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Keeping Score: My 2021 Roundup – politicalbetting.com

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  • JohnLilburneJohnLilburne Posts: 6,241

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    Exactly what I was thinking re crown marks - what's all this about??
    At some point they were replaced by CE marks.
    Google suggests 2006.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,632
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    You're probably not old enough to remember them. IIRC they went as part of the decimalisation process, several years before we entered the EEC.
    That was at a time when the policy of the Conservative party was modernisation and accepting the new, rather than looking back wistfully to a golden age when the toffs could do what they liked. Or something.
    They'll be irrelevant when Lib Dem agent Truss leads the republican revolution.
    Ed Davey supports our constitutional monarchy as Liz Truss has now said she does too.

    However Truss may find herself overtaken by Patel amongst Tory members given Truss wants easier migration from India unlike Patel
    Good morning and happy new year to everyone

    Patel as PM would be worse than Boris and he is on serious notice

    You really cannot be serious if you think Patel will unite the nation, she may the right, but I would remind you you only win power from the centre
    Do you think even the average voter let alone the average Tory voter wants easier immigration to the UK from India than is the case now as Truss wants but not Patel? Most of the 52% who voted Leave did so for tighter immigration rules and a points based system for all migrants, not just EU migrants
    It depends on the trade deal, and as you do not seem to mind the relaxation in immigration under the Australian deal then you have double standards
    Australia has a gdp per capita higher than ours. India has a gdp per capita less than a tenth of ours
    Yes, and the flow to Australia is going to be emigration, not immigration!
  • HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    You're probably not old enough to remember them. IIRC they went as part of the decimalisation process, several years before we entered the EEC.
    That was at a time when the policy of the Conservative party was modernisation and accepting the new, rather than looking back wistfully to a golden age when the toffs could do what they liked. Or something.
    They'll be irrelevant when Lib Dem agent Truss leads the republican revolution.
    Ed Davey supports our constitutional monarchy as Liz Truss has now said she does too.

    However Truss may find herself overtaken by Patel amongst Tory members given Truss wants easier migration from India unlike Patel
    Good morning and happy new year to everyone

    Patel as PM would be worse than Boris and he is on serious notice

    You really cannot be serious if you think Patel will unite the nation, she may the right, but I would remind you you only win power from the centre
    Do you think even the average voter let alone the average Tory voter wants easier immigration to the UK from India than is the case now as Truss wants but not Patel? Most of the 52% who voted Leave did so for tighter immigration rules and a points based system for all migrants, not just EU migrants
    It depends on the trade deal, and as you do not seem to mind the relaxation in immigration under the Australian deal then you have double standards
    Australia has a gdp per capita higher than ours. India has a gdp per capita less than a tenth of ours
    What has that to do with the fact you do not question the Australia deal but do India
  • Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    An 80 Shilling pint glass!? I think that's even more Imperial than my Inch's pint glass!

    https://www.inchscider.co.uk/
    Old name for a grade of beer, actually, not the glass; there might be 70/- and 80/- in the same way as the number of xxxxs reflected the grade of beer. Hence Wadworth 6X and Belhaven 80/-. TUD's Caley 80/- glass is obviously a promotional one - the point being that the Scots origin is clear from the beer being promoted.
    I saw it was the name of the beer, not the glass. Though it probably does have more of an imperial measurement sense about it than my cider glass which is called Inch's because Inch is the surname of the guy who started the company!
  • TazTaz Posts: 14,376

    The local McDonalds ran out of hash browns this morning. 2022 has already started badly.

    Hold the front page.
  • JohnLilburneJohnLilburne Posts: 6,241
    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    An 80 Shilling pint glass!? I think that's even more Imperial than my Inch's pint glass!

    https://www.inchscider.co.uk/
    Old name for a grade of beer, actually, not the glass; there might be 70/- and 80/- in the same way as the number of xxxxs reflected the grade of beer. Hence Wadworth 6X and Belhaven 80/-. TUD's Caley 80/- glass is obviously a promotional one - the point being that the Scots origin is clear from the beer being promoted.
    There were also 60/- and 90/-. I think they translated into beer names as Heavy, Scotch, and Export. 90s were wee heavies but normally had their own names. I used to drink McEwan's 80/- in my student days in Newcastle.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,828

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    Exactly what I was thinking re crown marks - what's all this about??
    At some point they were replaced by CE marks.
    Reference here to the proposal:

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/31/boris-johnson-crowns-pint-glasses-key-brexit-success

    I see he wants to simplify life by bringing back pounds and ounces - presumably not compulsory.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,828
    Taz said:

    The local McDonalds ran out of hash browns this morning. 2022 has already started badly.

    Hold the front page.
    In all seriousness, whatever the actual reason for the hash brown shortage, that sort of thing is a potential vulnerability as the import controls come in today.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/01/new-year-brexit-changes-permanently-damage-eu-trade-says-food-body

    Anyway off to do something more constructive than get depressed about weighing invisible food in stones, pounds, ounces and grains.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,368
    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    Exactly what I was thinking re crown marks - what's all this about??
    At some point they were replaced by CE marks.
    Reference here to the proposal:

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/31/boris-johnson-crowns-pint-glasses-key-brexit-success

    I see he wants to simplify life by bringing back pounds and ounces - presumably not compulsory.
    Boris announcing minor that has always existed as new post Brexit is hardly surprising.

    After all the Brexit victories are so small all of them need to be continually trumped to drown out the bad news stories.
  • Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    An 80 Shilling pint glass!? I think that's even more Imperial than my Inch's pint glass!

    https://www.inchscider.co.uk/
    Old name for a grade of beer, actually, not the glass; there might be 70/- and 80/- in the same way as the number of xxxxs reflected the grade of beer. Hence Wadworth 6X and Belhaven 80/-. TUD's Caley 80/- glass is obviously a promotional one - the point being that the Scots origin is clear from the beer being promoted.
    There were also 60/- and 90/-. I think they translated into beer names as Heavy, Scotch, and Export. 90s were wee heavies but normally had their own names. I used to drink McEwan's 80/- in my student days in Newcastle.
    McEwan's 60/- was an ok pint particularly if you didn't want to get smashed, and I preferred the taste anyway. Haven't seen it in a bar for an age.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    I thought you liked Nicola?
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,986
    edited January 2022
    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    Exactly what I was thinking re crown marks - what's all this about??
    At some point they were replaced by CE marks.
    Reference here to the proposal:

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/31/boris-johnson-crowns-pint-glasses-key-brexit-success

    I see he wants to simplify life by bringing back pounds and ounces - presumably not compulsory.
    The strange obsession with imperial measures by a portion of the Tory base is one of the more perplexing sides to Brexit. People rightly accuse the left of going down esoteric rabbit holes that the country at large doesn’t care about, but this seems to be the Tory equivalent.

    In fact it’s the right wing equivalent of reopening the coal mines.
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 22,660
    Streeting is a careerist who if you dont like his principles he has more.

    Same as most centrists
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,802
    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    Exactly what I was thinking re crown marks - what's all this about??
    At some point they were replaced by CE marks.
    Reference here to the proposal:

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/31/boris-johnson-crowns-pint-glasses-key-brexit-success

    I see he wants to simplify life by bringing back pounds and ounces - presumably not compulsory.
    The strange obsession with imperial measures by a portion of the Tory base is one of the more perplexing sides to Brexit. People rightly accuse the left of going down esoteric rabbit holes that the country at large doesn’t care about, but this seems to be the Tory equivalent.

    In fact it’s the right wing equivalent of reopening the coal mines.
    I don't understand it at all. There's so many other things going on in the country, this is such a waste of everyone's time and effort.
  • MattW said:

    Wes seems to be blaming it on Owen Jones..

    LOL. In Oct 2010 Wes Streeting had only just stopped being President of the NUS.
    All that and directing Grand Budapest Hotel…
  • JohnLilburneJohnLilburne Posts: 6,241

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    An 80 Shilling pint glass!? I think that's even more Imperial than my Inch's pint glass!

    https://www.inchscider.co.uk/
    Old name for a grade of beer, actually, not the glass; there might be 70/- and 80/- in the same way as the number of xxxxs reflected the grade of beer. Hence Wadworth 6X and Belhaven 80/-. TUD's Caley 80/- glass is obviously a promotional one - the point being that the Scots origin is clear from the beer being promoted.
    There were also 60/- and 90/-. I think they translated into beer names as Heavy, Scotch, and Export. 90s were wee heavies but normally had their own names. I used to drink McEwan's 80/- in my student days in Newcastle.
    McEwan's 60/- was an ok pint particularly if you didn't want to get smashed, and I preferred the taste anyway. Haven't seen it in a bar for an age.
    We never got it in Newcastle, just 80/- and Younger's No 3. Scottish & Newcastle at the time didn't brew any cask beer on Tyneside. A little later they started doing Exhibition on cask, but it wasn't very good, and then bought Theakstons which improved the general quality of available beer.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,011
    Over half a day of 2022 gone already. Doesn't time fly.

    Last night was the first time in several years that we've still been up to greet the New Year. There were plenty of fireworks being set off in the Bradford hinterlands. Made quite a spectacle from our window. There was none of that sort of thing when I was young - sometimes a ship on the Tyne would send up a flare, and that was it.

    So far I am sticking to my resolution. A meat free diet. Wish me luck, especially when I am faced with a pub menu full of steak pies, pork chops and the like I guess I'll be sampling a Greggs vegan sausage roll very soon.
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 4,940
    pigeon said:

    TimS said:

    Happy new year all.

    I can’t remember a new year greeted with such a mixture of trepidation, gloom and resigned pessimism as this one.

    Perhaps I am reading too much into Twitter. But nobody is predicting a glorious year. We’re choosing between Chinese property market collapse, Russian invasion of Ukraine, economic stagflation, a never ending pandemic, and Truss fighting Patel over immigration. And a series whitewash in the ashes.

    I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about this year, but that might be because I'm primarily fixated on the desire to see the back of this wretched pandemic and I think we're most of the way there. Winter doesn't look great from the POV of the poor bloody hospitals, and one can never rule out some personal disaster (oneself or a close relative getting seriously ill from this evil disease, having hitherto dodged it,) but it also looks increasingly as if Omicron is going to defeat all the restrictions, so our governments will hopefully recognise the rules as useless and throw them all in the dustbin come springtime.

    I've neither the energy nor the inclination to worry about any of the other problems right now. Leaving aside the fact that one has no influence over any of them, they all fall into the category of 'highly unlikely to happen' (e.g. a hot war with Russia,) 'that which can be ridden out' (e.g. another recession,) 'immaterial to my everyday life' (e.g. the UK travelling another mile or two down the road to breakup,) and/or 'why would anyone care?' (e.g. anything to do with cricket.) I don't know about anyone else, but after the last two years I feel as if my available reserves of angst have all been drained.
    An eloquent post. It sums up my perspective on the new year almost entirely.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,145

    MattW said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    murali_s said:

    Happy New Year folks!

