THE BRITISH THREAD II

unst is inhabited (nice bus shelter)

Out Stack is the farthest north.

I've got to tell you my Shetland story.

During the last war in about 1941, my father-in-law was training with the Royal Navy at Scapa Flow, as a member of a landing craft unit.
He got some long-awaited "shore leave", and so set out for his parents' home in Folkestone (a Channel port, south coast of Kent)- ferry to mainland, steam trains, wartime conditions, blackout, travel difficulties etc etc

On his first evening there, he went to the pictures (US: to a movie) and while that was showing, the cinema put up a message for him on the screen "Would Able Seaman **** please return to his unit at once" so he walked home, got his kit, and set off back to Shetland (blackout, travel difficulties, steam trains, ferry to Shetland........)

And when he finally got there after about two days travelling north, he was told his unit had left, and would he go to Southampton (on the south coast) to join his ship as soon as possible.....

They have the best whisky. It's the peat.

The shadows that pass are nothing compared to that.

I read the same in Bill Bryson's "Notes from a small island"...

I don't believe Mr Bryson and my f-i-l have ever met. Perhaps the Royal Navy had a habit of doing things like that.

That would explain a lot.

That's good, I bought my brother a bottle of a malt whisky I had not seen before, called "Scapa". The brand, not the bottle. I hope he likes it.

You get peat almost everywhere in the north, though. I've helped with the cutting of peat for fuel, on Skye. Should a weedy potter drink peaty water?

Am I the champion thread-stopper around here or what?


We went to see a powerful play last night in Salford, The Black Watch.
Have you heard of it? It's seemingly quite a phenomenon, and is on a world tour. It's about Scottish squaddies in Iraq, and about the history of the regiment.

good story about your fil McT. SNAFU is a military expression I believe.

Well my little anecdote for the day goes like this.

3 am woke up with pain in leg

got up and found could not put weight on ankle

10 am go down to Walk in Centre or Limps R Us.

I couldnt walk but I could cycle...and on the way I found one of the cleats on the bottom of the shoe was loose and it had been causing excessive movement of the ankle and I had effectively sprained it.

But they were very good when I got there...foot checked and basically told to go away and take pain killers..or come back.

Now we get to the point of the story. As I was waiting there was a chavlet, his mother and her mum also waiting. Only them so I could hear every word they said.

Beneath a sign saying Please Do Not Use your Mobile Phone, she called her doctor to get an appointment for the child. The reason was that she wanted some proprietary medicine, available without prescription, but with a prescription from the doctor its free (to her). So she phones the health centre and asks for an appointment. It was clearly not urgent and as they were busy she was told to phone again this afternoon to see if she could take a cancelled appointment with a doctor.

This was obviously not satisfactory.

Conversation with mother went like this

"Bleedin cheek, cant see im.

See the fing is right - if he gives me a prescription I dont pay nuffink. And I said it were cheaper that way.

Yeah evryfinks gorhn darhn 'ill

Yeah you pay all that money to the bleedin NHS, and you dont get nuffink back

Yeah well what I'll do right, is - nah listen right, I'll take im up Accident and Emergency. Then they gotta give me the prescription.

But it aint an emergency they wont like it

But hees a kid

yeah dead right. good on ya gal.

.................................................................

The child in question who apparently had an insect bite was no doubt seen in the Walk in Centre just as efficiently as I was.

But to save this woman maybe £3, she was prepared to have the NHS spend probably £hundreds.

£'undreds ain't nuffink an' I'm as larry as an oily rag wivaart a grumbler.

Faroer must be beautiful... I spent an idle evening once looking up photos and anything I could find on Faroer, and lord did it look imposing & intriguing. Bloody cold though.

(They also have the most bizarrely intricate tunnel system of probably the world.. even outlying settlements with as little as a couple of dozen inhabitants have over the past couple of decades been interconnected through steep hillsides and under bodies of water by long tunnels. Must be the highest $ /capita spent on roads/tunnels/bridges in the world, ever.)

Plenty of abandoned settlements too, where some fishing disaster wiped out the male population at some point and the women left thereafter...

Bleedin' chavs, wot a liberty eh.

Floggin's too good for 'em.

Surprisingly lush, I'm told, so that sounds very good for me....er, to me.

Have you seen that these silly little Hitlerian control freaks who pass for responsible people who are trying to re-classify the fragrant, heavenly weed.

Have you seen their evidence? "Some" doctors, un-numbered and un-specified, are supposed to have said that they have had cannabis smokers reporting mental problems. No mention of the fact that marrow growers report mental problems. Bus conductors. Porrige eaters. Rock stars. Cricketers. Knicker-elastic testers. Doctors more than most.

