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CABINET OF CURIOSITIES (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Mick Harper
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Just a note on M J Harper vs The Consumer Durables as I know many of you are rooting for me. The liquids in my fridge started turning into solid ice which makes 'brewing up' almost literally the case. This morning the fridge had turned itself off which means everything will now spoil. Then on my next foray into the kitchen (on another matter entirely, I wasn't checking up on it or anything) it had started up again. This could be a lengthy battle of wits.

My new telly arrived and I put on my weightlifter's leotard and body belt to begin the street to basement transfer. I could pick it up with one crooked finger! Apparently, since my last purchase, TV's have been miniaturised in every department but screen size.

One-all to the good guys.
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Mick Harper
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Three for free! Are you in, mickxharper? Three free bottles of turmeric. Supplies limited. FREE Turmeric

I am in two minds. My consumption of turmeric is such that this will set me up for life and I'll still be able to bequeath a couple of bottles to my loved ones. On the other hand with my fridge on the blink I have to be careful about long-term storage of foodstuffs so I'll have to put something in a codicil warning them about it to be on the safe side. Unless it's my brother.
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Mick Harper
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This Week's Tesco Story

I was passing the sweetie shelves, eyes averted, when something caught my attention. Orange Kitkat. As you know, I have to sample these things on your behalf. Actually I took two, because you have to have a 'control sample'. I won't bore you with a lot of statistical stuff but suffice it to say I was en route for chez moi and had stopped for a breather (you need one at my time of life) and a fag (I'm allowed to on all major sabbaths) when something caught my eye. Three orange Kitkats sitting in my Sainsbury bag. (A little tip for you there if you want tip-top service at Tesco.)

Now I know what you're thinking but you're wrong. I was thinking I must be getting senile if I can't count Kitkat bars. You know, after counting in sevens backwards from a hundred they ask you, "How many Kitkats am I holding up?" I worried all the way home. Which was where my fears were put to rest because, as I always do, I was entering my purchases on a spread sheet when I came across this item

CC Confectionery 3F1.2 -£0.90

I won't bore you with a lot of Tesco-speak but basically anyone with a Club Card gets three orange Kitkats for the price of two and the lady on the checkout had popped an extra one in because she likes me. Or it may have been the Sainsbury bag.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Wiley has always been up for tearing down statues, but has recently noticed that the real problem is what do you then do with these buggers when, after the initial excitement, you have to deal with the practical problems of monumental pieces that nobody wants.

Many are way too big and heavy to place in museums. Stately homes are not really an answer as that is just moving the problem, and English Heritage will see statues as off-putting to visitors.

Auction is an option, but the cost of moving probably will outweigh the benefits of purchase. I recently had the same problem with my old car, much as I tried to pretend it was an ancient classic and flog it, the reality was it was now worthless junk and I had to pay someone to take it.

The ignoral is that it is s now going to cost the tax payer about £250,000 to display the much hated Colston statue, in a now vandalised and horizontal form, using up valuable museum space, and after a few years no one other than a few local historians are going to want to see him.

This is crazy.

Say it quietly, but nobody really gives a real jot about these statues, certainly not the dispossessed folks of Bristol who would probably have opted for a new pool room and sauna for their youth club if they were donated £250,000, so by far the best option was the cheapest, ie leave him to the water, and simply leave the plinth empty for the perusal of future generations rather than try a gimmicky compromise, featuring the bastardised old statue in the museum and a costly new commision of which the sole talking point will be ...."that was where the Colston statue stood".
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Mick Harper
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Surely it being the second most famous statue in Britain (after Nelson's Column, write in with other candidates) so there ... um, should be a statue to it... or something. "It is an example of a commemorative device becoming an artefact in its own right," as we commemorative devices into artefacts specialists put it.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Mick Harper wrote:
Surely it being the second most famous statue in Britain (after Nelson's Column, write in with other candidates) so there ... um, should be a statue to it... or something. "It is an example of a commemorative device becoming an artefact in its own right," as we commemorative devices into artefacts specialists put it.


Another f***king statue.

I thought Wiley was the "go to guy" when it comes to continually repeating his errors, blowing himself up, plunging into the canyon, and so on.

Still, rather annoyingly, you have grasped part of the solution, we must at all costs leave Nelson, the others won't be missed, if only we could economically get rid of them.
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Mick Harper
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Got it! What's wrong with Nelson's Column? It's one long pencil of nothingness. It's so high you can't even see who's on top. (It's Nelson.) So...

We take all the people that have been toppled from their plinths and we have them climbing up the column. It'll not only look smashing we'll be able to explain to Japanese tourists in Trafalgar Square that it represents... exactly. You'll be able to invent anything you like and they'll give you half-a-crown for your trouble.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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It's getting worse, the Government is advising that the statues should not be knocked over, whilst the police and courts have decided that they will be on the "wrong side of history" if they actually do their jobs. I don't blame them, but arresting and sentencing folks does fall within their job descriptions. Maybe I imagined that? It is a collective madness, nobody used to give a jot that Rotheram park had a General Kitchener between its bird aviary and bandstand, nobody that is until Binky Fullblouse completed her masters, and pointed out that he had built a few concentration camps.

