Verbal

Not good.

How deeply surprising that the cap-doffing axe-grinders on here should think Ed failed. According to ITV News, the consensus among the political commentators at Westminster was that he did well. Having seen the exchange, I agree - he made Cameron look like the lying, slimy creep he is. (Just an objective view.)

And Liverpudlians. She must be spinning.

Needed by the state?!! Are you a refugee from the DDR or North Korea by any chance?

Which is why the washing machine has been argued to be more influential than the internet in changing modern society. Not many people know that...

Tell them to do PPE (politics, philosophy & economics) at Oxford. Employment rates for PPE graduates are stupidly high.

That's an awful lot of guesswork Johnny. I'm not doing much better, quoting personal experience, but I worked in the BBC Science Dept a while ago, and guess what the majority of staff there didn't have: a science degree. most were arts graduates of one kind or another, and a very large number of them were Oxbridge. The arrival of post-1992 universities - former polys - may have widened access to higher education beyond reason (it's arguable), but they haven't altered the British class system, and the way in which the more established universities are feeders into it. And please don't take too seriously the idea that there are a lot of grads doing menial jobs. Come back in say 10 years time and look again. Most people I knew did menial work when they left, or voluntary work of some kind. Their career trajectories since have in most cases been pretty meteoric (knighthoods, directorships, etc). Everyone starts at the bottom - and looking at what people do immediately after uni is massively misleading.

I think you need to re-read my post.

I do wonder (especially with that dangerously close to parodic comment you ended with) whether you've just been an expat for too long. I know plenty of philosophy graduates - history, politics, sociology, government studies as well. And when I compare them to the science and engineering graduates I've also known over the years, its the Arts and Humanities ones who've almost always done better in life. Now this is all circumstantial of course, and I really would like to see a decent longitudinal study done on this. But the meagre wage-slave future mapped out for so many scientists and technologists isn't, in my experience at least, matched by the A& H graduates. Check out the top echelons of the BBC, the Civil Service, the heads of charities, private schools political parties, those with major directorships. Whatever you may say about the impact of their social origins on their success, arts graduates are hugely overrepresented among the British elite. Now of course, by all means, tell children of people of lesser means that they cannot study the subjects studied by those further up the class ladder - but be careful that you are not making a tiny contribution to perpetuating or even rigidifying a characteristically British class system that is ossified enough already. When you cheer on a government that deliberately breaks the university system, be careful also that they (and you) know why they're breaking and what will replace it. If you really want a throwback to the late 50s, before the first modern expansion of the university system, one thing is for sure: to remain even vaguely technologically and intellectually in the game with other advanced economies, we will have to import talent by the boatload. But don't worry, it won't get so bad that we'll have to ask you back! Toodle pip, and don't forget to shout 'fore' when you whack your next tee shot into an Indian contract worker.

Truly desperate, desperate stuff. I suggest you do a history degree.

Because it's not even a deterrent. We can't fire any part of our nuclear arsenal without American approval. And besides, nuclear fallout does not respect borders. If you consider for a moment what the deterrent actually means - actually loosing off a nuclear weapon and all its unimaginable consequences - it's really no option at all. For which we pay BILLIONS. The beneficiaries are not us, but the defence contractors who pay PR companies and politicians well to perpetuate such a morbidly stupid logic. Set against that nonsense, give me more students any day.

I rest my case.

And then quoted by JFK in one of his greatest ever speeches.

You shouldn't rule out a far more likely outcome: that the political consequences of the spending cuts will be so severe that the coalition's popularity will plummet to unheard of depths. By leaving, and causing a constitutional crisis, the Liberals may actually gain in popularity. Not much maybe, but compared to the party of Dimwit George, enough to make it worthwhile.

Thatcher fixed the 'mess' not by cutting public spending, but by increasing it by an average, in real terms, of 1.1% per year - according to the Institute of fiscal Studies. The sheer chaos about to be unleashed by the '25-40%' spending cuts will sort out the coalition PDQ.

Trousers is a Tory. He doesn't deserve a dime.

So if you don't 'earn' it you get thrown out of the country? I think this idea has been tried - along with invading Poland, etc.

We should increase the deficit, not cut it. The libcons are economic dimwits. Says the Torygraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financevideo/8048614/John-Maynard-Keynes-Horror-at-Governments-economic-illiteracy.html

Wrong. You're confusing him with Swiss Tony.

Which tense is this question in, trousers?! Anyway, the answer to your question, as heard in R4 tonight, is that the biggest block to Labour facing reality was Gordo himself. If they'd won, he'd have clung on, but they didn't and he's gone - so totally different situation. I'm not sure your hypothetical works.

This doesn't make any sense. The push for green, far from restricting technological growth, is actually a serious spur for investment in new technologies - just as restrictions on car emissions pushed the evolution of car engines in Europe and Japan in the 1980s onwards. I don't understand your next, seemingly disconnected argument: we may indeed need nuclear power for a long time yet - but that has nothing to do with the fallacy that green technologies inhibit technological growth.

And you STILL thought it was Jesus?!

While that is a fact, in the most obvious way, it does not address the issue. The problem with many deniers is that their arguments are based on the limits of their own imagination. Because they can't imagine that human-influenced climate change is real, it must be untrue. Their lack of education, in other words, trumps current scientific opinion.

Wgaf.

Nonetheless, 'renewable' is what they're called. A good friend of mine in the Eastern US has solar panels which generate so much energy he sells it back to the electricity company. His total electric bill is less than $400 a year. The panels were paid for by state government grant. So big companies don't always win.