To be fair that wasn’t what Paul was raising – it was more that the pope can come out with something so nonsensically generalising as ‘all religions want peace’. For a start, religions are beliefs, not a set of wants. People might want peace, people might want world domination. Religions don’t ‘want’ either – that’s what’s called a ‘category error’. And that’s why it was dim.

Sorry I deleted the post you responded to, Stu. For the record your reply would have made sense. I’ll be in Bridgy in a couple of weeks if you want to pick this up in the Malt Shovel.. and talk Whirlwind.

This is great stuff.. http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html

Is this what they teach in public schools’ ‘rhetoric’ lessons – how to use logical fallacies and sound plausible?

It would explain a lot – particularly the hatred for a clever ‘progressive’ who can call them out without formal training, eh John?

I am sorry too. I know it isn’t quite the simplistic student politics ‘free money’ really, and I know nothing about you or how you actually came to be able to invest (which anyone would do), after which actually making money is of course a combination of judgement and luck. So please ignore my pompous moral judgement this time, if you can.

I have to salute your principles. I believe it is a perception of increased national responsibility rather than a reality, but I guess that we now will have one fewer scapegoat to blame for our woes. If you truly mean that you are prepared to suffer financially as a literal price to pay for this new sense of self-determination then I can only say more power to your elbow. It is a pity that others who never wanted to also have to pay, but on a personal level it is less galling to hear a principled reason for a vote to cancel out mine.

Careful.. say any more about what happened back there and the taste police will be after you!

Oh sod it, come and get me. Margaret Hilda Thatcher presided over the decimation of a nation’s industrial base and the ruination of hundreds of thousands of ordinary working class lives. But the thing she seemed most proud of was tearing up the social fabric of that nation, changing this place forever from a nice place to be and land fit for heroes to a grubby sordid narrow minded suspicious little place fit only for property speculators.

For those that weren’t there, this was what she did. Personally. This is why people wished her ill. So shoot me.

Ok. In the interests of good taste, as defined by JB as not saying what one feels.. Thank you for your lovely insult, and I apologise that you cannot educate me in your inimitable style, as only someone as wise as you could.

Tasteful enough for you?

One note though – it may pass unappreciated in the Land that Taste Forgot, but manners and good taste are not the same thing.

John, it’s not ‘doom’.. just a daft choice which we’ll survive but it doesn’t bleedin’ help. The world has to negotiate a position with GB to replace the European infrastructure – that’s all. So they will be picking up the phones to do that.

And the ARM deal might be off.