Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

I have been so touched recent by the popular idea that we should all apologies for our past morally ambiguous history, that I went round to a neighbor yesterday to apologize personally. Through research I have found out that I am a decedent from a Viking Family that came over to rape and pillage in the 10th century. This was a shock as on previously speaking to my neighbor about descendancy he informed me that he had traced his family tree back to 974 AD and at that time his family were Anglo Saxons living in York.
I felt very bad at the possibility that my great great great and so on grandfather Eric the beautiful (It is believed he was the first viking to come out) possibly raped the great great (ok you get the idea) grandmother and perhaps because he was a bit that way inclined (can we still say that) great great grandfather of my neighbor.
Also their house was probably pillaged before it was burned to the ground.
I now have difficulty sleeping at nights and have decided to make financial retribution as I'm sure that will satisfy my conscience, as it appears to for most of the worlds political leaders.
I suggest we all look to our past, I believe it's good for the soul.

Note.... Any others out there who can send me evidence of their family being persecuted by the Vikings (especially Eric the beautiful) please contact me via the, 'weshouldapologizeforabsolutelybloodyeverything.com' and I will bear my sole in our local social prayer and absolution building (church) and ask Freya the Viking god of forgiveness for absolution.

Al thats just so out of order ,(i think iv'e caught the teenage lingo disease)

And greekman i have Swedish ancestry way back ,so i think i may have a lot to feel guilty about ,i might now have to go for counselling ..

I'm Welsh.....................so I only have the sheep to apologize to :o)

love the last paragraph :))

saw this this morning and thought i would share it with you. no wonder woollies are sinking.

Thanks for sharing that Bosley :o)
I'll bet Alan's bed is named Wilma.

Pole dancing is one of my favourite games.
Whats wrong with Tesco????
What are you talking about? Dumbing down.
Note for Woolworths.......the definition of dumbing down can be found at janetandjohn.com

From my post 6416 28th. Jan:-

'Todays figures are 1,000,000 unemployed and 2,640,000 on incapacity benefits (they do not work). If you also add in the fact that kids at Uni aren't included in unemployment figures (in Thatchers time they had to be found jobs - now they just get sent off for a wasted 4 or 5 years at so called universities in my opinion just to keep them out of the unemployment figures) you come up with a far higher real jobless total than ever there was under Thatch.'

News today:-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/02/nbenefit102.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7223687.stm


Do the journalists read this thread for the pearls of wisdom we produce, do you think?

Anyway, I rest my case!

Alan, did your bookies give odds for Jeremy Beadle himself popping up out of his coffin and telling us we'd been framed/Gamed for a laugh/etc?

And as one of those lucky recipients of Incapacity Benefit, I'd like to point out that David Freud is wrong when he says that it it is "ludicrous that the disability tests are done by people's own GPs". This is not true. Applicants are seen by a doctor who administers the tests of a claimant's incapacity on behalf of the DWP and who is employed specially for this purpose.

It doesn't say much for the Government's proposals for reform if they don't even know how the system works at present.

However, my experience of the tests leads me to believe that the current system doesn't address every claimant's situation adequately and may be creating loopholes whereby some people who are able to work avoid having to do so.

And for the record, I wish I could go back to work rather than live off the state, because I've got a lot of better things to do than sit here picking my nose and giving our politicians something to snipe at. :o)

I have to agree, though, that Woolworths have done the right thing - or been obliged to do the right thing - in withdrawing the Lolita bed. I am very concerned about the sexualisation of children and find it wholly inconsistent that we publicise the names of paedophiles in a national register to protect children from that particular threat of abuse, yet do not protect them from exploitation by corporations who value profits over the right of young people to enjoy being children for as long as possible.

Woah there, ST.
Starting to get a couple of serious posts!!!!

In that vein, I have a brother and his girlfriend who claim incapacity benefit, and many other acquaintances who also claim.
While I do not grudge a single farthing to those who are genuinely incapacitated, I struggle with the wisdom of what is deemed incapacitated for work.
I think the government are doing the right thing in addressing the nature of the tests. I look at many, who may not be in any condition to swing a pickaxe for 8 hours a day, but there is very little excuse for not been able to answer a phone or use a computer, or many other tasks. Stephen Hawking solves the mysteries of the universe on the back of a fag packet and they don't get much more incapacitated than that!! The guys down to about the use of a single eyebrow!!
No. Its about time we asked the woman who claims due to her obesity if she can use a phone. If she can, she can do some work, even if it is only token.
My brother and his missus can both drive and are mobile, but they claim incapacity benefit quite happily, and legally, because they are little worse off than working at the kind of jobs available to them. Something wrong there. Sorry to sound all right wing, but there is.
The genuinly incapacitated should be up in arms, because if those kinds of claimants give the whole thing a bad name and take resources away from the genuine and deserving cases.

You don't sound right wing. Alan, just sensible. My original point on this was merely to point out that the unemployment figures have 'fallen' since Thatcher's time purely because they now put the numbers elsewhere - i.e. incapacity benefits!

