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Wednesday 21 July 2010

Sarah McDermott | 16:38 UK time, Wednesday, 21 July 2010

Here's what we've lined up for tonight's programme:

Former Daily Telegraph owner and Peer of the Realm Conrad Black is to be released on bail from a US jail pending an appeal against his fraud conviction. Inmate 18330-424 has served more than two years of his 78-month sentence and is being freed on a $2m (£1.3m) bond. Our correspondent Glenn Campbell will bring us the latest on what could be an extraordinary comeback from a man who at one time dazzled the British establishment.

Ahead of stress tests on Europe's banks this Friday, our Economics Editor Paul Mason has been to Spain to assess how vulnerable their economy and banks are -

We'll have the latest on David Cameron's trip to the US.

And we'll be marking the landmark of Facebook hitting 500 million users worldwide - a reach of about eight per cent of the world's total population.

The social networking juggernaut - dreamt up in a Harvard University dorm and only six years old - has transformed the way that millions of us interact and form relationships, but how robust is Facebook as a business model?

Do join Gavin at 10.30pm on Ö÷²¥´óÐã Two.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    Well I am still frothing as the moderator has seen fit to block numerous posts for totally obscure reasons.

    But anyways On Black I can't believe he will be found totally innocent but the law is the law.

    On the Spanish economy I am assuming the big issue is the likelihood of default and the risk that other countries, like us, are more exposed via the banks to such an event.

    But my reading of how the experts are reacting suggests there is serious and valid concern but we aren't near to a tipping point right now. I so hope that is what Paul Mason says later.

  • Comment number 2.

    Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls and obviously the title was drawn from the John Donne poem:

    " No man is an island entire of itself; every man
    is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
    if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
    is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
    well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
    own were; any man's death diminishes me,
    because I am involved in mankind.
    And therefore never send to know for whom
    the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. "

    It is a well loved poem that captures the human spirit of cooperation and social interdependence.

    The book was about the Spanish civil war and the fight of those opposed to the Spanish fascists backed by the Nazis of course.

    But the more I read of the racially orientated posts of those who see great differences between the races I do wonder if some people are not part of the continent but are in fact .... low lying reef's on the continental coast.

    Just a thought.

  • Comment number 3.

    #2

    It is a lovely poem, Gango, but if you think about it even a Nazi, or a horrible person of one sort of another, could 'think' that it's also referring to him/her. They do not, however, see a problem with causing death, pain, suffering, torture, abuse or any other violation of human rights against one's wishes to others.

    By the way, didn't Hitler or his 'friends' have a dog/dogs to which they weren't cruel?

    mim

  • Comment number 4.

    #74 from previous page
    #74 from previous page

    Gango

    I agree with you on most points regarding the issue of race variation and like yourself do not consider other races other than white any less intellligent, talented, less healthy and so on. However, although I haven't quite got to the bottom of this particular issue, there does seem to be a problem with mixed race bone marrow donations and the Nolan Trust that Ecolizzy refers to, seems to deal with that particular bodily tissue.

    mim

  • Comment number 5.

    In some countries, minorities are kept in their place...or is it a case of - those who live in glass houses, shouldn't throw stones.

    Arab guilty of rape after consensual sex with Jew


    What if this guy had been a Jew who pretended to be a Muslim and had sex with a Muslim woman?

  • Comment number 6.

    #1 gangofone wrote:

    'Well I am still frothing as the moderator has seen fit to block numerous posts for totally obscure reasons.'

    ------------------------------------

    I seem to remember a few months ago you were accusing national socialists of frothing at the mouth; yet just a moderated post would appear to affect you in the same way that you describe others!

    Perhaps you are somewhat touchy.

  • Comment number 7.

    AND WHAT IF THEY BOTH TURN OUT TO BE TRANNIES? (#5)

    It's a minefield out there DJ. Mind you, Croc Dundee had an infallible test.

    Worse - imagine if someone married a royal and then declared themselves CATHOLIC. Eeek!

  • Comment number 8.

    Perhaps David Cameron's apparent amnesia about 1940 could have something to do with the fact that the greater Tory party ( apart from Churchill ) were on the verge of doing a deal with Adolf Hitler to prevent an invasion on the pretext that " people might get killed " otherwise. Similarly, one old worn out Tory cabinet minister expressed the view that it was morally wrong to bomb German armaments factories because they were " private property ".

    It has to be remembered that it was Hitler who declared war on the US, not the other way around, perhaps the only reason they helped the UK was because Wall Street had already milked our government finances dry, and the UK being on the winning side in said war was probably the only way they could have got back the money they lent. It was also Wall Street that funded Hitler's rearmament programme, but since the Russians looked like turning the tide the stock market parasites would have lost out on all their German investments also ?

  • Comment number 9.

    What's happened to white working class kids...

    /news/education-10528359

    You're ok if you have both parents at home and they work, and insist the kids learn, but if they don't (won't)learn and work, they get left behind and ignored.

  • Comment number 10.

    @8

    One of Hitlers main funders was a certain Prescott Bush AKA Hitlers Angel grandfather of George Bush Sr. and great grandfather of GWB and of course the US continues to back Provisonal IRA terrorists, or as the media refer to them 'splinter groups' or 'dissident republicans' etc. What we need is another 9/11 to again dissuade the Americans from funding the murder of British subjects as this government as with all previous governments is more interested in prostrating themselves at the alter of US money than defending the realm.

  • Comment number 11.

    Now this is a good idea....



    We just don't get café culture, in this country. I believe that's what Blair thought he was introducing.

  • Comment number 12.