    Let's hope 2022 is better than 2021. Tories polling 20 points behind will help make this year better of course!

    What Starmer needs to do, to rid the planet of the Tory pest, is to use 2022 to firmly embed PR as official LP policy.
    There was an interesting article on quadratic voting in December in the Economist. Even a sample vote to work on. An interesting idea, even better than AV if such a thing is possible...

    The mathematical method that could offer a fairer way to vote from TheEconomist https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2021/12/18/the-mathematical-method-that-could-offer-a-fairer-way-to-vote

    https://www.economist.com/QuadraticPoll

    My predictions for the New Year? Haven't a clue. Anything could happen and probably will.
    Have a good one Foxy! May you save many lives and minimise the damage of chronic conditions!

    I’m intrigued by your new profile picture. The lion rampant taking the central role; two St Georges, an Irish harp and a Saltire. Bugger the taffs?
    Calling PB vexicologists...
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Protector
    Yep. I am definitely a Roundhead!
    Didn’t have you down as a Cromwellian. That See U Next Tuesday invaded, raped and pillaged my country. Used my school as a barracks.

    Tony Benn was a big fan. Another Tuesday chap.
    There's a town locally which, at the time, had a major Puritan clergyman, John Owen, as Vicar. Owen, of course went on to much greater things in the Commonwealth and indeed afterwards.
    Time has, as we know moved on, and a historian who lives locally three or four years ago sorted out a talk on Owen. However, the vicar at the time was Anglo-Catholic, insisted on being called 'Father' and so on, and rebuffed him My historian friend was rather hurt.
    Intriguing - Fordham or Oxford, or somewhere else? :smile:

    Very unusual that that sort of mini-spat was happening so recently.
    Old habits die hard, and not just in Norn!
    Unless the historianw as deliberately poking the priest in the eye, which is possible :smile:
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,914
    edited January 2022

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    You're probably not old enough to remember them. IIRC they went as part of the decimalisation process, several years before we entered the EEC.
    That was at a time when the policy of the Conservative party was modernisation and accepting the new, rather than looking back wistfully to a golden age when the toffs could do what they liked. Or something.
    They'll be irrelevant when Lib Dem agent Truss leads the republican revolution.
    Ed Davey supports our constitutional monarchy as Liz Truss has now said she does too.

    However Truss may find herself overtaken by Patel amongst Tory members given Truss wants easier migration from India unlike Patel
    Good morning and happy new year to everyone

    Patel as PM would be worse than Boris and he is on serious notice

    You really cannot be serious if you think Patel will unite the nation, she may the right, but I would remind you you only win power from the centre
    Do you think even the average voter let alone the average Tory voter wants easier immigration to the UK from India than is the case now as Truss wants but not Patel? Most of the 52% who voted Leave did so for tighter immigration rules and a points based system for all migrants, not just EU migrants
    It depends on the trade deal, and as you do not seem to mind the relaxation in immigration under the Australian deal then you have double standards
    Australia has a gdp per capita higher than ours. India has a gdp per capita less than a tenth of ours
    What has that to do with the fact you do not question the Australia deal but do India
    The blatantly obvious point that immigration would be far higher from India to the UK as it is far poorer than us per head than Australia to the UK as it is richer than us per head. It was of course free movement from poorer Eastern Europe without transition controls that was a key factor in the Leave vote. Easier immigration from Singapore for example would also be less of an issue as it is also richer than us per head
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,134
    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    TimS said:

    Happy new year all.

    I can’t remember a new year greeted with such a mixture of trepidation, gloom and resigned pessimism as this one.

    Perhaps I am reading too much into Twitter. But nobody is predicting a glorious year. We’re choosing between Chinese property market collapse, Russian invasion of Ukraine, economic stagflation, a never ending pandemic, and Truss fighting Patel over immigration. And a series whitewash in the ashes.

    I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about this year, but that might be because I'm primarily fixated on the desire to see the back of this wretched pandemic and I think we're most of the way there. Winter doesn't look great from the POV of the poor bloody hospitals, and one can never rule out some personal disaster (oneself or a close relative getting seriously ill from this evil disease, having hitherto dodged it,) but it also looks increasingly as if Omicron is going to defeat all the restrictions, so our governments will hopefully recognise the rules as useless and throw them all in the dustbin come springtime.

    I've neither the energy nor the inclination to worry about any of the other problems right now. Leaving aside the fact that one has no influence over any of them, they all fall into the category of 'highly unlikely to happen' (e.g. a hot war with Russia,) 'that which can be ridden out' (e.g. another recession,) 'immaterial to my everyday life' (e.g. the UK travelling another mile or two down the road to breakup,) and/or 'why would anyone care?' (e.g. anything to do with cricket.) I don't know about anyone else, but after the last two years I feel as if my available reserves of angst have all been drained.
    I think you've got to the right place. Lockdowns would still happen if absolutely necessary but the calculus on both the virus and the politics has shifted towards 'live with it'.
    "Live with it" cannot mean ignoring it.

    It needs to involve investment in better ventilation in buildings used by crowds, better management of cross infection risks in hospitals, different ways of working, entertaining and shopping etc. Some of these are relatively modest, and others have major economic and social implications.

    The post pandemic world is not simply a return to 2019, it is an inflection point in how we live.
    I can see changes but my sense is they won't be on a scale to justify a "BC" and "AC" split. Eg will we actually get seriously ramped up NHS capacity? Or big lasting shifts in how we socialize and shop and work cf to 2019? Maybe we will but my feeling is not really. Won't the changes by and large be things that are coming anyway? Digital, AI, robotics, meta, VR, all of this stuff that Covid might have given a boost to?
  • Fysics_TeacherFysics_Teacher Posts: 6,285
    edited January 2022
    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    Exactly what I was thinking re crown marks - what's all this about??
    At some point they were replaced by CE marks.
    Reference here to the proposal:

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/31/boris-johnson-crowns-pint-glasses-key-brexit-success

    I see he wants to simplify life by bringing back pounds and ounces - presumably not compulsory.
    The strange obsession with imperial measures by a portion of the Tory base is one of the more perplexing sides to Brexit. People rightly accuse the left of going down esoteric rabbit holes that the country at large doesn’t care about, but this seems to be the Tory equivalent.

    In fact it’s the right wing equivalent of reopening the coal mines.
    I don't understand it at all. There's so many other things going on in the country, this is such a waste of everyone's time and effort.
    I think I understand: it (the regulation that forced food and drink to be sold in particular, usually metric sizes, so 500ml rather than a pint or 500g rather than a pound) was seen as an unneeded intrusion into the internal legislation of the country. It didn’t affect exports or imports so what business was it of the EU?

    Please note that this is my understanding of the argument, and while I have some sympathy for it I can also see the point of standardised sizes to protect consumer, and regard it as far too trivial on its own to justify leaving the EU.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,134

    I wouldn't class covid coming from a lab and Corbyn voting leave as conspiracy theories! Perhaps attempts to cover them up could be classes as conspiracies.

    Is it so implausible that the Kennedy's had Marilyn killed? Hint - I'm not saying it was likely.

    Jeremy Corbyn was a supporter of Tony Benn, who regarded the then EEC as a capitalist conspiracy and consequently campaigned against it. So wouldn't be surprising if Corbyn's public support for Remain was, at best, lukewarm, and, in the privacy of the ballot box, he did vote Leave.
    Bet he did actually. I'll move that to Cat C.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    edited January 2022
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    You're probably not old enough to remember them. IIRC they went as part of the decimalisation process, several years before we entered the EEC.
    That was at a time when the policy of the Conservative party was modernisation and accepting the new, rather than looking back wistfully to a golden age when the toffs could do what they liked. Or something.
    They'll be irrelevant when Lib Dem agent Truss leads the republican revolution.
    Ed Davey supports our constitutional monarchy as Liz Truss has now said she does too.

    However Truss may find herself overtaken by Patel amongst Tory members given Truss wants easier migration from India unlike Patel
    Good morning and happy new year to everyone

    Patel as PM would be worse than Boris and he is on serious notice

    You really cannot be serious if you think Patel will unite the nation, she may the right, but I would remind you you only win power from the centre
    Do you think even the average voter let alone the average Tory voter wants easier immigration to the UK from India than is the case now as Truss wants but not Patel? Most of the 52% who voted Leave did so for tighter immigration rules and a points based system for all migrants, not just EU migrants
    It depends on the trade deal, and as you do not seem to mind the relaxation in immigration under the Australian deal then you have double standards
    Australia has a gdp per capita higher than ours. India has a gdp per capita less than a tenth of ours
    What has that to do with the fact you do not question the Australia deal but do India
    The blatantly obvious point that immigration would be far higher from India to the UK as it is far poorer than us per head than Australia to the UK as it is richer than us per head. It was of course free movement from poorer Eastern Europe without transition controls that was a key factor in the Leave vote. Easier immigration from Singapore for example would also be less of an issue as it is also richer than us per head
    There doesn’t appear to have been any negative reaction to 100,000 Hong Kongers turning up. Although I suspect neither Australia nor Singapore would welcome “open door immigration” with Britain.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,317
    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    An 80 Shilling pint glass!? I think that's even more Imperial than my Inch's pint glass!

    https://www.inchscider.co.uk/
    Old name for a grade of beer, actually, not the glass; there might be 70/- and 80/- in the same way as the number of xxxxs reflected the grade of beer. Hence Wadworth 6X and Belhaven 80/-. TUD's Caley 80/- glass is obviously a promotional one - the point being that the Scots origin is clear from the beer being promoted.
    you forgot 60/- , pale ale Carnyx
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,317

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    An 80 Shilling pint glass!? I think that's even more Imperial than my Inch's pint glass!

    https://www.inchscider.co.uk/
    Old name for a grade of beer, actually, not the glass; there might be 70/- and 80/- in the same way as the number of xxxxs reflected the grade of beer. Hence Wadworth 6X and Belhaven 80/-. TUD's Caley 80/- glass is obviously a promotional one - the point being that the Scots origin is clear from the beer being promoted.
    There were also 60/- and 90/-. I think they translated into beer names as Heavy, Scotch, and Export. 90s were wee heavies but normally had their own names. I used to drink McEwan's 80/- in my student days in Newcastle.
    60/- was pale ale, normally called light. Usually they were heavy , light and export.
  • kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    TimS said:

    Happy new year all.

    I can’t remember a new year greeted with such a mixture of trepidation, gloom and resigned pessimism as this one.

    Perhaps I am reading too much into Twitter. But nobody is predicting a glorious year. We’re choosing between Chinese property market collapse, Russian invasion of Ukraine, economic stagflation, a never ending pandemic, and Truss fighting Patel over immigration. And a series whitewash in the ashes.

