But, hey, I’m romanticising the place – let’s face facts, this place has always been a magnet for the kind of appositional dickhead who likes to think he can show us exactly how we’re wrong for thinking they’re cunts by using the kind of impenetrable logic often seen in the Red Lion’s pool room at 11pm on a Friday evening. Let’s see what the latest appositional dickhead in the grand scheme of dickheads with stupid, fallacious arguments has to say.

If a disabled person wants my help to pay their living costs, they should ask me in person – I’m fed up with money being expropriated from me, and given to any moocher who convinces a low paid, bored, incompetent bureaucrat to finance them, from my money.
NickNick

You’re right, Nick. It absolutely should work exactly like that. Every single disabled person on a benefit in the UK should have to go around to every single taxpayer and personally ask them for their share of the money they get every week. It’ll be what, about £120 a week, right? It’s only fair, and it’s only reasonable.

Let’s see… that’s £120 divided by 30,000,000 taxpayers… carry the one…

Okay! There’ll be a queue of 2 million disabled benefit claimants around in the morning asking for 0.0004p each, and 29,999,999 other taxpayers facing similar queues and calling you a burst haemorrhoid. By the way, some of those disabled people claiming some benefits might also be working and are also taxpayers, so they’ll also be kicking and/or punching you in the bollocks as their individual disabilities allow. You know, just to save time.

I know this wasn’t exactly the solution you were looking for, Nick, but it does involve maths – and isn’t something that involves dividing by a really large number much better than just comparing you to a really large sexual organ?

So a Parrot can learn Urdu as well as English while a bloke in Pakistan gets his wife to sue the British Government because HE refuses to learn English, and unless he does we won’t let him migrate here. It sort of puts things in perspective dosn’t it!
Marshian, Romney Marsh

Yep, sure does. For instance, I’m a long way away from you right now, but even from here I can tell that your brain is very, very small. Incidentally, the parrot can also bark like a dog, so you can expect him to start making comments on the Daily Mail website any day now.

are you crackers? it’s a PARROT!
rosy bertram, essex

That was quick! Also, hilarious.

Being a native of Newcastle & being quite able to speak the Queens English too, i’ll be happy to translate , post me the hourly rate..

Fusilier, Newcastle upon Tyne

Dear Fusilier,
Thank you for your interest in working for us. However, we are unfortunately unable to accept applications through newspaper comments sections. Please staple a copy of your CV to an old carrier bag and hang it in a tree. Thank you.

Leave regional accents alone! They are what gives flavor and character to a country.

tea drinker, lipton, usa

I could have sworn this was about recruiting interpreters for them rather than actually doing anything like banning them. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s the same thing. Maybe every time anything is mentioned in a newspaper, it goes illegal, and that’s how it works. I never knew. Am I reading the wrong way? I look at all the words and punctuation, in order usually, and then use their context and my existing knowledge of the English language to piece together what they mean as an ensemble. I don’t seem to be getting the right effect.

Maybe I should take a leaf out of Jane here’s book. Glance briefly at the headline, read eight words at random from the main body, roll it up, place it under my head as a pillow and close my eyes. Then whatever I dream – that’s the news.

What another waste of taxpayers money in this hard pressed times.They chose to come here either live with it or go home.

Jane, U.K

I’m now imagining Jane sitting at her desk, eating a banana, waving it at a colleague and saying through each mouthful “you know they’ve only gone and banned these now”.

Finally, a pompous pair arse of arsecheeks writes:

Sadly TV Channels – notably 5 and 4 pander to ridiculously exaggerated Geordie accents in the continuity announcers – but the truth is these people are virtually unemployable outside such niche areas or labouring. Similarly with the Glaswegian accent which is difficult to undertand at the best of times, but really dreaded by staff in English A&E Departments where combined with drunkeness it is unintelligble. I have often wondered whether school teachers in these areas have the same accent or just give up on trying to encourage the standard English learned by Germans and other Europeans which is a delight to hear.

David Bachauer, Manchester uk

How quintessential, humorous and melodious are the British regional dialects.Symphonic and poetic they are a delight to the ears. Shame on anyone who tries to denigrate them with snobbish rubbish.

Jim Calvert, Penticton, Canada

Such laughable poncy cocks, but with such fascinatingly different poncy-cock perspectives. Maybe you could settle your differences with rusty hooks? Last man sighted wins?

Every child needs a dictionary, says a proper professor from a proper university and everything. The result is moderately predictable, but it might just make you feel slightly better about people who left the UK and claim that everyone and everything is awesome down under. Apparently it’s stuffed full of exactly the same people as the place you left. Who would have thought it?

Dave #6 Clearly you have never had to wright university essays or scientific journals or for that matter reports at all .

Stick to TV mate

Geoff #5 Spell checker on word does not teach you vocabulary , it often results in extremly poor grammer as word does not really perform grammer checks. People do a brain dump and then only look at individual words in spell check and leave it at that which often leads to extremly poor grammer

Stick to TV mate
Cam

So what kind of dump did you have to come out with that? I wouldn’t be following Cam‘s advice about sticking to TV, because I think he learned some of his spelling from Frasier. And the rest from Shortland Street.

