If he's 6ft 3 that tie really is very long.
I read the news today oh boy! Page 2,132
I liked it when Boris said the UK would "never be cowed or divided" by the acts terrorists. Thankfully we have Brexit to do that for us.
Quote: chipolata @ 30th November 2019, 10:38 AMI liked it when Boris said the UK would "never be cowed or divided" by the acts terrorists. Thankfully we have Brexit to do that for us.
I'm sure most BCG readers will recall the recent story about "Only Fools and Horses" fans having to pay astronomical sums for a photograph with David Jason, and his autograph.
There seems to be something of a North-South divide when it comes to this sort of thing because Coronation Street's Jack P Shepherd (who played David Platt for 20 years) last night made a public appearance at which fans could have a selfie with Jack, his autograph and a Gail Platt mask - all for the princely sum of £3.
I hope Sir David is reading this and feeling thoroughly ashamed of himself.
The grabbing southern bastard!
On the awful atrocities at London Bridge - 1 of 2
Condolences are due and I readily give them to the families of the bereaved in what turned out to be north of London Bridge and mainly in a building there. Let's pray that the injured victims on the bridge itself pull through. For those in less London familiar parts of the UK, London Bridge station is south of the Thames and the area adjacent which includes the fabulous Borough Market is in truth the London Bridge area. It was only in the Spring when I ventured there alone for a second time in a football season to go to the market and marvel at its architecture, the wide range of ethnic foods, its pubs with real ale, the fish stalls, the vibrant international crowds, many with tour guides, and to sit by the Thames.
There in my private soul I gazed towards the bridge in awe and with a sort of appreciation and even pride that I am not only London through and through but my family were from this part of London. It's in my blood. I haven't always felt this way. Following the government cuts, I didn't want to know London ever again so the way I went out to do this was a part of my rehabilitation. It was part one, The pretty modern bit near Talksport. Part two also had to be done. But first I moved to opposite the market itself. There I listened to the South London voices talking veg, intermingling with every language.
So, yeah. That was before I got the five minute train to South Bermondsey. Part two and once done twice, this odd route was something I felt I wanted to do for the rest of my life and I am really fed up I haven't done it for months. All the while I was in all these places, I was telling myself I was doing it all in memory of my grandmother who was at the market daily and who never in her 92 years moved more than three miles. I also said to my brain I was being the most tiny part of helping an area which had been so cruelly attacked. I'm criss-crossing terrain a bit here but hopefully it is clear and hey Danny Dyer is royal and most can take that on board. There were tears of remembrance which were stifled by a decision to talk with people of every background and find a bit of humour with the people there- "hey I'm being a pretend journalist or just a mate" - and then all the way to the New Den. Some respond in memorable ways. Others blank. Such is life.
That tunnel out of South Bermondsey station which features in The Football Factory is actually not as scary. as it was presented by the film, Most who walk through there appear very train spottery which is apt. There are police on beautiful horses which to the sort of person I am reassure. Basic signs which could have been there since the 1970s although they weren't for then Millwall played at the Old Den are deliberately low key. The ones which divide the routes of people as required depending on which side they are on. People comply. There is a swift ten minute walk through anonymous environments until you get to the concourse which while ugly is full of the foody and shirty basics that show that the place is doing its best,. Nothing about it screams out community. One just knows that it is there and that huge efforts have been put into it in that regard. Women - young women - are far greater in number than expected as are people of ethnicity especially in the stewarding roles and kids. There's an apparently higher than average number of people who are disabled, either mental of physical. It's the comedy that strikes you immediately in direct encounters or simply as overheard.
I'm mainly Arsenal me - so many happy fun times - but it is po-faced in comparison even if it implies camaraderie. I doubt any other set of fans equal Millwall fans although some come close. Is this really an alien environment? Well, to Google the street maps of the roads around it and then one does get the heebie-jeebies. Personally, they are not ones that I would choose and I am sad for the people who live there although many will enjoy their homes. I hadn't actually realised. To not be a half baked teenager is to hopefully set knowingly your own course. Station to ground and directly back to station.
Of course, to be leaving Network Rail for a bit of ex bombed out industrial wasteland (but actually nothing very different from going out to the rather tremendous Aston Villa) and all underneath the railway tracks, wild, and their arches would on non match days send a shiver up the spines of the especially sensitive. But, here is the big irony given the reputation. On match days, it is the fans who make the area feel personably safe. The mores are working class conservative in some ways. Often one senses they reside in folk who will always vote Labour for financial reasons. Only Fools and Horses?
Not quite but not a million miles away. It does involve the sort of banter which would be banned by many a media outlet for a lack of political correctness and yet it mixes across the zeitgeists of the ages and there is mostly a sense of "whoever you are, we not only welcome you but love you deep down. In fact, we really, really love you but in our way." Perhaps that wasn't always the case. It is now. And while it too is not London Bridge it might as well be just as much as any Fishmongers' Hall. I would argue it is more so. Certainly in spirit and by virtue of being south. Many haven't a lot to celebrate. But they never turned into Wat Tyler and in fact most are quite the opposite. Help For Heroes is massive in the locality. Many who were seriously injured in the army get in free. Help For Heroes on behalf of autistics, Down's, etc.
