MakemineVanilla

7 minutes ago, Rugeley Villa said:

Well it is a hoover isn’t it ?  Can’t imagine myself saying to the wife” Eh love I’m just going to get the Dyson out “ 

There was a bloke who worked down our place he was kind of staff and was mostly off the tools so he’d drive about in a company vehicle . Then he bought a jaguar car and every time he’d need something from the car he’d say “ I’m just going to the Jag to get something “ 

Clarkson famously said that only cads and bounders drive Jags, and always refer to their vehicle as the "Jaag!"

3 hours ago, TheAuthority said:

When will people stop typing " so and so said on X, formerly Twitter." And just say "On X."

 

 

Some people still call their Dyson vacuum cleaner the "hoover", so you'll need to wait a bit longer.

17 minutes ago, Zatman said:

City are missing KDB plus Gundogan knack for getting big goals

The machine definitely looks like its missing a few cogs, and I think Mahrez is one of them too.

59 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

Watching the goal again, VVD is really poor, I get that the midfielder is the wrong side of alvarez but he can see matip doesn't have haaland right in front of him, he has to step across quicker, he's just watching the world's best striker stroll in to space and does nothing 

Liverpool were excellent today and their high-press looked like they might cause us a few problems.

City's problem seems to be that they have lost the knack of scoring worldies when they desparately need them.

12 hours ago, mjmooney said:

I'm a frayed knot. 

I now know that it is a subject of particular interest.

Just now, chrisp65 said:

You already have.

A fine example of thread theory if ever I saw one!

Someone asked the question: "Do any string theorists believe in the Many Worlds Interpretation of QM (where the wave function is physically real)?"

And got the answer from Chethan Krishnan, an Indian string theorist.

"I do! (Even though there are gaps in the many worlds picture that I am unhappy about, I think they are not insurmountable.".

So I live in hope!

3 minutes ago, limpid said:

Are you confusing string theory with the "many worlds" interpretation?

I'll have to look that up!

2 minutes ago, limpid said:

String theory is not a theory. And no, not even remotely.

So my hope that in one of the multiverses I am always right, is not possible?

Oh, bugger!

Doesn't string theory make all things possible?

3 minutes ago, blandy said:

Copper grease

Isn't that a bribe?

Nige looks like a good choice as a contestant who is attracting both viewers who like him and those that hate him.

He's now the Alan Rickman of reality television.

Of course the offense archeologists have now found a Tweet where Nella wrote something negative about Somalians on public transport, sounding like a bunch of fishmongers.

So she might have lost the sympathy vote.

14 hours ago, foreveryoung said:

But people shouldn't be blinded by the underfunding narrative. It's about very poor management, people in jobs which need not exist, as well as overpaying for everything from contracted work to supplies. It could basically run well on the financing it recieves, but would need a total reform.

Various sources indicate that the UK spends less on health-care than other prosperous countries, at under $5k per head of population or around 11% of gdp (pre-Covid).

The US spends 18% of gdp, which is way more than any other nation.

The Germans spend 12% of gdp.

I think the problem is that the government has not increased the health budget in line with the increase in population.

The intention to increase the number of Physician Associates, does suggest that there is a shortage of qualified doctors, and the job description does seem overloaded with vague terms and hyperbole.

It should be noted that 41% of female doctors work less than full time, which may also be a factor.

16 hours ago, VillaJ100 said:

Honestly all the tradesmen I know are absolutely raking it in. There's the inherent danger of getting hurt or sick or otherwise unable to work but none of them will get out of bed for less than £250 a day. It's also increasingly hard to find someone to do small jobs. 

Sadly as well literally all of them bar one aren't declaring earnings properly, often earning double or triple what they claim and paying next to sod all tax which is all claimed back anyway. I don't have any idea what can be done about it either. The one guy who is declaring properly is only doing so to get a mortgage.

Do you have any idea what they do with the money?

There have been various studies done over the years on the spending habits of "affluent workers", which revealed that they mostly squander it on gambling or buying consumer durables.

This proved to be the case whenever Metro-Cammell won a big contract and were hiring back in the day,  and the sky was the limit when it came to overtime which was paid at a very enviable rate.

11 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

Presumably companies investing in more machinery need more people to run it, therefore creating jobs

Or, make the company's product cheaper and therefore more competitive in the market, and so preserve people's jobs, which might otherwise disappear.

2 hours ago, ender4 said:

2022 average salaries:

Police - £26,199 (starting salary £21,402, after 7 years service £41,130)

Army soldier - £23,139 (plus substantial benefits)

Firefighter - £31,144

Nurse - £28,407

Paramedic - £25,655

Ambulance driver - £22,910

NEW MINIMUM WAGE IN 2024 - £22,308

 

 

https://www.reed.com/articles/police-officer-salary-structure

Median salary across UK is £34k and £44k in London.

