Walsingham

Do you think he gets paid to post this? I mean besides his student grant.

Fair points, Monte. - I said I 'doubted' they could maintain people smuggling to the same extent without drugs to keep the rest of the machine running. I don't have a study to back me up on that. I don't know of any comprehensive audits of organised crime syndicates, but it's possible they've been done. My points was that to be effective it helps to have safe houses, a network of feared enforcers, and a distracted defender. This is all consistent with syndicates being pumped full of more money than they know what to do with via illicit drugs. - I don't know if you CAN fix Mexico without ending the drug trade. Mexico is always going to be the most logical transhipment point of drugs to North America so long as South America continues to make them. The sums involved are staggering and as we can see in Afghan even full intervention doesn't necessarily solve the problem. - I certainly accept that there are finite resources available, and that disparate populations fall into bickering, and violence. It's a lesson taught by no less an authority than the old apartheid government of South Africa, which sought to resettle black Africans whenever it got the chance on (usually spurious) grounds of returning them to their 'homelands'. I don't see how unrestricted immigration can possible help any more than unrestricted loading of people into a lifeboat. ~ I'm not convinced that there aren't patronising roots to the hippy-dippy insistence on accepting everyone claiming asylum. For ****'s sake there's nothing wrong with most of the countries people want to emigrate from besides the people. I'd have thought the logcal solution was to work more effectively to solve these problems, not act as a massive safety valve/brain drain until the only people left are too stupid or too scared to leave. Do we really want the whole world to become like Wales?

I'm planning on completing the order today. Just one last question: What's the reliability curve on these babies? Is it worth getting a 2 year warranty?

This is PRECISELY the kind of accountant's thinking I just raged against. I can only assume your comment is deliberately provocative. EDIT: If it isn't: Just consider WHY the World Cup is prized? It is prixzed because it is supposed to represent the sum total exertion required to win it. This is different each World Cup, but assumed to be an exertion of positive qualities like endurance, skill, imagination, discipline etc. If you only get the Cup because you are a cynical cheating t**t then what you have just won becomes a celebration of being a t**t instead.

I suppose I should point out that Britain is entirely surrounded by water, but we manage to have an illegal immigration problem. Again, the problem is that the people smugglers have a large portion of their basic infrastructure and manpower costs met by illegal drugs. I doubt they could maintain those structures on the proceeds of people smuggling alone.

I was in the Natural History Museum Last week and discovered they have one set of bathrooms for everyone, with sturdy cubicles around each convenience. I didn't notice any lack of civilisation. Indeed, quite the reverse.

I didn't see the match, but I do get frustrated by the incredibly poor standards of sportsmanship shown throughout, not so much for their existence, but their celebration by 'fans'. I'm know I'm as old school as an Eton mess, but IMO... 1. If you are a fan then what you celebrate shows what you are a fan of. 2. If you celebrate cynical diving, handballs, or whatever then you aren't a fan of football, you're a fan of men who are ****s and... 3. It should say so on your ****ing overpriced shirt. EDIT: I'm not angry with the 'fans' so much as at the colossal waste of time and attention it is to invest so heavily in a sport which is little more than an exercise in product placement. Sport shouldn't be mere commerce. Being a fan shouldn't be mere commerce. Being mere commerce is WHY everything is sacrificed for the grubbiest advantage. I don't care what the sport is but real sport at the highest level should be a contest of all the human faculties in a spirit of wanting to test those faculties, not simply to win by one point or one play acting moment.