It needs to be known.
And apart from the tossers in the minority I feel so warm towards these people and feel that they are my belonging. .
On the awful atrocities at London Bridge - 2 of 2
While 1 of 2 was probably appreciated in extremely modest almost invisible respects, aspects of 2 o2 are going to go down like a lead balloon. Where shall we start? Somewhere which probably can't lead to a knee jerk reaction. Yep, it's back to Wat Tyler. Or maybe not. I have changed my mind so as to align with the over-dramatic modern mass media sensationalism. I'm going to turn things around, The poor man who was extremely young and far more academically able than I could ever have been - Cambridge University - was also far more confident in his outlook than I have ever been while being a quote free spirit. The academic free spirit is something to cherish. I accept that his is a serious loss.
The man's area of understanding, worked hard on no doubt, was in criminology. I have no such background. I am, therefore, just a pleb. I do know that and accept that and am not without instinctive bias. So - forgive me and I really do sympathise enormously with his parents and their pain whilst acknowledging that his father was keen politically to say that his son's values should not be reacted against (which is pretty much the opposite to how my own parents would have behaved) - I did have to research him. Call me wrong but I wanted to prove to myself that the family were ultra middle class. That's my issue. I think now they are moneyed but not so far as it can have had any direct links to my manor.
So knocking class prejudices aside, and while noting from the perspective of being a graduate, not that that shit matters, how news media glorified in focussing on this story 24/7 like it had got OCD on overdrive and all for hyping it up to rake the money in, I humbly did more research. All this media "for Christs's sake don't go anywhere near that place for ever more" followed within twelve hours of "how great that the place is flooded, business is usual, don't get kowtowed".
It is that absolute symbol of the schizophrenic mother as it used to be known before discredited. "Come to me........no don't come anywhere near me". As I say that went as liberals didn't like the notion but for God's sake this is what modern media and politics is doing to everyone's heads. They say "oh we must address the mental health crisis". "Yeah, we can by banning you". So anyhow, these guys were expert criminologists. I'm not. All I have is life experience and common sense.
I did review Jack's Twiiter page. There was an occasional post which had been deleted but in fairness almost none. It may provide, I suggest, a fair indication of the views of him and his Cambridge colleagues at the Hall. Anti banning and even pro championing the one thing above any other which has led to the damage and abject misery in working class communities, especially black, namely the absolutely disgusting drill videos which have rather than reflecting poor conditions directly led to them killing each other with knives and guns. To object is being racist to them. F**k off. This is white millionaire record labels encouraging murder and it's neither West Indian or African. It's imported Americana dark fantasy at its worst even or especially under Trump. Where now are the sensitive intellects of Scott-Heron and Gaye?
And then the drugs. Jack RIP believed on behalf of black peoples that it was simply no good objecting to drug use including cocaine as it was a way of having a go at party people among the middle classes. And in that, my friends, he was not alone and I am sure that most of the Cambridge people there, with non family background in London, were in total agreement. So that is the context. Liberalism of that kind was invited into our city by people who are so acutely conscious of sensitivities in some regards and so blasé or naïve on others,. This weren't a London Bridge thing. It was a Cambridge ultra liberal thing where any management was lost in house and spilled to the panic of thousands of ordinary people.
So Mr Khan. Shall we in kind recognition of these people' brains and efforts and good motivations and instinctive rebellions give him the benefit of the doubt? Not quite but almost. Let's state here that there is so much to suggest that he was an extremely nasty piece of work. They, though, would have said that perhaps he was able to reform. In respect to them, most of whom are still alive, let's say he theoretically was. Well, didn't they bugger it up? On the day of the 2017 atrocity at London Bridge, where was Khan? I will tell you as it hasn't been much in the media. He was on a prisoner rehabilitation course outside London which was intended to make him more establishment leaning. I humbly suggest that the day did his head in if he were well intentioned because it left him caught between two stools in his dodgy brain.
That happened during an election campaign. So to then say "oh, here is another election campaign, let's do another rehabilitation thing and it will be at London Bridge". Christ, the average dim wit bloke with an IQ of 43 could have said that was bound to leave to a conflict of explosion in a conflicted head. So anyhow he gets there. Of course, people will tell me not to mention the most dramatic sculpture in Fishmongers' Hall because the geezer was already tooled up on his way down to the Big Smoke. I do believe they protest too much. Wat Tyler. You are not telling me that anyone invited onto any course is not sent beforehand information by post. Stuff that explains a bit about the course and its highbrow venue.
