Summer holidays...

[Hoboh]

Good lad

I knew you'd grow out of that silly little phase

He's started putting 'left' in quotation marks also, I've noticed...

If by started, you mean, did once. And that was to refer to folk who define their lives by being from the 'left', as a lifestyle choice. Instead of coming to their own decision about things and then realising there is a pattern to their own views.

Anyway. I see no problem with individuals aspiring to have nice things. Or in enjoying nice things. I also believe in fair, progressive taxation, the protection of public services, social mobility and justice. They are hardly mutually exclusive. Not everyone who believes in social justice wants, or even thinks we all have to, live in a hut with hippies and eat potatoes all the time.

Oh yes they do!!!! and they want to ban cars and motorbikes and promote push irons by riding round with cheap cameras on their heads filming motorists! b*stards should be shot

[thebish]

Oh yes they do!!!! and they want to ban cars and motorbikes and promote push irons by riding round with cheap cameras on their heads filming motorists! b*stards should be shot

is your real problem that they were using cheap cameras?

[Lofthouse Lower]

Hoboh

Might put up a photo of me in my holiday keks and see what response I get

[Randy Watson]

I'm off to Benicassim a week tomorrow for Festival Internacional de Benicassim. Went last year and it is utter brilliance! Pretty much all you would expect from a festival in England just far better organised and it is garrenteed the weather. (appart from two years ago when a storm blew KoL off the stage). Forcasts are good and I CAN NOT WAIT!!!!

[Lofthouse Lower]

Bird from our office is going.

Wish she'd f ucking shut up about it

[Bijou Bob]

Off to Laos, flying into Bangkok, then 16 days in which to get lost, bitten, eat deep fried Tarantula and fill up on Beerlao then back home via Hanoi.............if we can get there. No kids this year.......get in!

[William the White]

Off to Laos, flying into Bangkok, then 16 days in which to get lost, bitten, eat deep fried Tarantula and fill up on Beerlao then back home via Hanoi.............if we can get there. No kids this year.......get in!

My middle daughter did two years in Vietnam - first in Ho Chi Minh city. next in Hanoi... Loved it and travelled the whole region... Said Lao was brilliant...

[Prufrock]

Good lad

I knew you'd grow out of that silly little phase

He's started putting 'left' in quotation marks also, I've noticed...

If by started, you mean, did once. And that was to refer to folk who define their lives by being from the 'left', as a lifestyle choice. Instead of coming to their own decision about things and then realising there is a pattern to their own views.

Anyway. I see no problem with individuals aspiring to have nice things. Or in enjoying nice things. I also believe in fair, progressive taxation, the protection of public services, social mobility and justice. They are hardly mutually exclusive. Not everyone who believes in social justice wants, or even thinks we all have to, live in a hut with hippies and eat potatoes all the time.

Definition of 'started' I reckon. Don't understand the rest of that first paragraph... I don't think it can possibly mean what it seems to mean...

Most of the second I agree with pretty much all the way. And practise!

What does the last sentence mean?

Doesn't fit your context though. Your implication is that I never used to put the word 'left' in quotation marks, but have since reached a point whence I do, as I have now disowned it. Or at least that is how it read?

The first paragraph was an outburst of frustration at those so involved in 'leftism' and its surrounding culture that their views on a situation seem depressingly predictable, regardless of the specifics. It is a sort of 'hey, guys, we're unconventional' thing. I don't, as it happens, regard you as one of those, but your comments regarding Iraq that lead to my ''left'' seemed typical of that type. They frustrate me, and your 'fairies at bottom of gardens' references whilst dodging questions, and alluding to mysterious conspiracies did. I think there are people who describe their political views as left-wing because they thing it is a cool, anti-authoritarian thing to do, and there are those who think what they think is right, and it is left. I hope that is clearer? Out of interest what did it seem to mean?

The second paragraph was aimed (very un-clearly) at Caps, who I had quoted via you. The idea that staying at my girlfriend's parents' house in Cornwall somehow went against the values (I sounds like an American politician) of social justice et al. As if committing to those values necessarily meant living in a hut and wearing clothes made of hemp, otherwise you were a, ahem, 'champagne socialist'.

[Lord Kangana]

Well Caps will be pissing himself right now.

Next time I suggest just "f*ck off ".

[Prufrock]

I did do throw-away comment first time, but then WtW came along, and whilst answering him I thought I might as well indulge the grumpy fecker (CAPS ). It's all 'is fault.

[Lord Kangana]

Anyway, didn't you kill a few gypsies and travellers who accidently wandered on to their land during your stay?

[William the White]

Pru - can you tell me what questions I'm supposed to have dodged?

And I will try to answer them...

[Prufrock]

Anyway, didn't you kill a few gypsies and travellers who accidently wandered on to their land during your stay?

Nope, she'd left the shotguns at home.

[Prufrock]

Pru - can you tell me what questions I'm supposed to have dodged?

