chrisp65

rum n coke, sat slouched across the floor propped up by a bean bag, solar fairy lights on outside chatting shit and putting the world to rights heavenly

never underestimate the lure of the biscuit

Something utterly unrelated to my work that was quoted to me yesterday evening as an example: The guy that delivers bread to prisons - he has 'x' number of prisons to visit every couple of days (toast or sandwiches for 650 people is a lot of bread) - once the threat level goes up, they ain't just letting the van straight in when he rocks up outside and toots. It takes an extra 30 minutes per site to get in and out. That's put 2 hours on his day. that means he can't meet his contract without renting another van and another driver. But that driver needs to be vetted and approved, just to deliver bread to a prison, so his pay is higher than just any old Joe. So now the contract is running at a loss and HMP Anytown is up in smoke because the guys didn't get their hotdogs. You suddenly realise how many people deliver bread to prisons, laundry to barracks, newspapers to airports, toilet paper to police stations, clean the county court windows, service the boiler in the bank of england, fix the coffee machine at Sky News HQ...all unknown people rolling up outside with a van who's tight gig economy schedule has just been shredded.

Yes there are very good reasons it can't be conf calls. One Client is a bit governmenty, so obviously they can't have unproven cutting edge future sci fi tech like skype. One is work on a grade 1 listed building and it's basically a crim offence to instruct the wrong work, so you need to be present not remote purely for personal arse covering porpoises. Porpoises was deliberate! Another client is an international concept designer and have proven incapable of selecting materials they haven't physically seen and touched. Another client recently melted their I.T. during an I.T. stress test they ran. Happily the half arsed non-trendy company from out in the sticks does have the ability to conf call, does have join.me and has heard of dropbox, we use it internally between offices in Brum, Sheffield and Edinburgh to 'talk to each other' about some of our giant international clients. But to be fair to the Clients I've used the word meetings in it's broadest meaning. The meeting is usually on a building site where brickies, plasterers, scaffolders, chippies and sparkies etc. can't work remotely. There's no substitute for being able to stand on site with the Client, point, and show them the size of the hole that need filling.

I'd say there is a large part of the public that is impacted by this, even if it isn't 'the public at large'. My job has definitely been impacted by it this week, visiting several different clients in several towns, the ability to arrange meetings and get in and out of buildings has been markedly different. This week, that's included businesses on Threadneedle Street and sort of semi secure buildings in Devon and Cardiff. I work in a company of around 40 or 50 people, we've had to redraw a lot of our itinerary because of the time needed to get in and out of places and the ability of others to attend meetings. Being a small private business, if we don't do the work, we don't raise the invoices and it doesn't take long for people to not get paid. We're not exactly working with MI5 or the army here, just pretty vanilla institutions that have protocols for when this stuff happens. When the incident happened on Westminster bridge, I couldn't get out of the building I was in for several hours and several meetings over the next few days were automatically cancelled. That meant my company couldn't meet programme dates and our sub contractors were stood down. That meant people that have their own white van businesses had work cancelled and lost money. It has a real impact. Not on everyone, but on a significant number. Critical versus severe because of an incident in Manchester means a plumber from Gloucester gets a week's work in London cancelled when he was using that money to pay for his week's holiday in July. I'd say he's a pretty typical member of the public.

The trouble for Fallon is that he has fallen in to this trap, on TV and radio, multiple times over the last couple of weeks. Radio 4 managed to get him to say all manner of contradictory rubbish a week or so back to prove he wasn't like Corbyn. He managed to suggest Corbyn was week because he wouldn't nuke first and ask questions later. That's Fallon's problem. Our problem (as a nation), is that the vast majority of people don't watch the news or analyse the politics to that level. Strong n stable. Yep, that's the slogan I like. That's about the level of political thought. So hats off to the foreign worker brought in by the tory party to come up with that one.

Tories taking us back to the 1970's

You'd like to think that it's a statement of the obvious that a perpetual value engineered dabble in bombing various bits of the middle east and north africa without any depth of understanding of the consequences is not going to end well. Having said that, you can't deny there's a lot of profit in selling bombs to mentalist murderous regimes. So yeah, swings and roundabouts.

As funny as it is, I feel sorry for the Pope being in this photo. He's the only one that's wholly innocent.

Just to back up what others have said. There's no guarantee by a long stretch that this or some other similar incident wouldn't have happened with an extra 200,000 police. But if Labour had sacked off 20,000 police and then something like this happened, my word you'd see some venom from the right wing media. But it wasn't Labour, it was Home Secretary and PM May that reduced the numbers. So it isn't relevant to our glorious free press. The same free press that had 'Blood On His Hands' as the headline about Corbyn on the very day of the attack. I won't give them the exposure to show the front cover, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for the Sun headline 'blood on her hands'. Sooner we rid ourselves of all these foreign types trying to influence our democracy, the better.

Adams Family, plus the kid out of the Omen 'shopped in and he doesn't even look out of place.

This evening, I've had to kick the mother in law's back doors in. It had got damp, swelled up and was dragging on the floor. Whilst I was still there having a nice chit chat, after the big event, I was thinking I can't wait to get away and get this one on VT. I suspect I left there smiling like a fool.

Yeah, it's horses for courses really. I just wouldn't consider having a car without them at the moment. I've got regular trips to Barnstaple or Sheppey, Birmingham or Portland, so the cruise control is great for clicking it to 76mph and getting on with something else. Similarly, around town, I click it to a max of 32mph and don't have to worry too much about accidentally speeding. I'm doing a lot of miles (rock n roll, baby!!!) and it's just part of taking the stress out of it and reducing my chance of points. The car is just another one of the white goods modern life requires. But it's left outside, and it's metallic obsidian black! I was only arguing as a form of activity displacement instead of getting my head around a tricky bit of work.

and ain't that our problem with the whole mess We have a very fluid understanding of freedom fighter / terrorist, going all the way back to whatever date you care to name, not least, Afghanistan in any of the last few centuries.

gear knob the clue's in the title

When the sun is out and nobody else has noticed and I want to pootle up a country lane to a pub lunch, I have a part share in a manual Triumph Spitfire. When I'm on the M25 at 5:30pm, or commuting in to town on the morning rush hour, or negotiating my third multi storey car park of the day...not so much. Like I say, I've done a quarter of a million miles on that automatic box, I'd be on my third set of knees now if that was a manual.

It's almost like different people like different things! Quarter of a million miles on an auto box with sport, standard and comfort settings at the press of a button. 0-60 in 9 seconds, or, 47mpg Left hand free for pasties or coffee or rooting through the CD box. Had to drive a manual through rush hour traffic a little while back, slow down...clutch...neutral...hand brake..clutch...first...hand brake and away!...oooh we're stopping again..slow down...clutch..neutral..hand brake... The equivalent in my auto is..press go.. press stop. No wonder you're all so slow through town. Can you get full cruise control and speed limiter on a manual these days, or is it still one or the other?

I'd never ever voluntarily go back to a manual. Stupid things.