Guardian decides it is good

[Voltan (Man of Steel)]

I've got a vague memory of riding a donkey decades ago while my parents watched, encouraged even. They were different times.

[Jockice]

That Blind Date in an East End curry house was one I've never forgotten.

Was that the time I vomited on you?

[BlodwynPig]

I've got a vague memory of riding a donkey decades ago while my parents watched, encouraged even. They were different times.

That donkey is probably dead now. Makes you think.

[Ferris]

That donkey is probably dead now. Makes you think.

Can't judge them by today's standards.

[Jockice]

What is a fake cousin? Read the article but don't understand what the bloke means. And he didn't score her properly.

I had a fake cousin for one day when I was in the sixth form. My mate Simon who was in the year above me at another school spent a day in my place after he'd done his A-levels. Just an experiment to see if he'd get chucked out. He didn't. He even accompanied me to lessons where I told the teachers he was my cousin from Leeds. To the dinner ladies though he was my French penfriend. I've rarely known anyone who looked less French in my life. He had Yorkshire emanating from every pore.

[Jockice]

And then there's the Scottish non-Oxbridge people who actually do all the work there. But yes, it really is a hive of self-regarding posh sods. I've relayed it here before, but I still marvel at the time I walked in on a senior editor (of reasonable vintage) pleading into their phone: 'But Mumsy, we won't be able to get up to the cottage in Holt before Saturday now ... '

I went back to my desk and Googled 'subscriptions to Class War magazine'.

This chap didn't have a very similar surname to a certain Goon, did he?

[Endicott]

You rotten swine, you!

[kngen]

This chap didn't have a very similar surname to a certain Goon, did he?

Not a chap, which makes it worse, somehow.

[king_tubby]

NAME THEM

[Jockice]

NAME THEM

Michael Bentine.
Spike Milligan.
Harry Secombe.
Peter Sellers.


Happy to help.

[BlodwynPig]

NAME THEM

Van Morrison
Billy Harrison
Jim Armstrong
Viv Prince

[Ambient Sheep]

You've reminded me that I used to know a local band called "Them Again".

[BlodwynPig]

You've reminded me that I used to know a local band called "Them Again".

Them! cover band?

[holyzombiejesus]

On one of those programmes that follows police arresting drunks in city centres, a man stated he'd got in to a fight because "Someone was giving my cousin-in-law the big big big."

[jobotic]

You've reminded me that I used to know a local band called "Them Again".

"That Lot"*





* featuring Van Morrison

[Ambient Sheep]

Them! cover band?

Nope, not even sure if they were aware of the Van Morrison link, they certainly never mentioned it to me.  It was just a play on "Oh no, it's them again!" -- they changed from their original name (which I forget) after they overheard an early audience member saying just that and then decided to own it.

By the time I knew them(!) they'd changed it again to The Party Line, which was quite clever as they were both left-wing and liked partying.  They then stuck with that until they split up a few years later due to general lack of interest.  Shame though; great songs.

[NoSleep]

"That Lot"*





* featuring Van Morrison

Take Them (some sort of horrific hybrid like that Abba/Ramones one called Gabba).

[Icehaven]

Shocking number of btl commenters seem to think some hipster musician's obvious joke health regime (which includes having the surface of her eyeballs replaced with a special filter she invented herself) was real.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/shortcuts/2019/jul/17/peeled-eyeballs-isolation-tanks-and-neuroplastic-goals-is-grimess-training-regime-for-real

It says something that so many of them either haven't read the article before commenting, or even worse have and couldn't tell it wasn't entirely serious. What a cesspit.

[gilbertharding]

Of course - but we live in strange times. Most of the joke-missers have heard of Goop.

[holyzombiejesus]

Read this piece by Rachel Cooke about Thornberry in The Observer and, well...

many people are wondering for how much longer the vast majority of Labour MPs intend to put up with the stench that currently rises from their party.

And yet, at the top, the denial goes on; pegs are still on noses. On social media, elements of the party have attacked both the BBC and the whistleblowers, rather than focusing on the allegations themselves.

Len McCluskey... has called Tom Watson..."a fucking disgrace" for having dared to criticise Jennie Formby... while she is undergoing chemotherapy.

she will not countenance my use of the c-word – complicity – to describe her ongoing support for Corbyn, whom she insists is "very distressed" by the allegations. Though some believe that the buck for all this stops with him and that he needs to go...

