I'm quite fond of a Gregg's once in a while - and of course N'cle is its home. But having followed your fine cuisine posts over the past few months I had you down for something rather more appetising! 😋
I'm quite fond of a Gregg's once in a while - and of course N'cle is its home. But having followed your fine cuisine posts over the past few months I had you down for something rather more appetising! 😋
But presumably not sitting in a sleazy snack bar sucking sickly sausage rolls 😉
Bart Simpson's parents named him Bart "because it doesn't rhyme with anything" 😳. I once worked with a Dick Herbert, whose parents, I always thought, were doubly cruel to burden him with both names
Absolutely barmy
If your surname were the same as the journo's you'd certainly be mindful of your child's first name
I think I preferred the ones with the Swiss flag - or was it Denmark (red with a white cross). Ironic that the people so hissy about the national flag make such a horlicks of painting it all over the shop
Immortal lines from the original ad as the Martians observe Earth from their spacecraft: "What is this place?" Reply: "It is called Huddersfield".
Seems to be right. There's a massive agricultural facility near me which was full of Eastern Europeans before Brexit - mainly Poles and Bulgarians (signs around the site such as for the washrooms all in Cyrillic back then). Now its all Kyrgyz. And yes, some of them put their flag in their windows!
gave it your awl and tried to shine, but never nailed it
You've got no sole, Simon. In fact you're an absolute heel. No wonder they gave you the boot.
Anyway the whole project is ashes now. Who would trust any of them after all that?
There was something very odd going on between Saltus, a very pushy financial firm publishing some sort of "wealth report" that does well for the clicks, and their PR firm Boldspace which appears to have dreamt up this report as a publicity vehicle, and this has never been explained.
I would still like to know the full story behind the Ali and Sally and Barry and Harry (or whatever they were called) who couldn't afford their school fees, as told to the Telegraph last May.
If you decided NOT to have the cup of tea you were going to have while doing it you can put it down as net zero ✅
😳!!!
LOL - to be honest I hadn't really thought about it till you asked and had to look up his dates on Wikipedia 😂
He was born in 1919 so that is unsurprising
👍
Joanna Southcott's box was a feature of my childhood. One of my father's catchphrases was "open the box" (possibly not unrelated to the Take Your Pick show on TV with Michael Miles). Always had a soft spot for the Panacea Society. The world was supposed to end in 2004 so we are on borrowed time
More people should take notice of your insights
At #HMAwards25 with all the team including of course @bbcdanw.bsky.social and @paullewismoney.bsky.social
The business model of acting to satisfy my demands as a drama consumer make no sense. You spend your career working your way up to a role in what I watch [obvs the pinnacle of your output] and then retire, as you are unable to suspend disbelief in the next thing, always associated with the last one
Could be Municipal Dreams TBH😉
No, and today is an Unbirthday - but always good to see that people are celebrating an Annie somewhere or other xx
She's got a stick in her hand!
People go on about how crap the BBC is these days but it is things like this that remind you it used to be even more crap. Toe curling.
So Keir Starmer says Rachel Reeves is "going nowhere". I think we can all agree on that 🙄
Glad someone has. They appear to have escaped the opprobrium that many people might feel they deserve. By the by, do you know the significance of the name change to MCIOD just before they went under? Does it even stand for anything? And Patron Properties? Linked?
Including mini-bonds 🙄
If you are into property developer shitshows the whole Empire fiasco of Doncaster saga is a page turner. Bankrupt Paul Rothwell, scion of a fish and chip firm with a swathe of failed businesses in his wake. (Search for "feather foot" on Companies House gives you a good start but there's much more.)
more here archive.is/202201311037...
Now you're talking 😜👍
I managed one more, that same summer. Wouldn't do it now - not even glamping with transport by helicopter and a hot tub on site. It was the Woodstock vibe that made it for me. An O2 concert with rain and expensive hotdogs isn't quite the same thing
IoW was pretty magical for me at my tender age. Sadly not the Dylan one but the year after and still very much in the spirit of Woodstock. Hitch-hiked and slept in a tent for the first time. While hitchhiking back, a coach to London broke down and I and my pal sneaked on to the replacement they sent
First festival I went to was no Glasto - but what a line up ! The second one was pretty good too - and just look at the prices!
