The Politics Thread

[TANGODANCER]

I'm too antiquated to change the habits of a lifetime. I know 800 metres is half a mile when watching athletics but still say two pounds of sugar and ignore mili-litres completely. I learned, as an apprentice, 0.125 was an eighth of an inch and the corresponding equations by eighths and quarters inch, 0.25, 0.375, .5, 0.625, 0.75, 0.875, 1 inch etc.. and there are 25.4 millimeters to an inch. We had to use different rulers if something was cast in iron, steel, brass etc as different shrinkage is involved in cast metals. We also worked in 64ths of an inch. Confused? you may well be.

In my prime I was five feet eleven and a half and weighed thirteen stone. What that is/was in metric the Lord knows. I can't remember anyone asking . Since most tape measures contain both metric and imperial, it isn't much of a problem and Google does have its uses. Oh, and I used to roll my own cigs (not smoked for about 14 years now) and buy 50 gram packs of tobacco. As I'm trying to give up swearing I won't mention the tobacco bandits ( H.M.Gov) prices whilst they claim to care about health yet still make an absolute fortune on tax. Sufficient to say, how can anyone afford to smoke?

Okay, that'll do. A quarter of Pear drops please..

[BWFC_Insane]

So Bruce, when you buy a length of wood, for example, are you thinking you need "maybe a metre" or "about three feet and a bit?"

We have a weird thing with this don’t we. I’m fully metric. In for a medical a while ago and asked how tall are you in centimetres? I know my height in feet and inches. But not cm. And if I had to measure up anything else I’d work in metres and cm. So yeah. Very odd.

Yep, absolutely. At work, everything's metric, except for when I'm dealing with the US or Ireland (who actually manage to concoct a hybrid along the lines 6"+17mm. Seriously)
I know my weight in both, but my height only in feet and inches. I'm conversant with distances in KM but only because I work away quite a lot, which again is a little strange because when I'm home I only work in miles.

Now then, I'm pretty sure that I've never used any unit of measure in a grocer's/butcher's retail environment when asking for something generally priced on weight. Instead I'll ask for six bananas, a fiver's worth of mince, that kind of thing (pints of ale not withstanding).

I hung a couple of pictures at home last week so to find the centre points I measured in millimetres, but would have been perfectly comfortable had I measured in feet and inches.

Yeah and for weight Im always metric since that’s what GP uses and easier to just use that. I also know roughly in my head what a Kg is. So feels sensible. But for example height I know what 5ft11 looks like instantly. Yet I know what a metre is too it just doesn’t translate in my head to the height of a person.

And agree on buying stuff. I just ask for ‘£5 quits worth’ or just pick up the number I need. I don’t know of anyone who asks for a specific weight of something other than those around and old enough the post war years because I guess they are just used to it. The missus once went into a different butchers and was asked for a weight ended up with half a bloody cow as she got her weights mixed up and normally would just do it by eye.

[Abdoulaye's Twin]

Problem with asking for £5 worth of stuff is at the moment the volume/quantity you get is changing every other week for food. The price increases I can see coming through the wholesalers at the moment are frightening.

[BWFC_Insane]

Problem with asking for £5 worth of stuff is at the moment the volume/quantity you get is changing every other week for food. The price increases I can see coming through the wholesalers at the moment are frightening.

A very fair point. And you can see that for months at the butchers. You don’t get close to what you used to.

I tend to do it by eye. How much do you want? Show me and I will tell you when to slice…kinda thing…

[TANGODANCER]

Weights and measures? Who actually checks weights anymore? There are a few general supermarket items down a little, but more than countered by the rise in others. 16% rise in a packet of crisps ? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61630281

One of the biggest pitfalls is sell-by dates and these really need checking as they seem to be getting shorter all the time. Because we can't get out as often the wife does a fair it of online shopping. Used to be quite simple but the amount of items "out of stock" when deliveries arrive is another issue. "A nation of shopkeepers" (we the Brits) were once labelled; now were a nation of internet shoppers. Very soon drivers won't be able to afford to start their cars. And gallons to litres, now there's another....

[BWFC_Insane]

Weights and measures? Who actually checks weights anymore? There are a few general supermarket items down a little, but more than countered by the rise in others. 16% rise in a packet of crisps ? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61630281

One of the biggest pitfalls is sell-by dates and these really need checking as they seem to be getting shorter all the time. Because we can't get out as often the wife does a fair it of online shopping. Used to be quite simple but the amount of items "out of stock" when deliveries arrive is another issue. "A nation of shopkeepers" (we the Brits) were once labelled; now were a nation of internet shoppers. Very soon drivers won't be able to afford to start their cars. And gallons to litres, now there's another....

I consider myself relatively fortunate. But it’s not exactly straightforward now even for us. So I absolutely shudder to think of those who are closer to the breadline.

All the while MPs claiming hundreds of thousands of pounds of expenses including thousands and thousands for subsistence annually tell us we can all live off 30p a day or some such. I don’t even know to begin with how we got here…but more crucially what do we do about it?

[Harry Genshaw]

The missus once went into a different butchers and was asked for a weight ended up with half a bloody cow as she got her weights mixed up and normally would just do it by eye.

