Hi Temp (and Mod),I appreciate your point (and empathy) but I have to say in my case all this exchanging of insults with Gerry is more or less done with a 'sportif' spirit. I assume this is mutual. Certainly I am not the least insulted and rather enjoy Gerry's predictable chiming in on my posts. I was rather hoping that people who read the forum might see (from our exchanges above) that Gerry's offensiveness is actually because he is just a nice simple, hick farmer type who knows no better than good ole' blunt talk. Happily he has revealed that this is indeed the truth. He is of course a quite harmless fellow and (now I'm growing to feel) quite lovable in his own unique way. Of course people can also see that I am the transparent, insufferable, perfect embodiment of a smug Englishman - but again, perfectly harmless really.
I do understand that more sensitive types coming to this forum for a serious conversation may take 'rudeness' at face value. Such are the pitfalls of the Internet where you cannot see the tongue-in-cheek smile of your sparring partner.
However I would absolutely understand if our posts were removed on account of their 'off-topic-ness'. That'd be fine by me. The only thing is though, I do feel that Gerry and my public 'name-calling session' has become so clearly 'cartoonesque' that it does rather perfectly make light of the phenomena of flaming and indeed polarized views in general. I don't think either Gerry or I are in the slightest bit hurt by each other. We're both far too thick-skinned. People can surely see that and maybe won't take people like us so seriously.
