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Monday 3 August 2009

Sarah McDermott | 16:08 UK time, Monday, 3 August 2009

From the web team:

Despite the worst recession in decades, banking giants Barclays and HSBC have announced multi-billion half-year profits. Both banks managed to shore up their finances without government bailouts, but they have benefited from the UK government's massive support of the banking system as a whole. Much of the profit at Barclays comes from the bank's investment arm - where the average six month salary is £100,000. Can that be right and has anything actually changed after the banking crisis? Tonight Richard Watson will be investigating if the bankers are cashing in when the rest of us are paying for their mistakes.

Seven weeks after the disputed presidential poll which prompted mass protests and deep divisions within Iran's elite, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has formally endorsed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as winner of the election. Senior Iranian political figures appear to have snubbed the ceremony - former presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami were absent, as were defeated election candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. Gordon Corera reports on the divisions faced by Ahmadinejad within his own political support base, and the rifts exposed within the clergy.

The Rorschach test, a psychological evaluation comprising a series of 10 inkblot plates created by a Swiss psychiatrist nearly 90 years ago has been reproduced on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia complete with how to interpret patients' responses. It is a move which has sparked a furious debate between psychologists who argue that prior exposure to the images and the interpretations of them could render them ineffective as a psychological assessment tool and supporters of the free access ethos who oppose suppression of any information. We'll debate.

And David Grossman is in California where Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has approved spending cuts of more than half a billion dollars to the state's budget. Deep cuts will be made in child welfare, health care for the poor, and HIV/Aids initiatives.

Do join Kirsty Wark for all that and more at 10.30pm on 91Èȱ¬ Two.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    I am getting the smell of 'it's time to fill yer boots, guys, f....the economy!

  • Comment number 2.

    #67 from previous page
    Something like that, Misstress76uk, but we're not quite there yet

  • Comment number 3.

    Hi,

    when some politicians find it easy to cut Government expenditure and some find it easy to spend it, who do we want in Power?

    waht about the little green men from mars?

    what is we got rid of television for a month or two, and newspapers and radio, how would we all feel? better perhaps

  • Comment number 4.

    The Rorschach test ...... in tonights programme ....... Hmm!

    No. 1 weekday analysis programme ..... The Rorschach test ...... in tonights programme ....... Hmm!

    Aha!

    Got it!

    It will inevitably lead into a much more important issue for discussion in tonights show .....

    Would the prompt undertaking of this test help identify how and why Harriet Harmon appears to be losing the plot?

    Other questions stroke issues that perhaps are a little more important than the Rorschach debacle sic ......

    Is the recent stroke current assassination attempt on Trevor Phillips as a result of the fact that he appears to have chosen a sensible moderate approach at the EHRC or .......?

    Does Russia have moral guardianship of the women of Chechnya and should it urgently take action to ensure their safety and well being ?

    Phil Woolas is taking small sure steps to deal with the publics concerns with immigration. Should he be more aggressive?

    With the GCE and A level results for this year pending, what will be the percentage pass-rate improvement be?

    If a caucasian commits a crime against a BEM it is presented as potentially a racist incident yet if a BEM commits a crime against a caucasian ethnic origin is ignored?

    Answers on a postcard, again, please to .......

  • Comment number 5.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 6.

    So the taxpayer underwritten Corporate Multinational Cartel Banks are once again turning mega profits and their stock market parasites likely to pocket a small fortune in bonuses. Bank executives sight good decision making by their high flying employees but is dead easy to turn a false profit when you can borrow money at virtually zero interest rates. From simple analysis over the past few moths it would appear that said profits revolve around a virtual pyramid in mining share prices in particular.

    Only recently various mining companies were considering mergers, a sure sign of impending insolvency. Yet if the CMC Banks and other financial institutions subsidize any share price any CMC company can continue to increase its " leverage ".