    I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about this year, but that might be because I'm primarily fixated on the desire to see the back of this wretched pandemic and I think we're most of the way there. Winter doesn't look great from the POV of the poor bloody hospitals, and one can never rule out some personal disaster (oneself or a close relative getting seriously ill from this evil disease, having hitherto dodged it,) but it also looks increasingly as if Omicron is going to defeat all the restrictions, so our governments will hopefully recognise the rules as useless and throw them all in the dustbin come springtime.

    I've neither the energy nor the inclination to worry about any of the other problems right now. Leaving aside the fact that one has no influence over any of them, they all fall into the category of 'highly unlikely to happen' (e.g. a hot war with Russia,) 'that which can be ridden out' (e.g. another recession,) 'immaterial to my everyday life' (e.g. the UK travelling another mile or two down the road to breakup,) and/or 'why would anyone care?' (e.g. anything to do with cricket.) I don't know about anyone else, but after the last two years I feel as if my available reserves of angst have all been drained.
    I think you've got to the right place. Lockdowns would still happen if absolutely necessary but the calculus on both the virus and the politics has shifted towards 'live with it'.
    "Live with it" cannot mean ignoring it.

    It needs to involve investment in better ventilation in buildings used by crowds, better management of cross infection risks in hospitals, different ways of working, entertaining and shopping etc. Some of these are relatively modest, and others have major economic and social implications.

    The post pandemic world is not simply a return to 2019, it is an inflection point in how we live.
    I can see changes but my sense is they won't be on a scale to justify a "BC" and "AC" split. Eg will we actually get seriously ramped up NHS capacity? Or big lasting shifts in how we socialize and shop and work cf to 2019? Maybe we will but my feeling is not really. Won't the changes by and large be things that are coming anyway? Digital, AI, robotics, meta, VR, all of this stuff that Covid might have given a boost to?
    I think it will turn out to have given a big boost to Ocado and similar delivery services. I’m not so sure about Deliveroo and the like though: I think minimum wages will make that model uneconomic.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,317

    Over half a day of 2022 gone already. Doesn't time fly.

    Last night was the first time in several years that we've still been up to greet the New Year. There were plenty of fireworks being set off in the Bradford hinterlands. Made quite a spectacle from our window. There was none of that sort of thing when I was young - sometimes a ship on the Tyne would send up a flare, and that was it.

    So far I am sticking to my resolution. A meat free diet. Wish me luck, especially when I am faced with a pub menu full of steak pies, pork chops and the like I guess I'll be sampling a Greggs vegan sausage roll very soon.

    Large helping of steak pie for me today, cannot possibly have New Year's day without having a lovely steak pie.
  • malcolmg said:

    Over half a day of 2022 gone already. Doesn't time fly.

    Last night was the first time in several years that we've still been up to greet the New Year. There were plenty of fireworks being set off in the Bradford hinterlands. Made quite a spectacle from our window. There was none of that sort of thing when I was young - sometimes a ship on the Tyne would send up a flare, and that was it.

    So far I am sticking to my resolution. A meat free diet. Wish me luck, especially when I am faced with a pub menu full of steak pies, pork chops and the like I guess I'll be sampling a Greggs vegan sausage roll very soon.

    Large helping of steak pie for me today, cannot possibly have New Year's day without having a lovely steak pie.
    Home made or bought? If bought, from whom?
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,011

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    An 80 Shilling pint glass!? I think that's even more Imperial than my Inch's pint glass!

    https://www.inchscider.co.uk/
    Old name for a grade of beer, actually, not the glass; there might be 70/- and 80/- in the same way as the number of xxxxs reflected the grade of beer. Hence Wadworth 6X and Belhaven 80/-. TUD's Caley 80/- glass is obviously a promotional one - the point being that the Scots origin is clear from the beer being promoted.
    There were also 60/- and 90/-. I think they translated into beer names as Heavy, Scotch, and Export. 90s were wee heavies but normally had their own names. I used to drink McEwan's 80/- in my student days in Newcastle.
    McEwan's 60/- was an ok pint particularly if you didn't want to get smashed, and I preferred the taste anyway. Haven't seen it in a bar for an age.
    We never got it in Newcastle, just 80/- and Younger's No 3. Scottish & Newcastle at the time didn't brew any cask beer on Tyneside. A little later they started doing Exhibition on cask, but it wasn't very good, and then bought Theakstons which improved the general quality of available beer.
    I remember having a cracking pint of No 3 in the bar on Cleethorpes railway station. The highlight of my trip.

    80/- was the default drink in The Diggers in Edinburgh. You didn’t need to say what you wanted, just raise the appropriate number of fingers for however many pints you were getting.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,375
    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    Exactly what I was thinking re crown marks - what's all this about??
    At some point they were replaced by CE marks.
    Reference here to the proposal:

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/31/boris-johnson-crowns-pint-glasses-key-brexit-success

    I see he wants to simplify life by bringing back pounds and ounces - presumably not compulsory.
    The strange obsession with imperial measures by a portion of the Tory base is one of the more perplexing sides to Brexit. People rightly accuse the left of going down esoteric rabbit holes that the country at large doesn’t care about, but this seems to be the Tory equivalent.

    In fact it’s the right wing equivalent of reopening the coal mines.
    I don't understand it at all. There's so many other things going on in the country, this is such a waste of everyone's time and effort.
    Yes, and I also think it's poor politics. The sort of people who are bothered about imperial measures are older folk who will vote Tory whatever. For younger people, it just seems weird. It won't win any new Tory voters.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 4,931
    malcolmg said:

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    An 80 Shilling pint glass!? I think that's even more Imperial than my Inch's pint glass!

    https://www.inchscider.co.uk/
    Old name for a grade of beer, actually, not the glass; there might be 70/- and 80/- in the same way as the number of xxxxs reflected the grade of beer. Hence Wadworth 6X and Belhaven 80/-. TUD's Caley 80/- glass is obviously a promotional one - the point being that the Scots origin is clear from the beer being promoted.
    you forgot 60/- , pale ale Carnyx
    Here’s an explanation. http://www.scottishbrewing.com/history/shilling.php
    Apart from keg beer, the only 60/- still available is Belhaven, and that only very rarely. I haven’t seen cask 70/- or 90/- labelled as such, for a long time, either.
  • NorthofStokeNorthofStoke Posts: 1,758
    kinabalu said:

    On the subject of "Conspiracy Theories", I took a few minutes to rank a few that spring to mind.

    Category A, No chance:

    - World run by liberal elite pedo ring.
    - Moon landings faked.
    - Covid doesn’t exist.
    - The Kennedys killed Marilyn.

    Category B, Possible but on balance no:

    - Oswald didn’t act alone.
    - David Kelly was murdered.
    - Epstein was murdered.
    - Covid came from a lab.
    - Corbyn voted Leave.
    - The Nazis burnt the Reichstag.

    Category C, Probable, in fact almost certainly true:

    - Boris Johnson despite appearances is built like a brick shithouse. He’s almost all muscle.

    Happy New Year to all at PB.
    I think you need to split category B to create B2 "Possible and on balance yes". Covid from a lab and Corbyn voted Leave would be in there.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,632
    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    TimS said:

    Happy new year all.

    I can’t remember a new year greeted with such a mixture of trepidation, gloom and resigned pessimism as this one.

    Perhaps I am reading too much into Twitter. But nobody is predicting a glorious year. We’re choosing between Chinese property market collapse, Russian invasion of Ukraine, economic stagflation, a never ending pandemic, and Truss fighting Patel over immigration. And a series whitewash in the ashes.

    I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about this year, but that might be because I'm primarily fixated on the desire to see the back of this wretched pandemic and I think we're most of the way there. Winter doesn't look great from the POV of the poor bloody hospitals, and one can never rule out some personal disaster (oneself or a close relative getting seriously ill from this evil disease, having hitherto dodged it,) but it also looks increasingly as if Omicron is going to defeat all the restrictions, so our governments will hopefully recognise the rules as useless and throw them all in the dustbin come springtime.

    I've neither the energy nor the inclination to worry about any of the other problems right now. Leaving aside the fact that one has no influence over any of them, they all fall into the category of 'highly unlikely to happen' (e.g. a hot war with Russia,) 'that which can be ridden out' (e.g. another recession,) 'immaterial to my everyday life' (e.g. the UK travelling another mile or two down the road to breakup,) and/or 'why would anyone care?' (e.g. anything to do with cricket.) I don't know about anyone else, but after the last two years I feel as if my available reserves of angst have all been drained.
    I think you've got to the right place. Lockdowns would still happen if absolutely necessary but the calculus on both the virus and the politics has shifted towards 'live with it'.
    "Live with it" cannot mean ignoring it.

    It needs to involve investment in better ventilation in buildings used by crowds, better management of cross infection risks in hospitals, different ways of working, entertaining and shopping etc. Some of these are relatively modest, and others have major economic and social implications.

    The post pandemic world is not simply a return to 2019, it is an inflection point in how we live.
    I can see changes but my sense is they won't be on a scale to justify a "BC" and "AC" split. Eg will we actually get seriously ramped up NHS capacity? Or big lasting shifts in how we socialize and shop and work cf to 2019? Maybe we will but my feeling is not really. Won't the changes by and large be things that are coming anyway? Digital, AI, robotics, meta, VR, all of this stuff that Covid might have given a boost to?
    I think that the effect of the pandemic will be to accelerate existing trends mainly, but there will be new ones too.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 4,931
    malcolmg said:

    Over half a day of 2022 gone already. Doesn't time fly.

    Last night was the first time in several years that we've still been up to greet the New Year. There were plenty of fireworks being set off in the Bradford hinterlands. Made quite a spectacle from our window. There was none of that sort of thing when I was young - sometimes a ship on the Tyne would send up a flare, and that was it.

    So far I am sticking to my resolution. A meat free diet. Wish me luck, especially when I am faced with a pub menu full of steak pies, pork chops and the like I guess I'll be sampling a Greggs vegan sausage roll very soon.

    Large helping of steak pie for me today, cannot possibly have New Year's day without having a lovely steak pie.
    Same here, Malc!
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,779
    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    An 80 Shilling pint glass!? I think that's even more Imperial than my Inch's pint glass!

    https://www.inchscider.co.uk/
    Old name for a grade of beer, actually, not the glass; there might be 70/- and 80/- in the same way as the number of xxxxs reflected the grade of beer. Hence Wadworth 6X and Belhaven 80/-. TUD's Caley 80/- glass is obviously a promotional one - the point being that the Scots origin is clear from the beer being promoted.
    Mmm pint a' heavy... Not sure I could drink six of those in a night anymore and not regret it the next day.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,914
    edited January 2022

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    You're probably not old enough to remember them. IIRC they went as part of the decimalisation process, several years before we entered the EEC.
    That was at a time when the policy of the Conservative party was modernisation and accepting the new, rather than looking back wistfully to a golden age when the toffs could do what they liked. Or something.
    They'll be irrelevant when Lib Dem agent Truss leads the republican revolution.
    Ed Davey supports our constitutional monarchy as Liz Truss has now said she does too.

