Verbal

If Wade is 'commenting without reading', what should we make of your 'ability' to twist anything you do read into a confirmation of your deeply paranoid, inadequate worldview in which the Jews yet again are the scum of the earth? Even a cursory careful reading of the situation reported by the UN tells you (not you personally; you're incapable of seeing this) that the non-combat contacts are not between IDF and Salafists, and indeed the contacts are designed partly to gain intelligence on the movements of Salafists, whom Israel regards as a more serious threat than Assad. Part of the contact has also to do with humanitarian treatment of the injured (wars do this, you know - but you wouldn't because you have not the slightest conception of that). But you just carry on with your Jewish conspiracy tropes - it clearly gives you a thrill. Where's the Hague quote? Looking forward to that.

Who are these 'UKIP detractors' exactly. Name names. It seems to me that Ukippers repeatedly do a number on themselves, which is picked up just as it would be when/if other parties behave stupidly. Anyway, there's more on the racist beating heart of grassroots UKIP on BBC2 this week. 'Meet the Ukippers' features Thanet members' 'jaw-dropping views on race'. The more this is exposed the better - and the cretinous complaints from Ukippers that they're being done up like kippers by the meejah rings hollow when the members (in every sense of the word) themselves are the ones doing the doing up.

This thread is the kind of toxic dribbling that results from epically bad journalism emanating from a "news" website that, in its own words, is "inspired by sites like Infowars.com", and the gullible simple-mindedness of a conspiracy groupie seduced by yet another story conforming to the old stereotype of 'those damned filthy Jews will side with anyone'. Here's a suggestion: go to the quoted sources of this supposed conspiracy of articles. You might learn something. Hague may be guilty of many things but please quote where he said he's ever supported Al Nusra or IS. Who knows what IS are? It's not rocket science. They are an alliance of former Saddam loyalists (the hardcore of IS), remnants of al Qaeda in Iraq, and a bunch of simple minded 'radicalised' Muslim conspiracy dimwits from the West seduced by the prospect of living the Guevara dream. All united by a loathing - well above and beyond a hatred for 'the West' - of Shia and its (Kurdish, Alawite) variants. That's 'the deal'.

Oh Dear, oh dear - another Marxist rag... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2959280/Former-public-schoolboy-season-ticket-holder-one-fans-train-racist-football-thugs-claims-friend-Twitter.html UKIP may or may not be a racist party, but the undeniable fact is it's a magnet for racist scumbags. If anyone wants to be a fellow traveller with racists, be my contemptible guest.

Oh dear. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/feb/19/chelsea-fan-in-paris-metro-video-posed-in-picture-with-nigel-farage

Add this one to an increasingly bizarre list in the land of 'safety always off'. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11421667/Woman-fatally-shoots-herself-while-adjusting-bra-holster.html

Which, they would argue, is the point.

You're confusing your theory with reality though. The fact is that all university admissions are up, across the board - as trousers has helpfully pointed out. That includes degrees such as event management, fashion management and some of the older favourites for 'mickey mouse' status, like media studies and sociology. Students I encounter are not, for the most part, making the sorts of calculation you suggest. Surf studies at Plymouth University, by the way, is apparently particularly popular.

On the contrary: it rewards D students in Surf Studies, assuming they don't get a job that pays more than the threshold - it's basically free money. And it rewards a large number of EU students who also qualify for the loans but do not repay them. The people who are disadvantaged are those who study for demanding subjects like medicine, whose debts will be astronomical because their courses run for much longer. As for the loan, it is certainly not a tax. A loan is a loan and a debt is a debt, and adding a couple of conditions to it doesn't alter that. Although we were told this wouldn't happen, some of the new 'stress-tested' mortgage applicants are being asked about their student debts in calculations about affordability. So in that sense too it counts straightforwardly as a debt - and one that will disadvantage many as this all starts to unfold (remember: the first cohort paying £9,000 pa for fees alone have yet to graduate).

