reason is that a British public sector physicist working at Cern, called Tim Berners-Lee, invented it. I imagine he's have second thoughts with the above drivel. There are of course countless examples like this, but I'm sure in your tiny hermetically sealed world, in which Hitler won the war and Apartheid still ruled supreme, this is all beside some imaginary point. In sheer hard cash terms, the worst spongers off the state are the drug companies overcharging the NHS, the PFI companies gouging the contract-bidding system, the defence contractors inflating production costs by several billions, the ongoing scandal of IT companies installing systems that mysteriously double or treble original estimates and then STILL don't work, etc, ad nauseum. The majority of these, of course, do so with the help of directorships lavished on sponging, I'll-do-anything-for-money Tory MPs and corrupt civil servants jumping ship from departments that had just awarded multi-million pound contracts.

Your political 'views' (putting it a bit too strongly, as if coherence and sense were any part of them) are well enough summed up in this. The total myth of a 'workshy slob class' was EXACTLY the rationale that created the workhouses in the 18th and 19th centuries. This makes you a worthless antique - a pre-Dickensian slob; no better than the fetid characters who created or rabble-roused for the systemic abuse that was the workhouse regime. That you then apply this poor excuse for an argument to entire peoples because of their colour makes you look even more foolish - an advocate for something that no one with half a brain would propose: a Poor Law for the 'ethnics'. Tell you what - why not go the whole hog, put up barbed wire fences all around them and add a few gas chambers?

No money saved - in fact MORE will be spent. And accountability has not been improved. Brilliant! Just the kind of useless, bumbling incompetence we need right now.

I have two words to say to you and the second one is 'off'.

Winston Wolfe.

What on earth have you been smoking?

Yes Harry. Hodgson will be fired in the next few days at the latest - and then go back to being the good manager everyone knows he is, so long as he doesn't get offered anything at Newcastle.

There is no hope for HMV. Their profit forecasts for the next few years are a desperate attempt to protect the share price, just as their 'diversification' into stunts like in-store live entertainment was a desperate attempt to keep footfall levels high. Tower Records did what they do far better than them - as did Virgin. And they went ages ago. Zavvi was always a hopelessly lost cause. HMV are in for a perfect storm. The megastore model for selling DVDs and CDs is an iTunes-inspired bust. And their Waterstones outlets will go the same way - again courtesy of iTunes, with a lot of help from Amazon. The good news is we may see the return of smaller specialist shops - both for books and music. (This is already starting to happen around where I live.) Frankly, I won't be unhappy to see HMV and Waterstones go the way of the dinosaurs. And dune, PLEASE put whatever you have left over from Desire into HMV. For me.

As I say, you are an utter low life.

So you'd wish civil war, and death and destruction, on thousands and people so that you can make a cheap buck. You really are a low life.

The unseen star of Reservoir Dogs. That scene still scares the hell out of me every time I see it.

Only if you have a fascistic frame of mind. So no, not reasonable at all. I expect we're all going to be surprised who the killer is - and possibly not ANY of the current suspects.

But sometimes life's a piece of sh!t. As Eric Idle once said.

I think it's someone who fancies himself as a pub landlord.

Very sad to hear that. Still remember his terrific performance in The Usual Suspects as one of his best.

Is this the kind of humour you're talking about, hamster?

It's not really about thinking how funny you are, though is it? Deppo's immense value to this forum is as a kind of lancer of boils. (Collectors of Nazi crap are especially pustular, for example.) Someone has to do it - it's dirty work - and I'm glad it's him.

I'm sorry to hear that. She may have taken the view that the pathetic gaggle of racists, xenophobes and philistines, who lined up to take potshots at her, aren't worth the trouble. Probably right.

Really? When did that happen?

There are no League One teams in Austria.

Not just a brown shirt then?

Except for Australians. For them, the only way to find happiness is to go to Earls Court.