Official political correctness thread

They were in full voice on Question Time. Did like one bloke saying there's been a massive sense of humour failure from the unions and Labour.

When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

Excellent Santa, by the way, Hilly. She's welcome down my chimney anytime. Though the fires are burning.

6of1 wrote:

Don't really get it. Well, if he had shot a few protesters that would be reason to complain. But to just blab away as the twit he is after all - that's hardly a crime, is it? Give the man a brake, he is vile arse, can't expect him to go against his nature.

give the man a "brake"
boom, boom!
:oops:

tiffanywint wrote:

Seve wrote:

your contradictions continue to amaze me aka timmer
a company that resorts to anti competitive practices in putting up barriers to prevent new players entering a market
is no different than a country which puts up trade barriers, import taxes etc to protect it's domestic market from overseas competition
I sure you are against protectionism by government, so I'm at at a loss to understand why do you find it acceptable behaviour from a company?

Seve, I now realize you are at a severe disadvantage when discussing anything related to business. The whole point of any business is to max out market share, and that involves attempting to wipe out your competition. There is no other way to run a business. Do yourself a favour, do not attempt to start a business. With your attitude it will collapse. .

well I hope you never try to run a business aka timmer, because, with your attitude to business ethics, sooner or later you're sure to end up sharing a cell with Bubba

tiffanywint wrote:

Seve wrote:

how is the free market and smaller government going to solve that one?

what you don't take into account is that in a healthy vibrant market economy people are a resource. They are both consumers and producers. The more the merrier....

which is the main flaw in capitalism, it requires endless growth to maintain momentum and we currently live in a finite world

but now you're scaring me
:affraid:

the planet is reaching the the point where it will not be able to support the number of people on it
and reaching it at an exponential rate
but you think it's great because they are all potential consumers...
may the deity of your choice help us

I'm not a tree hugger and I don't pretend to have any answers, but at least I can see there's a problem

a Swedish guy I met travelling told me about this

"Lakes in the eastern United States, Canada, and the Scandinavian nations have become known as dead lakes. Dead lakes are unable to sustain fish due to prolonged exposure to acid precipitation. These lakes are able to sustain life forms, such as algae and insects, that belong to an ecosystem that is far less complicated. Ironically, dead lakes are characterized as unusually clear and are a shade of bright blue. 17,000 of Sweden's 100,000 lakes have been destroyed due to acid rain. Acid rain has also contributed to destroying marine life on the Atlantic coast of the U.S. 25% of the toxins contaminating Chesapeake Bay are from nitrogen compounds that have been deposited by acid rain.
Acid rain is actually formed when sulfur dioxides from fossil fuels (coal and oil) are fired in power plants, smelters and industrial boilers and are then released into the atmosphere. Nitrous oxides are also released from these structures but it mainly eminates from the exhausts of automobiles."

and most of the pollution that's killing the lakes has not been produced by the Swedes themselves, it's drifted across from Germany, France etc

so even if they wanted to the Swedes can do nothing to stop it...

Seve wrote:

well I hope you never try to run a business aka timmer, because, with your attitude to business ethics, sooner or later you're sure to end up sharing a cell with Bubba

I know, running a business with the intention of trying to make money, at the expense of your competitors. The horror.

Quote :

I'm not a tree hugger and I don't pretend to have any answers, but at least I can see there's a problem

Agreed the problem is too much government but far easier to blame things on too many people.

At least your dead lakes story focuses on a real environmental problem such as pollution as opposed to the pretendtheories of man-caused global warming. Get yourself to Durban and tell the global-warming wackos to make themselves useful, fire up their jets and get going on bringing those lakes back from the dead.

tiffanywint wrote:

Seve wrote:

I'm not a tree hugger and I don't pretend to have any answers, but at least I can see there's a problem (with population growth)

Agreed the problem is too much government but far easier to blame things on too many people.

the two issues are completely unrelated

too much government spending is one problem
too many people on the earth is another,
which I happen think is more significant, if not quite as immediate

pollution is also a growing problem
and too much private sector credit debt is yet another
have a merry Xmas, it may be the last one

Quote :

too many people on the earth is another

I think too many Neo-Mathusians is an even greater problem.

Hanging Chris Huhne would be a good start.

an acceptable cost of our consumer society?