Students are given loans - that's what they're called and that's what they are. Therefore they incur a debt until the loan is paid off. The fact that they may not hit the income threshold for repayment at all points during their subsequent careers doesn't alter the fact that the debt remains. Trying to call debt something else doesn't alter the fact that it's a debt. And it is certainly not a 'retrospective tax'; there's nothing 'retrospective' about it. Students themselves are well aware that what they're incurring is debt - hence the greater emphasis on 'student satisfaction' since higher fees were imposed. Controversies about contact hours in some subjects also stem directly from anxieties about the cost of their education, which they know they now pay for.

This is like calling a win in the hundred metres a split second after the starting gun has been fired. The first cohort paying £9,000 hasn't even graduated yet. We don't know what will happen to repayment of loans, and there have been various predictions, some of which leave a huge and unsustainable hole that could have a huge negative impact on fiscal policy (meaning large cuts or tax rises). What's more striking though is how many inaccuracies there are in that article. For example, the universities have certainly not been "given freedom over fees". Fees are capped at £9,000, and the coalition government withdrew central funding pretty much pound for pound. There's also little chance of the ceiling being lifted, so the universities - like education in general - will suffer a gradual erosion of spending power over the coming years. The rise in applications itself has more to do with demographics than some supposed 'buy in' by increasing numbers of working class applicants - and numbers are expected to fall in line with a falling birth rate over the next five years. And as for the argument that 'new universities' are more competitive, it's clear that a number of them are making cuts because the older universities, including the Russell Group, are taking censurably more students (the one freedom they have been given) - some of whom would have previously gone to post-92s.

Pompey are now officially part of the HSBC tax-evasion-for-suspected-criminals scandal. Former owner Vladimir Antonov had an account there holding funds, apparently from Snoros Bank, to buy an executive jet. http://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/feb/12/hsbc-files-swiss-bank-hid-money-for-suspected-criminals

It's not a game. I can't find a shred of evidence that it's true - although if you can find some evidence I'd happily change my view about this. But it's odd that such clear claims were made about his 'atheist', 'hard Left' beliefs and yet the actual sources of these have proved elusive. As for proof that the 'next terrorist act' will be carried out by Muslims, that seems a very strange request. How can I prove the motives and beliefs of people who haven't as yet done anything? If you want to talk about past terrorist attacks, I suppose you could argue that the 9/11, 7/7, the Madrid bombers, plus the 1993 World Trade Centre, the mass shootings in Luxor, the Charlie Hebdo and Jewish deli attacks in Paris, the Sydney cafe siege, the mass murder of children by the TTP in Peshawar, the shooting of Malala Yusufsai in Swat, Pakistan, the execution by beheading, burning alive and stoning by ISIS - to name but a very few - were NOT carried out by Muslims. Many conspiracy loons have tried to do just this - is this where you're headed? To be clear, I'm against Islamophobia, not least out of self-interest - I'm married to a Muslim. But just as my wife is implacably hostile to violent Muslim extremists, so am I. If you've encountered extremists, as I have in Pakistan for example, and then had a work colleague kidnapped and tortured by them, you tend to have a slightly more jaundiced eye about the viciousness of Gulf-exported Salafist lunatics. If you've witnessed the murderous destruction of liberal Islamic sects, icons and places of worship by these fanatics, as I have, then you won't be quite so accepting of the argument that identifying these killers as Muslim fanatics is somehow 'Islamophobic'. It's actually the opposite: the diversity and richness of many Islamic cultures is under sustained attack by these Salafists - they've already wiped out Sufism in Afghanistan, for example, and are bombing their way to doing so in Pakistan. I do wonder, also, why you want to ‘apologise’ on behalf of atheists for the killings. Firstly atheists are united by nothing but a lack of belief. Secondly, Muslim responses to terrorist outrages conducted in the name of Islam have decidedly not been in the form of apologies, since this would imply complicity in the attacks. Many have, however, condemned such attacks – but condemning is a very different thing to apologising. As to the individual who shot the three young people in Chapel Hill, he may have been acting out of Islamophobic rage borne out of is 'atheism' - it's just that I've never heard of such a rationalisation, and there's no evidence yet that he's given it. Parking and a possible mental health issue - plus the ready availability of loaded, safety-off weaponry - seem to have been the causes: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-31431832 So sorry for giving you the impression that this is a 'game'. It isn't. I'm not partial to the prissy objection that we have to be 'even stevens' about parcelling out blame between 'atheists' (or whomever) and Muslim extremists, for fear of believing that not to do so is somehow to be prejudiced against an entire religion.

