Simply, the pursuit of Lance is forgetting the rest of the guilty.

It’s forgetting the cyclists who didn’t win the yellow jersey. If Lance hadn’t been a champ, he wouldn’t be worth pursuing.

Everyone else may have been taking drugs, but Lance always won – ergo, Lance was the best at taking drugs.

If this is your first experience of depression, then it might be a one-off. My dad went through it once, but it only happened once, all down to life circumstances. Don’t stress that this might be a permanent thing.

Lance shows all the classic signs of a psychopathic personality type.
If he wasn’t riding bikes he’d be in banking or politics.

Is there anyone who thinks he is a tragic hero?

Some people read him as a tragic hero – citing his self-sacrifice for Daisy over the car accident, or his heroic vision – as a Platonic figure who believed you could fight against the ravages of time.

Essay question: “Jay Gatsby is a crook, not a tragic hero.”
Discuss.

Probably best we all chat online given how infectious you all are.
Sore throat today, working from bed.
Saw snowdrops on the ride yesterday so spring shouldnt be far off.

Once I accepted that life is for the most part unhappiness, I started to feel happy.

I can specifically recall the five minutes of my adult life when I was “Happy”.
I was on holiday in France with friends, messing around in the swimming pool with the French girls next door.
Other than that, I don’t mind trundling through life somewhere in between happy and sad.

If you’ve both been married before then take heart, there is a 70% chance you would get divorced if she said yes and you ended up taking her up the aisle.

I always leave a tip unless the service has been awful. This is mainly because service jobs are poorly paid but demand non-stop effort from the staff.

Clarkson Rocks.

When I was 14 I seriously knackered my knee. I continued to play rugby but gave it up along with pretty much all other field sports before I was 18, when those sports get seriously physical. I did F-all exercise until I took up mountain biking at 25.
The knee hurts occasionally but I’m glad I gave my body a rest in my 20s, as well as giving up field sports. I do the odd run but otherwise its cycling all the way, and even that I don’t overdo.
For your body, life is a marathon not a sprint.

just now have a niggling fear that those valium may prove a little too moreish for my willpower

Valium is incredibly addictive, I’d be very careful, it also affects your ability to drive. Most doctors are far more conservative handing it out these days.

This thread is going nowhere, Exit Badnewz (pursued by a Zionist Bear).

Too many people on here have a simplistic idea of victims vs victimizers.
Israel’s response has gone over the top, sure, but the idea that the Palestinians are a peaceful people is equally laughable.
The political left is obsessed on this issue, even though most people in the UK have no direct experience of living in the middle-east. It is shifting British Jews to the right, making them more concerned about further immigration from Muslim countries, which I think is a long overdue move.

Back when I had the misfortune to spend most of my time in academia, I shared an office with a colleague who developed something of a paranoia about “Ze Zionists”. He then started plastering posters for Hamas on the office door. Last time I heard about him he was oscillating between Pro-Palestine marches and regular nervous breakdowns.

In my experience, anti-zionism has turned into textbook Jew hatred over the last five years or so.

Steven Sizer is a case in point. He is a C of E vicar who is vociferously anti-Israel, but continually denies being an anti-semite. So I took a look at his Facebook page, and his mix of over 2,000 friends is interesting to say the least: an eclectic combination of Holocaust deniers, Jews-control-the-world conspirators, and Hamas apologists.

How terrible the last 24hours must have been for you.
Stay strong.

Automation of office jobs can’t come soon enough IMO. I know I’d end up having a nervous breakdown if I had to do one for years on end.

Anyhow, check out Escape the City – when you are feeling better that is, as it sounds like you just need a rest, but it lists lots of great opportunities to get your soul back from toxic office environments.

There’s lots of research on the misery of long commutes.
I’d take the new role or move closer to current job.

Check out the Slow Movement.
I’m naturally lazy so it suits me.

Buy the house in her name only.

I really really really would not do this. Really.

When I was leaving primary school,

You sound like a very organised 11 year old!

Greece is in a no-win situation. The EU are not going to significantly renegotiate its loan-package and the conditions of austerity. But if Greece were to leave the EU, international investors wouldn’t touch it with a barge-pole – what is there to invest in other than olives?

Greece didn’t have an economy before austerity in the first place. It was all propped up by EU development loans, which like with much of Southern Europe, went into either speculative projects or the pockets of political cronies.
The people that did want to get on in Southern Europe immigrated.
The truth is there is a major historic economic divide between Northern and Southern Europe – going back to the collapse of the Spanish empire. The EU tried to change that, but hundreds of years of culture cannot be reversed with the click of the fingers.

There are lovers of clouds (academics) and lovers of prostitutes (hands-on).

This is an eye-opener for me as I assumed from other threads that the majority of the STW Massive were eternally single or divorced and bitter. Good to hear some people have succeeded in the love stakes.

Its completely lost its way, and is now being held hostage by ideologies hell bent on a federal superstate (formed to represent the interests of them and their mates), no matter what the cost to its citizens.

I’m afraid it was ever so.

The EU idea was first conceived back in the 1920s by two senior officials of the League of Nations – Jean Monnet and Arthur Salter, a British civil servant – to be a United States of Europe, ruled by a government of unelected technocrats like themselves. Two things were anathema to them: nation states with the power of veto (which they had seen destroy the League of Nations) and any need to consult the wishes of the people in elections.

Indeed, and the imbeciles of the EU might well reflect that if the Greek path is rejected, then the violence will likely follow, in Greece and elsewhere.

The EU will come up with numerous can-kicking exercises and empty promises to bide their time. They still think they can get things going with QE – although as in the West, only the top 1% will benefit.

Personally I think taking to the streets is long overdue – the situation can only be resolved with the ballet box and street demonstrations – this feels like the early days of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This feels like the beginning of the end of the EU in its current manifestation.
Its fifty-fifty whether Greece and the UK will be in it in three years time.

Mountain biking means FREEDOM. Freedom from routine, from work, from the family, from obligation, from everything really, including guilt. She’s a happy mistress who will always forgive you and let you have a ride no matter how long you’ve been away.

Im happy overall with the Sony but the small screen size means texting can be difficult.

This week Ive had mcdonalds, two kebabs, a shedload of beer, numerous muffins, and i think i will go for an indian later.

Andrew looks like a fun-loving Peter Hitchens.

I work with a load of ex-teachers, they all jumped ship about five years back.
I’ve also taught in a private school – it was a boarding school but I didn’t live on site – they have you by the nuts if you live onsite, there is no downtime.
Teaching should be simple but bad parenting, political interfering have messed it up in the UK.

Considering he was only in about an 1/8th of the film, it has to be Killgore.

British Mud. Mountain biking developed in California for a good reason.

IT Consultant and Video Animations here.
I work from home 50% of the week and hotdesk in a shared office the other 50%.
Find the combination works well – otherwise working from home can drive you slightly nuts.

Not read the whole thread, but the main reason the price is so low is the Saudi’s want to crash the Russian economy; shale gas, renewables, etc are secondary to this. There’s growing anti-Russian sentiment in the West (largely stirred-up by people who should know better) and the Saudi’s have dropped the price to take advantage.