Ginger_Warrior

Again, the law isn't against the purchasing of knives, it's against the irresponsible selling of knives. We can both agree on the finer points of emancipation, but surely we can also agree that anyone who sells dangerous weapons to under-18 year olds in a reckless and clearly unethical fashion to meet their own financial ends should be subjected to much greater scrutiny from government. I'd have thought that would be common sense, regardless of political ideology.

To be honest she didn't seem that relationship-y with him. It was more the other way round.

All governments interfere with the lives of citizens, even the US and Canada. By this reasoning, all governments are "nanny states". Yes, they're allowed to drive under 18. Drinking age is effectively 18, but there's some quirky laws about drinking with a meal or drinking with family. If you can die fighting in the Army for your country, you should surely be allowed all the vices that come with adulthood. I'd stress that the law is against anyone who sells a knife to an under-18 year old, not necessarily against the under-18 year old. The aim was to reduce the widespread availability of knives to that age group, given its association with gang culture, not demonize that social group as knife-wielding maniacs.

Presumably while living in a house that contains an adult who can buy a knife for the kitchen anyway, as the vast majority of under-18s do.

Give me a good reason someone under the age of 18 would need a kitchen knife of their own, given they have to use it under adult supervision if they're in a classroom anyway.

It surprises me that a lot of them aren't already banned, but then a lot of them pre-date the US constitution. On the knives point, of course technically any knife can stab someone, but there's a cut-off point between a knife that's used for domestic purposes and a knife that's specifically designed to be a weapon. Furthermore, in my country at least, you need to be 18+ to buy even a kitchen knife. It doesn't necessarily stop people using them to stab people, but the point to retailers is there: "This is a dangerous item, we're not letting you sell it like double glazing".

I'm not sure why you agree with him, unless you're also trying to insinuate that the guy who uses a gun as leverage when robbing a store is doing so for comparable reasons than the guy who decides to make a homemade bomb to kill or maim as many people as possible at a mass event. It's a clearly hyperbolic argument. Technically, I could throw a stick at someone and it could kill them. Let's ban trees, I guess.

Thanks for your replies. I wouldn't deliberately split them apart because, actually, if she's having trouble or if she's not happy with her boyfriend, then the last thing she needs is someone abusing that position of trust. When you're in a position where a girl already has a boyfriend it becomes very important to draw a line under it. That's the advice I would give to someone else in the same situation. Clearly, a lot of the anxiety seems to be drawn from not knowing whether it was her boyfriend or not, so I need to find that out. I'm not necessarily against polyamorous relationships, it's just not something I'm interested in. But it's a valid suggestion if that's what we'd both be interested in.

I know the typical response to this type of post is 'One-itis' but... When you meet a girl, and there just seems to be something unique and special about the way you interact with each other. She plays with her hair, she talks faster than she usually would with other people, she opens her body to you when she talks, she touches your arm when she says goodbye. Those things which on their own don't mean anything but together as a pattern, they make you think there's something more to it. So this goes on for a week or two. You're going to ask the question at the next opportunity when... You're randomly walking down the street, having just done a three-hour stint in the library. You're mentally exhausted, and this is basically the last place in town you would expect to see this girl... and you see her and her boyfriend. Therefore, not only do you realize that you now have zero chance of dating her, you also start doubting your own intuition and wonder how the heck you read it all wrong. Even better... depending on some factors which aren't in my control necessarily, I might end up effectively being this girl's supervisor for the next year. I've got assignments due in a couple of weeks and a presentation and I'm stressed already, so maybe I'm blowing it out of proportion because I'm tired but... it's one of the worst feelings, it really is. A right kick in the ribs. The worst thing is I don't actually know if it was her boyfriend, so I can't really close that possibility off and basically friendzone her. I mean, there was nothing about them that meant they definitely were, and she's never mentioned one, but they still seemed close which suggested they were together. But... plenty more fish in the sea. Good night's sleep, head down, do my uni work, stick to the schedule and all that.

RVP has more league goals than him, tbh.

You'll be waiting a looooong time before you can do the Oxhead island unlock mission @ 90+% without the 10% boosters.

Given the 10-match ban, I think I might have to prepare my "Annual Liverpool Cannot Mathematically Win the Premier League Day 2014" graphic a little earlier this year.

Hmmm.... random 19 year old dudes adding me on social networking sites... what the deuce?

