Jamie123

I've just come out of a meeting. I'd seriously like to know if anyone has ever achieved anything by going to a meeting. Everyone sits around a table and the chairman goes through the agenda items one by one, and sometimes says "Now item four, blah blah blah... I'll hand over to Julie for this." And Julie gets up and says "Blah blah blah blah..." - to which (almost) no one one listens to a word - "...blah blah blah blah. Thank you very much." and the chairman says "Thank you very much Julie, does anyone have anything to add..." and the one person who was listening gets up and says "Yes I'd like to add that..." blah blah blah blah blah..., while everyone else reads e-mails on their iphones or looks out of the window at birds circling against the grey overcast, or watches the hands of the clock and thinks about the piles of work on their desk which isn't getting done because they have to be at this stupid meeting listening to the chairman and Julie spouting stuff no one will listen to or remember five minutes on from now. I can think of only two exceptions: The Council of Elrond During the war, the meetings that bomber pilots, navigators, bombardiers etc. would have with their commander before flying off on a mission to make sure they bomb the right place at the right time etc. There are two consolations to going to a meeting: Coffee or tea (though this naturally doesn't apply if you're LDS. Sometimes orange juice too.) Biscuits (I like the ginger ones) (Sometimes) Cake and sandwiches OKOK that's three. Cake and sandwiches do kinda make all the difference - if they have them. But apart from them, meetings are an unproductive drain on your time, which could be put to something far more productive (like sleep). I daresay I'm going to be flamed now by all the meetings fans out there!

Deleted. Too nasty. Starmer is... not a very nice man. But that's all the more reason to pray for him.

That's exactly what most British people said when David Irving was thrown into prison by the Austrians. Nowadays, according to the lefty-wokey pseudointelligencia Starmerites who govern this country now, the truth or falsehood of an idea is less important than the groups of people it is likely to offend. As J.R.R. Tolkien wrote: "I bow not yet before your iron crown, nor cast my own small golden sceptre down." Discretion may be the better part of valour, but let's not forget there's another part too. (I've woken up a little bit Henry V this morning!)

Grannyopterix is always worth listening to... The Glorious Revolution again, with Trumpety-Trump as William of Orange? (At least he's the right colour for it!)

Like I'd ever resort to violence!

Oh plenty of politicians are! It's just that there aren't enough of them in Parliament to oppose Starmer-Schmarmer and his merry men, since we stupidly voted them all in. Our best hope is a rebellion in the Labour back benches. They can't all be under the Starmer spell!

I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure that doesn't follow. I can well imagine consenting adults making porn without being trafficked or subjected to violence. If people are being trafficked or attacked to make porn then by all means arrest the porn-makers for that, but not for the porn itself.

The la-and of the freeeee...and the home of the...brave! (I used to know all the words to that song, though I sometimes inserted silly words of my own. Not everyone appreciated my humour.)

I agree pornography ought to be destroyed, but I don't agree that the government, courts and police should be the ones to do it. It's the people "using" it (and I've been as guilty as anyone in this respect!) who need to wake up, see what damage it's doing to them, and do the destroying themselves. A tyrant who tyrranizes other people "for their own good" is still a tyrant. Whatever Mr Starmer and people like him might say, that doesn't apply to Lucy. She made that comment directly after the murders and long before the riots had even started. The judges stuck their fingers in their ears and went "lalalalala" when that was pointed out. They didn't care about facts. All they cared about was having Lucy Connolly's head on a stick. I am by no means ashamed to be British, but right now Britain has a goggly-eyed stupid-haired silly-faced problem living in No. 10 Downing Street.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/trump-starmer-lucy-connolly-free-speech-b2757856.html I'm normally the last person to say "US good UK bad" (there's plenty of bad in both) but in this matter I'm right behind Trump. Starmer won the election last year on a protest vote, and he's turning our to be twice as bad as the people voters were protesting against. If Trump wants to give Starmer a "kick up the arse" that's fine by me! I'll probably be arrested now for "incitement to kick the Prime Minister up the arse" - even though I've crossed it out already!

Haha I'd almost forgotten about Henry! Poor fella!

A bit like "Constantinople is a very long word, spell it." (To which the answer of course is "I.T.")

From Google AI: So now we know! I could never dissociate "I can't let Maggie go" (which is a great song, by the way) from women flying around in balloons eating bread. Wonderful!