I'm on record as saying drugs need to be decriminalised, but this last statement of yours seems pretty ****ing naive. Well, based on research made here in Finland (which I know is probably different from the states), prisons are where amateur criminals become professional criminals. Gang activity (mostly 1%) is a relatively new phenomenon in Finland and has been researched since the early 90s when the Hells Angels and Bandidos first came to Finland. After that we've seen a real explosion of new gangs, both prison and regular. I'd say my statement is probably more true for illegal aliens since they've got nothing to lose if they get sent to prison for committing no crime. Latino gangs are numerous and powerful and have a strong network in prison and they offer "work" after you get out. Probably a more sensible answer than my one line deserved. I would never deny the notion that jail trains and hardens criminals. But asserting that it is the production line for criminals, rather than gangs or families, or quirks of genetics still seems bizarre. Restricting the movement and sale of drugs is a question of simple mathematics. Compare the volume of drugs with the total volume of legal products and you see it's a nonsense. Illegal persons are another matter entirely. In fact I'd go so far as to say that if we destroyed the drug trade by giving the **** away for free then the architecture of organised crime that is currently able to swan past immigration controls and maintain large armies of enforcers and murderers on drug profits would be dealt a killer blow.

And to think we were trying to work on DNA profiling all these years...

Homophobia, discrimination, hate speech, religious and ethnic intolerance... It hasn't been that many decades since the last lynching in the south. That's like saying a cat is a bear because they're furry and like eating other animals.

Nice one, Amentep.

I'm on record as saying drugs need to be decriminalised, but this last statement of yours seems pretty ****ing naive.

The Taliban throw acid in the faces of little girls who want to learn to read, they run heroin, and pay 5 year old kids to hook up bombs. So, forgive me for not seeing the obvious connection.

May I suggest your mother?

The bug in ALL Relic multiplayers which means I can't use my ****ing router. Which, in case anyone from Relic reads this, is the same router model shared with more than 20% of UK users. Way to go, ***holes. I love your games but I refuse to buy them from a company which completely ****ing ignores that many people.

Wasn't this question discussed a while back? What the hell happens to all the old threads here? Is this ****ing Logan's Run?

For comparison I read yesterday that one of the new conservative health panel members believes foetuses can punch their way out of the womb.

I've been in Oxford attending a conference. I had forgotten what - perfectly natural - effect a large number of scantily clad student girls would have on me. One colleague can be summarised as observing that I didn't know whether to drool or cry.

What are tyhe fundamental, hard science, constraints on your solution, and what are the human constraints? Divide, and list, please.

And I can see you want those options... like... want them BAD. Even I don't get that upset about computer games. I actually had a similar issue come up in a much more serious context, which was the dry brush if you like. I always get enraged with wishy-washy attempts to make everyone happy. Particularly when you do so by taking power out of the hands of people smart enough to make themselves happy for the - quite illusory - sake of bloody halfwits who may or may not exist.

Had to listen to the radio because working. Quite glad I didn't have to see it. Agreed with the commentators that our setup nationally is quite inadequate to the fans. It's not a lack of money for sure. Just goes to show the importance of management, the importance of structure, and the importance of what I'd call the 'will to fight' if we were talking about combat. Something is ****ing busted.

I'm an energetic fat man right now, and English. So for me 25 is bloody melty. I just want to now if I should buy a new wardrobe.

Does anyone know how long we can expect this hot spell to last? I just checked the BBC and they reckon at least five more days at 25 degrees plus.

Exactly. After a very promising SA - Mexico opening match the number of idiotic play-acting and poor ref calls has just ballooned to 2006 standards - Portugal and Italy, obviously, but now it seems to affect just about every team. I don't wish to do him an injustice, so I should point out that he's supported Chelsea since he was about six years old. Rather than being a glory hunter. Having said that it's as if he can't see that this is a sport, and surely being a fan is about sportsmanship and winning, not just earning the owners of your club fat bucks. But then that calls into question the entire business of having a team loyalty so deep people get killed for it. You might just as well beat someone up for eating a twix because you support Hersheys.

Is there a big PC maker that doesn't pedal their computers with a ton of junk on it? Gateway, HP and Dell all do. Of course that is the price you pay for getting a great deal on them, I picked up two PC's the other day for my in-laws business and it was less than $500 total for two solid rigs. I hadn't looked at it that way. Question: how much skill and time is required to field strip and delouse one of the babies? I have a mate who runs a techie business. Maybe it could be a new offerring?