GRIMLY FIENDISH

...and then Twitter will get shut down.... "First they came for The Pirate Bay, but I said nothing, for I did not use The Pirate Bay Then they came for Megaupload, but still I said nothing, for I did not use Megaupload Then they came for You tube, but again, I said nothing, for I did not use You tube very much Now they have come for Twitter, and there is no one left to speak for me..." :rolleyes:

Naaah, that joke got pretty old quick for me. About the same time I discovred how rubbish "Pick of Destiny" was... -_-

Precisely. And no doubt the bugger would've claimed it on expenses anyway, so he's a double fool.... -_-

So, this is the second time he's been stripped of the Captaincy, yes...? Maybe this kind of proves that he's just not "fit for purpose"....

I'd agree with that to be fair. And, tbh, I dont really see the reason that any show should last 22 episodes a year, there's too much danger of 'filler' setting in.. If you look at how BBC does it with Dr Who and Merlin, 13 episodes is perfectly acceptable. The Cable networks also strike the right balance, it cant be coincidence that most of my favourite shows (Dexter, Mad Men, Game of Thrones and Walking Dead) are only 12/13 episodes a year..

If the idiots try to shut down Youtube, then Anonymous wont have to use duplicitous means to get people to join in a Denial of Service attack, they'll have literally BILLIONS of volunteers..... LOL Actually, you know what, sod it, let the powers-that-be try to shut it down.. I'm curious too see if I'm right..... :lol:

i would say it's definitely a "jump before pushed" damage limitation exercise tbh... To be brought down for something as ridiculous as this though is just stupid. If he really is guilty, what the hell was he thinking..? Okay, so he might have lost his licence for a while, but being in the public eye as he is being an MP and all, he really should've known better, it really does eventually come back to bite you in the arse.. Just ask Jeffrey Archer....

Hmmm, the general tone I'm detecting here is "You cant trust Cowell".. :lol:

Looking forward to hearing how they've utilised Zola Jesus, she's pretty awesome... :)

Oh I wasn't meaning to imply that it was a bad thing, quite the contrary, just a bit strange that so many of them seem to be doing it now. I can remember what some reviewers said at the time about the sort of music they were doing, basically they described it as "soundtracks for films that haven't been made"... Just seems quite poignant that now some of them are doing soundtracks... ;)

Well, all I can say is, that if Fringe gets cancelled then it just proves that American TV audiences are brain dead goldfish who need to be spoonfed Reality shows, whatever CSI or NCIS spin-off they can dream up (CSI Kentucky or NCIS Alaska maybe..?) or whatever shite the Kardashian slags are getting up to.... -_-

True.. Pioneers of Electronica is probably a pretty apt description... ;) And the tunes are pretty cool.. Good to have the Hartnoll boys back... And, NOT actually doing a film soundtrack album like so many of their early 90s peers (eg Trent Reznor, Daft Punk or Chemical Brothers) seem to be getting into these days... :lol: Although "Never" would've been quite a nice fit on the "Drive" soundtrack...

Ha!! You kind of picked the "fan favourite" to hate... :lol:

Yup, it's a bit like when Goldfrapp did "Supernature", most of the hard-core fanbase hated that album, and are not exactly too fond of the last one either...

"DJs are the new Rock Stars".. Errrr, yeah, only the phenomenon of the DJ goes back over 20-odd years to the Hip Hop and Rave scenes.... Amazing how Cowell seems to think that this is some kind of "new idea"... DJing is a very specific thing linked into clubbing and producing. I somehow doubt the average X-Factor or Britain's Got Talent viewer will remotely "get" what club DJing involves, much less be able to judge it...

You'd think, wouldn't you? Oh, but remember, it's us 'Joe Schmoes' who are subject to the law, not *those* guys.... :mellow:

How many lesbians have we had in tennis? A fair few. And no one really batted an eyelid tbh...

Apparently deletion of ALL content on MegaUpload servers may begin as early as Thursday.. Whether the content is legit or not... Basically, it's a "tar everyone with the same brush" solution... :mellow:

