3,942 Forum Posts by "D2Kvirus"
According to today's MNetro, her expenses break down thus:
£3,250,000 - Income needs
£645,000 - Fully staffing her seven homes
£499,000 - Holidays (plus £185,000 on helicopters and private jets for this purpose)
£125,000 - Clothes
£30,000 - Equestrian activities, even though she doesn't ride horses anymore
£39,000 - Win, even though she doesn't drink
£43,000 - Her driver
£20,000 - A carer (for who?)
£190,000 - Professional fees
£542,000 - Personal security
£73,000 - Business staff costs
£627,000 - Charity expenditure (including the £492,000 for flights to get there)
£400,000 - A swimming pool
She also claimed £480,000 for a mortgage that doesn't exist, and received £500,000 which she overspent on her allowance (rather than have it deducted from the settlment, or pay it back) - as well as not getting done for Contempt of Court/facing assault charges for dumping a jug of water on McCartney's lawyer's head. She said she wasn't angry when she did this, but calm - thus making herself sound more and more like a psychopath than her GMTV appearances last autumn...
Today from McCannWatch:
Kate & Gerry McCann have won £550,000 after suing Express Newspapers for libel after printing "grotesque" stories about them (or, to be more accurate, their daughter's slight case of death - at Kate's hands I hasten to add).
Thing is, not that long ago they said the Find Madeleine Fund was running on empty with the fees for the private detectives they hired to look for her. That they found plenty of money to hire lawyers to sue The Daily Express, The Sunday Express and The Star in three seperate libel suits.
They were all forced to write an apology for the stories stating the McCanns are responsible for the death of their daughter and covering it up, and one of them had to print there was "no evidence whatsoever" to support their theory.
Yet where is the proof that Madeleine is alive, exactly? There is proof to say that Kate & Gerry's story is riddled with inconsistencies and has even changed to try and suit new fit-up evidence that has come to light, yet why is it that wasn't mentioned?
It's typical in this country at the moment: Heather Mills gets a £24.3m divorce settlment despite claiming for a mortgage that didn't exists and making up numerous expenses and stories (as well as deliberatly overspending her allowance and trying to claim it, and throwing a jug of wqater over Paul McCartney's lawyer - if I did that I'd be up for Contempt of Court and a potential assault charge), Mohammed al-Fayed is keeping up the grim farce that is The al-Fayed Nutty Conspiracy Show at the Diana Enquiry, and now this.
It appears it pays to be a deranged fantasist that patently lies whenever a microphone is placed in front of you in this country...
I see Heather Mills has already started spending the £24.3m she wasn't entitled to in the first place...
At 3/16/08 02:38 PM, Earfetish wrote: You can still get rifles and shotguns in Britain, if you've got a reason for it. Like, in a rifle club, rabbit shooter, have a lot of land, whatever.
Single-round rifles and shotguns only - at the end of the day, the only guns you can arguably say you need (but this is going to go into a very different topic if I continue on this line).
Guns are really an all-or-nothing issue, imo. And I do appreciate that the USA should really stick with 'all,' since it's in up to its neck. I would support this kind of stuff, and I'd imagine public shootings would be deterred with more people carrying guns on campus or wherever.
By having so many guns is where the problem comes from, though. It's lazy to say all guns used in homicides are stolen and/or illegally purchased (actually, it's often a lie rather than lazy), but the climate of having guns engrained in their culture leads to people promoting their right to bear arms over, say, the right to life.
I doubt public shootings would be deterred by weapons being on campus - the Kirkwood shootings in February had two police oofficers killed out of the seven victims, and both of them were killed before everyone else because the killer knew if they were out of the equation it would be aeasier to get his target.
True, it can be said that this would slow down a potential Columbine as the guy is hunting the nearest gun-carrying member of staff/the student body, but as the students would be in class they're already out of the equation, so that makes the task easier - provided the shooter has planned it all out and knows what they'll be doing.
Realistically, if someone indiscriminatly opens fire in a crowded area they could be cut off quickly (although he would have fired first, before anyone can respond), but if there's method then part of the advantage is nullified by the student's timetable.
What you really don't want to do is sellf off your gold reserves, and see gold double in value in the following decade like our then-Chancellor Gordon Brown did. We should be thankful that he never got to run the country.
Oh, bugger...
