Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Silly Stan :)

Just the word Muppets and Waller... 3 appear 😆

Burnley supporters club. All of them. Stan is the one trying to be cool behind Sean Dyche.

About time to have a proper retirement....

Britain's outspoken Prince Philip bows out of public life
Wed, 2nd Aug 2017 11:11

(Adds background)

LONDON, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Prince Philip, the 96-year-old husband of Britain's Queen Elizabeth, bows out of public life on Wednesday with a final solo appearance at an official event, ending a royal career marked by occasional gaffes that landed him in hot water.

Though known for often off-colour comments that seized the headlines, Philip has been by the queen's side throughout her 65 years on the throne and she has described him as "my strength and stay".

He announced his retirement in May this year, after completing more than 22,000 solo appearances, spanning seven decades. At an engagement on the day of the announcement, a guest had told Philip he was sorry to hear he was standing down.

"I can't stand up much," quipped the prince.

Both the queen and Prince Philip have cut their workload in recent years, passing on many responsibilities to son and heir Prince Charles, and grandsons, Princes William and Harry.

Philip spent two days in hospital in June for treatment for an infection. The queen, the world's longest-reigning living monarch who celebrated her 91st birthday in April, will continue to carry out a full programme of official engagements.

Philip married Elizabeth at Westminster Abbey in 1947, and the couple are due to celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary in November.

Outspoken, irascible and intensely private, Philip, a Greek-born former naval officer, developed a reputation for occasional brusque and sometimes politically incorrect comments at ceremonial events he attended.

A stray remark about "slitty eyes" during a visit to China in the 1980s became symbolic of his gruff and often unguarded manner.

During a visit to Oban in Scotland in 1995 he asked a driving instructor: "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the (driving) test ?"

Well into his 90s, he made headlines when he exasperatedly swore at a photographer at a 2015 event.

Nonetheless, the queen has described him as a crucial figure during her long reign.

"He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years," Elizabeth said in a rare personal tribute to Philip made in a speech marking their 50th wedding anniversary in 1997.

For his final solo appearance on Wednesday, Philip, also known as the Duke of Edinburgh, will attend a parade of Royal Marines at Buckingham Palace and meet servicemen who have taken part in a 1,664 mile race to raise money for the Royal Marine's Charity.

Buckingham Palace has said that Philip may choose to accompany Elizabeth at certain events in the future.

Online estate agency Hatched has analysed the housing market for first-time buyers and found the areas that represent opportunities for those wanting to get their foot on the property ladder.
The research shows that the most affordable place for first-time buyers today is Burnley in Lancashire, where property prices average just £70,311.
A good news, bad news story. There must be a reason for the low prices and it can't be just Stan.

Old news..like strong and stable leadership.

Things haven't improved then Stan? Agree that the strong and stable leadership slogan was a disaster. Not in itself but how it was repeated time and time again. Daftest campaign in my lifetime. As for "the many not the few" seems like few people were convinced. Only the students and we know how naive most of them are.

Where is Burnley? No use saying Lancashire as my next question would be where is Lancashire.

It is ironic that the many not the few is a Tony Blair saying. He had it printed on the back of the Labour membership card. It is there still.

Is it FUN to be FAT?.. never in my books

Why the middle-aged ‘dad bod’ could be deadly instead of sexy - Aug 8, 2017

There are serious health hazards to being overweight at a certain age - By QUENTIN FOTTRELL - PERSONAL FINANCE EDITOR

The “dad bod” has been lauded as the new shape of sexy. But the more overweight you are, new research suggests, the more likely you are to die prematurely.

Weight gain in early and middle adulthood will increase health risks later in life, according to a study released Tuesday by researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. People who gained a moderate amount of weight (5 to 22 pounds) before the age of 55 increased their risk of premature death, chronic diseases and decreased the likelihood of achieving healthy aging, the study found. And the higher the weight gain, the greater risk of chronic diseases........
Why the middle-aged ‘dad bod’ could be deadly instead of sexy

No talk about north korea....?......I wouldn't be surprised now if the americans destroy their missiles bases and warn them for further attacks if they continue their threats.....a really serious and unacceptable situation !...

Very surprising to me that crude hasn't jumped by 20 dollars or so due to the possibility of war !....

Why? Does NK have vast oil fields? I expect the price of cheese to plummet with the sanctions against the fat Un.

Disruption to supplies around the pacific area.......something will happen....

Looks like that madman is going to keep trying to provoke Trump .

China Calls For Calm In 'Complicated And Sensitive' Korean Situation
Wed, 9th Aug 2017 13:17

The Chinese government has called for cool heads amid the current tensions between the US and North Korea over Pyongyang's nuclear programme.

"The current situation on the [Korean] peninsula is highly complicated and sensitive," according to a fax from China's Foreign Ministry which dpa received late on Wednesday.

