En Passant

26/1/25 43 Stranglers - No More Heroes +4 41 The Specials - Gangsters 41 The Selecter - On My Radio 36 Supertramp - Breakfast in America 35 Kate Bush - The Man With the Child in his Eyes 33 Thin Lizzy - The Boys Are Back In Town 31 Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing 29 Eagles - Hotel California 25 Madness - One Step Beyond  25 Electric Light Orchestra - Wild West Hero 23 Carole Bayer Sager - You're Moving Out Today 22 Manfred Manns Earth Band - Blinded By The Light 22 Eddie & The Hotrods - Do Anything You Wanna Do  17 Bill Withers - Lovely Day 16 Electric Light Orchestra - Evil Woman 16 Bob Marley & The Wailers - Is This Love 16 Plastic Bertrand - Ça Plane Pour Moi 14 Ram Jam - Black Betty  14 Gary Moore - Parisian Walkways 09 David Bowie - Golden Years  06 Blondie - (I'm Always Touched By Your) Presence Dear 00 Skidded - Into The Valley -6

Then it's apocryphal not statistical. So say so. You could have done that in the first place. You're all over this site posting like this endlessly, people have tried blocking you - it doesn't work (largely because of replies and continuity) the admins won't ban you - you haven't really broken any rules, leaving only the option of trying to improve what you do post. It may be a sisyphean task but occasionally somebody has to point it out. Can you not see that your first statement is Opinion Stated as Fact?

I get these odd twinges of conscience about punching down. I get over them, but it takes a few days.

Fuck me crem I'm doing my best to take what you say more seriously, but what were you doing here? Standing at the door with a bloody clipboard for 8 hours and putting a checkmark every time you saw somebody walk in without a newspaper and walk out with one? If not, how can you assert they were 'newspaper buyers'? It probably was mostly older folks but that's hardly rocket science. Have you got an appendix with how many had walking sticks? Or more likely, you were at Lakeside last month and walked past WH Smith whilst there and it wasn't actually shuttered. The Sun used to sell about 4M copies a day back in the 90's, it's less than half that now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_United_Kingdom_by_circulation.

25/1/25 41 Stranglers - No More Heroes +4 40 The Specials - Gangsters 40 The Selecter - On My Radio 38 Supertramp - Breakfast in America 35 Kate Bush - The Man With the Child in his Eyes 31 Thin Lizzy - The Boys Are Back In Town 29 Eagles - Hotel California 29 Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing 27 Bill Withers - Lovely Day 25 Madness - One Step Beyond  25 Electric Light Orchestra - Wild West Hero 22 Manfred Manns Earth Band - Blinded By The Light 22 Eddie & The Hotrods - Do Anything You Wanna Do  19 Carole Bayer Sager - You're Moving Out Today 19 Ram Jam - Black Betty 19 Gary Moore - Parisian Walkways 18 Skids - Into The Valley 17 Electric Light Orchestra - Evil Woman 15 Blondie - (I'm Always Touched By Your) Presence Dear -4 15 Plastic Bertrand - Ça Plane Pour Moi 15 Bob Marley & The Wailers - Is This Love 07 David Bowie - Golden Years 00 Siouxsie & The Banshees - Hong Kong Gone -2

Ah, yeah, I thought you might know and were using the place for reference only. Should've kept my trap shut

I'm fairly sure he said he actually lives somewhere in Kent these days

Well, you've convinced me not to downvote it again. I'll pick something else next time :). It really was quite hard there's nothing I actively dislike in that list - which is unusual for me. I'll probably pick on Blondie or something next - one of those where I generally love the artist but it's not amongst their tracks I adore. Really wouldn't mind not using the -6 at all, which is an odd place to find myself given I actively detest quite a lot of stuff

24th January 39 Stranglers - No More Heroes +4 38 Supertramp - Breakfast in America 36 The Specials - Gangsters 36 The Selecter - On My Radio 35 Kate Bush - The Man With the Child in his Eyes 31 Thin Lizzy - The Boys Are Back In Town 29 Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing 27 Eagles - Hotel California 25 Madness - One Step Beyond 25 Electric Light Orchestra - Wild West Hero 25 Bill Withers - Lovely Day 25 Ram Jam - Black Betty 24 Skids - Into The Valley 22 Manfred Manns Earth Band - Blinded By The Light 22 Eddie & The Hotrods - Do Anything You Wanna Do  21 Carole Bayer Sager - You're Moving Out Today -6 19 Blondie - (I'm Always Touched By Your) Presence Dear 17 Gary Moore - Parisian Walkways  17 Bob Marley & The Wailers - Is This Love 17 Plastic Bertrand - Ça Plane Pour Moi 13 Electric Light Orchestra - Evil Woman 12 Electric Light Orchestra - Mr Blue Sky  08 Siouxsie & The Banshees - Hong Kong Garden 07 David Bowie - Golden Years I don't even dislike that Carole Bayer Sager track but the minus points have to go somewhere and it's a bit of a novelty song I suppose. Dno.