Yesterday I drove my daughter back to university, and (paranoid as usual) I was dreading being dragged into an argument on this subject. I was even rehearsing my "defence" ("Am I the Supreme Court? Am I? Yes or no? No. I'm not, am I? I'm just your Dad. So it's no use your complaining to me, is there?"). All nonsense. She didn't say a single word about it, though I'm wondering now if she's even heard the news. It wouldn't surprise me if she hasn't, since she's been living with my wife who is not very interested in following the news. (Though she did seem to know about Pope Francis.) Now she's (they're) back at university I'm sure her (their) LGBTQ+(?) friends will have plenty to say on the subject. Actually it was quite a good day - though not without complications. When I arrived at my wife's apartment I found out I'd brought the wrong suitcases, so my wife went to Primark to buy another one which annoyed me momentarily ('coz I'm an old skinflint who doesn't like spending money). Then it turned out the Easter egg I got for my wife was white chocolate (which over the past two years of separation I'd forgotten she didn't like) so I went to Poundland to get her another. Of course, Easter eggs were all sold out, but I did find a whole stack of those new non-orange Terry's chocolate oranges on the top shelf. When I tried to get them down they toppled over and rained down on me like hailstones. About twenty of them hit me square in the face and broke my glasses. Luckily it was only the frames that were broken, not the lenses. When I went to the opticians, the only frames they had that fit the lenses looked like the ones David Tennant wore when he was Doctor Who... ...so I thought at least I'll look like David Tennant, which is kinda cool. But when my wife and daughter saw me they said I didn't look at all like David Tennant and I just looked dorky. Well, there you go. Anyway, we had driven for well over an hour before my daughter realized she had forgotten to pack her medicine. There was no way I was going to turn back at that stage (the sun was already well over the yard arm) so we had the whole rigmarole of trying to get an emergency prescription before the shops closed. Luckily we managed it, though it wasn't cheap. Then when I was taking my wife home, I had another guilt-inducing experience where this guy behind me wasn't happy about how fast I was driving kept flashing me. I nearly always enter into an imaginary dialogue with these people. Driver behind: [Flash flash flash] Me: "Yeah whatever. Flash flash flash." Driver behind: [Flash flash flash] Me: "Yes I heard you first time." Driver behind: [Flash flash flash] Me: "Listen maty, if you don't like how fast I'm going you can quite easily overtake me. I'm not going any faster just to please you, so keep your flashy flash-flash to yourself." My wife really hates it when I do that. I pointed out that I didn't do anything to retaliate, but it still triggers her. I ought to know better, but when you've got a flashy-flashy-flashman on your tail it's not easy to keep your mouth shut. Finally got back to my house about midnight. But on the whole, it could have been a worse day.

Correct - though it's more often abbreviated UKSC. It's what used to be called the "Lords of Appeal in Ordinary" (Law Lords), which was a subcommittee of the House of Lords devoted to legal matters. They are now quite separate from the Lords, though the judges still have the courtesy title "Lord" (or "Lady").

Yes I know Pope Francis is dead (and peace be upon him) but something else happened this past weekend which is causing much more of a splash: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/19/europe/uk-supreme-court-biological-woman-intl/index.html The Supreme Court has ruled that as far as the Equality Act 2010 goes, gender is defined by what a person was born as, not how they choose to identify. Right now Starmer-schmarmer is keeping a very low profile, but from here on he can't use the Equality Act to justify allowing trans-women into female-only spaces, or allowing trans-women to beat the socks off actual women in women's sports. I'm seeing my "child" this coming Thursday and I'm taking her (them) back up to college Friday. I may be worrying unnecessarily (she knows I'm a disgraceful reactionary Neanderthal) but I'm a bit uneasy about what to say if she brings it up. And to be honest, I think this may be a false dawn for "real gender" anyway. If I understand correctly, all the government needs to do is to get a new law passed to replace the 2010 act, making it explicit that "woman" includes trans-women, and the Law Lords' ruling becomes completely moot.

Many years ago I knew a Scottish ex-Catholic JW convert. He was always coming to visit me, sometimes alone and sometimes with his wife. I liked both of them a lot. He was an ex army man, who had also been an officer in the Royal Air Force. I also sometimes used to talk to his wife when I was on the bus into town. She was a very pretty woman, but she had a strange skin condition that made her come out in red blotches. This worried me the first time I saw it but she assured me she was fine. (Don't know why I'm telling you this detail - I'm rambling.) Anyway, on one occasion he asked me "do you know who the God of this world is?" and was gobsmacked when I answered "the Devil". He wanted to know how I knew this, and I said it was traditional Christian doctrine and had been for centuries. This was news to him. He said he had had no idea until he had met the JWs. It may not be talked about much - especially these days - but it's right there in scripture. The Devil promised to give Jesus "all the kingdoms of the world" if he would worship him. Its there throughout Christian literature: to give you one example, it is the entire premise of C.S. Lewis' "Cosmic Trilogy". I didn't tell him (though maybe I should have!) that he must have very poorly explored traditional Christianity before rejecting in favour of JWism.

Mr. Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. Watson went camping together. One night, as they lay looking up at the starry sky, Holmes said: "Watson, what do you see up there?" Watson replied; "I see thousands and thousands of stars." "And what does that tell you?" asked Holmes? "Well, Holmes," said Watson. "It tells me that the universe is vast beyond comprehension. Each of those stars is a sun, with worlds of its own, which may have beings on them who are looking up at the stars just as we are, asking whether they are alone in the universe." Holmes was silent for a few moments. "What does it tell you, Holmes?" asked Watson at last. "It tells me," said Holmes slowly. "That someone has stolen our tent!"

https://daggionline.blogspot.com/2005/10/when-im-in-heaven.html?m=1

...so time for a bit of highly offensive cultural appropriation! Yakki-da everybody!

I've not made any secret of the fact that, although I'm still a practicing Anglican, I'm not a great fan of the Church. So I don’t totally disagree with your assessment of it. I suppose I get a kind of comfort from the continuity the Church of England provides - stretching back to Saint Augustine - to a time even before England was a single country. You're going to disagree strongly with this, but I've always seen the "real" Church as the individuals who love Jesus Christ - be they Anglicans, Catholics, Latter-day Saints or whatever - not as an organised body.

I also wonder whether Collins really was such a "good vicar". It's worth noting that a gentleman-priest in those days was not so much a pastor or a preacher serving his flock, as a Church tax collector. He could employ some poorly-connected nobody to do the actual vicaring (for the 18th century equivalent of "minimum wage") and spend his time collecting tithes from wealthy (and poor) farmers, or ingratiating himself with potential patrons in the hope of acquiring new parishes to milk wealth from.

Better to have been a happy oyster...

We might all be oysters in the cosmic oyster bed...

https://www.plough.com/en/topics/culture/literature/why-we-should-envy-mr-collins Enjoy what you have and take delight in every small thing. And give no thought to what other people think of you. Could this be the long sought-after key to happiness?