JonesyInteresting illustration of prole social activities. What does ‘grab a granny’ mean ! I getting a hint that it means that my granny would not feel safe in some of the mean streets of Liverpool.
Its funny…as mentioned explaining Grab a Granny at first seemed difficult. Then I remembered it was unnecessary to make much of an effort. Essentially it is the act of picking up a more mature and perhaps, more grateful, companion for mostly pointless and meaningless future congress.
Its about the same as what you toffs call ‘dating’ John.
JonesyWell, that’s all a bit weird. Remember all of that – except the inverted dwarf racing.
I was always in Flannagans basement in the early nineties, drinking stupid amounts of Guinness (it was the law). There were some seriously good bands on down there, or it seemed like it anyway.. Started going to Guinans after my mate was barred from the Jac – sure you’d have gone there too. If you ever went downstairs there you’d probably have had to suffer me doing crap, p*ssed doors covers on open mic night (which was most nights?). I got thrown out of there myself once for arguing over.. something, might have been a jumper. Bouncer took me out the back door first, to teach me not to argue – then out the front, where I landed on my head. Things were different then, no-one got sued, my mates told me I probably deserved it and I went home happy enough and bleeding.
Other places – Flute on Hardman Street, Pilgrim, Ye Cracke, Dr Duncan’s, Dispensary (that came later), Grapes, Phil of course, AJ up by the Uni, the Cambridge (getting more bohemian this way), Peter Kavanagh’s.. and more. Loads more in fact.
But here’s the one. Do you remember Casablanca when it was a proper dodgy club, not a bar (ex-dockers bar at that)?
Have to beg the wider boards indulgence for this departure from normal service, I’m sure John Green and myself trading insults is not something widely missed anyway, this is a lot more fun for me anyway!.
Flanny’s live acts were fantastic….tiny little stage in the back corner away from the bar but, owing to the ceiling being about 6ft2 up to the bottom of the RSJ’s holding up the floor above (I remember this stat clearly as I’m 6’4″ and didn’t always remember the discrepancy at the time!), the acoustics were extraordinary. Never forget there was a duo on there one weekend singing the full Beatles repertoire and, towards the end of the night, he says ‘well people….time for just the one last Beatles track’ and strikes up with ‘Wonderwall’ and nails it cold. The whole place erupted in hysterics….some awesome nights!.
The Jac was a funny place….it seemed to pick up directly in sync with Guinans though so, whenever we went in there, it was a bit deserted and didnt really appeal….any time it was busy we were staked out in a booth a couple of doors up guarding our collection of empty glasses from roving glass collectors. The posh place up the road I’ve just looked up…it was the Baa Bar…apparently still there!.
The Dispensary is a blast from the past….much later on for me too. Jimmy, the guy who ran the place, was a legend and a good mate of mine, and one of the aforementioned former prop forwards, Andy Douglas used to stand in for Jimmy behind the bar at times. He was going to take over the place but then some….er….financial irregularities were supposed to have cropped up so it fell through. Might have been closer to 2003-5ish by then though, but, it was every bit a cracking old school boozer!.
The Casa I never tried or at least I dont have a clear memory if I did….someone had had a bad time there or as we were a large-ish gang of lads together we were warned off it….one of those places people talk about, like Quad Park, that i just never did!. Did you ever get out as far as The Grafton?. Miserable dive of a place but epic fun for a game of ‘Grab a Granny’!.
JonesyIts quite likely you’ve literally tripped over me at some point then….I was on occasion found comfortably passed out in one of the many covered doorways down Slater Street!.
If you ever frequented Guinans on Slater Street, in the early 90’s, we were often, when I was home, to be found in a corner booth under a dense pall of cigarette smoke with a very large collection of empty shot glasses on the table. There was a poncy place over the road and down a bit towards Bold Street, who’s name escapes me now, that we would visit also. Memorable as the Liverpool players used to drink there on occasion so the wannabe WAGs would hunt in packs there in the most incredibly short skirts imaginable. We’d get our free entertainment there for the start of the evening and then move on to the blues club for proper music and drinking.
In that timeframe you may have also witnessed what we termed ‘inverted dwarf racing’. A couple of our number were lads of diminutive stature….at least half a dozen were lads who played prop forward or no.8 for the school back in the day. If you recall how straight, and pedestrianised, Bold Street was in those days you see how it made a great running track. Taking a ‘volunteer’ shorty by the ankles, holding up in the air and racing between the litter bins was greatly amusing at the time. With hindsight its a miracle we didnt hospitalise anyone….but then we barely had any sight at all at the time let alone hindsight.
