Verbal

No it doesn't. View of his Bottom is right for once. But in any case, arguments about what's in founding religious texts are ultimately pretty futile. The Quran was written from the 'memory' of Mo's dream revelations about 100 years after he had them. In the meantime, all manner of petty rivalries and scores were being settled in the drafting of the religious documents associated with the birth of Islam. This is especially true of the 'hadiz', which are the actual source of all this veil nonsense, and which had largely been forgotten about until the Saudis decided to export Wahhabism, a particularly nasty and crude version of the religion.

Arguing with you is (as someone once said) "like trying to nail jelly to a greased piglet". Is it ever possible for you to stick to the subject at hand?

0 for 2, as the Americans say. Perhaps you could try something a little less ad hominem?

I thought 'The Ghost' was pretty good. A far worse crime was 'The Tenant'. But none of this is the point. This is not about defending his actions - nobody would. It's about due process, both in the US and internationally. Compare the Swiss court's and government's actions with those of the British government in the case of Gary McKinnon. The Americans thought they could win extradition by simply getting on their high horses - and were prepared to refuse Swiss requests for documents that related to the original plea bargain. My guess - actually more than that - is that the British government would still have folded in the face of such a refusal.

Did you read the NY Times article?

Well, maybe this is better than long post, no time...!

'When'?!

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/07/12/world/AP-Roman-Polanski.html?_r=1&hp Thank heavens for that. And credit to the Swiss for not being bullied into extraditing Polanski into the oblivion of the US prison system and its 'without parole' mentality.

Even if, as someone quite rightly said, it's all about sex?

That's what Dawkins says. Or worse: the idea of a watchmaker is wrong.

Have a gold star. Section 44 is a police-state measure used by to harass British citizens based on no 'intelligence' whatsoever. In more than ten years since hitting the statute book, and after thousands upon thousands of pointless, occasionally abusive 'stops', it has trapped a grand total of 0 terrorists. A word of advice: if you're ever stopped under Section 44, NEVER give your name and address. The police are only allowed to ask, not demand, under the Act. But if they succeed in getting your name, it will automatically be added to a centralised Section 44 list. There is no prospect of your getting it removed, and no guarantee that it won't be used against you.

Shouldn't there be some sort of penalty for winning games against fellow strugglers with players you don't own?

Yes, and the real problem is going to be with the presently disappearing glacier systems that feed the five great rivers of Asia.

Because one has nothing to do with the other?

I liked The Deputy - very 'Ventures' sounding - and Revolution Song (which is really good but could do with some tightening up here and there, i think) sounds like it could only come of Manchester. If you're up that way and looking to get a video made later this year I know some people who might be able to help you out.

Not had tripe. No food invented by the Scots could possibly be good for you. In Madagascar, I've been offered fried maggots served with live soft shell crabs that are cooked in front of you and then eaten whole. Pretty good! One of the least yucky things I've eaten, I'm sorry to say, is whale. It was served raw, dipped in a Korean sauce and then placed on a sizzler thingy for a few seconds. Tasted like the tenderest beef you could imagine.

Food and rugs from stupid animals? I have higher standards than you, evidently.

Several hundred?! I thought he died barely two hundred years ago. Didn't they teach you American history before they lined you up with the other immigrants to stick your hand on your heart and pledge blinding allegiance? Franklin was dead right though.

Ponty's advice was to cut out the abuse - not stop posting in a hissy fit. I've eaten whale in a Japanese restaurant in Tokyo. How it got there is interesting. The Japanese are not allowed to catch whales commercially, except in small numbers like those in The Cove', which I think is legally sanctioned by the International Whaling Commission - who also sanction whaling in other traditional communities like the Quinault indians of Washington State in the US. However, the 'research' meat has some perfunctory 'research' done on it and is then passed down the food chain, so to speak. It is, in other words, a bit of a dodge. The Japanese signed up to the Whaling convention and then looked for every conceivable way around it. So as a customer eating whale meat in a Japanese restaurant, I was probably more at fault than those in the cove. (Does it cut any ice that the whale - cooked 'Korean style' - was pretty good?) But the larger point is that the Japanese are doing something much less defensible with their 'research' vessels than with the slaughterers in the Cove. As meat eaters ourselves, we in the West are in a bit of a glass house throwing stones by complaining about the killing of dolphins. Other cultures ARE different in ways that can make us wince. But it's reasonable, on both sides of the argument, to hold all sides to international agreements - whether it's to ban commercial whaling or to license whaling and dolphin hunting among traditional communities.

So would you moderate your earlier claim that the 'new orthodoxy' is that the North Atlantic Drift isn't changing and won't change? I've always understood that a change or fizzling out of the NAD was a possibility in some climate models - but that, as you say, 'we don't know'. The idea that there is convincing evidence that everything is and will be fine is what puzzled me.

Don't ask me, ask Azougy. He'll give you a credible answer. But that's what he said - £40 million paid off by Sunday. This is on top of the claim that after the players were p[aid, the fans would immediately get some news that would make them all happy. Does he mean us?

Source, Grandad? Yours are the most plausible sceptical posts on here, so I'm always curious.

Azougy promised to pay off £40m of debts by this Sunday, which presumably includes the £28m to Gaydamak.

For or against?