Awol

Sky saying 4 people including Sven have issued high court claims for phone hacking against the Mirror Group for the period Piers Morgan was Editor... *crosses fingers*

I didn't say it made sense and I not speaking for anyone else either; Labour went into the election planning to make the same level of cuts as the Tories but taking an extra 12 months to do it. The difference is Osborne's tough talk was enough to convince the UK's creditors that HMG was serious about getting borrowing under control and the escalating euro crisis assisted him by focusing the attention of creditors on even bigger basket case economies instead of paying attention to the true state of the UK. The fact that the cuts made so far have been at best marginal hasn't stopped Balls et al from screaming their sound bites about "ideological cuts" etc, but to be fair the previous Labour plans were drawn up by Darling while he was Chancellor, not by Ed Balls who is possibly the only MP less suited to the role than Osborne..

Labour planned to spread cuts over a longer period than the Coalition, 12 months extra to be exact. A revolutionary difference in economic policy, eh? lol.

An independent non-aligned Scotland literally blows a hole in the air defence of NATO's northern flank and nullifies the anti submarine barrier across the North Atlantic. Creating such a strategic problem for the rest of Europe would pretty much guarantee rejection for membership of the EU. The Russians will be laughing their little red noses off, assuming Salmond hasn't already invited them to fly out of Lossiemouth.

Well the Swiss have a population just over 7.5 million with a great deal of direct democracy - or referenda. Given their neutrality, independence, standard of living with few natural resources and general "good bloke" international status, I don't think they are finding their citzenry too much of a barrier to informed decision making. You could certainly argue that the "experts" have made such a dogs arse of most, *cough*, democratic countries, that the wisdom of crowds really isn't so bad after all. The elite sneer 'populism', the people say 'democracy'.

Alarming is the word I'd use, but fully agree with the rest of your post.

Yes, his mother's idea of cute I'm afraid. I made sure he was quickly put back on the straight and narrow:

Thank you. Last one:

Stanley aged 48 hours.

I don't watch every piece of political theatre globally from beginning to end. Sad as it may be I do try to watch as much as possible when I feel it will be of interest, then read a variety of news sources and form opinions from there. Thanks to Youtube I caught about 30 minutes of the debate in total and read various reports from different media sources. If my slack approach disqualifies me from forming that opinion then I humbly apologise, Dr. In light of my dressing down from the good Dr, I confess to not having watched this debate from beginning to end either. Please strike my views from the record.

New entry: Awol Junior A.K.A. "Stanley" born 8/10/12, weighing 7lbs 8ozs. Chuffed. To. Nuts.

I only saw snippets of the debate to be honest, but if Romney was telling whoppers it seems odd that he hasn't been totally slammed for it? Conversely many of the fully paid up US and European Obama supporting media were generating some very worried sound bites after the debate. My question is if Romney was lying then why haven't they strung him up for it, rather than spin that the result didn't matter because Obama is ace?

Really? I thought Biden was arrogant, patronising and extremely rude. Not the performance you'd expect from someone who actually holds high office. I suspect that after Obama got his arse handed to him by Romney in their debate Biden was briefed to "attack, attack, attack!" The result was Biden looking like a totally un-vice-presidential chod, imo.

Ridiculous but they gave one to Obama for a combination of 1) being black and, 2) not being George W. Bush. The judges standards have been slipping for a while..

When the current government has suggested that certain functions are better performed by various independent charities or social groups and structures you have generally howled with outrage that this is the government's role. You can possibly see then why one might surmise you don't really appreciate the difference. The broad outlook of the labour party is based purely and simply on implementing a system designed to infantilise and indoctrinate a nation with post-Soviet socialism, destroying anyone who doesn't want to be part of that.................. Childish caricatures are childish.

Jack Johnson

....at least this is worth answering: Of course, but I don't think that 'society' and the 'state' are the same thing, although there is an overlap in some areas. Of course some Conservatives may still believe Thatcher's comment was correct, just as some Labour supporters may still believe Saddam had WMD. Favouring the broad outlook of a particular political party doesn't mean subscribing to every word ever uttered by its present or former leaders.

"Old sweat" syndrome Great work Limpid, thanks for the obvious effort that went into this.

The same chapter of the "rule book" that states wealth means you cannot have a social conscience and be a supporter of the Conservatives... Or we can grow up, stop talking about "rule books" and accept that social conscience, wealth and political affiliation have little or no correlation. If people - you, in this case - stopped trying to claim exclusivity over the moral high ground on the basis of your political beliefs then the discussions on here might be far more balanced and informative.

Glad it's not just me that has found Sky's coverage mawkish, insensitive and completely horrendous. I'd say they've almost approached the disappearance of this poor girl like entertainment..

working class Ed who just happens to live in a £1.6m house ? On that note, have you been following the latest Scargill story? No , but just had a look .. the Barbican flat story I assume .. everything that is wrong with the Union leaders in my opinion And imo the only credible argument against re-nationalisng the railways.

Yep, I don't think anyone was expecting that.

The Turks have said they won't invoke Article 5 of the NATO Treaty over this, yet, but even if they do Cameron has cunningly ensured the UK can't fulfil its NATO obligations by sacking half of the armed forces in advance. Genius. More seriously a conflict between Syria and Turkey has the potential to escalate into something huge and totally uncontrollable, but in a US election year its hard to imagine Washington allowing things to go that far.

He's a comprehensive kid, so he's one of us, he 'gets it', not like the other posh b'stards. Quite what that says about the 105 Labour MPs who went to grammar schools, or the 31 who went to private schools wasn't specified.. Maybe this"working class Ed" routine (other than being a shameless lie) is just misdirection to shift focus away from where it should be, i.e. the lack of sorely needed credible alternatives to the idiocy of Osborne?

In a wooden box, thank god.