OneGuyFromBarlick

Lovely. She's right and it applies to millions.

I enjoy reading peoples' comments on other sites. There's a lot of rubbish but some are perceptive.


So Prince Andrew's defence now seems to be that he is exempt - because Jeffrey Epstein has already paid off his accuser.

It’s hard to explain this to people who didn’t grow up in England, but if you saw a member of the royal family at a Pizza Express, you would be telling people about it for the rest of your life.

My personal favourite is

"No - just a perfectly ordinary shooting weekend"

Dontcher just love the contrasts between the social strata.......

I've just been reading about William Murdoch's experiments in Cornwall with making coal gas and setting up a small gasworks. It mentions that William Fairbairn said Murdoch occasionally used his gas as a portable lantern:

"It was a dark winter's night and how to reach the house over such bad roads was a question not easily solved. Mr Murdoch, however, fruitful in resource, went to the gasworks where he filled a bladder which he had with him, and, placing it under his arm like a bagpipe, he discharged through the stem of an old tobacco pipe a stream of gas which enabled us to walk in safety to Medlock Bank."

That amused me because Murdoch was a Scot so he would have been very familiar with bagpipes, perhaps even played them! (Fairbairn was a Scot too!)

I like "He filled a bladder which he had with him".

Today's tip: Never leave home without your bladder!
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From the BBC...
In an opinion piece for the New York Times on Wednesday, the oldest-living former US President, Jimmy Carter, warned that the country "...now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss. Without immediate action, we are at genuine risk of civil conflict and losing our precious democracy. Americans must set aside differences and work together before it is too late."

And guess who is leaning on the gap and widening it.

I've just seen a BBC report that begins: The PM is facing calls to resign from Labour...
I didn't know he was a member of the Labour Party.
When will the BBC learn to use logic when writing their news reports! Surely The PM is facing calls from Labour to resign... would be better?

I often fume because of exactly that Peter. The standard of news editing is nowhere near what it was in days gone by. Not only do they get the syntax wrong (Lincoln wrote the speech whilst travelling to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope) but they allow the wrong words to be used. Add to this the predilection these days for using the Internet rather than a telephone call (the reason for all the drop-outs) and you start to get a sense of why the quality of their output has fallen so abysmally low.

Jonathan Haslam former Downing Street press secretary, under John Major.

"Boris is bleeding heavily in shark infested waters, but he's not dead yet. "

Once a spin doctor, always a spin doctor David! Patently untrue, he isn't bleeding and is not in shark infested waters but this form of words enables the speaker to say something that diverts from the fact he hasn't actually answered the question.

Stanley wrote: ↑15 Jan 2022, 04:52 Patently untrue, he isn't bleeding and is not in shark infested waters

I think that, metaphorically at least, he certainly is. We shall see. . . .

I agree with you David but I was just flagging up that the use of metaphor and simile is often to divert the questioner. Simple yes and no answers are out of fashion.

That quote from Haslam is very mild - most of the `off the record' quotes from politicians and advisers about Boris that I see in The Times are full of f*** and c*** and similarly nasty words. They seem to have a restricted vocabulary.

And perhaps because of that get reported. So many people are looking for a way to get noticed. It may be that the use of such bad language is the verbal equivalent of streaking at a sports event.....

From the John Crace sketch column in The Guardian

" Sajid Javid come unstuck on the morning media round. The health secretary had first said that it was a complete coincidence that Covid was now over on the day the government needed good news, only to contradict himself and say it wasn’t over. "

Quite! Absolutely transparent and obvious the announcement was part of the save Johnson campaign.

I've just read a newsletter urging its readers to switch to cheaper SIM deals. It did a survey and says: More than three in ten (78%) responded saying they pay more than £10 a month. I wonder what the writer meant to say?

I don't suppose it's important Peter.

I think if he/she doesn't know the difference between 3 in 10 and 78% it's important. Perhaps we don't teach maths any more.

I'm with you Peter. We watched one of the "celebrity" episodes of The Chase a couple of weeks back. Occasionally they chuck a simple maths question into the cash builder which are usually standard general knowledge questions. It was something like what is 42 minus 11. Can't remember who it was but they came up with 24 as the answer!

I have noticed also that with odd exceptions, the majority of "celebrities" are absolutely useless at general knowledge, it's as if they have never been to school, never read anything or actually taken any notice of events that they have lived through.

I've noted the same thing Ian. Perhaps being a celebrity is a full time job leaving no time for real life?

Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
Cyril Connolly

He was mentioned this morning on R4 very high brow programme about 1922 and 'modernism'.

Note from my energy supplier Octopus yesterday -

"At the moment, customers on standard variable tariffs are protected from price rises until the Government price cap is updated in April. That means for an average home, we are currently buying energy for about £2000 and selling it for £1300."



This is from the company which is rescuing thousands of customers from other less prudent suppliers which have gone bust.