At 3/16/08 01:28 PM, Proteas wrote:At 3/16/08 01:00 PM, D2Kvirus wrote: So all we're waiting for is the gun-carrying member of staff to be shot first, in other words? If the person's orginised like Harris & Klebold or Cho were, surely they'd be sure to shoot that guy before he had a chance to draw their weapon?The bill itself is not limited to teachers and members of staff, d2k, it allows students who meet the requirements of the state to carry firearms as well, making the planning of such an attack that much more difficult. And these are not some random whackjobs either, these are trained military professionals and civilians who have met the standards set down by the state, so any argument you put forth about them being unqualified to do so will be null and void.
It still makes them a target - there will be students who will make a big deal of being able to carry a gun, which would put a target on their back (in theory). Also, having students and teachers carrying weapons will create a more tense and nervous atmosphere on campus, just as passing through metal detectors does.
There's still plenty of variables - military training doesn't prepare you for being rushed by a few dozen students trying to escape, and I go back to saying there's always the possibility of somebody not checking their targets. After all, if you see a student with a gun how can you tell if they're the shooter or security in a half second?
As for police clearing things up, there's still the variable of a panicked police officer with an itchy trigger finger shooting before they ask questions - something else that isn't in the proposal, no doubt.You can't eliminate guns in this country or the threat of gun violence and you know it, so what do you propose? Continue going around with our collective thumb up our asses pretending like nothing will happen? If the police can't be trusted to do thei rjob right, who can?
No, that's the cellardoor6 route (no, wait, that's going around with your thumb up your ass pretending there isn't a problem).
There's plenty of things that can be done - the Australian model is the line I prefer, especially as the British one will be a pig to enforce: you need a Permit to Acquire for every weapon, with a 28-day delay before issue, as well as the Genuine Reasons needed for ownership: pest control, hunting or target shooting - "self defence" is not an option. Indeed, it makes it easier to keep tabs on the buyer - why would somebody claiming target shooting want/need buy a couple pump-action shotguns?
Problem is, to enforce this in the US you need to do a hell of a lot of retro-permitting, which is where a hell of a lot of the problems come from.
Meet the Spartans made $37.75m - so yes.
So all we're waiting for is the gun-carrying member of staff to be shot first, in other words? If the person's orginised like Harris & Klebold or Cho were, surely they'd be sure to shoot that guy before he had a chance to draw their weapon?
As for police clearing things up, there's still the variable of a panicked police officer with an itchy trigger finger shooting before they ask questions - something else that isn't in the proposal, no doubt.
At 3/15/08 09:36 PM, Proteas wrote:At 3/15/08 08:32 PM, LazyPint wrote: This year, a packet of cigarettes is going up 11 pence, a bottle of whiskey is going up about 55 pence and petrol is going up 2 pence per litre in a few months.... that's it? They raised taxes on some items by a few pennies?
Dude, come to Tennessee and see what a REAL tax hike looks like.
A few pennies, on an annual basis - a litre of petrol cost 36.7p per litre in 1983, by 2007 it was 87.9p per litre (here) - that's $1.78 per litre, which they don't pay in the US by any means. Indeed, in the UK we pay double what the US pays, so we chuckle when Americans complain about what they have to pay.
There's also the fact that half the cost of petrol is on fuel duty, while a quarter of it is on the actual petrol itself, while the retailer makes 1/16 of the price (here).
Every year it's the same thing: alcohol, tobacco and petrol have tax hikes, health and education get small increases in budget (but are still massivly underfunded), while a chunk of cash is thrown at the military - ignoring that, if you join the military, you flunked out of the education system and could well need NHS care.
Also, there's the sleight of hand that bothers me the most: there's a small increase to the Winter Fuel Allowance, but not to the State Pension. So, that's nine months of the year they have to survive on £87.30 per week - and, as the pension limit has been raised from 65 to 68, that's going to make your 66th Christmas pretty bloody cold.
At 3/15/08 06:45 PM, Idiot-Finder wrote: What's the chance that cellardoor6 will think this is real?
I suspect he's currently receiving counselling due to accidentally agreeing with me on something. He seems to exist to say I'm wrong - and lies incessantly to prove it.
