I think this is unfair.

The selfish gene was a truly original & ground-breaking work – a legacy. Whereas religion is the land of circular arguments that have all been repeated ad-infinitum ever since Charles Darwin gave us a better set of answers.

“I want to believe.” “Why?” “Because I want to.”

In decades to come Dawkins role as the English anti-religion guy will be taken over by further generations of people with thick enough skin to say that religion shouldn’t get a free pass, with a greater or lesser knowledge of the subject, and just as little impact on the beliefs of the believers.

His scientific work however was original, and his book The Selfish Gene had a huge impact in bringing the combination of many peoples research to wide public attention.

Given how little the RAF added to the victory in the Falklands (a total of one pass by a Vulcan bomber, that missed as I remember), I suspect that the forces who actually won the war, and suffered the casualties, might take exception to a flyby.

The harriers were flown by the Fleet Air Arm. Ever since the RAF has devoted itself to killing our Aircraft Carriers so they won’t be shown up again, recently with a considerable degree of success
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/15/harriers_...

Now this is well worth a laugh http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2009/02/t...

Where else would you get the Communist Manifesto approvingly referenced in an Obituary of Maggie Thatcher!?

A poster child for the thirst to recapture lost battles…

Race and Class are dead concepts. Now deference is given to cash and (sometimes) to manners, and outside the rarefied air of politics those are available to people of every background.

Still enjoyed this though :) http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/briton...

For some reason this made me think of Julian Mann
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/are-yo...

It’s very difficult to accept that everyone has a genuine chance of employment, when you know that a hell of allot of people are forced into schools were they’re destined to fail.

If everyone had access to quality education, I could accept a hard line on those who refuse to accept it, though even then you’ve have to acknowledge that people make immature choices when they’re young, and that many kids don’t make their own choices.

But when you can point to six year olds and say “fundamentally mate, you’re screwed” the root cause of the benefits problem isn’t with immigrants.

Is there any point to these guest posts beyond allowing us the satisfaction of ridiculing them?

I can’t even bring myself to read them anymore.

Is H having the intellectual equivalent of a dirty protest? Perhaps you'd tell us what you're protesting.

Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf is knocking around, perhaps H can build upon Julian Mann's foundations with an even more sane, balanced and objective post from the much missed ex-Iraqi information minister.

A joke stands on its own merits.

There was a street comedian in Dublin called McSavage who’s act was essentially ripping the piss out of the people who walked past.

A fella in a wheelchair came down the street, but McSavage let him go. Your man was wise to it & says “What? You’re not gonna slag me off just because I’m in a wheelchair?” to a big laugh from the audience.

So McSavage comes back with “Hahaha, you’re pretty funny mate, but you’ll never do stand up.”

:)

The root cause of the financial crisis is the tsumani of essentially interest free money that came from China over the preceding decades, and the frenzy or borrow & spend that it prompted across the western world.

Plenty of sticky fingers in the till to be sure, but it won’t take long before the UK financial sector is again picking up about 20 – 25% of the UK’s tax bill.

Here’s one for example

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/b...