Kenny McBride

Young Voters Question Time is also worth a look on iPlayer. Richard Bacon does a surprisingly good job as host, Rufus Hound of all people talks the most sense, and Katie Hopkins is the biggest cunt in TV history.

Richard Bacon is tremendous. He's been the undisputed star of Radio 5 for the last two years at least.

Liam Thompson uses Bad Boy For Life by P. Diddy.

Does anyone know who was the first UK trader to get non WWF/WCW/NWA footage over from the US or Japan?

 

Not 100% sure but would guess either Rob Butcher, Glen Radford, Dave Wright or Mark Allsopp. Could be wrong though!

Definitely not Rob, as he got his first tapes from Dave Wright before it all went horribly wrong.

There are many things that contributed to the collapse of the economy, the banks shoulder some, profligate spending and borrowing by an idiotic government has most of the pie, and it's container as well.

I don't want to be overly concise, but that's utter fucking bollocks.

That's about as concise as it needs to be.

The marginal rates of tax are largely irrelevant as to whether such substantial cuts are appropriate or even remotely necessary. The amount we spent bailing out the banks should be recovered with profit when the banks recover enough to make those shares worth selling, plus there was a story a while back about how the banks largely over-estimated their bad debt and thus the Exchequer will make a profit on the insurance scheme set up to handle that side of things. Certainly, we'll want to cut our structural deficit in the not too distant future, but what's the point of making tons of civil servants unemployed when unemployment is already higher than it's been in years? With little or no bank lending to business (particularly start-ups), the whole idea of forcing people to "look for opportunities" to fend for themselves is crazy. Say I'm a civil servant, recently made redundant from my job near the bottom of the payscale. I don't want to be unemployed, so I develop a business plan. No matter how much I want to start up my business that will employ a hundred people, I can't because the banks just won't lend me the money I need. There are very few other jobs. Thus, I'm sitting on the dole until the market changes. In the meantime, my joblessness is costing the country money in benefits that, once you account for JSA, housing and council tax benefit, income support, free dental care, free prescriptions and so on, is not all that far from the net cost of the government employing me in the first place. Except that now I'm not providing any service to the country (which may have actually been helping stimulate the economy indirectly), my skills are getting rusty and I'm sinking into a depression that may well end up costing the NHS even more. I stay in this situation for a year or more, and now I'm far, far less employable even when the economy does improve, because I've not had a job for so long. Of course, by that time I'll have been unemployed for long enough that the Jobcentre will pay for me to get re-trained, so there's another whack of money spent on me. And all this time I'm bringing in so little cash that I have no room for spending on anything except the essentials, so all the little extras I used to treat myself to on payday each month are now not being bought, thus hurting other parts of the economy.

Modest cuts are almost certainly necessary at some stage. Bigger cuts might be. But now is absolutely the wrong time to be doing it. The threat to the country's financial stability is nothing like as great as some ideologues would have you believe. And believe it or not, cutting taxes for the rich is not the only way to stimulate the economy. Some stimuli don't even need to have a direct cost.

Edit: Double post.

The IMF aren't "intellectual heavyweights" by definition. They're ideological neo-liberals who insist on absolutely minimal public spending and absolute maximum privatisation. They've used their immense leverage to force numerous developing countries to privatise vital infrastructure (like water) and tend to make low taxation and privatisation conditions of their "assistance". Whether we need 25% cuts in public spending or not (and I really, really don't think we do), the backing of the IMF is hardly a surprise, nor is it "proof" that the Tories are doing the right thing.

But what is a mini luchadore? Just a short bloke?

 

In Mexico, minis are any wrestlers under 5ft tall. Normally the actual midgets/dwarfs/whatever are the babyfaces because they're really little and kids totally identify with them, whereas the bigger guys (who are mostly just really short "normal" guys) are the heels.

 

I recall a commentator once saying that Rey Jr wrestled as a 'Mini' at first when he was younger due to his height, but can't find any evidence. It is bullshit, does anyone know?

