Tamura

The final scene of The Bridge. There are so many great moments across all four series, and if it was up on Youtube I'd probably pick Saga interrupting fika (quick guide to fika for anyone unfamiliar with Sweden) to tell everyone she was having her period, after being admonished by her boss to talk to her colleagues more. But I'll stick to a scene that is available to view easily.

She'd spent the entire four series always, without fail, introducing herself as "Saga Norén, Länskrim, Malmö" so it was a nice touch for her to finally cast off her police identity. Such a great show, I even managed a spot of Bridge tourism while I was in Malmö.

Now that's what I call a proper sized trophy. Our first XI clinched their first premiership title last weekend, finally breaking Hoylandswaine's five-year long grip on the trophy. Plus our second XI won their division (and promotion) too. Only real downside was losing in the cup final a few weeks ago, we play Hoylandswaine in the T20 final tomorrow so still an opportunity for a double at least.

21 hours ago, Accident Prone said:

Whenever I go to the post office with a handful of packages to send, I ALWAYS get a huff and a puff from the clerk. One or two, it's fine, but if you have to take up more than 5 minutes of their time then they look at you with scorn. I took in eight parcels yesterday, all super simple DVD-sized packages, and you'd think I'd barged into the clerk's house on Easter Sunday and shat in her chocolate eggs.

I don't do those "big" deliveries often, maybe once a year at most, but I still dread going there because it means I get the daggers and the long, drawn-out breath and the same old speech about getting an account so I can dump them in a bag and get charged later (which would ultimately cost me MORE). I've never known customer service like it.

Can you imagine checkout staff at a supermarket chucking their toys out of the pram because someone has the audacity to turn up with a full trolley of shopping? Stroppy fucker should just get on with their job.

Signmakers that can't spell (a never ending annoyance).

Hisham Foad, who was on the BBC's World Business Report very early this morning.

On 7/10/2023 at 8:20 PM, gmoney said:

Good luck! Just remember, shit on their time, not in your breaks. 

In the past I certainly haven't been shy in standing my ground when it comes to my rights as an employee, at the last place I probably caused the HR department to expand in order to deal with my last year there. However my financial situation and my unemployability (at least on paper) has caused me to think a bit more pragmatically about things. It's been good so far, today my boss (who wasn't the person who gave me the job) "promoted" me so now I have to deal with the health and safety checklist every day, saying he saw potential in me on the first day, and he sees me as a long-term asset compared to the staff he's currently got who are mostly easily replaceable unskilled workers. So I'm thinking at the moment I'll stick with being a model employee, as it's working out a lot better than years of fighting the system ever did.

I start a new job tomorrow. That might not sound like much, but the last time I had a job where I worked for someone else was in 2004. Since then I've travelled a fair bit, played onlike poker for several years, and spent just over a decade looking after an elderly relative with significant health problems. I think it's going to be a bit of a culture shock going into an actual workplace again, I just feel lucky to have found someone that's willing to give me an opportunity after so long away from a conventional career.

7 hours ago, BomberPat said:

Bollocks to that. She's a corrupt sycophant, given a position of authority over things she demonstrably knows nothing about. The placement of an apostrophe in a Tweet is fuck all compared to anything else worth criticising her about, and so long as meaning and intent is conveyed, whether everything is spelled correctly or grammatically correct is irrelevant at best and exclusionary at worst - would you exclude good progressive politicians on the grounds that their grammar was a bit off? 

Take a look at the online jobs market, in paritcular admin jobs. You'll find a reasonable standard of English is pretty much the bare minimum to be considered for many jobs, that's before you even get to things like telephone manner or knowledge of Microsoft products.

If you're suggesting my voting choices are based on grammar then you're mistaken. I have the misfortune to live (or in the future potentially so due to bondaries being redrawn) in a marginal seat so my vote goes to Labour without any consideration based on the suitability of any of the candidates. That said, I remember getting a local election leaflet for a potential Tory candidate that had over 20 spelling and grammatrical errors in, starting with the hilarious "Since been elected" as the opening of the first sentence.

Once again, I'm not criticising Dorris per se. I'm making the broader point that people running the country aren't capable of communicating using a level of English that would get you a minimum wage jon as an administator.

