Paulos_the_fog

Paulos_the_fog, 7 months ago

@Gargron

Goodbye, good riddance, we won't miss you one little bit!

Paulos_the_fog, 10 months ago

@Popehat

That is treason and every single person who was a party to it should spend the rest of their natural lives in prison!

Paulos_the_fog, 9 months ago

@aral

Not so - in Thailand for example, saying nasty things about someone is a criminal offence and the veracity of the statements is not a defence.

Paulos_the_fog, 9 months ago

@aral

Isn't there an absolute defence in English law that the defamatory statement is true?

Paulos_the_fog, 10 months ago

@Teri_Kanefield

What I could never understand and still can't, is why around 50% of US voters love Trump. The man is comprehensively obviously and transparently an absolute 100% cast iron fückin asshole. It's obvious!

So someone explain to me why such a huge number of Americans support such a totally useless prick?

What does he represent to the mindless Trump supporter that they find so admirable?

Paulos_the_fog, 10 months ago

@SmudgeTheInsultCat
"Do you like anal?"

Paulos_the_fog, 8 months ago

@dcjohnson

It's uncanny how the language used by Netanyahu and his ministers to describe the Palestinians "human animals", resembles that used by Nazis to describe the Jews in the 1930s and how the ghettoisation of the Gaza strip resembles the ghettos of WWII

Paulos_the_fog, 10 months ago

@StillIRise1963

Personally, I would simply say that politicians who lie should go to prison along with newspaper editors who lie or allow lies to be printed in their publications!

Paulos_the_fog, 8 months ago

@jon

Yes public transport in rural France is pretty dire!

Paulos_the_fog, 10 months ago

@Radical_EgoCom

Looking at that list, I am definitely a Leftist then!

Paulos_the_fog, 9 months ago

@Radical_EgoCom

I had an operation scheduled for the beginning of my last month before retirement and although I could have gone back two or three days after I was discharged, my surgeon asked me if I was still working and I said yes. Then I explained the stunts they had pulled on me and she said "Oh well, in that case I don't suppose you will want to go back, will you. I'll sign you off unfit for work for 3 weeks which is the maximum allowed then you'll only have to get a sick note for a week from your GP and you'll never go back to work!"

That was exactly what happened!

Paulos_the_fog, 9 months ago

@Radical_EgoCom

One company stiffed me over sick pay so I simply took every single unjustified sick day I was entitled to along with a mass of sick leave against doctors certificates including the whole last month before I retired!

Paulos_the_fog, 9 months ago

@crooksandliars
So that'll be a lie then. I believe from looking at photos of him standing alongside men of known stature, that he is between 6' 1" and 6' 2" in his elevator shoes.

215lbs is a complete joke - more like 270 - 300lbs

Paulos_the_fog, 10 months ago

@kennykravitz

I reject all recipes that use cups and °F.

These are nonsense measures! A recipe is in grams and °C or I won't even entertain it.

Only the USA ever uses cups as a measure and American food doesn't have a great reputation with its "quantity trumps quality" philosophy so I doubt if I'm missing much.

Paulos_the_fog, 10 months ago

@NormanDunbar @kennykravitz

Yes somewhere on the internet, there is a table for converting US cups to UK cups which for historical reasons, is what I guess might have been used in Oz.

I have never in my life seem a single Brit recipe that uses cups so I am in some doubt as to the veracity of the conversion table.

Yes, me too, I grew up with pounds, ounces and all that complete bollox but having lived in continental Europe of much of my adult life, I flatly refuse to have anything to do that nonsense!

Paulos_the_fog, 10 months ago

@NormanDunbar @kennykravitz

The Americans don't even have the same gallons, pints or fl Oz as the British Imperial system!

Lose hope all ye who enter here!!!

I lived in Thailand for several years and the decorative order of the house that I rented was to say the least rather poor. So, I asked the landlord if he would be happy if I gave the living room a coat of paint. The walls were concrete but had been finished to a pretty high standard. He agreed and so I measured up the surface area of the walls deducted the windows and doors and arrived at a total area that I calculated would require 4.5 litres of paint for 2 coats. Off I went to the local DIY hypermarket, a place called Baan and Beyond Where I asked them for a 5 litre pot of the shade that I had chosen (the palest grey in their range). “No litre here sir! Only gallon here”. I had somehow stumbled on the only DIY outlet I'm guessing in Thailand where they sell paint in gallons and not litres. Thailand is to all intents and purposes completely metricated so I was very, very surprised! From my school days I remembered that one gallon equals about 4.5 litres so I asked for a gallon. That was fine until I arrived home and I thought that doesn't actually look like a 4.5 litre pot so I looked carefully at the label and it was marked 1 US gallon which equals 3.75 litres not 4.5 litres. That's the difference between a US gallon = 3.75 litres and a British gallon = 4.5 litres! In the end, I had to go back to the DIY store and get another pot because 3.75 litres was just not quite enough to finish the job. My calculations we're nothing if not accurate and I was roughly half a litre short!

Paulos_the_fog, 10 months ago

@NormanDunbar @kennykravitz

In France, you will still hear people in the food markets, especially older folk, ask for 'une livre de tomates' literally 'a pound of tomatoes' but what they will be expecting to be served and will be given is 500 grams. France invented the metric system of weights and measures and the country along with most of the rest of Europe was completely metricated by around 1850.

In Normandy, I was offered some second-hand oak beams recovered from a demolished barn. They were priced by the 'pied cube' or cubic foot but when I asked what their 'pied' was in metric measure, it turned out that it was considerably smaller than a UK/US foot!

The enormous variation in weights and measures with the same name across the country used to cause significant problems in trade which is why standardized weights and measures were introduced in the first (to enormous opposition)

Paulos_the_fog, 8 months ago

@cloudguy

If you want a structure in such an exposed position to survive, it is essential to use an appropriate timber

Paulos_the_fog, 10 months ago

@jacqui76 @marcas @harriettmb @irelandpolitics

I wonder how many voters in NI holding loosely Unionist views, would nevertheless vote for a united Ireland just to make all the post-Brexit problems go away?

Paulos_the_fog, 10 months ago

@freemo
Important to whom?

Paulos_the_fog, 10 months ago

@freemo

In that event - describe socialism and how it is differentiated from communism.

The reality is that communism has never really been implemented in any nation state - certainly not in the former 'communist bloc' states!

Paulos_the_fog, 10 months ago

@freemo
If that's your definition of socialism, the UK in the 1960s and 70s went a long way down the socialist path. Much of British industry was publicly owned - the railways, British Airways, steel making, mining, much of the automobile industry, British Telecom, The Post Office, some banks, ICL (mainframe computers) and much more!

It was a catastrophe - the nationalised industries were woefully inefficient massively overstaffed and offered nearly zero in customer service!

In the 1970s, I moved to France which had/has just as many nationalised industries but they were a paragon of efficiency - well run, profitable for the government and a delight to deal with.

I have often pondered what could be the difference between Britain and France that made Britain's nationalised industries so utterly dire and the French ones so damned good! I have concluded that it is the quality of the management.

Paulos_the_fog, 10 months ago

@freemo
Oh I think socialism has been successfully implemented - for example by most native American cultures and indeed by tribal cultures throughout the world. No such cultures would even consider allowing members of their own tribal group to starve to death or to otherwise suffer from the want of some commodity that the group has in sufficient abundance to provide them with it!

The problem in our society in the west is that a small number of people hoard all the necessities they can get their hands on to the detriment of the whole of society; not only so but they attract enormous undeserved admiration for doing so!

We live in a hideously distorted society but because we were all raised with it, we assume is right and proper that it be so.