Britain - The Official Thread

[DG_Silva]

Barry Cryer is the last of his style of comedian - genuinely funny and able to get a laugh out of anything. Incredibly talented, he will be sadly missed.

'I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue' is fantastic show, and Barry Cryer was a worthy permanent replacement for the great Willie Rushden. If you've never heard it, try it here:

Spoiler: Possible swear words and double entendre

And for those wondering about the origins of Hamish and Dougal, 'You'll Have Had Your Tea?':

Spoiler: See above

 

[Liquid]

Barry Cryer is just one of them, isn't he? Just a funny bloke, A-Z. Will be sorely missed.

He wrote the Cupid Stunt material where his alternative was Mary Hinge.

 

[HenrySwanson]

 

[MatskiMonk]

Sue Grey report is in...

 

[Moglet]

Amendments to the Highway code apparently come in this week... I'd seen a bunch of click-baity headlines a couple of weeks ago, and dismissed the subject, but.. it does seem to be a thing.


View attachment 1108194

"....should give way to pedestrians crossing or waiting to cross a road into which or from which you are turning" is an interesting one. There are certain bits of Cambridge (and I imagine other cities too) where this, if you were sticking to the changes as described, would mean you couldn't make a turn until the shops close because there are pedestrians waiting to cross constantly during the day. At Christmas it would be even worse. I imagine there will usually be a pedestrian who lets you cross into/out of the junction but it feels like we should have more traffic lights at junctions like this to help the flow of both road and foot traffic.

Interestingly over the weekend I gave way to a cyclist as they approached my car on the left just before I was due to make a turn. I slowed down to let them go but they slowed down too (right in my blind spot) and we both ended up coming to a halt.

 

[Jimlaad43]

Silent changes like this to the Highway Code happening every year is why I'd support driving licenses having a 10-ish year expiration and require you to pass (at least) a Theory test again before you can get the second one. The amount of people on the roads who once passed their test, but now are just absolute dangers on the road is too many. Making it mandatory to prove you still know how to drive every so often would massively improve the driving of some people who will suddenly have to take it seriously again.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Language warning, NSFW and all that.

Spoiler: Language warning

Like a Hogwarts for wankers, where you get taught Latin and Tax Avoidance

 

[MatskiMonk]

So, some current polling

A reasonable shift to LAB from CON, and little movement for the Lib Dems or Greens... If you're a Tory, and this represents you...

.. why would you switch to the opposite party, and not shift to something closer to your political ideology like the Liberal Democrats? The answer is obviously likely to be tactical voting, but why are we so obsessed with being a two party country?

 

[PeterJB]

So, some current polling

View attachment 1112990

A reasonable shift to LAB from CON, and little movement for the Lib Dems or Greens... If you're a Tory, and this represents you...


View attachment 1112989

.. why would you switch to the opposite party, and not shift to something closer to your political ideology like the Liberal Democrats? The answer is obviously likely to be tactical voting, but why are we so obsessed with being a two party country?

A large number of the defectors to Labour are probably the people who defected to the Tories two years ago. I imagine a lot of people do want to vote for a third party (myself included), but if you're the only person who does then it changes nothing, and there's no way of knowing if a large chunk of the population are planning to do the same thing, unless there is a complete collapse of a majority party that can't be ignored. People start up new parties all the time, and social media can inflate their sense of self and popularity, and then you get to the ballot box and find out basically nobody has voted for them.

 

[Liquid]

Because of FPTP. It encourages, almost demands, tactical voting. It's only going to get worse with the gerrymanding the Tories will introduce (Wales losing ten seats!).

 

[Famine]

I imagine a lot of people do want to vote for a third party (myself included), but if you're the only person who does then it changes nothing, and there's no way of knowing if a large chunk of the population are planning to do the same thing

Conservatives lose 20% across the lifetime of that upper chart, falling from 50% to 30%. Labour gains 10%, rising from 30% to 40%, with the rest divided across other parties. That tells you that a large chunk of the population is switching allegiances.

Conservative and Labour are largely opposed in principle (although at the moment the Labour leader is Tory enough to be a Tory 25 years ago, and the Conservative party is a bag of mad nationalist nutters led by an on-paper libertarian but in-practice a power- and money-hungry gibbon who'd sell his many children for a year more in Number 10) so it makes no sense to switch from one to the other. If the 20% who switched away from the Conservatives all went to the Lib Dems - who are essentially between the two but a little bit more liberal than either - the three main parties would all be at 30% each.

People do it because they don't want "x" to win, so they vote for "-x". But they don't seem to get that a vote for "y" (more closely aligned to their values than "-x" is) also means "x" won't win.

While the Lib Dems don't seem to get as many seats as their voting percentages would seem to indicate, even 50 would prevent a majority and force a coalition. Sure, you might get a blue tie in Number 10, but he or she can't do anything without yellow tie backing.

Enough people are switching parties. They just need to stop thinking "well, no point voting for a third party because if nobody else does it...".

 

[Rage Racer]

Liz Truss doesn't recognize Russia's sovereignity over Voronezh and Rostov regions.

Top British diplomat refused to recognize Voronezh and Rostov as part of Russia — source

After Truss’ statements urging Moscow to move its forces, located on Russia’s soil, away from the border with Ukraine, Sergey Lavrov asked his British counterpart if she recognized Russia’s sovereignty over the Voronezh and Rostov Regions

tass.com

 

[MatskiMonk]

Liz Truss doesn't recognize Russia's sovereignity over Voronezh and Rostov regions

Person in charge of Brexit negotiations doesn't know what she's on about...?