The new Government line is that the council should now explain the statue by putting Kitchener in his historical context, which probaly means an expensive plaque saying something like "For christ sake he was just interning the Boers a bit like our allies do with terrorists at Guantanamo."

For god's sake, just let Binky and her mates pull Kitchener down, providing they agree to fund the full cost of the removal.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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It's much easier to get rid of smaller pillaged artefacts rather than monuments, but it is still such a faff. Jesus College Cambridge University recently decided to return a bronze sculpture of a cockerell to Nigeria. I think that most of us would agree that this is a common sense decision that could be proposed by the Master of the College and then maybe dropped off to the Nigerian embassy in London. It can't be difficult can it?

In fact it takes three years, between 2016-19, to set up a Legacy of Slavery Working Party (aha) with the participation of fellows, staff and student representatives to explore the historical, legal and moral status of its ownership of the bronze which, it turns out, had been taken from the court of Benin and donated by the father of a student.

The "legacy of slavery" is an interesting one as the cockerell turns out to have belonged to the slave-owning Oba, whose slaves were emanipated by the British as a part of the British trying to consolidate their colonial rule. Still, that is an afternoon's work at most, it is after all information available in all good textbooks, and Cambridge is good at this sort of stuff. The real shits in the historical record, if you think slavery is a bad thing, are the Oba but there is no escaping the main issue is a simple one, that the cock was not, as everyone knew, indigenous to the UK, unless it was a forgery ( Jesus does have a cockerell insignia), and now amounted to just a minor curisoity to what is a big very wealthy college and, let's be honest, the bird was becoming a bit of an embarrassment as it had probably been looted by British troops from the slave-owning Oba.

How the hell does this take 3 years?

It's a quick text, would you like it back? Please. Smiley face with wink. But no, it's then another 2 years again to finally return it.

Apparently this has to involve Nigeria’s minister of information and culture, the director general of the National Commission for Museums, major press announcemnts and TV programmes.

The current head of the Oba N’Oba N’Edo Uku Akpolokpolo, Ewuare II, was pleased.

“We are indeed very pleased and commend Jesus College for taking this lead in making restitution for the plunder that occurred in Benin in 1897,”

Sonita Alleyne, the master of Jesus College, was also happy

“This is an historic moment … it is the right thing to do out of respect for the unique heritage and history of this artefact.


“I would like to thank the LSWP for its diligent and careful investigation into the provenance of the bronze, to the fellows for their keen support for its restitution, and to our students who pioneered early calls for this.”

Job well done.
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Mick Harper
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We're all trying to boost our Twitter following and there are a number of ways you can do this -- no, I'm not going to say what they are in case any of you lot are thinking of trying to overtake me. Fat chance, worms.

Anyway this friend of mine, Elaine Must, has come up with a terrific new one. She's the eighth most popular Twitteree in the world but intends buying Twitter then banning the other seven. I don't mind telling you this because I know none of you can afford the forty-five billion dollars it takes. Not even if you all gang together. Fat chance, worms.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Bravo, Braverman.

Taking the Colston case to the Court of Appeal, but not seeking to overturn the acquittals, denying the protesters their craving for publicity, was a cunning move.

The Court of Appeal is now looking at whether the Colston statue was a hate crime against the protesters' humans rights which gave them the right to topple it. I am sure that there will be much gnashing of teeth when the protesters eventually discover the main thing they have achieved is the curtailing of the use of bizarre human rights defences following criminal offences.
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Mick Harper
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It has taken two and hundred and fifty years to convert Colston from a great benefactor of worthy causes to the devil incarnate but nowadays Woke moves with such speed that soon everyone -- including Wokios -- will find they have committed serious crimes in their recent past. So far this has only caught out show biz people enjoying the droit de seigneur expected of them, sportsmen engaging in the banter of dressing rooms expected of them and people who smoked, but soon it will be acts of omission rather than commission.

"Please itemise, for the panel, the steps you took to make life easier for trans persons when you were at school."
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Mick Harper
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Best Creative Use of 'Very Nearly' of the Week

...after a bunch of Trump supporters stormed Congress... democracy has prevailed but very nearly didn't...
Simon Tisdall reviewing The Age of the Strongman in the Guardian
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Mick Harper
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I am always reminded on this day of the chief difference between now and my early life. You can have hot cross buns on any day of the year. There's other stuff as well but it's mainly hot cross buns.
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Mick Harper
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After ten years wearing the same few shirts and having to attend a family holiday I thought I would buy some new ones. The nearest shirt shops being a tube ride away I thought I'd buy them over the internet (for the first time). I ordered near approximations of my current shirts. They arrived, they were short sleeves when I had ordered long sleeves. After an inordinate kerfuffle I sent them back to China. They promptly refunded my money. Yesterday, eight months later, they have arrived back.
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