Because The United Kingdom?

[sunday]

2 minutes ago, TrustMe said:

Thanks Sunday.

Ah. Apologies DB, I got the wrong end of the stick.

You are welcome, it was a small thing.

[JWB]

Starmer should prepare to panic. His entire strategy is starting to implode (msn.com)

[TrustMe]

It's just waffle by the Telegraph which is a pro-consevitive newspaper.

[Stuart Galbraith]

It hardly matters. Starmer has got this far without a strategy through the expedient of standing back and watching the Tories shoot themselves  in the foot, over and over again.

[Ivanhoe]

I am seeing the occasional news story about some dude or other positing purchase of the Torygraph. What's going on there?

If Axel Springer wins the auction, my suggestion for a new name is Graph Zeppelin.

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

Newsprint is dead. Long live the new flesh.

[Ivanhoe]

Maximum weirdness today, two (count 'en, two!) news stories about England in my morning news feed;

https://www.outkick.com/british-pilot-snorts-coke-off-topless-woman-tries-to-fly-packed-plane-to-uk-report/

Quote

 

British Airways pilot Mike Beaton loves to party.

How do we know? Because, according to British tabloids, it was Beaton, a married father of one, who bragged to a stewardess via text messages that he’d been snorting cocaine off a topless woman’s “t-ts” and had been “very, very naughty” with two women and a couple of guys in Johannesburg, South Africa before he was to fly a packed plane back to the UK.

 

Who does he think he is, Russell Brand?

And no wonder the Plod put their finest Jaguar-piloting detective in Oxford;

https://www.sciencealert.com/oxford-was-the-murder-capital-of-late-medieval-england-and-it-was-all-because-of-students

Quote

 

A deep dive into historical documents reveals that during the late medieval period in the 14th century CE, Oxford had a per capita murder rate four to five times higher than other high-population hubs like York and London.

And the reason? Bloody students.

Like, quite literally. Newly translated documents list 75 percent of the perpetrators of murders with known background as "clericus", a term most commonly used to describe students or members of the then-recently founded University of Oxford. And 72 percent of the victims were also classed as clericus.

 

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

With that kind of introduction,  this video might make more sense now.

 

 

[Daan]

Modern British history education:

(Ok, from a book called Brilliant Black British History)

Edited September 30, 2023 by Daan

[Ivanhoe]

On FB, I've been getting a whole bunch of posts in my feed about the "black Irish", how most of the Scots were black, etc. 

They haven't got to Iceland yet, but its a matter of time. 

I just realized there may be a sort of "our diaspora is better than yours" thing going on. 

 

[R011]

9 hours ago, Daan said:

Modern British history education:

(Ok, from a book called Brilliant Black British History)

From what I could read of the text, it said there were "hundreds" of Black people in Britain at the time.  That doesn't seem to exaggerate their numbers and significance.  Unlike the idiots in Ivanhoe's post.

Edited October 1, 2023 by R011

[JWB]

 

[DB]

On 9/26/2023 at 1:23 PM, sunday said:

I think DB meant other, non automotive, manufacturing businesses. Like Rolls-Royce aero engines, the wing manufacturing arm of Airbus, some parts of British Aerospace...

You're not really wrong, but it wasn't really the point.

Firstly, automotive isn't the largest segment - food production is. Secondly, the "halcyon days" of British-owned automotive production never made any money, but instead cost the taxpayer lots of money instead. It's bizarre to imagine that anyone sane would want that back.

On the other hand, those utterly and completely mis-managed car manufacturers and their successors from the 1970s now employ about 182,000 people, which is more than they would have done they had just gone away. So, we could have wholly owned nothing, or that.

I suppose it's not worth mentioning that neither Ford nor Vauxhall were British owned anyway.

[rmgill]

Daimler, Jaguar, Humber, MG, Rolls Royce, Leyland, Commer, AEC, Scammell, Karrier, Lanchester, Guy, Triumph, etc etc. 

Edited October 3, 2023 by rmgill

[Stuart Galbraith]

Most of those havent existed since the 1970's Ryan, if not  much earlier. Scammell disappeared in the Mid 1990's when the British Army went with Oshkosh IIRC. Lanchester went in 1955. MG is Chinese.