Happened to me many moons ago when I was first wed. I used to buy a pack of bacon from the co-op and it was around £2.80. One morning they had none, so I went into the busy butchers further down and confidently asked for £3 of bacon. Chap promptly threw 3lb of it onto the scales and asked for god knows how much. I was too embarrassed to say owt. We were eating bacon for weeks!

[TANGODANCER]

The missus once went into a different butchers and was asked for a weight ended up with half a bloody cow as she got her weights mixed up and normally would just do it by eye.

Happened to me many moons ago when I was first wed. I used to buy a pack of bacon from the co-op and it was around £2.80. One morning they had none, so I went into the busy butchers further down and confidently asked for £3 of bacon. Chap promptly threw 3lb of it onto the scales and asked for god knows how much. I was too embarrassed to say owt. We were eating bacon for weeks!

The magic word is "worth" H.G. Three pounds worth.

[Harry Genshaw]

The missus once went into a different butchers and was asked for a weight ended up with half a bloody cow as she got her weights mixed up and normally would just do it by eye.

Happened to me many moons ago when I was first wed. I used to buy a pack of bacon from the co-op and it was around £2.80. One morning they had none, so I went into the busy butchers further down and confidently asked for £3 of bacon. Chap promptly threw 3lb of it onto the scales and asked for god knows how much. I was too embarrassed to say owt. We were eating bacon for weeks!

The magic word is "worth" H.G. Three pounds worth.

Well I know that now but then....

[Worthy4England]

The letters to the 1922 are starting to mount up....I'm just not sure the wider parliamentary Tory party will bite the bullet at this point should it get to a trigger level...

[Gary the Enfield]

The letters to the 1922 are starting to mount up....I'm just not sure the wider parliamentary Tory party will bite the bullet at this point should it get to a trigger level...

They'll have to prise the premiership from his cold dead hands........

[BWFC_Insane]

The letters to the 1922 are starting to mount up....I'm just not sure the wider parliamentary Tory party will bite the bullet at this point should it get to a trigger level...

They'll have to prise the premiership from his cold dead hands........

Can he not afford to turn the heating on either then?


Must be bad.

[BWFC_Insane]

The letters to the 1922 are starting to mount up....I'm just not sure the wider parliamentary Tory party will bite the bullet at this point should it get to a trigger level...

They won’t. It depends on IF they reach the letters threshold and then how many vote against him as to how damaging for his survival it would be. If enough of your parliamentary party want you gone, but not a majority then barring a miracle you probably will have to go one way or another at some point.

May won her confidence vote fairly comprehensively…didn’t last very long after.

The fundamental problem is there just isn’t anyone who this ‘former Brexit party’ rabble are likely to unite behind who has the gravitas, experience and skill to make a better fist of it. They are a bit like Labour were pre Brexit in an awful position. They are bleeding traditional Tory voters in the south…..yet can’t afford to lose their newer voters in the north. And the two are more or less not reconcileable. Unless the Lib Dems do something stupid of course. Which is always possible in life.

Imagine if Johnson hadn’t done his hatchet job on Sunak? We would have normal politics back again.

[Worthy4England]

Imagine if Johnson hadn’t done his hatchet job on Sunak? We would have normal politics back again.

Hmmm. If you leave yourself open to such a hatchet job, then there's a fair chance you're not the right pick either - just a different pick. You could probably pick Jimmy Carr and have less tax avoidance going on than that in the Sunak household.

[BWFC_Insane]

Imagine if Johnson hadn’t done his hatchet job on Sunak? We would have normal politics back again.

Hmmm. If you leave yourself open to such a hatchet job, then there's a fair chance you're not the right pick either - just a different pick. You could probably pick Jimmy Carr and have less tax avoidance going on than that in the Sunak household.

I get that I do. But you know old fashioned politics where the Tories were the rich overlords handing out the occasional scrap whilst playing the financial system to their own end sounds incredibly enticing compared to what we have now.

That’s how far we’ve sunk in my eyes. I’d crawl on broken glass for a Theresa May or a David Cameron and I didn’t vote for either.

[Worthy4England]

Oh...that's a sad state of affairs!

[BWFC_Insane]

Oh...that's a sad state of affairs!

It is but we’ve currently got a government prepared to lie repeatedly and ashamedly. And nod and wink that they know you know they are lying, but you can’t do a thing about it. And then try to exert control over the media, courts, electoral commission and any body who would normally hold them to account. It’s frightening.

I fear if we don’t somehow get rid of them soon we might never be able to and we’ll have a procession or Trump like figures following in Johnson’s footsteps.

[Hoboh]

Might stand for election then, vote for me you won't get any back slapping, back handers, nor parties in no10, the buggers would be too busy. Huge cuts in oversea aid, total reform of legal aid, nuclear power stations galore, fracking and finally telling the Putin supporting EU to do one.

[Worthy4England]

^^ No wall building in the channel? Have you seen how many people we're letting in since we got control of our borders back? 677,000 in 2019 - the highest number since 1991. I'd have thought you'd have been apoplectic.

[TANGODANCER]

Maybe we need a Margaret Thatcher with today's problems. She had an unenviable era to be P.M of, but she surely couldn't do any worst than what we have now.