Some of them jumped 175ft from the helideck when all other options had ceased.

One of the guys said after jumping he found a co-worker in the water with a life jacket on.

Said he was face down, dead, and contemplated relieving him of his jacket but couldn't do it out of deference and respect for the colleague.

Just kept hold of the body and made his way away from the blazing inferno.

Said he never attempted to look at it's face in case it was one of his close friends.

I'm not saying there might never be some strange exception, but the very thought of sitting through the tedium of a trial unless getting paid to do so is just nuts. I read a brief review that in the end, they actually only showed a very edited version, and then put music to accompany etc. Even so it must've been as dull as ditchwater, but then I'm told a sizeable number of people waste a not inconsiderable slice of their waking lives engrossed in endless, turgid, banal drivel like Big Brother, or IAC, so the mind-numbing clearly fills some sort of basic need.



At least at the end, someone might really go to jail for life, so I can see that bit being intriguing. Could you have a wager on betfair?

I gave Episode One a go ... not brilliant.

I also gave Episode Two a go ... better but a long way short of unmissable.



Episode Three will be the last chance.

I'm not much of a telly person - well, outside sport - but I 'discovered' a show I enjoy a few weeks ago: [iThe Borgias[/i: great fun, without insulting the intelligence.

Agreed, some can even get an annual hard-on watching the mother of all all abhorrations the Eurovision Song Contest.

Now that is banal drivel.

Complete and utter e.









Glad there weren't any bookies giving odds on it.

I'd have done my bollox in as per usual.

I thought he was walking until the judge said [itake him down.[/i

Been really enjoying it, not taking it too seriously and its encouraged me to find out a bit more about the history too. Excellent performances all round and Sean Harris as Micheletto is particularly good, as are the main characters

Totally agree.



Never been a Jeremy Irons fan, but isn't he wonderful in this?

Just watched it - another incredible documentary.



There's so much good stuff on the BBC, ITV and Ch4 on demand services that it staggers me to think that the three females in this house are sat in the other room watching Geordie Shore, their brains must be the most under used organs in this house.



Well, there is one more I can think of that never used at all these days...

Absolutely - just the right side of OTT.

On the historical front, I've been enjoying the dramatisation of Phillipa Gregory's books The White Queen. Although i missed it last night, I'm also looking forward to watching Gregory's "The Real White Queen and her Rivals" to get further background into the characters.

Me too, and the one last night was as good as the drama and filled in a lot of the gaps.



What gets my goat a bit is the moaners, the TV drama train-spotters equivalent, the ones who whine about "historical inaccuracies" because someone is wearing a pair of gloves that look as though they have a press stud in them, or they spot a zip in the back of someones jerkin - FFS just sit back and enjoy an hours entertainment, we all know it wasn't filmed in 1470, its drama, you're supposed to use your imagination a bit.

It's that quite delicious school of Brit character acting, whereby villains actually become rather sexy – see anything Alan Rickman does, plus Antony Hopkins in [iSilence[/i etc. From a non-Brit perspective, Al Pacino has it too.



I first saw Irons on stage at the RSC doing Richard II – I remember finding the character so utterly wimpy and this is so different.

Do you mean the sort of pedants who watch an episode of, say, [iSharpe[/i and know the regimental costumes are wrong. Or can tell you (without being asked) why the tanks are wrong in any drama set in WWII? That sort of pedant?

Did anyone else see [iThe Daily Show[/i last night, as it dealt with the Zimmerman verdict and the entire issue of Florida's 'stand your ground' law?

I think I'm thinking of the same pedant that you are thinking of





And how do we know that YKK hadn't invented the zip fastener in 1470, they may have had problems with distribution and decided to shut up shop for 500 years until proper roads were built.

Well indeedy.

Didn't Irons also camp it up a little in Playaway/Play School? First time I saw him after that was in Brideshead and I wasn't particularly a fan of that.

WTF are the BBC doing waving a flag for supermarkets?



