chrisp65

Yep, I think we can all agree that people in the UK being able to communicate in English is a good thing. Not sure how it will help a woman that is kept indoors by a medieval retard of a husband. I guess she might one day be able to pick up that phone and ask for help, so it can only do more good than harm. But it was sold in that typical Cameron way, of starting off sounding so reasonable, it was to help us all integrate and thus stop our children going off to Raqqa or killing off duty soldiers. Then, seamlessly, there's a Daily Mail appeasing threat of a threat at the end of it. Failure, might mean you are 'sent home'. Then, after another bit of thinking time, you wonder: exactly how many of the mentally ill and deceived or deluded people that have gone to Syria from here couldn't speak English? How many of them had parents that couldn't speak English that would have spotted a problem and talked them back to sanity had they had English? It's different issues conflated into politicobollix for a chance of a photo op.. Something all sides are equally capable of. It was pure Thick Of It style politics for someone other than non english speaking repressed and abused wives. In a week's time it will be added to the 'long list' of things Cameron has done to 'sort out' immigration. The last census (as rough n ready a guess as any, I guess) suggests that there were 140,00 non english speakers in the UK in 2013. A budget of £20 Million means that we will need to trace these people, explain the new rules, offer them classes or monitoring or coaching of some description, test them and assess them possibly starting expulsion proceedings. At a budget of £140 per head. Right you are.

I'm compiling a list of the nation's favourite lists: 1.0 Shopping 2.0 Celbrity nip slips 3.0 Funny pictures of Ed Milliband 4.0 Cat gifs 5.0 Funny Vines whatever they are 6.0 Curry 7.0 Old TV Comedies 8.0 Questions I've answered on UC / Mastermind the list isn't finished, I still need to include more Rachel Riley, a dig at Piers Morgan, Top Gear and fish fingers

I don't know what News Thump! is (if it's outrageously popular or you've clearly made it up then I concede I've just let myself down, again) Even just going on holiday I'll give myself a crash course in a language so as not to look like the stereotypical brit abroad. Although, I'm already at a cultural advantage there. Recent trips to France and Germany I've tried my best to learn the basics to order food and buy tickets for the zoo etc.. But the buggers insisted on speaking excellent fluent english. Even taxi drivers and beggars in Berlin all appeared to be fluent english speakers. Basic Maltese was my proudest boast. I could swear on Maltese building sites in the foulest Maltese. Turned out very few people understood me. I thought it was down to my accent, turned out it was because they were all Algerian. ----- I don't think anyone can reasonably object to the mission to get people integrated via improved language skills. Threatening to deport people if they don't is hardly a great way of getting mums on 'our' side - which I thought was the point of it.

Looks like Camoron's initiative to spend £20 Million on getting 'muslim wives' to speak english or **** off home is already having repercussions. The Spanish government have now said that any english ex pats that can't shout louder and more clearly at the the waiting staff after a year may be sent home. MAY. BE. SENT. HOOOOOME. YES?

A barrel of oil is now cheaper than an oil barrel.

My wife's fave band back in the day. Hot summer nights, with Eagles playing quietly in the background. That's the sound of the summer of 1984 for me.

hmmm, newspaper stats can be all a bit, skewed it would appear Jane A has sold 4 times more books that best selling book of all time..... Pride and Prejudice - 20,000,000 copies and counting... in music news, Snakehips Featuring Tinashe and Chance are currently outselling Mozart, Bach and Shostakovich combined

Membership of the Labour party is rising, and apparently has a further rise everytime he says anything in a reasonable tone of voice and the media attack him, Labour membership up 200,000 now since he became leader. Now I'm not saying that will win an election, far from it. But the people that put him where he is appear very happy with his performance so far. ------ On the trident measured as a unit against nurses, I did a fag packet round numbers calculation - taking the average nurse wage and presuming they work a 40 year career, trident is the equivalent of a job for life of an additional 32,000 nurses. I don't think that particular trade off has been put to all the ageing tory voters of the Express and Mail that can't have a place in a care home or get a 15 minute home visit slot twice a day from an east european care assistant.

I picked up the 15 days gas storage from the interweb, so happy to be corrected on the fuel storage if you've got a more accurate number......

Observer - Trident Costs Rise Again... In times of austerity with our steel industry going down the toilet due to the offloading of subsidised steel from China, it's nice to know that the report and assessment of Trident (note: not Trident, just an assessment), will cost us £3.3 Billion. That's 'billion' not 'million'. The cost of the actual project is pretty much unknown, somewhere in the tens of billions, definitely north of 20 billion, probably less than 100 billion. . Who's the enemy these nukes will be detering? If it's China, why let them close our steel industry and why give them money to build nuclear power stations in england? If it's Russia, why have we allowed ourselves to have just 15 days of fuel storage in the UK whilst being reliant on piping in gas from mainland europe? £20 / £30 / £40 billion would buy quite a lot of border security, jobs, fuel storage, fighter planes, army boots, windfarms...... I'm not for or against, I'm just struggling to find a reasoned debate beyond hippy vs hawk.

Too busy trying to rationalise retaining nuclear subs but with no nuclear warheads.