The other place we were to be found was the basement of Flannagans down on Matthew Street if you ever got that far down towards the river?. There was always a live act on downstairs and a massive atmosphere. There was also the cocktail bar Labinsky’s on the opposite corner where the posh girls drank and who we, mysteriously, never did very well with?. The busker on the corner there was always good for 10 minutes entertainment as well. Notable as his guitar was a cardboard cutout and he’d stand there pished off his skull making strumming noises. When you’re 19 and equally diluted yourself this is a real attention grabber I recall.
Anyway my sincere thanks for giving me the excuse to trip back over those memories….part of me hopes you dont recognise any of them!!!
JonesyWhat’s this ? Dissension in the ranks ? Can’t have that. Let’s have the chorus of the Red Flag.
“The working class can kiss my #rse; I’ve got the foreman’s job at last!”
Ironically that works just as much the other way around John. There are areas that I grew up that I’m distinctly persona non grata because I made something of myself….I drive a nice 4×4 and I wouldn’t be able to leave it parked outside the pubs I used to fall out of in my formative years. Which I find deeply sad.
This is precisely the ‘have’ vs ‘have not’ factor that led to the Leave success and is, ominously, becoming an accepted and legitimate thing.
JonesyJonesy, your theory about ‘nicking dole money’, along with earlier comments.. are there 17 million on the dole, then? Sorry, but you seem to have lurched into DM made-up-land, where maths or logic need not apply as long as we can find a scapegoat.
Lefties are people worried about losing their dole? Thatcher’s lot did such a number all those years ago that there still seem to be very few, even among intelligent commentators like yourself, who remember what the word Labour means. It is a workers party – it’s just that a lot of these workers got laid off. The effect of the resulting frustration and disengagement has been to move these communities to the right, not left.
If their kids are getting jobs they are told they’ll lose them if they even think of joining a union. So very few have any idea of what ‘left’ even means (apart from a vague sense it’s something bad that involves 1970’s hair and Russia), never mind actually being it.
This was encouraged by decades of courting by the Conservative party via their ‘news’ outlets, while New Labour pursued the middle-class.
You surprised me earlier by equating EU membership with reduced social provision, when in reality the ‘hard right’ are loving Brexit because it gives them a free hand to screw everyone already relatively badly off without basic legal restraint.
In fairness Beermat I did say mongrel confluence of left wing dole scroungers and over 60’s closet Enochs!. That is a flippant reply of course but equally offensive to both factions I feel….so there is balance. It also adds up to a very large number of people.
I’m not sure its so easy to label ‘Conservative rhetoric’ as a catchall foe here. I’m from Liverpool originally and I grew up through the Militant era effectively watching Orwells ‘primus inter pares’ in realtime. It was enough to ridicule socialism as a concept, for me, for life and nothing to do with any message of conservatism….which in the Liverpool of the late 70’s early 80’s was non-existent!.
I’ve seen, first hand, what happens when community core employers (Cammell Laird shipyard in my case) lay off entire workforces and the impacted community very definitely did not drift to the right!. Its still hardline labour today, 30 years after the fact, and the local party is even now busy trying to deselect Angela Eagle for having the temerity to attack their favourite bearded Trotskyist!.
There is a beautiful notion of Labours working class solidarity which, from what I’ve seen, does not stand up to a microseconds scrutiny when you actually live on one of the merseyside estates where Labour held sway. Lots of positive rhetoric is espoused, meaningful slogans written and earnest accords sworn about how they all stand as one and fall as one. In truth its just underpinned by shared misery and the socialist rhetoric disappears pretty quick when someone gets a good job with a company BMW!. Its a cynical view I’m afraid but one I’ve seen often enough to convince me its the accurate one.
With the point on the EU membership the battlebus £350mn message resonated with those easily led. People, ironically both far left and far right, genuinely did swallow the line that stopping payments to the EU would suddenly drop billions more into social welfare and NHS. The left because it served them financially and the right because it pandered to their message of immigrants gobbling up all our resources demanding more. The same people are, even today, whining about the Foreign Aid budget thinking that would be poured immediately into welfare if only we could stop giving it to fatcat Indians. The idiocy is palpable….which is the one unifying factor.
JonesyJones,
Although we broadly agree on most things, I have to disagree with your most recent post.
Take Nigel out of the equation. Pretend he never left the trading floor. What then? If UKIP had never existed, would the question have ever been asked. I suspect not. Now that the argument has been won, look at what the Tories are doing. They are running scared of UKIP. Grammar schools for example
The result of the referendum, allied with the total collapse of the Labour Party has led to a lurch to the right for the Tories. Not entirely surprising. No idea what will happen next.
