mockney piers

*reads Ant's addendum and thinks, hmm ditto*

I dunno, tough one. I clearly do have some types more than I have others. For instance Bjork makes me go weak at the knees (yeah, I'm weird I know) but claudia Schiffer leaves me absolutely cold. But then I'm marrying a blonde (actually she's just a redhead in denial, but that's a whole 'nother story). On the whole black girls don't really make my heart skip a beat in that same vein that a blonde won't. That's not to say I don't see plenty of black girls who make me thing 'crikey o'reilly'. I'm not nearly crass enough to express it in the same way that our city oik did, but my thought process might not be so far removed. Does that make me racist for thinking that, I don't think so. Incidentally mixed black and white seems to be a great meeting of genes and imho gives rise to a weirdly high proportion of beautiful people.

Seeing as they come from an oral tradition of a time when the Jews weren't even Monotheistic, when the worship of Yahweh was not exclusive as He stood alongside Baal of the Phoenicians (and later Carthaginians) to whom the Israelites were rather partial to a bit of sideworship themselves, and the rest of the Pantheon of mediterranean Gods, you can begin to understand that the old testament was in fact written by a whole bunch of priests many years down the line with their own agenda about who and how Jewish worship should go. Deosn't meaen the shift to montheism wasn't a radical and revolutionary one in terms of theological history. Just because it's made up doesn't stop it from being very interesting. Indeed their hatred of Canaanites is somewhat ironic as most evidence points to them being a canaanite people themselves and the flight from Egypt was almost actually a much much shorter flight away from Egyptian dominance of the coastal region, about 100 miles up into the mountains. The Red Sea? Hmm, perhaps a river or even just a bit of a flash flood in a mountain gulley that has become somewhat exaggerated in the subsequent telling.

It is indeed a recurring theme, Hesiod wroet about how the Golden Age of men had descended into the iron age of corrupted man, and that was the 8th century BC. A time held up by the likes of TS Eliot to be a forgotten golden age of man. Everybody likes to pick a time, the Roman republic, Late Roman antiquity, the dark ages, the high chivalric time. Of course Brendan's correct, there was no golden age, times have always been hard, and man inhumane to man. One of my history tutors when I first arrived at university told me never to romanticise the past, if I really wanted to know what the Medieval period was like then he suggested I watch Monty Python and the holy grail. That's not to say things haven't been good times in the past or lessons to be learnt. There were very stable and relatively peaceful and enlightened periods in history. Pax Romana was based on slavery and huge military power, but there were periods of peace and prosperity. Under the Umayyads of Spain and the Abbasids in the middle east there were a series of highly tolerant and enlightened rulers that meant the middle east was a great deal more peaceful than it is today.

I gather there's a friendly against Charlton at the end of July. Possibly part of the Chris Dickson deal?

What a weird shuffling group dance. Sort of reminiscent of bill & ben the flower pot men. Or people dancing to the Smiths when I were a lad.

Peckhamgatecrasher Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Can't wait to see you go for Leviticus 18:23 > Giggirl. > He he, does that include rabbits, I'm sure that could upset quite a few ladies?

Roll up roll up, never never errr foal up, if you do you'll catch the flu and that will be a drain on the NHS innit. Schwap, flwap. Hooooooow is everyone, Spike can't hear you........

Amazingly enough my first (registered) post is a recommendation for Buddha Jazz..I'm like a broken record aren't I. No idea how I go about tracking down older posts though.

Like the MacGabhann before me, you'll overtake me yet!!

Benin was the birthplace of Voodoo that we all know loads about having watched Live and Let Die, and was transplanted to the Caribbean and Florida, amazingly enough, by the slave trade. Also 51 languages are spoken there. And someone can buy a helluva lot of yams with ?1900 of my cash there!!!!

I trust I'm down for a g&t. The missus is on her hen do, and my account has been wiped out by a chap from Benin, but I'll probably pop in to say hello, especially as I've never been to the Herne.

Good quote from the ever interesting Abu Muquwama "Although democracy is often touted as a solution to conflict, that is not quite right. Democracy is, by its nature, a system designed to invite and encourage conflict over power and resources. It does so for a reason: conflict is good. It drives competition, innovation, and progress. But democracy only serves these purposes if conflict is kept within peaceful bounds. This requires a commitment among the parties to democratic norms--that is, it requires losers to accept their losses (and vow to compete, peacefully, another day), and it requires winners to not seek to permanently exclude the losers. The danger in Iraq at the moment is that democratization is a work in progress, and escalating political conflict is occurring within a fragile state just starting to recover from civil war. In a country of 27 million people in which every household owns an automatic rifle and (nearly) every political party has its own militia, what are the prospects that this competition will stay within peaceful bounds? Dr. iRack expects some fireworks in the months ahead."

Looking forward to the new season, you never know, this could be the one to finally take the Hamlets to the dizzy heights of the Premiership!!

There were plenty of teachers at my old school who commanded respect, even among the most troubled/troublesome kids, without recourse to a cane. I suspected things would go downhill in education when, during my final year, most of those senior staff wre 'encouraged' to take early retirement and the savings went to pay for a whole bunch of fresh-faced teachers who were of course absolutely saveaged by the above kids. I can well believe that, without the guidance of such experienced teaching professionals, they're only just becoming good seasoned teachers (17 years later). I'd laugh if they were encouraged to take early retirement to pay for.........

I liked Opera, but Firefox's extensibility wnis out. Yes, download 3 and hopefully all will be well.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1061&Itemid=59

Awww, huncamunca, the lady doth protest too much methinks ;)

Horsebox, cheers for that, always nice to hear from someone who sounds like they know what they're talking about.

I'm a bit slaughtered lamb right now....jeeez, i can spell...just about. Somewhere the point is, if you take part then such is. If you wilfully wish to make things bad then that's just not good, or right, or whatever the word need be. If you wish to partake, then marvellous, no one cares if you worhsip Satan, Mammon, Jesus, Mohammed or the Hurdy-Gurdy mushroom man, just be true to yourself.

Aww, I think you're great too. Remember though that pedantic opinionated twonk and brainy aren't the same thing!!

I can't back this up, just a police man I knew a few years back telling me we'd be very surprised by the number of guns out there. He put the figure of potentially armed police at 40%ish, though he did assure me they're in secure boxes and there are a million forms to fill if you open them. I can quite imagine his 40% was a finger in the air though. Any policemen on here care to tell us what the reality is?

Cheers everyone. Halifax LadyG. As I say, they were pretty helpful and didn't draw beady eyes at me once, but they could have been a bit more on the ball in nipping this in the bud.

You'd have thought, I guess as it was a sunday or something, but there should have been pending withdrawals visible to them. Dunces!!

They've been fine, but will still take 3 weeks for my money to reappear and in the meantime my card's been cancelled, so only have weekday, lunchtime access to funds.