"The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also described as the Pacific Trash Vortex, is a gyre of marine litter in the central North Pacific Ocean located roughly between 135°W to 155°W and 35°N to 42°N.

The Patch is characterized by exceptionally high concentrations of pelagic plastics, chemical sludge, and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre

Charles J. Moore, returning home through the North Pacific Gyre after competing in the Transpac sailing race in 1997, came upon an enormous stretch of floating debris. The area is frequently featured in media reports as an exceptional example of marine pollution. Moore's claim of having discovered a large, visible debris field is, however, a mischaracterization of the polluted region overall, since it consists primarily of particles that are generally invisible to the naked eye

Although many media and advocacy reports have suggested that the patch extends over an area larger than the continental U.S., recent research sponsored by the National Science Foundation suggests the affected area may be twice the size of Hawaii.

The patch is not easily visible because it consists of very small pieces, almost invisible to the naked eye [29], most of its contents are suspended beneath the surface of the ocean

Some of these long-lasting plastics end up in the stomachs of marine birds and animals. Besides the particles' danger to wildlife, on the microscopic level the floating debris can absorb organic pollutants from seawater, including PCBs, DDT, and PAHs.

On the macroscopic level, the physical size of the plastic kills birds and turtles as the animals digestion can not break down the plastic.

Many of these fish are then consumed by humans, resulting in their ingestion of toxic chemicals.Marine plastics also facilitate the spread of invasive species that attach to floating plastic in one region and drift long distances to colonize other ecosystems.

Research has shown that this plastic marine debris affects at least 267 species worldwide

A similar patch of floating plastic debris is found in the Atlantic Ocean."

an acceptable cost of doing business?

“This is where they walked, swam, hunted, danced and sang,
Take a picture here, take a souvenir
Cuyahoga
Cuyahoga, gone”
REM

“The Cuyahoga River at one time was one of the most polluted rivers in the United States. The reach from Akron to Cleveland was devoid of fish. A Kent State University symposium, convened one year before the infamous 1969 fire, described one section of the river:

The surface is covered with the brown oily film observed upstream as far as the Southerly Plant effluent. In addition, large quantities of black heavy oil floating in slicks, sometimes several inches thick, are observed frequently. Debris and trash are commonly caught up in these slicks forming an unsightly floating mess. Anaerobic action is common as the dissolved oxygen is seldom above a fraction of a part per million. The velocity is negligible, and sludge accumulates on the bottom. Animal life does not exist. Only the algae Oscillatoria grows along the piers above the water line.
The color changes from gray-brown to rusty brown as the river proceeds downstream. Transparency is less than 0.5 feet in this reach.
There have reportedly been at least thirteen fires on the Cuyahoga River, the first occurring in 1868. The largest river fire in 1952 caused over $1 million in damage to boats and a riverfront office building. Fires erupted on the river several more times before June 22, 1969, when a river fire captured the attention of Time magazine, which described the Cuyahoga as the river that "oozes rather than flows".

The 1969 Cuyahoga River fire helped spur an avalanche of water pollution control activities resulting in the Clean Water Act, Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, and the creation of the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA). As a result, large point sources of pollution on the Cuyahoga have received significant attention from the OEPA in recent decades.”

Our teeming population is the strongest evidence our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly support us from its natural elements. Our wants grow more and more keen and our complaints more bitter in all mouths, while nature fails in affording us our usual sustenance. In every deed, pestilence and famine and wars have to be regarded as a remedy for nations as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race." Paul Ehrlich in 1968? Al Gore last year? Nope. It was Tertullian, a Carthaginian priest in 210 AD when the world population was 250 million.

Seve wrote:

the two issues are completely unrelated

au contraire. completely related. two much government interferes with the market's ability to function, thus people become a burden. see socialism. In a free market, people are both producers and consumers. The more the merrier.

Wouldn't that mean Tertullian is wrong? And has been wrong now for the following 1800 years as the planet has sustained a population 28 times the one in his day?