Horses for courses innit. I didn't read for a long long time and got back into it via Dickens. I read three or four in quick succession and loved them, loved the walking across country from one village to another, which today would all just be 'London'. But then I tired of the longer descriptive passages that didn't really go anywhere and I tired of the olde worlde language. I've tried to pick Dickens up again fairly recently and it's absolutely no longer for me. But it was 'my thing' for a while back there. As for the comment on Dostoevsky being 'dull'. I love it. In some ways it does still have those rambling passages I got bored of with Dickens, pages of description of something not required by the main story. But I love it. House of the Dead, Demons, Crime and Punishment, absolutely fantastic books that had great story, great idea at the heart - and look impressive on the shelf! Heading off in the opposite direction, I've also got a thing for Colin Mcinnes. He's no Dostoevsky, but bloody hell the pulp books City of Spades and Absolute Beginners are just gorgeous.

Tattoo fixers, every episode: punter: 'oh hi, yeah, wicked wicked, got this tattoo on holiday when I was drunk wiv my mates without really finking about it and now it makes me look like a prick' staff: 'oh, yeah, ouch, that's rubbish and permanent and makes you look like a retard, I could draw a bigger one over the top, you can trust me, I've got a throat tattoo and almost no remaining viable ear skin. From our 20 second consultation I think you like unicorns, Darth Maul and anchors'. punter: 'oh, yeah, wicked wicked, let's do it'. Brilliant TV for that 1 minute pause and stare whilst channel hopping.

Yeah, similar feeling, it's why I said it was 'filmic' it's one of those half remembered things, I wanted to say I saw a vampire and a meteor, I think I did, but I don't know if they were even still flying back then and it might just be 40 years of rose tinting embellishment over the original memory.

Boring / disastrous day: when I had to gig buddy for my dad. He wanted to go and see Brian Somebody ex of Queen that was playing a gig at the Ice Rink. This had lots of problems: I absolutely **** hated Queen with a passion. The Ice Rink was not a music venue. It transpired it was a 'seated' gig. My seat, was next to a drainage pipe that transmitted the sound of every toilet flush. All of the above was thoroughly compounded by my parent's idea of gig preparation, which involved being ready 3 hours early 'just in case', though in case of what was never specified. Getting in to town so early it was still light. Deciding to go to a pub by the ice rink for a drink to kill some time. Walking to the bar and becoming more and more aware on the walk to the bar that this was a gay pub and everyone was looking at us. We got to the bar, everyone looked at everyone else and my dad announced 'shall we leave?' and just walked straight back out. The dawning realisation that I was in the middle of town, leaving a gay pub, with a man 20 years older than myself. This is all back in the day, 25 years ago. Now, I'd stay in the pub. The gig involved Brian Bloke playing a noodley guitar with a poodle hair style. He played instrumental versions of Queen songs. But that wasn't the highlight, oh no. He'd done music for some Ford Car advert. He played that first, **** advert music for Fords. He played it again mid way way through. He played it a third time as part of his unwarranted encore. A bloke from Queen, playing guitar solo versions of Ford adverts, over and over again. To the accompaniment of an intermittent flushing toilet. Don't talk to me about 'nam, you had to be there man, you had to be there.

When I was a kid RAF St Athan still used to have their air day. I was out by chance on the day of the air show, a few miles down the road mooching around with my mates looking for mischief. We found ourselves out on a headland where all the planes were using it as a turning point. So they were really really low down close to the water, close to this headland, and going pretty much as slow as they could without falling out of the sky, ready to do their fly by of St Athan a couple of miles up the coast. One after the other, all day, Concorde, Vulcan, Phantom, anything and everything. Low enough to see the individual panel lines. Absolutely filmic.

Somebody asked me what plane I'd flown on last time I had a trip out. It was admittedly deliberate, but I said 'a white one'. In reality, I did know it was probably either a Boeing or an Airbus and definitely wasn't a 747 or a Tupolev Tu-95.

Had the wonderful experience today of stopping off at a cafe down the beach, asking for a coffee and being asked 'do you just want a normal one or something expensive that takes ages?' I had a normal one. Oh, and a **** huge custard slice.

feel free to post up two pics of clearly left wing biased journo's at the beeb

On three news bulletins on BBC radio today the newsreader has 'reported' on bosses and directors reacting badly to Corbyn saying companies shouldn't be paying shareholder dividends if they aren't paying a decent wage. Interesting angle to take, the worries of bosses and shareholders. There was me thinking BBC 'news' might at the very least take a neutral standpoint.

You've remembered it and told others about it!

I worked on the test beds for the GE90 engines - like a James Bond set on the inside, just a vast white space with some robots in it. It was next to the Concorde Engine test bed, which was like something out of Flash Gordon, right down to the art deco style chrome levers and bakelite nobs n dials. Just wanted to mention that.

Sonic Boom! I'm going to a thing in March where a couple of German guys are bringing over some quite good speakers and setting them up for people to have a listen to their own records. It's £15 to get in on the Sunday.....I'm going on the free Saturday, when the merchandise stalls and stuff are still setting up!

Access to military grade weaponry and yet unable to post a photo the right way up - what could possibly go wrong!