Triumph is a multinational. Its British owned IIRC, but it does have manufacturing centres in Asia, and possibly in the US as well to get past unfair trade barriers.

I think the car industry, broadly, is doing fairly well. We seem to be bridging the gap into electric vehicles very well, at least we will if the Torys dont manage to fuck it up like they have everything else.

14 hours ago, JWB said:

 

Captain Smith finding new and creative ways to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Incidentally, Home Secretary Braverman was heckled for being transphobic the other day. By a fellow Conservative.....

https://www.itv.com/news/2023-10-03/this-is-trash-heckler-removed-from-braverman-speech-says-shes-a-bully

[Stuart Galbraith]

40 years ago, they built new railways. Today...

 

[Tim the Tank Nut]

Jeremy Clarkson did a program on the British Motor industry.  It was an astonishing eye opener.  Everyone involved was at fault.  The executives, management, workers, and unions should've all been imprisoned or executed.  Britain had the skillset but chose to let it rot rather than grow it.

In the past I would've said "how could anyone be so blind?" but watching today's UAW in the USA we are heading down the same path.

If I'm not mistaken the test driver for the Ford GT was an English tank commander...

[rmgill]

6 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Most of those havent existed since the 1970's Ryan, if not  much earlier.

Exactly. 
Why? 

Can you start new? 

For the US we have Rivian and Tesla. 

6 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Incidentally, Home Secretary Braverman was heckled for being transphobic the other day. By a fellow Conservative.....

 

Exactly my point. Your conservatives aren't conservative. 

[Tim the Tank Nut]

I think the Ford GT driver was Ken Miles.  He survived WW2 to get killed in a race car.

[JWB]

“I’d rather die in a racing car than get eaten up by cancer," Ken Miles is quoted as saying in Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans

[Stuart Galbraith]

2 hours ago, Tim the Tank Nut said:

Jeremy Clarkson did a program on the British Motor industry.  It was an astonishing eye opener.  Everyone involved was at fault.  The executives, management, workers, and unions should've all been imprisoned or executed.  Britain had the skillset but chose to let it rot rather than grow it.

In the past I would've said "how could anyone be so blind?" but watching today's UAW in the USA we are heading down the same path.

If I'm not mistaken the test driver for the Ford GT was an English tank commander...

The problem is, everyone pointed at the Unions because they were a scapegoat, and easy to blame. And they were, its absolutely true, definately part of the problem.. But the Unions were demolished, and what was left? The same lazy, inadequate, frequently corrupt leadership of the same large companies. If you lookup what happened to Rover Group, exactly the same grasping, inadequate management was screwing things up 40 years later.

Im glad our Car Companies got bought up by Germans and Americans. For the first time in decades they were not being screwed for quick and easy profits.

Think it was actually the AC Cobra, but im willing to be corrected. I think Shelby said everyone thought he was an asshole, till they finally wised up he was continually taking the piss.

Edited October 4, 2023 by Stuart Galbraith

[Stuart Galbraith]

1 hour ago, rmgill said:

Exactly. 
Why? 

Can you start new? 

For the US we have Rivian and Tesla. 

Exactly my point. Your conservatives aren't conservative. 

Because our massive investment banks were making huge profits, the North Sea was full of oil, and nobody was exporting anything because the pound was too expensive, and nobody wanted to do anything about it because greed works. Now the pound was collapsed, and guess what? We are finally starting to export again.

Im frankly amazed there is a British car industry at all, let alone we lost as much as we did. I dont think there is a single British truck company that made it through, unless you count what used to be Iveco Ford. 

But look at your own country. How many of the truly great car companies from the 40's made it?  Packard, Cord, Duesenberg, Plymouth, Chrysler, Mercury, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Studebaker. Even Checker Cab IIRC. You have exactly the same problems we had, they are just packaged a little differently.  Ironically im told that Ford only made it, because it was receiving bailouts from the European wing through the 1970's.

Sell out to the Japs and the Germans. They will sort you out. 

[JWB]

Rishi is the job. The war is all but won !

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

Yeah, about Rishi...

 

[urbanoid]

2 hours ago, JWB said:

Rishi is the job. The war is all but won !

 

Technically the first country to send tanks to Kyiv was Russia. And after that was Poland, I wonder if the number of tanks delivered by everyone else combined has already matched the number delivered by Poland.