Walsingham

The SNP have 'taken Scotland'. Bloody worrying. I give it 18 months until Russians begin buying Edinburgh. Wait a minute... they already bought London!

Supplemental: Muslim voters being told not to vote in London. Londonistan indeed.

Continuing the theme of me copying Monte, I agree. It is poor form to ask, even among friends. I should apologise to Numbers for not having been clearer earlier. I know Miliband isn't one Beria short of a gulag. However, I do think there are a lot of things which many Britons would accept which abrogate their freedoms pretty seriously. Which _might_ be OK if I thought for one second that the intended benefits would be felt. They won't. You might as well try to legislate away ageing. Further, I accept that there are some freaks in banking, and they get adulation and prizes. But can you honestly look at most big enterprises and say they aren't run by nutters? The trick is simply to enforce the laws which already exist, and to amp up the punishments. Destroying a pension scheme should not have a lower tariff than burning down a house or stealing some cars.

1) Committees - You are correct that much government work is done by committees. A good example would be civilian oversight of the security services. Which of course I support. If, like me, you actually observe the functioning of these committees then you'd have healthy skepticism of their capabilities. You wouldn't want one commanding how much money you are allowed to have. Because that means their oversight extends to everything. EVERYTHING. 2) The Crash (which you mention later) - Was delivered by bankers, but engineered by politicians. Bad housing loans were not initially made as some sort of jolly wheeze. They were supposed to help honest poor folks get on the housing ladder. Once made they were traded as if completely sound because the government had instructed them to be treated as such. Yes some shockingly twisted and bizarre f***s were implicated in what happened later, which only made the situation worse. But at root this is like blaming the repo man for your mortgage foreclosure. EDIT: Just to disprove the notion that nothing on the internet ever matters, I'm pleased to report that I have shifted my vote thanks to this discussion.

Sure, go right ahead. You posted only questions, but not your perfectly smart but dangerously left-leaning colleague's responses. Maybe we can compare them to actual proposals/demands made by the montagnards bolsheviks British left and discuss their merits and flaws. It was something along the lines Monte's already said. How is a people's committee going to reduce wage unfairness? Make all wages the same? Wow. Stop investors from getting money for risking their wages backing good ideas? Or starting businesses that grow? Super-wow. So presumably you'd support something more complex than a non-flat rate. Maybe worthy causes and jobs get more money. Awesome. Except you're either making it up as you go along dictatorially, or you have a code. If you have a code then persons who have the potential to accrue money will pay experts to explain just the right jobs and combinations of tasks to do to earn more money. This is what 'progressive' taxation is supposed to do. [EDIT: and it fails, in case you hadn't noticed] Or, you know, you get a thriving black market economy. Or everyone with an ounce of ambition goes and lives somewhere else. Or I guess you could build some sort of wall or minefield with barbed wire around your utopia to stop people leaving.

Joss Whedon ... JOSS WHEDON Joss Whedon is anti-SJW? ... Whedon makes positive complex (ish) female characters and puts them out to a wider audience. He's a good guy. I would ask any SJW attacking him why they aren't, for example, dealing with female genital mutilation. Or ...well the list is so long where do you begin? You can't call yourself a vampire slayer if you just swat mosquitos.

Normal currencies are less volatile, but that's a difference of degree, not a fundamental one. The main reason why Bitcoin is less stable than "normal" currencies is, I think, the fact that the market for Bitcoins (and the market for trading Bitcoins for goods & services) is many orders of magnitude smaller than, say, the Dollar equivalent. So if one person suddenly decides to buy (or sell) a lot of Bitcoins, that can quickly upset the whole Bitcoin ecosystem and change everyone's expectations (and by extension the "going price"). Whereas a single Dollar-based transaction would never make any measurable difference in the grand scheme of things, since there are probably billions of other Dollar-based transaction on the same day and they all sort of even out. The value of today's national fiat currencies isn't fundamentally more "real" than that of Bitcoin. In both cases the value derives from the fact that people expect to be able to either trade it back later at a profit, or buy stuff they want with it. With Dollars you have more choices what to buy and there's less risk of the whole system collapsing before you have a chance to trade your money back for another currency, but again that's a difference of degree. The central bank can choose the amount of new money to print or change the federal funds rate, but those are only tools to nudge the market for that currency into a particular direction, they don't make it possible for the central bank or government to simply "decide" the value of a currency. And they can also make things worse. Not that any of this is poor thinking, but you do know that Barclays Bank and others have recently been fined for manipulating currency markets?

