Dr John Dee

No, it's abuse that's not. And any further hijacking of this thread to whine about deletions will, of course, be deleted.

Certainly he's a senator for a little known, irrelevant and lost party. Soon to be a very brief footnote to parliamentary history if Malcolm gets his way.

Request noted. Just fetching the bamboo now ...

All true. I was just extending the range of torpitude to certain Australian locations.

Lazy German? You mean the stuff that relies on Google Translate?

Not without offending the Swiss court with such bad German.

A lot of people, actually. There's a reason the press is called the fourth estate. Why isn't it possible to worry about such things and what the press do as well?

It probably says something that Google Translate is the only source of appreciation for Dank's contribution to football. Actually this gibberish sounds a lot like a Dank interview.

My Bigpond homepage opened this morning with its usual jumble of news items, including one on the AFL thinking about fiddling with round 23. Of little relevance here (or anywhere else probably) except that the photo for the item link (and for the article itself) is of Jesse. So he's the 'face of the AFL' already? The article itself is at: http://www.sportsfan.com.au/afl-to-experiment-in-pre-finals-bye/tabid/91/newsid/188955/default.aspx?ref=BP_RSS_sportsfan_9_-afl-to-experiment-in-pre-finals-bye_190216

Well, given that his barrister has already attempted to define reputation as 'what people say behind your back' I presume the argument is going to be that even someone with a bottom of the ladder reputation can be damaged by newspaper reports.

That was certainly given momentum during all those years that City were rubbish. We stayed in Manchester for around 6 weeks at one stage and fell largely among City supporters since we were circulating mainly with academics, artists, inner city types. They were pretty aggrieved that United fans regarded them as largely beneath contempt, and their response had been to develop a pride in 'authenticity' and localism according to which United were only interested in the big stage and attracting supporters who didn't give a stuff about Manchester, the city, its traditions and so on. They're not singing that tune any more and while the last couple of derbies I've seen have been up to scale on the pitch the intensity of crowd rivalry doesn't seem particularly feverish. Perhaps the City fans are still a bit embarrassed at how easily they were bought off. Where we were staying, in the curiously named suburb of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, we were about a mile from Old Trafford. While the Theatre of Dreams isn't on the scale in size terms of some of the auditoriums you mention, the place doesn't seem to notice. United played A.C. Milan one night when I was supposed to be working so I didn't turn the tv on. It didn't matter much. I opened the window and the crowd noise, which was extraordinary at that distance, told me everything. A sort of haphazard symphony of human emotions and – inevitably given United's standing at the time – exultations. This morning I read that they've gone down to Midtjylland. There's so much writing on the wall now that it's falling off and running down the street.

Didn't think that, 'bub, you're keeping closer tabs on events so I assume you know much more than I do about the particulars of the insurance coverage and Hird's efforts to finagle some compensation for his stupidity. He's beginning to look like he's addicted to legal action no matter what the consequences ... keeps his 15 minutes of infamy going, I suppose.

More than happy to be wrong on this, 'bub. I was just following the line of sue's logic but without any knowledge of the actual terms of the insurance contract. If you're right, Hird's up that same creek that he's found himself up several times already. You'd think he'd buy some sort of paddle. Maybe he just assumes that there'll be a retinue of white knights somewhere behind him to clean up the mess.

Not that stupid but, as 'bub says, maybe just a bit too smart. Certainly the one unbroken thread in all the court activity was that Hird's lawyers were always too clever for Hird's own good. Chubb is, as far as I understand things (which is not very far, admittedly), Essendon's insurer. That presumably means that any actions Hird took as an employee could be covered. But Hird has always gone one out on the court stuff. He lodged a case separate to the club's, and he appealed when the club refused to do so. I wouldn't blame Chubb for saying: well, you've acted as an individual and in your own interests, not those of the club, you can pick up the costs as an individual. I hope Chubb win on that, even if there are entirely other reasons for it.

Well, surely that's Chubb's fault for not thinking of it. Sue 'em, Jimmie! Throw everything at it! And when you lose, take it all the way to the High Court. That should sort out the family finances for a while ...

I won't mention suspect penalty decisions if the grape doesn't mention how crap Arsenal are at getting round the bus when the opposition parks it. Things might have tightened up at the top but like others here I still fancy Leicester's chances. They're playing with real desire and with real belief in each other (I'm not sure what 'playing above themselves' would entail but they're probably doing that as well). Those local rivalries oop north (Liverpool/Everton, Newcastle/Sunderland) are pretty fierce ... in fact, just about anywhere with a strong working class heritage. Newcastle on a Saturday night is a truly frightening place and it's even more frightening if there's a derby game on. But the cake would have to belong to Rangers and Celtic since they've also got the religious dimension to them (there are vestiges of that in Liverpool/Everton because of the Irish influence ... Arsenal were also the team of the London Irish once upon a time, but I'm not sure how significant that might be in the dispute over north London sovereignty).

I doubt whether these are sufficient to recuperate this thread.

Spare me the amateur psychologising Daisy, though it's a nice twist to your usual evasions I guess. Someone who doesn't know what a metaphor is, is unlikely to be able to detect tone in anything. Sad, as you say, but pathetic as well.

Pathetic. Some chase you were prepared to cut to, then. Couldn't run away much faster. The actual chase was: you were in such a hurry to make your pointless point about bing's "faith" that you didn't bother stopping to read what he actually said. I hope your understanding of the issues at stake in climate change is a bit better than your understanding of the language. But with that much mud on your face* you almost look like a weekend environmentalist. * that's a metaphor by the way, though so of course is "cut to the chase." You'd probably only recognise them as clichés since they're your proper métier.

I don't know who else is on the estimates committee at the moment, but Di Natale and Madigan are likely to make Old Dee's wet tram tickets seem like knuckledusters.

Sorry but you started the "semantic roundabout" and now you're trying to evade the implications of your nonsensical accusation by starting another one. Bing said/implied/metaphorised/suggested nothing bearing upon 'his apparent faith' and no amount of equivocating will turn what he said into anything like that. He pointed to the paradox (look it up) inherent in a seemingly general acceptance of the state of the art science involved in the gravity wave discovery at the same time as a politicised rabble refuses to accept the state of the art science involved in the study of climate change. No it's not too hard to understand, unless you're a captive of denialist clichés (including that good old shibboleth of theirs about climate science as religion).

Di Natale and Madigan puffing themselves up to grill McDevitt. He must be terrified.

Back to your dictionary Daisy. Look up paradox, contradiction perhaps. And even if Bing was suggesting a comparison, which he wasn't, a comparison is not a metaphor (which requires substitution as the process enacting the identification) ... so, instead of your cheap and shonky online dictionary, try the Oxford: "The figure of speech in which a name or descriptive term is transferred to some object different from, but analogous to, that to which it is properly applicable; an instance of this, a metaphorical expression. mixed metaphor: see quot. 1824."

I thought the AFL had copyrighted all oxymorons with the word 'integrity' in them.

It wasn't a metaphor. Just saying.