Chindie

You're going to be charged with a one off circa 6% tax on your bank account funds.

Yeah Riccitillo had been under pressure for at least 18 months, Sim City is just the final straw. I must admit that I'm amazed people are letting EA off with this - the entire thing is a debacle and inherently anti consumer.

The company I work for has just introduced a new company benefits thing and since this is the annual enrolment month everyones looking at the bits and bobs to sort out the things you can only do during this month and also nosing around at the new stuff. Mostly this compromises of a kind of Quidco cashback system that also offers discounts at shitloads of retailers as well. Great, right? The thing is most of the discounts are instore discounts using reloadable gift cards you can top up at a preferential rate. This really shouldn't piss me off, but it does - it's a fairly logical way to do it but somehow it seems a bit shit to me.

Altruism doesn't exist in politics - principle would matter little if the benefit wasn't there. I do rather think it's a bit of a red herring discussion, though, and an infuriating read. Again.

So, how long until all of Cyprus is on fire?

Hopelessly dull card in the end, Hendricks/Condit being about the only saving grace.

Dave Bautista, who is better known as WWE's Batista, has signed on to play Drax the Destroyer in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. Got no idea at all if he's a decent actor, being a former wrestler presumably not, but he does, non green skin aside, look a little like the character... GotG remains probably the most interesting thing Marvel has done so far. It's odd that we're hearing so little about Thor and Cap 2, but Guardians news is a fairly constant steady trickle.

Impressive stats. Mancini is lucky to still have a job, IMO. Expect him to be sacked at the end of the season.... Said it many times, he isn't a terribly good manager.

Emulation is notoriously difficult - you need exponentially greater power to do it and even then it's often rough. The N64 has a reputation for being particularly awkward to emulate as well, which doesn't help matters.

My PC at work being **** shite and hanging every time I need to open a pdf or receive an email. And a website I use all day being down for 5 his for no apparent reason. I've basically wanted to chuck the PC down a lift shaft today.

Yeah, company client hospitality day out. I spent the entire day on the guinness and doing terribly on the horses. Thankfully my bliss said i was alright to come in late today, because i feel shite.

Thank you for the tips. I had a long and ultimately quite fruitless day at Cheltenham

Any tips for Cheltenham today chaps?

She holds herself really weirdly when she does the weather, like there's something wrong with her back.

Finding out this morning I'm going to Cheltenham on Wednesday for free, all on the company, bar any flutters of course. Travelling 1st class too!

AC3 is basically a deathknell for the franchise. I liked the series but, having got it on day one, I still haven't bothered to finish it. This years one, already announced and shown, has the foul stench of pumped out annual cash-in worse than any other entry in the series, which is a helluva an effort.

It's just more of North Korea playing the spoilt child, no different to any other time they've acted out.

Having to spend all day at a company conference.

I would contend that, where one to ask the active membership of offtopic, to complete an anonymous political compass quiz, and then collate the results of the respondants as 'left' or 'right' wing, you would end up without a large majority of left wing support. I might go so far as to suggest that you'd actually get a result leaning a little to the right. Your average person in the UK, in my experience, is slightly socially right wing, and few genuinely lean that far left on anything other than a few social matters, and economically tend to support the basic concepts of capitalism. You'd end up with a fairly centred view, with perhaps a slight lean right. I think reading this forum as 'really left wing' is quite funny, really. The noticeably active members leaning noticeably one way or tother balance out, and neither particularly comes out as 'really' either way. If you think this forum is particularly profoundly leaning either way, you should have been on my degree course modules. You'd have had an aneurysm. I know where the country stands. When I said "on here" I was referring to VT, specifically off-topic. You really think this forum isn't left-wing? I'm not sure on that. Certainly from what I've seen (I don't come in here all that often) it seems to be. It's completely expected that VT would have more Labour leaning people (when you take into account the location of the club we all support) but a lot of people's views here do seem to be further to the left than people I know (I've got quite a few Labour supporting friends). Has there ever been a political compass thread on here? We'd be able to put this to the test. Yes, I know you were referring to Off Topic. I think it would bear out pretty much as small sample of the population would. Which is what I said. Birmingham is as divided as the rest of the country is - and I would still contend that even people who vote Labour stolidly would come out as fairly 'right wing' if you asked them to do a quiz on it (not least because the idea of Labour being truly left these days is quite funny). And of course there are more than Brummies here - there are more than Brits in fact. Generally, I think they'd cancel each other out, and socially you'd have a slight right lean which may out itself where you to collate all the answers. We've done political compass threads before, I've started one in fact. They're never very popular. And no, I really don't think the forum is particularly left wing. I think I could only name a few posters (not that I would) who I would nail to the post as 'left wing'. I'd probably be able to nail more as right, in truth, off the top of my head. Quite honestly.

Right Wing is Hitler, left wing is Stalin... That doesn't really help much. They're both pretty similar in my head. This proves how ignorant I am to Politics. I really really should care. But I don't. Do a political compass - take about 10 minutes. All the people who are Right in the world (not right as in right wing, they're Wrong) come out as social libertarians

I would contend that, where one to ask the active membership of offtopic, to complete an anonymous political compass quiz, and then collate the results of the respondants as 'left' or 'right' wing, you would end up without a large majority of left wing support. I might go so far as to suggest that you'd actually get a result leaning a little to the right. Your average person in the UK, in my experience, is slightly socially right wing, and few genuinely lean that far left on anything other than a few social matters, and economically tend to support the basic concepts of capitalism. You'd end up with a fairly centred view, with perhaps a slight lean right. I think reading this forum as 'really left wing' is quite funny, really. The noticeably active members leaning noticeably one way or tother balance out, and neither particularly comes out as 'really' either way. If you think this forum is particularly profoundly leaning either way, you should have been on my degree course modules. You'd have had an aneurysm. Right Wing is Hitler, left wing is Stalin... That doesn't really help much. They're both pretty similar in my head. This proves how ignorant I am to Politics. I really really should care. But I don't. Yeah they were similar.. Left wing believe in big government and dependance on the state/high taxation. Labour Right wing believe in big corporations and free market. Conservatives Theres more to it than that. The concept of a political spectrum has become stretched so much these days as to have pretty much become broken - for instance right wing in the UK is different to right wing in the US, and even then the UK has differing concepts of it in the degrees to which things are 'really' right wing. Typically, the right is interested in traditions, hierarchy, and also perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, freedoms (which in turn can be a quite good example of the spectrum breaking - a real dyed in the wool libertarian would certainly be right wing and interested above all in human freedoms, but someone who was right wing to the extent of racism/bigotted nationalism would find they wouldn't agree with the libertarian on many points. This is why gauges of political... stances... tend to try to seperate economic issues from social ones to get a more accurate rendition of what a person really believes). Typically, the left is interested in equality, progression, change, and will usually support some constriction of freedoms to achieve it. But again there always remains the gross oversimplification.

The new Tomb Raider ain't bad. And pretty in a brown, overcast and slightly grim kinda way. The voice work for Lara is kinda offputting still, as is how much like Jennifer Lawrence they've made her look, but its pretty good otherwise.

Hardware manufacturers don't care about Japan the same way that Nintendo Land isn't a minigame collection

I work with a girl who says the word 'mortice' as 'morteece' and 'ascertain' as 'ass certain' which I find bizarrely annoying.

JLA film is a proper fools errand.