Jamie Douglass

(Suspect I’ve posted this before. Favourite overlap fact)

Samuel Beckett, Salvadore Dali, and Emperor Hirohito all lived until 1989 and could have been really into the Happy Mondays.

If any of them, my money’s on Hirohito.

I saw a bar of "Dubai chocolate" on sale for £11.99 recently, and I assumed it was a euphemism, or at least under-recognised street slang, as well.

But no, just has bits in, apparently.

"I'm in the main hall......no you shouldn't have any problems finding me" #CPC25

One of those stories that gets better and better by the line

I'd mind less if they were the generation who'd actually done it themselves, but the youngest person who did national service must be 82 at least

oh very good.

yeah, the rhythm is up the spout

which jam? Fig / Quince I can totally see. Strawberry....not so much.

the packets of scampi fries where one 'fry' is just a ball of the flavour coating, delivering a concentrated hit of pure scampifryness straight to the brain.

Mouth watering just thinking about it

I don't know, scarf with *sandals* is a strong look

1. yes, yes it is
2. this is also how I feel watching most stand-ups try to do political speeches

"husband of French" giving strong "person with Norwegian"

pretty sure "Foreigner with a Frenchman" is a Morrissey B-side

and to think she could have said "The Ted Heath Orchestra"

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Hea...

I'm still fond of the time Cameron said how much he enjoyed Eton Rifles when he was at school and Paul Weller almost had a fit.

(Made even better by Weller raging "he CLEARLY DIDN'T UNDERSTAND IT" and everyone else thinking calm down Paul, he might just have a working sense of irony)

There's a strong strain of....not quite libertarianism but certainly a muscular liberalism as well. cf Vetinari

“William: "I'm sure we can all pull together, sir."
Vetinari: "Oh, I do hope not. Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.”

Headline from the Times: "Bestselling novelist Jilly Cooper dies in fall aged 88", illustrated with a rather famous black and white picture of Virginia Woolf

Epic; no notes

Love this picture, not least for the fact that David Tennant has clearly insisted on being allowed to wear trousers that fit

www.thetimes.com/life-style/c...

Really hoped this would be, like, "Satan" and "Witches" or even "Popish conspiracies" but turns out to just be "reconciling the worldwide anglican communion" as you were

If we can find a delegate we're happy to refer to as "a dunce - inane" then I've got a cracking Macbeth joke

Oh for goodness sake. If you're just going to revert to "it's a conspiracy" this isn't a serious discussion.

I say this without a hint of sarcasm: the Treasury are desperate for money. If you genuinely think your solution would work, write it up as a paper, with modelling showing there are no negative market consequences, and submit it. If it works, even in theory, you'd quite probably get a knighthood.

I didn't. Fair enough, that is a gap in my cultural knowledge. And I shall modify my take.

Stratford Johns looks like &c

The chap on the front cover looks like an AI tried to merge Kingers and Larkin

@jamesrball.com thanks to that bloody thread I've been singing "Girl! / I wanna institute a WEALTH TAX!" to the obvious tune all morning thanks for that

is this something to do with the length of the french government I'm confused

“What’s YOUR view on Beeching?”

Was that the one which had a five minute section that was just Tom Hiddleston doing impressions of Robert de Niro, to Robert de Niro? Because that is one of my favourite pieces of television since...the invention of radio

For one thing, if you heavily tax things, people do less of that thing and do something else instead (see "smoking"). Even minor changes to stamp duty have massive market effects. There're entire departments of govt & the BofE whose entire job is to model this stuff. Do you think they're all wrong?