Verbal

JPS Lotus circa 1972?

What amazes me is the unadulterated narcissism in all this. Your hysterical (and hysterically funny) screams about 'Nazism' and 'witchhunts' are nothing more than a pathetic whinge from someone who wants to live like a giant baby - someone who HATES to have his (or Gray's) language and views judged in any other way than benign, no matter how intimidating, or threatening, or bullying, they may appear, or actually are, to the people at whom they're directed. Your self-regard - that nothing you (or Gray) can say can possibly be wrong so long as you self-define it as 'banter' - is so overwhelming that you've lost all sight of all sensible argument, and resort to ludicrous comparisons with the Pogroms and the Gulag. Yes, Sergei, you're right: Sky are mass murderers on a par with Mao, Stalin and Hitler for sacking someone who can't BEAR the idea of a woman anywhere near football. And as for that Wendy Toms - I bet she would volunteer to be the camp commandant who'd personally supervise your slow starvation to death, along with the other millions of your fellow banterers. Grow the **** up.

Sexism is no better than racism. When it is let loose in the workplace, or anywhere else for that matter, it discriminates as surely as racism. Football is notoriously sexist. In the 1920s, the FA used to expel ANY club affiliated to it that allowed women to participate, whether in the running of the club or - heaven forbid - playing for it. Gray's boorish comments might strike you as funny - 'banter', in that utterly stupid phrase that is supposed to neutralise the offence. But there was nothing remotely funny about what Gray said. It demonstrated (and was intended to) his loathing of women - merely BECAUSE they are women - making decisions of any kind in football. He is the 1920s FA personified. Your bleating about '1984' are merely a feeble attempt by you to reserve to yourself the right to be abusive towards women whenever YOU see fit. Dress it up as 'banter' if you like. But it's a truly loathsome attitude. There's nothing Big Brother about it. You abuse, humiliate, bully your workmates, you're breaking the law and you are almost ALWAYS in breach of contract. So please, get it into your head: mutual respect for your work colleagues is not some alien, authoritarian evil; it is simply a reasonable way to behave. Gray deserved what he got, and in my view got off remarkably lightly. In any case, do we really need to be offering contracts of £1.7m a year for such crass, peevish neanderthals? He should take his huge pile of money and go hang his head in shame.

There goes the neighbourhood.

The question: 'Are women linos a good thing?' is preposterous. It only makes any sense if you assume an inability by gender to run the line...and that is clearly nonsense. It is, in other words, nastily misogynistic. But clearly acceptable to you.

Foreign Office advice is no. Airports in chaos. I'd go. It'll be tourist-free. Actually it may be the safest time. Terrorists probably won't want any outrages against foreigners while the focus is on removing the government. An attack would severely divide the opposition.

I bet you did. When you accidentally forwarded them to me, I should have known from the filename that I mustn't look - 'Dr D's three-way with dune and hypo: how many ways to connect?' I suppose that's what they call 'teaching materials' these days.

So few words, so much to untangle.

Strange that you don't mention the video clips. Like those did you?

You didn't? I don't think there's been a French farmers thread on here recently. But just for you, no - I personally don't like the way EU budgets are STILL distorted by farm subsidies. so why does an avowedly anti-european bunch make such a screw-up over fees?

You really are no lover of women.

Must be all those posting on the Gray/Keys thread. I had no idea that so many on here were no lovers of women.

Didn't you think I was agreeing with you?

Redondo saint = do rent in arse

Good grief. How pathetic. Why don't you grow up? It does seem that when you scratch the surface, a FEROCIOUS anti-intectualism wells up here - and is unleashed on students or anyone whom, patently, is cleverer, more energetic, ambitious, than the grumbling naysayers who prefer not to confront the obvious lunacy of their ossified prejudices. I was merely making a point about how taxes will now be winging their way out to the tunes of billions as a result of this change - and that the university system as a whole just got a whole lot more expensive. All in the era of cuts. What it reveals is that the demand for 'cuts' (ie increases in this instance) are as much driven by ideology as anything.

So are you so much of a Tory apologist that this doesn't register with you? Of course it'd be better to have no fees. But don't you feel even a little bit conned that this lot have devised a system that shovels your tax pounds straight out the door to Eastern Europe - and also actually raises the overall cost to the Exchequer of the university system itself? Oh, and EVERY university of any reputation in the UK will charge the full £9,000. Don't kid yourself that it'll just be Oxbridge.

The big difference being that European university systems do not work with loans an ANYTHING LIKE the scale of the UK. Many are free, and so there are no loans for students to apply for. THAT's why European universities are cheaper to UK students. There is next to no flow of european tax funds into British students' pockets

For the simple reason that by whacking up the fees to such screaming levels, they are funnelling taxpayers' money abroad. Had we kept a system that, say, cut student numbers and maintained a university system through the MUCH CHEAPER route of government grants, we wouldn't be in this ridiculous situation. The higher the fees - and remember the government has TREBLED them - the more flows abroad. The higher the qualifying salary level, the more East European students do NOT have to pay back. so entirely the government's fault for adopting a cretinous neo-liberal approach rather than dealing directly with the problem. Who these days needs a solution that costs FAR MORE money?!

Yep, that was my point.

Ah, I see the charm offensive is going well since your near-miss.

And this government will continue to give. Want to hear a little scandal? As more and more students in the UK re dissuaded by the combination of higher fees and poorer employment prospects, their places are being increasingly taken up especially by East European students. The reason is that they get a first-rate university education and, because they're in the EU, can apply for UK-funded student loans on exactly the same terms as UK students. The scandal isn't that more EU students will fill places; it's that this government has designed a system that will rob the UK taxpayer of billions. EU students individually in receipt of upwards of £50,000 in UK government loans will, on the whole, not pay back - - because a) it's hard to chase the money; and b) these students come from much lower-wage economies, where the £21,000 floor before you HAVE to repay will in many cases simply never be reached. So this coalition has somewhat brilliantly exported education, training and jobs at HUGE expense to UK taxpayers.

Aren't you all being a tad hysterical? It all seems a bit 'so what' to me.

Neat trick with the mobiles. Yet another band, though, who owe EVERYTHING to The Band.

...

Precision. Considered. Lexicographer. Don't mention it.