No, I mean what's the evidence? 'According to the articles' doesn't do it. What's the source of this claim?

Horrible indeed. Not that atheists are any less capable of killing than anyone else, but I'd be curious to know what the evidence is that he is?

That is truly shocking. The CSA has long been regarded, even by government, as unfit for purpose. Perhaps the DWP thought that meant the CSA should be the working model for job centres.

This isn't PR but just one variant of it - and not one that finds favour among many - known as the party list system. It's how the Euro elections work, and the Knesset and the upper chamber in Holland. When people talk about wanting PR for the UK lower-chamber elections they're mostly talking about STV. This isn't a great analogy - there's just so much more at stake in a democratic society of 60+ million than in a bowling green committee. The problem with FPTP is that while it doesn't literally disenfranchise people who support parties with little support in 'safe' constituencies, it doesn't give them enough of a stake in the outcome of a vote. The better forms of PR do allow for a larger number of voters' second-choice candidates to gain support - and that does at least reflect opinion more broadly in a constituency, rather than awarding the result straight to someone who may only get 30-odd percent of votes cast. It's not perfect - no system is. But if the ambition is to produce the 'least worst' form of democratic accountability, then PR is it. I'd add the Australian model of compulsory voting to it, contra Brand and his adoring groupie on here.

Please don't fall for the line of an unthinking hysteric like pap and his apoplectic yelling. The fallacy of your argument is completely contained in your post: you're making a simple equation between what you regard as unfair representations of people on benefits in the media with the actual views of voters of either the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats. So contrary to your assertion, it actually IS a 'great leap' to think that voters for either party was signing up to a secretive campaign of bullying and intimidation to the extent that people's health is knowingly and sometimes seriously damaged.

The only people WORSE are voters? What the hell is wrong with you? I can only assume this is another variant on your rap that the British electorate are all (except you of course) 'morons'. If you're going to coarsen political debate to this level, I really suggest you take a holiday from humans. These revelations are appalling - but they are just that: revelations. Claimants and investigators have put together the story of a culture of bullying and intimidation, not just of claimants but also of staff members. Such behaviour is, among other things, illegal. Only a fool would suggest that anyone 'voted' for that.

I'm not sure I can stand almost 100 more days of trousers-whataboutery.

For once I agree with you. There is a particular incompetence in the Left's making this the central argument against the Tories' management of the NHS. The problems created since 2010 are far more root-and-branch than that, notably following the wholly preposterous Health and Social Care Act.

In this case they should do it. The woman in Jordanian custody tried to kill local men, women and children at a wedding party in Amman - a definition right there of a worthless low-life. Suicide bombers are two-a-penny - she doesn't add anything to the ISIS arsenal, and just makes them look even worse. If she were a bomb-maker it might be a different story.

Brilliant.

Not really. As many on here have pointed out, there are other countries (Canada, Switzerland, for example) that have high gun ownership rates. Only in the US do they kill so many. I think it's a cultural thing. The Second Amendment has been articulated by the NRA and others as the right to resist anyone and anything. It's a kind of individuated version of MAD (mutually assured destruction). Or, to put it another way, vast numbers of people in the US are psychologically in a semi-permanent Mexican stand-off with some supposed enemy/invader/burglar/asker of street directions. For this version of MAD to work, guns always have to be at the ready, loaded, cleaned, safety off. In other countries, this just isn't the case - guns are normally stored unloaded and sometimes disassembled. So with a high number of guns in the US literally at the ready to blast someone to kingdom come, it's no wonder there's such a high number of incidents like these.

Guns are not the problem, people are. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jan/22/florida-toddler-fatally-shoots-himself-father-gun