I would bet money that a lot more non-cannabis smokers report mental problems than hop-heads do. That's why they want to ban it up into the longer sentence arena despite the jail being full and them having to let murderers, rapists and peediewhatsits out to make room for the daily intake. They get more non-cannabis smokers to deal with and they get to lock people up as well. Control freaks love locking people up. It must turn them on. They are on Control Freak addiction. And a bad case too.

And a Chief Constable, and they know about these things, has said that ecstasy is less dangerous than aspirin. Some CCs want cannabis legalising.

These amateurs are trying to drain the life out of our nation so they can look virtuous. They think we are idiots. Control freaks of that type think everybody is an idiot. They think that if they put "cannabis" and "mental problems" in the same sentence we are all going to go wobbly at the knees and shaking like a leaf. A trick Jennifer Whiteside could do although she was only acting.

If they think we are idiots we might as well start acting like idiots.

Sugar causes mental problems if you overdose on it. The guy who made Twin Peaks consumed a large cake of pure icing-cake about 12 inches high before he got to work.
And he was probably on baby milk before he made Eraserhead.

And these selfsame twattles are fighting a war against hop-heads and are scared shitless of asking the public to pay out more to win it in case it would lower their status in the ratings. Gold isn't yellow for nothing.

That's why they get on about this other stuff which increases the demand for medical services, gets their fissogs on the telly, locks up more people and provides more work for probation officers and other Grauniad readers and sends the lads into battle ill-equipt, undermanned and under officered.

It's standard practice for gutless windbags.

Crankypants, I told you. Fits to a T.

Strong modern strains of cannabis cause schizophrenia in some.
That's bad. Personality-changing. On the other hand.....

I've only ever smoked one spliff, and it did nothing for me. Maybe they sold me dried dandelion.

Right I'm off to Bonnie Scotland this morning. The weather is warm and dry. Nice, but bad for fishng.

It's going to rain in Scotland but sun is shining all over the rest of us. And Spendius, I know of 3 people in this town alone who have had psychosis because of weed. Mind you, I don't know many people, and it is the hippie capital of England.

I thought Hebden Bridge was the hippie capital of England.

How does anybody know that the weed caused the psychosis. It might even have delayed the onset in those disposed to it due to frustrations in their relationships.

And I did stress abuse. Food is abused. Alcohol. Hand washing.

There are sex addiction therapists. The "smart-set" is cocaine fuelled. Nobody can win an Olympic medal without training on illegal substances. Training itself can be obsessive. Travelling too. Gardening. Shopping. There's a few thousand killed every year through motoring and many thousands seriously injured. Some kids. Should we ban motoring? Should we ban people? They cause every problem there is.

And psychosis can be acted to get benefit and it sure does benefit those who claim to treat it and those who service and maintain and build the structures where the treatment takes place.

And the control freak banners are addicted to shoving their ugly fissogs into the living rooms of the nation talking empty rubbish.

Cannabis is effectively legal in Vancouver. And in Spain. And in Amsterdam.

And what do you say about 2p on the standard rate to get the wars fought properly? What are we doing in wars the public won't stand making the slightest sacrifice for because they are addicted to their spending patterns? What are the cops doing arresting Amy? Finding themselves easy and safe jobs is the answer to that.

Can't you see Clary that "psychosis because of weed" is nowhere near evidence. It's just a prejudice. And one belied by the Blair government's actions.

Who on earth is really bothered about these clowns dragging on 'weed' and other silly substances.

I grew out of that last year.


The important news of the day and The Football Season in general is that:-

Manchester United FC have proven themselves to be the best team in the country for another season.


Wonderful isn't it.

That has to be better than puffing away on illegal substances, which are no good for anybody.

Don't you realise Spendi, the government outlaw things like this to protect you, it's like complaining about having to wear a seat belt in your car for instance.

Rather childish and tantrum like.

Grow up 'Dear Boy'

I don't want to be strapped in a car as if I am a toddler in a push-car. I never wear a seat belt and never have.

And if the Government wants to protect me it should have had the school curriculum show me what to watch out for instead of showing me how to drop myself in the doo-doo at every turn and shoving me into the firing line whilst it swanned around the vice dens of London buttering up the "actresses".

The Government only wants to "protect" us for its own reasons. Not our's.

But still, if it took you to your ripe old fat age of only last year to discover that you had been what you're saying what I am, for all the previous years, 65 is it, then I can well imagine that you don't know a simple thing like that yet.

I'm not really talking about banning the weed. I am talking about that lot of left-wing, liberal control freaks interfering in things that don't concern them.

Are you a left-wing, liberal lickspittle of Big Government and Nanny's Apron?

And Man U had the ref playing for them. It should have been 1-0 Wigan before it was 1-0 Man U and then it was a different game. And 1-0 Man U was iffy to say the least and 1-0 Wigan was a sure thing.

Oh Dear!

The dummy (That's a soother for our colonial readers) has come out again, hasn't it.



A bit like a bear with a sore bum, or should that be head?