    Similarly oil prices, front page leading article in the Indy alleging that oil will run out soon when in actual fact the speculators currently have millions of barrels parked up in natural harbors in idle tankers. Oil speculators must be desperate to get the price up and must be clutching at straws if they have to target brain dead ten bob fat cats like the gangophone to get them on their side and inflate the price.

    Its not as if the world will end when the oil runs out, exploration keeps finding plenty of new reserves but you can distil oil from coal. The Germans did so in the second world war, likewise apartheid South Africa. According to 91Èȱ¬ Coast back in the 19th century they were commercially distilling oil suitable for use in a diesel engine from peat. Britain has huge reserves of both coal and peat. Of course the eco-fascists will vociferously object, but then despite their anti big business rhetoric they are in actual fact an integral part of the false growth promoting CMC.

    Perhaps the most important factor in the recent stock market rise is the fact that the government are continuing to promote the CMC Corporate Nazi ideology. It is said that energy consumers will have to fund the whole cost of introducing " smart meters " when the energy companies stand to save almost ten times as much in lack of need to send people to read a traditional meter. This on top of the proposed 15% private tax on domestic and 17% on business energy bills to pay for subsidized wind farms to stand idle 70% of the time.

    It all adds up to yet more False Economic Growth, which apart from increasing the ever widening Financial Apartheid is based on increasing ecological damage to our planet. Perhaps its high time to move forward with a whole new social / economic system and anybody who looks back in nostalgia to the old days be turned into a pillar of salt like Lott's wife in the bible.

  • Comment number 7.

    #4 JAperson ~ Is the recent stroke current assassination attempt on Trevor Phillips as a result of the fact that he appears to have chosen a sensible moderate approach at the EHRC or .......?

    Well looks as though clevor trevor, made a mistake here....


  • Comment number 8.

    Earthlings!!

    call in the Hotel inspector now!

    perhaps theres a link bwetween leaders of countries and horology,

    perhaps we need a happy Bunny test for those in charge of the burrow?

    perhaps if we elected some happy bunnies, there might be peace between all bunnies.....

    happy Bunny in charge = Peace
    unhappy Bunny =War


    ?

  • Comment number 9.

    #3 Bubblegum Triffid

    The arrival of flying saucers raises important points:

    2) Euthanasia

    Visitors to the planet would first by visual observation or object proximity detection, find a debris field surrounding the planet. Derelict space craft, bits of metal, discarded tools bags, nuclear and toxic chemical materials etc.

    Next they would observe a brown pall of pollution in the atmosphere over east asia. Then smoke drifting over the planet. Either from deliberately set fires, used to drive out wild animals for hunting or capture. Or blazes in forests caused by micro and macro mismanagement of the ecological systems in question.

    Scanning of the planet would reveal toxic and nuclear material in both the oceans and on land. Life sign analysis would determine the most numerous large species had reached numbers the rapidly diminishing and degraded ecological systems could no longer support.

    Independent objective planetary assessment systems aboard the craft would show that in terms of intergalactic and cosmic time scales the planet was in the final seconds of it's death throes.

    The benevolent visitors might decide to administer the cosmic equivalent of a blow to the back of the head with a spade to a myoamatosed rabbit. Just to spare us further suffering before our imminent deaths.

    Celtic Lion

  • Comment number 10.

    So Bubblegum Triffid

    How and why did we both use rabbiit analogies? Even though we had not communicated. And your post was not moderated, prior to my posting. So we each had no idea what the other wrote, or did we?

    Perhaps Rupert Sheldrake needs to investigate?



    Celtic Lion

  • Comment number 11.

    The banks are booming due to consolidation and lack of competition?

    Why don't the Treasury lend directly via Zopa?

  • Comment number 12.

    #3 Bubblegum Triffid

    The arrival of flying saucers raises important points:

    3) Termination

    Any life form arriving here, would by necessity be a more evolved and wiser race than ourselves.

    Seeing how we treat each other. Using the earth's resources to make weapons to kill each other, how we treat the planet and other non human life without respect etc?