[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b037b9gdBritain's Favourite Supermarket Foods[/url

Quote Mintball="Mintball"Did anyone else see [iThe Daily Show[/i last night, as it dealt with the Zimmerman verdict and the entire issue of Florida's 'stand your ground' law?'" I didn't watch The Daily Show, but I did watch The Charlie Rose show a couple of nights ago. Pretty much everything I'd seen about Zimmerman since the verdict was announced was so inaccurate it made me want to throw the TV through the window. I think the media have been disgraceful - bordering on inciting riots. The Charlie Rose show was a room of sanity in a world that's gone mental IMO. I'll try and find a link to watch the DS. www.charlierose.com/watch/60241735

Quote Mintball="Mintball"Did anyone else see [iThe Daily Show[/i last night, as it dealt with the Zimmerman verdict and the entire issue of Florida's 'stand your ground' law?'" I didn't watch The Daily Show, but I did watch The Charlie Rose show a couple of nights ago. Pretty much everything I'd seen about Zimmerman since the verdict was announced was so inaccurate it made me want to throw the TV through the window. I think the media have been disgraceful - bordering on inciting riots. The Charlie Rose show was a room of sanity in a world that's gone mental IMO. I'll try and find a link to watch the DS. www.charlierose.com/watch/60241735

I'm watching it now. It's another throw my TV out of the window response.



The police dispatcher did not explicitly tell Zimmerman to stop following Martin, which is what the presenter said, and is a lie the media keep telling.



Zimmerman was following Martin and trying to find their exact location. The cop realised that Zimmerman was following him and asked him if he was following him. Zimmerman said he was, the cop said, "OK, we don't need you to do that", Zimmerman replied "Ok."



They then carried on talking about where they were and when the cops would be getting there.



The cop did not tell him explicitly to stop following Martin.



The actual phone call from Zimmerman is available to hear. The transcript of the conversation is available. It is a blatant lie to say that the cop told Zimmerman to stop following Martin and go back to his car.

"We don't need you to do that," as a response to being told that he was following someone, would, by most normal people, be understood as 'stop what you're doing - ie following'.



The core issue is the law itself, which is a straightforward excuse to do what Zimmerman did. The other case that has been mentioned, from last year, where nobody was even injured but where a (black) woman with a gun (shooting at a ceiling as a warning shot – she claims her partner was abusive) was subsequently jailed for 20 years does raise the question of race.



But the law is bonkers. Where, then, was Martin's right to 'stand his ground' when he was followed and 'challenged' by an armed man with a vigilante complex?

No it doesn't. She was found guilty by a different jury and sentenced by a different judge in a case based on a completely different set of facts. Was the sentence ludicrous? Yes. Is the law ridiculous? Yes. But what does that have to do with race?



One thing I find strange is that Zimmerman is being described in US media as white in a country that would, in almost all other case, describe him as being Hispanic. This case has been turned into a 'white v black' issue by the media. The focus should instead be on the farcical 'Stand Your Ground' Law. Common sense dictates that Zimmerman should have been convicted of something. The law over there says otherwise and on the facts presented, he was rightly found not guilty. The anger should be directed at the state for allowing such a dangerous piece of legislation to exist.

For the last 6 - 7 years I lived in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.



Elizabethtown is a stand your ground state.



I am an anti-gun guy. My solution to the gun problems in the USA would be outlaw guns completely and make it an imprisonable offence to even have a gun in your house or building.



Now, the sun is going to transform into strawberry ice cream before that's ever going to happen in America. My best friend in the US was a massive gun guy, he had a concealed carry licence, was 100% responsible over gun ownership and knowledgeable about the laws.



I have confidence that my friend was responsible to carry a gun. My problem is that practically every other person who I knew had guns I had absolutely total confidence that they should never be allowed to own a weapon.



You might not know this, but I'm a bit of a dick. After each mass shooting I'd ask him if he felt guilty because he helped cause it. Most of the time it only peed him off slightly, but Newtown was different. He didn't want to talk about Newtown AT ALL and for a few weeks, was pretty much "Whatever Obama wants to do with guns over this I don't care."



That lasted about two weeks. After that it was pretty much forgotten about by my friend and the NRA. It was back to their default position of never giving an inch. And the eventual new laws brought in by Obama were just a waste of paper and time.



IMO shootings like Newtown and Columbine are just the price you pay for being a gun loving country with more guns than people. It's a tragedy that they happen, but it's the price of being a gun culture.



Now, on to stand your ground. An incident happened about 18 months ago at a gas station 1 1/2 miles from my house. It was a gas station just off the freeway. Two idiots had got themselves in a road rage incident over something stupid. The first guy pulled into the gas station to fill up his car. The second guy followed him, drove by and drew a gun. The first guy shot him and killed him.



I don't think the killer was even arrested. He did nothing wrong. The dead guy was a complete ******* moron for drawing his weapon when it wasn't warranted. The other guy had a legitimate stand your ground defence. If he hadn't been killed, the police would have arrested the dead guy and he'd have gone to court over drawing his weapon.