4 hours ago, SuperBacon said:

Of all the things to go after her for, grammar errors or typos ain't it. 

I'm not going after her. I'm commeting on the very troubling fact that people running the country aren't even capable of communicating using an acceptable standard of English.

Nadine Dorries may know a lot of things, but in the first sentence she doesn't know that "it's" only ever means "it is".

9 minutes ago, WyattSheepMask said:

She’s that person at a party who says she’s going and then spends 2 hours telling everyone she’s going

Tories are well known for it.

12 minutes ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

Looking at the Moorlands team there Tamura, Braiden Fortis sounds like a name that was created by the NXT random name generator. 

He's actually a member of a Moorlands cricket dynasty. I used to play occasionally with Andy Fortis's dad and uncle back in the late 80s and early 90s, whenever they'd let me turn out for the Sunday side anyway. Braiden's uncle Lee might be the best known of the family, he's the head groundsman at The Oval.

In local cricket news our season goes from strength to strength, while Hoylandswaine's gets worse and worse. The all-stars at Hoylandswaine go into most seasons as the team to beat, since they've managed five consecutive league titles. This weekend we faced them twice in the league and cup, both away. Despite the absence of one of our opening bowlers we crushed them in the league by 153 runs, followed by a slightly closer win by 48 runs in the cup. Only the quarter final of the cup, shame it wasn't a showcase final again (which we've beaten Hoylandswaine in the last two years). Things are looking good though, we're currently top of the league and Hoylandswaine are languishing in mid-table mediocrity. Just a shame I'm not directly involved any more since it wasn't worth putting up with extra work and ever-increasing aggravation from some club officials for the same money as before.

11 minutes ago, westlondonmist said:

Sorry it was knighthoods/Dame the others got but still? For being paid a heavy salary to be a cunt.

I try not to make too much distinction between the various types of vanity titles given out mostly on the the basis of them licking Johnson's arse, but a peerage allows unelected people a lifelong say in the running of the country so it's an important distinction to make as it can't be ignored like refusing to call them "Sir".

6 minutes ago, westlondonmist said:

Mogg, Patel and Bailey given peerages. I should really take my dislike of the general population, focus all the hate on the poor and immigrants and maybe I'll get one.

Only Bailey got a peerage out of the three, although Keith's allegedly corrupt relative Benjamin Houchen got one as well. 

11 minutes ago, David said:

But how is such determination made?

Government phone = goverment business. Personal phone ≠ government business.

TIL that in my local Sainsbury's you can walk round the shop at 9am drinking from a bottle of gin you've picked up off the shelf, get to the checkout and say you've forgotten your bank card and be escorted out of the shop by the security guard without the police being called. 

Rehan Ahmed? Admittedly his debut came in Pakistan where the pitches are a bit more suited to spin (apparently less so than in other parts of the subcontinent), but you'd think taking seven wickets in your debut Test (including a 5/48) would see you in the team for a second Test appearance at some point surely?

First gig was Napalm Death, Obituary and Dismember at the Queens Hall in Bradford in 1992. There's some videos of it online, but the quality sucks since microphones on camcorders weren't too good back then especially when combined with the need to film surreptitiously to avoid trouble with bouncers.

Best gig was probably Sex Dwarf, Svaveldioxid, Honnör SS and Stress SS, Gaki-Fest in Stockholm in 2017. It was a warm-up gig on a Friday night for two bigger gigs on the Saturday and Sunday that lots of international travellers (like me) were in town for, and the venue only held 120 people (officially, but I'm prepared to wager there were plenty more) and there were no pre-sale tickets, so cue lots of elbowing and shoving. Sex Dwarf were on top form.

And for anything thinking the sound quality on that isn't so good, that's how it's supposed to sound.
 

