Makom

We've been involved in all the important wars in the history of the world. It's what we do. It's our thing.

I gotta ask, what's the step in between nonce and walter mitty?

Option 3. You should always believe in miracles.

No statutory paid leave for maternity. None. Nada. Not even the most hard line Tory can come up with shit like this.....America takes the idea that 'there is no such thing as society' to a whole level beyond Thatcher.

American legislators putting American jobs first, second and third? Well I never, what a complete surprise. There's never been a dumber set of politicians than American politicians. These are the people who actually put it into law that the government has to buy American, even in cases where the alternative is both cheaper and better quality. They are still absolutely convinced that everything they do is better than everybody else on the planet, including politics! Despite them now having had 50 years worth of evidence to the contrary. They are the dumbest of dumb fucks that a dumb fuck ever fucked.

Indeed. After watching it, I could not in all honestly believe the same person who crafted the characters and storyboard of Alien was the same person behind that pile of cack. It actually made me appreciate Alien even more, if that were even possible.

If I had my way, coalition government would be banned as inherently undemocratic. I personally never bought the argument that 'nobody won' was the legitimate will of the people in expressed in 2010. If we must have fixed term parliaments, then it should be part of that law that the party with the most votes must either form a minority government, and therefore only pass laws that they can get cross party support for, or there should be a return to the previous government for a period of a year before another election is held, and if necessary, repeat that cycle until the next majority government emerges to serve another 5 years. Not only would that be more democratic, as the party in power would always have a clearly expressed mandate (their manifesto), it would also on a practical level force parties to differentiate themselves, lest they become bankrupt after having to fight too many campaigns.

PR isn't democracy, it's just an illusion of fairness which leads to illogical and unsustainable outcomes. If we had PR, right now, the country would be governed by a Tory/UKIP coalition, with half its MPs wanting out of Europe, and half wanting to stay in. Worse, we'd have an EU referendum where the prime minister wanted us to say no/in, and the deputy prime minister wanted us to say yes/out. Meanwhile, on the opposition benches, you'd have almost unanimous support for the idea that we should stay in, or at the very least, not be wasting our time with a referendum at this point in the recovery. It's hard to come up with any argument that this outcome represented the democratic will of the people in 2015 any more than a narrow Tory majority govt does. Even worse outcomes have been seen across Europe, where extremists and narrow interest parties rule the roost in times when there is real indecision in the electorate, as there always is in times of recession or mass migration. The real truth about multi-party democracy is that that majority always loses. The only alternative to that is a one party state.

For all the non-Irish speakers, it's a parody of an IRA slogan, "Our Day Will Come", apparently. Which I guess explains the balaclavas. It must be weird living in Ireland if you don't speak Irish. Actually, scratch that, it must be weird living in Ireland, period.

Better than electing the wrong leader and watching as they crash and burn in 2020 after repeating the same mistakes Ed made. Credibility hardly matters when you know that whoever you are, for the next 4 years your opinion doesn't matter a jot. It would seem rather fitting to me that Ed be the one put in that position, since it was he who brought it about.

On the subject of UKIP, I was reading not long ago about the party in Finland that's been making great gains - it's all the same rhetoric and warped logic, banging on about immigrants and Europe in exactly the same way, blaming all the countries ills on them. The difference between Finland and here however, was that their stupid PR system meant that in the wake of the financial crisis they managed to get into power by going into coalition with the larger centre-right party. It was every bit a nonsensical protest vote as it was here. And unsurprisingly, once they failed to deliver on their promises because their policies made no logical or rational sense, they were voted out. I for one am thankful our system means we're not at risk of having to make the same mistakes, and we can just keep them out unless or until they can convince enough people they're worth a punt, or the two main parties between them can't come up with a simple majority.

Translation? For those of us who don't speak Gaelic..... And why the fuck are they wearing balaclavas?

When Ed was appointed, the party were supposed to actually have had a big discussion and drafted a sweeping policy mandate a few years ago. Does anyone remember what the conclusions were? Because I sure as hell can't. I hope the same mistake isn't repeated this time around. There's absolutely no point even announcing any policies until a year before the election, because frankly, the swing voters simply aren't listening. All it does is provide ammunition for the Westminster bubble should whatever you say prove to be a mistake given later developments. It's not like you ever get credit for coming up with the right policy in opposition, is it?

I wonder actually, given the dearth of suitable candidates right now, if it wouldn't have made more sense for Ed to continue as leader, until say 1 year before the election, or whenever it is Cameron will step down and the new Tory leader (Boris?) who will fight the 2020 election is known. As long as he didn't come up with any new policies himself, the time could be used to shuffle the shadow cabinet around multiple times as a sort of extended audition, so the party could see who has what it takes to win power. The once installed they could announce their platform, and as they're a new leader it wouldn't much matter if they weren't consistent with what went beforehand.

