THE BRITISH THREAD II

I think Smorgs put her finger on it there.

The goverment should have and could have done something about public smoking years ago, but it would have cost them too much, and so they weaselled out.

Talking about Scotland:

I could go to the stadium tomorrow ...

I'd could imagine such if it was Celtic ...

From my bolt-hole in the lean-to made of windows in solid textured Elizabethan polyvinyl-chloride I heard on a distant television appliance, being viewed by some of the less intelligent members of my social milieux, a gentleman, who I now know to go by the name of Chris Tarrant, for the moment, take 10 minutes, including the come-ons for the expensive dross, to get from asking a contestant on his show, which county Exmouth is in to providing the answer. That is serious padding folks. Not one iota of talent required. They say, or at least the ones who say it say it, that TV costs a million smackers an hour to get to your glazed eyes. So that 10 minutes was worth around £160,000. The contestant thought it was Devon, and so did the friend he rang, but they weren't positive. It wouldn't have entered their heads that if he was positive, if he came from Exmouth say, just inside the boundary where the "Welcome to Devon" (Devon Welcomes Non-Smokers) sign stands and which he passes every time he comes home from work, that it would be stealing to bet £3 grand to win £4 grand. If honour is a factor I mean which is most unlikely when they've just charged you all £160,000 for an empty plastic bag.

And Mr Tarrant has provided us with a tried and tested method of how to become a millionaire his very self. You have to try to underestimate the British public just that bit more than anybody else. It's a cutting edge science where the elite are measured objectively so it must be democratic unlike some other branches of science where funds are raised by other methods a bit easier than chiselling out of us lot.

Anybody from up country, which is most of us, might wonder if the Boundaries Commission had redrawn a line or two in order to keep voting patterns under control since we had learned that Exmouth is, or in this case, was, in Devon. It might give one pause for thought if one was betting £3 grand at 4 to 3 which is about 100 to 30 in traditional parlance.

The guy is basically in a betting office with £3 grand in his hand and he looked like he had never had that much before. I actually got up to look at these shenanigans in case my ears were deceiving me and to order up a cup of tea and a ginger biscuit.

I wish Proust was still alive. He could have easily done twenty pages on that 10 minutes. They repeated the question a large number of times and tried to induce viewers to ring in with the answer at £2 a minute, and you probably have to give your name and address and postcode and say you are over 16 etc, and I have little doubt they were successful enough to pay out the £1,000 prize and leave some left over for themselves. One of them probably won anyway as the process is a bit mysterious and it's well known that mixing money and mystery is mightily iffy to say the least.

And the tone of voice throughout was of that quasi-religious tenor which is needed to give something completely fatuous a seeming sense of importance except it was not as stylish as the rituals in the Vatican or even that of your average Liberal Democrat party conference.

I returned to my recliner a wiser man and gazed unseeing at Nature's mantle.

Spendy...you wasted ten minutes of your precious life watching Chris Tarrant ...?...when you could have been watching Amir Khan breaking a little Scotsman's jaw......

Walter, if you go to watch THE Rangers, you will see maybe one Scotsman (the manager) and some foreigners.

But you might learn some interesting new songs and chants....the Rangers support specialise in that.

SPENDI CLAIMED

I returned to my recliner a wiser man and gazed unseeing at Nature's mantle.

Pity some of this wiseness you like to tell us all about on a regular basis, isn't portrayed with some sense or indeed sensibility on the acronym thread.. You don't appear to know the difference between a thrashing and a trashing:-

Considering the number of which you seem to be writing and receiving in no particular order, one might think you would have learned by now!

You thick, dense, smoke affected oink !

Mac wrote-



I don't like to see anybody get their jaw broken.

I think that if we are entertained by watching people sitting on an electrified barbed wire fence the Chris Tarrant version is miles funnier than the boxing. I think the boxing is put on for people with no sense of humour and who only understand the very simplest of situations.

A fierce argument took place tonight with a bloke in the pub who could not see the difference between knowing that Exmouth is in Devon sat on his couch and a bloke betting £3 grand on it being a fact.

They are all the same these non-betting men. They don't know what day it is. Anybody can have a certainty if they have no money on it. It is as if there's no point to bookies.

And he absolutely could not understand that the contestants uncertainty and equivocations were worth £160, 000 of your money. And that the fact of that must allow for the possibilty that it had been arranged a-priori as Kant used to say.

I think I might be temped to arrange a number of unlikely scenarios for £160,000 so it doesn't shock my sensibilities that somebody else might if they had the opportunity.

What can you learn from watching a boxing match that you didn't already know except that the names have changed?

Just how far behind do you want to be?

McTag I know North America is a continent, not a country. I just equated it because if I say I live in North America it really does not tell someone much. I thought
the UK consisted of 4 countries and Great Britain is made up of 3. It is still confusing to me but thank you for the explantion.

Oh, I hardly say UK. I normally just refer to the separate countries.

How 'bout that Lord Black, eh?

To confuse you even a bit more, TTH: the Isle of Man andthe Channel Islands aren't part of the UK but direct dependencies of the British Crown. :wink:

I have a surprise for you because I did know that. In addition to those there is Jersey and Guernsey (all being self- governing British dependencies) You will have to correct me if I am wrong because it was a couple of years ago when I researched it- through books, not on the internet. I want to visit England some day. Thank you for trying to confuse me more though :wink:

The Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey belong to what I summed as 'Channel Islands': including Sark and Herm and the even smaller islands Jethou, Brecqhou (Brechou), and Lihou.

I did not realize there were those other islands also. Thanks, I learned something new

It is a fact strange but true, that Great Britain is indeed made up of three countries and yet we live in the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Not a lot of Britons know that, let alone Americans. Congratulations.

McTag
Coming from you I take that as a huge compliment. I do appreciate the answers that both you and Walter Hinteler gave me. Thank you both very much.

Shame he got off with some of the charges, but I look forward to the sentencing.

That Barbara Ameil seems to be a real piece of work.

I hope the appeal process is brief.

Well, another advantage to have learnt English as a foreign language: such was/is taught there. :wink:

I once had a correspondence with Mr Black when he was at the helm of the Telegraph group and I must say he seemed a very decent and well educated bloke as far as I could tell.

I was trying to persuade him to resist the influence of feminism in the publications he controlled. Sadly, I failed in my mission which I suppose was to be expected now that the whole population seems determined to shelter close to the seeming safety of Nanny's apron strings.

I do know that a lot of people benefitted from his activities and his subsequent demise is much to be regretted rather than be subjected to the gleeful vengeance of the bigoted, talentless, non-smoking shitbags who are now dancing over what they hope is his prostrate position. Such types always go for the man they think is down, which he isn't yet.

I for one hope he is treated leniently because without such people in the world we would probably still be moping in caves.

Goody-goody two-shoes types have not contributed one iota to anything of any use or even ornament. And never will.