Off Topic The "Discuss Anything Else" Thread

My complements on your vegetable Swanny, most impressive.

 

That is a broccoli is it Swanny?

In case you are wondering how I managed to obtain those interesting effects on my Orange masterpiece, I din't have a camera handy so I scanned it.

 

I see what you mean Cyc. He does look pretty active and I can see he has a taste for it.

 

Well, apparently it is, this one too:

 

Any relation to Cubby Broccoli Swanny?

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Suppose I better get on with some work..

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Could be, but I don't think so..............

 

What a ****wit.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/wheelchair-bound-suicide-bomber-blew-7310960

 

It's a cynical age.
Need to return to some of the caring and peaceful vibe of the late '60s with the Bonzos

 

Good one, Bustino. Do you remember this one from Michael Bentine, "The Toastmaster"? First time I ever heard this I was driving from London to Norwich and had the car radio on. Had to pull over, he had me in hysterics. Humour changes with time, of course, but it's still pretty good:

 

Between 2000 and 2006, Digby Jones (now Baron Jones of Birmingham) was Director General of the CBI but his own opinions on Europe seem a little distant from the apparent leaning of the current day organisation. The six points that Jones makes about what we get from the EU contain some unerring truths. His pithy five points “What do we get in return?” leads to “So what is to be done?” that can be summed up neatly in just the one sentence: “Reform is not possible: it may be promised but it just won’t happen”.

Factsheet 1:
Let us quote 2012 statistics: exports to the EU27 = 45.1 per cent; imports from EU27 = 50.6 per cent (exports to USA = 17.1 per cent).
Trade with Europe means lower transport costs, lower barriers to entry for new exporters and integrated supply chains. No kidding, Sherlock, but we do not need a super state for simple logistics.

Factsheet 2:
Lots of CBI member statistics from 2012, as one might expect.
“Free movement of labour helps UK businesses plug skills gaps.” Naturally the CBI can explain to the indigenous population of places like Boston and Peterborough what skills are required to pick crops in Lincolnshire fields. We used to plug our ‘skills gaps’ by getting people in from The Commonwealth (remember all those Indian doctors?) but now we have to turn highly skilled people away because we cannot control numbers from the near continent.

Factsheet 3:
Lots of pointless waffle as our minority share of voting rights gives us little actual power unless we can persuade a few like-minded others to act with us; hiding the factual inaccuracy of our WTO membership, which we cannot properly exercise from within the EU (that is not to say that taking our chair at the WTO could possibly replace access to European markets).

Factsheet 4:
No surprise that they trotted out the “In” camp’s favourite comparison – Norway. Let us just gloss over the fact that they were intending to join the EU but their populous had a Referendum before joining and said ‘No’, so they are stuck with a miserable deal. If the Germans sold them a million cars a year, they would have a bargaining position.
Apparently, “The fact that Britain runs a deficit in exports with the rest of the EU is of much less relevance.” If only I could arrange a poker game with the CBI and Cameron, a bunch of jerks I could bluff with an unsuited 7 and 4.

Factsheet 5:
Coffin lid, here is the biggest nail we could find: “The EU should negotiate a high quality Free Trade Agreement with Japan and sign the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement with the US”. TTIP is a disaster waiting to happen – the CBI will go from hero to zero with its members the day the ink dries on that deal. Most of the other eleven points of the CBI reform agenda are the fantasies of an organisation that does not understand that The Project is bigger than all its constituents.

 

I am less than convinced that this is an Orange. There is no sense of scale in the picture, so it could well be a Satsuma or a Tangerine – both of which could easily be passed off to the French peasants as Oranges.

Perhaps we should get Graham Taylor in to decide whether he likes it...

All this talk of fruit and vegetables must be really confusing to those North of the Border. Does anybody have a picture of Deep-Fried Mars Bar 1314?

 

The European Union – What Happens If We Stay?

The EU is a big ocean liner. Over twenty years ago, it struck an iceberg whilst a few bureaucrats were at the helm and everyone else was sleeping below decks.

In the expensive First Class cabins, the British passengers were awoken by passengers from the Third Class cabins coming in through the port holes fleeing from their cabins below that were filling with water. They were travelling Third Class because they spent half of the 20th Century in poor servitude at the behest of Russia. The EU’s sister ship USSR had long since disappeared beneath the waves.

The stowaways had fled the part of the ship that was already wrecked and were climbing through the port holes into the cabins of the First Class German passengers. Only one of the female passengers seemed to welcome them.

Up on the deck, Dave was rearranging the deckchairs while Donald waved yellow cards. Once the ship has gone down, Kate Winslet will die of exposure after trying to swim in icy Arctic waters for 20 minutes because this is not Hollywood.

Those with common sense in the First Class cabins will stop trying to plug the hole with cash and make for the lifeboats.

 

Love a good cartoon.

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4/11 in 2/1 out. I would not be surprised to see that more or less reversed by June. I would say of the people I know (personally rather than professionally) who have a preference at least 80 percent want to leave.

 

big gangland shooting at a boxing event yesterday in Dublin.These drug dealing scum will do anything to kill their rivals

 

What a brilliant analogy