Isn't there a sense that, for some on the left, the allegations are regarded as hysteria, as simply a weapon with which to attack its leader? And that while these attitudes go unchallenged by that leader and his acolytes, nothing will change?

Didn't she think it was a bit cheap of McCluskey to deploy Formby's cancer in the way that he did? (Margaret Hodge, a Jewish MP, has said that her illness has been "weaponised".)

Perhaps it's worth noting here that McCluskey, who has a child with Formby and who is also bound to play an important role in any future leadership contest, is said to be a fan of Thornberry's.

There's something straightforward about the way that she tells me, just before I leave, that it's "about time" the Labour party had a female leader.

[BlodwynPig]

my hatred of liberals knows no bounds. I see them everywhere now, on the TV, at Marks & Spencer's, in the leafy suburbs, UNDER THE BED

"There are today many Liberals in the UK. They are everywhere -- in factories, offices, butcher stores, on street corners, in private businesses. And each carries in himself the germ of death for society."

[Jockice]

Read this piece by Rachel Cooke about Thornberry in The Observer and, well...

Ex Tapton pupil. The school nearest to the one I went to. Not to be trusted.

[BlodwynPig]

David Mitchell and Victoria Coren's daughter ... is all grown up

[Johnny Yesno]

Read this piece by Rachel Cooke about Thornberry in The Observer and, well...

This is a bit naughty:

"We either have politicians interfering or we don't. If we are going to have a quasi-judicial process, which I think is the right thing to do, that doesn't sit with politicians being involved. I am torn about it. I really do want to get involved, but we also have a structural thing, which is that the NEC is in charge of the Labour party, and I'm not on the NEC. What I've tried to do throughout this period is to keep connections with the Jewish community – I go to everything I'm invited to – and to try and steer a line on our foreign policy that is reasonable, robust and even-handed and that is very difficult with issues like the Middle East, which is quite often a spur for a lot of this [antisemitism on the left]."

The square brackets, I mean. I doubt Thornberry meant 'antisemitism on the left' when she said 'this' as the 'clarification' suggests. I would wager she meant something less loaded and judgemental like 'antagonism'.

[BlodwynPig]

Her eyes follow you around the room, don't they...screaming "anti-semite!!!"

[ZoyzaSorris]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/30/boar-wars-how-wild-hogs-are-trashing-european-cities

Sorry to turn this into a general Guardian watch but just got annoyed by this dreadful article from someone who appears to have no natural history knowledge at all. Constantly boosts his anti-nature view that boar are a problem in Europe with evidence from the US and elsewhere where there is the small difference that they are NOT A NATIVE SPECIES. The awful rag is losing it's few remaining USPs now it seems to be steadily becoming anti-environment as well as anti-science in general.

[BlodwynPig]

Sorry to turn this into a general Guardian watch but just got annoyed by this dreadful article from someone who appears to have no natural history knowledge at all. Constantly boosts his anti-nature view that boar are a problem in Europe with evidence from the US and elsewhere where there is the small difference that they are NOT A NATIVE SPECIES. The awful rag is losing it's few remaining USPs now it seems to be steadily becoming anti-environment as well as anti-science in general.

I have noted this, not just in the Guardian. All out war on anything 'other', a tendency to celebrate  mankinds reign over the beasts of the earth, middle-class imperialism, the worst kind of imperialism.

Man can't find his place in the world, man decides to invest in a "new him" - technologically savvy, binary opinions, unusual pornography. This is the type of man we end up with. Rotten state of affairs.

[gilbertharding]

One for 'Up the Arse Corner', there.


(By which I mean, obviously, that in that photograph she has a stupid fucking look on her face as if she's just sat on something unexpectedly, and definitely not that I or anyone else here is imagining assaulting her - in case anyone from the Guardian happens to read this and draws some conclusion about Sick Misogynistic Chris Morris Fan Site ect ect).

[Ferris]

Saw this earlier today.

https://interactive.guim.co.uk/maps/embed/jul/2019-07-29T00:14:33.html

I had a lovely time in Montraal, but have never made it to Qumbec. That's Great Bear Lake that has cloned itself, and some of the lakes are in the Pacific Ocean.

Lovely work from the Grauniad subs. I'm not actually sure how they made this much of a mistake - did they drag the map around or something?

[DistressedArea]

Article a few days ago about people getting trapped inside their Agas. All Agas have had escape hatches since 1998!