Tory council boss on Eric Pickles' 'fair cuts' claim: it's 'bollocks' http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/patrick-...P=FBCNETTXT9038 ust over a year ago, as the most devastating cuts to local government in modern times were unveiled, you may recall the communities secretary Eric Pickles assured us we were all in it together: "This will be a progressive settlement and fair between different parts of the country." It was clear at the time that quite a few councils viewed Pickles' claim with contempt and disbelief, although it was principally Labour-run councils which were prepared to openly say so. A fascinating new report now confirms what was much whispered about at the time but largely unsaid: that many Tory-run councils were equally appalled. Here's a senior executive at a Conservative-run authority in a deprived area, quoted in that Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) study of the impact of local authority spending cuts in England: "Stop believing what the government tells you. All the stuff that the government said was a complete nonsense. Our [grant] budget cut this year from DCLG is (much larger than the government figure). They've made up this new formula which is to say that our complete income generating power, including Council Tax receipts, is X. Bollocks. It's a lot harder than he [Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for CLG] would like to make out." Here's another view - a fairly typical one among executives we spoke to, says the report - expressed by a senior manager at a Tory-led authority: "This is the most unfair and unjust settlement I have ever seen." So what were those Tory councils so angry about? The report, written by a group of Heriot Watt University academics, addresses in detail Pickles' methodology, which it says sought to minimise the scale and inequitable distribution of the cuts by rolling up councils various funding streams into a new compound "spending power" assessment. The report says (page 14): "On the whole we would characterise the government's presentation of the local government part of the Comprehensive Spending Review and the subsequent local government grant settlement as not wholly transparent and potentially misleading." Pickles announced on 13 December 2010 that no council would lose more than a 8.9% cut in "spending power" in 2011-12. The most deprived councils would get the "lion's share" of the funding. Those areas, he said, would be given "more weight". Look at Hackney in east London, he said: it gets £1,043 per head, compared to £125 per head in Wokingham, in leafy Berkshire. But Hackney always did get more per capita funding - the distribution formula reflects the greater social needs and costs of inner city living - so that wasn't a surprise, or evidence that deprived areas were being protected. What Pickles didn't say - but the JRF report points out - is that while Hackney as expected continued to receive more cash per head than Wokingham, its residents had taken a far bigger hit. According to the JRF report (see table two, page 15), Hackney's "spending power" reduction in per head of population cash terms in 2011-12 was £180. In Wokingham it was £4. You see similar patterns with other councils: Liverpool saw spending power cut by £162 per head; in Windsor and Maidenhead it was just £7. And so on. The report batches England's local authorities into five groups, sorted by degree of deprivation, to make a similar point (table five, page 21): in the most deprived group the percentage spending power cut was 15.4%; in the least deprived it was 12.1%. I spoke to Glen Bramley, one of the report's authors, and he gave me the per capita cash figures for those groups: the most deprived councils were cut by £199 per head; the least deprived saw cuts of £86. Is that fair and equal? Pickles was very clear about this. In his December 2010 statement he said: "Funding fairness underpins this settlement." As you might expect, the cuts unfairness translates pretty clearly in political terms: in 2011-12 Labour-run single tier authorities shouldered a "spending power" cuts burden amounting to 7.2% (-£1,089 per head); in Tory boroughs it was just half that - 3.6% (but less marked in cash terms at -£855). In Lib Dem-controlled authorities it was 5.1%. Next year, 2012-13 it will be similarly skewed, though less marked. I asked the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) to comment on JRF's claims that Pickles' presentation of the cuts as fair and progressive were "misleading". A spokesman replied: "The settlement is fair between different parts of the country - north and south, rural and urban, metropolitan and shire. Funding is being directed to where it is needed most so councils can protect the front-line services people rely on, shield the most vulnerable places, safeguard the most vulnerable people, and protect taxpayers' interests. "For example, the average spending power per dwelling (not including police) in Hackney will be £3,050 compared with £1,537 in Windsor and Maidenhead. The English average is £2,186." As you can see, CLG has not only repeated Pickles' earlier sleight of hand - by presenting spending level figures rather than cuts comparisons - but has changed the terms of the comparison from spending per capita to spending per dwelling. It's also pushed the financial year ahead to 2012-13. Why? I checked the government's own spending-per-dwelling spending power data to see if changing the comparators told a different story: but it doesn't (a link to the relevant CLG spreadsheet can be found on bullet point four of notes to editor section of this page). They show that every dwelling in Hackney will face a £221 cash cut for the financial year starting April 2012, equivalent to 6.8%. In Windsor and Maidenhead, the cash cut will be £28, or 1.89%. The most disadvantaged communities, confirms JRF, are shouldering the burden of the cuts, both proportionately and in absolute terms, and with little of the capacity of more affluent households to cope with the withdrawal of local services, whether libraries, youth clubs or Sure Start. The design and phasing of Pickles' cuts programme, it says, made this "inevitable". One might expect the government to spin and mislead; but it only adds fuel to the JRF thesis that at a national political level, addressing deprivation has been "substantially de-emphasised in national policy making". At the grass roots, for the poorest people in the most deprived communities, facing the biggest cuts, the future is more stark: in these areas, speculates the report, it is no longer even certain whether: "...English local government can continue to serve deprived communities." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, even local Tories are against the Govt's plans. What does that say....?

Homophobia is still the massive elephant in the room as far as football is concerned, it's very disappointing that when you have these initiatives to stop racism in the game that there really isn't anything similar to try and combat homophobia. I'm afraid as long as this situation exists, many people are going to continue to see football as being this "macho" thing and it will continue to be a turn-off for them... Shame, because the gay community is a pretty solid market to tap into economically...

Yeah, I did mean the 46 second clip... The second clip I was like saying "Oi, shut up, dull American men, let the foxy red-head Scottish chick speak...." :lol:

TBH, it seems more like an intro to me....

I am cautiously optimistic. Totally loved the first two albums, hated the third, the fourth was alright, but not really on a par with the first two. If this is a return to the standards of the glory days, then I look forward to it....

I think that someone needs to be killed for this.....

Mars Volta isnt an easy listen, but I found them quite a rewarding one whenyou have the patience...