 

While we are at it, anyone know his legit height? An educated guess would put him between 5'2 and 5'5 but does anyone know for sure?

Officially he's 5'6. I'd guess he's probably a couple of inches shorter than that in reality. Standing next to Eddy Guerrero, I'd put him at about 5'6", so try comparing them.

Mini Abismo Negro is freakishly tall for a mini. He's only a few inches shorter that the real Abismo Negro.

But what is a mini luchadore? Just a short bloke?

In Mexico, minis are any wrestlers under 5ft tall. Normally the actual midgets/dwarfs/whatever are the babyfaces because they're really little and kids totally identify with them, whereas the bigger guys (who are mostly just really short "normal" guys) are the heels.

Whatever happens, it's cool that two British guys are fighting for a heavyweight title. Harrison looks like a joke to serious boxing fans but that's not where the money in this fight is. It's a pretty easy sell to have the first British heavyweight boxing Olympic champ in a million years against the first British world heavyweight pro champ in a million years.

Also, everything I've seen and read (which admittedly is probably coloured by it being British and therefore biased towards Haye) suggests that he's not ducking the Klitschkos so much as they're trying to dictate all the terms from location to money to everything else, when the fact is that there's a lot of money to be made on the British end of things and Haye deserves the lion's share of that.

Hi

 

I seem to remember watching a Japanese tape a while ago, that featured some guys doing a bit of a random dance to The Offspring's Come Out And Play?

 

Did this happen, or did I just make it up? If so, any idea who, what, when it was?

Kintaro Kanemura's Team NO RESPECT. You didn't imagine it.

David's plan is naive because his savings are being taxed and with interest rates likely to remain pretty low for the immediate future, he's essentially earning nothing. The odds are that unless he's found a REALLY good savings account, he's actually losing money, because the interest payments less tax probably aren't keeping pace with inflation, and certainly won't be having a significant enough compounding effect to make stashing them that way profitable at all.

The thing is, I don't really care about any of that.

 

I've been putting money away every week for 15 years so far, and i've saved a tidy little sum already, so it's doing fine.

 

It'll be there and available for me when I need it, and I don't run the risk of it disappearing into a black hole at some point down the line.

 

As I said over a year ago, if anyone else fancies handing their cash over to the experts to earn a profit on it for them, go ahead.

OK. I'm going to guess that you're making somewhere around

Anyone who is working should have a pension plan in place. Whether that's a stakeholder pension, a traditional employer's pension or investing the money in some other way (for example, there's been a trend in recent years to invest in property, on the basis that house prices were rising faster than almost any other investments), it's all doing the same thing - providing a means for you to have an income after you're too old to work. David's plan is naive because his savings are being taxed and with interest rates likely to remain pretty low for the immediate future, he's essentially earning nothing. The odds are that unless he's found a REALLY good savings account, he's actually losing money, because the interest payments less tax probably aren't keeping pace with inflation, and certainly won't be having a significant enough compounding effect to make stashing them that way profitable at all.

However, that doesn't negate the importance of state pensions. Lots of people are in low paid jobs and have families to support on those low wages. They can't afford to save significantly and often won't have access to an employer scheme. The state pension ensures that they have some sort of income once their working lives are over. In principle, I'm not opposed to raising the pension age by a few years, but it needs to be done gradually so that people can be properly prepared for it. At the same time, there should be significant efforts made (over a 20-30 year horizon, which is sadly outwith the purview of any government) to reduce the reliance on the legacy debt. As far as possible, we should be avoiding the situation where my taxes pay for my grandparents' pensions. With good management and sound investment, it should become possible to have a national pension fund that actually earns enough money to cover its own debts, and my contributions more or less cover what I take out of it at the end of the day. The Norwegian national pension fund is a pretty good example. What's more, as one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, it's actually able to exert a certain amount of political power, such as when they took the decision a while back to establish a more ethical investment policy for the fund.

