THE BRITISH THREAD

Oops! Missed these posts...sorry. I was just out the back, choking me chicken.

How long can a chicken run about when its head has been cut off? Opinions vary, but at the weekend I was told 2.5 years.

His Royal Toniness is a prime example

Get the sledges out, people...the beeb are forecasting a reasonable amount of snow tomorrow.

It looks like Smorgs will be skiing to work on her birthday!



<clears throat, hitches up trousers to achieve castrate type singing voice >

<AHEM>.......RIGHT.....

..."We're walking in the air
We're floating in the moonlit skyyyyyyyy
The people far below are sleeping as we flyyyyyyyy....."

< loosens trousers and becomes serious for a while >


OK....listen up, does anyone know what this represents?......




Hint: It was the result of a study carried out at Manchester University. :wink:

Back later with the answer, if nobody's got it by then.

Carry on.

is that sigma or delta? Does beta record the delusional affect of dextroamphetamine on US pilots?


· 1991 US A-10 plane attacks British armoured personnel carriers in the Gulf, killing nine soldiers

· April 1994 Nato delegation of 26 people, including two high-ranking British army officers, die when their US Blackhawk helicopter is shot down in Iraq by American fighters

· 2002 US F-16 pilot kills four Canadian soldiers when he drops a laser-guided bomb on a Canadian live-fire exercise near Kandahar, Afghanistan

· 2003 American aircraft attacks a Kurdish and US special forces convoy, killing 15 people. BBC translator Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed dies in the attack. Journalists Tom Giles and John Simpson both injured

· 2003 RAF Tornado pilot and navigator mistaken for an Iraqi missile and shot down by US gunners. The pilot was trying to land near the Kuwait border, having carried out a successful sortie in an early offensive on Iraqi positions. A US general blames the "fog of war"

· 2003 Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull and two Iraqi civilians die and four other soldiers seriously injured when their convoy is attacked by two US A-10 aircraft near Basra in southern Iraq. The incident occurred despite excellent visibility and the convoy displaying the correct panels identifying them as "friendlies"

· 2005 Italian intelligence agent Nicola Calipari killed and journalist Giuliana Sgrena wounded in Baghdad after US forces open fire on their car. Sgrena had been kidnapped and subsequently rescued by Calipari

· 2006 Two US A-10 Thunderbolts attack Nato forces in southern Afghanistan, killing Mark Anthony Graham, a Canadian soldier, and seriously wounding five others during a mission to seize a Taliban stronghold.


....actually I thought the Yanks just killed us Brits, but we shouldnt take it too personally, as the above list demonstrates.

A fellow boozer told me last night that his grandfather was killed in a "blue on blue" by American fire in 1917. He said that it was quite common.

I can quite believe that. Today of course they can take out allied forces with laser guided precision.

Interesting stuff in The Guardian today, including the information that US aircrew are permitted to take amphetamines in order to be able to stay awake longer.

These are banned to service personnel here.

A friend of mine wrote a radio play based on the Slapton Sands incident "Exercise Tiger" in the Second World War, of which Wikipedia writes:

When the remaining LSTs landed on Slapton Beach, the blunders continued. The British heavy cruiser HMS Hawkins shelled the beach with live ammunition, following an order made by General Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, who felt that the men must be hardened by exposure to real battle conditions.[8] English marines on the boat recorded in its log book (the only log which has since been recovered from any of the boats) that men were being killed by friendly fire. "On the beaches they had a white tape line beyond which the Americans should not cross until the live firing had finished. But the Marines said they were going straight through the white tape line and getting blown up"

I've been to Slapton Sands and read the memorial. Of course its not just the Americans who have blue on blue incidents. They also have by far the biggest airforce. But what is really shameful about this incident is the attempted cover up to save embarrassment, and the collusion of the british mod. I wonder what the American public would demand of their government had British pilots wrecklessly killed American service personnel.

Agreed. There are differing opinions as to how trained the pilots were, some say not at all, others say adequately. What a mess.

Well I'm for the war.

Saddam was evil and it is our task to eradicate evil from the world and it will be messy at times. Torture and rule by it is evil. It is evil because it uses our divine gift of imaginative intelligence to work creatively to cause pain rather than for its true purpose.

So Matty fell in that heroic struggle, which we will win, and his memory should not be besmirched by all this petty infighting over the manner in which he died. We have shown the woman who loved him his last moments.

And for what?

Because she wanted to see. And because it proves the american dod and the british mod liars. (simply cause they said no tape existed)

Okay, where were we? Oh yes, talking about me.

Well, yesterday I had a new crown fitted (not at Asprey's, the lower right 4) and I fitted a new skin and strings to my banjo.

No snow here this morning.

I'm starving.

Will get two new crowns (upper left 5 & 6) today.
Afterwards car inspections at garage.
Firsts colder night since ages here, no snow.

Mornin' Sarah.

Happy 50th Birthday!! I hope you have a great day.


Mornin' everyone.....about 6 inches of snow here, when I woke up this morning.
Looks like it's going to continue for a few hours yet.

Merry Christmas!

Good morning and happy birthday to SARAH!!


A carpet of snow renders the cityscape a fairytale. My mad lads motored up to chilly Manchester from London for the Spain game yesternight, and back too at dead of night. Football!!

I lied, it's the lower right 5. I can't count before breakfast.

And, it's snowing here now, just started.

Happy Birthday Smorgiepops! I'll phone you later.

McTag, pls convey a very happy b'day to smorgs from my side as well. I don't have her phone number else I would have called her myself !