    However Truss may find herself overtaken by Patel amongst Tory members given Truss wants easier migration from India unlike Patel
    Good morning and happy new year to everyone

    Patel as PM would be worse than Boris and he is on serious notice

    You really cannot be serious if you think Patel will unite the nation, she may the right, but I would remind you you only win power from the centre
    Do you think even the average voter let alone the average Tory voter wants easier immigration to the UK from India than is the case now as Truss wants but not Patel? Most of the 52% who voted Leave did so for tighter immigration rules and a points based system for all migrants, not just EU migrants
    It depends on the trade deal, and as you do not seem to mind the relaxation in immigration under the Australian deal then you have double standards
    Australia has a gdp per capita higher than ours. India has a gdp per capita less than a tenth of ours
    What has that to do with the fact you do not question the Australia deal but do India
    The blatantly obvious point that immigration would be far higher from India to the UK as it is far poorer than us per head than Australia to the UK as it is richer than us per head. It was of course free movement from poorer Eastern Europe without transition controls that was a key factor in the Leave vote. Easier immigration from Singapore for example would also be less of an issue as it is also richer than us per head
    There doesn’t appear to have been any negative reaction to 100,000 Hong Kongers turning up. Although I suspect neither Australia nor Singapore would welcome “open door immigration” with Britain.
    Again because of the blatantly obvious point Hong Kong also has a higher gdp per capita than we do, unlike India.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita

    Hong Kong also has only 10% of our population, India has 20 times our population
  • Taz said:

    The local McDonalds ran out of hash browns this morning. 2022 has already started badly.

    Hold the front page.
    American celebrity billionaire Warren Buffet famously breakfasts at McDonalds each day, though iirc on McMuffins rather than hash browns.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,317

    malcolmg said:

    Over half a day of 2022 gone already. Doesn't time fly.

    Last night was the first time in several years that we've still been up to greet the New Year. There were plenty of fireworks being set off in the Bradford hinterlands. Made quite a spectacle from our window. There was none of that sort of thing when I was young - sometimes a ship on the Tyne would send up a flare, and that was it.

    So far I am sticking to my resolution. A meat free diet. Wish me luck, especially when I am faced with a pub menu full of steak pies, pork chops and the like I guess I'll be sampling a Greggs vegan sausage roll very soon.

    Large helping of steak pie for me today, cannot possibly have New Year's day without having a lovely steak pie.
    Home made or bought? If bought, from whom?
    Home made , always make our own though local butcher does do a great one , much prefer to make it ourselves. Just finished prepping and the beef , onions , etc are in oven now for several hours , sausages go in near end and then will make the pie and stick in the oven.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,317

    malcolmg said:

    Over half a day of 2022 gone already. Doesn't time fly.

    Last night was the first time in several years that we've still been up to greet the New Year. There were plenty of fireworks being set off in the Bradford hinterlands. Made quite a spectacle from our window. There was none of that sort of thing when I was young - sometimes a ship on the Tyne would send up a flare, and that was it.

    So far I am sticking to my resolution. A meat free diet. Wish me luck, especially when I am faced with a pub menu full of steak pies, pork chops and the like I guess I'll be sampling a Greggs vegan sausage roll very soon.

    Large helping of steak pie for me today, cannot possibly have New Year's day without having a lovely steak pie.
    Same here, Malc!
    Enjoy Fairlie, I am looking forward to mine big time.
  • Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    TimS said:

    Happy new year all.

    I can’t remember a new year greeted with such a mixture of trepidation, gloom and resigned pessimism as this one.

    Perhaps I am reading too much into Twitter. But nobody is predicting a glorious year. We’re choosing between Chinese property market collapse, Russian invasion of Ukraine, economic stagflation, a never ending pandemic, and Truss fighting Patel over immigration. And a series whitewash in the ashes.

    I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about this year, but that might be because I'm primarily fixated on the desire to see the back of this wretched pandemic and I think we're most of the way there. Winter doesn't look great from the POV of the poor bloody hospitals, and one can never rule out some personal disaster (oneself or a close relative getting seriously ill from this evil disease, having hitherto dodged it,) but it also looks increasingly as if Omicron is going to defeat all the restrictions, so our governments will hopefully recognise the rules as useless and throw them all in the dustbin come springtime.

    I've neither the energy nor the inclination to worry about any of the other problems right now. Leaving aside the fact that one has no influence over any of them, they all fall into the category of 'highly unlikely to happen' (e.g. a hot war with Russia,) 'that which can be ridden out' (e.g. another recession,) 'immaterial to my everyday life' (e.g. the UK travelling another mile or two down the road to breakup,) and/or 'why would anyone care?' (e.g. anything to do with cricket.) I don't know about anyone else, but after the last two years I feel as if my available reserves of angst have all been drained.
    I think you've got to the right place. Lockdowns would still happen if absolutely necessary but the calculus on both the virus and the politics has shifted towards 'live with it'.
    "Live with it" cannot mean ignoring it.

    It needs to involve investment in better ventilation in buildings used by crowds, better management of cross infection risks in hospitals, different ways of working, entertaining and shopping etc. Some of these are relatively modest, and others have major economic and social implications.

    The post pandemic world is not simply a return to 2019, it is an inflection point in how we live.
    I can see changes but my sense is they won't be on a scale to justify a "BC" and "AC" split. Eg will we actually get seriously ramped up NHS capacity? Or big lasting shifts in how we socialize and shop and work cf to 2019? Maybe we will but my feeling is not really. Won't the changes by and large be things that are coming anyway? Digital, AI, robotics, meta, VR, all of this stuff that Covid might have given a boost to?
    I think that the effect of the pandemic will be to accelerate existing trends mainly, but there will be new ones too.
    At some point, someone will question the compatibility between Net Zero and the pandemic-induced plague of diesel-engined delivery vans that are the corollary of online shopping.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,494

    Over half a day of 2022 gone already. Doesn't time fly.

    Last night was the first time in several years that we've still been up to greet the New Year. There were plenty of fireworks being set off in the Bradford hinterlands. Made quite a spectacle from our window. There was none of that sort of thing when I was young - sometimes a ship on the Tyne would send up a flare, and that was it.

    So far I am sticking to my resolution. A meat free diet. Wish me luck, especially when I am faced with a pub menu full of steak pies, pork chops and the like I guess I'll be sampling a Greggs vegan sausage roll very soon.

    Yorkshire doesn’t do meat free! When it’s banned in rest of country people will drive into the Democratic Duchy of Screaming Eagles for the meat pies. 🤤

    And if my brother beats Eagles in the once in a generation election teachers will force feed meat into the mouths of children. 😂
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,317

    malcolmg said:

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    An 80 Shilling pint glass!? I think that's even more Imperial than my Inch's pint glass!

    https://www.inchscider.co.uk/
    Old name for a grade of beer, actually, not the glass; there might be 70/- and 80/- in the same way as the number of xxxxs reflected the grade of beer. Hence Wadworth 6X and Belhaven 80/-. TUD's Caley 80/- glass is obviously a promotional one - the point being that the Scots origin is clear from the beer being promoted.
    you forgot 60/- , pale ale Carnyx
    Here’s an explanation. http://www.scottishbrewing.com/history/shilling.php
    Apart from keg beer, the only 60/- still available is Belhaven, and that only very rarely. I haven’t seen cask 70/- or 90/- labelled as such, for a long time, either.
    When I started at age 14 it was 1/10 for light , 2 shillings for heavy 2/3 for export and 2/6 for lager. So you could get 10 pints and change from a pound.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,454

    Taz said:

    The local McDonalds ran out of hash browns this morning. 2022 has already started badly.

    Hold the front page.
    American celebrity billionaire Warren Buffet famously breakfasts at McDonalds each day, though iirc on McMuffins rather than hash browns.
    If you buy a mcmuffin meal you get a hash brown with it
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,779
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/01/sir-tim-brighouse-many-hold-gove-responsible-expert-educator-sets-out-whats-gone-wrong-with-britains-schools

    There's a fair amount of discussion on education here. This book looks like it has some interesting ideas for reform.
  • jonny83jonny83 Posts: 1,270

    Taz said:

    The local McDonalds ran out of hash browns this morning. 2022 has already started badly.

    Hold the front page.
    American celebrity billionaire Warren Buffet famously breakfasts at McDonalds each day, though iirc on McMuffins rather than hash browns.
    If you buy a mcmuffin meal you get a hash brown with it
    Double Sausage and egg McMuffin with a Hash Brown. Ugh, my weakness...
  • kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    TimS said:

    Happy new year all.

    I can’t remember a new year greeted with such a mixture of trepidation, gloom and resigned pessimism as this one.

    Perhaps I am reading too much into Twitter. But nobody is predicting a glorious year. We’re choosing between Chinese property market collapse, Russian invasion of Ukraine, economic stagflation, a never ending pandemic, and Truss fighting Patel over immigration. And a series whitewash in the ashes.

    I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about this year, but that might be because I'm primarily fixated on the desire to see the back of this wretched pandemic and I think we're most of the way there. Winter doesn't look great from the POV of the poor bloody hospitals, and one can never rule out some personal disaster (oneself or a close relative getting seriously ill from this evil disease, having hitherto dodged it,) but it also looks increasingly as if Omicron is going to defeat all the restrictions, so our governments will hopefully recognise the rules as useless and throw them all in the dustbin come springtime.

    I've neither the energy nor the inclination to worry about any of the other problems right now. Leaving aside the fact that one has no influence over any of them, they all fall into the category of 'highly unlikely to happen' (e.g. a hot war with Russia,) 'that which can be ridden out' (e.g. another recession,) 'immaterial to my everyday life' (e.g. the UK travelling another mile or two down the road to breakup,) and/or 'why would anyone care?' (e.g. anything to do with cricket.) I don't know about anyone else, but after the last two years I feel as if my available reserves of angst have all been drained.
    I think you've got to the right place. Lockdowns would still happen if absolutely necessary but the calculus on both the virus and the politics has shifted towards 'live with it'.
    "Live with it" cannot mean ignoring it.

    It needs to involve investment in better ventilation in buildings used by crowds, better management of cross infection risks in hospitals, different ways of working, entertaining and shopping etc. Some of these are relatively modest, and others have major economic and social implications.

