Verbal

Seven.

Blacks are three times more likely than whites in the US to die in confrontations with the police. http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/21/michael-medved/talk-show-host-police-kill-more-whites-blacks/

Only on a reductionist view can you conclude that the individual stories of gun mania have no connection to a larger picture. The death-by-cop incident yesterday, for example, is far from isolated – you watch the news, right? I’d say this thread has been a good one, and hasn’t on the whole resorted to unthinking USA-bashing (a favourite pastime of yours ironically). FWIW, I think a few things stand out: Part of the problem in the US is the fetishisation of guns. Too many Americans know too much, in a trainspottery way, about the minutest details and performance of this or that piece of annihilating semi-automatic weaponry. Another is an inoculation from the real, terrifying effects of this weaponry. I remember growing up watching Westerns on TV and thinking that bullets merely sting when they strike a cowboy’s hand and dislodge his revolver. Because in Westerns that’s how they always reacted – the gun flying out of their hands and their clutching a presumably lightly bruised wrist. The ludicrously simplistic good guys/bad guys dichotomy also rears its head in the proliferation of gun violence in the USA, fostered by POV shooter games and movies, frankly, like American Sniper, where even the language – ‘savages’ – is the same as in the old Westerns, dehumanising the supposed enemy and obscuring the real consequences of taking a bullet to the face. Having worked in conflict zones and seen a few things for real, I shudder to think of the pernicious effects of this nonsense when allied to a wider gun culture. And then there’s implicit in all this a kind of individuated MAD (mutually assured destruction) advocated by the American gun lobby, a Utopia in which the entire country is in a gigantic Mexican stand-off. You hear this rubbish after mass shootings like Sandy Hook, when the National Rifle Association argued that the way to avoid it would have been to arm all the primary school teachers so that they could just shoot anything that moved while they taught arithmetic. So there’s plenty of stuff to think about as a result of this thread. Odd to think otherwise.

Criminals do indeed get guns in the US. And then play cowboys and Indians with them. Or cops and black people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21T2F5WFPAw

Short-sighted, or rationally making an alternative choice? In London, which is in any case an overwhelmingly Labour town (BJ is an anomaly), people who voted for the Lib Dems in the 2010 general election are now split 35% each between the LDs and Labour. The Tories are the choice of only 15% of ex-LD voters, and the minor parties, including UKIP, are nowhere (YouGov/Evening Standard, 31 March). I'm sure you'll agree that this is excellent news. Not only do we get to be rid of coalitionists like Simon Hughes, but a good few Tories as well. With the collapse of the Labour vote north of the border, London holds the keys to No 10 and they're jangling in Ed's pocket. Thanks, Lib Dems!

Not even furious editing makes your post coherent. This is not about you calling someone who's disabled a 'mong'. It's about you calling anyone a name which to them would suggest you are saying they have the attributes of a disabled person. As for 'the rest of my post', it can't be nonsense because it was merely asking you questions - which you have signally failed to answer. So again: what terms of abuse are off the table for you? By your weirded-out logic, it's ok to call a white man a 'n**ger', a Chinese woman a 'Paki' and a South Asian a 'ting tong'. Is that it? So long as the person at whom your abuse is directed is not described by your term of abuse, it's ok? Good grief, the twists and turns you have to make to justify your absurdities. And all because your thin skin has been *****ed by an infraction. You poor soul.

So where do you draw the line, Turkish? Is this like your attitude to race, in that you reserve the right to abuse the disabled but want to be absolved from being called a bigot? What words are off the table? None? Is the company you keep thick with the words 'Paki', 'n**ger', 'ting tong', 'mong', spazz'? And would you in an ideal world just love to use all those words and more on here to abuse whomever you like - without so much as a single one of those infractions you rather hilariously recoil from in such a thin-skinned way? I feel sorry for you. In your world everyone targeted by you should adopt the 'sticks and stones', but you, you precious one, should be exempt from one of those nasty, painful, upsetting infractions. I do hope you find a life.

