snafuOh dear…guess who has dropped himself in it. Again?
Jeremy Clarkson is in trouble again. This time, the controversial Top Gear presenter has been slammed for glamourising drink driving after a tweet about beer in his cup holder.
While the rotund broadcaster did not suggest he was drinking the ale, he was heavily attacked on Twitter and Instagram, and branded a “bloody idiot”.Jeremy Clarkson
One of the best drives of my life. Gravel road. M6. Sun going down. iPod playing Blind Faith. Beer in cup holder.
On that link there is a list of other events where Clarkson has acted the fool.
snafuit comes as a GREAT surprise to me that J BOYLE and SNAFU would agree on ANYTHING given what i’ve read on here in the last couple of yrs.
I reserve the right to agree with anybody, and also to disagree with anybody as well. Even Edgar.
I actually find the incessant stirring utterly depressing
I agree, but how would we know if you stopped it?
Shouldn’t that be a vulture’s back?
No, the idiom doesn’t work since vultures are not known for their water resistance – hence ducks.
snafuThere’s this one http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?132562-Virgin-Galactic-spaceship-crashes-during-California-test-flight
Rats. Ok, I admit I’m the idiot who clicked on Trip Reports by acciddent… It was the next one down from Commercial, I tell you!
snafuNo, Hampy. (See below)
is it asking too much for the film producers to, at least, get the history right and not deviate into flights-of-fantasy just because they believe it is more entertaining?
It won’t sell seats that way; usually make do is much cheaper and keeps the accountants happy. And anyway, history can be…influenced by a film:
While visiting Bletchley Park I have clearly overheard visitors telling each other that the anels explaining the first capture of Enigma machines are incorrect, because BP displays say it was RN personnel who captured it first, but the visitors ‘know‘ it was first captured by USN because they ‘remember seeing it “on TV” somewhere…‘ And I’ve heard that sort of comment from both Brits and Americans looking at the display
First captured by the RN, yes, but it was actually on sale – for both commercial and military use – from 1923 onwards, and the Poles had broken the encryption as early as 1932.
Yes I did realise that, having seen both movies 🙂
Both movies?
At the battlefield the locations of where men fell are marked (the bodies are buried elsewhere, even then the Army sent remains home to be buried.
Well, it was only officers bodies that were sent home (or more likely Fort Leavenworth) at the time – unless you were part of the Custer clan (two of his brothers, one a civilian, a civilian nephew and a brother-in-law died with him) or your family was prepared to take the body away without utilising military resources. The bodies were initially buried where they fell (1879) and later (1881) reburied in the on site cemetery – stakes were left in the ground to denote where the bodies had been and these were later replaced with the current markers (1890). More recently (1999 onwards) markers have been placed to indicate where native American warriors fell.
BTW – fascinating fact that most of the world believes Custer and all the men of the 7th Cavalry were massacred at Little Big Horn; just the men who rode with him died, another battalion followed behind, scouting further along the valley from where they had come whilst a company escorted the supply wagons but both arrived too late to assist him, whilst his 2ic’s battalion was meant to ride into the camp to rout the natives but either encountered a lot of resistance and retreated or (if you believe Custer’s wife) the coward in charge left Custer to die by not trying to push through the middle of the attacking warriors to help him. Either way the cavalry had initially been split into three distinct battalions and only one battalion – Custer’s – was completely wiped out (except for one native scout and one horse – Comanche – although other horses could have been taken by the victorious warriors). That is not to say that those two surviving battalions had it easy – they joined up and (with the wagon train and its escort) were apparently under siege for another day before relief arrived, but then what do you expect when you try to ambush a camp where (unbeknown to them) a mass pow-wow of various tribes was being held?
Incidentally, did this documentary mention that a large number of those who died alongside Custer apparently took their own lives rather than be captured? This information was known about – the native Americans never kept it secret – but it took 100 years before a history book came out and made it ‘official’, and even then that information had been essentially suppressed (apparently at the request of the government) for over 40 years due to the unpopular idea that US Cavalrymen would commit suicide in action.
(Had to do some background research into an Englishman who died in the battle…)
snafuThe expectation at the time was that the natives would torture any captives since the bodies of previous captives were usually found naked and mutilated, hence the troopers would be eager to go as ‘painlessly’ as possible. But they didn’t notice that the bodies of those killed before capture were also stripped and mutilated – a tradition reserved for the dead: native Americans usually killed any captives immediately (to the point that there might even be a fight for the honour to do it; the sounds of intermittent gunfire heard by the surviving soldiers after they knew Custer and his men were defeated were the coup de grâce being dealt out prior to scalping) unless they were children (who were adopted) or young women (who were ‘adopted’ and eventually married into the tribe), stripped them and then mutilated the body so that it would not be happy in the ‘happy hunting ground’. The myth of torture has been perpetuated by most western’s – at least until they stopped being so one sided.
Apparently Custer’s ear drums were pierced so that he could hear better in the afterlife, because he hadn’t been listening to the natives when he’d been alive…
snafuFlown one of those.