:o)

Alan, I agree entirely that those who are able to work in some capacity should not be enabled to live off the state - or should at least engage in a reasonable proportion of contributive employment. If I was in a position to work I would do so happily. Sadly with chronic fatigue, I am able to do a little at home (such as a couple of hours on the computer, in total, each day), but if I push past this I quickly get into a vicious circle of increasing exhaustion which does then lead to total incapacity. (Ideally, when I re-establish a certain level of fitness, I'd like to go back to some kind of paid work for 3 days per week and spend the rest of the time writing my first blockbuster movie/novel/whatever!). I think it's a great pity that some people claim an inability to work due to conditions such as obesity - then again, I have met people who are extremely obese and need at times to be lifted (with a mechanical hoist) out of bed or cannot walk more than a few yards without getting completely out of breath. Compulsive eating and the like can be as disruptive to normal living as depression, severe pain, etc.

It is a pity that your brother and his wife apparently can't find the kind of work to which they would be suited if they were fully fit. I guess they are intelligent and capable people, but can only find the kind of work that is increasingly being farmed out to children in the Philippines or illegal immigrants in this country. I feel sorry for them as individuals, but would think it would be far better if people in such positions worked, even if it was on a part-time basis as a concession to the fact that the work is not what they are suited to.

I'll save the rights and wrongs of pole-dancing seven-year-olds for another time! ;o)

Or to put it another way, I too feel tempted to ask the obese woman why she can't stop eating cheeseburgers, get off her A and start doing something useful with her life. Then again, if she left school at 16 unable to read, spent the next few years having half a dozen future-NEET children by various fathers and propping up the counter of her local McDonald's every day whilst dwelling on the gloominess of her prospects, the damage now done is going to be a challenge to reverse.

At least now she can get a McA level with fries, so all is not lost.
I believe the government have it about right if they follow the idea of assessing not ones incapacity for work, but what one can do, if anything.
The downward spiral you refer to is not related to IB. It is a sad state common to many areas, rural and inner city, but is the answer to support these actions and try to understand them as some kind of social disease, or is it better to think of it as requiring "tough love". Making it increasingly financailly difficult to exist in this state, so the more able, and therfore more lazy, get out of the spiral and teach their children of the moral satisfaction of earning a crust, and dare I say it, getting a bit more from life.
You see, I always think there is a danger that too many kids are brought up, seeing mum & dad do almost nothing, finding another way to play the state, and still having a relatively comfortable life. You just know the kids will grow up to expect no more, and that is tragic and needs halting. Fast.
In short, is it worth some casualties to restore a long lost work ethic, or shall we start writing the epitaph for that ethic, as the cost of restoring it is too high.

Anyway, enough of the serious stuff.
On a lighter note, what about the Bishop who got death threats from a load of muslims who he ticked off a bit.
Gotta admire either his balls or his stupidity when he decides to try and pacify them by saying he just meant they should be welcomed in a Christian way.
Would that be the Christian way of raiding their home countries to convert them as King Richard did?
Note to Bishop; I think what they didn't really like was the Christian way, and thats one of the reasons they are a bit tetchy toward you.
Anyway, give my regards to Salman Rushdie, cos I think you're likely to be moving next door to him soon.

I've checked the date.
It isn't the first of April.
I looked behind my cornflakes and their was no sign of his Noeliness, Noel Edmonds with a Gotcha Oscar.
It isn't even a stunt to commemorate the death of Beadle.
So it must be that a general election is coming.
I'm basing this on an early contender for muddled thinking of the year award that I read this morning.
Labour are slowly clawing the opinion polls back and the tories are worried. Some bod has decided the best way to counter this is to wheel out an ancient tory from the years of The Maggon, to say something stupid.
Enter, stage left, Lord Tebbit.
In a week where a local 13 year old was charged with a stabbing at a local school. In a 12 months where youth gun and knife crime is universally considered the biggect threat to society and more people than ever before (according to a survey) are scared to go on the streets after dark, Lord Tebbit has the answer.
He proposes we give all boys and young men guns and teach them to shoot, to rid them of the aggression and need for violence they currently take out on their X Box.
He reasons if they spend their time on the moors turning birds into clouds of feathers and dust, or reducing the rabbit population, they will go home to help old ladies across the road and perform charitable works. Theres no way they will use their new found skills for the purposes of , say, getting rid of their drug debt problem, or hijacking cars or anything.
Hmmm.
Methinks Lord Tebbit could have an instructive few hours explaining that one to the good people of Hungerford. Or Dunblane.
All we need now is for the current tory leadership to fulfill part two of the plan. To step forward and remind us all how much better the tories are now and that we should all be grateful that they have changed so much.
Its a great plan, spoiled only by one thing. Labour can counter it by wheeling out Kinnock and Hatton and saying the same thing.

SIlly old sod. I don't think anyone is going to take him seriously, they never did that much. He's not representative of the current Tories and was never that representative in Thatchers days.

He does have a point to a certain degree, though, in that getting them involved in something that is exciting, with a bit of controlled danger - such as an outward bounds course

http://www.outwardbound.org.uk/home.html

would be a way of channeling their aggression and building their self-worth. Maybe we need a scheme to make these courses available to all kids, especially those vulnerable to the gun/knife culture.

I think I might support the party that brings back the days of the Gladiator, let them take their aggression out in a Gladiator stadium..................throw in a few lions and they'll definitely get my vote.

Now theres an idea that covers itself in margarine and rumbles round my underpants........................
Could we have James Alexander Gordon reading the results every Satrurday Teatime? Car theives 47 dead v Vandals 47 dead, Score Draw.
I'm liking it....................

Norman Tebbit as ref?