Found an old brickphone in a drawer I rarely look in the other day. Back busted off and battery bulging. Wonder how many other people have ancient tech abandoned round their homes in similar condition
Bit like renting Venice for your wedding
Shopping
Mine too. But I am well acquainted with the bill for a plumber to fix monobloc taps and dual flush toilets - twice each since new in my home seven years ago. The "ordinary" taps and lever flush loo are fine and dandy. And I've never known a pull-the-chain loo fail apart from the chain breaking!
Single taps are easy to repair. Even an amateur can repair a Victorian tap with a new washer. Monoblocs often need replacing when they go wrong - or at the very least need a new cartridge. Hutber's Law. Ditto dual flush lavatories. They go wrong far more often than ones where you "pull the chain"
John Major had a good question which he said could be asked of anyone interested in a political career: what would you resign over? If there’s nothing, you’re just someone who wants to be an MP. You need something that you believe in.
like the adblockers who have "trusted partners" whose ads they allow through
There is good money to be made by someone who could develop an app that expunged the "you need to know just one thing to ...." or "the three words x said to ..." stories from ALL websites
Exactly. I don't have a problem checking for news when I "wonder what's going on in the world". I don't need to have stuff shoved at me and certainly not guff about a pothole in Sheffield or someone's opinion about the clothing of a minor celebrity
go to a butcher and chuck steak
I guess in a world where the names of the Rooney children Kai, Klay, Kit, and Cass are unremarkable, a quiverful of offspring called Harry, Larry, Carrie, Clarrie, Barry and Gary would not raise red flags 😉😜😂
and who? Saltus and Boldspace deny supplying the case study although the journalist said it came from Boldspace. Very odd. And what dd the jouralist think when she interviewed the case study? Or perhaps she didn't interview the case study - or someone was playing an elaborate hoax on her.....
@juliedoughty.bsky.social more questions in this thread
He was a journo too 🤭
www.fnlondon.com/articles/uk-...
Check out Saltus's relationship with Boldspace and Censuswide. That wealth report deserves some examination too while we're looking
who simply printed a not very informative statement from the Telegraph with no further questions asked
Was Saltus conned by its own PR people who made up the story with AI? Was it supposed to be a "take a hypothetical case of a family who ...." that somehow got mistranslated into a genuine case study. Who did the journalist interview? Anyone? The PR firm? Copied quotes from email? So many questions
"conduct the interview". Right. Press Gazette itself only manages to print a "statement" from the Telegraph with no further questions answered. Did Saltus approach the Tel with the story? Is it advertorial? Did they pay to place it? Did the Tel ask Saltus to cook something up for political reasons?
Also curious that IIRC (I think I read elsewhere) that far from pitching the story, the journalist was approached by the Tel to write the story and provided by them with the case study to write up. Happy to be corrected if that's not the case but if that is true it is seriously weird
So did the journalist not speak to the case study? Or was it just copy and paste of something supplied by the PR? And did the PR use AI rather than produce a genuine case study? so many questions ...
And raising of state pension age for women (Waspi)
What I find interesting is the source of the press release allegedly Saltus but looking every bit like fiction originated by AI. Or if it wasn’t why wasn’t it less of a dogs breakfast ?
But those tele jobs ARE content writing. The author of the scam piece clearly did not talk to the purported case study but wrote up a press release just as surely as Reach journalists copy and paste stuff about appliances and turntable ladders supplied by the fire service with no further input
You’re a bit of a plank, aren’t you?😉
My thoughts exactly. Don't mess with strong women
If you've ever heard the phrase "friends don't let friends by new-builds", read on. In fact, even if you haven't, read on. Basically, everyone needs to read this by my amazing colleague Anoosh on the sheer horrifying mindfuck that is the new-build nightmare www.newstatesman.com/politics/soc...