Pretty much.

colly wrote:

Wouldn't that mean Tertullian is wrong? And has been wrong now for the following 1800 years as the planet has sustained a population 28 times the one in his day?

yes, I'm sure that's what aka timmer is implying

but Tertullian being wrong then has no relevance to whether I may be right today
all through history people have been making pronouncements, more often wrong than right
you have to judge each one on it's merits

I'm sure human civilisation will continue for a long time after I'm dead,
but at this rate the quality of life will decline significantly from what I personally enjoy today

tiffanywint wrote:

Seve wrote:

the two issues are completely unrelated

au contraire. completely related. two much government interferes with the market's ability to function, thus people become a burden. see socialism. In a free market, people are both producers and consumers. The more the merrier.

:pale:
your quasi religious reverence for the market is most disturbing
God didn't create the market, man did
so there is no magic bullet

Seve wrote:

God didn't create the market, man did
so there is no magic bullet

but that is exactly the point. there is no magic bullet. the market is what it is. men producing and buying goods and services that men both need or simply want. the trick is to keep everyone involved or as many as possible.

tiffanywint wrote:

Seve wrote:

God didn't create the market, man did
so there is no magic bullet

but that is exactly the point. there is no magic bullet. the market is what it is. men producing and buying goods and services that men both need or simply want. the trick is to keep everyone involved or as many as possible.

no aka timmer, the market is not "what it is"
it is not a natural law of the universe like gravity

man created things are never perfect, they can always be improved upon
everything man has ever invented has been refined and updated over time
the market is no different
;)

Seve wrote:

[no aka timmer, the market is not "what it is"
it is not a natural law of the universe like gravity

man created things are never perfect, they can always be improved upon
everything man has ever invented has been refined and updated over time
the market is no different
;)

you don't understand what a market economy is. its about a free trade of good and services. its the only economy that can work. the idea isn't to "improve" it, rather its to simply allow it to be.

tiffanywint wrote:

Seve wrote:

[no aka timmer, the market is not "what it is"
it is not a natural law of the universe like gravity

man created things are never perfect, they can always be improved upon
everything man has ever invented has been refined and updated over time
the market is no different
;)

you don't understand what a market economy is. its about a free trade of good and services. its the only economy that can work. the idea isn't to "improve" it, rather its to simply allow it to be.

no clearly it's you who don't understand what a market economy is, because you seem to think it's some sort of natural phenomenon like thunder and lightning

what you propose would be like a farmer just sitting and watching his fields and expecting a good crop to appear
no fertiliser required, no pests to be errdicated... yeah right

Seve wrote:

what you propose would be like a farmer just sitting and watching his fields and expecting a good crop to appear
no fertiliser required, no pests to be errdicated... yeah right

That analogy makes no sense whatsoever, fertiliser, pests, whatever :roll: Your "improvements" btw have crippled global economies to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars of sovereign debt, that can never be recovered.

You keep right along though, promoting your regulation, government spending, fretting about too many people for government to look after, while the rest of us try and make an honest buck, buying, selling, producing innovating and living.

You lost me when you indicated you had no understanding that a business must compete and strive to take market share from its competition. You also seem to be under some delusion that government promotes competition. Wrong, its a free market that promotes competition. Oddly you seem oblivious to the fact that's its government regulation that creates artificial monopolies and restricts competition. Its called corporatism. The unholy alliance of government and corporate interests. Monopolies, or more to the point oligopolies are created by government regulation and corruption of the free market.

Mamet identified the solution and he's hardly alone. In order to foster a truly free market or as free a market as possible, the size of government must be kept to the bare minimum. The candy store must be downsized. The bigger it is the more candy it has to giveaway. The more any industry sector is regulated the less competitive that sector will be. Just a basic fact. And the more active government is in the marketplace, the greater the burden on the tax base, until we inevitably get to where we are now, about to be crushed under the weight of economy killing, sovereign debt.

tiffanywint wrote:

Your "improvements" btw have crippled global economies to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars of sovereign debt, that can never be recovered.

sovereign debt and the free market are two separate issues
I've explained to you that in my country sovereign debt has not been a problem since the 90s, but you choose to ignore this information
a trade deficit and private sector debt is a problem in my country, but you seem incapable of grasping the possibility that this can be a problem

tiffanywint wrote:

You keep right along though, promoting your regulation, government spending, fretting about too many people for government to look after, while the rest of us try and make an honest buck, buying, selling, producing innovating and living..

I haven't been promoting government spending, I've been arguing against the application of simplistic quasi religious economic dogma in an indiscriminate, across the board manner, which is what you appear to be advocating

tiffanywint wrote:

You lost me when you indicated you had no understanding that a business must compete and strive to take market share from its competition.