    What would they consider of us? Would they see us in the cosmic, eternal and infinite order of things, just as vermin, virus or bacteria?

    Would they want such a destroyer of planets, a disregarder of life to escape the confinement of this planet? To be free to pollute and infect the rest of the universe?

    Might they spray intergalactic bleach on the cosmic cloth and wipe us out of existence to protect the rest of the universe from our contamination?

    Are your space ships approaching universal rent-o-kill or just an interstella nurse eradicating with a disinfectant wipe a potential cosmic infection?

    Celtic Lion

  • Comment number 13.

    And Boiled Bunny completes a hat-trick. 8,9,11.

    If only we were playing cosmic poker with the Gods

    Celtic Lion

  • Comment number 14.

    @ 22:32 I wrote private to KCL

    Hope you dig my tonight's Newsnight post, is there some kind of theoretical collective subconsiousness beginning to manifest itself on said forum ?

    I hadn't read your Rabbit analogy post #10 when I sent you the above just now but perhaps said phenomena could be explained as an awakening of basic human instincts the type of which enabled the species to progress from the stone age

    Perhaps to appeal to a wider audience a good analogy could be " The Force " as portrayed in the original Star Wars film.

    As Wagon drivers you needed some kind if magic to pass oncoming HGV's at up to100 Mph closing speed with only six inches clearance on the wing mirrors. When they put temporary traffic lights up the truth was out and it was a struggle to get past parked HGV's at 10 Mph. Not everybody could do it but is was nothing to do with whether you could read and write. Totally distinct from theoretical academic achievement, but if you can't read the written test you don't get the chance to pass the current practical driving car test.

  • Comment number 15.

    I justed watched the Newsnight piece on banking profits. What astounded me is that everyone seemed to accept that Barclays (and maybe RBS later) made a profit. What is absolutely fundamental and that Newsnight did not mention is that this profit was made under new accounting rules which allow banks to value toxic assets at what they had expected them to be worth before the credit crunch hit. Today, what they thought was worth 90p in the pound is actually worth 40p in the pound and thats not going to change, recovery or no recovery. So the profits are an illusion. Under the old accounting system which we believed and used happily until October 2008, these banks are making horrific losses. This is the fundamental reason why the asset insurance scheme has still not been finalised and may never be.

  • Comment number 16.

    Inkplot 7 to 10 make no sense to me at all. Further confirmation that I am indeed barking?

  • Comment number 17.

    I daren't say what I got for the inkblots!

  • Comment number 18.

    This is not about whether the widely derided Rorschach 'ink blot test' crackpot quackery has any external validity (er, it doesn't) or its value as a diagnostic tool (ie for 'diseases' like homosexuality, hmmm...). Rather the discussion is the same old one about the deepening spiral of the dialectical relationship between psychology and public awareness thereof. Which of course is every bit as interesting (and appropriate for Newsnight coverage) as any report from the front line of yet another irreconcilable conflict between the criminally arrogant and the aggressively ignorant.

  • Comment number 19.

    Agree with JA Person in as much as much more important issues could be discussed other than the Rorschach 'debate'...looks to me that the opposition is standing on pretty weak ground; the psychologist guy didn't look like he knew what he was talking about, saying that exposure to the test would me them 'failing' the test...sorry since when did inkblots have a completely non-subjective meaning? Isnt the point to use what the patient 'see's' to unravel underlying issues in the psyche? And anyway if it is such a problem why not just ask the patient "Have you seen these images on Wikipedia"...the answer will probably be 'yes, because I was intrigued when Kirsty Walk off of Newsnight got into a lather about not seeing them so I decided to have a nose..." I was interested in the debate here but this was a real disapointment

  • Comment number 20.

    IS EAR-SIZE AN INDICATOR OF INARTICULACY? (a sort-of feedback thing)

    Has Newsnight 'uncovered' the 'underlying' cause of Kirsty's surreal diction?

    Only one fleeting close up - did she panic?

    Are flying saucers powered by anti-gravitas - like this forum?