QTWTAIN
Absolutely terrifying that Rachel from Accounts is in charge of sorting out this department 😱
Beyond the riches of Croesus. Absolutely absurd to think you can't live "very well" on very much less unless you think a Svarovski encrusted Rolls Royce is one of life's essentials
Child Trust Fund. Killed off 2011 and now Jisa (tho many old CTFs remain).
Absolutely. Classic passive aggressive behaviour.
You lost your temper? You just snapped?
You've noticed the Assisted Dying proposals, of course...?
Remember Michelle on Question Time, who voted for a crackdown on "benefits scroungers" but hadn't reckoned that tax credits for running a loss-making nail bar in her front room would be affected www.theguardian.com/money/2015/o...
I'm baffled by the plethora of listicles. "Your favourite toothbrush colours ranked" - that sort of garbage. Are people flocking to find out by reading The Times? Really?
What sort of a savage wants tea and cake at lunchtime? 🙄
Probably a Waspi - who claim they flew Spitfires made out of twintubs. Ridiculous people 🙄
I've noticed recently that there are now two Fridays in every week - at least that's the case if you work it out by the frequency I need to put the bins out
🎵 24 howlers from Tulsi....
The real problem boils down wealth inequality and the complete lack of social mobility making people feel increasingly hopeless. The people who did make it to the top will never admit it was mostly luck or privilege, because it doesn't serve their interests. So they peddle this nonsense. 1/?
or a podcast
Exactly this
Sorry to bring this thread up again, but how could we have left out Ponteland? Just overheard someone mispronounce it 😳
A little bit of Cicero for the weekend.
Good morning and welcome to your thread of FT Weekend highlights on this cold but mercifully bright weekend. First before you hear one more tech oligarch redefine free speech please read this fantastic essay on the history of an ideal on.ft.com/4hlBeFq
We are suckers for "brands". We should be more discerning.
Same goes for Cadbury's chocolate, Coca-Cola etc
The Twice Brewed in Once Brewed might be more amenable
Uffam apparently (had to look that one up - hadn't seen it before). "The village of the owls"🦉🦉
We in the House of Commons Library are recruiting a senior researcher in our Social and General Statistics team! Come work with us to develop new and improved ways to inform MPs and their staff about data. housesofparliament.tal.net/vx/mobile-0/...
Ovinjum Goose Fair - ah happy days!
Lived in Newcastle for three years and always knew it as Prudda. Bellingham has a lot of people stumped. My flatmate came from there and, as an incomer still struggling with the local accent, I thought for the first week that we lived together she was from Belgium 😳
Booked a hotel in the US a few years ago and on my arrival they couldn't find the reservation. Eventually (long story), they found it alphabetically by my middle Christian name - their computer system assuming that my middle name was my surname, Hispanic-style.
You beat me to it. Was just going to add to Jonn's post that once you've found Prudhoe, you have to know how to pronounce it! Romiley is of course near Manchester/Stockport, famous for the Chadkirk Chapel
When I lived in a flatshare with no washing machine a zillion years ago and had "no time" to go to a launderette miles down the road in south London, I used to haul my bedding and towels on the bus to a place in Soho that laundered sheets and table cloths for hotels and restaurants. No app needed.
And the people signing up for them will be eagerly watching those survivalist series on tv - how to live in the forest after a natural disaster/apocalyptic war when even now they can't wash their own underwear, or cook dinner without a foodbox and instructions delivered to the door
faster than a luge at the winter Olympics 😉
Exactly.
I absolutely do not want personalised content
Many people have advantageous occupational pensions while others don't. If MPs set more generous terms for themselves for their pension than for others - and at taxpayers' expense - then that is of concern. However if the rules for state pension are universal then, so what? It's apples and pears
You do know the difference between the rules for state pension and those for occupational pensions, don't you?
That's wheelie sad. You were sent packing because you just couldn't handle it.
Presumably we can melt them down to make into tanks. And the batteries could be useful in power cuts