I'm the one who's been preaching competition, your the one who's been defending cartel and monopoly practises as being "natural" and "normal" developments which don't need to be avoided
I do understand that business must compete, it's you who doesn't seem to understand that sometimes competition needs to be encouraged and reinvigorated, when one player, or a group of players in collusion, becomes too dominant in a particular market

tiffanywint wrote:

You also seem to be under some delusion that government promotes competition. Wrong, its a free market that promotes competition. Oddly you seem oblivious to the fact that's its government regulation that creates artificial monopolies and restricts competition. Its called corporatism. The unholy alliance of government and corporate interests. Monopolies, or more to the point oligopolies are created by government regulation and corruption of the free market.

it's a case of "the chicken and the egg" aka timmer
do unscrupulous corporate interests work to lobby and manipulate inept or corrupt politicians or visa versa?
in truth there's a bit of both

tiffanywint wrote:

Mamet identified the solution and he's hardly alone. In order to foster a truly free market or as free a market as possible, the size of government must be kept to the bare minimum. The candy store must be downsized. The bigger it is the more candy it has to give-away. The more any industry sector is regulated the less competitive that sector will be. Just a basic fact. And the more active government is in the marketplace, the greater the burden on the tax base, until we inevitably get to where we are now, about to be crushed under the weight of economy killing, sovereign debt.

yada yada yada
the same old simplistic quasi religious dogma
in some aspects of government that is certainly what needs to be done, in other aspects it's not, that's the nature of the real world aka timmer;- there are no "one size fits all" solutions, no magic bullets...

Seve wrote:

I haven't been promoting government spending, I've been arguing against the application of simplistic quasi religious economic dogma in an indiscriminate, across the board manner, which is what you appear to be advocating

You clearly have no idea what I've been saying, as the above statement says absolutely nothing.

Seve wrote:

I'm the one who's been preaching competition, your the one who's been defending cartel and monopoly practises as being "natural" and "normal" developments which don't need to be avoided
I do understand that business must compete, it's you who doesn't seem to understand that sometimes competition needs to be encouraged and reinvigorated, when one player, or a group of players in collusion, becomes too dominant in a particular market

Your lack of understanding of basic economic practise is staggering. Your last sentence above proves it. "Too dominant in a particular market" Huh? Using what criteria? You remind of a regulator I once had to meet with who explained to me that because the dominant market players were making "sufficient profits," that they would have pay this new fee, which served an industry related government agenda. I explained the fee would simply be passed on to consumers, as all such regulatory nonsense is. He shrugged and explained consumers would just have to protest the market players. In truth, at the highest level the major market players were all in bed with the government anyway. They colluded on the fee. We lower level paeons, just had to go through the motions of sussing out the regulator.

You are not preaching competition because you appear to have no idea what competition actually is. Competition is only achieved by the free market. You talk in abstracts. There is no government regulation ever created that has actually been able to create competition. It makes no sense. It can't be done. Only market players in response to demand can create competition. The only active role that government can play vis a vis competition is to restrict it or eliminate it all together. No matter how well run a company is, no matter how much market-share it might achieve, it cannot prevent other companies from competing with it, without the force of law. It need government complicity. And even if two, or even three, major market-players were to violate anti-trust legislation and conspire not to compete with each other,they still can't prevent a 4th company or a 5th company from competing with their cozy arrangement. Even by breaking the law they can't elminate competition. Despite what you like to believe, government does not tweak, or seek to improve the competitive environment, as a farmer might stoke the field environment by utilizing fertilizer etc. That analogy you cited is non-sensical. All we can ask of companies-at-play in the market-place is that they obey the law. The rule of law is paramount in a free market, as it is the only defence against criminal activity. Anti-trust law is prosecuted by the U.S. Justice department, just as fraud or any other criminal activity, potentially commited by buyers and sellers, active in the market place, are. Government regulation is something else, and again it has nothing to do with creating competition. It involves fees and licensing, standards, rules-of-play designed to achieve some political, economic or social end, consistent with the government agenda, but never to stimulate competition. That simply can't be done.

On the other hand government can and does play a role in impacting competition in the market. The role it plays however is to stifle competition, to restrict.