Possibly not worst gig overall, but definitely worst band was Grip Inc at the Dynamo Open Air festival in Eindhoven in 1995. Travelling to festivals in the early internet days was much different, you paid your money to an event company and they sorted out festival tickets and organised a coach and hotels for people that didn't want to camp (me!). I remember getting on the coach at the first stop in Leeds, and the journey to the ferry still sticks in my head to this day. We had further pick-ups in Huddersfield, Halifax, Bury, Manchester, Birmingham and London before finally getting to Dover about nine hours after getting on. But anyway on to the band. Groove metal was in the in thing back then and the band had Dave Lombardo from Slayer on drums, but the crowd absolutely hated them. The Billy Idol wannabe singer didn't help much, and neither did them covering Paint It Black by the Rolling Stones. For reasons they came to regret, the organisers had drinks trays that were a sheet of stiff cardboard with six holes in, that were perfectly aerodynamic and flew through the air like frisbees. They were flying about intermittently during the festival, but when Grip Inc played business picked up somewhat, as you can see on the video at 1:20 onwards (which doesn't quite capture the number of missiles, but it's a decent indicator)

The oranisers learnt from this the next year and the trays were floppy cardboard in a box-type design, no doubt far more expensive to produce but no use whatsoever as missiles.

TV wise there's a four-part series on the latter half of the Troubles on iPlayer.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0f9ctf1/endgame-in-ireland

If you don't mind a somewhat illicit source there's a 10 episode Peter Taylor sister series to his Provos, Loyalists and Brits trilogy, search for "Provos" on The Pirate Bay.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUNc43ZM5vB1Vz2vmv2P-DA

That's a decent channel, good collection of documentaries.

 

1 hour ago, SuperBacon said:

@Tamura any recommendations out of those books?

It's actually quite difficult as I don't have many that can really be considered a broad and perhaps more importantly complete overview, for example "The Irish Troubles" on the second shelf down is pretty comprehensive as far as it goes, but it was published in mid-1993 so only covers up to 1992. Although I don't own a copy "Northern Ireland: The Fragile Peace" by Feargal Cochrane was published in 2021 covers everything, gets good reviews and is available new and not too expensive. I've always found Peter Taylor's trilogy ("Provos: The IRA and Sinn Féin" from 1998, "Loyalists" from 1999 and "Brits" from 2001) to be excellent, but only if you're ok with them only going up to around the conventional end of the Troubles (Good Friday Agreement in 1998) and leaving the post-GFA stuff. "Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA" by Richard English (2003) and "A Secret History of the IRA" (2007 second edition would be the preferred option, not the 2003 first edition) by Ed Moloney are excellent, although as the titles suggest they obviously cover the IRA in more detail there's more than enough context to understand what's going on with the loyalists and British and Irish governments too. Did a quick check and all of those are available cheaply enough online from the usual marketplaces, they were also published on mass-market publishers so there's a better chance of them also being available at libraries too. On the loyalist side there's "Crimes of Loyalty: A History of the UDA" (2006) by Ian S. Wood and "UVF - The Endgame" (2007) by Jim Cusack and Henry McDonald, and "UDA: Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror" (2004) by the same authors is good too (much cheaper on eBay than Amazon btw). Some are available in ebook too, I remember seeing the UVF was only £2.99 just now.

I have a small collection of books on the subject that wasn't taught in school, and quite enjoyed episode 1 of the new BBC show. One thing that was touched on, but not explored in excessive detail, was just how discriminatory Northern Ireland was at the time. Between 1922 and the late 1960s the convention was that Northern Ireland wasn't even discussed at Westminster, so there was very little external oversight as to how the parliament at Stormont chose to govern. Discrimination against the Catholic minority was very much ingrained into the whole system, in employment, voting and housing. A frequently cited example of the latter being the Emily Beattie situation, where miraculously (or is it only Catholics that have miracles?) a 19 year old single Protestant woman was allocated a three bedroom council house all to herself despite entire Catholic families being far more in need of the house in question. That she happened to be the secretary of a Unionist politician was just sheer coincidence...

Kate Rusby in Huddersfield tonight. It'll be the first time I've ever been to a gig where a set has an interval, instead of a gap between bands/acts. Although it might not be on yet, as last night in Newark was cancelled with a message saying "we are hoping a day’s rest may make Huddersfield possible tomorrow".

I'm all for giving the benefit of the doubt to the victim/survivor, but in the case of Schofield do we even have one? I don't tend to frequent Twitter, but as far as I can see the "evidence" (for want of a better word) so far is a swifly silenced talking head on GB News who wasn't even talking from first hand experience. So is there more to this story, or is it nothing more than malicious gossip based on his brother being a nonce and Schofield having a falling out with Willoughby for reasons that are murky at best? And not forgetting Schofield having had the audacity to come out as gay...