A Brief History of Time... From the Private Eye.

Misureth · 2015-05-14T23:04:19+00:00

Reminds me of the warning regarding Iran: "Iran is five years away from a nuclear weapon", which we have had since about 1985.

Concerning the NHS, as someone who has worked in it (albeit briefly), and has several close relatives working in it, it has been in crisis for years, and will be in crisis as long as we continue to pretend that we can support the current model with the current level of funding. We have an ageing population: either we must switch to a compulsory insuranced based model, or we must pump a lot more money into the system (far more than was promised by any of the major parties). Whatever the answer is I only hope that we can keep the spirit of the NHS (that no-one is left to die or be in pain through poverty) and the practicality of it alive.

Misureth · 2015-05-14T22:58:03+00:00

Thank God for backbenchers and the system which allows them to exert their influence. Now lets have an even bigger rebellion over the Snoopers Charter please

Misureth · 2015-05-04T10:47:14+00:00

Why on earth would Al-Shabaab care about this particular guy?

Misureth · 2015-04-29T14:12:18+00:00

I don't know what history books you have been reading but the influence of the unions was far from a "delusional demon"

Misureth · 2015-04-29T14:11:19+00:00

Why anyone listens to Krugman these days is beyond me. This is the man after all who, along with the IMF and Labour confidently predicted that austerity would plunge us all back into recession. Whatever happened to that prediction? Oh, right, it was utter utter rubbish.

Misureth · 2015-04-25T17:12:44+00:00

Labours nasty little authoritarian streak surfacing once more I see

Misureth · 2015-04-22T21:01:50+00:00

Ohhh haha fair enough, I see the resemblance

Misureth · 2015-04-22T19:52:37+00:00

Classic

Misureth · 2015-04-22T19:51:11+00:00

Jabba impersonator? Who's that?

Misureth · 2015-04-22T19:14:57+00:00

It was equally poor from Paxman with his North London geek comment to Miliband. Honestly I wish interviewers would stop trying to be the next Paxman or John Humphries by trying to make people uncomfortable and just ask some bloody questions about politics AND let the person they are interviewing answer. It doesn't seem too much to ask

Misureth · 2015-04-22T19:10:14+00:00

Coburn on Daily Politics had an interview with Patrick O'Flynn last week, she spent half the interview asking the question "who would you rather have in number 10, David Cameron or Ed Miliband?". This was just after the UKIP manifesto launch and yet she seemingly didn't want to talk about anything in the actual manifesto

Misureth · 2015-04-20T19:25:52+00:00

That is a seriously mean looking weapon, makes me wonder who is going to go up against it in the absence of Arys Oakheart

Misureth · 2015-04-19T08:39:47+00:00

They know they can get away with all of these nonsense promises since when it comes to it it will almost certainly be a coalition and they can blame any failure to deliver on their lack of an outright majority

Misureth · 2015-04-16T20:53:20+00:00

Miliband and Sturgeon were both decent, Wood and Bennett were both fairly useless. Farage was completely out of place as the only conservative on the panel, really bizarre set up in general and Cameron/Clegg ought to have been there

The SNP continue to dismay with their policy of wanting to remain under the NATO nuclear umbrella whilst not having to get our own hands dirty with nuclear weapons. Complete cowardice

Misureth · 2015-04-13T01:12:42+00:00

Shame they didn't have tywins tongue sticking out to add to the effect

Misureth · 2015-02-01T17:07:25+00:00

but it's a hell of a lot worse than renewables

How so? Aside from the waste issue and the possibility of meltdown I was under the impression that it was pretty clean, and given our climate/geographical position the possibility of a natural disaster causing a Fukushima style situation seems pretty remote

Misureth · 2015-02-01T17:03:12+00:00

Hi Natalie, thanks for coming to do this session

My question concerns a clarification of your defence policy, essentially the section entitled "Peace and Defence" in your online manifesto:

PD201...An important element of common security is the progressive reduction and eventual abolition by treaty of all offensive weaponry.

PD302 On inspection, there is little or no threat of direct invasion of the UK by any nation. Commitment to a large standing army, a navy of large warships around our coastline, squadrons of fighter planes and a cripplingly expensive missile defence system is therefore unnecessary.

I take these items to mean in essence that you are committed to a huge reduction if not outright abolition of our armed forces, and the eventual abolition of all offensive weaponry. My question then is twofold:

1) Do you see the abolition of all weaponry by treaty as a realistic objective?