 

[Rossell2]

Future candidate for Prime Minister there... Apparently....

 

[PeterJB]

She fancies herself the next Thatcher so I think she's trying to have her Falklands moment.

 

[UKMikey]

So long as she doesn't have a Pinochet moment.

Meanwhile our government appears to be following US Republicans in trying to stamp out independent political thought in our educational establishments.

Nottingham school criticised after pupils slam PM in lesson

A school is criticised after pupils wrote a letter that called for Boris Johnson to resign.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[DG_Silva]

So long as she doesn't have a Pinochet moment.

Meanwhile our government appears to be following US Republicans in trying to stamp out independent political thought in our educational establishments.

Nottingham school criticised after pupils slam PM in lesson

A school is criticised after pupils wrote a letter that called for Boris Johnson to resign.

www.bbc.co.uk

There's a world of difference between independent political thought for 16 year old, and telling 9 year olds to write a letter about something they are too young to know about.

 

[UKMikey]

There's a world of difference between independent political thought for 16 year old, and telling 9 year olds to write a letter about something they are too young to know about.

Citation required. Does somebody flip a switch in their heads when they turn sixteen or something to turn "too young to know" into "able to think independently"? But because they criticised Boris they must have been indoctrinated somehow? Not sure when Year 6 pupils were supposed to be "9 year olds" either. I'd be more suspicious if they disagreed with the 73% of adults polled by YouGov that think he's doing a terrible job at following the rules he set down for everyone else.

I remember my primary school holding a mock election in their final year. We had a Labour candidate, a Tory kid, and a mock Communist each of whom laid out manifestos and debated on stage. My ten-year-old schoolmates and I listened to all the issues and decided the Communist kid made the best points of all three. All except for one boy who insisted "my dad says it's all a pack of lies." If any of us had been indoctrinated with party politics, I know which of us I'd've bet my money on.

To speak in more general terms, at some stage we have to leave the bad faith arguments by the door and start putting our faith in teachers to do the job they've been trained to and are paid to do. The alternative is telling them to teach kids only what we want them to learn. I've seen which way that's going in parts of the United States and it doesn't look like it's doing their general level of education any good at all.

 

[andrea]

I'm not surprised, I'm just disappointed.

 

[Famine]

I'm not surprised, I'm just disappointed.

By what/in whom?

There's no admission of guilt (but it doesn't look great), and he's giving lots of money ("substantial", whatever that means) to her anti-sex-trafficking charity.

 

[Barra333]

Does this protect him from legal prosecution? The article only specifies the civil case.

 

[Liquid]

Whatever happens, the stink of this case will linger around Andrew for the rest of time.

 

[Famine]

Whatever happens, the stink of this case will linger around Andrew for the rest of time.

To be fair, as soon as the jokes started he was tainted. It would have happened even if it had gone to court and he was cleared - even in a criminal court. It would just have been "rich people with better lawyers get away with 'x' again", and "two-tier justice system" from the armchair Kavanaughs.

A quick glance at Twitter is... to be expected, but surprisingly one-sided. I've seen lots of "sure, a guy who pays huge sums to shut her up is clearly innocent, chinny reckon", but very few "she shuts up about it for enough cash, clearly only in it for the money" - which I wasn't expecting.


He maintains his innocence and apologises for being friends with Epstein even after his original sex offence conviction and for "maligning" Giuffre, while giving money to her charity to combat sex trafficking, and she - the victim of the alleged offences - has accepted that.

 

[PeterJB]

Well this is a hoot. Power's still on for now but there are streets half a mile away with outages.

 

[merseyxshore]

 

[Famine]

Angry Scottish mucky supermop and COVID/vaccine denier Neil Oliver is now also a wind-denier. What a surprise.

In the meantime, 0.3% of the UK population is watching the same livestreamed YouTube channel of planes trying to land at Heathrow (Big Jet TV, if you care).


Ahhh, I remember only a couple of months back when we had a red warning for wind up here and it knocked out power to half of Northumberland for over a week, and it was trending all over social media non-stop.

Oh wait, no, that didn't happen. Because we don't have any weather up here.

 

[Dreadmed]

In the meantime, 0.3% of the UK population is watching the same livestreamed YouTube channel of planes trying to land at Heathrow (Big Jet TV, if you care).

Guilty as charged. 😄

 

[sirjim73]

Angry Scottish mucky supermop and COVID/vaccine denier Neil Oliver is now also a wind-denier. What a surprise.

In the meantime, 0.3% of the UK population is watching the same livestreamed YouTube channel of planes trying to land at Heathrow (Big Jet TV, if you care).


Ahhh, I remember only a couple of months back when we had a red warning for wind up here and it knocked out power to half of Northumberland for over a week, and it was trending all over social media non-stop.

Oh wait, no, that didn't happen. Because we don't have any weather up here.

0.31%



If anyone needs the link 😉

At least he's somewhat entertaining and knowledgeable.

I do take your point though 👍

 

[Sprite]

Well this is a hoot. Power's still on for now but there are streets half a mile away with outages.

View attachment 1115176View attachment 1115177

My partner opened our back door to let the dog out just as a gust came. The wind was enough to lift a pane of glass in a skylight at the top of our stairs which then came smashing down our stairs and covers everything in glass.

 

[UKMikey]

Ahhh, I remember only a couple of months back when we had a red warning for wind up here and it knocked out power to half of Northumberland for over a week, and it was trending all over social media non-stop.

Oh wait, no, that didn't happen. Because we don't have any weather up here.

"You call that a storm?..."