Verbal

http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/CAMPAIGNS/slaughter/ALL/

What? You know we've progressed a bit beyond the days of town cryers, the pony express and flag signals. It's now possible to use something called the internet, social media, podcasts, media interviews, party political broadcasts, public meetings, etc, etc. There's no reason on earth for Farage to travel to Strasbourg to make his point about the EU. He can make it far more effectively, and to a far larger and more receptive audience, here. The likely appeal - and he has conspicuously failed to deny this - is that he enjoys the gravy train just as much as any other Euro freeloader, and that he especially loves the largesse of the receipt-free expenses racket.

You do realise that that little 'blame the media' episode has been discredited, if not laughed out of town. What is it, exactly, that leads people to demean themselves to such an extent that they retail some party apparatchik's mock-paranoia as if it were gospel?

UKIP are the BNP in blazers. Shame some of the more gullible and easily led on here buy into the UKIP mock-paranoia about the media 'fitting them up.' It's merely apeing the UKIP standard response. Farage is caight fiddling his expenses? Blame the media. Poster boys and girls meant to be typical voters and turn out to be party members? Blame the media. One racist after another falls out of the purple closet? Blame the media. Homophobic cretins come out of the UKIP woodwork? Blame the media. The problem with all of this is that while the 'media' is supposedly at fault for these 'smears' the allegations themselves are all nonetheless not actually denied. That anyone should buy the UKIP line, which is merely a cynical attempt to deflect criticsm without actually addressing it, and then peddle it as though it were true, is just simpering submissiveness.

I'm prepared to take a wild guess.

I'm not talking about the Enlightenment at all, but theologians of the Middle Ages. If you want chapter and verse on this, read Larry Siedentop's 'Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism'. The Enlightenment, like the Renaissance, is much overrated.

Britain is a profoundly Christian country, but God has little to do with it. Our beliefs in individualism - the primacy of the individual over other claims from family, clan, tribe, 'orders', etc - was promoted by Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages. This was a social revolution, because these other claims had dominated everyday life. So the beliefs in individual liberty, representative government, the moral equality of individuals - political values we grow up with - were first developed by theologians in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This was possible despite the huge capacity for oppression by the Church. The reason why it was possible was simple: Christianity had become an incredibly diverse religion by the Middle Ages, with all kinds of competing ideas and beliefs - and this was especially true in Britain. But out of that mess came the core beliefs we have today. So Christian, yes - but not in the way Cameron babbles on about.

It's nothing more than deja vu really. They went through exactly the same thing after Matt Busby. If history repeats itself, they'll have to get through another one or two managers (although probably not a relegation!) before they get back to challenging for the title.

I'm not sure it's "apparent" - more of a fact. Aap3 is the joint-lowest shirt sponsor's deal in the Prem. Barely £1m pa. Anyone at the club trying to do a deal that's better than that is going to be aiming at the easiest target of all.

That wasn't as bad as I was expecting.

If only you had the ability to read a newspaper article in its entirety... Still, MH370 is bound to turn up any day on the tarmac at Diego Garcia. That makes perfect sense.

St George is fooled by the long sentences. There is no reference to climate science or climate scientists in this. Nor is it about peer reviewed science as reported in climate journals. What it's saying is that while exaggerations and simplifications in the media and the green lobby may induce countries to get together to make treaties, there's little predictive evidence that it actually results in treaties that make meaningful change - or even in countries making much of an effort. So St George is either dissembling when he refers to 'peer reviewed' 'alarmist bibles' - they're clearly not the subject of this paper - or, more likely, articles like this are simply beyond his grasp.

Based on what? The Birmingham schools are in areas where there are strong Kashmiri populations which, because of the rural conservatism of their family backgrounds, have proved stronger recruiting grounds for Salafist extremism - although whether that actually means '25 schools' have been 'taken over' remains very much to be seen. In Tower Hamlets, the Asian population is predominantly Bangladeshi, which does not have a record of Salafist extremism.

Non satis. The P should be capitalised as it's the start of a sentence, and there should be a full stop at the end of the sentence.

All excellent choices. Are you sure you mean Kim Jong Ill, who is now (a) dead and (b) a waxwork? Or do you mean Kim Jong-un - the one who puts people out of their misery with a flamethrower, and therefore something of a risk around waxworked dead relatives?

He was. The hijackers were also fighting someone I knew, Mo Amin, who died in the crash. So in the circumstances that was a pretty amazing water landing.

Will do. Just send me your account number, sort code and password.

I'd lay good money on Norwich being a Championship team next season.

The 'natural party of government' has not won an outright majority at a general election in more than two decades. You have to go back to 1992. Most students at university today, for example, weren't even born then.

You underestimate this guy. He's clever: He never did close the bracket. Spooky.

You don't think he's a real bear, do you?

Bertrand Russell couldn't unpick this logic.

Quite so. That was extraordinary.

Of course! Just as he was Tommac - also a flying ace.

Are you sure your daily commute isn't to CCHQ? (Yes, the Tory dumb****s really call it that.) It is entirely consistent with a quality of governance so poor that it guarantees that policies designed to cost less, cost more. The special idiocy of this one is that having dumped almost the entire bill for Higher Education on students, this government now finds that the costs to the Treasury - and the taxpayer - are still higher than the loans/university grants regime it replaced. Genius.