Quote: Stephen Goodlad @ 2nd May 2019, 9:08 AMTake it back 30/40 years... a lad 'dissed; a gang member, he got a good hiding. When he was down with a bloody nose that was the end of the lesson. He didn't dis any gang members again and it was status quo with the gang.
Violent, nasty sure - but everyone lived to fight another day..
Ah, the good old days! When people knew how to inflict grievous bodily harm but stop just short of full blown murder. It truly was a more innocent time. 
What would you prefer, a thump or a stab?
Alexa, will you please stop treating teenagers like little lords and force THEM to work on answering YOUR questions? Why haven't you done the washing up yet? How long will it take you to dig over the 12 acre allotment with a teaspoon? When I lock you in the shed for a month, do you think you will be able to find the time to get a wash. that is, if you have no access to headphones? That sort of thing. Thanks very much.
Ladies - in the spare moments you have away from your essential kickboxing lessons and intensive counselling sessions, have you considered reviving some old English traditions like crochet and removing environmentally unfriendly washing up suds by running a bar of soap around the plug hole? It isn't as if men aren't now managing to combine nine pints of beer with some good old fashioned morris dancing fun.
Can I get a skinny latte?
No but you may have one if you start speaking English properly.
Belated congratulations to Barcelona for their splendid performance against Liverpool. This country has enough on its plate without having to cope with crowds of high pitched North Western hysterical and sentimental big drama uber-schmaltzers for the next one hundred years.
But at the end of the day, this was a game of two teams from insignificant tiny regions which laughably fancy themselves as separate nations. Neither of them came out of it well.
For example, whenever Lionel Messi is in an international team, he is reminiscent of a Sunday League shambles on Hackney Marshes. If I was an Argentinian, (or should that be were? - English specialists please advise) I wouldn't vote for him and Denis Compton he most certainly ain't.
As for Anthony Joshua, he could appear to be so avoidant that one reluctantly has to conclude he wouldn't even fancy his chances against the late Lynsey de Paul.
Iain Dale's six hour programme on LBC has just begun. I can hardly contain myself. Please tune in. He is the only one apart from Theo Usherwood who doesn't sound like he has been fed cocaine since teatime to hype up this non-event for the advertisers, most of whom are profiting from sickness.
Great build up in that it was as depressing as hell to make what follows interesting. Yummie Mummies who are getting off on their toddlers' mild allergies for all it's worth and whose egos need to be shrunk by at least half. I had excema all over my legs as a kid and terrible breathing problems because of detergents and feathers and the answer was eseentially kind words with bedtime reading and a message that at least I wasn't going through WW2. Anything else and I would have rightly been described and treated as an utter wimp.
The woman next door tells me that every kid in her school has his or her so-called major health problem, including a distaste for apples, stuck on a board on the corridor for all to see. She thinks it is ridiculous which of course it is because everyone has an issue with several things physically. That's life. Get over it and as parents stop building up your self-importance by over-inflating the weakness of your offspring..
As for tattoos on the children in WW2, why read about them and make yourself depressed? It happened - and much worse. It was totally appalling and my uncle got some of them along with dead bodies out of Belsen. All you need to do is believe that truth to counter attention seeking adults who have an allergy to the truth and get off on falsehoods. You really don't need the grim detail and to wish to acquire it is creepy.
(With all due respect to every contributor and unapologetically in equal support of Jewish people, as always, although I am not one myself)
Not really news but there's an old episode of Judge Judy with a defendant who was heroin dependant and his behaviour showed he was clearly in a bad way. The usually unsympathetic Judge Judy showed him compassion by not giving him a hard time and offering him help to recover. It's the only time I've seen her offer help to anyone but if you watch the episode it's clear why.
It was just repeated so I googled his name to see if there was a positive outcome but his sister has shared a few posts on facebook groups to say he took his own life in August 2016. I was hoping he had been through rehab and was now in recovery and enjoying life so it's very sad it didn't turn out like that.