"We hope all relevant parties speak cautiously and move prudently, stop provoking each other, avoid further escalating the situation and strive to return to the correct track of dialogue and negotiations as soon as possible."

I wouldn't be surprised if the americans don't knock out of the sky the next north korean missile test as a severe warning !.....something like that....

Anyway...what is this weather ?.....blinkin heck !....I'm getting webbed feet and hands...so much it has rained....can't beat the good ol' british summer weather....never know what it's going to do....

It's globular warming rf.

You need to pay more tax to cure it.

The biggest threat to free speech? It’s the left (Fred and Stan)


By Niall Ferguson August 07, 2017

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/08/07/the-biggest-threat-free-speech-the-left/QeNyES0rXB3bdWR8rjHKTI/story.html



With every passing week, those who predicted the tyranny of President Trump look sillier. Blocked by the courts, frustrated by Congress, assailed by the press, under mounting pressure from a special counsel, and reduced to reenacting “The Apprentice” within the White House, the president has passed from tyranny to trumpery to tomfoolery with the speed of a fat man stepping on a banana skin.

So does that mean we can all stop worrying about tyranny in America? No. For the worst thing about the Trump presidency is that its failure risks opening the door for the equal and opposite but much more ruthless populism of the left. Call me an unreconstructed Cold Warrior, but I find their tyranny a far more alarming — and more likely — prospect.



With few exceptions, American conservatives respect the Constitution. The modern American left, by contrast, thirsts to get rid of one of the most fundamental protections that the Constitution enshrines: free speech. If you want to see where that freedom is currently under attack in the United States, accompany me to some institutions where you might expect free expression to be revered.

Almost every month this year has seen at least one assault on free speech on an American college campus. In February the University of California, Berkeley, cancelled a talk by Milo Yiannopoulos, the British “alt-right” journalist and provocateur, after a violent demonstration. In March students at Middlebury College in Vermont shouted down the sociologist Charles Murray and assaulted his faculty host. In April, it was the turn of conservative writer Heather MacDonald at Claremont McKenna and pro-Trump journalist Ann Coulter at Berkeley.


Nor is it only right-wing speakers who have been targeted. Bret Weinstein, a biology professor at Evergreen State College in Washington state, always thought of himself as “deeply progressive.” In May, however, it was his turn to fall victim to the unfree speech vigilantes. Weinstein refused to acquiesce when “white students, staff, and faculty” were “invited to leave campus” for a day. In response, a group of about 50 students confronted him outside his classroom, shrilly accusing him of “supporting white supremacy” and refusing to listen to his counter-arguments.

No one could accuse the great Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins of being right-wing. Yet last month it was his turn to be silenced. A public radio station in — you guessed it — Berkeley canceled a discussion of his latest book because (in the words of a spokesman) “he has said things that I know have hurt people,” a misleading allusion to the atheist Dawkins’s forthright criticism of Islam. The station’s general manager declared: “We believe that it is our free speech right not to participate with anyone who uses hateful or hurtful language against a community that is already under attack.”

These are weasel words similar to those published in The New York Times back in April by Ulrich Baer, a professor of comparative literature at New York University who also glories in the title of “vice provost for faculty, arts, humanities, and diversity.” “The idea of freedom of speech,” wrote Baer, “does not mean a blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks. It means balancing the inherent value of a given view with the obligation to ensure that other members of a given community can participate in discourse as fully recognized members of that community.”



“Freedom of expression is not an unchanging absolute,” Baer went on. “[I]t requires the vigilant and continuing examination of its parameters.”

Sorry, mate. Freedom of expression is an unchanging absolute and, as a free speech absolutist, I am here (a) to defend to the death your right to publish such drivel and (b) to explain to as many people as possible why it is so dangerous.

Freedom is rarely killed off by people chanting “Down with Freedom!” It is killed off by people claiming that the greater good/the general will/the community/the proletariat requires “examination of the parameters” (or some such cant phrase) of individual liberty. If the criterion for censorship is that nobody’s feelings can be hurt, we are finished as a free society.

Where such arguments lead is just a long-haul flight away.

The regime of Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, in Venezuela, used to be the toast of such darlings of the American Left as Naomi Klein, whose 2007 book “The Shock Doctrine” praised Venezuela as “a zone of relative economic calm” in a world dominated by marauding free market economists. Today (as was eminently foreseeable 10 years back), Venezuela is in a state of economic collapse, its opposition leaders are in jail, and its constitution is about to be rewritten yet again to keep the Chavista dictatorship in power. Another regime where those who speak freely land in jail is Saudi Arabia, a regime lauded by Women’s March leader and sharia law enthusiast Linda Sarsour.

Mark my words, while I can still publish them with impunity:

The real tyrants, when they come, will be for diversity (except of opinion) and against hate speech (except their own).

Niall Ferguson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.