Knightowl wrote:

You're in the UK right? How can you criticize the two party US system? Yours

is almost identitical and on top of it, you've got those blithering old

idiots in the house of lords and all those inbred royals to deal with.

Yes I'm in the UK and it's a fair point about the house of Lords but regarding the two party system, I beg to differ. In the UK anybody can stand for parliament even independents and you don't need to be a multi-millionaire or have the backing of massive business to do it. I think all it takes is a couple of thousand pound deposit to enter the vote for any seat in the country. It can be very entertaining to watch your normal grey suited political candidates standing at the results next to a bloke dressed as a giant panda or wearing multi-coloured clothes and a daft hat or something equally daft! (I remember one of the funniest things on TV in recent years was when comedian Mark Thomas entered a by-election and chased the Conservative MPs open-topped campaign bus in his own open-topped bus) We also have a parliament made up of at least 8 different parties, sure you have your Labour and Conservatives but you also have the Liberal Democrats who got quite a few seats at the last election, the Scottish National Party who have a few, the Welsh independents, a few ultra right wingers from Northern Ireland, Gerry Adams and his IRA lot and one independent who stood on the grounds of being "Anti-sleaze", so it's not in any way a two party system like in the US. There is also a Green party MP in the Scottish parliament. As for those inbred Royals, as far as I am aware, the queen does not have any important role to play in politics other than formal ocassions such as opening parliament. I personally can't stand the Royals and think they are all a bunch of money grabbing parasites for what it's worth, one of the few things I admire about the US is the fact that status is not defined by who your ancestors were. I also think its a scandal that Prince William got his place in university before he even got his A level results, yeah as if any university was ever going to knock him, and the resulting publicity and money he will attract, back. Anyhow, that's enough ranting from me, Dave www.belleandsebastian.freeserve.co.uk +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+