Ok, it was in Flight Simulator…;o)
snafu“….He was told he couldn’t be admitted as a single man….”
I would have though that in itself was illegal ?, as it would need to apply to women as well.
…it does – as already mentioned – which was why I didn’t put ‘single man’ in the title.
So, does anyone know of other sites that apply such rules?
snafuFortunately I missed the the lusting after Tom Daley – but how ironic given that he is openly homosexual.:o
I’m sure you can still lust after him, Charlie: he is not only available during the olympics…;o)
You would have thought though, that all children would be supervised. Either by parents or school teachers ?
Perhaps they should have said that children must be accompanied by an adult at all times. There couldn’t
have been any argument with that…
But in the same way that there used to be women who were unknowingly married to closeted gay men, known as ‘beards’, might not some adults come in with their own children to camouflage their intentions?
snafuObviously something is pushing it…;o)
But it will never get anywhere near that speed on a British road unless they sort out the potholes!
snafuPersonally I do most of our shopping at Sainsbury Kings Lynn anyway, largely because it’s a new store with massive wide aisles.
Don’t get too used to it, apparently the shopper doesn’t like being in wide aisles since the feel too open and exposed. At least, that is what the marketing guys say, giving them the opportunity to reduce the aisle width and stick another coffee shop, launderette, shoe repair kiosk or MacKing burger counter in the newly available gap – which has happened in several of the larger supermarkets around my way. At least that makes it difficult to leave their flaming great stock trollies in the way of the baked beans or breakfast cereal.
snafuFirst things first Charlie. Let’s deal with and cure all the simple problems first and then we might gain sufficient expertise to solve the complex ones.
Like the common cold rather than cancer, or maybe ebola…?
snafuWithout – I hope – tempting fate, is this day, the day that Nigel and UKIP take their first confident steps on the path to Government ?
Sounds a little like my sister back in the days when she was apparently going to be Mrs Simon Le Bon; if only she knew then that she never would, but instead marry a railway manager from Braintree…
Yes, as the old saying goes: if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. English beggars, obviously. We don’t want none of your foreign beggars around here, thank you.
snafu‘Keep the unemployed out of work’…..are you serious?
Does the government also live in a massive castle on top of a high mountain that’s surrounded by impenetrable thorn bushes? Do they have cellars full of gold coins that they’ve stolen from simple folk that live in the shires…
(Local government does in Hampshire…!)
Which is cheaper – pay benefits to the unemployed and have people moan about scrounging, or organise a group for them to get together with a couple (or more) of focused and knowledgable individuals who can help and assist those who need or want the help?
I visited such a job club last year which was run by a coupe of retired ladies and an ex navy officer – all volunteers – who all had experience in the careers field who were doing a marvellous job with the unemployed and had a fantastic success rate at getting people back into work; but the club was closed in the summer when local government decided they could no longer afford to organise the power, computers or accommodation for them. The outlay was already accounted for and there were no wages to pay out so the cost was effectively minimal, so now those unemployed who would have benefitted from attending are having to do it by themselves – and some of them are just not equipped to do that, and probably never will be.
Poisoned apples are undoubtedly against some H&S regulation, but I shall let someone else come up with the page and paragraph number.
Just to clarify. Winter Fuel Payment does not depend on any temperature being reached and is paid to all pensioners automatically. The Cold Weather Payment is an addition paid to the vulnerable pensioners when the winter weather is very cold.
I stand corrected, thank you; too much listening to OAPs on Radio 5, I think.
Of course there is the possibility that they use it to buy a few tins of kitty chunks for Tibbles or another bottle of gin instead…;o)
snafuBut he can change his mind, can’t he Charlie? After all, that is exactly what proper politicians quietly do whenever convenient (and hope that no one remembers what they had previously promised…).
snafuWe must, of course, remember that the Liberal-Democrats didn’t win the last general election…
Nobody did, really. The Libs could just as easily gone in with Labour so that the Tories were the opposition. Now that would make Johnny-boy foam at the mouth.
# 68 – Precisely so and if anyone seriously believes that the the UK is a worse place to live in now than it was 50/80 years ago then they are living in another world.
Indeed, but it is all relative. Here is part of a fascinating interview with a chap called Harry Leslie Smith, who was an RAF wireless operator during WWII, about his life:
What was it like growing up in Barnsley in interwar Britain?
I don’t know how you can sum it up because it was so brutal – there was no other word for it. I was born five years after the end of the first world war. That alone was a disaster that crippled soldiers. That’s the trouble with wars, too: after a war, the government doesn’t give a damn about the soldiers. There were guys with no arms or legs who were living under the same desperate circumstances as everyone else.
My elder sister died in the poorhouse at the age of six from tuberculosis. For a young kid, I think the worst part about it was – I just couldn’t keep up with my studies. For one thing, we couldn’t stay in the same place – I must have gone to at least six or seven schools by the time we’d finished hopping around because we couldn’t pay the rent here or something else. And then this job I had which took from after school until just about dark and on Saturdays. So I was just ******** by the time it came to weekends.