Incidentally, what Cam should have done is lay his dump in Word first, like everyone else did. It just goes to show, you can sit a twat in front of a computer but you can’t make him think.

Splendid, another load of nonsense from an ‘educational’ professional. Never have so many few been so out of touch with so many. Since when has building vocabluary come from a dictionary….this is such nonsense. Where is his evidence, or is this something that this Professor has ‘just decided’?? For many of our children simply buying a book and a pen for school is a distant dream…(i am training to be a secondary teacher)…this guy need to get in the classroom and get real before ranting about the need for dictionaries!
Caro

Yeah, fuck it. Who needs a dictionary? And come to think of it, who needs a PhD and tenure at a university to know things? Jesus, I did two law modules in my second year of university and I get sick to fucking death of these ‘judges’ and ‘barristers’ going on and on about ‘points of law’. These ‘law professionals’ are just the same as these ‘educational professionals’ – they’re confusing ‘experience’ with common sense. So I know how Caro feels, what with that 6 months of teacher training she’s got under her belt. Still, it’s great that she seems to know that she’s not and never will be recognised as a professional in her field, or as someone who’s picked up a dictionary.

Caro didn’t fill me with confidence about the standard of teaching these days, but she did show everyone can have a positive impact on the world, no matter how difficult it is for them to grasp the simplest of concepts. Caro, for instance, got me to clean my monitor – when I first read this I swore blind her rabid flecks of spit appeared on my screen. I scrubbed and I scrubbed and I scrubbed, but I couldn’t get all the stupid out.

The literacy in this country is embarrassing , from whites also. For a first world country its extremely basic.
Engelbert

Yeah, it is, isn’t it? Still, nice to see that you recognised that white people can have literacy issues too.

It’s far too late. The human race is doomed. Children these days are semi-literate mongoloids who bludgeon the English language into submission every time they open their mouths. Incidentally, I’ve noticed their vocabulary of swear words continues to grow exponentially.
Cecil Willoughby

Oh, I don’t know. I’m getting on a bit, and I reckon I know a few more swear words than your average kid. For example, I read your comment – or the textual representation of wankcheese – and the first thing I thought was that you’re a complete and utter flange, and that I’d rather pop my own chalfonts with a rusty needle than have to consider that someone like you exists. Fortunately for me, you’re miles away and you live on an island with a massive propensity for natural disasters. If you couple that with the fact that you’re not as smart as you think, then I feel much better for the future of the human race. Except for Gwen Stefani.

Posted by: scoteee

Dr Neave believes the dance movements may form honest signals of a man’s reproductive quality, in terms of health, vigour or strength.

I’m the Worlds worst dancer, last month my partner and I chose to have try for a baby, this week we are pregnant.
Utter rot, Is there any chance these Doctors can do something more productive?

I feel I should paraphrase. Scoteee wonders if these scientists, having received a lucrative research grant to make themselves more attractive to women in clubs, should not have just jacked it in and stuck more organs in formaldehyde.

I also liked this comment from Denise Perping, who dances in the spirit of Christian charity.

Posted by: Denise Perping

The right knee’s speed of movement?! I’ve never knowingly avoided someone because their knee is moving too fast? slow? Does the left knee need to know what the right knee is doing?

Is a university degree necessary?

Er… try asking a coherent question if you want a sensible answer.

A university degree is not necessary in the same way as air, food and water are. You can live a happy and fulfilled life without a university degree, you won’t survive five minutes without air to breathe.

If you want to be a medical doctor, a university degree is necessary for you to attain your ambition. (Note for aspiring medics: you also need air to breathe!)

If you want to learn how to learn and how to think, to explore a subject of interest to its fullest extent… well, you can acquire these skills elsewhere, but a university degree is a good way to set your feet on the right track. Oh, and you still need air to breathe.

Define ‘necessary’ and you might be able to answer your question for yourself. Trouble is, I learned how to craft such debate by, er, going to university. Oh, and I still need air to breathe too!
Megan

BA (Hons) in Smug Pedantry, right? I did the same course, which is why I feel qualified to craft this equally smug response: the actual, entirely reasonable question was, ‘is a university degree necessary for success in later life?’

I’ll give you a 48-hour extension to resubmit your answer. Any later and you’ll be forced to wear one of those striped beanies with the little propeller on top for the rest of your life. People will laugh openly as you walk by and small children will follow you around for hours at a time, poking you with sticks, but at least it’ll draw attention from the long, silvery thread of drool perpetually dangling from your chin.

She employed this woman nowing she was a imigrant thats why she employed her in the first place ,if you had the slightest dought and you had a job of such importance you would play it safe and look around for uk citizen no problem no fine ,she never thought she would get found out and now she and the labour party are trying desperatly to find some sinario which thay can save her job ,weak priminister and weak goverment.