The lady TIE Bomber pilot in this vid (at 4:10) did make me feel kinda funny in my chair: I couldn't take that seriously with the TIE Bomber being so agile and with that Macross Missile Massacre (but yes, he was aiming to make an anime intro). Still impressive work by that guy to make that by hand. That blaster rifle seems a bit too short for her grip on it. Might this explain how inaccurate imperial blaster fire is?

They are the Queen's elections, naturally. Constitutional monarchy, old boy. Best bit of kit I've seen so far: election predictor. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11568581/forecast-prediction-nate-silver.html Quite eerie to see Scotland all yellow like that. When the f*** did the Scots become commies?

The lady TIE Bomber pilot in this vid (at 4:10) did make me feel kinda funny in my chair: You know you've annoyed your commanding officer when you are put in a ship which gets bullied by Y-Wings.

You're a freak. BURN THE FREAK!

Even ball cancer?

Not sure I get it, Oby. Are you upset that your civil war exporting lacks black people, and is inherently uncool?

...On a helpful passing peasant.

I'd give an example of the kind of loose and dangerous thinking that Monte is talking about - I assume. A colleague who is perfectly smart remarked that he thought the Left had some good ideas. I asked for an example, and he said "Well, some people earn far too much money." I agreed that some people do earn a lot more money than they know what to do with. I know quite a few, and grew up with more, thanks to my education. However, my questions to my colleague were: - How much is too much money? Precisely how much. - How would one calculate how much money was too much money? And what powers would regulating it entail? - Would the approach be magisterial, or legal? If legal, then how would you handle persons able to spend money to hire experts to explain why the laws didn't apply in their special case? - Who would you pick to adjudicate and enforce the system? _Is it because you like them personally, and what would happen to people who don't know them personally?_ I'll continue the point if anyone's interested.

I may have missed it, but did we pause to consider how these two 'lone wolf' jihadis, armed with assault rifles, got shot down by a Texan rent-a-cop? Do you chaps still have meter maids? You could raise a regiment and send them to Syria.

My spine REALLY hurts. *wry grimace*

The fundamental issue you're all touching on is that law has to be applied to all equally, whereas sensibility is fine tuned. The law has to protect the views of mouth-breathing air-thieves so that I can post what I like. I don't have to like the ****ers, or respect them. If you don't get this then you're closer to the fethwits who shoot up newspapers than you probably think. Because you're a spoon-fed arse-brain. EDIT: the censor filter on this forum is less constraining than I thought. Sub-edit: mkreku, you windflap, this is a private forum. Obsidian don't have to let you say what you like any more than I'd have to if you were in my living room

Hold on, Numbers. I know you're both man enough to speak yourselves, but be fair. The point Monte's making is that for inexplicable reasons it is considered perfectly fine for Lefties to advocate criminalising owning stuff and locking people up for being enemies of the people. The dictatorship of the proletariat is still a ****ing dictatorship.

To put this inflammatory cartooning in context: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-32579910 I find kidnapping young girls and systematically raping them to be offensive. I'm not sure we've got the two sides of this debate balanced, tbh.

For the record, if mainstream Islam genuinely can't handle freedom of speech, and the superior right to life, then it had better bloody well learn to handle it. However, again for the record, I don't think mainstream Islam has anything to do with such shootings. Mainstream Islam is the only thing which enrages these ****ers more than the West does. Worrying about the mainstream is a dangerous irrelevancy.

At last! I can finally prove that isn't just an unusual Siberian duck, out back of my house. Like it said it was. In heavily accented English.

To rake up Monte's point a bit: I don't go around insulting people for the hell of it. But it is grave mistake to assume that not drawing pictures of Mohammed would solve this problem. The only reason you attack someone who draws pictures is if you are having serious mortality/faith issues. So much so that merely questioning your beliefs is enough to trigger a fight or flight reaction. Now, better men than I have argued that if an individual is that far gone, then simply being around people of different faiths is too much. They can't allow for others to think different because it exposes the essentially personal nature of faith, and the human fallibility of same. In short, as Monte says, appeasement is merely feeding the tiger. You just get a stronger tiger, that is never going to stop being hungry. In conclusion: we need to convince the Chinese that jihadi spleens are an aphrodisiac, so all the jihadi tigers will be captured or shot.

Demand implies that they don't require it. I think your point is that they have to have it. I'd echo your point and develop it slightly. Change requires energy. Huge change requires greater energy. Energy is attractive. Purity is also attractive. Combine the two, and you have quite a hit. Revolutionaries are just junkies. And all junkies hurt people.

Getting offended by the way someone depicts religion = natural Picketing or protesting the way someone depicts your religion = legal Killing people _because_ you are offended = mental illness