Anyway, just bringing something to everyone's attention that I posted over on the BC forums:
Video game history is getting PULPED
Last year, independent game store Gamestation was taken over by high street giant GAME and, having passed questions of price fixing and satisfying The Competition Commission, their stance has been found out.
Gamestation, previously known for stocking retro games, as well as trading in pre-owned games, the new vision for the chain is that 15-25 of their 200 stores will serve retro gaming, and remaining stock will be destroyed.
Yes, all the games and accessories they sell for the NES, SNES, N64, Master System, Mega Drive, Saturn, Dreamcast and PSOne will be destroyed to make way for the current and previous generation of consoles, as well as the PC.
In other words, how will a branch of Gamestation vary from a branch of GAME exactly?
At 3/14/08 07:22 PM, LazyPint wrote:At 3/12/08 11:40 AM, D2Kvirus wrote: ...to cut to the chase:On the plus side, driver have a few months before the fuel goes up. At my petrol station, we put unleaded up a penny to celebrate.
I wouldn't be surprised if it goes up by 2p in October as promised, then another 1p in November.
You're quoting the American Budget, not the British one.
McCannWatch Latest:
Kate & Gerry McCann used the disappearance of Shannon Matthews as an excuse to get their names in the papers with a full page spread last week (it must be said Shannon was found, alive, today).
Strangely they weren't seen to comment about the Scarlett Keeling case, where a 15-year old girl was left in Goa with a stranger by her mother (who went to another part of the country), and Scarlett was found drugged, raped and murdered. That's closer to the McCann case, shall we say - apart from the mother was dragged over the coals pretty quickly in this one, and not the McCann case...
May I just note, for the record, cellardoor6 is agreeing with me?
However, my main issue with Obama comes not just from his policies (and lack thereof), but how he covers everything up with a media-friendly sheen. After a decade of Blair (and looking down the barrels of having David Cameron as PM in the near future), I'm used to seeing people carve out a quick advantage and use that to carry them into power, and when they're there is when we realise what they're really like, and there's no shifting them (by legal means) for at least four years.
Looking at what policies Obama has, and his attitude to various subjects, he isn't some guy who'll bring great change to the US and/or the world, but somebody who can be relied on for continuity of all the problems that are in place, as well as those problems that affect non-Americans too.
...to cut to the chase:
If you drink, you're fucked.
If you smoke, you're fucked.
If you own a house, you're fucked.
If you're green belt land with property developers poking around, you're fucked.
If you need to fly anywhere, you're fucked.
If you use plastic bags when shopping, you're fucked.
If you save your money, you're fucked.
If you've immigrated here, you're fucked.
Add to that health and education get less than a quarter of the funding that the armed forces do between them.
So, what's different?
What baffles me about Wikipedia is that it's a valid source of information when it comes to historical events, from the Egyptians to the Industrial Revolution, but it's the modern stuff that's rendered questionable, the victim of somebody playing silly buggers or somebody trying to rewirite their own history.
There's also times where there's obvious gaps in profiles/reports to paint a fairer or darker picture of a certain person/event involved.
There's also mod fascism for new articles, which they tend to delete before telling you how to keep it on there, for example when I tried to add an article on Hallowicked and it was gone in two hours and a very piss poor excuse was given for it.
So, does this mean Republicans invented spam mail? Figures...
Bad ways to start the day #763
I walked into work and closed the door behind me as I do every time before switching off the alarm - only for the bloody thing to go off instantly, causing me to have a minor heart attack as I had to dash across the place to switch the bloody thing off.
It didn't get much better when I tried to reset the damn thing - mainly because when I did, for half a second it looked and sounded like I'd set the Auto Destruct...
At 3/5/08 10:43 AM, CaptainChip wrote: Fix your links please.
They work fine, thank you.
Anyway, shortly before Obama losing three states (oh, how I laughed that Hallmark Boy wasn't looking so smug) one story that trickled over here was that, if and when Hillary wins, Bill would be the Vice President.
My question is this: was it Obama slinging the mud, or the Republicans?
One thing to come out of discussions is how Prince Andrew was in the firing line during the Falklands War, and didn't get anywhere near the coverage that Harry did - which leads me to wonder that, if he was the son of any other ex-royal (i.e. Princess Diana Inc.) he'd be used as a story?
Obama is an Interventionist, this proves it And this. And this. And this...
