What bike you got/getting. I got this for £900

Wow – bargin!

It's hardly worth pointing out that 99% of this thread is completely **** irrelevant because "class war" has sod all to do with whippets and Waitrose, and more to do with who sells labour and who owns the means of production, and which group's interests the state serves.

But I did enjoy the bit where someone got called nouveau riche.

Think about it (even if it is a struggle).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_struggle ?

he used to be part of my family…back when he was a socialist (that tells you how long ago it was).

There is a less dubious myth about scrap metal- steel framed ATBs etc being stripped and put in shipping containers and sent to china.

I can at least see how that might work but it sounds like a lot of effort for not much – 3-4kg of low quality steel?

Relax, "guys". We all know you're both the same person.

It is, truly, **** awful.

"It's horrible and I wish I had done something, but how could anyone really know?"

I dunno – call **** social services?

Same with the Bulger murder, by the way – tons of adults claimed to have seen the two boys lead the child away, clocked it was wrong and did nothing.

Seriously though does part of the Muslim community have nothing better to do than find stuff to get upset about? This is why your average Joe does not get/like (delete were appropriate) Muslims imho

Yeah, it's almost as if for everyone irritable Muslim there was an irritable John Gaunt/Richard Littlejohn/Bradford Bugle & Herald reader just waiting to hear about an irritable Muslim getting ticked off so they could get ticked off at the irritable Muslims…

Never seen the film, was it good?

Actually, it's very, very good! If you know about music, Factory, Joy Division, Madchester etc (I don't), I think you would really enjoy it. Steve Coogan is excellent in it (and I don't usually like his stuff at all), lots of cameos/location work, lots of really good 70s/80s scenes that are well done, really interesting, very funny. Christopher Ecclestone has a cameo, too. I've seen it twice, might get it again now that I am thinking about it.

There was 35 people in the audience that night at the (Lesser) Free Trade Hall. Half of Manchesters 45 to 55 year olds used to claim they were there at the time.

I assume you've seen that very funny scene in 24 Hour Party People?

Not just STWers chatting about it.
Bradford newspaper forum

Hmm…sample quote:

I think the military should blow them all up!

Unclear whether the poster there is talking about the cutouts, the real life Mosques or Teh Muslims. Possibly all three.

OP – sorry to hear that. Nightmare.

You should be able to seize her assets and get them sold I would guess – needs a criminal lawyer tho

Civil law, surely? Although can't a court can make restitution orders after criminal conviction? I dunno. Anyway, yes – a lawyer of some sort and not us muppets.

OP – you might be able to get some free, qualified legal advice from a Law Centre: http://www.lawcentres.org.uk/

in today’s PC correct world of plastic pop maybe not…

Malcolm's brand of music was always plastic, disposable, throwaway, wafer-thin. Integrity wasn't his thing (and he didn't pretend it was).

ake me wonder who the new legends are………..Lady Ga Ga?

Lady Gaga is an heir of Siouxie Sioux, Kate Bush, and Madonna…with Elton John and Bucks Fizz too. But she – like the Pistols – did emerge from the arthouse/ "scene"/ underground, she can write and play her own stuff, she knows how to use the media effectively, and she's pushing an interesting "look".

In a world of N-Dubzes, Lady Gaga is not our biggest worry!

Handbrake – for turning DVDs into files you can play on laptop, phone, iPod etc.

As I can't see any actual links to the story, can I be tedious and ask for clarification:

Was the mosque replica an actual target on the range or was it a building in a mock-up villages like the one that they use for training (like the one they have in Cyprus).

Local politics is the bitchiest scene going. I'd be surprised if the other candidates let their rival's PA filter the questions.

Don't mean to be rude, but 2 years of marriage and only 2 years together before that, you sure you spent enough time getting to know each other inside out before tying the knot?

Pfft – if you don't know each other enough after two years, forget it. Marriage is a journey of discovery in itself, it's not something you do once you get to the destination.

When you're out on your bike, do you enjoy yourself only once you get to the place you're going, or do you enjoy yourself while your riding too? And while you're riding, are there good bits and bad bits, or is it downhill all the way?

(DHers are the equivalent of prostitute-using johns here, I suppose: they pay for the uplifts so that they can only experience the pleasure but they never really form relationships with the hills). (I'd better stop with this metaphor, I'm sounding like Swiss Toni).

Actually, you're sort of acting like the worst type of parent and proving the point right there: you (hypothetically!) made a "shocking mistake" and yet all you can talk about how upset you feel and how other people have wronged you by not listening to you. Me me me me me me me…

Judging him before hearing his side of the story, or even meeting him?