The Lwibwal Dwem'cwats did well.
I believe that is how they all pronounce themselves.
In the neighbouring area they won significant votes by fighting against more housing for current residents in nice areas.
Combined with their support for Freedom of Movement, one can only assume that their housing policy for an additional half a million people every year is to have every one of them sleeping in cardboard boxes in Centwal London.
At one point, I feared that the permanently affixed hands on the hips of Jo "Pseudo-Agwessive Baby Power" Swinson would be the uncontested co-replacements for Sir Vincent Twickers-Dancalot-Bumblebee OBE.
But now enter one Layla Moran who of all the Iranians with unfeasible glasses and attractively big gwipsy earrings I have known is the one with the gweatest pulling power. She could get a lot of wight thinking pweople down on their knwees.
Slappergate Pre Ear Hoops:
TfL have defended their decision not to outlaw manspreading on the tube. This is fair enough so far as it goes but it doesn't address the BBC's wall-to-wall coverage of men's snooker. How long has the average member of the public got to put up with the sight of men getting their leg over at the Crucible when women are at no athletic disadvantage from fully participating in all aspects of this sport? Greater equality at the baize would not only raise huge revenues but save the NHS.
Mrs May and Mr Corbyn are to agree this coming Tuesday on a new locus for Customs Union discussions.
This will avoid the earlier problems with talks about the Customs Union, a customs union and no custom union membership and encouragingly open the prospect of parts of Britain joining a Locustoms Union. And that would merge oh some customs union with e customs arrangements and that custom treaty thingy u and i who didn't know what we were doing can comprehend in text speak, all of which while totally different from each other are precisely identical, innit.
England's new acting Prime Minister Rebecca Long-Bailey said: "According to the Government's own Department of Extinction Rebellion, the locust is usually solitary but it has the capacity to be gregarious with abundance. I am confident that the submerging of anything to do with customs in what remains of our emerging country - or is it county? - in the locus for these talks so that the locus in effect replaces customs as the principal issue might almost command a majority of the House. But if it doesn't a few of us will be ready with an amendment which combines the two with a short-horned grasshopper from the family Acrididae and possibly something else about which we may or may not be on the verge of seriously considering.".
Oliver Letwin, the acting Prime Minister for the island of Southern England, said "I am reminded of the halcyon days with my Nanny when she would read me stories from Aesop's Fables such as The Ant and the Grasshopper and the Hen and the Fox or was it Liam the Fox? Do you know, I am really not sure now. However, I am wholly satisfied that we are working hard to combine the two in such a sensible way that it can go to a long series of meaningless indicative votes where it will only lose by a couple of votes. At that point, we can get it through - actually - on account of it not being supported by a majority".
When asked if this was acceptable, Ms Long-Bailey said it probably wasn't but she was more than happy for Mr Letwin to remain in her Labcon party which has soared to 3% in all the latest opinion polls. Ex Prime Minister Tony Blair, speaking from Buckingham Palace, said "I just don't geddit. I saw Jackie Milburn playing for Newcastle against the Swiss team Grasshoppers in 2007 but when you look at what being outside the EU has done for that country no one in their right mind would want my empire going downhill in that way. Nor would my wife Meghan."
Of all things to live in darkness..........
The world Snooker final is Higgins Verses Trump.
Higgins Verses Trump.
Higgins Verses Trump.
I said the world Snooker final is Higgins Verses Trump.
Higgins Verses Trump.
Higgins Verses Trump.
I said the...BREAKDOWN
Quote: Definitely Tarby @ 5th May 2019, 1:15 AMThe world Snooker final is Higgins Verses Trump.
Higgins Verses Trump.
Higgins Verses Trump.I said the world Snooker final is Higgins Verses Trump.
Higgins Verses Trump.