The cream will rise to the top....hopefully. I don't discount another lost election before the right leader becomes apparent....

What better reflects Ed's failings btw than the fact one of the very first things the Tories plan to do, is bring in their union mandate law.....you now won't be able to strike unless 50% of members vote and 40% say yes. Of all the things that you could probably say would never be done by a Labour government, no matter far right it shifted, is to make it harder to call a strike than to elect a government. This is the result of a Labour leader campaigning on behalf of the ordinary workers. What a spanner. Hence why choosing the right leader is crucial.

OK, so the BBC has no experts - it's official. Here's their list of the 5 big things that weren't discussed in the election campaign, but that will need answers now.... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32693640 In case you don't want to read, it's Heathrow, HS2, nuclear power, climate change and foreign intervention. Yet again, they've completely ignored the issues of boundary changes & Trident.

Choosing the right leader is the only thing they need to do. The right leader will know what needs to be done to actually win in 2020, and crucially they will be able to get it done. One glimmer of hope is that Ed actually changed the way Labour leaders are elected, so the mistakes that saw him get the role, will not be repeated this time around.

Prometheus, Sunday on C4. Well, what to say..... 1. OK ish plot, filling in lots of Alien blanks, but with one massive hole - why did the Engineers tell the humans to go visit their weapons planet? 2. Brilliant cinematography 3. Utterly shit characters/story-telling, to the point it's so unbelievably bad you start to wonder if there's at least an hour's worth of film sitting on some editors floor somewhere that fills in the blanks. Idris Elba in particular was a massive let down, he had at most one line which portrayed any kind of emotion/motivation, and that made no real sense due to all the missing bits of the film

The right answer of course seems to be this: Assuming the monarchy uses male line succession, then the eldest male brother would become King, as unborn children have no legal rights, which is as true today as it was in the middle ages - the right to succeed to the throne being a legal issue after all. The same would be true if the child only has sisters, assuming a UK style succession (pre-George). However, as soon as the child was born, he or she becomes King or Queen by virtue of now being a person with legal rights and now being in the correct position in the established line of succession - the sibling would have to relinquish the Crown in the exact same manner as if a previously unknown but legitimate claimant to the throne came to light.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Humanities ...is your friend. They lap up stuff like this. There's already a related question on there - see May 6.

The referendum campaign will actually seal the fate of UKIP - since it will be the first time anyone critically examines where they get their figures from. The tragedy of UKIP is that most of them are already MEPs, so you would assume they would actually have some knowledge of what it actually does, but they clearly don't based on the bullshit they were propogating in the election campaign. That's not to say there isn't a credible case to be made that what we get out of the EU isn't worth the money we put in, but it's guaranteed that UKIP on its own won't to be able to make it well enough to persuade 50%+1 voters to buy it. The more likely outcome is they will undermine the case by having their nonsense exposed for the fag-packet economics that it really is, handing victory to the Europhiles.

Based on my limited experience of knowing one person who had it, you've nothing to worry about, neither medically or appearance wise. I think we humans over-estimate how much notice people take of us, at least amongst our close associates anyway. Strangers might think you look wierd, but fuck 'em, they don't know you so why should you give a shit? I took more notice of the humungous cist the size of a tennis ball on his neck, that fucker looked ready to burst and shower anyone within 10 feet with pus. But I'm pretty sure that one wasn't caused by the other.....

The electorate have had their chance to vote against the EU in every recent general election - they could have voted for UKIP recently, and the Referendum Party before that. The EU is what it is today because successive UK governments have rubber stamped its various growth stages. David Cameron is the first politician to say he's going to do something about that and give us a say on the exact issue, which is why the referendum will take place, because that's not a 'promise' the electorate will either forgive or forget if it's broken. And IIRC the wording of the referendum has already been mooted, and if it hasn't, it's not clear how it could be worded in a way that doesn't allow people to vote the UK out, if that's what they want to do.

UKIP are dead and buried as far as electoral maths is concerned, and that's the only thing that counts. The only reason Farage suggested he will stand for the leadership again even though he's just 'resigned', is that he's probably worked out what everyone else has - that their popularity was largely driven by his ordinary bloke image. The only other person I know who is associated with UKIP's upper echelon is the woman who regularly appears on This Week, and she's patently a fucking idiot, with barely half the ability of Farage to bat away difficult questions about why their policies are so insane/inane, and none of the appeal. She clearly wouldn't even come close to generating the same level of popular support amongst the sort of brain dead moron who voted for them. Whenever I've seen a UKIP MEP speaking, they come across as much the same, if not worse.