they're not all scrappage

Oh, so the picture doesn't fit the caption. How did top gear fail to pick up on that when they broadcast the same image last week (I wonder)

[stops revving monster truck]

Your laughing about it now, but wait til it turns out your keycard was actually stolen from ASDA.

Time to rev up the monster trucks

Do goths count as wildlife?

Wild? they were livid!

Christmas island is apparently only 7 hours ahead of us.

But Christmas Island is still about about 4 – 5 months ahead of Easter Island, although sometimes it looks like Easter Island is catching up

(awaits game of Who Has/Has Had the Highest Mileage Car Top Trumps)

Bought my merc sprinter at 235,000 miles, currently on 278,000 miles. Expect to keep it way beyond 300,000

Do I win?

the thing that gets me is the fact that the quoted fuel economy for something like a Prius is still worse than a modern diesel engine

It depends whether the figures can be compared like for like, if you take the maximum MPG a petrol or diesel car can acheive it only achieves that figure at a speeds and in circumstances that people rarely drive in – faster than you can drive around town, slower than you drive on motorways, with no junctions, no roundabouts no braking or changing gears. So apart from being stuck behind a truck up the A9 between Perth and Inverness its a fantasy value.

The advantage, I would hope, of combining elec and petrol is that you'll travel in an optimum, economical manner for more of of the circumstances of your journey. So in use, rather than in marketing material, something like a Prius should out perform a comparably size car.

The other advantage of the combination is that we are at a very early stage in the transition away from fossil fuels for road travel (if indeed we ever make that transition) and at present we don't have either the driving habits, (in terms of range) or the infrastructure (in terms of charging facilities at home and one the road) that would make drivers feel happy to set off on a journey on battery power alone.

How do you get a clown off a swing?

–
–
–

–

–

Hit him in the face with a shovel, hit with anything, just get him off my swing I hate clowns!

and will work even if the phone is pin locked, just type 112 as the pin and dial.

Thats a mixed blessing, emergency call centres are plagued by silent calls from mobiles in peoples pockets because 1 and 2 being pressed overrides the keypad lock.

I read once that emergency call centres were getting the equivalent of one call every 4 seconds (22,000 a day) but that might have been before fancy flippy / slidey / touchy phones became so popular

The think the previous owner of Christy Towels will be the winners.

They bought the Christy towels brand

'they' being the whole of India? India's government nationalised Christy towels?

Stonehenge is for mugs

indeed

its how the jaccuzzi was invented, the boiling flesh of one reveller standing close to the electric flipflops was noted to produce a lovely relaxy bubbly sensation for all the other party goers in the pool

BAe: tried many times over the last few months, not getting very far at the moment.

have you tried bribing them? (or inviting them to bribe you) 🙂

Does St Helens count as Lancashire now (it was, it wasn't, it is again now?) How about pilkingtons and their fancy glass technologies?

relax man, everything will be just fine

I've been pondering getting into the shed/garden storage / garden office business. Not mass manufacture, but something a bit more niche, secure and attractive. Is really that much of an appetite for sheds here? Or rather one that isn't served by whats generally on offer?

also, call round a few filling stations – some stock 20ltr containers of heating oil.

the 500ltrs is usually the minimum order to make it worth sending a great big truck for delivery, might be worth seeing if you can collect from their depot instead, although you'd need to have a suitable container.

EDIT: Double check that its suitable, but red diesel (tractor fuel) can I think be used as heating oil in the place of kerosene, in that case a rural filling station, somewhere a bit boaty if you live by as canal / lake / the sea or a truck stop should be able to dispense you some, so long as you have something suitable to put it in.

Infact here you go

I think I saw something on TV about investigating whether eating poppy seed bagels could result in failing tests for opiates, but I can't remember too clearly what the outcome was, but I think the result that bagels could result in a positive test.

The loaves have been electronically tagged so their movements can be tracked after they've been released into the wild. Some time later this week what looks like a TV detector van will turn up and team of forensic bakers will dissect you so that they can retrieve the data. Its similar to gathering information about shoppers habits through Loyalty Card, but with a lot more blood and no nectar points.

