alastairq

But, it's that '' quid or two more'' that is the breaker, if feeding oneself on a very tight budget! As for salt? Well, one would need to eat from KFC to know about salt...McDonalds stuff isn't 'liberally coated' in salt at all. A small menu double cheeseburger [plenty of protein, especially in the cheese]...has less salt than the two rashers of fatty bacon sarnie available served with an expensive, posh, bread bun at an artisanal caff! The sausage & egg McMuffin is a far better bet than a typical sausage sarnie from a burger van ...especially as McDonalds don't fry the egg, but poach it instead. But, on the topic of 'salt' alone, how many reckon they cook at home, by opening up a read made meal from M&S or Waitrose? Ready-made menus? Where do the ingredients come from? What do they come from? Tesco are famous for hiding other ingredients in their basic staples [Horsemeat, for example? Remember that?] What I like about Maccydees is,all through the recent pandemic, their drive-thru has been open, and clean, for service. Not [just] for the 'fast food', but the change of scene and a nice coffee. With absolutely no chance of having to 'mix it' with anybody else on the planet [which suited me]!! Local caffs? No chance! Deliveroo-type comestibles? Not for the prices being charged, in a month of Sundays! But then, as someone with a taste for a good fried breakfast in the past, I was forever reluctant to pay more than 4 quid for such a meal....yet I know some will question, what sort of fry-up can one buy for 4 quid these days? Well maybe the rest of the world has an inflated view of the cost of food, but I don't!

Blaming McDonalds for the general public's littering habits [adn drive thru's?] isn't really fair on either. I find it amusing how folk view McDonalds [especially] when as a nation of workers we have almost lived off fish n chips [fat fat fat]...and bacon butties [fat fat fat] In the end, it is the buying public who are in control of what they wish to eat....If they 'cannot be bovvered' then that is up to the public. McDonalds do offer all sorts of 'healthy eating' options....It's hardly McDonald's ''fault'' if all the workmen's backsides [building-site b#ms?] don't want to eat salads & stuff, is it? Personally I look upon Maccydees as a cheap, sound option..not all the time, but then, I don't eat fish n chips [any more, at over 7 1/2 quid that's too much for my pension]. or bacon sarnies....[I only get bacon for my S&H when he visits, I have poached egg....its a ''cost'' thing. But then, if I ate out, 4 quid-a-head in my view ought to provide a sound decent meal.......[for two??] Living on a small pension maketh a titewad out of man...

Nope, they don't! Better than vomit or the stink of vaping. McDonalds actually have a clean surroundings contract....in other words, staff go round regularly and clean up the McDonalds area. Not sure Harrods do that to any surrounding car parks? Or M&S? The bins for McDonalds are designed to actually 'receive' any waste packaging, etc, without overflowing. [CAn be lobbed in without having to exit the car, too..there's even an aiming target inside the bin!] I admit to scattering the contents of a Mcdonalds bin out the car window whenever I've driven through West Yorkshire...must be something in the air that makes me do it...Otherwise, its goes in the McDonalds bin. I don't mess on my own doorstep. Those that live in crowded urban areas don't notice the mess anyway. As for chippie smells? I don't know what fats your local chippies have been using, but round my way they clean the oil out regularly, so the fish n chips doesn't smell too bad at all. But for smelly things to follow, try following a motor caravan whose toilet tank is a bit too full? Horrible smell, that blue stuff! Anyway, diversity is bad for us, ask any student?

Erm ..Nope? Why is there a presumption that folk who drink Maccydees coffee, and sometimes eat maybe a small double cheeseburger, or a Sausage & egg Mcmuffin, are going to be [any fatter?] larger than those who eat the pet rabbit's dinner? At least I don't pay for the gratification of being seen somewhere like Pret a Manger? I prefer to only pay for the food, not the ambience or kudos....I leave that to those who have so much surplus cash, they don't know what to do with it?

Watching a recent Zoe, it seems 'herd immunity' refers to the acquisition of natural immunity in a population, by 'encouraging' infections. But, hey [....ll?] I'm not expert, I achieve immunity by not going anywhere near anybody else......which I find very relaxing and calming and pleasant... The vaccines I've had may help in the medium term, and I'm booked sometime for a booster. I will still not have a flu jab, however.....I don't like the idea of deliberately making myself ill.....[like I don't like getting drink..or taking pain killers....or anything that makes me dizzy.]

Not be the many unvaxxers, it seems...?