One of the first things that Mr Khan would have received was information about the prominent statue on the stairway of Fishmongers' Hall. It is in almost everything that is said about Fishmongers' Hall. The one which shows Sir William Walworth (call him symbolically the British Establishment) stabbing to death Wat Tyler of the Peasants Revolt about which no academic has ever been sure includes the actual knife with which Walworth killed Tyler. Well, what a wonderful choice of venue by our esteemed young academics. A bit of leather jacketed punkish rebellion testing of the evil terrorist with them thinking they were fully in control or simply a symptom of the idiocy of people with supposedly high intelligence?
I mean, what would you do if you were a brainwashed and so-called religious fanatic who was susceptible to any kind of twat or symbolism going? Who had spent eight years in jail and was now thinking "well, maybe I should try to conform and bury any resentment". So, yeah. the literature probably turned up in Stafford from punters believing it wasn't an ultra complex mind that couldn't be saved like almost as if suddenly turning to Christ (although you can bet that most of them were intellectually dismissive of Christianity). And he goes "oh right so the man who was looking to overthrow the system, Mr Tyler, was murdered by the Establishment and oh it's London Bridge area, sort of, again during an election and old Wat succeeded there in 2017 on behalf of Islam but still everyone hated him so he was killed. It's time to tool up on his behalf.
I have no qualifications in criminology whatsoever but that I offer as a not implausible common sense angle.
Thanks very much. 
Tonight, Virginia Roberts (the girl at the heart of the Prince Andrew scandal) will be interviewed on BBC's Panorama.
The press is still full of reports that she was "forced" to have sex with Andrew and that she was a "sex slave" but, strangely, all reports are failing to mention that, by her own admission, she was paid a five-figure sum by Jeffrey Epstein the day after she (allegedly) first spent the night with Andrew. Some reports say it was $15,000, others £10,000.
In January 2015, Virginia was quoted in newspapers around the world saying, "Jeffrey always took care of paying me after I 'entertained' his friends."
If the BBC interviewer doesn't mention those very substantial payments in tonight's interview, I shall be more than a little disappointed and I might even go as far as to question the BBC's impartiality in this matter.
If she was paid after it sounds like a payoff to cover up something.
The queen isn't dead.
Why is that news? Basically, because her death was announced on Twitter last night.
When she does eventually shuffle off this mortal coil, the associated ceremonies are going to be unlike anything ever seen before in Britain.
Nine days of national mourning will ensue and a great many of our favourite TV programmes will be either cancelled or postponed.
I don't know whether or not God reads the BCG forums but, just in case he does, "Please don't take her during the World Cup. Amen."
I'm sure a lot of people would like it to happen then.It only goes to show what a tough thankless job god has got .I wouldn't have his/her/it's job if you paid me.....etc.
(this is easier than going to church,isn't it?
The father of Virginia Roberts is in the news today stating, as a fact, that she is telling the truth about her sexual liaisons with Prince Andrew.
I doubt it's possible to imagine a more a ridiculous statement or a more ridiculous news story.
The only way he can know she's telling the truth is if he was standing there watching her and Andrew have sex on the three occasions she alleges it took place.
Was he standing there watching?
If so, it makes him a lot dodgier than Andrew!
Rood you need to be careful as you are inches off blaming the victim.
Quote: Teddy Paddalack @ 3rd December 2019, 1:44 PMRood you need to be careful as you are inches off blaming the victim.
I hope not.
As far as I can see, everything Virginia Roberts and Andrew are alleged to have done together was perfectly legal and perfectly decent - they were both young, free and single, and she was above the age of consent.
Neither of them did anything wrong and therefore neither of them is to be blamed for any of the things they allegedly did together.
If her allegations are true, Andrew is to be blamed for his subsequent public denials.
If her allegations are false, she is to be blamed for making them.
Are those allegations true or false? We have no way of knowing unless further evidence emerges to settle the matter one way or the other.
In the meantime, I'm blaming nobody.
Quote: Rood Eye @ 3rd December 2019, 2:17 PMI hope not.
As far as I can see, everything Virginia Roberts and Andrew are alleged to have done together was perfectly legal and perfectly decent - they were both young, free and single, and she was above the age of consent.
Neither of them did anything wrong and therefore neither of them is to be blamed for any of the things they allegedly did together.
If her allegations are true, Andrew is to be blamed for his subsequent public denials.
If her allegations are false, she is to be blamed for making them.
Are those allegations true or false? We have no way of knowing unless further evidence appears.In the meantime, I'm blaming nobody.
As I understand it she's alleging that she was the victim of sex trafficking, which is an offence.
Not when a person is being controlled by a second party and made to do things they would not ordinarily do. So when a convicted paedophile flies in a young girl to meet a Prince you have to ask yourself is what I am saying fair to the victim and quite frankly its not in my opinion,
You need to get back to the comedy aspect of things mate as you have a good eye for the funny and not bad timing. But when you cover the news in such a way you come across as someone who is not that in touch with current mindsets.
Its only my opinion mate but of late you seem to spend more of your time trying to incite via base issues and you're better than that as are most of the people on here apart from Chappers 