  • Comment number 21.

    #13 #14

    So how come we posted at exactly the same time. When I didn't know the contents.

    Ecolizzy will confirm we can post at exactly the same time.

    "I hadn't read your Rabbit analogy post #10 when I sent you the above just now but perhaps said phenomena could be explained as an awakening of basic human instincts the type of which enabled the species to progress from the stone age"

    Brossen 99 #14

    yes. I have got this in a rational system. This is was why the system knew the date and extent of the 2007 UK flooding 15 years before and knew that the global economy would collapse, the date and the magnitude.

    All published in independent articles and verified in letters from Cabinet Ministers and other politicians. A NN producer just got abusive when I told him and would not look at the evidence. Reflections on Reality, is still the most accurate assessment on development strategy.

    It is difficult but who ever said Einsteins Special theory on relativity was an easy read?

    Celtic Lion

  • Comment number 22.

    Journalists (newsnight included) seem to take every chance they can to emphasise problems with wikipedia. If someone doesn't want an image on a wikipedia then they should remove it, and contribute to the debate in the article's discussion page about why it shouldn't be there. If you can't convince your fellow volenteers to keep the images off the article then that's tough, stop whining to on national TV about wikipedia having a moral duty to restrict informaton flows... sheesh!

    This is really not an interesting or enlightening debate, it's someone who wants to roll-back the Internet being given a voice by sympathetic journalists.

  • Comment number 23.

    Ah yes, inkblots. And how long have these tests been around, pray? And with Kirsty Walk in another of her hectoring interviews of people whose only crime is to try and disseminate knowledge amongst the plebs as opposed to shoring up the barriers erected by smug professionals, art critics and media hackettes to protect their superior self-satisfied status. How awful! that the people who are subjected to these discredited psychological tests might actually get access to knowledge of what is being done to them! and how overpaid, allegedly professionally qualified, psychiatrists are reporting on them. Come back Pavlov, all is forgiven.

  • Comment number 24.

    Bit off topic but whilst mentioning the Stone Age #10 it crossed my mind about how primitive man would herd Mammoths and drive them of a high cliff. Perhaps the only way to kill them at the time but they probably killed so many at once that they could never eat all the meat before it went completely rotten. Perhaps not that different from today's stock market parasites, they earn far more money that they could ever need. Meanwhile the government allows them to inflate the cost of living to pay for it, more and more environmentally sound people fall into the down side of financial apartheid. Of course the real inflation is hidden in the corporate statistics, we make no true progress in promoting the ultimate ecological future of our planet.

    The Corporate Multinational Cartel Banks will ensure that nobody is allowed the finance to come along with the modern day equivalent of a flint arrowhead. True efficiency savings in our economy are frowned upon by politicians, alleged honorable men but perhaps seduced by the " Dark side of the Force ".

  • Comment number 25.



    There are equivalents in ecology. leaf opening, catapillars, bird nesting. In physics etc. But we have to remember NN reprents only a very narrow and extremist view on reality. In the main NN philosophy is "we convert the ecological life systems of the planet into something called increasing economic growth".

    So a broader view objective view on the news is ignored.

    Celtic Lion

  • Comment number 26.

    I wonder what 'talented' bankers say when they're given the ink blot test?

  • Comment number 27.

    Brossen 99

    If you really want some back ground on how man killed wolley mammoths. If you enter in Google:

    working bearded collies coevolution

    There is a site which is one of the leading references points on the subject. There is so much info though together with the links etc it might take a while.

    It does link back to your references on the 'force'. Communication between different species.

    Celtic Lion

  • Comment number 28.

    Red is a difficult colour to pull off on a tv or monitor, this is because most monitors and tv's are not calibrated - the colour temperature is usually set at 9300k and not 6500k and the contrast and brightness are usually too high, therefore red comes blasting out at you.