WHy? Is it because they sell the best coffee at half the price of the gucci latte spots? Or the fact that they sell consistent quality grub, that isn't dressed up like a fashion statement? Their drive-thru service is far superior to paying for parking, then having to walk through the covid-zone and sit in amongst the super-spreaders trying to look like a sophisticate? Or is it that they power their delivery lorries on the spent cooking oil? Rather than paying lip service toso-called Eco-credentials? My only complaint is, the drive-thru order points are all on the right side of any vehicle.....

MAybe U-turn is a less offensive description than 'fork right' or 'fork left'......? Nowt wrong with U-turns.....the real nasties are those stuck in scientific & political dogma...

The important thing is to be able to change one's mind, or 'view', as the science changes. {Which it inevitably does, over time?} It seems, the idea of herd immunity isn't quite giving the percentages it originally was thought to be able to do?

Erm.......don't we all?

Oh how I completely agree on that one!! {Sorry, those two!]

Back on topic...McDonalds appear to be running short of Galaxy Caramel McFlurries.......

It was the ''latte-sippin' bit that I think the mods might have taken a fence or two over? I don't read Guardians, and am off Galaxy for now.....

The swear word, i was ignoring...it 's the very descriptive [and appropriate in my view] rest of it...so very apt, yet deemed potentially so very...erm.....offensive, to some? [if the cap fits, doesn't help matters in this day & age, does it?} Aren't we supposed to be inclusive these days? Or have I got that wrong as well? Speaking as a GoG! {Enhanced spell check refused to cite 'speaking', instead coming up with ''Spa, Spanking, and Sip!! Eeeee, I wonder where they got the spell checker from??]

Don't beat about the bush, Annie.....the mods don't like us saying things as they are....

I guess the donkeys have finally died, then?

IN my experience, people who live in a rural area tend to migrate to & from urbanised areas on a frequent basis.....shopping, fuel, medical, etc etc. Children are bussed in from the 'outside' to 'urban' schools...[the only rural school sector being primary] Hence I suspect a source of infection may not be from another local person, but brought in from the outside? I don't know about the south of the country, but up here, rural areas have long since lost their 'local' amenities. For me, to shop & support local businesses [for 'supplies' purposes, not posh crockery!], involves journeys of quite a few miles....albeit not seeing traffic jams or zebra crossings on the way. The 'local village shop' long since went the way of the dodo....[I guess the gucci cutesy lifestyles haven't arrived up here yet?] Nowadays, my nearest 'shop' for essentials is about 1 1/2 miles away, cross-country, and is a large petrol station on a busy main road. [ A good source of infection, with so much passing trade coming from afar?} Same for my nearest bus stop! Which is the third tree down on the left, sort-of-thing. A 'request' stop, which should really be an 'ambush' stop! Not very well frequented by buses either. The point being, for rural folk, life isn't one of an entirely isolated form...from the outside world.

Would that be, percentages per so many head of population,perhaps? Being more sparsely populated in rural areas, it won't take very many infections to show up as a bigger percentage...

Oh, how I used to wish the EYMS deckers I once drove on the 121 service [based from Driffield], has summat to cut down the interior reflections on dark winter's nights...out of sight of streetlamps??? Trying to maintain a semblance of 'time' with Bristol VRs, Leyland Limp-ones, etc was a nightmare if one wished to not 'leave' intending rural passengers, stood at their usual trees/bus stops, gateholes, etc, at night. Or run down the frequent rural cyclist [not much pleasure/leisure cycling round hereabouts in those days..anyone on a pushbike was either going to work, going home from work, or doing the shopping...not like today's lycra-clad wombles!] Measuring up the part of the windscreen through which one could actually see the very vague headlights, resulted in almost 4/5ths of the screen, from in front, to the left, being obscured bright reflections, and visuals of the old farts sitting on the left picking their noses. The little screen to the rear of the doors, whilst equipped with a blind, which was a token gesture, was no help at all. Being able to switch off the left side interior lights helped a bit..but meant a passenger 'could not read a newspaper' when sat there. Yet, despite frequent warnings, complaints by drivers, etc...nothing much was ever done to address the issue. it didn't matter in the cities & towns, with street lighting.....but the 121 service was a very rural interurban route. Nothing really improved until the mid-1990s, when the depot was issued with a fleet of very long Volvo/Alexander deckers, all kitted out on the EYMS Classic line scheme. The other nice thing about those [tram-like, in my view] volvos was, we could now overtake cyclists out on the open road, with impunity. whereas with the Olympians[and VRs], much planning & route knowledge had to be employed in order to overtake a push bike... Same with trakKeters....nowt worse than a bus whose gearbox and engine was ''all in'' ,top gear at 32 mph!! No revs to change down, not a lot of acceleration [non existent usually] to pass summat doing 31 mph....One had to know where all the little downhill dips were on the route, to help increase speed..Then one had to know where one could see far enough ahead, clearly, to make sure nowt was coming the other way [unusual]..The new Volvos obviated all of that..plus they were comfy to drive...[unlike the VRs, which had solid wrought iron{!} control columns, immoveable, right hard up agin one's knees...I now suffer from knee pains, etc, from those days...ruddy icy cold they were, in the depths of winter.... One cannot imagine as a modern day bus driver, so used to being able to whizz up to 50 mph in comfort, what it was like to see 50 after several miles...only to have to stop to pick someone up, and start all over again. I don't recall much, if any, time being slashed off the 121 timings after we got the Volvos...? Which said a lot about the time-keeping of the old machines? Usually, time was only made up by running straight in & out at either end [Hull, or Scarborough]...too bad if one needed a pee? Woe betide anyone who left the next driver to make up for lost time, when changing over at Driffield!!! No excuses for being 'late' for changeover!! No amount of apologising to the next driver really washed! Nowt worse than starting one's shift by getting into a sweat trying to 'make' time.... Of course, sweating is unheard of these days for drivers......

