Recent Comments

1. 10 minutes ago on Non Sequitur

   And MySpace and Twitter and TikTok and…

2. 13 minutes ago on Non Sequitur

   Across multiple time periods and multiple civilisations and countries, people have fought and died for the rights we have. Do not give them up easily.

   Except for the 2nd Amendment. That needs to go.

3. 35 minutes ago on Non Sequitur

   Trouble in the Middle East started circa 5,000 BC.

4. about 1 hour ago on Basic Instructions

   That’s between you and your tailor.

5. about 2 hours ago on Jeff Danziger

   That’s too simple. That makes it sound like Ireland was conquered by England.

   Henry II was a Norman, who supported one of the many warlords of Ireland by allowing Norman knights to help him regain his territory. They stayed and looked like forming a separate Norman territory on his border. Given the Irish warlords had been a pain for centuries already, having a competent Norman state on the Western side was a serious threat.

   With support from the Pope, Henry II took control of the East coast. But not the whole island.

   For the next hundred years or so, there were Irish territories and English (Norman English) and Norman. The Black Death wiped out most of the Norman English and Normans, allowing the various Irish groups to expand their territories; the English authority was quite small by the end of the 1500s.

   The actual conquest finally occurred under the reigns of Henry VIII through to James I.

   Prior to all this, there was the Vikings and Norwegians who had taken most of the island. That went on for centuries. If there was ever a united Ireland, it was briefly after that period and until the Normans turned up.

6. about 2 hours ago on Jeff Danziger

   Arms exports are conducted by the arms industry, merely licensed by government. There is no point blaming any party.

   US foreign policy is bipartisan. There is no point blaming either party.

   And this is not about red v blue support in a rich Western country. It is about civilians being killed and maimed and orphaned and widowed and radicalised in a long-suffering part of the world.

7. about 3 hours ago on Clay Bennett

   “Hire somebody to screw them”

   I like this idea.

   “PSS – Politician Screwing Services. Send your $$$ to PSS and we’ll send a classy hooker or rent boy (or both!) to the politician of your choice. They can be screwing our staff instead of our society.”

   “PSS. Invest in our business to help keep politicians out of your business.”

   “Pastors and TV evangelist servicing is also available. NB: only over-18s are available, although we have some who look younger just for this market.”

8. about 3 hours ago on Jeff Danziger

   Thank you. My MA was useful then!

   Did I lose many marks for putting in a £ when I meant a US$ ? :-)

9. about 3 hours ago on B.C.

   Fairy nuffski.

   If one goes by the junk in the mainstream media about science stories, written by humanities graduates, and thinks that is what ‘science’ is, then that would make sense.

   “Scientists now believe…” etc. Idiots. All because some post-grad student has written a load of unpublished bollocks that is controversial – and indefensible.

   Even the BBC is guilty of that. “Oh, and after Professor Specialist talking some hard stuff about evolutionary psychology, lol!, here is Pastor Nutjob to talk about the Creationism view, for balance.”

10. about 3 hours ago on Jeff Danziger

    “Everyone seems to have forgotten who started this”

    Not surprising.

    I did a list earlier today of major events since 2001. Every year either had “Palestine attacks Israel” or “Israel attacks Palestine” or similar.

    Years ago, I tried to get to the bottom of “Who started WW2?”. It is an event in the tit-for-tat between the Francs and Gauls that goes back to pre-Roman times.

    More recently, I tried to get to the bottom of the Irish troubles. It’s a tit-for-tat that goes back at least a thousand years.

    As for the Israel problem: the Semites have been infighting continuously for three thousand years, with the divisions caused by the end of the late Bronze Age. The collapse of the Phoenician empire did not help.

    Who started it? They did. Who is ‘they’? Both sides. Separate tribes of the Canaanites are still fighting over the land they lived in seven thousand years ago.