OneGuyFromBarlick

"our Barrowford correspondent......"

How could he resist - his favourite village and his favourite organisation - Ofsted.

From experience I know that Comrade Nolic is a very responsible man. He will not say anything if he has some sort of professional connection with a matter. If he does say anything you can trust his opinion implicitly.....

" Austerity is not an economic necessity, it is a political choice."John McDonnell in his speech to the Labour Party Conference yesterday.

Laura Kuenssberg, BBC News Political Editor, on `Today' this morning:
"For many people Jeremy Corbyn is scary."

Yes, and for many people the little boy was very scary when he said "The emperor's hasn't got new clothes, he's naked." People are often frightened when somebody speaks the truth and shows them that they are being conned.

Right on Tiz. See my post in politics corner about the use of fear.....

'Thin rivulets of prose meandering between wide meadows of margins'

A quotation long forgotten that popped into my head today. I don't know where I saw it....

Wikiquote has:
"You shall see them on a beautiful quarto page, where a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin."
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal (1777), Act I, scene 1.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Books

I have not read the play but it looks as though whoever quoted it got it from there. I have an idea I saw it in a critique of a book by Hugh Prather titled 'Notes on love and courage' but it could apply to any of Francis Gay's books as well. Remember them?

My WH Smith diary has this quote for this week's page...
"If this is the way Queen Victoria treats her prisoners she doesn't deserve to have any"....Oscar Wilde

"Not everything that counts, can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts"

Tell that to McKinsey and Company.

I hate that firm and all its works David!

Heard on 'Still Open All Hours' last night.... "Men don't want 'all woman', they just want the bits that first took their minds off Meccano..." (Nurse Gladys Emmanuel.

"I hate that firm and all its works David!"

I knew that.

It's quite surprising how many leading politicians did a stint with them and got infected. When the history of the 20th century is written someone should do a job on them.... My current Bete Noire is the large accountancy firms and their free SPADS embedded in government....

"“The South China Sea would be a good place to hide Chinese submarines,” said Carl Thayer, a U.S.-born security specialist who has taught at the University of New South Wales."

Read more here: China expansion

This is the big strategic threat. Little mention in the British media.

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. "Steven Weinberg"
Isis blowing up another priceless piece of history. Link. Not that I consider Isis per se being good people.

China's antics in the South China Sea are not only for direct military purposes. There is an abundance of valuable mineral deposits such a manganese nodules as described in this 2013 report:
`Submersible taps vast mineral deposits in South China Sea' LINK
They're also exploring the Pacific seabed for minerals: "The mineral potential of the deep ocean seabed was underscored on July 3 [2011] when a group of Japanese specialists announced the results of a seabed survey of 78 sites in the Pacific containing rare earth minerals that are critical to a wide range high-technology products for both civilian and military use. They estimated that a one square-kilometer area in one hot spot alone held a cache of rare-earth oxides equivalent to one-fifth of current global demand in a market where China produces around 97 percent of the supply and has sent prices sky rocketing by imposing increasingly tight export quotas." LINK

How much further can we go in exploiting Mother Earth?
"Life has to take charge of its environment and evolve with it." (James Lovelock)
Notice he didn't say exploit it......

Shirley Williams on Dennis Healey -

"How can I put this?. . . .

I don't think he was a man who was totally dedicated to the factual truth."

I saw that programme as well and heard her say it.... She was smiling at the time!

“Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box.”

Assuming they all go into the same box.

I think this might just qualify as 'Understatement of the decade'.
From The European Space Agency

"One of the biggest challenges of building a lunar base is how to get the materials to the moon"

The response of environmental campaigners to the news that 10 of the world's biggest oil companies have offered their support for a new global treaty on climate change...
"Arsonists don't make good firefighters"

Heard on the Radio 4 Just a Minute programme:
"The version of the weather proverb `red sky at night' that you hear in Liverpool is...
Red sky at night, Shepherd's delight
Red sky in the morning, Warrington's burning.