    The post pandemic world is not simply a return to 2019, it is an inflection point in how we live.
    I can see changes but my sense is they won't be on a scale to justify a "BC" and "AC" split. Eg will we actually get seriously ramped up NHS capacity? Or big lasting shifts in how we socialize and shop and work cf to 2019? Maybe we will but my feeling is not really. Won't the changes by and large be things that are coming anyway? Digital, AI, robotics, meta, VR, all of this stuff that Covid might have given a boost to?
    I think it will turn out to have given a big boost to Ocado and similar delivery services. I’m not so sure about Deliveroo and the like though: I think minimum wages will make that model uneconomic.
    Recent employee-status rulings might not help delivery services or, ironically, their drivers. By the time the legal eagles untied their pink ribbons, most drivers (at least round here) were working for not one service but several, depending whether the next job came in from Uber, a local cab firm, Deliveroo or whoever.
  • Late entry for definitive Christmas films, The Battle of the Bulge.
    More or less mythical interpretation of events, set at the right time of year, some mostly fake snow. For me nothing says Christmas like Robert Shaw at the head of a column of fake Königstiger.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,494

    I have seen Green Knight now. I remember a chat about which new films worth watching @nigel I think this one you said you enjoyed? I am pleased I watched it. I absolutely loved it at time. Amazing cinematic use of colours and light effects and sound and framing. It was so thoughtfully shot and the edit and pacing it made me think of Tarkovsky very early on.

    But more I think about it, not sure about the writing all by the director. I liked the Winifred bit he added, a good test for a Knight. Although I hate foxes, that was a good idea here, and the acting from the scavenger lad really woke the film up. Where I would be more critical is two fundamental mistakes imo, first, touched on the kisses passing through Gawain between his hosts, but didn’t really have Gawain reciprocating enough to properly explain this as not gay as we know it, if today brought up in Christian household, not understanding a norms in the old days. These days we tend to think of kings and queens and knights in this pre medieval or early medieval period as having a Christian sociology to sex and marriage, not an old Roman one. The fact wives are shared in Arthurian romances like a swingers club, and the knights themselves do a lot of kissing, is for a purpose and the sort of purpose lost in this screenplay and all modern screenplays (unless you can name me one) this script stepping away from this probably says more about the writer understanding of historic chivalry and loyalty not then as is today. second, the writer don’t actually stick to the original point of the story as I understand it, so in that way it got a bit messy. Didn’t show him tricking the Green Knight with secret sash instead of attempted beheaded and being forgiven for it by nick , though it suggested two endings, none of which Morgana clearly shown behind as purpose one where the shame of running away doesn’t work for him, and one unseen where he takes off sash is beheaded? If the original story has a point not stuck to, what’s the new point or is it a film that has lost it?

    Nor did it ever feel as eerie as maybe it should?

    I enjoyed this one and would recommend people give it a go. 🍿

    Now If I wrote the film myself it would have been different. I think it would have been more honest to original with more Morgana, more fall of Adam and Eve and include Lilith too, because she’s badass, the lady bosses not being evil but free willed and unashamedly getting the sex they want. Said again most little story’s I have written myself have been in ya face erotic, I long since accept I have a dirty mind so I would have made a sex movie out of this tale ✌️👉👅 💦🍌
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,134
    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    An 80 Shilling pint glass!? I think that's even more Imperial than my Inch's pint glass!

    https://www.inchscider.co.uk/
    Old name for a grade of beer, actually, not the glass; there might be 70/- and 80/- in the same way as the number of xxxxs reflected the grade of beer. Hence Wadworth 6X and Belhaven 80/-. TUD's Caley 80/- glass is obviously a promotional one - the point being that the Scots origin is clear from the beer being promoted.
    you forgot 60/- , pale ale Carnyx
    Here’s an explanation. http://www.scottishbrewing.com/history/shilling.php
    Apart from keg beer, the only 60/- still available is Belhaven, and that only very rarely. I haven’t seen cask 70/- or 90/- labelled as such, for a long time, either.
    When I started at age 14 it was 1/10 for light , 2 shillings for heavy 2/3 for export and 2/6 for lager. So you could get 10 pints and change from a pound.
    Yes, when I started pubcrawling on a Fri night in the mid 70s I used to take one pound and that was enough for many many pints and a bag of chips (with scraps) on the way home.
  • malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    An 80 Shilling pint glass!? I think that's even more Imperial than my Inch's pint glass!

    https://www.inchscider.co.uk/
    Old name for a grade of beer, actually, not the glass; there might be 70/- and 80/- in the same way as the number of xxxxs reflected the grade of beer. Hence Wadworth 6X and Belhaven 80/-. TUD's Caley 80/- glass is obviously a promotional one - the point being that the Scots origin is clear from the beer being promoted.
    you forgot 60/- , pale ale Carnyx
    Here’s an explanation. http://www.scottishbrewing.com/history/shilling.php
    Apart from keg beer, the only 60/- still available is Belhaven, and that only very rarely. I haven’t seen cask 70/- or 90/- labelled as such, for a long time, either.
    When I started at age 14 it was 1/10 for light , 2 shillings for heavy 2/3 for export and 2/6 for lager. So you could get 10 pints and change from a pound.
    1/10 being carefully calibrated so that after 11 pints you had enough loose change for a twelfth. On my last visit to a Scottish hostelry it seemed only natural that a pint of 80/- should at last cost £4.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    Exactly what I was thinking re crown marks - what's all this about??
    At some point they were replaced by CE marks.
    Reference here to the proposal:

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/31/boris-johnson-crowns-pint-glasses-key-brexit-success

    I see he wants to simplify life by bringing back pounds and ounces - presumably not compulsory.
    The strange obsession with imperial measures by a portion of the Tory base is one of the more perplexing sides to Brexit. People rightly accuse the left of going down esoteric rabbit holes that the country at large doesn’t care about, but this seems to be the Tory equivalent.

    In fact it’s the right wing equivalent of reopening the coal mines.
    I don't understand it at all. There's so many other things going on in the country, this is such a waste of everyone's time and effort.
    Yes, and I also think it's poor politics. The sort of people who are bothered about imperial measures are older folk who will vote Tory whatever. For younger people, it just seems weird. It won't win any new Tory voters.
    It's a defensive move to keep the fraying Brexit coalition intact. It's a simple visual reminder that leavers can look at before brushing loose tobacco off the sleeves of their shell suits and putting a quid on the edge of the pool table.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,317

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    An 80 Shilling pint glass!? I think that's even more Imperial than my Inch's pint glass!

    https://www.inchscider.co.uk/
    Old name for a grade of beer, actually, not the glass; there might be 70/- and 80/- in the same way as the number of xxxxs reflected the grade of beer. Hence Wadworth 6X and Belhaven 80/-. TUD's Caley 80/- glass is obviously a promotional one - the point being that the Scots origin is clear from the beer being promoted.
    you forgot 60/- , pale ale Carnyx
    Here’s an explanation. http://www.scottishbrewing.com/history/shilling.php
    Apart from keg beer, the only 60/- still available is Belhaven, and that only very rarely. I haven’t seen cask 70/- or 90/- labelled as such, for a long time, either.
    When I started at age 14 it was 1/10 for light , 2 shillings for heavy 2/3 for export and 2/6 for lager. So you could get 10 pints and change from a pound.
    1/10 being carefully calibrated so that after 11 pints you had enough loose change for a twelfth. On my last visit to a Scottish hostelry it seemed only natural that a pint of 80/- should at last cost £4.
    Must have been fancy hostelry at £4
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,632

    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    TimS said:

    Happy new year all.

    I can’t remember a new year greeted with such a mixture of trepidation, gloom and resigned pessimism as this one.

    Perhaps I am reading too much into Twitter. But nobody is predicting a glorious year. We’re choosing between Chinese property market collapse, Russian invasion of Ukraine, economic stagflation, a never ending pandemic, and Truss fighting Patel over immigration. And a series whitewash in the ashes.

    I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about this year, but that might be because I'm primarily fixated on the desire to see the back of this wretched pandemic and I think we're most of the way there. Winter doesn't look great from the POV of the poor bloody hospitals, and one can never rule out some personal disaster (oneself or a close relative getting seriously ill from this evil disease, having hitherto dodged it,) but it also looks increasingly as if Omicron is going to defeat all the restrictions, so our governments will hopefully recognise the rules as useless and throw them all in the dustbin come springtime.

    I've neither the energy nor the inclination to worry about any of the other problems right now. Leaving aside the fact that one has no influence over any of them, they all fall into the category of 'highly unlikely to happen' (e.g. a hot war with Russia,) 'that which can be ridden out' (e.g. another recession,) 'immaterial to my everyday life' (e.g. the UK travelling another mile or two down the road to breakup,) and/or 'why would anyone care?' (e.g. anything to do with cricket.) I don't know about anyone else, but after the last two years I feel as if my available reserves of angst have all been drained.
    I think you've got to the right place. Lockdowns would still happen if absolutely necessary but the calculus on both the virus and the politics has shifted towards 'live with it'.
    "Live with it" cannot mean ignoring it.

    It needs to involve investment in better ventilation in buildings used by crowds, better management of cross infection risks in hospitals, different ways of working, entertaining and shopping etc. Some of these are relatively modest, and others have major economic and social implications.

    The post pandemic world is not simply a return to 2019, it is an inflection point in how we live.
    I can see changes but my sense is they won't be on a scale to justify a "BC" and "AC" split. Eg will we actually get seriously ramped up NHS capacity? Or big lasting shifts in how we socialize and shop and work cf to 2019? Maybe we will but my feeling is not really. Won't the changes by and large be things that are coming anyway? Digital, AI, robotics, meta, VR, all of this stuff that Covid might have given a boost to?
    I think that the effect of the pandemic will be to accelerate existing trends mainly, but there will be new ones too.
    At some point, someone will question the compatibility between Net Zero and the pandemic-induced plague of diesel-engined delivery vans that are the corollary of online shopping.
    On the other hand there I'd less commuting with WFH, and much less air travel, fewer trips to the supermarket too. The pandemic makes for a lower carbon lifestyle.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,011
    My 1992 Newcastle Breweries 'Cask Ale Trail' pint pot has a crown on it.

    To get the free glass (personalised with your initials) you needed to drink a pint of cask ale in 8(?) different pubs and get a card stamped. So I did.
  • Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    TimS said:

    Happy new year all.

    I can’t remember a new year greeted with such a mixture of trepidation, gloom and resigned pessimism as this one.

    Perhaps I am reading too much into Twitter. But nobody is predicting a glorious year. We’re choosing between Chinese property market collapse, Russian invasion of Ukraine, economic stagflation, a never ending pandemic, and Truss fighting Patel over immigration. And a series whitewash in the ashes.

    I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about this year, but that might be because I'm primarily fixated on the desire to see the back of this wretched pandemic and I think we're most of the way there. Winter doesn't look great from the POV of the poor bloody hospitals, and one can never rule out some personal disaster (oneself or a close relative getting seriously ill from this evil disease, having hitherto dodged it,) but it also looks increasingly as if Omicron is going to defeat all the restrictions, so our governments will hopefully recognise the rules as useless and throw them all in the dustbin come springtime.