- stephen murray, middlesbrough

Look at ‘dought’, for a start. Despite his obvious shit-for-brains thought-processes, Stephen understands about silent letters and ‘gh’, he even knows a fair few words that are spelt funny. So he clearly has the makings of a good speller in him. And look at ‘priminister’. It actually seems quite logical if you’ve never seen a newspaper and have no idea what the word is meant to look like. It’s implausible, the more I think about it the more it explains a great deal about the internet, and to be honest it frightens me a little. But the only conclusion I can come to is that Stephen Murray can write but not read.

I think that it should be, but that it should include a full expose ( with acute accent on the e) of the mystery religions/ occult religions practised by many of the most powerful people on the globe…e.g those who go to Bohemian Grove and spend so much time trying to persuade others towards their dark tawdry and thoroughly kitsch rituals and immorality towards others.
anti-fraudster

Mon Dieu! Vous parlez Francais? Avec un circu.. ced.. squiggle sous la “c”?

For too long now I’ve assumed that everyone on “Have Your Say” was either a halfwit or a quarterwit so coming across someone this clever really knocked me sideways. Finally, I realise that my blase (with a very cute accent on the “e”) attitude has caused me to miss some truly insightful comments (with a hairy, groaning umlaut on the “o”) .

But anti-fraudster didn’t stop there. He knows all the isms you’ve ever heard of and at least one of his own.

Hmmm …ruralwoman…darwinism? Not without some trenchant criticism on offer about social darwinism and its horrible links with eugenicism, one of the most evil and horrid beliefs out there. It might scare people so would have to be handled with care. Which is always part of the problem. While some religious beliefs e.g love God, love your neighbour, are beautiful and of highest goodness, others options: child sacrifice, puttee, suppression of women, and so on are to the vast majority abhorrent… and can cause nightmares. No use being prissily politicially correct, there is evil religion as well as good.
anti-fraudster

I’d go even further and suggest that eugenicismologists invented the halon women-suppression systems and silly puttee I’ve been having nightmares about.

As an aside, anti-fraudster has so far left around eight comments in that thread, including one where he has a dig at someone for getting the apostrophe wrong in one of their words. I thought that was pretty rich coming from somebody who can’t even get the words right.

Anyway. What’s the answer?

R.E. should get back to text. There are some really really important texts that should be part of everyone’s basic knowledge. For some the text will never come alive. This is the same for all texts.
For some inexplicable and very dumbed-down reason focussing on texts has gone out of fashion. Education without a decent amount of focussing on text breeds an unlearned and malleable generation whose idea of debate is to shout unconsidered and unvalidated slogans from different sides. My children have told me you can pass R.E exams with knowledge of one parable. Textual illiteracy unfortunately. Where are the well-read in the next generation? Who is to blame for this shocking ignorance? Many on this board have little to no knowledge of text, and just loads of prejudice. Once this question is posed in a “should we be aware of important texts?” frame the answer is stunningly obvious.
anti-fraudster

So. Is it all about really, really important texts? Are there very dumbed-down reasons for things not being textual enough any more? How can we validate our slogans? Should we listen to anti-fraudster?

I tried to emulate him and come up with a pithy answer – a different frame for the question that cuts through the bullshit and makes the answer stunningly obvious. Here is the frame I made. It’s the “You’d have to crush me to death under a pile of fossilized mastodon turds, weep remorsefully for an hour over my mangled remains, pull me out by my face, then crush me to death again under another pile of reassuringly expensive, prehistoric tods before I’d even consider paying attention to this pompous ass-hat’s content-free, pseudo-intellectual prattling for a single, interminably boring picosecond” frame.

It’s not all bad though. Thanks to Tony and Stephen for finding some proper intellectuals on there.

My sequel would be 2084 the sequel to Orwell’s 1984. In 2084 The party would be replaced by The Council of Imams – for England is now an Islamic state and its government is a tyrannical theocracy. Orwell’s proles are replaced by us infidels, and the hero of the original would be replaced by Gemma Smith a women in her early 30s who tries to rebel against the suffocating life imposed on her by the Councils strict application of Sharia law.
I might even have a stab at really writing this.
Chazz Trinder

It’s such a great idea that I’m surprised nobody thought of it 25 years ago, wrote the book, and then won loads of awards. But why “Gemma”? I reckon, if you’re going to use her as a transparent space where you can put a “Vote BNP” sticker, you should call her:
Ofsomedickwhoshouldmaybereadacouplemorebooksbeforeattemptingtowriteone.

Not so much a sequel, but a spiritual successor to Martin Amis’s ‘Time’s Arrow’. It was a World War II story told in reverse. If he was up for it, I’d love to see him attempt it once more.
BulletMonkey

It could start off with everyone saying “Yeah, it’s not very good is it?”. Then he could slowly erase everything he’s written, word by word, until he only has good books left and everyone notices he’s stopped being a racist.

Rubbish
This film was rubbish as it was in french and i am english!!!!!!
chelsea

Tell me about it. Just last night, I saw a film that was 104 minutes long whereas I’m 6’2″.

My top tip for coping with this kind of shit is to get yourself at least 498 friends on Facebook then join the group “I Love Xmas!”. Puts it all in perspective.