And I will try to answer them...

I almost feel bad for hijacking a summer holidays thread. But then, I've had mine. So feck em all.

The thread is here http://www.the-wanderer.co.uk/boards/vi ... 4&start=20" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I can't believe an apparently intelligent, sceptical man such as yourself, who was a rational adult at the time doesn't believe it. What do you think he slaughtered the innocents of Halabja with? Fairy dust? He had WMDs, absolute irrefutable proof. He then got rid of them. Unfortunately he refused to comply with UN resolution after UN resolution so they had to take the word of a dictator that he had gotten rid of his toys. Four separate inquiries found no foul play, which found the 'Iraq Dossier' was put together absolutely independently by the JIC. The only input Downing Street had was the foreward, and some presentational issues for the address to parliament were superficial and absolutely acceptable in terms of presenting it to the House.

Although I suppose it was all for the oil?

What? I believed he did that at the time... I was even involved in a small (and ineffectual) group trying to expose it... the cloak of silence - and my cynicism - is that it was well known, but never exposed, by the western powers that wanted his regime to continue the war against iran... they only love the Kurds of Halabja now... when they were lying in the streets, poisoned, they averted their eyes... Or, in fact, thought them a real nuisance... whereas, now, they are useful...

As for the rest of your post... as the Bloody Sunday 'enquiry' exposes... there's nothing more supine than the enquiry the government sets up to give itself a rigorous examination...

Have the fairies promised you a nice birthday present? i bet they don't deliver.

But they weren't the same people were they? The people who let Halabja happen (I don't think, as your nuisance comment seems to imply, they were happy about it) because it didn't serve the national self interest. Then the Tony Blair George Bush thing happened with their morally motivated (as well as self interest) foreign policy and post 9/11 attempts to stop any possibility of a WMD attack. Do you honestly think Blair and Bush knew they no longer existed?

And just because one 'inquiry' was hardly thorough it doesn't follow that all government inquiries are shams. That is a properly ludicrous leap of 'faith'. Lord Hutton in particular was picked because he reputation meant they thought no-one could accuse the government of a scam should he find in their favour, which he did, and then the odd Daily Mail-Guardian coalition ignored that anyway, and called scam.

They honestly knew they couldn't be found. They dishonestly made up 'evidence'. How you interpret that behaviour is up to you.

I interpret it as bollocks. Who is they? Where is any shred of proof of this at all? Hans Blix reported Saddam's regime were hiding confidential papers at home. That they were not complying with UN resolution after UN resolution that demanded they be open with the weapons inspectors. They had seen Saddam use chemical weapons before. I'm not saying all that is conclusive proof that they 'knew' he had them, but rules out them 'knowing' he didn't. How did they 'know' they couldn't be found? The 'dossier' was compiled independently by the JIC. Inquiry after inquiry has backed up that the threat at the time was credible, and there is no reliable evidence that anything was made up. You can go on believing that everything is a conspiracy, and that every inquiry is a sham.

Do you have any evidence for any of your claims?

All you have come forward with so far is comments about my fairies. It sounds like the knowing conspiratorial, predictable standard response of the 'left'.

[P.O.S.]

Bird from our office is going.

Wish she'd f ucking shut up about it

A girl at the gym was on about it too and wouldnt shut up about it either, making sure everyone heard time and again that shes hiring a car, spending a few days with the girls in Barcelona, then going to the festival that's gonna be amazing yeah, then to chill out after they're all heading off for a beach holiday you know just to straighten themselves out for a couple of days because it's going to be manic, yeah.

I felt like f*ucking straightening her out afterwards.

[TANGODANCER]

Bird from our office is going.

Wish she'd f ucking shut up about it

A girl at the gym was on about it too and wouldnt shut up about it either, making sure everyone heard time and again that shes hiring a car, spending a few days with the girls in Barcelona, then going to the festival that's gonna be amazing yeah, then to chill out after they're all heading off for a beach holiday you know just to straighten themselves out for a couple of days because it's going to be manic, yeah.

I felt like f*ucking straightening her out afterwards.

I'd give that gym a miss for a day or two when she gets back.

[CAPSLOCK]

GG

Nice jugs, but are you about 4 foot tall

Just trying to do some calculations

[Gooner Girl]

GG

Nice jugs, but are you about 4 foot tall

Just trying to do some calculations

Charmed, I'm sure!

Not entirely sure what calculations you are doing but for the record I'm 5'4.

[Lord Kangana]

Anyway, didn't you kill a few gypsies and travellers who accidently wandered on to their land during your stay?

Nope, she'd left the shotguns at home.

F*cking yoghurt-knitting treehugging dogooder. Amongst other stuff.

[CAPSLOCK]

GG

Nice jugs, but are you about 4 foot tall

Just trying to do some calculations

Charmed, I'm sure!

Not entirely sure what calculations you are doing but for the record I'm 5'4.

I think you do