    I've neither the energy nor the inclination to worry about any of the other problems right now. Leaving aside the fact that one has no influence over any of them, they all fall into the category of 'highly unlikely to happen' (e.g. a hot war with Russia,) 'that which can be ridden out' (e.g. another recession,) 'immaterial to my everyday life' (e.g. the UK travelling another mile or two down the road to breakup,) and/or 'why would anyone care?' (e.g. anything to do with cricket.) I don't know about anyone else, but after the last two years I feel as if my available reserves of angst have all been drained.
    I think you've got to the right place. Lockdowns would still happen if absolutely necessary but the calculus on both the virus and the politics has shifted towards 'live with it'.
    "Live with it" cannot mean ignoring it.

    It needs to involve investment in better ventilation in buildings used by crowds, better management of cross infection risks in hospitals, different ways of working, entertaining and shopping etc. Some of these are relatively modest, and others have major economic and social implications.

    The post pandemic world is not simply a return to 2019, it is an inflection point in how we live.
    I can see changes but my sense is they won't be on a scale to justify a "BC" and "AC" split. Eg will we actually get seriously ramped up NHS capacity? Or big lasting shifts in how we socialize and shop and work cf to 2019? Maybe we will but my feeling is not really. Won't the changes by and large be things that are coming anyway? Digital, AI, robotics, meta, VR, all of this stuff that Covid might have given a boost to?
    I think that the effect of the pandemic will be to accelerate existing trends mainly, but there will be new ones too.
    At some point, someone will question the compatibility between Net Zero and the pandemic-induced plague of diesel-engined delivery vans that are the corollary of online shopping.
    Bring back the milk float!
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 22,660
    kinabalu said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    An 80 Shilling pint glass!? I think that's even more Imperial than my Inch's pint glass!

    https://www.inchscider.co.uk/
    Old name for a grade of beer, actually, not the glass; there might be 70/- and 80/- in the same way as the number of xxxxs reflected the grade of beer. Hence Wadworth 6X and Belhaven 80/-. TUD's Caley 80/- glass is obviously a promotional one - the point being that the Scots origin is clear from the beer being promoted.
    you forgot 60/- , pale ale Carnyx
    Here’s an explanation. http://www.scottishbrewing.com/history/shilling.php
    Apart from keg beer, the only 60/- still available is Belhaven, and that only very rarely. I haven’t seen cask 70/- or 90/- labelled as such, for a long time, either.
    When I started at age 14 it was 1/10 for light , 2 shillings for heavy 2/3 for export and 2/6 for lager. So you could get 10 pints and change from a pound.
    Yes, when I started pubcrawling on a Fri night in the mid 70s I used to take one pound and that was enough for many many pints and a bag of chips (with scraps) on the way home.
    Are you sure?

    In 1977 it was 32p a pint in local pubs and only 25p a pint in the local Club for me.

    So I needed about £4 if i wanted mushrooms and Chips to follow my Gallon of Marksman
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,989
    edited January 2022
    kinabalu said:

    On the subject of "Conspiracy Theories", I took a few minutes to rank a few that spring to mind.

    Category A, No chance:

    - World run by liberal elite pedo ring.
    - Moon landings faked.
    - Covid doesn’t exist.
    - The Kennedys killed Marilyn.

    Category B, Possible but on balance no:

    - Oswald didn’t act alone.
    - David Kelly was murdered.
    - Epstein was murdered.
    - Covid came from a lab.
    - Corbyn voted Leave.
    - The Nazis burnt the Reichstag.

    Category C, Probable, in fact almost certainly true:

    - Boris Johnson despite appearances is built like a brick shithouse. He’s almost all muscle.

    Where does "Prince Andrew visited Pizza Express in Woking" rank on the list?
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,662
    Dura_Ace said:

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    Exactly what I was thinking re crown marks - what's all this about??
    At some point they were replaced by CE marks.
    Reference here to the proposal:

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/31/boris-johnson-crowns-pint-glasses-key-brexit-success

    I see he wants to simplify life by bringing back pounds and ounces - presumably not compulsory.
    The strange obsession with imperial measures by a portion of the Tory base is one of the more perplexing sides to Brexit. People rightly accuse the left of going down esoteric rabbit holes that the country at large doesn’t care about, but this seems to be the Tory equivalent.

    In fact it’s the right wing equivalent of reopening the coal mines.
    I don't understand it at all. There's so many other things going on in the country, this is such a waste of everyone's time and effort.
    Yes, and I also think it's poor politics. The sort of people who are bothered about imperial measures are older folk who will vote Tory whatever. For younger people, it just seems weird. It won't win any new Tory voters.
    It's a defensive move to keep the fraying Brexit coalition intact. It's a simple visual reminder that leavers can look at before brushing loose tobacco off the sleeves of their shell suits and putting a quid on the edge of the pool table.
    It also sums up the desperate lengths the remaining brexit supporters are having to go to to confect a 'win'.

    I can't understand why their not bragging at the great advantage brexit has delivered for UK steelmakers. Oh...

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/dec/29/uk-steel-industry-braces-for-slump-in-trade-as-us-eu-tariffs-abolished
  • kinabalu said:

    On the subject of "Conspiracy Theories", I took a few minutes to rank a few that spring to mind.

    Category A, No chance:

    - World run by liberal elite pedo ring.
    - Moon landings faked.
    - Covid doesn’t exist.
    - The Kennedys killed Marilyn.

    Category B, Possible but on balance no:

    - Oswald didn’t act alone.
    - David Kelly was murdered.
    - Epstein was murdered.
    - Covid came from a lab.
    - Corbyn voted Leave.
    - The Nazis burnt the Reichstag.

    Category C, Probable, in fact almost certainly true:

    - Boris Johnson despite appearances is built like a brick shithouse. He’s almost all muscle.

    Where does "Prince Andrew visited Pizza Express in Windsor" rank on the list?
    To be a conspiracy theory I think it needs more than one person to believe it.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,134

    kinabalu said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    An 80 Shilling pint glass!? I think that's even more Imperial than my Inch's pint glass!

    https://www.inchscider.co.uk/
    Old name for a grade of beer, actually, not the glass; there might be 70/- and 80/- in the same way as the number of xxxxs reflected the grade of beer. Hence Wadworth 6X and Belhaven 80/-. TUD's Caley 80/- glass is obviously a promotional one - the point being that the Scots origin is clear from the beer being promoted.
    you forgot 60/- , pale ale Carnyx
    Here’s an explanation. http://www.scottishbrewing.com/history/shilling.php
    Apart from keg beer, the only 60/- still available is Belhaven, and that only very rarely. I haven’t seen cask 70/- or 90/- labelled as such, for a long time, either.
    When I started at age 14 it was 1/10 for light , 2 shillings for heavy 2/3 for export and 2/6 for lager. So you could get 10 pints and change from a pound.
    Yes, when I started pubcrawling on a Fri night in the mid 70s I used to take one pound and that was enough for many many pints and a bag of chips (with scraps) on the way home.
    Are you sure?

    In 1977 it was 32p a pint in local pubs and only 25p a pint in the local Club for me.

    So I needed about £4 if i wanted mushrooms and Chips to follow my Gallon of Marksman
    That's how I remember it - 4 or 5 pints plus the chips for a quid. And to add a detail to show authenticity. I would put the small change needed for the chips into a separate pocket at the outset so as to not get carried away and spend it. Although if you were skint you could ask for just a bag of scraps and they'd usually oblige.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    TimS said:

    Happy new year all.

    I can’t remember a new year greeted with such a mixture of trepidation, gloom and resigned pessimism as this one.

    Perhaps I am reading too much into Twitter. But nobody is predicting a glorious year. We’re choosing between Chinese property market collapse, Russian invasion of Ukraine, economic stagflation, a never ending pandemic, and Truss fighting Patel over immigration. And a series whitewash in the ashes.

    I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about this year, but that might be because I'm primarily fixated on the desire to see the back of this wretched pandemic and I think we're most of the way there. Winter doesn't look great from the POV of the poor bloody hospitals, and one can never rule out some personal disaster (oneself or a close relative getting seriously ill from this evil disease, having hitherto dodged it,) but it also looks increasingly as if Omicron is going to defeat all the restrictions, so our governments will hopefully recognise the rules as useless and throw them all in the dustbin come springtime.

    I've neither the energy nor the inclination to worry about any of the other problems right now. Leaving aside the fact that one has no influence over any of them, they all fall into the category of 'highly unlikely to happen' (e.g. a hot war with Russia,) 'that which can be ridden out' (e.g. another recession,) 'immaterial to my everyday life' (e.g. the UK travelling another mile or two down the road to breakup,) and/or 'why would anyone care?' (e.g. anything to do with cricket.) I don't know about anyone else, but after the last two years I feel as if my available reserves of angst have all been drained.
    I think you've got to the right place. Lockdowns would still happen if absolutely necessary but the calculus on both the virus and the politics has shifted towards 'live with it'.
    "Live with it" cannot mean ignoring it.

    It needs to involve investment in better ventilation in buildings used by crowds, better management of cross infection risks in hospitals, different ways of working, entertaining and shopping etc. Some of these are relatively modest, and others have major economic and social implications.

    The post pandemic world is not simply a return to 2019, it is an inflection point in how we live.
    I can see changes but my sense is they won't be on a scale to justify a "BC" and "AC" split. Eg will we actually get seriously ramped up NHS capacity? Or big lasting shifts in how we socialize and shop and work cf to 2019? Maybe we will but my feeling is not really. Won't the changes by and large be things that are coming anyway? Digital, AI, robotics, meta, VR, all of this stuff that Covid might have given a boost to?
    I think that the effect of the pandemic will be to accelerate existing trends mainly, but there will be new ones too.
    At some point, someone will question the compatibility between Net Zero and the pandemic-induced plague of diesel-engined delivery vans that are the corollary of online shopping.
    https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/rivian/107956/amazon-and-rivian-team-new-electric-delivery-van

    https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/latest-fleet-news/electric-fleet-news/2021/10/12/tesco-selects-eo-charging-to-power-its-fleet-of-electric-vans

    and, I imagine, everybody else
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,134
    Dura_Ace said:

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    Exactly what I was thinking re crown marks - what's all this about??
    At some point they were replaced by CE marks.
    Reference here to the proposal:

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/31/boris-johnson-crowns-pint-glasses-key-brexit-success

    I see he wants to simplify life by bringing back pounds and ounces - presumably not compulsory.
    The strange obsession with imperial measures by a portion of the Tory base is one of the more perplexing sides to Brexit. People rightly accuse the left of going down esoteric rabbit holes that the country at large doesn’t care about, but this seems to be the Tory equivalent.

