Except Not Really
I know, I know, Politics, Religion and Current Affairs aren't supposed to darken the blog's doors unless I can shoehorn them in under History or similar.
However - and you must have anticipated that word being used - because I make up the rules here, I can also ignore them should I feel like it, and hence this Intro. Art!
The Mother of parliaments
Conrad has actually been in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and whilst both bristle with history and tradition, they are a lot smaller than you imagine from television broadcasts.
ANYWAY our political process here is that one party in Parliament has a majority of members, from which a Cabinet is chosen. These are the people who hold office as heads in Defence, Health, Education and so on. One MP is selected as Prime Minister, an extremely powerful position because the PM's word is akin to The Word Of God. You may be aware - I don't expect you to follow the minutiae of British politics if you live in the Sanjak Of Novi Pazar - that Boris Johnson resigned over appointing a sex-pest as Deputy Chief Whip. The Whips are party appointees who keep the rest of the MPs in line with party policy and the PM's wishes, and are notorious for having political dirt on everyone. Art!
Nothing salacious here
And by September Bojo had gone; just like that. No fuss or bother. His legal impropriety in office amounted to getting a fixed penalty notice for flouting Covid regulations during lockdown.
Here an aside. In Ruffia, if you fall out of political favour with Peter The Average, you are equally likely to fall out of a window. From several storeys up. Or be arrested, tortured, imprisoned or executed, or all of the above, and then fall out of a window.
Don't you South Canadians start looking smug, either. It would be absolutely inconceivable for a British PM to try and fiddle the results of a General Election, and sit having a tantrum at No. 10 Downing Street until the very morning they had to leave. It's just not British. We didn't fight a Civil Unpleasantness in the seventeenth century for nothing, you know.
ANYWAY as you may know, Liz Truss is now PM, and discovering that the buck does indeed stop at her door. In fact it seems to have taken up residence. Art!
That's Harry Truman, ex-artillery officer in the First Unpleasantness. Oh, and a South Canadian President with a memorable desk decoration.
So - on to the meat of the matter. Over on Quora a poster's son had placed a bet on Liz Truss not being PM by the time 2023 rolls around: a £40 bet at odds of 40-1. Thus if he wins he gets £1,600. The poster then said the gambling agency very obviously got cold feet about taking this bet, coming back to his son with an offer of £140 to buy it back - not a phenomenon Conrad realised existed. The son refused and the process continued.
14/10/2022: £400
Later that day: £650
Still later that day: £800
17/10/2022: £930.
They seem to know something the rest of us don't.
There you go, a whistle-stop tour of British parliamentary process and a good laugh at the bookie's expense.
You've been Done
Turning The Tables
I plead with you, for the love of all that is holy, STAY AWAY FROM QUORA!
It is incredible to see how many hours it can eat up from your daily life. Conrad cannot even remember how he got logged onto it. I have been posting the odd silly question here, but in order to up the word count educate you, I append an answer given by one RC to a very relevant question.
Yes, it certainly did. Not only from directly after the war but *long* after the war, up to the present day.
I am glad that you used the word ‘Commemorate’ not ‘Celebrate’ as an event as dreadful as this is not something you want to glorify with flags and parades.
Great Britain, as it was then, had been aloof from Continental politics, wars and rivalries because it was an island with the biggest navy in the world. If it didn’t want to get involved on the Continent, then it didn’t. This meant having a relatively small army that acted as an imperial garrison, across the globe, akin to the Royal Navy principle of the army being “A shell fired by the Navy”.
Come the Twentieth Century Britain became involved in Continental politics, in part because the Teutons *insisted* on building a huge navy capable of taking on the RN, whilst only having overseas colonies that amounted to two men and an aardvark. Thus Britain, after nearly a century of splendid isolation from Continental matters, began to move closer to a rapprochement with France, the traditional enemy, versus Prussia, the traditional ally.
This led to a British presence on the Continent that was gigantic in comparison to pre-1914 levels, a relatively gigantic army involved in gigantic battles that resulted in gigantic casualties. This was utterly unprecedented and brought home to Britain just what Continental warfare constituted - you suffered more casualties in a single day in Flanders than in ten years on the North-West Frontier (poetic licence here but apposite).
For a long time after The Great War ended British people made pilgrimages to the Western Front, to see where friends and relatives had fought and died, and to cement bonds with French and Flemish communities. The Belgian Fire Brigade still sounds The Last Post on the ramparts of Ypres, as they have done for decades, since they appreciate sacrifices made.
“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”
It was a horrifyingly traumatic event that still has echoes, which is why we still remember.
Conrad is firmly of the opinion that British politicians - that word again - who harbour hawkish sentiments should be sent on a walking tour of the CGC cemeteries in France and Belgium, and be told "This is what happens when YOU screw up."
Wow, that was a bit dark! Light and frothy now please -
Underwater Photography Competition
Alright, 'Relatively light and frothy'. Art!
Courtesy Steve Woods
This is a literally dozy sperm whale. It kept falling asleep and then waking up again according to the photographer. Nice to know that whales have nap times.
"The Sea Of Sand"
The Doctor, shut up in a cell with little to do, is hearing how Homeworld became a despoiled and desolate waste.
A critical population point was reached and exceeded eight thousand years ago, with the bio-vores anarchic society becoming the dominant civilisation and species on Delta Pavonis. With horrifying speed, the planet's animal and plant species became extinct, either being killed directly for their energy or indirectly when their habitats were killed off. A series of fratricidal wars were fought, with bio-vores killing each other for their life-energies. A formal, strict and authoritarian government structure emerged from the chaos of war. Emergency plantations were instituted, to provide oxygen for the collapsing atmosphere. Vast hibernation dormitories were created, driven by geothermal power, allowing a significant portion of the population to sleep and thus not need life energy input.
The Infiltration Complex plan had been put forward as a desperate measure to harvest biological resources from other worlds -
"Difficult without rockets or interplanetary travel," interjected the Doctor.
A bit shorter than usual but I've been havering long enough already.
Finally -
Now to see how day-old Bibimbap tastes when re-heated in the microwave!
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