&quot;First of all I should say that I agree with davy&quot; - Norman Tebbit.

Get drunk and talk politics. No one else seems to be interested :(

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I know, even

raggedhalo has stopped arguing with me.

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A bombastic buffoon? Yep, that's me.

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I'd like to meet you, one day. Jillyness sometimes perhaps, next time you are Oop North?

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I'm thinking of a weekend in November for the next trip. Depends on funds and time.

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Now that's depressing. It must be fun to get the liberal pokey stick of antagonism out every so often.

Try these:

The death penalty is good because...
Everything should be privatised because....
The Labour party are full of ass monkeys who, even though their entire heads are made of ass, can't find it with the multiple hands of their toady minions.
The NHS is bad because...
Students should pay top up fees because...

:D I think that covers it.

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Let me know when you're going, and if I can, I'll be there. I did plan to go on the Sat in August that you were up (indeed, I briefly saw

cryx when she returned to BiCon from town) but I couldn't get there as I was having sex at the time. :) Priorities, y'know....

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I'e done 3 and 4 before, I'm actually anti- the death penalty for alomst everything, I've been toying with an argument for the devolution of national insurance and the welfare state (like the bank of england, removing it from central government control cvan only improve the job it does), and should students pay top up fees? Well, I didn't have to, so saying they should would be hypocritical of me. I do think there are a lot of muppets on a lot of worthless degrees, though, who would be better served by vocational training. Does that count?

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Fox hunting?

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Why, surely you could have sex anytime?

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All for it. Huzzah!

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Not with this particular girl, no (although that may now change, hurrah). And she was well worth it. :)

Also, I can go to Jillys anytime really... it was practically my local for ages! Although I don't go as often now, it has to be said.

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Tsk tsk.. now you're just trying to start arguments! :D

*puts gloves on*

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Ah, yes, the Jilly's local.
I lived just off All Saints Square for a year during the glorious '1p in at Jillys and the Banshee' era. Happy days indeed.

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I approve of the death penalty in the most extreme cases; say the Green River killer or Dahmer. There really is no chance of rehabilitating those people and I would really rather not pay for an extra 20 years of their life. In Oregon at least, the death penalty is fairly rare and only used for the utter horrible, icky folks that just can not be integrated into mainstream society. They also get a shitload of appeals. Remember children, do not kill someone in Texas.... Not sure about it for treason though, a good thing that nice young translator wasn't prosecuted under the Official Secrets act.

National Insurance, is that like your social security or are those NHS payments? I agree completely with the destruction of the UK's 'benefits' system (How rhetorically stimulating is that word? How about government handouts?) ideally in the form of welfare to work programs. A very half and half solution but it's had a decent amount of success in the US.

My reasons for a gross dislike of the 'benefits' *cringe* system or a welfare system in general are the models it creates in small, isolated communities. You develop a generation of people who believe that the populace as a whole will bail them out, a feeling of entitlement which discourages the rewards and self esteem inherent in having an education and working. I'm not farmilliar enough with UK economics to actually bind that opinion to pounds and pennies though.

I actually really like the Tories plan for education, they want to offer scholarships based on industry need for profession. Say, aromatherapists have to pay for their own damn degrees but nurses would be given assistance. I like that idea. If public money is going to be spent on students, the degree should give something back to the mainstream public based on the demand. How many fucking people outside of Camden go to an aromatherapist, really? Could you imagine the citizens of Barnsley making an appointment to go sniff lavender?

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It's like Zulu...

"Foxes, sir, bloody hundreds of them!"
"Don't fire until you see the red of their brush..."

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Oh, and 99p pizzas at the Babylon. Where did those days go?

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Death penalty-wise, I tend to feel that it is a mark of civilisation that you don't kill people unless you really, really have to; it actually demonstrates moral superiority and confidence in our society that we don't. there is now no death penalty at all in this country - Blunkett quietly repealed it (the last three crimes you could be killed for were high treason, Sabotage in Her majesty's Dockyards, and Piracy on the High Seas), but at the same time he has massively raised the number of crimes you can be imprised for and criminalised a lot of formerly law abiding citizens without then changing their way of life - I find this form of expansionist government abhorrent.

There's a lot to be said for a benefits system, although I'd prefer a Workfare system (one which actually did away with the poverty trap at about £10 as well, which nobody seems to really care about). However, there has to be something catastrophically wrong with a system that costs £100,000 a year to keep kids in care when the very best schools in the country can do the same job for £40k and give them a better education at the same time. Not that I'm suggesting private enterprise can do better, oh no, there's no examples of that are there?

And no, having grown up just outside Barnsley I cannot imagine an aromatherapist thriving there.

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That said...

http://www.touchlocal.com/directory/category-towns.cfm/Aromatherapy/South%20Yorkshire

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That was in the old days, when life was cheap. It still is cheap, but these days it costs more.

Aye, them were't days.

I lived in Didsbury so it was the late-night 42 bus home for me.

Do you remember it being £1 to get in the Ritz and you got a free bottle of beer thrown in? With the bouncy dancefloor and the incredibly cute goths. And the Banshee... wow, I haven't thought about that place for years. Trekking up and down from Jillys to the Banshee and back again, to see where the best music/people were. :)

OK, I'm shutting up now, I feel old :-/

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tzel.livejournal.com

I'd like to sit in a comfy pub and drink good beer and have good conversation. Damn, I must be getting old...

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It's part and parcel of the whole aging deal, I think. You forgot your pipe and slippers :)

If and when you ever come over I'm sure it can be arranged.

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Death Penalty: David Blunkett and our nice Congressmen/wo have done a lovely job of imprisoning people for minor, petty offences that aren't antisocial, which I find completely abhorrent. As far as I can tell, the social theory behind imprisonment, from its base seems to be founded on serious antisocial behavior that has serious consequences. Violence, invasion of house, murder are all things that have a quantifiable emotional or financial cost. The use of P2P programs, spitting on the streets or littering don't necessarily have a quantifiable objective social or financial cost.

It is a superiority issue for killing the evil fuckers but how much of our social worth are we to exchange for keeping the violent criminals in a state if limbo? There are no options for rehabilitation for a small percentage of the severely emotionally disturbed. Instead, society has to support abberant behavior for decades in the form of a prison? Morally superior or not, I say cut the fat!

I think this is going into social contract territory... ;)

I agree completely, public education seems to be thwarted with comfortable red tape. 100,000 a year for public education? I suspect much of that has to do with the creation of certain 'necessary' positions over the years that have now grown obsolete or inconsequential. Education systems don't seem to respond very quickly to changing social need.

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