Aaah, but we only know if those decisions were the 'right' decisions , afterwards. Rightly or wrongly, at least the Government had the 'balls' to change policies on a frequent basis, and [unlike the WHO, initially,] not be tied up with dogma. I think [thinking back over the past 18 months or so] that the biggest problem wasn't so much prevarication on the part of government, but the time lag between instituting a particular policy, and the advent of evidence as to whether that policy was the 'right' one or not? Voters in the UK weren't patient enough [or, the media weren't?] to await evidence of outcome. We needed rapid changes f policy as the thing progressed. Yet I recall, we didn't want rapid changes of policy as the thing progressed. It appeared we wanted a solid path and solid leadership. Which was the last thing needed to help us survive the assault. What we got was, actually, rather than leadership, we got decent government management...which meant we got the vaccines, and a vaccination program, in situ and running, at the earliest possible opportunity. Or should we have had the sort of situation as per Brazil? Would that have been preferable, for the current crop of boris-bashers?

I seem to recall they were captured Russian Army vehicles, which had been shipped to Russia by GB...

Although, to be fair, the German armed forces did make use of many captured Allied vehicles throughout the various campaigns. Waste not, want not, etc.

Gosh! You mean, a Cessna has actually made it??

Or, the blatant use of AEC Routemasters to depict WW2 era LT double deck buses? Foyle's War, anyone? [Yes, I am a fan of Foyle's War, bt now & again I really have to squint.]

Pretty clear to me and my family as well....andI had a self-imposed lockdown almost instantly, to protect others in my bubble. But around the small town nearby, for every person imposing their own precautions, there were likely two or three who either didn't 'believe' it all, or couldn't have cared less anyway. Then there were the financial [economic] pressures faced by individuals? These alone must have been weighed up on an individual basis too? I know my daughter & SIL were faced with financial dilemmas, only sorted somewhat by the Governments' furlough scheme. For myself, it was all a 'godsend', where most of the rest of society disappeared from my life...hooray! Not that I have any sort of religion, but couldn't think of a better description, given my age. But then, I didn't, and never will, blame the''government' for any failings....being only too aware that the failings are actually down to ourselves, the way we live as citizens of the UK, our attitudes, etc...Nobody cared less about basic wage earners in the care industry. Indeed, only a few cared about the care industry full stop! {Those who had direct contact or who made use of the industry?] Folk as a whole didn't 'care' about the underfunding or understaffing of the health service, if it didn't directly affect any of us in a serious way,. All folk seemed to care about was the two furrin holidays or so a year, and the freedom to come & go as we pleased. As a whole we had become a facebook-controlled nation. Or, to bring it home to this forum,the next plastic delight from Hornby [the price of which would have paid my rent for a month!!]? In other words, ''not my problem'', seemed to be the prevailing attitude. Looking back at how so many people seemed to go to any lengths to desperately cling onto the old lifestyles....things that were ''so important'' to them. Or, so it seemed to me! So no wonder we, as a nation, failed the stress test in so many ways. I suspect this sort of thing has an underlying agenda, of 'kicking the government in the kneecaps?' [And, no, I'm not a conservative supporter, nor a Labour supporter either, based on their recent record.]