    In fact it’s the right wing equivalent of reopening the coal mines.
    I don't understand it at all. There's so many other things going on in the country, this is such a waste of everyone's time and effort.
    Yes, and I also think it's poor politics. The sort of people who are bothered about imperial measures are older folk who will vote Tory whatever. For younger people, it just seems weird. It won't win any new Tory voters.
    It's a defensive move to keep the fraying Brexit coalition intact. It's a simple visual reminder that leavers can look at before brushing loose tobacco off the sleeves of their shell suits and putting a quid on the edge of the pool table.
    The hit from Aukus seems to have worn off so needs must, I suppose.
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 22,660
    I remember in the 1980's taking part in the Mansfield Brewery Ale Trail

    Completed 25 pubs and got a Mansfield Tie

    Completed 50 and got a visit to the Brewery

    Completed 75 and got a Mansfield Brewery Pullover

    Never quite made the top prize for visiting all 100

    Each leg had a naff clue for the final pub on the leg. I remember one was the" Beatles eat out of this after an overnight stay" the pub you had to visit being the rather tenuous Cavendish Hotel
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    Speaking of booze and boozers: Pubs, bars and restaurants need our custom more than ever right now

    So instead of Dry January or Stoptober or any of that bollocks I hereby christen january 2022 as “Drankuary” - so we all have to go to a bar or pub every single day for an eight hour session until February - or “Deathuary” as it will then be known
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    kinabalu said:

    On the subject of "Conspiracy Theories", I took a few minutes to rank a few that spring to mind.

    Category A, No chance:

    - World run by liberal elite pedo ring.
    - Moon landings faked.
    - Covid doesn’t exist.
    - The Kennedys killed Marilyn.

    Category B, Possible but on balance no:

    - Oswald didn’t act alone.
    - David Kelly was murdered.
    - Epstein was murdered.
    - Covid came from a lab.
    - Corbyn voted Leave.
    - The Nazis burnt the Reichstag.

    Category C, Probable, in fact almost certainly true:

    - Boris Johnson despite appearances is built like a brick shithouse. He’s almost all muscle.

    Where does "Prince Andrew visited Pizza Express in Windsor" rank on the list?
    To be a conspiracy theory I think it needs more than one person to believe it.
    But take that unbelievably stupid photo out of the equation and we're in a situation where there's an Internet conspiracy theory that a senior British Royal was involved with Epstein, and anyone saying there might be something in it labelled a 4chan nutter.

    Who the fck took it and on what pretext? Smile please, Mr Epstein would like a shot for his blackmail records?
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 22,660

    My 1992 Newcastle Breweries 'Cask Ale Trail' pint pot has a crown on it.

    To get the free glass (personalised with your initials) you needed to drink a pint of cask ale in 8(?) different pubs and get a card stamped. So I did.

    8 I had to do 100 Mansfield Pubs (half a pint in each) for a "years supply" of Mansfield bitter or Marksman Lager

    Never quite managed it had to settle for the tie, pullover and Brewery visit for 75 pubs.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,828
    Leon said:

    Speaking of booze and boozers: Pubs, bars and restaurants need our custom more than ever right now

    So instead of Dry January or Stoptober or any of that bollocks I hereby christen january 2022 as “Drankuary” - so we all have to go to a bar or pub every single day for an eight hour session until February - or “Deathuary” as it will then be known

    And as a multiplier you'll be drinking five times what each one of us does? Definitely patriotic and heroic.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,572
    I've just run my first ever marathon: 4hr 45 minutes, with 140 metres of ascent. Mostly on road, but with some muddy and boggy sections, including one where I had to walk.

    Quite pleased with the effort; half an hour faster than my target time, and I was on target for a 4hr30m before I slowed down coming up Madingley Hill at about 20 miles.

    And that brings my running streak (not streaking running) to an end. I'm going to take a few days off and concentrate on something new. So you won't hear me going on about running for a bit ...
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,828
    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    An 80 Shilling pint glass!? I think that's even more Imperial than my Inch's pint glass!

    https://www.inchscider.co.uk/
    Old name for a grade of beer, actually, not the glass; there might be 70/- and 80/- in the same way as the number of xxxxs reflected the grade of beer. Hence Wadworth 6X and Belhaven 80/-. TUD's Caley 80/- glass is obviously a promotional one - the point being that the Scots origin is clear from the beer being promoted.
    you forgot 60/- , pale ale Carnyx
    Here’s an explanation. http://www.scottishbrewing.com/history/shilling.php
    Apart from keg beer, the only 60/- still available is Belhaven, and that only very rarely. I haven’t seen cask 70/- or 90/- labelled as such, for a long time, either.
    When I started at age 14 it was 1/10 for light , 2 shillings for heavy 2/3 for export and 2/6 for lager. So you could get 10 pints and change from a pound.
    1/10 being carefully calibrated so that after 11 pints you had enough loose change for a twelfth. On my last visit to a Scottish hostelry it seemed only natural that a pint of 80/- should at last cost £4.
    Must have been fancy hostelry at £4
    D'you think he went to the North British on Princes Street? Long time since I've been there.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,317



    Happy new year

    welcome to the club
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,494
    malcolmg said:

    Finally a good winner. L'homme presse was very very impressive, definitely going to be a big star.

    Lead them round at own pace then rode away. Added to my note book 👍🏻
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,989
    edited January 2022



    Happy new year

    Looks like PCR testing system has finally totally crashed....zero slots anywhere by 1.30pm.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,317
    edited January 2022

    malcolmg said:

    Finally a good winner. L'homme presse was very very impressive, definitely going to be a big star.

    Lead them round at own pace then rode away. Added to my note book 👍🏻
    Definitely one to watch, made it look like a canter.
    Got Tommie Beau at Catterick with this on eso just waiting on Spot on Soph Catterick 14:45 for a nice Trixie.
    @MoonRabbit
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    kinabalu said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    Exactly what I was thinking re crown marks - what's all this about??
    At some point they were replaced by CE marks.
    Reference here to the proposal:

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/31/boris-johnson-crowns-pint-glasses-key-brexit-success

    I see he wants to simplify life by bringing back pounds and ounces - presumably not compulsory.
    The strange obsession with imperial measures by a portion of the Tory base is one of the more perplexing sides to Brexit. People rightly accuse the left of going down esoteric rabbit holes that the country at large doesn’t care about, but this seems to be the Tory equivalent.

    In fact it’s the right wing equivalent of reopening the coal mines.
    I don't understand it at all. There's so many other things going on in the country, this is such a waste of everyone's time and effort.
    Yes, and I also think it's poor politics. The sort of people who are bothered about imperial measures are older folk who will vote Tory whatever. For younger people, it just seems weird. It won't win any new Tory voters.
    It's a defensive move to keep the fraying Brexit coalition intact. It's a simple visual reminder that leavers can look at before brushing loose tobacco off the sleeves of their shell suits and putting a quid on the edge of the pool table.
    The hit from Aukus seems to have worn off so needs must, I suppose.
    You and @Dura_Ace and the other idiot Remoaners still don’t understand Brexit and you never will. It is fuck all to do with steel or cheese or whatever

    What is Brexit? It is Brexit. What is the meaning and purpose of Brexit? It is Brexit. Brexit IS the great benefit of Brexiting

    Look at it this way. Every time some Eurocrat appears on tv and announces a new EU law or policy or “Brussels decides” I get a reflexive desire to puke as I think: wait, I didn’t vote for this, I didn’t vote for any of them, you can’t vote for them, they just rule us forever - as that has been the case all my adult life

    And then I remember: wait, we brexited. We’re out. They do not rule us. We are ruled by ourselves. Fuck them. And then I feel warm and happy about Brexit all over again. Plus Brexit annoys people like you and Emmanuel macron so that’s good as well

    There will have to be a 3000 year shortage of cheese, 4 million hour queues at Heathrow, along with a successful invasion by yodelling Belgian dwarves for me to decide Brexit was a mistake
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,424

    My 1992 Newcastle Breweries 'Cask Ale Trail' pint pot has a crown on it.

    To get the free glass (personalised with your initials) you needed to drink a pint of cask ale in 8(?) different pubs and get a card stamped. So I did.

    I suspect (see upthread) that it was optional, as with so many beer-related matters, there's 'tradition' involved.

    In other recollections the first time I walked into a Sunderland pub, in 1958, I asked for a pint of bitter and was told it was all bitter ..... did I want best or ordinary? Think 'best' was about 1/9d per pint.
    Although I did, in 1960, find a pub which sold 'ordinary' at 1/- a pint. The pub didn't last much longer though.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,986
    Leon said:

    Speaking of booze and boozers: Pubs, bars and restaurants need our custom more than ever right now

    So instead of Dry January or Stoptober or any of that bollocks I hereby christen january 2022 as “Drankuary” - so we all have to go to a bar or pub every single day for an eight hour session until February - or “Deathuary” as it will then be known

    We decided once Christmas Day was over that we would eat and drink out as much as possible over the next couple of weeks for this reason. Eat out to help out.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,572

    I remember in the 1980's taking part in the Mansfield Brewery Ale Trail

    Completed 25 pubs and got a Mansfield Tie

    Completed 50 and got a visit to the Brewery

    Completed 75 and got a Mansfield Brewery Pullover

    Never quite made the top prize for visiting all 100

    Each leg had a naff clue for the final pub on the leg. I remember one was the" Beatles eat out of this after an overnight stay" the pub you had to visit being the rather tenuous Cavendish Hotel

    In about 1994 myself and a few friends tried to do a Monopoly board pub crawl around London, possibly inspired by Red Dwarf. I forget how far we got, but after a few squares we gave up on doing them in board order. I do remember a rather insalubrious establishment in Kings Cross - how that area's changed in 25 years!
  • eekeek Posts: 28,368
    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    On the subject of "Conspiracy Theories", I took a few minutes to rank a few that spring to mind.

    Category A, No chance:

    - World run by liberal elite pedo ring.
    - Moon landings faked.
    - Covid doesn’t exist.
    - The Kennedys killed Marilyn.

    Category B, Possible but on balance no:

    - Oswald didn’t act alone.
    - David Kelly was murdered.
    - Epstein was murdered.
    - Covid came from a lab.
    - Corbyn voted Leave.
    - The Nazis burnt the Reichstag.

    Category C, Probable, in fact almost certainly true:

    - Boris Johnson despite appearances is built like a brick shithouse. He’s almost all muscle.

    Where does "Prince Andrew visited Pizza Express in Windsor" rank on the list?
    To be a conspiracy theory I think it needs more than one person to believe it.
    But take that unbelievably stupid photo out of the equation and we're in a situation where there's an Internet conspiracy theory that a senior British Royal was involved with Epstein, and anyone saying there might be something in it labelled a 4chan nutter.

    Who the fck took it and on what pretext? Smile please, Mr Epstein would like a shot for his blackmail records?
    Not so much a question of who took it, more how did it arrive in the public domain and why?
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,424
    edited January 2022



    Happy new year

    Congrats. Mrs C & I each had one of those this morning, too.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373



    Happy new year

    Looks like PCR testing system has finally totally crashed....zero slots anywhere by 1.30pm.
    So unless they scrap the isolation rule, any teacher or doctor who gets a false positive on their LFT but is otherwise perfectly fine will have to isolate for seven days.