Bayern playing the way they did tonight... how did they manage to [bleep] up the Champions League Final last season? :-s

A wise man once taught me that the only good thing to come out of Liverpool was the M62. #classic

I see what you mean now. Yes, it's useful to know how the way a question is structured affects the response you receive. True, but take two scenarios: A: Do you want to go for coffee? B: Erm... yeah. Compared to: A: We should go for coffee sometime! B: That sounds like a great idea! I know a place... In the first scenario you have no indication of how much the other person really wants to go for coffee, or what their preferences are. The question asked ("Do you...") is very limiting. The second scenario is a much better starting question because it leaves the conversation open-ended, for the other person to carry on and expand. The principle applies to just about any situation where interpersonal skills are used. A good salesperson will ask "What are you looking for today?". A bad salesperson, and one who will ultimately be ignored by most customers, will ask "Can I help you?".

Maybe I missed this advice but... what should you have done instead/differently?

I hope it goes better than my most recent attempt to start something without pulling her hair.

CHAMPIONEEEESS CHAMPIONEEEEESS OLE OLE OLE!

'Kay. I'll fold here. Should never have made that reply. I'm sure it wasn't what Star would have wanted me to do, and I apologise for that. ------------------------- Reforms of nursing training are "stupid"--Royal College of Nursing I'm annoyed in my government. The Francis inquiry that was set-up as a result of poor care at Mid Staffs hospital was quite clear in its conclusion that front line staff weren't to blame. What was to blame was a culture of cost-cutting that started under the previous Labour government when it told the Trust it must acquire Foundation Status; part of their requirements was to find £10m's worth of savings. As is usual in business when savings need to be made, staff were cut. The wards in question were severely understaffed and under-resourced, which lead to the bad care received. The Francis inquiry made a number of suggestions. Not amongst them was a reform of pre-training nursing entry requirements. The government has essentially decided to make up its own suggestions, and completely ignore many of the suggestions that were actually made but are desperately wanted and needed, such as a register for care assistants and a commitment to minimum staff levels. Their main newly-made suggestion is that nursing students should do one years worth of work as a healthcare assistant to learn the "menial tasks" of nursing (see also: wiping patient's arses, bedbathing patients, feeding patients who can't feed themselves, assisting with toileting needs) before they can even start their training. Nursing students already work the equivalent of 60 weeks full-time work in practice delivering patient care as part of the three-year degree course, indeed, we are marked and signed off by registered nurses for demonstrating competency at the basic care tasks listed above, and for the professional attitudes and skill we show while doing them. From my own experience, we miss out on a lot of our additional competencies as nursing students above healthcare assistants because, frankly, the ward hasn't got the staff and we're basically used as free support workers to fill up the holes in rotas, meaning we don't have time to spend with registered nurses to learn our trade. I'm furious that they're making this a requirement, because a) it's not needed; b) it won't improve care beyond the current training requirements and c) it appears to making nurses and nursing students a scapegoat for errors committed by both the current and previous governments. But the thing that annoys me most is that the reasons Mid Staff happened, and the factors identified by the Francis inquiry which cost multi-millions of taxpayers' pounds, are not going to be addressed at all. So, to sum up, nothing will actually improve, and my whole profession is scapegoated by politicians who are purposefully lying to try and avoid any blame for their own role in the failings at Mid Staff.

I'm sorry, you'll have to explain this one to me. Let's say I use a search engine to look for a RuneScape fansite. I find their DGSweeper tool and their PoP calculator very useful. I go onto the forum, find a moderator using a very minor swear word (which contrary to what you argued above, isn't actually against our rules in the first place). You seem to be arguing that all the things I used the main site for originally are now no longer useful. So... the PoP calculator breaks and DGSweeper no longer captures maps... because a moderator on the fansite swore? Stop picking a fight here. Star did nothing wrong from our perspective. If you still feel she was wrong, and our principles are wrong, you're more than welcome to select from the five other 'Platinum' fansites listed by Jagex on their own forum. Your right to be offended is manifested in your ability and freedom to choose which website you want to visit, or perhaps more pertinently, what websites you don't want to visit.

And I'm explaining why it is not.

Maybe it's common to bite people's arms where he comes from. It's all a cultural misunderstanding, I'm sure.

I suppose you'd define me as a 'liberal', sees. Did I ever once think it was a tea party nut job? Nope. Was I aware that, given recent history, there was a significant chance of the perpetrators being Muslim? Yes. I'll carry on debating after you've stopped presenting Straw Man proposals. Conveniently forgetting that the Nazi regime sent thousands of catholic priests to concentration camps. The third Reich was not a religious regime, it was simply convenient for them (as for anyone) to claim that "God is on their side". Thank-you for arguing my point for me. Somebody referencing God as a justification for their own callous actions. I'm not sure how you cherry-picking one line from a much bigger point really contradicts what I was trying to say.