Higgins Verses Trump.I said the...BREAKDOWN
Those of us who argued vehemently with the rising of the Donald that no one was called Trump and it must be a stupid made up name were able to reinforce our arguments when it transpired that his old man originally had the surname Drumpf and later simply tried to anglicize it. Now this snooker bloke has proven that we were wrong. The bastard. On this basis, I am supporting Higgins.
Returning briefly to the topic of manspreading, the problem with the modern feminist lobby is that they just don't understand the nuances involved. As someone who was raised typically by Victorians, I began life permanently cross legged as well as waiting to be fed the occasional biscuit rather than just grabbing. It was the epitome of politeness. But then, of course, one entered the workplace during the time of Thatcher, Major and Blair. Long gone in most was civil respect, mutual understanding of seniority in work roles and waiting for sex until at least three years into marriage.
Suddenly - and it was a lack of confidence on their part - women of power were exposing their cleavages to show who was boss and male managers who supported them opened their legs wider and wider "challengingly" to minions to the extent that many ended up with severe splits in their arses. Ludicrous as it was, it did the trick. Ultimately they held senior positions because of their bombast rather than any sort of substantial credibility while the rest of us were sufficiently irritated to get out of their offices as quickly as possible in view of the sheer creepiness, thereby never getting promoted.
This is not to say that we weren't on a certain rhythm of transition of our own. It was possibly at the time of the Summer of Love when standing in a Sergio Tacchini shirt alongside people who were so off their heads on e they couldn't have given a toss whether their team won or lost, the journey on the long train home was combined with that thing where while the legs are still crossed the right knee goes much further out so as to form a distinctive v shape. In other words, it was a suitable safe place for retaining the essence of 19th Century manners while reaching out to the cut thrusting ways of money munching modernism, not that we subscribed to them ourselves, preferring to ask "and what can I give you?".
Subsequently our people became ones in which the legs were not crossed but opened to what was deemed a reasonable extent so long as the hands were crossed in front of the crotch while we were protecting any embarrassment in our faces by eating a dozen or so Garibaldis straight out of the packet without the use of hands. But, and this is the crucial point, I for one was not prepared to go the whole hog not because of my history - I miss the 1910s so much now it is almost as if I wasn't there - but a normal unwillingness to need arse mending surgery. Consequently I took a very different route.
It took two decades before it was possible to sit confidently on a crowded train with the trousers and pants down around the ankles, feet sitting as they were in Converse trainers. Hence, personally I have no time for these people who are now determined to diminish masculinity on the rail network, whether it is underground or overground. It isn't as if anyone's opportunities for promotion and financial piggery are at stake there. Plus in summer it is still uber-power cleavage central.
Footnote: one of the hilarious things about the news coverage is all of the photos of examples appear to hint of the men having erections. Those who are grossly offended or threatened just by a sitting position flatter themselves that it is all about them and ironically are clearly over-sexualised. If TfL had the decency to provide smoother trains and buses, much of the so-called issue would be resolved as the last thing on earth most people are is so sexually attractive as to arouse.
Quote: A Horseradish @ 5th May 2019, 1:00 PMReturning briefly to the topic of manspreading,
In my best Colin Crompton impersonation "Give order!! Two points Mr. Chairman................Er, number one BRIEFLY and er, you seem to be the only person bothered about this phenomenon." 
Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 5th May 2019, 3:38 PMIn my best Colin Crompton impersonation "Give order!! Two points Mr. Chairman................Er, number one BRIEFLY and er, you seem to be the only person bothered about this phenomenon."
Bwiefly, yes, I will try to remember that one but you need to be aware of just how much effort has to go in to keeping my hands free enough to write all my charming essays. My legs are wedged up above my waistband to my rear in the formation of a cricket while meals have had to be abandoned for a selection of custard and other creams which I scoff orally from a tin underneath my right armpit.
Why are Tories and Labour punting it that their losses are due to the public being upset that they haven't Brexited? Has it escaped their notice that so many votes have gone to the parties which support another referendum?