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For millions of years we also had famine, plague, genocide, invaders, slavery, widespread superstiton, a life expectancy of 30, no healthcare, no leisure time, no means of mass transport, no internet, no xboxes. I think I'm a lot happer with the way things are now.

That was the answer. I'm guessing the question was "what have the Romans ever done for us?"

11% Labour (crime), 11% Liberal Democrat (Europe) and 78% Green (everything else).

Fucking Hell, I'm a tree hugging hippy.

Just think what you could all accomplish together if you all started voting accordingly.

I was surprised by my results.
50% Conservative, 25% Green, 25% Labour.

Before taking the test I'd have expected to see some Lid Dem in my results but there was none.

Quoth Lembit Opik: "Have you got any LibDem in you? D'you want some? 

Down, boy.



I remember Armando Ianucci did an amusing skit where a trio of elderly women were reminiscing about the war, and they all had to take a turn in Churchill's wartime cabinet as their contribution to the war effort.

I myself head a 'Princeton' with dinner: gin, port and orange bitters! 

If you did away with the government tomorrow and replaced that with the rule of anarchy, you get an anarchist library with no membership cards, no fines and no reminders, just 'bring it back when you're done with it.' Within a week all the Jeffrey Archer novels go on the bonfire because... ah, never mind - I hear he's litigious. Within a year all the books have been burned because there's no gas for central heating and we've got to keep warm. After a while the anarchist press starts producing its own new books to replace the old ones. Some are typo-filled facsimiles of old books that still exist in a few private collections or are occasionally rescued from the town dump, and others are new products of the anarchist society and become a popular replacement for proper literature.

Society finds that it can run its own affairs quite well without an elected executive telling it what to do. Eventually some people emerge as being really good at planning and organizing and getting things done, and they get put in charge of service provision and by no means everybody is happy about it. Within a few decades the new society has evolved its own bureaucracy led by publicly elected officials. If the people are lucky they get to vote for the members of the newly-emerged politburo every 5 years. If they're unlucky, the executive get jobs for life, in their gift, to pass on to their own decendants.


For some reason I keep picturing scenes from Dr. Zhivago.  

In Cardiff, we've got this guy...

http://www.thecomicguru.co.uk/

I don't know if he's still got his shop in the arcade as I don't often go to that end of town, but he's got contact details and a trading address on his website.

That shop isn't there any more. Not that it necessarily means he's no longer trading.

Can I point out (again) that the whale was being fed on food waste -- the Doctor says as much. The authorities were also using it as a handy dissident disposal method and (presumably) fear of the 'beast' as a useful instrument of repression.

Oh yes, that too; I was paying attention. 

Surface the roads. I don't think my neighbours would do a very good job of it themselves.

Three Doctor Who fans in their late thirties chatting.

First Doctor Who fan: There's vampires in the new series apparently.
Second: They've done vampires in Doctor Who before, haven't they?
Third: Yeah, twice.
First Doctor Who Fan: Was 'The Horror of Fang Rock' one of them?

So are they just going to stop feeding children to it, but keep on feeding it grown-ups? Are they going to stop feeding live people to it now? Does Liz 10 just get away with having approved a set-up that feeds her subjects live to a space whale, especially the ones who aren't good academically?

'An it harm none, do what ye will.'

We already have proper laws like that, enforced by the police and law courts. The principle of outlawing harm is behind laws against assault, murder, drink driving and disposing of hazardous waste improperly.

Unfortunately we also have laws against possession of recreational drugs, which should be nobody's business but the user's, laws which circumscribe our right to free assembly, and laws which insist drivers have to wear a seatbelt and motorcyclists must wear a helmet because the government has decided it knows better than they do what's good for them.

I cannot support the principle of freedom of choice in everything, I'm afraid. A lot of the things we take for granted as 'culture' wouldn't be possible if everyone just did their own thing. Museums and libraries would be ransacked in short order, and the perpetrators wouldn't be hurting anybody, would they? I like the conservation of not just 'historical,' but also merely old buildings. If I lived in a 15th century cottage, why should I not be allowed to set fire to it, or knock it down, or paint it bright green, windowpanes and all? Surely I wouldn't be doing any harm; I'd just be expressing myself. But my community would be culturally the poorer for it.

A creed that is predicated upon doing whatever you like as long as it isn't harmful would need to have a much narrower conception of what constitutes harm than we do already, seeing as the law would be very short on specifics and virtually impossible to enforce. I think the world would soon come to resemble the wasteland Max Headroom used to broadcast to.

Imagine if Ken Campbell had got the role instead of McCoy?

Much the same as it was, I reckon, but better. And possibly taller.

Michael Bentine instead of Tom Baker?

Disaster.

Richard Griffiths instead of Peter Davison?

That would have held my interest as much as Peter Davison did.

http://www.fivechinesecrackers.com/2009/12/how-to-write-christmas-is-under-attack.html

A nice article that linked to. This comment on it, from 'Culfy' really made me laugh:

I agree. Those evil PC secularists forcing everyone to change 'Christmas' to 'winter'

They've even rewritten those beautiful Christmas songs 'Walking in a Christmas Wonderland' and 'In The Bleak MidChristmas'

It just doesnt make any sense to me to give up the right to self govern or hand over power/give up sovereignty to another centralised ruling body.

When you've got two commentators advocating the opening of boarders in the name of anarchism, in a world where immigration isn't a problem because every country's economy has been fixed, we're not talking about giving up sovereignty to a centralised ruling body, we're talking about the voluntary dissolution of government.

I wouldn't want to abolish any Nation State. National Sovereignty is up to the populace of a country and not to be dictated by others. Whether a country wants open borders or not is up to that country, irrespective of whether they print their own money or not.

I don't know how you would maintain the existence of a nation state with no borders and no government. I think the country that adopts anarchist principles of government will soon be at numerous kinds of disadvantage relative to its neighbours and would soon find itself annexed.