Well, be fair, old chap: it's not a totally outrageous thing to think that someone who hasn't manifested any interest in the last decade and a half has lost the right to spend time with you and skepticism is well-placed.

People can only speak from their own experiences, and only the OP knows the circumstances and facts specific to him, but sometimes parents do things that are so awful and selfish they lose their claim. And some parents are so venal and self-delusional that they see other people (including their children) as accessories to their own lies and never admit to their own mistakes – they make everything about them and how they've been wronged. And all of that ends up working over their children again and again, when the right thing for them to do would have been to look after themselves but build as high a wall as possible.

I was very lucky in my relationship with my parents but I have certainly seen others around me who weren't, and I wouldn't go tossing around the word "arsehole" if any of them urged caution for someone in the OP's position. So…

this is dying:

I went on that slide 20+ years ago! My mum's friend told me to stop being such a little shit. (I didn't).

great story, stu – glad you're here to tell it!

IMO those that can make it in business and are interested in maximising their own wealth would not go into politics.

Money isn't the only reason people go into politics – there's the lure of power, people listening to what you're saying, travel, pictures in the paper. You don't have to be greedy to be self-serving: you could also be vain, delusional, megalomaniacal…

That's a very good point. I wish I had been thinking of it when I made that last post!

every socialist government veers sharply into the area of state control

You must be one of the last people in the UK to consider the Labour party socialist!

really downmarket ad. looks cheap.

ffs, rtft, mate! I suggested the NHS as one of Labour's great achievements, another poster claimed a Tory had had the idea first. Well, even if it were true, tough shit – it's achieving something that counts on the scoreboard, not thinking about it. Ditto PACE.

i just have the cycnical feeling hes doing it to ease his concious….

Ach, you know, maybe he is. My first instinct was to suggest being generous and meeting him – I mean, even if it doesn't help you or interest you at all, at least you're helping an old man ease their conscience. You could just think of it as an act of charity to begin with, and you never know, you might get something (spiritual, financial, whatever) out of it.

But when I read the "harsh" suggestions above, I can sympathise with those too. Some parents are just **** poison – child abusers, bigots, liars, hateful people – and any kind of contact with them just ends up eating away at you and sustaining their shit.

So…unless there's a good reason not to, go. I suppose that's not very helpful advice.

PACE was hardly a 'new idea' the Tories came up with, as the foundations to such an act date back more than 10 years before it's implementation.

I think to be consistent with my earlier bashing of the Tories' supposed invention of the NHS: you don't get a medal for thinking about running a marathon.

just shut up.

It's like the Algonquin around here, some days.

money.

I would endorse the PACE suggestion…and half of the content of the employment reform laws of the 70s and 80s. Good point.

lol :P

Sorry to hear that. It gets a little bit less worse after a while. Make sure to write to his parents (if you can). IME of being in a broadly similar situation, the letters meant a lot to my mate's parents, and the ones they really like were the ones that remembered their son as he really was, not the ones that were too formal or impersonal.

I had some dodgy bacon last year and spent the next four days doubled over in agony in one of two places: the bog and bed.

Do you have wifi and a laptop?

3 pages on – still no list of great Tory legislation.

http://www.hhvanhire.co.uk/ in Kentish Town/Camden, without hesitation.

My emphasis is on the creation of free health care for all rather than the vehicle

At the risk of being a monomaniac about this: the Tories didn't create it, (Old) Labour did.

A Tory, working as part of a national coalition government, may have developed a white paper in response to an inquiry undertaken at the request of a Labour minister, but that paper was significantly different to what actually emerged in the NHS Act in 1946, and it was the Labour government that pushed that act through.

You get 0 points for suggesting going to the moon and 10 points for actually doing it. ;)

The Tories wanted free health care for all and made some of the progress to what we have now.

Not claiming the idea was necessarily Labour's – just that they actually did it.

+ Marathon Plus. Not light but if you're commuting you're probably weighed down with carp anyway.

crayon sheath?

Don't get a postal vote: they don't send them out in time for them to be returned from overseas. Get a proxy vote, if you can, and appoint someone at your favoured party's office.

Labour: NHS, implementation of Beveridge report, Human Rights Act, Scottish and Welsh devolution, minimum wage, Racial Discrimination Act, legalisation of abortion, Open University, Health & Safety at Work Act, Civil Partnership Act, Kosovo intervention, reform of House of Lords, London Mayor.

Tories: Cones Hotline.

(Of course, OP only asked what great things have been done, not what crap ones have been done – there would be a lot longer list in that case).