    My monitor is very well calibrated because of printing high quality images and having to use colour management :



    Watched NN on my calibrated monitor and a non calibrated tv about 3 feet away, the contrast in Kirsty's red top was quite something. The hair tied back is a good idea for tv presentation, though in my view it would suit Kirsty's shape of face as articulated via a camera lens - more if she was waring glasses. Although I get the feeling, reading the autocue and anything close up from a script would be difficult due to eye sight, otherwise she may already be advised to do it. In the highly unlikely event of me being asked, I advise to stick with usual hair-do (although it was a good, bold try) unless out in the open presenting to camera or are able to ware some glasses suitable to face shape.

    I use the Star Trek Universal Translator for kirsty speak - leaves me feeling all tingley.

  • Comment number 29.

    I SHALL CONTINUE TO KLINGON TO THE WRECKAGE (#28)

    "I use the Star Trek Universal Translator for kirsty speak - leaves me feeling all tingley."

    Nice one SP. The 'wreckage' I refer to is, of ocurse, that left of news presentation.

  • Comment number 30.

    Rorschach tests been with us since my university days many eons ago. I got around the problem by copying someone in a film who when he was subjected to the test replied it was some sexual activity. After repeating the same answer to each one they either thought I was some deviant pervert, mad or that they just gave up.
    I have always had doubts about myself ever since!!!

  • Comment number 31.

    Nos 29

    Yes there are times when you have to kling-on and engage the word grappler as they are non-sonorantly thrown out to perhaps? hold to a time schedule.

    Still Kirsty has a quality and is one of my fav presenters.

  • Comment number 32.

    Hi Celtic Lion

    #10

    its intriguing! I had a look at the link and will further investigate, perhaps Newsnight are toying with us! Perhaps there are pulsating subliminal images posted on the website to see which way we might bounce!

    perhaps..they posted an image of a Giant bunny on the site last night and some of us picked it up...

    given the power, and the range. ..."my hand is long and my vengeance is great.... Texas billionaire trying to take over the world in Billion dollar brain

    perhaps...it might occur to some, come to think about it,...minds far more powerful than ours....
    could be running research programmes to see whether it is possible to tinker with websites to influence various forms of control over others...

    whats that knkc on the door..

    seriously this would make sense, if PCs are starting to resemble TVs, apart from the obvious direct ways of trying to brainwash us, and less obvious ie TV has the same waves as sleep, I feel more awake once I have switched off..

    could there be programmes designed to discover if various forms of subliminal but potentially new forms oof image be put on websites, perhaps without peoople running sites even being aware of it...

    or is it risky asking this sort of question.....? !



    might this be a question for Susan Watts?



    linked to this such experiments -are- seemingly carried out,

    in the 1960s I suddenly say what I thought was a Blue Whale appearing on the screen of the Black and white TV !!,

    about a year or two ago I read that experiments had being carried out around that time to see if Black and White TV sets could transmit a colour image,


    PS last nights programme also left me thinking why didn't we take over the profitable banks, rather than the ones with the debts !,

    the next question was, remembering the Guardians excellent series on tax avoidance or tax 'efficiency', if these Bnaks are both declaring £3Billion in profits is this an accurate figure? just a question,

    best wishes, if not a bit alarmed by my own post today,

    Hail to the Big Rabbit !!!!

  • Comment number 33.

    Hi, re my last posting,

    might some sort of 'experiment' on the Newsnight website last night link with the feature on the inkblot stuff?

    might such a thing cross the minds of the Newsnight team....?

    best wishes again

  • Comment number 34.

    Hi again

    # 9, 12

    wrecking our planet is illogical, caveman stuff, not higher level intelligence,

    reminds me of the Hogarth images of people emptying their bedpans in the streets below,

    but with all that said, I think things will work out

    best wishes

  • Comment number 35.

    HMMMMMM (#34)

    The caveman had acres of 'street' to empty his 'bedpan' into AND probably a taboo against such stupidity.

    When cleverness broke free from that sustainable idyll, leaving wisdom behind, farming allowed concentration and stagnation of groups - ever larger. Taboo atrophied and bedpans could be emptied willy-nilly.