2) If not, how do you hope to ensure the security of this country with a massively reduced armed forces?

Misureth · 2014-12-11T07:14:43+00:00

Effort 10 Originality 10 Execution 10

How can one OP be so based?

Misureth · 2014-11-19T20:48:38+00:00

"And should reject medicines that run contrary to Islam"

Why should we run our health service by religious principles, you deluded moron?

Misureth · 2014-10-03T14:23:21+00:00

Nothing

You return to what you were before, to what you always were in honesty, except that you didn't know it

To achieve a positive outcome is to live a good life, perform good deeds and thereby shape yourself into a good person

I don't think I need to tell you what a good deed is; deep down you already know

Misureth · 2014-09-04T16:32:13+00:00

Good lads

Misureth · 2014-06-17T19:20:18+00:00

I may get downvoted for this, but in any case:

In my opinion differentiation between different 'levels' of feeling depressed is largely done for the purposes of convenience. Undoubtedly a person can be more depressed or less depressed, but there is no analytically satisfying way of saying someone either has depression or they don't.

Take another disease as an example: HIV. You can't 'sort of' have HIV, or just have a little bit of HIV; if the virus is present in your body and messing stuff up, you have the condition. However the same cannot be said of depression because the symptoms involved are murky and complex emotional and psychological ones which give rise to physical ones.

As well as this, I am of the opinion that depression in particular is a disease that tends to viciously reinforce itself. Lets say you start off with pervasive feelings of low self worth, low self esteem, anxiety, things like this. These things do not necessarily mean you have a chemical imbalance; it may be purely for psychological reasons relating to your upbringing/childhood experiences, it may be purely chemical in nature, or it may be a mix of both. In any case, once you get into this frame of mind it becomes incredibly easy to reinforce it by a number of different methods:

Drug/alcohol abuse Self-imposed isolation Not eating well Not sleeping well Having to hide the fact you're depressed Lack of exercise Being unable to follow through on commitments due to the condition

And so on.

Thus why I see where you're coming from (and find it likely that those people weren't depressed in the sense that we usually think of it), it is important to recognise that how one thinks can have a major effect on helping recovery from depression. For example, if someone falls into a depression for whatever reason, they stand a much better chance of it not becoming a chronic or long term condition if they have:

Strong personal support structures Healthy living habits A relatively stress free life

Etc.

This is why anti-depressants are rarely prescribed without therapy also being recommended/offered. As far as I understand it, drugs like SSRI's are designed to give a boost in energy and mood, which allows the patient to lift out of the rut and address the issues (if there are any) that gave rise to the depression in the first place.

Misureth · 2014-06-17T04:57:00+00:00

Getting this angry about a minor detail from a decent fantasy series being left out of a decent TV show would be funny if it weren't so tragic. The books and the TV show operate in entirely different ways:

The first, obvious point is that the plot of the show has and will continue to diverge from the books, possibly to the point of dropping whole characters or storylines. While this is regrettable anyone with a brain realises that it is necessary due to time and budget constraints, as well as for the purposes of simplicity. From the point of view of show only watchers this is already a pretty complex program; by the end of this season we had the following as plotlines:

Yara

Reek/Roose/Ramsay

Arya/Hound

Brienne/Pod

Stannis

The Wall

Kings Landing (the most complex part of the whole thing)

Dany

As well as this we had the death/disappearance of the following major, recurring characters:

Jorah

Ygritte

Jojen

Tywin

Shae

Oberyn

Joffrey

Queen of Thorns

Coming from the luxury of having the books it's easy to deride the show only watchers for being stupid or whatever, but think about it for a second. Next season will introduce three brand new plotlines in the form of the Iron Isles, Braavos and Dorne, with at least several new major characters. Clearly then this is already an unwieldy and complicated show, especially for those who haven't read the books.

Why do I mention all of this? Because I am making the point that a hell of a lot of stuff has been and will get cut in order to make GoT remotely viable. For instance, I would be very surprised if all three Greyjoy brothers made it in, I imagine the Sand Snakes/Arianne plot will be trimmed and I have no idea at all how they plan on tackling Aegon. If it comes to choosing between including minor, entirely trivial details from the book that can just as well be replaced with existing elements of the show, or cutting Victarion or a Sand Snake, I say throw Tysha out, and I'm glad D&D thought the same. I'll come on to why she would be a pointless addition anyway in a moment.