With CCTV we can be more sure than we were 75 years ago but even that is being faked now. Evans wasn't exactly a good witness but he still didnt do it. In any event a civilised society shouldn't kill. The world is a better place without state executions. Of course if I were one of those kids parents - I'd want to do it myself and sod the state - but there are no easy answers here. I'm trying not to use emotion here, of course like you and toast and probably nearly everyone I'd be there with my own rope if I acted on my feelings. I'm not trying to rise above it, I can't anymore than anyone can, he disgusts me (words almost fail how I feel as with others) but state execution is just wrong and it doesn't make any difference how I feel about that. Indeed.

Yes, because people have plead guilty under duress. Look, I'd string him no problem. But just one of these ends the argument for me. Mind you I also don't read the Daily Fail.

The one unanswerable argument against the death penalty. As I believe previously espoused by our old and sadly missed friend @Cat O'Falk

Thu 23 Jan 38 The Specials - Gangsters 38 The Selecter - On My Radio 35 Kate Bush - The Man With the Child in his Eyes 34 Supertramp - Breakfast in America 34 Stranglers - No More Heroes +4 29 Thin Lizzy - The Boys Are Back In Town 27 Bill Withers - Lovely Day 26 Skids - Into The Valley 25 Eagles - Hotel California 25 Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing 25 Madness - One Step Beyond 25 Electric Light Orchestra - Wild West Hero 25 Ram Jam - Black Betty 23 Carole Bayer Sager - You're Moving Out Today 22 Blondie - (I'm Always Touched By Your) Presence Dear 22 Manfred Manns Earth Band - Blinded By The Light 21 Eddie & The Hotrods - Do Anything You Wanna Do  20 Bob Marley & The Wailers - Is This Love 20 Gary Moore - Parisian Walkways 20 Siouxsie & The Banshees - Hong Kong Garden 18 Electric Light Orchestra - Evil Woman 14 Electric Light Orchestra - Mr Blue Sky 12 Plastic Bertrand - Ça Plane Pour Moi 10 Elton John - Pinball Wizard 9 David Bowie - Golden Years 05 Sex Pistols - Pretty Vacant 0 Gladys Knight &The Pips - Catch the Midnight Express (© John Hurt) -6

I generally tend to the view that most people are not innately evil and mostly do bad things, even murder, through circumstance and/or an uncontrolled temper often exacerbated by the loss of normal control through drink or drugs. That usually goes double when the perpetrator is a juvenile, so much of what they are depends on their circumstance and upbringing. Of course this brings no comfort to the victims or their relatives and it's not a popular view I know so I question myself about it constantly. But this fucker? I cannot find a way to see how any situational circumstance could lead to what he did. Fuck him - he'll not live long in prison anyway, at least not unless he's on permanent rule 45 (segregation for own safety, used to be rule 43)

To be honest, I think I was at a loose end one day and saw you'd posted visting some conference, you seem to do a bit of flying. So I looked up the conferences in the place you were going and the only one I found was about castors on chairs or something similar I forget exactly now. This isn't helping is it? Looks even more like stalking now - I mean it's ok to do detective work for the dead to help in the relevant thread here but I don't think we're supposed to do it for members. Ah well. I won't be knocking on your inbox anyway, I just spent an unconscionable amount of money on one of those Herman Miller Aeron chairs and my budget for such things is now exhausted until about 2035.

(not plural iirc) I've only watched it once as a teen yoinks ago. It's a good film but so sad. I'm such a wuss sometimes.

My word but you're an organised chap. I'm more 'can I be arsed to vote in whatever shows up in unread today or not?' and that's as far as it goes. Still, if I need some office furniture parts (I'm still guessing about this, without appearing to be stalking....) I'll definitely be in touch, no room for slapdashery if I have to spend actual money.

Slow Horses is one of the very few programmes I've not been disappointed by in recent history. Deadloch was basically the only other I can think of off the top of my head (they've been filming a series 2 of this, yeay!) edit, actually The Diplomat wasn't bad. The trouble is a lot of the rest is probably halfway decent *if* you haven't seen the same premise a million times before. They end up leaving out major pieces of information so as to keep you guessing and add intrigue but all it does is make you smack your head on the sofa when they suddenly reveal something as a deus ex late on. That and the seemingly endless trait to show the home life and tribulations of every character in detail - No, I don't care that you have marriage problems.....or that your spouse is constantly nagging you about the time you spend at work and not looking after the kids, shopping whatever - yawn. Squid game of any description isn't even on my radar I'm afraid, just not my kind of thing.

et al. Kind of, but it's a UK site and the list was started at a UK university. So some latitude regarding the famous of the UK specifically should probably be expected.

That's a juxtaposition you won't see often.

3. Why would you even want to give a falcon a penile implant?

I had to read the title twice - I wasn't aware you could die from Sri Lanka or how you'd even catch it.

Replying to my own post but from a thread where it was fast swerving off topic. TikTok's terrible algorithm collecting users data is why it's being banned. Oh, and because it's not American owned, it's perfectly ok for American companies to do this worldwide....