Don’t see it that way Bruce. Farage was a symptom of the omnipresent schism inside the Conservative party towards Europe. He didn’t inspire it or lead some kind of insurrection. Tory Eurosceptics existed long before UKIP and were a far more extant threat to the Tory leadership. Here were going back before Major and Maastricht.
The Tories have lurched right, no question, then though the electorate just gave the impression of a massive right wing shift. Even though the majority of the 17mn that seemingly just returned a nationalistic vote are actually ardent lefties. Just lefties who didn’t want foreigners nicking their dole money.
Then there was the alleged unexpected Tory majority in the last election. Add that to Corbyns absolute dedication to the People’s Republic of Labour and its consequent comic opera quality….plus the Lib Dems disappearance from political life and there is no value in centre ground conservatism.
No-one is running scared of UKIP….there’s just nothing to stop the re-emergence of traditional conservative touchstones like grammars.
Regardless. Nothing here is impacted either way by Farages presence or lack there of!. Like I said he’s simply an opportunist. Personally I’d love to know honestly what his thoughts were when the voting result became obvious and he suddenly realised he had nothing in his hand to follow up with!. The idea of winning and then, in the process, losing everything must have been fascinating.
JonesyI’m at a complete loss to understand this visceral dislike of Nigel Farage from people who, to the best of my knowledge, have never met him.
I assume that they, like me, know him from his numerous television appearances and presentations and feel able to pronounce on his character from that aspect.
Superficial ,to say the least. What I glean from his public persona is that he is certainly a showman. He is certainly charismatic; two traits quite necessary for a career as a politician. Whether he is a charlatan; whether he is unscrupulous; whether he is a disreputable; whether he is a lying megalomaniac, I’m unable to say because I’ve never met him and thus am unable to make anything more than a speculative judgment about him as a person.
Those of you who oppose me, either know something that I do not or, are indulging in vitriolic character assassination in fulfillment of your prejudices.
For perseverance, conviction, and single minded determination to attain his ends, his successful effort to unshackle us from the EU is without parallel. One man, alone in the Brussels ‘lions den’, confronting time and time again the ‘ravening beasts’ and taming them !
For his unrelenting moral courage and determination I would be proud to call him a friend.
He’s an opportunist. He hasn’t faced anyone down. He hasn’t stood like Leonidas staring down the unstoppable hordes. He’s taken the EUs coin whilst decrying them at every turn.
The leave vote has not happened because of UKIP. The referendum was a sop to the Eurosceptics in the Tory party. It backfired not because of a rallying to Farages message…..Farage proved a liability with his refugees posters etc and got marginalised if you recall. Leave was driven by Gove, Boris and their merry entourage.
The vote itself was a mongrel confluence of ill educated inner city labour supporters who didn’t want to see their benefits cut any more and wanted to see their free baby milk and smoking patches maintained on the NHS. These alongside the over 60’s who secretly miss good old uncle Enoch, who never quite got over the defeat last time round and still think in terms of Spitfires and a week on passage to Australia!.
In short nothing whatsoever to do with Nigel Farage!.
If, following the Leave victory, he’d stepped up with a manifesto for Brexit with clearly plotted steps to take us out of the union showing the clear advantages he talked up I would have agreed that he at least had leadership potential. This was the culmination of his quest of many years. Did that happen?. No. He ran away. Where was his homework?. Where was his plan for post-EU Britain?. He’s been going for years at this and he had nothing to hand in?.
Of course he didn’t. He never thought he’d win so he never had to put the work in on actual answers!. He’d let better men like Carney bail him out!. Opportunist who got caught out. Traders, at least the slack ones, get caught like that daily in the city. They are ten a penny shysters too!.
JonesyWhat ever makes you feel good in support of the English settlers down under…
Hope you are pretending to be naive….whatever…
Its a common/standard practice when presenting your product to a client what standards/specs has been previously achieved so as to strengthen your case/product. That happens in almost every field and submarines are no exception. Are we to forget the so-called “combat proven” marketing stuff we so much hear about in case of air and land systems?
In this case, Scorpene class is the only non-nuclear submarine which represent the latest standards the French industry has achieved. There is no other specimen to back up the claims in support for the shortfin barracuda which is a non-nuclear submarine. I’m not saying every single stuffs… but yes, presenting Scorpene data for shortfin barracuda is not something out of this world theory.
Jang,
Once again. Scorpene is an export coastal boat. Shortfin Barracuda is an attempt at making an SSK do a Fleet submarine job. Apart from the Japanese boats, which are unique in service today, no one has tried this since the old Russian 641 Tango’s and maybe our O class back in the day.
Scorpene bears no relationship whatsoever to the kind of boat that Shortfin Barracuda will have to be. Showing details of Scorpene in some bizarre attempt to promote Shortfin would likely be so absurd as to jeopardise further business. The analogy would be someone wanting to buy Brahmos from India…would you send them details on Agni ‘because, well, it’s a missile isn’t it?’. It’s foolish.