On the subject of budget cuts, it's utter nonsense to talk about how cutting public expenditure will automatically increase activity in the private sector. If the private sector were going to explode, it would have happened by now. There's plenty of people unemployed and interest rates are at record lows with no signs of a significant rise any time soon. However, until firstly, banks are willing to lend more freely and secondly, we develop more of an entrepreneurial culture, there just won't be that sudden move towards substantial private sector growth. Over the long haul, I'm all for a balanced budget, but slashing spending now just doesn't make sense.

If it were up to me, I'd do a couple of things. First, I'd double the personal tax allowance and raise the lowest band to mean that most people who are paying tax at all are paying roughly the same. That instantly lifts a lot of people out of poverty and takes away a substantial chunk of the benefits trap while also giving people at the bottom end of the wage scale a bit more spending money to put into the economy without massively changing the amount of actual revenue received by the government. It would probably also cut out the need for a certain degree of income support, tax credits and so forth, thus reducing government expenditure. Secondly, I'd put in place a corporate tax break of something like

Things were reportedly pretty frosty between Rock and the office for a time (and EXTREMELY frosty between Vince and whoever was responsible for the fuck-up) because Rock felt like they'd just forgotten he existed and he wanted to at least remain on good terms with them. As it stands, they appear to have got back to a fairly comfortable relationship now, but I'm willing to bet that he'd be a lot less willing to go the extra mile for them now than he would have been then.

This debate is making me extremely brutal and violent.

I remember the interview Jake did on the Talksport wrestling show where he went on at length about Jericho's problems. He reckoned Jericho was an ego wrestler, and would change all his shit to try and "keep up" with the other guy in the ring. Therefore, if he was wrestling a huge power guy, he'd start doing power moves. If he was wrestling a flyer, he'd pull out tons of aerials. If he was wrestling a mat wizard, he'd be busting out submission holds all over the place. Jake felt that he didn't have enough of his own shit to work into matches and didn't know how to pull himself back and let the other guy look good doing his own shit, but instead would try to match him and take away the emphasis on what made them different. He also knocked him really hard for nicking Benoit's triple suplex spot, because you just don't steal other people's spots.

Not sure about Dynamite/Davey but it's possible pre-WWF.

 

Johnny Smith worked loads in the UK, originally as John Hindley and then in the mid-90s as the in-no-way-misleading "British Bulldog".

I don't think they ever did. Dynamite was more or less full time in Canada by the time Davey started working regularly over here. I know in Dynamite's book he talks about being in Canada and hearing from his family that Davey was in training. He made a handful of trips back here during that period, but it's not likely they worked together, since tag wrestling was a relatively rare occurrence here back then.

I've spent two working days on and off reading this thread from start to finish. It's one of the best ever.

 

And I can't remember who was looking for a band name, but 'Dark Discharge' has got to be a winner.

 

But what I wanted to know never really got dsicussed. When you're pushing the baby out, do you shit and piss and bleed everywhere?

 

Often, the mother will be given a laxative very early in labour so she doesn't make a mess. The muscles you use to push out a really stubborn turd are pretty much the same muscles used to push out a kid. There's gonna be some blood, because things get...torn. Plus there's all the gunk the baby's covered in and has been living in for the previous 9 months. Piss...I really don't know.

Dude, you know NOTHING.

 

They stopped giving women enemas years ago as if there is a bowel movement, it helps the midwives to see how the baby's head is progressing.

As for the muscles being the same as the ones you use when opening your bowels, theyre not. Your womb contracting is doing most of the work and the rest of the muscles are just close to the ones you would use on the loo.

Blood? well DUH. The placenta (which is fascinating) will be breaking away from the wall of the womb, along with the 'cushion' thats been keeping baby snug for 9 months (what comes out when you have a period)

Pissing? very few women dont, unless your able to have a pee in dignity before your babys born.

Oh and then theres sick too.

