QUOTE OF THE DAY. TRIPPS ORIGINAL

[Stanley]

And possibly damaging for Trump.... I certainly hope so.

[Tripps]

Only in Britain can you be sent to prison for not having a television licence and then - when you are in prison you can watch television without a licence.

[Stanley]

I think that is possibly a perfect example of a paradox......

[Tizer]

And you can probably have you're cocaine etc delivered by drone from Drugs2U!

[Tripps]

Is it the sub-editor's day off?

[Stanley]

You're being Picky David

[Tizer]

The Daily Telegraph front page today has a small headline saying `Britain facing worst flu season on record'.
Perhaps the Telegraph's own records don't go back as far as the terrible 1918 influenza pandemic, or even the 1957/58 Tokyo flu and 1968/69 Hong Kong flu (In 1970 I did a research project on the latter two viruses).

[Stanley]

Thanks for flagging that piece of bad editing up Peter. Is Tokyo Flu what we called Asian Flu at the time? I remember having it and I thought I was dying. I never called an ordinary cold flu after that, they are entirely different beasts!

[Tizer]

Yes, it's a bit confusing because it originated in Southern China but came to the notice of the West when schools suddenly had to shut down in Tokyo. The illness was therefore called Asian Flu but the actual virus was isolated in Tokyo and was then officially designated as `A/Tokyo'. I had it too and remember lying in bed and being so hot and febrile that I was hallucinating.

[Stanley]

Thanks Peter....

[Tripps]

Sound of a penny dropping. . . .


"Sir Keir Starmer challenged opposition critics with a promise to double down on net zero as he admitted the “consensus is gone” on climate change in a speech at the UN’s Cop30 summit. The Prime Minister staunchly defended his Government’s clean energy agenda, but conceded unity on “science that is unequivocal” has splintered since the Paris Accord a decade ago."

[Stanley]

Yes, I think some of us realised that quite a long time ago.....

[Tripps]

A Venezuelan said today :-

"To those who say that the United States is only interested in our oil, I ask those people: What do you think the Russians and the Chinese wanted?…
The recipe for Arepas?"

[Stanley]

The thing that crosses my mind is the similarity between the present situation in Venezuela and that in the Middle East which was also ruined by countries seeking dominance over oil deposits. Will we see a repeat of the mistakes perpetrated by the 'Seven Sisters'?

(The history of the supermajors - the 'Seven Sisters', so called by Anthony Sampson in his 1975 book 'The Seven Sisters: the Great Oil Companies and the World They Made', traces back to the seven oil companies which formed the "Consortium for Iran" cartel and dominated the global petroleum industry from the mid-1940s to the 1970s.[22][23] The Seven Sisters were:

Anglo-Persian Oil Company (BP)
Gulf Oil (Chevron)
Shell (Royal Dutch Shell)
Standard Oil of California (Chevron)
Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon, later ExxonMobil)
Standard Oil of New York (Mobil, later ExxonMobil)
Texaco (Chevron))