Real cows have horns

honk honk

Some also have bells

ding-a-ling

the deal is that your bid is binding provided the goods are as described, so with a used car you want to look for exhaustive descriptions and as many of the car faults, dents, scratches listed as possible. A few blurry pics and some blurry words leave you without a leg to stand on once you've bid.

I think it might be an echo of the old chamois leathers used for cleaning and polishing. There was a lengthy discussion about it on Notes and Queries once, there was a bloke who's company had been making dusters for the best part of a century and he didn't know why they were yellow, but he'd tried making different coloured ones and the public didn't buy them.

As for you, you need to refresh your wardrobe with lots of new summery yellow outfits, that'll solve the problem. Or you could offer to launder Livingston FC's kit each week.

"Killing two birds with one stone" Have you ever tried even hitting one bird with a stone?

It would be a useful skill if stones were for some reason rare and expensive. The trick is in these circumstances is to sellotape the birds to a plank then bludgeon them with the stone.

You can't have your cake and eat it.

Thats just a phrase thats become too abreviated over time, it means you can't keep it as a pretty object as well as eat it and enjoy how nice it tastes. However you could just buy two cakes. Or take a photo.

The 'can't polish a turd' is about futility, you can polish a turd, given time, and then its just shiny turd, but its not improved by being shiny. But the phrase again is over abreviated, it should be 'no matter how much you polish a turd, its still a turd'.

However the phrase "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" …. I think many stroke victims would disagree

Bessie Braddock to Winston Churchill: “Sir, you are drunk.”
Winston Churchill to Bessie Braddock : “Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober. In the meantime get your coat, you've pulled.”

putting the text you want in speech marks usually works, it should usually bring up the words you are searching for only when they occur as that phrase.

EDIT but that doesn't work either

I think thats really lovely, a very sweet solution.

The poor and the rich behave selfishly and self destructively for the same reasons – it doesn't matter how they behave as they know they'll be treated with contempt by all around them on face value alone.

In the old days you did the work yourself

What old days were these?

Perhaps trail centres need chainlink fences around them, and a membership policy to make sure only the right sort can get in. Or they can be ridden on the basis that we're not that special and meeting someone else doing something else is a likelyhood. Its always seemed to me that cycling is just one of several things that is being encouraged at these sites, but perhaps we should put a stop to that. 🙂

Now what do I win?

Some shoes, don't ask where they came from.

I also may have the option of moving to Glasgow. Which city is better?

You wouldn't be able to know without trying both, you'll find people who'll swear either is best. The attractions of Edinburgh are more obvious, its pretty, lots going on entertainment wise, its small.

Glasgow is bigger and it takes more time to discover the best bits and the longer you spend time there the more it rewards, however the appeal isn't as obvious on a daytrip. By contrast Edinburgh is very accessible, but being quite a small place and with a lot of it being touristy/superficial you can run out of things to discover quite quickly, and the smallness can perhaps start to make it feel cramped.

In many senses Edinburgh is the showpiece, Glasgow is where the real work gets done.

I've tried both and with hindsight If i wasn't expecting to live in a city for a long time I'd choose edinburgh, if I was I'd choose glasgow, both cities' main charm from my point of view is that you can escape from the city to the countryside very quickly.

The phrase 'green with envy' is just a cultural reference, 'envy' and 'green' only relate in english speaking cultures as its derived from lines in a couple of shakespeare plays where he uses the phrase 'green-eyed jealousy'. It doesn't mean that people turn green/see green / feel green when they are jealous, its just a turn of phrase which for many people is disconnected from its origins*, nobody will sense green in relation to the emotion of jealousy, or be made to feel jealous by the presence of the colour green.

*possibly more so in the states where green is the colour of money, and many people will never have seen any of Shakespeare's movies

A very elderly internet funny

I've just been informed that Chauvinism is now frowned upon!

I would have thought being frowned upon is the whole point, having dislikes that make you dislikable.

So hedgehogs and hippos can probably understand each other and hold a conversation, aint nature great!

Well I wish 'nature' would chip in and pay the phone bills our hedgehog runs up calling africa.

His drivers license or even a credit card will prob be fine (although I think the border guards usually prefer a cash bribe.)

Don't let him know this though, tell him you'll help gaffer tape him to the bottom of a truck in a layby in Calais.