    Now we have no wisdom, inverse taboos, and St-Vitus-like applied cleverness.

    Would you like to explain what we do to reverse this so that it will 'work out'? Is Harriet any part of your plan?

  • Comment number 36.

    #35 Barrie

    Again NN last night had a discussion only with those who represented a very narrow extremist position, Cable, McFall, Tait etc. That of converting the life systems of the planet into something they call economic growth.

    All the solutions exist it is just the media and people in general aren't interested.

  • Comment number 37.

    Hi,

    News Editors seem to focus on each other rather than on events themselves?

    if something 'radical' appears, or as Celtic Lion points out in 36 is already there, media outlets seem too tramline or lack the 'courage' to pick the stories up? ridiculous in a sense to say this, but they seem scared witless to step outside a small area occupied by their peers, or approved of by their current bosses

    What has it to do with the intrinsic merits of any story if the people involved in it are considered to be 'unimportant by the oxbridge and public school educated news gatherers and hence the story is ignored, in favour of stories, promulagated, is that the right word by their (moneyed) chums in their small privileged elistist circles?

    ironically by this high handed attitude the media are fast making themsleves irrevelant, puttting themselves on the margins and ultimately out of a job ,as people tune into the fact that media outlets seem most concerned about imposing their views, rather than listening to others, a but like many politicians perhaps, and hence we switch off or cease to read their newspapers?

    there is much SELF PITYING hand wringing amongst journalists that they are losing their jobs as media outlets are closing or laying off people, but they need to take responsiblity for this, if you poison your own well -what do any of you expect to HAPPEN? !!! PLEASE WAKE UP, AND AT NEWSNIGHT at least HAVE THE COURTESY TO START INTERACTING WITH YOUR POSTERS, please. How many times does this importance of this have to be pointed out to you?

    NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

    best wishes

    Proud to be one of the Hoi Polloi!!

  • Comment number 38.

    I just heard that The Observer newspaper is closing down!

  • Comment number 39.

    I've never had much time for Arnold's acting but as govener of California I am rather impressed with his swinging public sector cuts and spelling out the need for and why to Californians. On the other hand over here in blighty, Labour are hoping that their education policy has worked and that their core voter are still thick enough in believing that the Tories are still the nasty party of cuts. Brown and his cohorts of clingers-on, playing around with cynical politics whilst the economy has spiralled out of control with the need to review its Public spending buried deeper than my recently dead cat is a tactic not working as the recent byelection has proved as an inexperienced 27yr old woman - bland as the day is long - trashed labour and reversed a healthy Labour majority into massive defeat.

  • Comment number 40.

    Hey bloggers!

    Look what I've just found!



    best wishes

  • Comment number 41.

    Mistress @38 wrote:
    "I just heard that The Observer newspaper is closing down!"

    with the Guardian and Manchester evening news to follow...if you pray hard enough...oh what joy!

  • Comment number 42.

    I wonder if Andrew Rawnsley has been paid lately.....sign of the times guys

  • Comment number 43.

    Hi,

    re the Observer,

    I've just started reading it again after boycotting it for years because of their disgusting pro-invasion of Iraq stance

    Pity that such a great left of centre paper got hijacked by the right wing warmongers,



    Perhaps the Guardian should recognise that many readers were repelled by the Observers very out of character editorial line, and who may in time return like me to buying this paper?

    I would very much hope that the Scott Trust would continue to support the Observer a bit longer until previous readers return, while I hope trying to find out privately what on earth happened at the Observer at this time, and how it happened, who was involved.

    They might even consider volunteering evidence about this based on their own painful experiences, being on the receiving end, to the new Iraq war inquiry about the cynical manipulation of the news media in support of this illegal war,

    just to leave you with some vintage Observer



    from a newly returned Observer reader

    best wishes

    BubblegumTriffid
    somewhere in the 91Èȱ¬ Counties


  • Comment number 44.