    #10

    It must be in the Bush family's tradition to support Hitler and his 'descendant' by self-proclamation. Wasn't it G W Bush who"d succumbed to the pressures of the still walking this earth monster who identifies himself with.most of the moustachioed, including Hitler and Stalin??

  • Comment number 13.

    IF UK GOVERNMENT PROTECTS ALCOHOL AS THEY HAVE TOBACCO . . . (#11)

    The scourge that is tobacco, has been known for decades. Successive governments have fought a rearguard action for tobacco with incremental, judicious, measures chosen to have minimum effect while looking like concerned action. Someone has done the calculation of revenue against NHS cost. NO ONE in government, it seems, is concerned with lingering death and associated misery and stress.

    By the same token, alcohol will take a hundred years to shut down. Alcohol is woven into our lives just as warfare is. I recently pointed to our pageantry being militaristic - it is also alcoholic. We are far from civilised by any measure. Alcohol is a revered drug and to be a user is to be accepted. Pushers are pillars of the community and Barons get knighthoods.

    I bet Afghanistan can't wait!

  • Comment number 14.

    "Spain's Economic Woes":

    We are told, by the loonies, that Parliament, here, should reflect the gender demographic of this country, as a solution - you get the impression they believe - to society's ills.

    Well, what a disaster female MPs have been in Spain. They've presided over, or maybe instigated, an economic catastrophe: the building boom; demented rush to save the planet from climate change; and a lot else, no doubt. Thank God we've held them at arms length here.

    Is the above just a joke or does the evidence suggest there's a grain of truth to the argument and we should be thankful for not having gone down the same route?

    The women certainly haven't been any better than the men have they? Given they were selected, partially, on the basis of not having something (penises), rather on what they did have – the intelligence and aptitude for the job, it transpires – you may believe this isn't surprising.

    Discuss.

  • Comment number 15.

    #14

    As if, Gordon & Mandy were any better, under the assumption that they do have that the female Spanish politicians do not.

    Singie

    All evidence suggests that tipples in moderation are good for one's health. They certainly have done no harm to my almost freaky in its nature fitness, strength, agility and mental creativity. If anything frequent Perkins ice cream sprinkled with liqueur and glasses of wine may be of significant help.

  • Comment number 16.

    Brightyangthing

    Oh, what a glorious summer morning.
    The sky is clear, the Sun is shining
    Most people are kind as well as smiling!!!!
    I'm looking forward to cycling and dancing****

    Hope you're feeling along similar lines, BYT

  • Comment number 17.

    Crumbs, fancy Jews and Muslims agreeing on something....



    There's hope for reconciliation yet.

  • Comment number 18.

    THREE HETEROSEXUALS WENT INTO A PUB - AND NO ONE NOTICED!

    Did I hear correctly, this morning, that the un-straight show-biz lobby are unhappy due to 'invisibility' of their actors?

    In the interest of balance (in an unbalanced world) I just want to point out that heterosexuals are NOT EVEN MENTIONED.

    As that unsung heterosexual bard Shakespeare said: "Leave it out John!"

  • Comment number 19.

    70 million in five years?

  • Comment number 20.

    CAESARIAN BIRTHS TO BE CLEARLY LABELLED (#17)

    I feel sure there must be some (minority but equal) sect who do not regard C-section beings as really human. To protect their rights, visible labelling is imperative.

    'Keeping it fair in Fair Britain'.

  • Comment number 21.

    As I thought about the Tories announcement of GPs running their own budgets



    Privitisation by the back door.

  • Comment number 22.

    'IF YOU WISH FOR A 50:50 COMMONS FIRST DEFINE YOUR GENDERS' (#14)

    Thanks for the invitation to discuss SSC - I don't mind if I do.

    You have a point.

    Is Harpy-Phobia a hate crime yet?

    I can never see the rationality in 'representative masses' - whatever the basis. The police are always trying to get more brown officers, but if a brown crime was going down, and they PICKED a brown bobby to send, surely that would be discrimination (no pun intended, but rather good eh?)

    As for parliament, we have had two woman Ö÷²¥´óÐã Secretaries, in succession. I admit one looked no stranger to violence, but does Kitten Shoes REALLY have any appreciation of Testosterone-fuelled VISCERAL violence?

    I have bemoaned 'Toilet Door Syndrome' in gender-typing before. A bloke in a skirt is not a woman, neither are all the self-selected harpies who can ACTUALLY BREATHE in that fetid Chamber (pot). Women born to mothering and the gentle life, find the political ethos (as currently configured) anathema. And there's the clue. Governance should be by mature, competent individuals - any gender - who can subsume self for a better country/world. The exact opposite of what we have now.

    SPOIL GENDER GAMES

  • Comment number 23.

    #18

    How about the Sonnets, singie? Aren't they proof that he was inclined both ways? Not that it matters in terms of his superb achievements all round the globe? I should imagine his plays and the Sonnets are either staged or recited/read every day in their tends or hundreds in all corners round the world. It's ridiculous for any stupid upstart alive today that they may be a match to the great English bard, Shakespeare, especially the one who also identifies himself with Stalin and Hitler. Delusion in it's most extreme, that is.

  • Comment number 24.

    By the way, a few days ago I said that I would count the number of stairs leading out into the world out of the ward. Well, there 24 of them.

  • Comment number 25.

    GENDER STUDIES

    Woman's Hour just referring to 'Mr or Mrs Big' with respect to masterminding (mistressminding) sex-worker trafficking (male AND female of course).

    Permission to scream Capn Mainwaring?

  • Comment number 26.

    #25

    Scream away to your heart's content, singie.

  • Comment number 27.

    another Plod gets off...well, I never...

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