I didn't say enema. I said laxative. Clearly Edinburgh has different practices from the Isle of Wight, since that's what they gave my sister.

The muscles thing...I'm only going on what my mother and sister have both told me.

And the blood - technically, what you describe isn't really "blood". Technical differentiation, I guess, since it's red and sticky and stuff.

I've spent two working days on and off reading this thread from start to finish. It's one of the best ever.

 

And I can't remember who was looking for a band name, but 'Dark Discharge' has got to be a winner.

 

But what I wanted to know never really got dsicussed. When you're pushing the baby out, do you shit and piss and bleed everywhere?

Often, the mother will be given a laxative very early in labour so she doesn't make a mess. The muscles you use to push out a really stubborn turd are pretty much the same muscles used to push out a kid. There's gonna be some blood, because things get...torn. Plus there's all the gunk the baby's covered in and has been living in for the previous 9 months. Piss...I really don't know.

Richard Herring used to have a bit in his stand-up about paedos. It went along the lines of, 95% of nonces become sex offenders after being abused as children themselves, so when the police are dealing with kids who've been abused, they should immediately hang the child, to prevent the crimes of a virtually guaranteed future paedophile.

It'd save the NHS a fucking fortune in psychiatry and psychology too. These people want to talk about their problems FOREVER. Just get on with it, kid. We all had it rough growing up. What makes you so fucking special?

I'd bet that if you took every one who commits a murder, a higher proportion of them would have previously committed a minor offence than the proportion which would have committed murder. So executing/locking up for life anyone who commits a minor offence is a much more effective way to cut the number of murders.

Interestingly, I had a very enlightening conversation with someone I work with on this subject the other day. He was pointing out - and he should know, being a highly qualified criminal psychologist - that sexual abuse is most often committed not by "monsters" and "beasts" and "twisted perverts" but by petty criminals. The correlations and predictors are more to do with general criminality than any sort of sexual behaviour. Most sex offenders are known to the police and the CPA/PF before they get caught for any sex crime. That's how most of them get caught - they spill a drop or leave a fingerprint somewhere and they're found out because their DNA and fingerprints are already on file somewhere. Therefore, it is entirely logical to suggest that by locking up petty criminals for life without parole, we would substantially reduce the number of SEX BEASTS free to harm OUR PRECIOUS LITTLE ONES.

Independence will happen within the next 5-10 years. The next general election followed by the next Scottish election will prove that. No matter the outcome of the general election, it's going to cause a shitstorm in (or for) Scotland. If Labour wins, it will be by a slim margin. Some polls even suggest a minority government. How are the English voters (the majority of whom will have voted Tory) going to feel about Labour whips getting Scottish MPs to force through legislation that only affects England? It happens already to some extent, but the problem will become more obvious and raise more ire if the Labour majority is wafer-thin. If that happens, English people will start to demand independence. On the other hand, if the Tories win, you could well have a party without a single Scottish MP setting policy and enacting legislation that affects Scotland. It's what happened under Thatcher and Scots hated it, as a rule. At that time though, the SNP was not a serious electoral force. Now it's shown it can operate as a party of government, whether you think they're a good government or not. Thus, at the next election, more people will vote SNP because they'll see that voting Labour is no good, since the Tories run Westminster anyway and voting Liberal is already a wasted vote, since all you're doing with a Liberal vote in the Scottish elections is voting for another Labour government. It's going to happen. Just you wait.

I can't really understand the hate for Seven from you Kenny.

LOL @ hypocrite jesus-boy attempting to lecture me.

I explained precisely why I voted for (and nominated) Seven. He responded like...well, not so much a dolt, more a troll, but we don't have a troll of the year award so you work with what you've got, dontcha?

I did nothing of the sort, and as I have explained before I got bored of his identikit essays and hilariously cocky attitude. He's a good guy but I don't like the poster he became after the forum decided to collectively suck him off.

"I liked him before he was was cool. Total sell-out these days..."