Last time I looked it was £26k for most of the UK - I definitely needed an update.

1 hour ago, bickster said:

The article is somewhat bollocks, she didn't get elected on an anti EU ticket in the first place, she's an ally of Orban and he's never attempted to take Hungary out of the EU either, in fact on the campaign trail she stated quite a number of times that her Party had no intention of leaving the EU.

She's doing exactly as she promised to gay people though, she's not defying any expectations that I can see

I see what you are saying there.

The press branded her as far right, which deliberately created false expectations, and now her cosying up to Brussels is being framed as moderation.

Well spotted!

24 minutes ago, bickster said:

Has she? In what way?

https://www.courthousenews.com/wheres-the-far-right-meloni-defying-expectations-italys-leader-keeps-lid-on-radical-politics/

Quote

After more than 100 days in office, far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has proven to be anything but the “most dangerous woman in Europe,” as the popular German news magazine Stern described her on the eve of her election win last September.

I get the impression that the electorate of latin countries love political histrionics, and don't expect it to translate into actual policy.

The present prime minister of Italy has proved to be rather more moderate than her speeches seemed to promise.

I think Anglo-Saxon nations prefer their political leaders to be toadying, unctuous weasels.

I think the expectation that political leaders will fail to keep their promises, is about the same.

Judging by tonight's performance, no one could accuse England of having a surplus of players worthy of a cap.

The unforced-error count was beyond belief and the referee had a pretty high score of his own.

21 minutes ago, bickster said:

This is demonstrably nonsense. Images of women and their breasts as an erotic motif have been present in paintings since at least the Renaissance period

To know that would require you to know how tits were percieved at the time of Renaissance, but I would never doubt your omniscience.

Desmond Morris had an entirely different theory about tits, as he opined in his book The Naked Ape.

He conjectured that tits were an evolutionary step to encourage pair-bonding, in that it encouraged face to face mating; an advantage to any species where there is a long period of dependency of the off-spring.

It seems that the twin globes of both arses and a goodly pair of norks, trigger strong mating signals in the male of the species, which may induce eyes to go out on stalks and trigger salivation.

He claimed that humans were the only species in which tits kept their protuberant shape once the period of lactation was over.

This might explain why arses seem to alternatively compete with tits, as erotic obsessions - the bustle didn't go out of fashion until WW1.

Vince Packard might be forgiven for his error, as he wrote his book in 1957, a period when Hollywood seemed to have made a fetish of big tits, and Jane Russell comes to mind in The Outlaw 1943.

Looking at Rubens' Venus In The Mirror (1613-14), can we conclude that he loved big female arses?

1 hour ago, sidcow said:

It probably is wrong but it's just a simple fact that women have more naughty bits than men. 

In some cultures walking around showing ladies breasts is culturally acceptable, but in The UK apart from some authorised areas like nudie beaches you're not allowed to. 

In Spain it's OK to go on the beach topless but not walk down the road. 

Our culture has decided upon these rules. 

Men's tits have been decided as not sexual. Women's have. So for me a change in the law is needed for her dress to be "proper" to wear, rightly or wrongly. 

For what it's worth I would be delighted to spend some time in the company of Ms Scott in that dress, as long as she kept her gob shut. 

I probably would stare at her tits quite a lot though. I'm a bloke, she's pretty and her tits are on show. I'd struggle to not look at them. 

I think it was Vance Packard (The Hidden Persuaders) who claimed that it was the marketing people of bra manufacturers who established the female breast as an erotic symbol.

Certainly in the 1920s having a flat chest was all the rage and the Flappers used to strap their mammaries down, which made Twiggy ideal for the role in The Boyfriend.

It seems likely that men can be trained to associate any number of female physical attributes with desirability, and it would seem from the obsession with the attributes of our own Ms Lehmann, that we have entered an age when glutes are king.

As far as I remember, Darcy doesn't mention Lizzy Bennet's tits once, in Pride and Prejudice.

3 hours ago, JoshVilla said:

Having potentially be the most untrustworthy government that this country has ever had in power during the pandemic obviously didn't help matters. Even more so when they were telling everyone to be scared while they were partying away, obviously not worried about it. It's not hard to see why so many people were so sceptical.

I think we have to separate the consequences of the lockdowns from the consequences of the "vaccine".

It would seem more likely that the excess deaths probably have more to do with former than the latter, and for which the Government must be held to account.