Ben Shapiro in his latest book, Primetime Propaganda (2011) which deals with the TV industry devotes an entire chapter to what he calls the Government-Hollywood complex; broadcasting being just one of many major industry sectors in which government conspires with corporate interests to eliminate competition in the market place. This is corporatism, not to be confused with capitalism which is simply the operation of a free market; buying and selling in a competitive market, in which the market determines the supply and demand equation. A little girl operating a lemonade stand is engaged in capitalism.

Shapiro draws attention to what seems like an inherent contradiction in business colluding with government, in the sense that any market player understands from experience, that government usually serves only to quash business's profit making capacity, yet the TV industry consistently programs in favour of the big government agenda, Why? Shapiro explains " Because government doesn't doesn't quash profit making in Hollywood. To the contrary , with the help of government, TV's powers that be are able to retain and maximize their oligopoly, crowding out competition. Executives and creators in television aren't interested in the free market - they're too busy swallowing subsidies from the government at the expense of taxpayers and their potential competitors."
More from Shapiro, " Just like the federal government with the network conglomerates, local governments work with cable operators because they expect kickbacks. " Local politicians have cut deals, written and unwritten, with their chosen cable operator to keep out competition," wrote former FCC official Sol Schildhause. Local communities extract concessions from high-bidder cable operators seeking to enter particular markets."

"Attorney David Saylor states that cable operators have been gouged by the government in order to receive their monopoly:" Cable operators have had to participate in auctions to balance local budgets. They have been forced to disgorge 5% ( and sometimes more) of their gross revenues in the form of franchise fees...Cable operators have even been given city councils absolute programming control over certain cable channels'"

" These are prices cable companies are willing to pay. Because cable operators are able to foreclose all competition in local marketplaces, they are also able to decide which programming to carry for entire swaths of the country.'

" The effect of monopolistic dealings between cable and operators and government is devestating. Local cable operators remain dominant, with 68% of local consumers controlled by single local cable operators as of 2007. Consumers are the ones who lose when cable companies hold monopolies. Last year for example, Cablevision, the cable operator for New York City, engaged in a knock-down drag-out battle with Fox because Fox wanted Cablevision to pay fees to carry its programming. Fox was blacked out for two weeks on Cablevision, preventing New York viewers from watching the live broadcast of the World Series. A few months earlier, Cablevision had blacked out ABC during contract negotiations, preventing the live broadcast of the Academy Awards."

Thank you Ben Shapiro! And Ben is only discussing one industry sector that he knows from the inside. The behaviour repeats itself with every major industry sector. If the sector is big enough, government is in there actively promoting its broader political, social, economic agenda, in concert with the market players, suppressing competition and corrupting the free market to the point that its non-existent. And with big government, this is perfectly natural and predictable behaviour. In fact it could not be any other way. Government uses its power simply because it can, because government always has an agenda it is pursuing, (and that agenda is decidely not promoting competition for competition's sake) and business jumps right in, because business is always about maxing out market share, and if government is going to hand them market share on a platter, business will take it every time. Even the little girl running the lemonade stand, if she was serious about making money, would collude with government to achieve market domination, if government saw that the girls lemonade stand could help further its agenda.
This is why I suggest you seem to be under some delusion that government promotes competition, when in fact only the free market can foster competition. You're assertion that it's a case of "the chicken and the egg" is quaint but it doesn't matter. The chicken and the egg, government and business, are both predictable beasts. It doesn't matter which is doing the approaching. The end result is the same. A conspiracy against the free market and thus the consumer. So which one do we reign in? We can't very well try and stifle business activity. It's such activity that produces the wealth that drives all economic activity, which provides the tax-base that funds all government activity. This would be a socialist or collectivist approach in which government then must step in and manage the supply and demand equation. Clearly the answer is to reign in the beast that is government, unless one truly does wish to construct the utopian nanny state.This is the conclusion that Mamet reached, but its the same conclusion that any dispassionate observer must and does reach. Ergo, government must be kept to the mimimum size. The bigger it is, the more powerful it is and the more resources it has to corrupt the free market in pursuit of its broader government agenda.

Yet you dismiss the observable demonstrable behaviour of government as "yadda yadda yadda" and "quasi-religious dogma."