Not a psychosematic sense of taste to give somewhen when they're eating an apple (like, say, me).
At 3/2/08 02:26 PM, MickTheChampion wrote: Thank Christ they've seen sense and sent him off home - it's a British military tradition that working class lads are to die so that some toff can play at soldiers.
Actually, high school dropouts and country bumpkins who can't afford to keep their farm open - bit of a difference, as they don't really classify as Working Class.
Oh, and some poor sods in the Territorial Army who suddenly found they weren't Middle Aged and playing soldiers based on the idea they're the last line of defence when they dfound themselves shipped off to Afghanistan to bolster the ranks.
Bully: Scholorship edition is basically a next generation revamp of the game Bully and I'm guessing your locial media has been hating on it.
For the simple reason it was by Rockstar, they claimed it was either:
a.) A bullying simulator, with you as the bully.
b.) A Columbine simulator.
Hence Sony changed the name to Canis Canem Edit - but the 360 & Wii versions are using the original title, so the same crap is coming out two years after it's public knowledge what the game is.
They are covered in a tasty meat... it's a bit of bother all the bones but I don't eat those. Just that sweet succulent tasty meat.
Steak doesn't have the bones, more meat on it, and you don't need swarfiga to get the bloody sause off afterwards.
I once, erm...
...conquered the ancient civilization of Carthage?
I rule half of the known (read Rome: Total War) world with Carthage!
At 3/1/08 04:59 PM, morefngdbs wrote: I remember reading that 'Life of Brian' by Monty Python was banned or relabeled (to an x rating) in parts of Britian, & in the bible belt of the U.S. churches went nut's ... like they always do when some little thing pisses them off.
Life of Brian wasn't banned outright, it was certain local authorities that banned it being shown in cinemas within their juristiction - even thouigh most of them had not seen the film (typical of a lot of The Ban Brigade), and at least one of them didn't even have a cinema within their boundaries!
At 3/1/08 03:25 PM, Slipklok wrote: I hate Papparazzis. Their job is to ruin peoples reputations and lives so they can make a few bucks. They're human garbage, thats what they are.
This has nothing to do with the paperazzi - you don't see them flocking around the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. It was The Drudge Report that broke the (voluntary) pres sblackout, before Channel 4 News reported the story - although the story had been broken a month before TDR got hold of it in Australia and Germany, but those weren't followed up.
At 3/1/08 03:00 PM, Earfetish wrote: Afghanistan is different to Iraq guys.
Only because they tend to shoot back in Iraq. Afghanistan is the "Regular" game mode, Iraq is the "Difficult" - which begs the question of whether Bush gets to find a "Very Hard" version before November...
To me, censors are a form of Christian repression - especially the BBFC - who often use the opportunity to inflict their bias onto The People. A quick rundown of some of the BBFC's more notorious bullshit:
* The Exorcist was banned from home release from 1973 until 1999, as head censor James Firman constantly came up with excuses not to release it.
* The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was banned a home release from 1974 to 1999, the best reason given that "an unarmed girl was persued by an armed attacker" (by that logic, every Halloween, Friday the 13th,Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream movie should have been refused certificate too).
* The word "chainsaw" was also banned from use, leading Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers to be renamed Hollywood Hookers - with a picture of a chainsaw between the two.
* Natural Born Killers was banned from home release from 1994 to 1999, with the usual "copycat" bollocks wielded about.
* Childs Play 3 was banned as a result of the furore after the James Bulger murder (even though it was proven neither of his killers had even seen the film - gotta love the tabloid press, eh?)
* Strangely, when Fiorman left the BBFC, all these bacme available, but...
* Manhunt 2 has repeatedly been refused a certificate, despite Rockstar winning appeals against the decision and, crucially, having the BBFC state there is no link between media and murder - every time they win another fight, the BBFC are "recommended" to find another avenue of suppression.
Censorship is simply one man/group's prejudice dictating what he/they feel is suitable for you to watch - which is garbage.
At 3/1/08 02:25 PM, robattle wrote: What? He left for the war I didn't know that until CNN told everyone.
God damn why did they have to tell everone.
I think they learned their lesson after the Black Watch debacle in 2004/5 - the BBC reported on where they would be deployed in Iraq and what sort of manoeuvres they would be expected to make over their deployment...and it turns out the Iraqis have TV too.