    I am trying to work out why a previous post got blocked and so I will try it in smaller chunks.


    There is no propaganda campaign against the Nazis as they lost and Nuremburg and subsequent war crime trials provided an abundance of evidence that there was a Holocaust. No BNP or far right activist will be going to the Djemjanjuk trial to provide any evidence.

    Claims that the evidence has been refuted - but then why not make the defence aware of that? How can an alleged crime have taken place in the context of death camps if there were no death camps?

    There is no propaganda campaign against the BNP - just BNP lies being exposed.

    Lies such as three local murders that never happened that the BNP London Assembly member must explain.

    The manslaughter of a BNP activist - that was due to a border dispute not a race attack.

    The race rapes in Oxford St that never happened.

    Holocaust "agnosticism".

    The BNP claims that they are not a Nazi party - yet they revere Hitler and want to replace democracy with National Socialism.

  • Comment number 45.

    #36 kingcelticlion

    "All the solutions exist it is just the media and people in general aren't interested."

    Also the Nobel prize givers?

    I assume that if two previous winners had relied on your work it won't be long before you get one huh?

    Perhaps not.

  • Comment number 46.

    #37 bubblegumTriffid

    "PLEASE WAKE UP, AND AT NEWSNIGHT at least HAVE THE COURTESY TO START INTERACTING WITH YOUR POSTERS, please. "

    I agree to some extent but then the BNP supporters try to use this page with sensationalist shock tactics as a way to cheap publicity. To cave into them would be to bring on "anarchy".

    If somebody posts ideas that include Holocaust "Agnosticism" or "Hitler was a peace lover" then I would suggest interacting with them would get very tricky as it may imply acceptance of those views.

    Personally I have no reason to think that the ideas are not listened to - though I get very frustrated with the inconsistency of the moderators whereby hideous and evil views can be expressed but rebuttals are blocked.

  • Comment number 47.

    Hi,quick post as being timed out but is there nay evidence that our posts are listned to

  • Comment number 48.

    Hi,

    Back online, always keep it short, by the way the Flat Earth Society has being blocked here,

    sorry earlier blog got cut short, thanks for 46,

    changing the subject,

    PS is it now known who Banksy is?

    one blogger can be ignored
    turn them into an army and the oyster is ours !!

    best wishes

  • Comment number 49.

    Completely off topic, this must be the piece I listened to on Radio 4 PM



    Well Joanna this is what happens when an inexperienced person hypes everyone up into a media frenzy without the long term effects being thoroughly pointed out. We will need to house, or care home, and health care, including all the problems brought on with old age care for all these gurkha people. Although I do like them and think them very brave and hard working, it will overload our infrastructure even more. And Nepal will become a much poorer country, and the expertise of these men will be lost to the country. Well done Joanna for meddling!

  • Comment number 50.

    HHhmmm re; The Observer closing, isn't that the Guardians idea, I thought they wanted rid of it. It will upset my parents no end, they've read if for 52 years, from the days of Vita Sackville West. As my mother often points out, recently it's become like a comic, with all the rubbishy inserts, and no in depth news reporting.

  • Comment number 51.

    @ #48 bubblegum Triffid - Banksy is Robin Gunningham (originally from Bristol). The news broke last month in the Daily Mail.

    Here is the article:

  • Comment number 52.

    OYSTERS OFF (#48 and a word from 49)

    OF BEDS (shameless re-post)

    As the oyster yields a pearl
    man invents.
    Neither realises their fecundity
    is rooted in irritation:
    of one - the body
    of the other - the mind.
    Man kills the oyster
    for its pearl.
    And kills his own World
    for that eureka moment of invention

  • Comment number 53.

    Hi,

    thanks for that, I guess we might aspire to get the pearl without killing the oyster? enjoyed the poem, thank you

    thanks for the link Mistress76UK, I had in mind another contemporary artist whose works (to me) seems similar to Banksy,#
    I guess if you pretend to be somebody else you can't get nicked for defacing peoples walls, albeit with interesting art
    # wouldn't be fair to suggest openly who this is. if they want to remain incognito, so be it, far be it for me to spoil the party, I might just drop /them/ a note however....

