Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[Welchester]

7 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Didn't the outgoing PoTUS talk yesterday about "The movement we have started only just beginning."? 

 

Might All-Bran help?

[Regularity]

7 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Didn't the outgoing PoTUS talk yesterday about "The movement we have started only just beginning."? 

 

5 minutes ago, Welchester said:

Might All-Bran help?

Well, we all knew he was full of sh1te, and like all a55holes, was just passing it through, so you never know...

[CKPR]

Mark Twain's wry observation about politicians and nappies comes to mind.

[figworthy]

11 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

By its appearance in the abovementioned bastion of the liberal tradition. It has long had a liberal interpretation of what constitutes "news".

 

And what constitutes correct spilling.

 

Adrian

[rocor]

17 hours ago, CKPR said:

Mark Twain's wry observation about politicians and nappies comes to mind.

 

Maybe this is more of a case of what he is reputed to have said, rather than what he did.

 

https://marktwainstudies.com/the-apocryphal-twain-politicians-are-like-diapers/

[Annie]

Yesterday (Southern Hemisphere colonial time) it was the 21st day of the 21st year of the 21st century.  Being the terribly alert wee slip of a thing that I am I only noticed that today.

[Andy Hayter]

5 hours ago, Annie said:

Yesterday (Southern Hemisphere colonial time) it was the 21st day of the 21st year of the 21st century.  Being the terribly alert wee slip of a thing that I am I only noticed that today.

You can do better than that if you go to 9:21 and 21 seconds yesterday

 

21st second of the 21st minute of the 21st hour on the 21st day of the 21st year of the 21st century

 

I missed it

[ian]

I'm waiting for the 21st month...

[Nearholmer]

You haven't been projecting forward how long lockdown is going to have to last, have you?

[Edwardian]

In the news today, the death of the knock, knock joke.  Apparently, many under thirties have never heard of them.

 

Mature Person: "Knock, knock"

 

Millennial: "What!?!"  

 

My favourite is not in fact a proper knock, knock joke.  I call it the German* Knock, Knock Joke:

 

"Knock, knock"

 

"Who's there?"

 

"Vere are your papers ?!?"

 

*Because our nation still lives in the 1940s. An appropriate update might be the Russian Federation Knock, Knock Joke:

 

"Knock, knock"

 

"Who's there?"

 

"Putin"

 

"Putin who?"

 

"Putin you in prison for exposing my despotism and corruption"

 

Hmm, needs work, I think. Let's send it to Siberia.

 

 

[Edwardian]

10 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

My favourite is not in fact a proper knock, knock joke.  I call it the German Knock, Knock Joke:

 

"Knock, knock"

 

"Who's there?"

 

"Vere are your papers ?!?"

 

 

 

Or, I suppose, we could rechristen this the "Belgian Astrazeneca Joke"

[rocor]

44 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

In the news today, the death of the knock, knock joke.  Apparently, many under thirties have never heard of them.

 

Mature Person: "Knock, knock"

 

Millennial: "What!?!"  

 

My favourite is not in fact a proper knock, knock joke.  I call it the German* Knock, Knock Joke:

 

"Knock, knock"

 

"Who's there?"

 

"Vere are your papers ?!?"

 

*Because our nation still lives in the 1940s. An appropriate update might be the Russian Federation Knock, Knock Joke:

 

"Knock, knock"

 

"Who's there?"

 

"Putin"

 

"Putin who?"

 

"Putin you in prison for exposing my despotism and corruption"

 

Hmm, needs work, I think. Let's send it to Siberia.

 

 

 

I knocked (sigh!), this one up on the spur of the moment. Fortunately there is no longer a groan button.

 

"Knock knock"

 

"Who’s there?"

 

"That’s right,  Ivan Hoo"

 

"You’ve a what?"

 

"Not Yootha Watt, Ivan Hoo"

Edited January 29, 2021 by rocor
With due credit to Abbot and Costello.

[Regularity]

Computer logic variant, based an partial homophones (“assonance”):

Not not.

Yes?

[Caley Jim]

At the risk of repeating myself, a linguistics lecturer pointed out that only in Russian do two negatives still make a positive.  'But,' he said 'there are no languages in which two positives make a negative.'  At which point a Glasgow voice from the back shouted, 'Aye, right!'.

 

Jim (windae picked)

[Regularity]

It is now 1 year since the first reported COVID-19 cases in the UK.

 

Despite UK citizens who were brought home from Wuhan province and that notorious cruise ship having to quarantine themselves, no such restrictions were applied to Chinese nationals coming here. (This is a criticism of UK policy, nothing more than that.) The two cases were a Chinese student and his mother, who were allowed to land unhindered, as were (and still are) all too many people from overseas, for example, northern Italy.

We were told that 20,000 deaths would be a good result: only possible with a rapid lockdown and putting people first. We have seen 5 times that.

We were also told that without doing anything, we should expect 500,000 deaths: the result of no lockdown and putting the economy first. We have experienced 1/5 of that.