    This is not going to end well for essential services...
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,145
    edited January 2022
    jonny83 said:

    Taz said:

    The local McDonalds ran out of hash browns this morning. 2022 has already started badly.

    Hold the front page.
    American celebrity billionaire Warren Buffet famously breakfasts at McDonalds each day, though iirc on McMuffins rather than hash browns.
    If you buy a mcmuffin meal you get a hash brown with it
    Double Sausage and egg McMuffin with a Hash Brown. Ugh, my weakness...
    But what is a hash-brown without treacle?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,989
    edited January 2022
    ydoethur said:



    Happy new year

    Looks like PCR testing system has finally totally crashed....zero slots anywhere by 1.30pm.
    So unless they scrap the isolation rule, any teacher or doctor who gets a false positive on their LFT but is otherwise perfectly fine will have to isolate for seven days.

    This is not going to end well for essential services...
    I think the next week we are going to see a lot of issues. The amount of social mixing will of course caused spread and everybody and their dog will be trying to get tests, especially with people returning to work and school while at the same time more and more people isolating.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373



    Happy new year

    Congrats. Mrs C & I each had one of those this morning, too.
    I hope your symptoms are all mild.

    If it's this infectious there really does appear to be fuck all point in any NPIs. Short of welding us all in our houses this is going to run through the population faster than one of @malcolmg 's racing tips goes round the course (and that's pretty damn fast).

    Get vaccinated and keep the symptoms under control appears the only sane way out.

    Shame about the Piers Corbynistas...
  • ydoethur said:



    Happy new year

    Looks like PCR testing system has finally totally crashed....zero slots anywhere by 1.30pm.
    So unless they scrap the isolation rule, any teacher or doctor who gets a false positive on their LFT but is otherwise perfectly fine will have to isolate for seven days.

    This is not going to end well for essential services...
    I thought false positives were pretty rare: false negatives are much more likely.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,368
    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    dixiedean said:

    Foxy said:

    Jonathan said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Happy New Year. I'm hoping this year will be the year we finally get back to the cheerful optimistic of the 1990s.

    That will require a large number of people - including many in the media - to let go of Brexit. They still think that Brexit has doomed us to perpetual pessimism....
    Looking forward to Boris and the Tories saying we can forget about Brexit.
    Oh, I think they are increasingly keen on the voters forgetting the polished turd that is Brexit.
    You obviously didn't hear the PM'S New Year message then.
    Am I the only one who wasn't aware there were ever crown stamps on pint glasses?
    I don't know if Scottish licensing laws are different but pint glasses here are regularly marked as such and have crown stamps. Just checked a Caley 80 shilling glass I got from a beer festival 20 years ago and lo and behold..



    These rsoles are all about confected battles and synthetic victories.
    Exactly what I was thinking re crown marks - what's all this about??
    At some point they were replaced by CE marks.
    Reference here to the proposal:

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/31/boris-johnson-crowns-pint-glasses-key-brexit-success

    I see he wants to simplify life by bringing back pounds and ounces - presumably not compulsory.
    The strange obsession with imperial measures by a portion of the Tory base is one of the more perplexing sides to Brexit. People rightly accuse the left of going down esoteric rabbit holes that the country at large doesn’t care about, but this seems to be the Tory equivalent.

    In fact it’s the right wing equivalent of reopening the coal mines.
    I don't understand it at all. There's so many other things going on in the country, this is such a waste of everyone's time and effort.
    Yes, and I also think it's poor politics. The sort of people who are bothered about imperial measures are older folk who will vote Tory whatever. For younger people, it just seems weird. It won't win any new Tory voters.
    It's a defensive move to keep the fraying Brexit coalition intact. It's a simple visual reminder that leavers can look at before brushing loose tobacco off the sleeves of their shell suits and putting a quid on the edge of the pool table.
    The hit from Aukus seems to have worn off so needs must, I suppose.
    You and @Dura_Ace and the other idiot Remoaners still don’t understand Brexit and you never will. It is fuck all to do with steel or cheese or whatever

    What is Brexit? It is Brexit. What is the meaning and purpose of Brexit? It is Brexit. Brexit IS the great benefit of Brexiting

    Look at it this way. Every time some Eurocrat appears on tv and announces a new EU law or policy or “Brussels decides” I get a reflexive desire to puke as I think: wait, I didn’t vote for this, I didn’t vote for any of them, you can’t vote for them, they just rule us forever - as that has been the case all my adult life

    And then I remember: wait, we brexited. We’re out. They do not rule us. We are ruled by ourselves. Fuck them. And then I feel warm and happy about Brexit all over again. Plus Brexit annoys people like you and Emmanuel macron so that’s good as well

    There will have to be a 3000 year shortage of cheese, 4 million hour queues at Heathrow, along with a successful invasion by yodelling Belgian dwarves for me to decide Brexit was a mistake
    With this one post I’m now convinced, Brexit was a mistake.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,248
    IshmaelZ said:

    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    pigeon said:

    TimS said:

    Happy new year all.

    I can’t remember a new year greeted with such a mixture of trepidation, gloom and resigned pessimism as this one.

    Perhaps I am reading too much into Twitter. But nobody is predicting a glorious year. We’re choosing between Chinese property market collapse, Russian invasion of Ukraine, economic stagflation, a never ending pandemic, and Truss fighting Patel over immigration. And a series whitewash in the ashes.

    I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about this year, but that might be because I'm primarily fixated on the desire to see the back of this wretched pandemic and I think we're most of the way there. Winter doesn't look great from the POV of the poor bloody hospitals, and one can never rule out some personal disaster (oneself or a close relative getting seriously ill from this evil disease, having hitherto dodged it,) but it also looks increasingly as if Omicron is going to defeat all the restrictions, so our governments will hopefully recognise the rules as useless and throw them all in the dustbin come springtime.

    I've neither the energy nor the inclination to worry about any of the other problems right now. Leaving aside the fact that one has no influence over any of them, they all fall into the category of 'highly unlikely to happen' (e.g. a hot war with Russia,) 'that which can be ridden out' (e.g. another recession,) 'immaterial to my everyday life' (e.g. the UK travelling another mile or two down the road to breakup,) and/or 'why would anyone care?' (e.g. anything to do with cricket.) I don't know about anyone else, but after the last two years I feel as if my available reserves of angst have all been drained.
    I think you've got to the right place. Lockdowns would still happen if absolutely necessary but the calculus on both the virus and the politics has shifted towards 'live with it'.
    "Live with it" cannot mean ignoring it.

    It needs to involve investment in better ventilation in buildings used by crowds, better management of cross infection risks in hospitals, different ways of working, entertaining and shopping etc. Some of these are relatively modest, and others have major economic and social implications.

    The post pandemic world is not simply a return to 2019, it is an inflection point in how we live.
    I can see changes but my sense is they won't be on a scale to justify a "BC" and "AC" split. Eg will we actually get seriously ramped up NHS capacity? Or big lasting shifts in how we socialize and shop and work cf to 2019? Maybe we will but my feeling is not really. Won't the changes by and large be things that are coming anyway? Digital, AI, robotics, meta, VR, all of this stuff that Covid might have given a boost to?
    I think that the effect of the pandemic will be to accelerate existing trends mainly, but there will be new ones too.
    At some point, someone will question the compatibility between Net Zero and the pandemic-induced plague of diesel-engined delivery vans that are the corollary of online shopping.
    https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/rivian/107956/amazon-and-rivian-team-new-electric-delivery-van

    https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/latest-fleet-news/electric-fleet-news/2021/10/12/tesco-selects-eo-charging-to-power-its-fleet-of-electric-vans

    and, I imagine, everybody else
    Indeed - and slowly trundling round a town, with frequent stops and starts is the perfect environment for an electric power train.

    The thing holding it back, up till now, has been battery cost. Which has dropped through the floor and is still falling.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373

    ydoethur said:



    Happy new year

    Looks like PCR testing system has finally totally crashed....zero slots anywhere by 1.30pm.
    So unless they scrap the isolation rule, any teacher or doctor who gets a false positive on their LFT but is otherwise perfectly fine will have to isolate for seven days.

    This is not going to end well for essential services...
    I think the next week we are going to see a lot of issues. The amount of social mixing will of course caused spread and everybody and their dog will be trying to get tests, especially with people returning to work and school while at the same time more and more people isolating.
    Don't forget we have to test all of them when they return to school. Had my schedule through yesterday from the deputy head.

    That's going to lead to a spike in cases on its own. And a surge in demand for PCRs, which aren't there.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373
    MattW said:

    jonny83 said:

    Taz said:

    The local McDonalds ran out of hash browns this morning. 2022 has already started badly.

    Hold the front page.
    American celebrity billionaire Warren Buffet famously breakfasts at McDonalds each day, though iirc on McMuffins rather than hash browns.
    If you buy a mcmuffin meal you get a hash brown with it
    Double Sausage and egg McMuffin with a Hash Brown. Ugh, my weakness...
    But what is a hash-brown without treacle?
    Much pleasanter.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,188
    No lfts, no pcrs.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373

    ydoethur said:



    Happy new year

    Looks like PCR testing system has finally totally crashed....zero slots anywhere by 1.30pm.
    So unless they scrap the isolation rule, any teacher or doctor who gets a false positive on their LFT but is otherwise perfectly fine will have to isolate for seven days.

    This is not going to end well for essential services...
    I thought false positives were pretty rare: false negatives are much more likely.
    I've had so many experiences of both among colleagues that I've decided the only safe conclusion to draw is that LFTs are a crock of worthless rubbish.
  • Leon said:

    Speaking of booze and boozers: Pubs, bars and restaurants need our custom more than ever right now

    So instead of Dry January or Stoptober or any of that bollocks I hereby christen january 2022 as “Drankuary” - so we all have to go to a bar or pub every single day for an eight hour session until February - or “Deathuary” as it will then be known

    The 'working from home' gang should change to 'working from pub'.
  • Pulpstar said:

    No lfts, no pcrs.

    no income tax, no VAT....no money back, no guarantee..
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,145
    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    jonny83 said:

    Taz said:

    The local McDonalds ran out of hash browns this morning. 2022 has already started badly.

    Hold the front page.
    American celebrity billionaire Warren Buffet famously breakfasts at McDonalds each day, though iirc on McMuffins rather than hash browns.
    If you buy a mcmuffin meal you get a hash brown with it
    Double Sausage and egg McMuffin with a Hash Brown. Ugh, my weakness...
    But what is a hash-brown without treacle?
    Much pleasanter.
    Which reminds me I have a pack of Aldi hash-browns in the freezer, next to the mini ice-cream cornets.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373

    Pulpstar said:

    No lfts, no pcrs.

    no income tax, no VAT....no money back, no guarantee..
    C'est magnifique?
This discussion has been closed.