Walsingham

lol How do you think the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War picked the leader of their military units? How do you think the early Bolshevik-aligned soldiers organized themselves? Officer removal via vote has historically played a pretty major role amongst ultraleftist western revolutionaries. Those would presumably be the anarchist militias which proved totally incapable of a single offensive operation?

Show me a single example of a military unit run on pure democratic lines out performing an authoritarian unit. The only example I know which comes close is the bunches of nutloops rocking around Africa in the sixties. They ran by a sstem they called 'chinese parliaments', but that wasn't democratic decision making. They just pooled perceptions and ideas. Military action requires concentration of force, determination, and timeliness. You cannot do any of those things when you have every single unit running things according to popular democracy. As usual you stick dogmatically to your fantastical nonsense. I'd honestly have more respect for someone who had a political philosophy based on Klingon society.

I'm going to repeat the last thing tomorrow when I wake up. Tonight I got presents from friends for being genrally nice.

Completely failed to do any exercise today. Spent all day doing a sales training course. Bull****ed myself inside out.

Can I suggest that we kill him, and divvy up his women? We'd get at least one reasonable one each, and could sell on the remainder.

I've worked in a call centre, and it wasn't a sweatshop, but one of our managers came from another one, and it was VERY clear it was a sweatshop. Workers were terrified, worked WITHOUT breaks, and barely understood what they were doing. I don't actually understand how they made money, because it seemed that no-one in their right mind would have been ABLE to buy anything from them. Having said that, no-one's arms came off after getting caught in a phone headset. Going back to the initial question I put it to a chap I mett today over lunch and his response was to point out: If you fail to post a sufficiently healthy profit, people dump your stocks and then EVERYONE loses their jobs. So well done, Kaft, instead of 1500 redundancies you've got a nabjillion.

You want him to play Linoheart after that lot? Isn't that rather like having someone wash down foie gras with Vimto?

Schoolboy error on his part. Now he's established that rule all you have to do is buy him some pants. The next time he does something on the PC you don't like... WEDGIE!

Rest day today, but will go for a long walk anyway. More running tomorrow if anyone's with me?

If you ask me - and you did - then I'd say he was het up about something. Given the nature of his conversion he was having a midlife crisis and possibly struggling with feelings of homosexuality. Extremists LOVE to exploit closet homosexuals by giving them spiritual expiation and moral masculinity. I've done training with muslims, we have muslims in my unit. Both my grandfathers fought alongside muslims. The idea that muslims are suspect because of their faith is balls. It emphasises seriousness, commitment, self-sacrifice, moral and physical courage... in fact the only soldierly virtue I think they miss is having a drink. The major was a traitor, pure and simple. He volunteered, he swore oaths of loyalty, and yes he got treated roughly on occasion but nothing excuses shooting your comrades in the back.

It's a question of degrees. It's also a question of consequences. Or do I mean the two together? Part one involves causing direct harm by action, and there is a little anyone can do to avoid the consequences. Part two involves firing people - presumably with a severance package - who are free to go to do other work. moreover if the company does it in an aggressive and exploitative way then they damage the morale and productivity of the remaining employees. Ultimately you can't expect government to act like a nanny and smack anyone who's a bit mean.

I kill superheroes. Got two contracts a lot further forward yesterday. i also learned to play the ukulele. And ate curry. And got decorously drunk.

1. If a company wants to fire people, and all it has to do is post a loss... then it will post a loss. Easy. 2. You're essentially preventing a company from letting go of a loss-making element of their business to concentrate elsewhere. Lets get all trendy and point out that if the copmany is Exxon it means it can't fire its oil workers, drillers, prospercters etc because they make a profit. So shucks they just can't reorient on green energy. Legislation is a hammer, and your using it to do surgery?

Despite having bad lungs still from the flu I decided I had to get back into the swing of things: 4 blocs of 5 mins run, 1 min walk Followed by somesitups and pressups. I have meeting s to get to so I can't do the full whack of situps and pressups. I'll do more tomorrow to make up for it. EDIT: began coughing like a smoker at the end, hacked up lumps of solid phlegm. Not good

A nine year old antivirus on the internet today is like putting a middle-medieaval peasant in a modern sewer. His immune system is just not set to the right threats. OK, maybe a bit self-referential. However, I have to admire your generosty of spirit in persisting to help them. I'd have smacked them about the face and thrown the whole thing out the window.

In this specific instance I'd suggest that if you work for a big company with a reputation as bastards then you've no right to complain when - surprise surprise - they behave like bastards. However that is not to say I don't think they're bastards and I wouldn't want to work for them. In fact I'd go further and say anyone who collaborates with such bastards deserves all they get. It's the reserve side of selling out.

Thanks for that. Not only are they awesome, but they just helped me with my work.

I was amazed by your comment. In the UK those comment sections are filled with the most insane verbiage ever concocted by man. e.g. http://ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com/

I just ate a grape and I ****ed in my pants! ROFL!

I'm going to leave the racism point unless we have a thread for it. I think it's a fine line, standing up to tutors. They like it if you try and then back off, IMO. Army PTIs less so :lol:but contrary to theslug we don't get sexually asaulted for marching out of step. Also, in my experience if you have a REALLY good point that's self-evident then you can get away with it. Sounds strange, but I swear it's true. I've seen people contradict NCOs three times on parade and live. What angers me about this instance is that - unlike the Army - there's no real need for blind obedience EVER in academe. I'm not suggesting positive leadership is out of place. But that's as far as it goes. My advice is to accept that she's wrong, gievn the forum's responses, and just lie to her. Or better still, get someone to crack you in the eye, then claim it happened after your protesting at an inappropriate remark. Should shut her up. Academics love any evidence of physical courage almost as much as businessmen love any evidence of killing people.

Oh, well, I guess we can all give up then, and go back to pleasuring ourselves in darkened caves, then.

Do NOT try to take on professors head-on. I did that at school in an essay on the House of Lords. I tried to argue that despite it being theoretically unworkable and unjust it mysteriously continued to give good value for money compared with the House of Commons, which tends to just go with the party whip. My socialist tutor marked it 'N' for unmarkable, which was lower than the guy who handed in crumpled stained sheets of notepaper copied wholesale from the textbook, proving it wasn't just normal marking of a crap essay.

Except the majority of the Turks don't want EU membership. Surely we have to ask the people about such decisions, too, btw? Just sayin'. I hadn't heard that they didn't want membership. If that's so then how come they have been working so hard to gain membership? I'm just asking. Maybe this should be a separate thread, tho.

I do think that Cameron should be forced to state publicly that there willl be no change to the BBC charter. If enough of us write in about it then it can be tackled. I'm not saying that the BBc is a holy writ, but if it annoys Rupert Murdoch then it can't be all bad, and it is certainly unique.