In terms of logarithmic scales (which is what I use professionally for estimating the impact of potential risk events), we have fallen more or less right in the middle of those two. This is what happens with indecisive leadership: an attempt to please two extremes does not result in pleasing both, merely p1551ng both off equally by being neither one thing nor another.

 

We should be on the streets in uproar, but even if there wasn’t lockdown, no one would turn up.

 

Write to your MP. Ask them how they have allowed such a disastrous shambles to happen on their watch. Better still, write to your local paper, get support, and raise a petition to recall your MP, and if their explanation as to why they haven’t held the government to account aren’t acceptable, eject them as your representative and call for a by-election. 

 

Happy anniversary!

[Annie]

1 hour ago, Regularity said:

This is what happens with indecisive leadership:

Indecisive, - that's the word the news media down my end of the world have been using too.

[Compound2632]

6 hours ago, Annie said:

Indecisive, - that's the word the news media down my end of the world have been using too.

 

They could broaden their lexicon with the words:

• incompetent
• complacent
• corrupt (or alternatively, chumocracy)

It has to be said that this is not a good advertisement for Eton College.

[monkeysarefun]

Yeah I never thought our climate denying bunch would listen to the scientists over the economists, but between them and the states here its been an amazing result - 11 or 12 days now since the last case of local transmission nationwide. We have around 100 active cases and nearly all of those are from overseas in quarantine,  20 hospitalized nationally and no one in ICU. Anywhere in Australia. Our last COVID death was on November 29th.

 

It might have been very different though - every day I give thanks that the Libs kicked the insane loon Tony Abbott out of the PM's job before this started, given some of his quotes since.  I dread to think where we'd be now otherwise:

 

Tony Abbott, the former Australian prime minister tipped to become a UK trade envoy, has railed against Covid “health dictatorships”, saying the economic cost of lockdowns meant families should be allowed to consider letting elderly relatives with the coronavirus die by letting nature take its course.

He claimed it was costing the Australian government as much as $200,000 (£110,000) to give an elderly person an extra year’s life, substantially beyond what governments would usually pay for life-saving drugs.

Abbott said not enough politicians were “thinking like health economists trained to pose uncomfortable questions about the level of deaths we might have to live with”. More politicians should have asked whether the cure was proportionate to the disease

 

and

 

Former prime minister Tony Abbott has called for COVID-19 restrictions to be relaxed, arguing officials have become trapped in "crisis mode" and that governments need to consider "uncomfortable questions" about the number of deaths they are prepared to live with.

 

Speaking in London to the UK think tank Policy Exchange, Mr Abbott said the media had spread "virus hysteria" and people should be allowed to make their own decisions.

"From a health perspective, this pandemic has been serious. From an economic perspective, it's been disastrous," he said.

"But I suspect that it's from an overall wellbeing perspective that it will turn out worst of all. Because this is what happens when for much more than a mere moment, we let fear of falling sick stop us from being fully alive.

"Now that each one of us has had six months to consider this pandemic, and to make our own judgements about it, surely it's time to relax the rules so that individuals can take more personal responsibility and make more of their own decisions about the risks they're prepared to run."

Edited January 30, 2021 by monkeysarefun

[Regularity]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

It has to be said that this is not a good advertisement for Eton College.

To be fair to Eton, the head of sixth form did feel compelled to write to Stanley Johnson about the fact that his seventeen year old son seemed to be of the opinion that rules applied to everyone else and not him.

[wagonman]

That drongo Abbott is going to be our Trade Envoy? We're all doooomed!

 

 

[Annie]

Idiots like Tony Abbott are happy enough to talk about 'the level of deaths we might have to live with' so long as they aren't the ones who have to do the dying.

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, Annie said:

Idiots like Tony Abbott are happy enough to talk about 'the level of deaths we might have to live with' so long as they aren't the ones who have to do the dying.

It can always be arranged...

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

Speaking as an Australian I would like to offer a sincere apology to the UK for having Tony Abbott inflicted on you. He is basically an ar$ehole. 

 

But the sad truth must be told, Tony was born in the UK. It would be nice to think we copped the little expletive deleted because transportation was still in operation but alas his family migrated here when the turd was a kid.

 

Apart from that I can't say think of anything else to say about the little bastard.   

[Compound2632]

@Malcolm 0-6-0, you should not feel yourself bound by any sense of personal responsibility. There are plenty of true-born Britons I'd be glad enough to disown.

[Edwardian]

3 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

Speaking as an Australian I would like to offer a sincere apology to the UK for having Tony Abbott inflicted on you. He is basically an ar$ehole. 

 

But the sad truth must be told, Tony was born in the UK. It would be nice to think we copped the little expletive deleted because transportation was still in operation but alas his family migrated here when the turd was a kid.

 

Apart from that I can't say think of anything else to say about the little bastard.   

 

Don't you worry, we are perfectly capable of producing equally egregious twerps ....