Actually, Steve, I shut it down because the only thing happening was the BBOP's were getting redundant in their worn out justifications for being obnoxious, arrogant asses. As to your pathetic challenge, it isn't necessary to prove what is apparent. You seek to challenge me, but I am not the issue.

I note the name-calling in your post. I note the snide last word you indulged yourself in before you shut the thread. How diminishing for you. You're no paragon, are you? I note also your lack of irony in so doing. As for the rest, it's gibberish. I hope you're feeling better.

As for people leaving because they get pissed off, a few points.

1. You do not have to open a thread. If you open a thread that you know will offend you, you're barking mad.

2. If you accidentally open a thread that then seems to offend you, it takes about two seconds to recognise it as such and click to somewhere else. The damage to your sensibilities will be minimal.

3. You do not have the right to not be offended, but you do have the right, and the means, to avoid offensive material.

4. This is not a purely political/controversial forum, not by a long chalk. There are something like seventy threads in front of me on today's page. Most of them are not of interest to me. Some, both above and below the line, definitely are, some might be, so I'll dip in. On the whole, the experience here is pleasant. There are threads on topics which interest me which I no longer visit (for example, one on Israel, another on HIV transmission). Each of those threads is plagued by a complete idiot (more than one in the case of the Israel thread, and Jim will know I'm not referring to him), both of them arch-bigots, and I decided ages ago that the game wasn't worth the candle. But, you see, this stuff doesn't get me down. I'm in control. I avoid stuff I don't want to bother with. Life's too short.

5. I'm a little bit anti-religion. But what I don't do is seek out the bits of religion that might offend me (I'm not easily offended as it happens, which I know can be annoying). For example, as a somewhat anti-religious person, I don't go into Sunday Mass and come out ranting about how terrible the priest was in his sermon. I avoid Sunday Mass. If I came here and gave you a weekly report on the Sunday Mass down the Catholic church in Bude, you'd think I was mad. So all these people who, allegedly, depart from Mudcat because they have sought and found what they regard as nastiness - aren't they doing exactly the same thing? Are they really worth it? Of those seventy threads, I'd bet that sixty-three or four are bereft of "nastiness" in whatever sense you want to view it. So why do people really leave? It isn't an honest conversation this, is it?

6. Musket is dead right: the bigots, the homophobes, the racists, the fundamentalists must not be indulged. They must be ridiculed and confronted. We need to try to make the world a better place and indulging bad people is not the way to do it. And these are bad people. Even the ones who assume a gentle veneer. Soft faces, hard cases. If you're pissed off because you think this forum is worse than it was, try to recognise the people who truly drag it into the gutter. Anyone for a bit of anti-Darwinism now?