THE BRITISH THREAD II

He slept with her.

euphemism.

Steamroller might refer to the steam, I presume, which can be seen when a heavy roller is compressing freshly laid tarmac. It looks as if steam is being rolled out of the road surface.

Good lateral thinking, that.

The heavy roller has a water spray to prevent the hot bitumen sticking to it.

We used to call them steam-road-rollers long after the last steam one had been taken out of service.

On the subject of mechanical plant and news items, have you ever noticed they always refer to "bulldozers" when any demolition etc is being described.
"And the bulldozers went in today".
I rarely is actually bulldozers, (unless it's an army operation).

Also, in this country, "JCB" to describe any type of excavator, irrespective of manufacturer.

How about the weather forecast after Newsnight in which a band of rain was alleged to be "dragging its heels" as it cleared the south-east on Friday.

Come to think of it what is the "south-east"? And Friday?

Cold over Britain today, so I've made a nice pot of tea.

I hope the cops are going to get it in the neck off Leveson for failing to uphold the law, when their friends were committing criminal offences, because they were frightened of them.

They got off rather lightly, did they not, but the good Lord had plenty of interest to say. Question Time and This Week (Andrew Neil on TV) should be good later this evening.

The word is, Rebekah Brooks and Charlie Coulson are going down, not in the American way of course, which will make things even worse for our Prime Minister.

When Mr Kemp's wife sings, as she will if she gets frustrated, I think things will be worse for many more people besides Mr Cameron.

You need to realise Mac that the premiss on which all these well paid jobs are riding is that free speech is a good thing after the manner of Mums and dumplings in beef gravy.

Not only is that premiss not a done deal but we don't bloody well have free speech anyway. And if the premiss is not a done deal philosophically, which it isn't, the whole thing is a giant non sequitur on the taxpayer. Expediency dressed up as philosophy remains expediency.

You will see a long succession of phoneys defending free speech on our behalf (oh yeah!) and if we chant a bit of ribaldry at a few footballers out they all come again eagerly seizing on the opportunity to condemn us whilst sticking their smirking mugs into our living rooms.

Some skint kid nicks a pullover out of the smashed in window of a shop that's already a full scale insurance job and he gets the bums rush and six months. Meanwhile a permanent crime wave is blossoming all over London and the countryside of the Home Counties and now it has been partially discovered a bean-feast is in play explaining how awful it is and how they are all going to do better in the future.

Nothing has happened. As one experienced investigative journalist said after getting the gist of the report--"It's game back on".

Cameron rejects the key conclusion of an inquiry he himself set up.
Cameron's party loses three by-elections.
Cameron is a schmuck.

Agreed, but he was never going to win those by-elections. What's significant though is that UKIP came second in Middlesbrough and Rotherham.

We seem to have been sleep-walking into this immigration problem.

South Manchester is stuffed with "colleges" which are or were privately run, teaching "business studies" and English language to foreigners, mainly Pakistani I think.

It has long been obvious they were not kosher, if I can put it like that, and existed to get youths on student visas into the country. Few completed any course of study. The Border Agency have lost track of about 250,000.

Too much uncontrolled immigration, too fast. Add a recession, and UKIP are on the ascendancy.

Unfortunately the knee-jerk reaction means we're in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I agree with you 100% about those bogus colleges, they should be shut down. We need to remember though that legitimate foreign students bring in millions of pounds to the UK economy. Boris found himself on the back foot in India because intelligent, articulate Indians are starting to look elsewhere for their degrees.

I know a little about intelligent, articulate Indians. I worked with a few of them. I'm talking about uneducated youths with minimal English-language ability who have taken advantage of our liberal regime to come here and disappear. Not so liberal now, granted.

I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm saying there's a danger of going too far. We want to attract certain students, and cracking down on bogus language colleges is the right way to go, but they had a go at the London Metropolitan University.

Oh, Happy St. Andrews Day btw.

Did you see that nut-job called Claire Tomlinson presenting Sky News sports at 23.20 hours tonight? Two boxing matches, two rugby games,(it is Friday though) and a football match in the 2nd Division. Not a woman in sight in any scenes except the one in the studio where we were addressed as if we are about 4 years old and being persuaded how wonderful we all are for being of the same nationality as Mr Flintoff and what a privilege it is for us to have caught the attention of such a perfectly formed lady of a certain age who has self-evidently been giving somebody with clout in Mr Murdoch's many tentacled brain mangling monster a blow job.

That's the significant news imo. Perhaps the immigration issue is being blown up and grotesquely over-simplified in order to distract our attention from the onward march of the Monstrous Regiment of Women.

With the ready connivance of a certain number of people who satisfy certain basic, biological definitions of masculinity.

I don't object to female sports presenters. There are some duff male ones, like that guy called Mike who the BBC are trying to do their best to make into some semblance of a a "personality" and failing miserably.

Clare Balding, Gabby Logan, good. Hazel Irvine fair. Jaquie Beltrao always watchable, if only for the lip gloss.

It's best when they cross and recross their delightful legs I think Mac. A delicate version of the Kenny Everett trick.

The whole thing is patently ridiculous. Claire Tomlinson absolutely so.

Useless. Pure tokenism. They know nothing about male sport. Nor politics.

You're all sold out old boy.