Crikey, now even dogs in America have guns! And they're using them to kill us! http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/girlfriend-charged-with-murder-after-claiming-dog-shot-boyfriend-10156810.html

A 'few nutters'?! UKIP is riddled with racist scumbags. Voting is not just a tick-box exercise where you align your ideas with manifestos. If it were just that, you could just as easily vote for the BNP or any other fascist fringe party because they'll have plenty of stuff in their manifestos about minimal states and other things you seem to cherish. Voting is also about the company you keep. And if you're happy to keep company with a bunch of racist scumbags, who are every so often (very often, it seems) caught out actually being racist scumbags, then go you.

So let me get this straight: those decades of 'experience' you waffled on about earlier have led you to the enlightening, well-reasoned conclusion that you should vote UKIP. Did you spend all those years in a darkened room? And just to be clear, you're happy about getting into bed with the party whose members: have called for the compulsory abortion of Down's Syndrome foetuses have argued that the flooding of the Somerset Levels was caused by gay marriage have recommended that politicians imitate Adolf Hitler's 'oratory style' have called Thai people 'ting tongs' have declared revulsion at the sight of black people have memberships with notorious racist organisations, including white supremacist groups have been described by one of their own former MEPs as 'bloody right-wing fascist butters' and have a leader whose idyllic school days included, according to his teachers, marching through villages singing Hitler-youth songs. ..to list a few. THAT's the party that decades of your considered thought have led you to.

The 'benefit' of being older does not make you wiser, Lord T, as your I-am-a-Man-of-History posts demonstrate. You leave the impression that having 'historical experience' leads by some kind of iron law to a decay into some sort of Ukipper version of Colonel Blimp - and that would be truly frightening if it were true. Thankfully it it's nonsense - you can be saved. Oh, and Labour/SNP is coming. Run and hide.

The coalition has already cut housing benefit extensively. One of the consequences of that in London is the social cleansing of large swathes of the city. Housing benefit and tax credits for people in work - and, you might want to add, extensive government financing of apprenticeships, which was once paid for entirely by employers - wouldn't be picked up by companies. So the immediate effect of your proposals would be the clobbering of the working poor.....again. But this is fiddling around the edges. The biggest ticket item by some distance is pensions, followed by the NHS, social security and state school education. Those four alone account around two-thirds of all public spending. So to make the kind of difference you're expecting, you're going to have to cut substantially into one of those three, not just tinker. As you say, easy.

I can't for the life of me see what's wrong with UJ's comment. How does saying that politics has complexity make him an "uninformed idiot"? And talking of which, you own contributions on this have swung wildly between faux-Marxist poseur and indignant over-taxed small businessman. Want cuts exactly would you make, since you make it all sound so easy?

Who gives a **** whether it's infractable or not? The issue is not that the word is infractable but rather that those who use it are contemptible.

Weird.

And here we go again with Turkish's thread on race, part 72.

You seem to have got that the wrong way around. There has been no Conservative majority election victory since 1992 - almost a quarter of a century ago. Labour came within a missed meeting of forming a government in 2010 despite its record in power. The Conservatives long ago ceased to be the 'natural' party of government.

It's such a shame you have good taste in music.

Not most - all. No one on contract at the BBC waits until expiry to line up their next one. It would be career suicide - much like (usually) punching one of your colleagues.

That's a truly sickening list.

He did, at least twice, in December 2001 and October 2004.

If someone were to say you could only choose one industry to be renationalised, I'd choose water.

It's not been about that since it was redesigned by Andy Wilman and Clarkson - it's much more about blending car culture with Tony Scott visual aesthetics and a three-headed Mr Bean. The quite separate issue of Clarkson's 'fracas' with his producer has to do with the unavoidable consequences of what is alleged to be a physical assault. No one, no matter how 'irreplaceable', is going to remain in position if this basic claim is not disputed. Whatever we might feel about Clarkson - and I would certainly agree he's a rare talent - the outcome of this was inevitable. He'll now be reinvented on ITV, working with producers equipped with body armour.

The 'anecdotes' that are the some of the key facts of the case have been the subject of a BBC press release.

Why do you say that? There seems to be little dispute about the basic claim that a 'fracas' took place and that it involved something between a push ('handbags' in Clarkson's words) and a punch. I see that Oisin Tyman is now being hounded with threatening messages, presumably by TG fans of one kind or another. The one outcome I think is most likely from this is that Tyman will not be working on the show if it continues, especially if Clarkson is allowed to return.