Do you remember your youth as a time of hunger?
Oh yes, absolutely. If you didn’t have a job, you didn’t have money; if you didn’t have money, you didn’t have food – that’s the whole point. That’s why I did this barrowboy job as a child. I got four shillings a week and managed to put a little bit more food into the house. I had a maths teacher – Froggie Dawson – he was a rather fattish man, with a corpulent body. I remember one time I hadn’t gone to school for a couple of days; it was in the winter, and the snow was on the ground, and so when I came back, at the end of the class, he made me stay behind, and demanded to know: “How come you were off school yesterday and the day before?” And I remember lifting up my shoe – and I had cardboard there for a base, and it was all soggy. So he said – go home now, get there as quick as you can, and see me after school tomorrow. So after school the next day, when all the others had gone, he reaches into his drawer for a pair of shoes. And they were a bit big but I knew I could stick some newspaper in the front, and I thanked him profusely [sobs]. We didn’t have any hope at all that I could remember, until after 1945. We just didn’t believe they were going to do anything about it, because we existed under such a cruel system for so long…
…You’ve told David Cameron to keep his “mitts” off the NHS. What would happen if the NHS was dismantled?
Then you’d be back to my early childhood when the rich could buy care and the rest of them had nothing. They either lived or died according to their genes or their strength or will or something. It’s not fair. I think everyone has the right to his life and to live it to the best of his ability. To even think we could live without an NHS is just unbelievable to me, and I think it’s about time governments really worked to fund it properly, even at the expense of getting some of these rich people paying more taxes.
What’s your fear about the situation facing people in Britain today?
Even now I shudder to think what people are going through to feed their children. It’s so bloody unnecessary as far as I can see. It’s appalling. It’s all these zero hour contracts – how could the government allow something like that to even come into existence? You can’t take money from the average worker and not from the big businesses. The government hand everything out now to private companies – in the old days, the government used to be the ones who looked after everything. How the hell can you privatise water? It’s the basis of life.
What advice would you give to Ed Miliband?
I spoke with him at this year’s Labour conference and actually I told him – I said, you have a chance now to be a prime minister who will go down in history! But you have to assert yourself and you have to make it clear who you are and what you’re planning to do! But it didn’t seem to work. He said, “Yes, yes,” and patted my arm. And it’s true – anyone who came up now with a good plan to rule Britain could rule it for the next 20 years, because it’s at the stage where it can be saved and it could be saved.
What message would you give to my generation?
First of all, I would suggest that voting should be made compulsory, and until it is, what they have to do is get up off their arses and go to cast their vote. If they don’t like any of the people who are on the ballot, spoil the ballot! Spoiled ballots are counted too, they might not realise it – and if the government comes to power and finds only 37% of the people are voting for them and the rest are saying, “**** on you!” maybe there’ll be some changes.
Britain is seen as a rich country today, despite the need for food banks and soup kitchens, despite the fact that OAPs cannot all afford to heat their homes when it is not quite cold enough for winter fuel benefit to kick in, when job clubs and other unemployed assistance groups are being closed to save money and keep the unemployed out of work.
At least we haven’t gone back to workhouses; not yet anyway, but give them time…
The only way that I will snuff it early is by drowning in a bog of your claptrap. If you want to join in with the ‘grown-ups’, try to be be sensible and less juvenile.
Which. essentially, means bow down before me, say and do nothing to displease me, do not question my wisdom since you are not worthy, and NEVER make a spelling mistake in any communication with me and expect me to take you seriously… Pompous, self important windbag. (Watch how he takes TonyT to task later for mixing up ‘non’ and ‘none’ – post 79 – although he might let him get away with it since they would both hate to be seen to spout a French word, no matter how silly it makes the sentence if you read it properly!!!)
Isn’t that right, Greeny?
I like the idea but, I think that a turd is much more in keeping
One of yours, or maybe ‘St’ Nigel would oblige?
You can reply to more than one post within a single post. Also, what is with the formatting here? Nobody uses the quote function when replying to a thread but uses the tedious ‘RE#’ syntax, yet you can make four or five concurrent posts?
It boosts his post rate. And he hates having to reply to just a small part of the post so he blats the whole lot and leaves you to figure out what on earth he is referring to…
Anyway, RE 74, ‘grown ups’ don’t fall for UKIP’s reactionary, paint-by-numbers guff, so take a leaf out of your own book.
Come on, have a little respect – he is in the grasp of political dementia and needs all the sympathy he can get. And don’t you know it it is Autumn – all his leaves have long left the branch…
Nigel would.
Yes, I’ve heard that it is written on the wall in the Ukip headquarters toilets. Tee, hee?
Are you really Snafu thinly disguised ?
I’ve had a quick look and come to the conclusion that I am not him, and he is not me. Not that that will satisfy you, but maybe if you ask me what number I’m thinking of and we’ll see if meddle can guess the right figure?
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