Plan B Forum

Many moons ago I was an oceanography post graduate student in Southampton, England. We had a research aquarium. The queen came to the university to open some new building or whatever and she was shown our aquarium as part of the visit. (I wasn't there - this was a year or two before my time.). One t...

Not bad - but why does the scansion go to hell in the last line of stanza 2? Iambs all the way until then?

MajGenl.Meade wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 01, 2024 12:31 pm

That's an odd question, wesw. What prompted it?

You're assuming some sort of rhyme to his reason, Meade. Rhyme left the building long ago and I don't think reason was ever there.

I always thought E.D. was his Electoral Disfunction. My mistake.

The head of State appoints the PM. HoS is currently the King but there are republican moves to get rid of the royals (I don't mean in an 'Up against the wall' sense) and replace the King with some sort of elected HoS like (say) Germany where Frank-Walter Steinmeier is President. Chancellor (Head of ...

You're right of course - people don't vote directly for a PM but for a Member of Parliament (roughly equivalent to a US Representative) at their local constituency. The leader of the party that wins the most seats is usually 'invited' by the Queen King to form a government. Usually there is not a pr...

I thought you should know,

https://people.com/?hid=caee1d10a67da99 ... 570078163e

It's interesting seeing this 'best President' discussion in a British context. In the general election of 1945, just two months after VE Day and while the Pacific War was still raging, voters rejected Churchill as PM and voted Atlee (Labour) in with 46% of the vote against Churchill's (Conservative)...

I don't understand why, on my YouTube feed and presumably generated by their algorithm, I get ads for TFG 'Trumpinator Bobblehead' dolls. Tagline "I'll be back in 2024." It's an AI-generated Trump voice telling us to buy one or five or twenty or even fifty of these things. I can't see a price withou...

I was trying to think of a joke when I read this story but couldn't. Nice one.

There seems to be no check on Putin - the Russian people will have to deal with him. Stalin was never this bad or as brazen. (On second thoughts he probably was.). Prigozhin died in a plane crash along with nine others - some of them were Wagner Group members but others were presumably relatively in...

All that with the anti-Christ and making sure Biden gets in. From the Guardian: Just under a fifth of Americans believe Taylor Swift is part of a conspiracy to help Joe Biden win re-election in November, a new poll found. US rightwing conspiracy theory touts Taylor Swift as ‘Pentagon asset’ “The sup...

I didn't know that. Nepali soldiers have long had an outsize role in the UK Army as Gurkhas with a reputation for ferocity and bravery. But Nepal is very poor and probably easy pickings if you want mercenaries.

I didn't mean to hijack this thread into reminiscences but yes: Tess was quite a lady. I knew of course that Denniz was killed in a car crash in Illinois but I didn't know (or had forgotten which is not unusual these days) about the drunken driver. I remember when Tess's husband Douglas died. We hea...

My recollection is that Jasper AL is where Smitty,* as in Le Chat House, lived. I know that RayThom and Lord Jim and Denniz were there but of course are no longer here - not sure who else here may recall those days.

* Teresa Smith, married to Douglas.

MajGenl.Meade wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 09, 2024 1:56 pm

Thank you, Vidkun, for taking over that function.

Seems harsh, Meade. But not wrong.

I don't disagree that it is politics; and Robert Hur - the Special Counsel - knew exactly what he was doing. Truth left the building a long time ago and perception is what matters. This is a disaster for Biden. We have a world in which huge portions of the population believe that the Covid vaccinati...

I think Biden has done a good job and probably a bit more than I expected of him. But this report by the Special Counsel (on Biden's retention of classified documents) could well be devastating. If Biden were in a box and running against Trump or, frankly, any one of the current GOP crop of candidat...

There is no equation with Jane Fonda in 1972. Whatever you think of Fonda and her trip to N Vietnam, she wasn't running anything.

I don't think it stands a cat in hell's chance of passing.