Simply put you are wrong Jang now stop trying to contrive situations to fit your strange agenda.
JonesyWhere is anything I said there personal John!?. Are you incapable of straight rebuttal?.
Would you not care to comment on the ‘colossus’ who couldn’t win a seat in his own parliament?. Would you claim he hasn’t been feted by a US presidential candidate that is going to have an incendiary effect on the social harmony of our most important military ally should he be elected?.
Would you claim that those simple facts reflect a man who is either successful or particularly bright?. Take your time John I know these are difficult thoughts for you to entertain.
Personal achievements. Wearing my countries uniform, fathering 3 beautiful healthy and bright girls and not being one of the 17 million gullible morons who believed Farage would lead us anywhere!. That’ll do for starters!.
JonesyLooks like the voters of South Thanet mysteriously failed to recognise the colossus stood before them?. Tory majority of more than 3000 wasn’t it?. Maybe they weren’t worthy of him in that constituency eh?.
The kind of politician that explains away election campaign lies as a ‘mistake’ and joins the Trump bandwagon fully aware of the dangers a self-destructing USA represents for the UK and anglosphere in general.
He’s lucky, mouthy and a bit dim. He appeals to people of the same stripe. Seems they number in the millions now in the UK. Embarrassing really.
JonesyHmmmm…….Mr D Adams. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. All is explained.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, #2)
Begs the question of who or what imagined the existence of some of the posters on here! ???
JonesyWeren’t they part of Project Fear? Their opinions and forecasts are worthy of a place on this forum. In their accuracy, they rank alongside the CBI and Mark Carney.
No problem, a three year moratorium on foreign aid should cover it.
That would be the same Mark Carney who has been so thoroughly proven right John?.
….and your proposal represents a deepening of austerity doesnt it?. I thought Leave said we would be better off to the tune of £350mn a week…..now we have to knock off the Foreign Aid budget to make ends meet….correction….to catch up to where we were financially pre-vote!.
JonesyI’ll just leave this here…..the report is in the link.
“The downgrades to the BCC’s forecast for UK GDP growth imply that the UK economy will be £43.8 billion smaller at the end of the forecast period than previously predicted.“
JonesyTwo firings from two separate vessels? That is pretty embarrassing.
Two firings from two vessels that failed at different stages of the engagement profile is even worse…..cant blame a faulty component batch or poor storage like you could if the same fault hit both launches. Its not like there’s no competition in this weapons sector either…..both Marte ER and NSM are viable alternates here and both have recent export success.
JonesyProf. Roberts writes that united as we have always been by language, blood, custom, law and Parliamentary tradition we should look to re-awaken this force for good which combined, would make us the third largest power and commercial grouping in the world. Canada, Australia, New Zealand and GB with a combined population of 130,00,000 would have the third biggest economy and the third biggest defence budget.
Between these countries there would be free movement of peoples with full reciprocity in terms of employment, business and retirement. CANZUK would provide not only the right to take a job in a member state but also in one where jobs are actually available.
In dangerous times, that are as far as we know, likely to become even more uncertain and dangerous, I welcome the idea of a common defense budget allied with a common strategy; a kind of all for one; one for all Nato of the globe.
Bit past its sell by date this one at cursory glance. They are friends and in some cases family but you cant avoid the perception that this is a very UK-centric concept. Trading alliances sure….the obvious issue of logistics and distance kicks in which will naturally limit trade in some things out to the Pacific nations…we’ll need a lot more than this to cover the gap left by the EU…but common language and heritage clearly are advantages to be leveraged.
In a social sense I think the last thing any of those countries are looking for is a winding back of the clock to pre-Heath days though. Going forwards Oz and, to a lesser extent, NZ are pushing their Asia-Pacific identity to anchor and strengthen their places in the region. Canada’s Anglo-French issues will always remain too. Ties back to UK on grounds of grounds of heritage I’m sure will endure and free movement will foster that but regional/local opportunity will be increasingly more significant. In defence terms I’m not seeing a lot of sense here either?.
Australia, Canada and the Kiwi’s have a differing strategic focus and priorities than us simply by dint of geography. They are all Pacific facing where we aren’t really East of Suez anymore. Canada is already in NATO in Atlantic terms…so why the need for duplication?. Our forces are predominantly expeditionary focused wheras the others are much more defensively oriented. The Aussies have their primary defensive partnership with the US and are seeking a greater regional positioning and influence through relationships in their immediate sphere of interest….which is entirely correct for them. Not obvious to see where the synergies are I wouldn’t have thought?.
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