Humour is a very subjective emotion in the sense being discussed here. And what is rib-ticklingly funny to one will leave another unmoved. Finding humour in oppression and misfortune and making fun of minorities goes back to the Greeks and it is guaranteed that someone somewhere will be offended by it sometime. From Aristophanes all the way to Spike Milligan, Benny Hill, Lenny Bruce, Hicks, Monty Python and Russell Brand some people will have been offended but the majority have laughed. That’s all that matters.

I tend to agree. Laughter is a physical response you cannot control, after all. That doesn’t stop people laughing at things because they are ignorant of the subject matter, however. Spike Milligan’s Indian character in Curry and Chips, regarded nowhere as the pinnacle of his career as an entertainer, would not be funny to the majority of people today because we know too much about India and its people. There is no novelty left in that sing-song accent because 1) it doesn’t apply to India as a whole and 2) you can hear Indian people all over the UK who have adopted the local dialect.

You were there on a much nicer day by the looks of it! It was grey, windy and cold when I was there, and the atmosphere soaked into the building! I came in to the site from the North-East, partly because the chap on the Clockwork Orange told me to get off as though I was heading to the old museum. Cue a protracted wander through red sandstone tenements and along busy roads.

I seem to remember only seeing bleak overgrown docklands from the front of the museum, but I was actually thinking of the view from the tall ship to the South of the museum. I was keeping an eye out for the Govan ferry as, on the same day, I visited the ancient stones on Govan Parish Church, just as the Polish mass was clearing out. The Canteen in the new museum was rather good!

I do recall hearing different noises from different countries’ Starfighters….

The German ones tended to go thud.

Too soon?:confused:

If you weren’t up in the clouds on your high horse, you would realise that having (say) a C-27J would allow the aid organisation to distribute directly and bypass pretty much every stage bar one of the local bureaucracy. The less stages, the less funds (or effective funds) siphoned off via corruption.

No high horse involved, I don’t donate more to charity because I’m lazy and I rather like having money. :highly_amused: :highly_amused:

You seem to have a good idea on your hands here though. Simply bring in more roughty toughty aircraft into Africa and watch the corruption vanish overnight. Perhaps you should be working for an aid agency as clearly they lack your astonishing insight at the moment!

Given the DC-8 doesn’t have rough field capability, it is entirely relevant to the thread.

Tenuous at best. It is only ‘relevant to the thread’ in the sense that you started offering up fairly obvious pointers that don’t refer to either of the previous posts purely so that you can soapbox about some sh!t nobody cares about. Look at the thread:

Post 1: “Look at this DC-8 that is being run by a charitable organisation in Africa”.

Post 2: “Looks like the engines have been replaced”.

Your post: “Well if I were running a charitable operation out of Africa then I wouldn’t have blah blah blah blah, maintenance costs, blah blah blah corruption”.

And now you are arguing that this is all ‘relevant to the thread’. Amazing.

I clearly missed the thread here, where Samaritan’s Purse were looking for a new aircraft that must be able to handle rough field conditions and were fielding the internet for unqualified opinions. There must be a subtle subtext to the opening post in this thread because I read it as merely pointing out that a DC-8 was still in active service, something of a novelty for an aircraft of this vintage. Perhaps the thread should be re-titled “I run a Bible-thumping charity and I’m looking for an aircraft to ship aid around Africa in. Some guy on Craigslist is selling a DC-8 but I’m not convinced it is the best aircraft for the job. Plz advise thnx, xxxxx”.

Is the usual “bwaaaah, charity money is siphoned off by corrupt locals in Africa” stock post triggered by any mention of Africa or only those posts where charitable deeds are mentioned? Does this thread really need the same tired, jaded observations pointed out? Do you just happen to be another boring armchair commentator on the Internet? I just Googled “Africa, Charity, Corruption” on Google and I got 2,050,000 results. What makes you think you are either making an original observation or that your arguments haven’t been better hashed out elsewhere?

However, if your still confused, just ignore it all and go back to acting very sage about what other people’s motives for holding particular viewpoints are, and perhaps plot your career path to chief constable of the thought police.

Hysterical at best. No confusion here, in your case it is just another armchair philosopher hijacking a thread about a fairly dull aircraft so that they can get their voice heard.

I’ve watched that episode in the company of Germans and they rather liked it. It is ancient history to them.

Thinking out loud here. I wonder how many forumites would defend Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson et al with the argument that comedians should be able to touch upon any subject and that no individual or group should be offered special protection, but that joking about WW2 airmen is disrespectful and ‘too soon’.

I would suggest that if you find the Mitchell and Webb sketch offensive then you are weak minded, too readily offended and need to get over it, and get over WW2, in much the same way that women, homosexuals and non-caucasians need to learn to take it on the chin from such masters of their craft as Davidson and Manning. 😮

Any more of this sort of chat and I will start whining about ‘censorship’ and ‘Big Brother’, as many of the defenders of Manning and Davidson do. You cannot even joke about WW2 airmen any more without some whiner with no sense of humour trying to silence you…

One cannot have it both ways. Note that I haven’t expressed my own opinion on Mitchell and Webb as it is somewhat irrelevant.

I’ve only been to the new museum once, but I visited the old one fairly regularly as a child. I seem to remember the old museum being slightly better. The new one felt like a chilly barn when I was there, with vast windows looking out over pretty much nothing except the Clyde (not a picturesque strait by any means) and some bleak industrial remains. The building itself is visually arresting, but I decided to get to it via the Underground which required me to wander a fairly unloved corner of Glesga. The fancy landscaping adjacent to the site was already being overrun with Giant Hogweed last summer, and the final stretch from the station took me via some sort of underpass/overpass system that had ‘mugger country’ written all over it.

The old museum seemed to have more of an organic feel to it, as you stumbled upon exhibits rather than have them (idiosyncratically) laid out like the new site has. Nothing fancy, just a room full of old cars, a room full of railway and tramway locomotives and trains etc. I rather liked that! I’m either old enough or was only taken to a certain style of museum when I was younger, but my memory of several museums were of there being generally more exhibits, less interpretation, less interactive technology and less ‘steering’ and ‘signposting’. I feel that both East Fortune and the National Museum of Scotland have gone down the route of thinning out the exhibits but pushing for certain agendas instead. Not a bad thing, but I preferred the whimsy of being a small boy surrounded by big machines, rather than a sole exhibit that is meant to make us all feel great pathos for individual or group X. The old one was also a barn of a place, but you could find yourself wandering down long lines of trams or upstairs (?) in the room full of model ships and feel like you were in separate places. The new museum felt, to me, like an Ikea that happened to have old cars pinned to the walls; you were very much meant to observe and interact with the exhibits, and form your opinions about them, in a certain way. I felt like I was missing out on something, yet I saw the entire exhibition fairly quickly. Some sections of the old museum, such as the underground station reproduction and the historic street, are laid out much as I remember them from before, which is pleasing.

Overall, I’m not sure what to make of the new museum.