I remember when Piers was thought of as the cleverer of the Corbyn brothers...

Hmm... when did that change.... ;)

Are they including that proposal to build a launch pad thingy on the north Sutherland coast, a bit east of Durness near Whiten Head? Y'know, the one where the roads for around a hundred miles in every direction won't support heavy traffic, where you can't get in by sea, with the nearest harbours being Thurso or Kinlochbervie, and can't get in by air 'cos of all the winds? Where you couldn't launch anything half of the year 'cos of the winds?

Are we at that level of competent planning?

Probably not even got that far yet.

Isn't there an island in the middle of the Pacific or Atlantic we still own that we could use?

Who cares? Let's just launch Boris into space.

A good question. ETA That they were both educated at Shrewsbury does not speak particulary well for private education.

I had to explain to quite a few folk I know that my unhappiness about the Corbyn-led Labour Party was not the leftiness (although I might still disagree on some specific issues), but that JC is just not that bright and had never come across as being acquainted with competence (I remember things from the '80s...).

Anyone wondering about the overall competence/usefulness levels of our political class as a whole could do worse than read Isabel Hardman's Why We Get The Wrong Politicians, which makes a lot of things much clearer. Martyn Williams' Parliament Ltd and Posh Boys by Robert Verkaik fill in some gaps.

A Brexit-supporting ex-member of Wyld Bird Seed went to that same school - the issue may just be with that one school rather than private education as a whole.

No, no. Piers turned up to rant too.

I don't remember long time climate change denier Piers Corbyn ever being considered clever. Not by anyone capable of rational thought, anyway.

So Starmer puts out his stall, literally the first thing the BBC presenter says after he finished was that he was heckled.

Don't forget the dumb is cleverer than the dumber, doesn’t mean either is clever!

Private Eye gag, because, as you point out, no-one ever really thought either was that bright.

.... do you guys east of the pond not have weather satellites? :jaw-dropp

Or maybe you prefer the kind launched by local launchpads for local people? :D

I think the UK might have the same problem the US is having:seems as though the best and the brightest no longer want to have anything to do with politics.

Ours would have been launched from the European Space Agency site in the past. We don't have the same access to that now, for some reason that escapes me..;)

ESA will launch a payload for anyone as long as they pay.

Where is Boris going to get a rocket and launch facility by next year? It's the end of September now!

Maybe he watched this Top Gear piece of Dave!

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the ISF. The ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

This was in the Brexit thread, but I think it's appropriate to put it here as well

Wonder if they missed their 'donations' to The Party?

Could we make do with launching one, and have him on it?

"There's no shortage of water, it's in the Ocean, theres just a shortage of water tankers"

Pretty sure the UK is still a member of ESA, which is independent of the European Union.



https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Corpora...erating_States



Same with my former career at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory.

Every day he walked past a big mahogany board at Eton with the names of Old Boys who'd been PM on it, he went to a school where if you said 'I want to be Prime Minister' they'd take it seriously rather than one where the response would be "Yeah okay, delivery driver or behind the bar in a Wetherspoons?", when Cameron became PM Johnson just had to get his name up on that board too. The last ten years have been a big Bullingdon jolly, Cameron insulting the waiters & groping the waitresses while they throw food at each other and now Boris is setting fire to the toilets and throwing money around so we don't call the police. Expect them to burn a £50 note infront of a homeless person on their way out of Downing St.

Boris Johnson with his clown act reminds me of Jimmy Savile with his chummy 'everybody's friend' act. Why do Brits fall for this slimy phoniness? It is not amusing it is utterly revolting.

Not all Brits do: my sister tried several times to have Savile stopped from coming on her ward at LGI, as did a few of her friends, but they were all over-ruled by LGI's craven management; I knew folk at Broadmoor (worked with them up here, but they went off to work in a full secure setting) who tried similar things but werre over-ruled by management.

As for Blow Job, anyone who was ever taken in by his schtick needs to give themselves a good talking to: he was always a buffon and a chancer. However, the whole "Posh Boys Should Be In Charge", fore-lock tugging bollocks dies hard in many places.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-b1930558.html

As is pointed out upthread, those of us who passed our tests 30 years ago have the same type of licence. I expect to receive a letter soon...... :rolleyes:

It's almost funny.

My UK license has C1 and C1E which are

C1: You can drive vehicles between 3,500 and 7,500kg MAM (with a trailer up to 750kg).

C1E :You can drive C1 category vehicles with a trailer over 750kg providing the combined MAM of both cannot exceed 12,000kg.

I think they are called “call up” papers….

My Finnish EU licence, which was swapped from a UK one is a 'B':

B

Vehicles with a gross weight of no more than 3,500 kg that have been designed and manufactured to carry a maximum of eight passengers in addition to the driver;
Vehicle combinations comprising a towing vehicle in Category B and a towed vehicle whose gross weight is no more than 750 kg;
Vehicle combinations comprising a towing vehicle in Category B and a towed vehicle whose gross weight exceeds 750 kg, as long as the gross weight of the vehicle combination is no more than 3 500 kg.
Includes a right to drive categories AM/120, AM/121 and T

I got my full licence 1999.

Do I qualify to come to work as an HGV driver in England...?

No you are restricted to little vans.
Earlier licenses let you drive a seven and a half tonner.

That's still not an HGV of either class.

I checked my licence and I lost the C1 category along the way. Not surprising perhaps, as I switched to a Greek-issue EU licence while living there, then back to a UK licence when we returned. MrsB is sorely disappointed that I won't be collecting fat signing-on fees and good wages in retirement :)

As you say, C1 is not HGV anyway so some of the headlines flying around are misguided or just plain deceptive.

CE is HGV

I couldn't be bothered to work out what particular type of vehicle I could drive, but yes.


When I posted that story on Facebook, this is what one colleague said - he moved to one of our sites back in Germany rather than with us, in 2018 because of Brexit.

Massive sigh or relief across the UK...

Some Brexit papers are finally acknowledging the mess, but they can't blame Brexit so they are blaming the implementation.

Boris's days are numbered.

He is however a useful distraction and there's hardly a surfeit of alternatives.

If the papers (or more accurately the press barons who own them) are expecting a change of course to a "better" Brexit, I'd be interested to know what they're expecting.

Do they want an even quicker descent into the low regulation, low wage economy that seems to be the preferred model for the billionaire classes ? They cannot, surely, be suggesting a less hard Brexit in which they UK joins the EEA as a vassal state ? Or are they just suggesting that the UK can have the "Rainbows and Unicorns" deal of all the benefits of EU membership but none of the responsibilities ?

I can see how such a thing could be dangled for propaganda purposes but surely no person versed in international business could believe that it could actually happen ? :confused:

Further evidence that satire is redundant.

ETA: Splendid choice of photo here, though.

"Too early" to say whether Afghanistan campaign was a failure, says Army chief

Gen Sir Nick Carter joins Nick Robinson on #BBC Political Thinking

https://bbc.in/3oqunm4

I don't think anyone in government at the moment is thinking that far ahead,

It's 'look at the headlines, oh **** we need to deal with that so let's do a thing that makes us look better for the next headlines',

no long term planning, just trying to get through one crisis after another whilst looking good.
ridiculous.
Yet people keep voting for them? that's even more ridiculous.

edit:
the press barons themselves? I think some people aren't happy unless everyone else is in conflict. There might not be a goal.