Recent content by Peck of Arabia

I've upped my time on Europa Universalis IV from 12 hours to 83 hours in less than fortnight. Reforming the Holy Roman Empire is pretty addictive

I thought I might pop in for a bit, see what I've missed- it turns out I've been gone for 13 months!

Permabanned!? This place will be a lot poorer for kicking you out, Quackers

Commodity traders are not bankers. I'm fairly sure, too, he's been a heavy smoker and drinker for years; it seems a particularly reckless and harmful thing to start just to win a few potential votes

That renders most threads here lose-lose. As I understand it, I think Miliband's backed out anyway. https://twitter.com/Ed_Miliband/status/532915715725357056 I think that's a no, anyway. But then I read it another way and it's a "yes, let's invite you to the leaders debate" A blog at The...

How on earth did you find a Father Ted YouTube clip that could be watched in the UK, Mr B?

From the article "being a recent immigrant or being of non-White British ethnicity has a very substantial positive effect on progress through school" as the children of immigrants typically have "high aspirations and ambitions, and place greater hopes in the education system than the locals do."...

I don't see why it should garner criticism; UKIP has it written into its constitution: "Objectives 2.3 The Party believes that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (hereinafter “The United Kingdom”) should only be governed by her own citizens and that its...

If you want to know what heresy feels like in modern secular Britain, say something about privatisation of the NHS. I tried it myself a couple of weeks ago in the pub and I think I lost another friend because of it. Still, in regards to the article; I believe the electoral success of UKIP...

Says who? That's kind of the point of contention- you're saying UKIP uses dishonest debating techniques more extensively than others, to such an extent they're famous for it and to me this doesn't seem to me to be the case. It may be part of a narrative, one that is inherently hostile to UKIP...

If hypocrisy, appeal to emotion and strawmanning are standard for the world of politics and not the sole, or even the dominant preserve of UKIP, it's not a telling characteristic. If it's the word "solely" you object to I can retract it, if you like. My wider point remains.

Hey, you said they were the telling UKIP characteristics, as if nobody else had ever even conceived of them until 1993. Personally, I associated blatant appeals to emotion with the soft left as much as anything. Strawmanning pretty much stretches over the political spectrum like a fine tarpaulin

Hypocrisy, appeal to emotion and strawmanning; solely the preserve of UKIP. Duly noted

To be fair, my language skills were part of a larger point... I think [scrolls up] [scrolls down] eh, not really. Still it was nice being the centre of attention for a while

I'm touched by your concern for my well being :) Most of what you say is fair enough, I guess. Comparing me to the Dutch is like comparing apples and oranges (so to speak) though. There are pressures on learning different languages like French, German or English that just do not apply to me...