Fact is, experience demonstates,"The bigger the government candy store, the more goodies it has to give away." This is simple cause and effect,not yadda yadda. Y does follow X in this equation and you can even add the "Z" the more goodies it will give away.

"The more any industry sector is regulated the less competitive that sector will be" is not yadda yadda. This should be obvious. Regulation such as licensing, limits on licensing, fees, awarding of contracts, tax incentives, etc creates a competitive environment for government largesse, a quid pro quo between government and market players. The candy store is open. Of course free-market competition is compromised. This is not yadda yadda. This rather is reality, as opposed to your weak claim, that only sometimes this might be reality.

You also dismiss as "yadda yadda and quasi religious dogma" and only sometimes reality, the notion that "the more active government is in the market place, the greater the burden on the tax base." It is baffling that you can't see that all government activity taxes the tax-payer. How could it be otherwise? Where does the money come from then to finance the government activity? Even if the government borrows or prints the money, the taxpayer is on the hook for not only the debt but the servicing of the debt. This is not yadda yadda.

You dismiss the crippling weight of sovereign-debt as yadda yadda. The current plight of our debt-ridden, contracting, western-economies says otherwise.

"that's the nature of the real world aka timmer;- there are no "one size fits all" solutions, no magic bullets... " There may be no magic bullets but there is a bullet, if you want to use that analogy i.e. the shooting and killing of a problem. That "bullet" (and decidedly not magic) is simply that the most desirable role that government can play in a free-society, that values a free-market, never mind free-speech and other individual freedoms, is that government play a "limited" role, which :idea: is what the U.S. founding fathers envisioned in the first place.

Unfortunately you don't seem to be able to see the correlation between government expansion and government spending-and-borrowing, over the last 50 years, and the global sovereign-debt crisis which is currently staring down and contracting our western economies.

As an aside, my friends in the financial sector tell me, we are likely to see a controlled inflation of roughly 2% in the next couple of years. Government will print money in a bid to head off youth rioting, as young people enter the workforce and there is no work. Government will try to artificially "stimulate" phony job creation in order to stem violent social unrest. There is a genuine fear of what rampaging youth can do to a society based on what we saw in Britain this year.

Another school of thought says to simply swallow the medicine and gut the public service, default on pension payments, benefits etc, that are no longer sustainable anyway, to give the productive sector (the private sector) a fighting chance to revive the economy with real wealth creation, but this comes with a political price- namely a full scale revolt of the entitled classes and although their civil disobedience would be nowhere near as violent, as rampaging, vandalizing, rioting, disenfranchised youth, they do have a political clout that the youth don't have. They have means. They have financial resources. They can thwart the political will. They know the game.

Now, I don't mean to write off youth job prospects. Until a complete collapse, there are always ways for enterprising youth or olders to thrive or at least live comfortably in any economy. It just requires that much more human ingenuity.

The "occupy" movement meanwhile is exploiting the current crisis, to advocate their goal, which is a marxist-socialist society.

Unfortunately, political-will being what it is, the path of least resistance is probably to print money, try and keep the youth at bay (operative word being try) and just ride things out until the inevitable collapse and what lies beyond that; a big war, dictatorship, social breakdown, a full scale depression. Who knows.

Rereading the first few pages of this thread makes me realise what we've lost here. Genuine adult debate and interaction has been replaced by bullshit about comic and superheroes.

It can be revived. As my father used to say, 'if man made it, man can fix it.'

I don't think it can.

There was never anything interesting in itself about this forum, that's why it was dormant for the first year of operation. What made it interesting to me were the small group of educated but dissatisfied adults that arrived here in 2011 (And I'm not talking about J7), plus the wordplay with the girls. Now it's sexless students,  aspergics and Brian. All too horribly male for me.

However, the main fault lies with the management not the members. M never accepted that leaders lead, though the clue is in the word. Everyone's view was given equal weight even if, like Moore and sixofone, they'd only made a handful of posts. And the moderators were/are with few exceptions a useless bunch of cunts.

I understand there's going to be a change of administration, but if it's Lazenby., then we're fucked. Nice guy he might be, but he's already shown he's no idea how to run a forum. It's not really important now though. Most forums have a brief shelf-life and the real discussion here should be 'where to next?'

Do forums even have a future in a post-Facebook/twitter age? I suspect not.