NJS

Watched the first ep of Spartacus - Blood and Sand last night after someone at work mentioned it. It's run by one of the best writers on Angel/Buffy and looks quite promising - lots of blood and a bit of tit.

The current system allows a party to govern without checks by gaining the support of 31% of the country. That just is not right. The only other government in Europe which operates a system as unrepresentative as ours is France. It doesn't matter what kind of system you have as long as decently clever people with the right motives come to the top. Unfortunately I have to hope that would start to happen when total power was no longer on offer to twats. I just can't help remembering Major having to horse trade with the Ulster Unionists to remain in power at one stage - I remember a remark about how they had to pass a nasty little law which allowed the RUC to take away even more rights from people and I could see the same thing happening with the BNP or George Galloway - or even other single issue MPs which are quite likely. As you say if it was all about noble checks and balances then it would be fine - people being petty little shits puts a dampener on that imo.

I think my instinctive mistrust of PR is starting to kick in - all this stuff about Clegg deciding who's in charge when his party may still come third seems somehow wrong to me. And of course that's before considering possible BNP and other minority party influence. I've always thought the current ssytem to be flawed but I'm still not convinced the alternatives are any better.

I like Kevin Smith's story about how he joined the group of people at his house protesting about Dogma who had no clue who he was so he was able to have quite a reasonable discussion with them about their objections - of course none of them had seen it.

I'd assumed so because I remember reading something about Adams and McGuinness being able to be "full" MPs whereas previously they'd just been provided with office facilities.

Mi5 and 6 swear oaths to the crown tho don't they? I think the armed forces do and until recently MPs did - the latter always made me reluctant to accept the UK as a true democracy because it meant someone like me who would never swear an oath wouldn't be able to be an MP (although I realise the Sinn Fein ones did so on a limited basis).

She would have flooded London if Ipswich had beaten us.

As a slight point of order, the Pope is only infallible when he addresses something in an encyclical letter which is very rare - his day to day hate speech is his own.

The Queen certainly has a phrase like "by the grace of God" enshrined in her mission statement/coronation oath but I think most Anglicans are pretty casual about it.

The same argument though could be made for the easy ride monarchies get - again due to a degree of brainwashing that there's nothing wrong with inherited position.

I know it's a pet subject of mine but I think you have to understand how ingrained catholicism is. I and others can make blithe statements about giving the doctrines 2 seconds of intelligent thought or about people choosing their particular brand but I do recognise that as far as they are concerned it is very much part of their basic identity (obviously the same appiles to other faiths) and attacks on the church, no matter how justified, are still seen as attacks on their team as it were. Having said all that I do hope that the more the Vatican takes this stance (though they have tried to move a bit very recently) the more people might finally take a stand.

Here's the full list of "discussion topics" from the Civil service that's causing all the trouble: Can anyone tell me why the ones in bold are not good discussion points to raise? I fucking hate the moral cowardice of diplomacy.

What I was getting at above when I mentioned a middle ground is that I absolutely believe people should have the right to those things but I still feel sometimes that our morals are a bit too loose - I suppose it's just my upbringing but I think excessively casual sex is still sort of wrong. Fine, just dont address it by issuing a moral decree 'thou shalt not have excessive casual sex' Absolutely - I think there are lots of things which I have a problem with morally which I wouldn't dream of proscribing. I think we almost have the balance between morality and law correct in the west as a whole and one of the things I strongly believe in is non-interference in private consensual activities - though I think that principle should be extended to drug use.

What I was getting at above when I mentioned a middle ground is that I absolutely believe people should have the right to those things but I still feel sometimes that our morals are a bit too loose - I suppose it's just my upbringing but I think excessively casual sex is still sort of wrong.

Typical of the man but true at the same time.

Far too much red and white in those photos.

Keane will fucking love spoiling it - had a feeling it might turn out that way.

I agree it has to be a voluntary "corruption" as I referred to it and I think the driving force is a natural desire of all humans to be "free" from the shackles which repressive regimes whether religious or not impose. At a base level I think religion's classic mistake throughout history has been sexual repression rather than any other kind and I think that will be its "downfall" in the Muslim world. Of course some aspects of this in the western world could be argued to have gone too far but I think a middle ground is the way forward. I think this also applies to Catholic third world countries just as much as Islamic ones.

What industry do you work in? If you don't mind me asking. Banking - I work in IT for the London branch of a German Landesbank (regional state bank). The bank asked its shareholders for a capital injection to cover toxic losses and a condition of that was an EU backed restructuring.

Confirmed today that our branch is going from 129 > 65 staff by the end of 2012 but mostly through wastage - one lad on our team left today so no great pressure but only "guaranteed" a job until the end of the year but should be okay beyond that. There's the option of voluntary redundancy but it has to have a business case as well. They really fucked things up in head office in Stuttgart by announcing stupidly generous packages which loads applied for only to find out there was no chance for most of them so they had to go back to the drawing board.

Can I just verify that shagging pensioners is a no no? Out for a birthday with a lad from work last week and he was telling me how when his brother turned 32 he vowed to shag a 16 year old and a 64 year old in the same week to celebrate - and supposedly succeeded.

Brought back from the edge of lunacy by that clause.

Suggestions I've read this week are that he was either from Palestine or Asia Minor but this was before the Turks as such arivved from an ethnic pov.

I agree with a lot of what you say but the problem as I see it is that English patriotism is almost defined by the "upper class" stuff you mention which I tend to dislike rather than a pride in a shared sense of community I would be happy to embrace.

I don't mind if people want to celebrate or have an excuse to get pissed but I'm sick of this victim myth that nobody can do it. Patrick's day is generally a marketing ploy by Guinness in this country which people have embraced and there would be nothing to stop anyone doing the same for this day. I was just talking to a lad last week how overall the English have been the biggest cunts in human history and my reaction to that falls somewhere between pride and shame depending on the subject/mood but I have no real objection to any celebration of this kind.