Verbal

But did Hammond get a kick up the colon?

Sadly untrue. Third World people getting killed for profit and otherwise being treated like medieval serfs does not make the biggest news story. It rarely does. If you want an example less close to your home, think of Bhopal. It's estimated that something like 25,000 people have been killed or suffered horrific injury as a direct result of Bhopal. But does it make the headlines? Often enough that Union Carbide, the American company that caused the accident, have been able to walk away from their obligations to the victims scott free.

That you were wrong?

Yep, that's as good as it's ever going to get this season.

...when what you really want is the complete songbook of West Side Story?

No, I don't. But what a very odd conclusion to come to! Why on earth would you think that?

Eric, I would be only too happy to hear that this is a single journalist's fantasy. Unfortunately, it's extremely well documented by a number of reliable sources, many of whom have had to dodge harassment and threats from the Dubai authorities, who have tried desperately to keep this all under wraps, and certainly away from people in Dubai itself. When Panorama produced a a piece detailing the appalling abuses, the BBC was threatened with all kinds of legal action by the Dubai government. What actually happened? Nothing, of course.

No, Nick, it isn't comparable at all. Here's a pretty good description of how it really works: "In their home country – Bangladesh or the Philippines or India – these workers are told they can earn a fortune in Dubai if they pay a large upfront fee. When they arrive, their passports are taken from them, and they are told their wages are a tenth of the rate they were promised. They end up working in extremely dangerous conditions for years, just to pay back their initial debt. They are ringed-off in filthy tent-cities outside Dubai, where they sleep in weeping heat, next to open sewage. They have no way to go home. And if they try to strike for better conditions, they are beaten by the police. I met so many men in this position I stopped counting, just as the embassies were told to stop counting how many workers die in these conditions every year after they figured it topped more than 1,000 among the Indians alone. Human Rights Watch calls this system "slavery." Yet the Westerners who have flocked to Dubai brag that they "love" the city, because they don't have to pay any taxes, and they have domestic slaves to do all the hard work. They train themselves not to see the pain." http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-a-morally-bankrupt-dictatorship-built-by-slave-labour-1828754.html

Interesting Phil. No disrespect, but does this mean that Dubai might become a vaguely pleasant place to be? And that there might be fewer trapped and enslaved construction workers from South Asia? Because whenever I've passed through, the place always seemed like the gilded gates of hell. I couldn't imagine anyone with a conscience voluntarily buying up there for their place in the sun. As for the westerners losing their shirts on get-rich-quick schemes, I suspect that they aren't in sufficient numbers in themselves to spark a crisis on the scale of the sub-prime disaster in the US. And they will bear a great deal of the loss themselves - even with hyped up bank loans. The bigger losses for banks will surely be the absurd property schemes themselves - the kind that our chairman friend down the road used to buy his Ferraris. I can well imagine what you mean about Iran, by the way. I remember what Jordan was like during the years of the Iraq sanctions. A lot of people got obscenely rich, and the border was like the wild west.

West.

That's quite a nasty sentence you've got. Don't know many who've been able to recover from death.

If you really feel like being freaked out, check this out: http://www.lhcfacts.org/ I epecially like this bit of Yoda-ese, which means we'll all have to downsize a bit: “miniblack holes as are expected to be produced soon at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.” “To publicize the danger because time is running out is a big decision.” “ …after 50 months the earth to a centimeter would have shrunk. It would be nothing more there, not only no more life, there but also the earth would be… a small black hole.”

There's something far worse than all those about Plymouth and I'm struggling to think of who he is... Don't know his name. Don't know his rank.

Hello Foday.

If you can tell me the name and nationality of the pilot, I'll start to believe you. (And he wasn't Russian!)

And worst of all, had it not been for those damned socialists, you'd have learned to spell and express yourself legibly in what I can only assume is your second language.

All you're doing is wheeling out yet another tired, discredited CC denier - this time, someone who is not only bought and paid for by two Canadian oil industry lobby firms, but who lies on his CV (claiming he his a Doctor of Science in Climatology, when he is in fact a Doctor of Philosophy in Geography). As the following link points out: "It must be soul-destroying to see a long-retired geographer who rarely published during his colourless academic career and who never conducted any research in atmospheric science dismiss that effort without a shred of evidence or a hint of good conscience." http://www.desmogblog.com/dr-tim-ball-the-lie-that-just-wont-die Can't you at least give us ONE scientist who is not untrained in atmospheric chemistry, and a liar? You really can't find one credible source for whatever it is you so religiously believe?

This is quite childish. FWIW, and as I've already said, I thought some of the comments in those PRIVATE emails were injudicious, given the hysterical nature of deniers, who see conspiracies everwhere. But are you really suggesting that a few ambiguous, but still privately expressed comments, amount to a demolition of atmospheric chemistry itself? If so, St Canute, you're even flakier than I thought was possible - or, as I suspect, you're just on a colossal wind-up. Because no one can be THAT imbecilic...can they?

St George does the best impression of King Canute I've seen in ages. Very funny - although I strongly suspect he's Scooby MkII, and adopting the 'persona' of a noodlebrain sent round the bend by an incurable internet addiction to conspiracy theories, in which science is really an international Masonic cult out to hoodwink everyone to achieve its own Smersh-like aims. Good luck with your Thatcher question, badger. I suspect you won't get an answer - or if you do, it'll be that she submitted to the cult.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why even the most law-abiding resort to smuggling.

I had no idea you had republican tendencies. Welcome to the dark side! (And off with their heads - although personally I think Made Guillotine is too good for them.)

Dangerous idea to bring on here. Leave it to us lot and the country will be festooned with gallows.

Precisely.

I wish there was a smiley for a Mutley laugh.