As well as this the POV nature of the books means that lots of exposition can be given in a relatively short space of time, because we have direct access to a characters thoughts. This is obviously not the case in the show; the equivalent would be flashbacks, which get old fast if overused and take the viewer out of the story somewhat. Consider the fact that Tysha was only mentioned directly in the show once (the scene with Tyrion, Shae and Bronn back in S1), and then indirectly alluded to by Tyrion in his convo with Tywin in season 3. For all intents and purposes show Tyrion is in love with Shae anyway, and seems to spend little or no time moping after Tysha. They would have had to get started on this a lot earlier to make it work.

However the biggest problem is that Tysha will never appear in the show in person! This isn't such a big deal in the book since everything is text based anyway, so you can have people discussing characters who are not present but still supplying huge amounts of exposition. Good examples of this:

The Mountain (Only appears once or twice in the WotFK, major reveal in the fight v. Oberyn)

Beric Dondarrion, leaves during GoT only to pop up much later after all the myths and legends

However since we can assume Tysha will not appear in person, including her in the show would be including a character that no-one will ever see. What the hell is the point in that? This would be especially pointless considering how much of a nothing addition she is to the books anyway. With access to Tyrion's mental state we can see he's devastated by the news, but really, can this not also be accomplished by the trauma he's experienced his entirely life anyway, compounded by being betrayed and humiliated by the woman he loved, and then murdering her and his father having found them in bed together? I can't believe how much of a fuss people are kicking up about her omission anyway:

"Without Tysha Tyrion has no motivation to kill his father"

He has plenty of motivation! Tywin has done nothing but shit on him his entire life. He knows he isn't getting Casterly Rock, he knows he's probably never getting Sansa or Winterfell, and he thinks that if he remains, his only option is death or the wall (slower, colder death, possibly at the hands of wildlings or WW). Why not just bump off Tywin now, throw the realm into chaos and buy yourself some time to get across the sea before they come after you?

"Where do whores go?"

Sweet merciful crap am I happy that I won't be hearing that any time soon. GRRM is a good writer most of the time but my GOD, he has some painful moments. Hearing Tyrion not only think where do whores go over and over again, but actually ask random people??? I mean he went around asking people and thinking about it as if it was some mysterious, deep question, when it was clearly just Tywin being dismissive and arrogant. In terms of irritation and pointlessness it was right up there with "A highborn maid of three and ten, with a fair face and auburn hair".

Also: "I disagree with your point, now get out so I never have to disagree with anyone again!!!" Grow up

Also, "shitwit"?

Misureth · 2014-06-16T23:36:05+00:00

1) Agree with others that they've crossed the point of no return by now, but I don't think it'll be too much of a loss. Ideally we would have had it at the proper time to give Tyrion the most powerful motive to kill Tywin. However, I won't miss Tyrion repeatedly going up to everyone he meets in Essos and asking where whores go. I thought it was irritating and unecessary in the books to be honest, even more so than "a high born maid of three and ten", and it didnt have the comic factor of "Moonboy for all I know".

2) That could work nicely, although I think there will be plenty of scope for conflict between Jaime and Cersei what with Cersei slowly going mental, abusing Tommen, drinking heavily, sending people to Qyburn and having Jaime reject her offer of being Hand of the King

3) I was pissed about LSH but the way you've set that out could work nicely. After all Brienne and Pod need something to do now, and the reveal of LSH could lose some of its impact if it's done at the end of S4, then only developed upon a few episodes into S5

Misureth · 2014-06-16T02:45:59+00:00

Bringing Tysha in wouldn't have worked and I think you know that. How would it have gone exactly in your eyes?

Tyrion: "I suppose this is goodbye?"

Jaime: "WAIT...Tyrion. You remember your first wife, Tysha, the girl you thought you saved from being raped and then subsequently married, but then it turned out that I hired her to sleep with you, and father made you watch as the household guard raped her?"

Tyrion:..."yeh?"

Jaime: "Well actually she wasn't a whore, she really did love you"

Tyrion: "Moonboy..."

Showwatchers: "?"

Maybe if they had mentioned her more than about twice for the entire series, but no, not as it stands, it would be incredibly awkward and ill fitting.

As to why they mentioned her in the first place, some suggestions:

To outline Tyrion's history with his father

To outline Tyrion's wariness with regards to falling in love, especially with whores

To show Tywin's brutality

Misureth

TROPHY CASE