"Ding Dong The Dinosaur is Dead" ?

Check ‘de rigueur’ in the OED. Come back to me if you don’t know what that means.

At £215 per annum (plus VAT) I think I shall give it a miss, especially as it appears your OED is French – translate indispensable from French to English and it becomes essential, which is pretty much what the definitions I provided imply (but for free, which is a much better price I am sure you will agree).

To the neigh-sayers – I’m sure the moderators have everything completely under control, although they may need to import an unbiased moderator to adjudicate if necessary (or at least, one who has not nailed his political colours to the mast and therefore might be held open to cronyism if he were to wave his wand around when furiously debating – which he hasn’t as far as I am concerned). And this is what we are doing: debating. Try it, you might just come away with both ears slightly skinned and a mild rash.

…. i am always wary of blaming the Labour party entirely for the economic mess when it was a European and USA wide mess as well.

I wasn’t only referring to 2008. Labour have a plentiful record of incompetence in matters financial stretching back to way before Callaghan and the IMF bailout and Wilson’s “Pound in your pocket”

Moggy

Re 88

Even if it is just by default, that still leaves our friends UKIP then ?

You can’t condemn them until they’ve been given a go.
It’s a shame the political parties can’t use the the best bits of each of them.I have to say Moggy has pretty much summed it up although i am always wary of blaming the Labour party entirely for the economic mess when it was a European and USA wide mess as well.
A Canadian friend of mine took advantage of the financial crash in the USA buying a place when people were just handing back the keys to the properties, just before it arrived here ,sure enough it then did hit here.

Re 88

Even if it is just by default, that still leaves our friends UKIP then ?

Re 85

CD
…not three meters from where I’m sitting…”

Would that be gas or electric meters ? Plain Englsh please, not French measurements !

That’s allowed as the US spelling was used!!;)

I don’t trust anybody who says everything any particular party does is all bad, whatever that party.

Totally correct.

I have voted for all three major parties in my time.

If I sum up, Labour are totally useless at economics and are happy to drive the country into bankruptcy via a mixture of incompetence and dogma. The Tories are uncaring and pretty poor at looking after those who really can’t (rather than won’t) look after themselves, The LibDems are never going to form a government and the best that can be said of them is that in coalition they are to some extent a moderating influence, but on the other hand their blocking of electoral boundary reform for tit-for-tat reasons was the worst thing that could have happened in this current parliament.

Moggy

Re 85

CD
…not three meters from where I’m sitting…”

Would that be gas or electric meters ? Plain Englsh please, not French measurements !

CD – all very laudable in principle, and I could not agree more with your comments about name calling. However the state of the country, present and past, will be seen and interpreted differently depending on peoples’ political perspective. From those who regard the Thatcher years as one of the political highlights of the last century to those who view that period as a nadir in our nation’s fortunes, as an example.

Well another political thread goes the way of all others on this forum…

…and possibly this one was doomed by its very title.

Why does it always have to descend into name-calling? And yes, I know, ‘he started it’! Why cannot we just discuss the reality of the situation that this country is in, or has been in, without falling-back on the tired (exhausted!) old stereotypes of what political parties are like, how ‘evil’ past and present politicians are and how much better it would have been if so-and-so hadn’t be voted into power…..yes, voted, remember that annoying democracy thing!

I don’t trust anybody who says everything any particular party does is all bad, whatever that party. And I think that anybody who loves or hates any particular politician isn’t quite right in the head…..and anyway why should anybody else trust what anybody else loves or hates? Not three metres from where I’m sitting there is a piece of an old Bristol aero-engine; why should anybody trust my judgement if I’ve got what, to most people, is a piece of scrap on display in my house? But I…..I’m very fond of it!

If something is good you should be able to make an argument for it; if something is bad you should be able to make an argument for it…..if you can’t then you are probably wrong!

Is it any wonder that today’s politicians can get away with just spouting meaningless sound-bites to a population that has lost the ability to recognise a fact or retain the most the basic information about the world they inhabit, let alone, construct an argument based on this knowledge?

Aided by my Mk 1 Holmes Magnifier, you are fourth from the left in the third row. The only one with both arms raised, not just one !

Re 82 …”got any ideas..” None, that could possibly equal yours. Could you look up ‘deranged’ ?

Check ‘de rigueur’ in the OED. Come back to me if you don’t know what that means.

I am surprised by your comedic references. You and humour must be the oxymoron of all oxymorons. Come back to me if you don’t understand that.

Saw this and thought of you…;o)

[ATTACH=CONFIG]226533[/ATTACH]

Re 78

C’mon, you can do better than that. I had you down as probably the big cheese of the Socialist Workers Party, you know, the morons who profess to dance on graves.

You appear to know me better than I know myself. I think I’m reasonably stupid (well, I am answering your comment) I have a huge conk which doesn’t at all mask my right wingery.

Snaf. I don’t think you exist. Dinosaurs are no longer with us. You’re possibly a hologram. You’re certainly a caricature.