Another incident that happened was that Robert Tarraffa killed Sixfredo Mendez. Tarraffa is a low life trailer trash junkie POS.



I'm not sure of the details, but I think there was a suspicion that Tarraffa had stolen a playstation. Mendez, and five other close friends, broke into Tarraffa's trailer and were going to give him a slap. Tarraffa stabbed Mendez and Mendez died.



Again, no police action because 6 idiots were invading someone's home and that person had a right to defend himself. Even though he was a junkie, thieving POS who probably deserved to die.



Now, a couple of years ago Tarraffa and some other idiot got into a fight over a girl/drugs/who knows? I don't know who had the gun, but Tarraffa ended up shooting the other guy 9 times. One of those shots was probably legitimate. The other 8 were when the other guy was trying to run away. The fact that Tarraffa shot someone who was running away, and he shot him so many times, meant he's serving 20 years in jail now.



If I've punched you in the face and am walking away and you shoot me in the back, you're going to jail because you've shot me as I'm walking away.



If I'm going to attack you, then you have the right to shoot me because of stand your ground.



Now, if you shoot me once and I'm on the ground so you shoot me three more times, you're probably going to jail. You have the right to defend yourself, but shooting someone who is already down is not defensive.



Now, on to Zimmerman. Zimmerman had a clear concern that Martin was a criminal, up to no good. He had called the police to report that possible criminal and the police were on their way.



We don't know how the confrontation started, because we only have Zimmerman's side of the story, but what we do know is that Zimmerman received a broken nose, two black eyes and was bleeding from two wounds to the back of his head. There were no marks on Zimmerman's knuckles.



The only injuries to Martin were the gunshot wound and damage to his knuckles.



Martin was witnessed on top of Zimmerman giving him a beating "MMA" style.



There was recorded 911 calls where "someone" was screaming for help in the background. Now, the common sense evidence was that obviously it was Zimmerman who was screaming for help. But Martin's family lied and claimed they knew it was their son. Experts couldn't tell who it was.



The evidence says that Zimmerman was being beaten by Martin and he shot him while Zimmerman was on top of him. That's why he was acquitted, and that's why the cops were right to not even arrest him.



It wasn't a case of armed man follows and murders unarmed boy. It was a case of concerned citizen follows person he suspects to be a criminal. The suspected criminal then beats the crap out of armed man. Gets shot.



Zimmerman MIGHT have racially profiled Martin. But you don't have the right to beat the crap out of someone because you think they are following you.



It was the right verdict. And the media and America, and the Daily Show, are lying inciters who do not have a coherent argument. If they want to argue against gun ownership, argue against it. If they want to argue against stand your ground, argue against it. But the media are lying about basic facts which are plain and simple.

But the call continued and they were discussing where the suspect was. There was no indication whether Zimmerman had continued to follow or whether he had turned round.



It was a soft suggestion not to follow. It was not an implicit "Stop following" as has been suggested.



One of Martin Gladwell's books discusses a plane crash and the attitude of NY air traffic control. A plane was in traffic to come in to land and was virtually out of fuel. The pilot told ATC that he was low on fuel, but that was useless because virtually every plane coming in to land is low on fuel. The pilot needed to inform the ATC that they needed immediate landing because they were critically short of fuel. ATC would have them cleared him for landing, or it would have been their fault that he crashed. But saying "we're running low on fuel" meant they were ignored because nearly all of them were in the same position.







There was an argument. She left the room to get a gun. She went back into the room and shot into the ceiling.



If she was free to walk away from her husband, find a gun and then return to the room, then she wasn't under legitimate threat of attack.



I don't know the details, but one point is if they were in an apartment, there could have been someone killed because the bullet could have come through the floor.



20 years is ridiculous for that crime. But that was the statute. It wasn't a race issue.



She should have probably lied and said that her husband had threatened to beat the kids. But that's down to her defence, and they are not supposed to instruct her to lie.







Martin had a phone. He was okay telling his friend that a "creepy cracker" was following him, but it didn't occur to him to call 911 and report that he was being followed?



You don't know that Zimmerman did challenge Martin. No one does because there is only Zimmerman's testimony. Zimmerman claims that he was taken by surprise and Martin just started beating on him.

Martin was on top of Zimmerman and beating him.



Zimmerman received a broken nose, two black eyes, cuts to the back of the head and a "back injury".



Zimmerman claims that Martin told him that today was going to be his last day.



Zimmerman claims that Martin was hitting his head into the ground. The evidence supports this.



How much of a beating should Zimmerman have taken before he could legitimately shoot his attacker?