Beefy's Corner - The Off-Topic Chat Thread

Been happening a lot at Nottarf, had to pay his wages somehow.

 

Trick-or-treating is just begging. My parents never let me do it and if I have kids one day they won't be doing it either.

Unless we're homeless.

 

Same here. The whole premiss is stupid. The government spends god knows how much (although doubtless the tories will cut its funding) teaching kids not to talk to strangers let alone go up to their house and ask for food!

 

Happy St George`s day.
Is there an ENP ? It`s a strange paradox that the person most responsible for the SNP`s rise in Scotland was Thatcher. They were a small minority until she showed up.

 

Halloween isn't an American invention, it's always been in the Christian calender as it's the day before All Saints (Hallows) Day, but granted it was the Americans who ruined it. Trick or Treat has Celtic roots too, from the Samhain festival - it was connected with driving away evil spirits, and was carried out by people in costume. They were then rewarded with gifts of food

 

I saw an interesting interview with Steven Berkoff recently in which he was making the point that arguably the two greatest writers that this country has produced had an effect on anti-semitism with their depiction of Jewish characters in two of their major works.
He argued that Shakespere's Shylock from The Merchant of Venice was a ruthless moneylender who demanded his "pound of flesh" and Dicken's ***in from Oliver Twist used child exploitation to line his pockets and these characters helped to stereotype Jewish people in a bad way.

 

I am sure most of them are pagan festivals adopted by Christianity and Dan Brown to gain popularity.

 

I just knew someone was going to say that, I should have been more precise. It was the Americans ruining it bit I was really referring to. There are some very knowledgeable people here. Pity its meant to be a footie site

 

Happy Turkish Catholic man who probably didn't actually exist Day!

 

I wasn't aware of that, however, I think we can forgive people who lived hundreds of years ago from having some old-fashioned views.

 

You'll be telling me he didn't kill a dragon next.

 

George wasn't a Turk! He was martyred in about 300AD, 700 years before the Turks invaded Asia Minor. He was, in fact a Roman soldier of Greek parentage.

Maybe, to avoid confusion, we should consider St Edmund as our patron saint. He WAS English (King of East Anglia) and martyred by the heathen Danes not long before they were stuffed by good old Alfred and his Wessex boys!

 

Point taken, but you can understand why a Jewish person might feel differently, considering how badly they have been treated by society throughout history.
My take on it is that I feel that Shakespere was a great writer and contributed massively to not only British culture, but also worldwide. However i don't regard him as a great Human Being and a lot of his work was propaganda for the ruling Tudor dynasty.
Dickens, at least brought the issues of inner city poverty and degredation of Victorian Britain to a wider audience through his works.

 

Neither of them were fond of lawyers!

 

The trend of #QuotesFromYourTeacher on twitter tonight has amused me.

Anyone got any good ones?

 

I've also just seen this on my Facebook:

please log in to view this image

 

Not really their fault, I mean it's all automated.

 

Some sort of procedure when this situation arises wouldn't go amiss though, surely. I'm sure there are plenty of ways to alert them to the fact the guy's dead.

 

They surely have one, but as you can see from the picture there was only one day between the deceased notice and the late payment charge. It seems probable that the late payment charge had already been processed before they found out he was dead.

 

Makes for a somewhat interesting viral story though, that's the most important thing.