    Dear.....

    I know what you are up to..... !

    PS do you think there is an attempt to destroy good papers by filling them with, well you know 'that sort of thing'?

    best wishes
    time for a nap, its all getting a bit too exciting

  • Comment number 54.

    Hi,

    wo ho !! look what I've just discovered on a flat earth forum

    take a butchers at this !



    the earth I'm walking on is very flat, if it was round getting around might be a bit difficult, its all in the perspective,

    best wishes, despite the clicks on my phone line I'm still free, and I live in Engleland, perhaps

    BGT
    "we shall prevail!"
    once bloggers unite, we will never be defeated !

  • Comment number 55.

    Andrew Dismore MP, the most expensive MP in London (expenses claim £145,146) has spent today slagging off our security services with absolutely no proof to back up his claims. I hope you will refrain from giving him the oxygen of publicity until he comes up with some evidence.

  • Comment number 56.

    #49 Ecolizzy

    I saw Queen J on the TV just after you posted before on the subject. She was on a stage addressing a crowd jumping up and own. Shouting something like the UK loves you all, we want you to come here, you're all welcome.

    It was that all inclusive 'we' again. I don't mind the Gurkhas coming here if they want. But I didn't realise the point was to actively encourage them and crash the Nepalese economy.



  • Comment number 57.

    #56 KCL I suppose I agree with Jj and quite a lot of other posters here, why is celebrity given such a lot of quodos(?)

    This hasn't been thought through properly, are we making provision to house all these people? Are they expecting to walk into a new home? Is there enough care home places for them, after all a lot of them are very old. I read that there are 10,000 that can apply, will some or most of them apply? How many wives and children and parents will come with the gurkhas. Has anybody tried to find out? Did anyone think of Nepals economy? The trouble is here if anyone questions someone asking these questions, they are immediatly tarred with the racist brush. Logic seems to go out the window these days, you just have to grab the popular vote! : (

  • Comment number 58.

    #57 ecolizzy

    That was exactly what the 91Èȱ¬ told me when they discovered that I was the author of the climate change risk assessment not Sir David King who they had been promoting.

    Though they admitted I really knew my subject and was a good communicator, they pointed out news was about ratings and he was a media celebrity. So they continued to tell the public he was the original author, though they knew he wasn't just for the ratings. It has put the response to ecological life support system crash by years. Sad but celebrity and ratings mean more to the media than peoples lives.

    Was it Kudos? (from Greek, not Latin) Sadly it has become empty, 'awarded' now for vacuousness. There appears to be an inverse relationship in the media between truth, integrity, realism, and the amount of time and space allocated.

    I empathise with your thoughts. Trying to save 6 billion lives by pointing out that converting the life support systems of the planet into something as meaningless and useless as economic growth is not sensible. To me that is rational and logical. Yet is met with derision by the planet wreckers.

  • Comment number 59.

    #58 Thanks for pointing out how to spell Kudos, my mind went completely blank and I hadn't a clue!

    Though they admitted I really knew my subject and was a good communicator

    Well you've definitely managed to get some of your ideas into my thick woolly headed brain! ; )

  • Comment number 60.

    #60 Ecolizzy

    The feeling is reciprocated. Just when things couldn't get any worse you manage to find something else. Makes me think how do we incorporate that into some global solution.

    Your style is very direct. Now even though I was thinking about the economy of Nepal, I could not possibly say any thing about evryones favourite. But you, you just fire the torpedo in.

    The other thing is you ask questions. If something is posted, you very often ask for the explanation deeper than the post. Others may just reply with an abusive rant. But you seem to probe. Asking is there any subsatnce behind this. Challenging. Checking.

    You would be good as a NN presenter!

  • Comment number 61.

    #20
    Yes to all.

    What do I win?

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