“de rigor?” That’s a new one on me. You either meant the front half of rigor mortis which could mean you are an ex caricature or “de rigueur” which means indispensable, which, in your case, would be laughable.

No, I spelled it wrong but there are several definitions – none of which match yours:

mid 19th century: French, literally ‘in strictness’

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/de-rigueur

de ri·gueur adjective də-(ˌ)rē-ˈgər
: necessary if you want to be fashionable, popular, socially acceptable, etc.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/de%20rigueur

de rigueur
Necessary according to etiquette, protocol or fashion.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/de_rigueur

I can’t do better than that on demand and don’t dance on graves: I don’t dance full stop – disco long ago passed me by – but it does have to be said that apparently there wouldn’t be enough room to dance on Thatchers memorial stone even if you could get to it. And you’d slip off it, of course.
I merely used your (unknown to me) nose and stupidity to illustrate a point – I don’t know you so don’t flatter yourself, and since I obviously do not exist it is actually your subconscious self countering your own biased nature by posting against you. I am your worst nightmare.

I don’t know about the SWP but from what I hear it is much akin to the old KGB and the Stasi – comedian Mark Thomas mentions that they used to note the things he said at gigs down in note books for when the revolution came and he was brought up before the peoples committee.
On the subject of comedy…where are the right wing comedians? Jim Davidson blogs his homophobic views on his website (despite all those claims that he’d be snookering you tonight, whatever that was), Al Murray’s Pub Landlord is much favoured by the BNP (failing fantastically to see the irony), the left will point at Jimmy Carr and his famous tax avoidance case despite him claiming liberal tendencies. Chubby Brown is just offensive to all parties and it is his unPC-ness that prevents him from being on TV than any perceived political bias; same with the late Bernard Manning. A man with impeccable right-wing credentials, Norwegian neo-Nazi mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, favoured Sun columnist Jeremy Clarkson as the funniest thing on the BBC (the “Burqa Broadcasting Corporation” he called it: oh help me I am laughing uproariously. Not) in his pre rampage blog.
Doing my research for this I found one confused and deluded individual who was adamant that Frankie Boyle was right-wing: no he isn’t, he is just crap. Others say Ricky Gervais: not sure since I have never found him funny either, but that is no reason to assume…

You got any ideas?

Re 78

C’mon, you can do better than that. I had you down as probably the big cheese of the Socialist Workers Party, you know, the morons who profess to dance on graves.

You appear to know me better than I know myself. I think I’m reasonably stupid (well, I am answering your comment) I have a huge conk which doesn’t at all mask my right wingery.

Snaf. I don’t think you exist. Dinosaurs are no longer with us. You’re possibly a hologram. You’re certainly a caricature.

“de rigor?” That’s a new one on me. You either meant the front half of rigor mortis which could mean you are an ex caricature or “de rigueur” which means indispensable, which, in your case, would be laughable.

It’ll be that bloody chicken song wot swung it!

Well Snaf, you never cease to surprise me but not being one of the 15 million who did still leaves you in the majority!!;)

Someone commented that you weren’t fit to clean Lady T’s boots. What do you think I said when I heard this ?

Well, I’d like to think you mentioned that it is a free country, that there is no censorship or thought-police in place (yet) and that although you did not agree with my sentiments you could understand that she was not exactly everybody’s cup of tea and left it so that you were the bigger man. But then you probably referred to me as some sort of commie scrum unfit to mention her name, whilst lighting another candle on your personal shrine to her.

As for me, I would say that the stains from the downtrodden masses could never be cleaned from her boots, so it would be a pointless exercise probably best reserved as make-work for some poor downtrodden brown-nosing lacky like yourself…;o)

If you really want to enjoy humour at the expense of our political elite of the past, plus sundry others, tune in to an hour of Spitting Image memories tonight. Quite the sharpist and incisive and downright funny satire of the past 50 years…or ever, perhaps!!

Um…I never found it funny. In fact I found that it actually created the stereotypes it satirised rather than illustrated the problems of the day, rather like if I said that John Green (see above) was really thick, I mean like really, you know, so incredibly stupid and dense and he also had a big nose, then whenever he was mentioned or his posts replied to it became de rigor to regard him as a big-nosed thicky whilst masking his right-wing views…;o)

If you really want to enjoy humour at the expense of our political elite of the past, plus sundry others, tune in to an hour of Spitting Image memories tonight. Quite the sharpist and incisive and downright funny satire of the past 50 years…or ever, perhaps!!

Re 75

Actually, it is funny.

Here’s another. Someone commented that you weren’t fit to clean Lady T’s boots. What do you think I said when I heard this ?

It is pretty obvious that judged by your outrageous and inhuman comments about Lady T that you are no gentleman.

Coming back to this… Watched an old episode of QI this evening and thoroughly enjoyed Jo Brands quip that Lady Thatcher sounded like a pubic trimmer!

Guess you won’t see the humour in that though.

(Moan, mutter)
Just so that all my ‘fans’ don’t think I have backed away… I posted a reply two days ago and it appears to have not made it.
Annoying for me, probably a relief for yourselves?