You'll love this one...!! A book club & more discussion
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Watcha Doin' - 2019
Came across these old clips from 'Mock the Week' on YouTube the other day and they made smile. They are about 8 years old, so back when David Cameron was PM and Boris Johnson was Mayor of London, but I love the commentary and impressions that Hugh Dennis does for them.https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KVeBmhc...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OFLjf8k...
Lisa wrote: "Margo wrote: "Rusalka wrote: "Glad everything went well, Margo! And that's days away, the doc didn't say bed rest for a week, did they?"@Rus - our voting is today! I am in the irish republic :-)
..."
That's how I feel about our elections - none of the above lol
Margo wrote: "It's probably because we are all separate countries and not part of the empire ;-) "Snarky comment noted. But how do you stop Fred who works at the election booth in the UK not calling his mates in Ireland tonight to say "the swing here is X so get everyone to vote Y!" and then the Irish mate calling someone who votes on Saturday, I dunno, in Slovakia, saying so "everyone is voting for X and Y here in the UK and Ireland, do with that what you will".
If you don't all vote at the same time, then there is so much room for fraud. And we have pre-poll (early voting), but still only 4 million people did this this election with a "reason" (more than ever), but still on the day 15+million turned up on one day.
Also, some in the UK would dispute your "not an Empire" comment. Which is why we are all in a right mess.
Okay... I audibly snorted. Thanks Lisa!
@Rusalka - thanks for that link about the election cock up. I hadn't seen that. It truly is appauling. Lije Lisa said, UK politucs has gone down the pan.
I hope we get a general election. None of the Tory leader prospects would be a good choice.
Rusalka wrote: "Margo wrote: "It's probably because we are all separate countries and not part of the empire ;-) "Snarky comment noted. But how do you stop Fred who works at the election booth in the UK not call..."
Apologies Rusalka, my intention was humour, not snarkiness. I must stop poke fun at politics, I sometimes forget that it is a sensitive area, especially online where there is so little context. I genuinely believed that you were joking with me and did not take your comments seriously.
Tensions are high all around the world. You're concerned about right wing forces in your country, I fear that mine will fall prey to the extreme left. There is so little to choose between the two. I think in this little corner of Europe we feel so fraustrated with the political system that all that most of have left is our sense of humour. My comment was not appropriate if it caused you offence.
As to your comments over potential voter fraud, I don't have the foggiest! I'm not sure that many of our parties are cross boarder/channel, although doubtless ideologies are. It seems to me that most votes are won/lost on social media well before polling day. That is what worries me - a very sinister new phenomenon that targets individual voters.
Rusalka wrote: "Sarah wrote: "And many people were turned away, generally those from other EU countries who are resident here. I'm guessung as we weren't meant to have these elections they were struck off the list..."Ah, now your comments make more sense to me! I had very slow internet connection earlier and couldn't open this link earler. Thanks for posting Rusalka :-)
BTW I have deleted earlier comment. I should said have Europe is an aliance, not a federation. That better expresses my meaning and doesn't include the "E" word lol
Hotel is fab! Pete is gone for a walk to try to get rid of a headache so I am in the room enjoying the amazing view. I will post a picif I can figure out how. Probably won't get to check in again til Monday.
Margo wrote: "Apologies Rusalka, my intention was humour, not snarkiness."No no. Oh man... internet translation. I thought you were being humorously snarky. As I was too.
Dammit. *shake fist at the inadequacies of text based communication*
Margo wrote: "Hotel is fab! Pete is gone for a walk to try to get rid of a headache so I am in the room enjoying the amazing view. I will post a picif I can figure out how. Probably won't get to check in again til Monday."Glad the hotel is wonderful. Have a lovely trip!
Rusalka wrote: "Margo wrote: "Apologies Rusalka, my intention was humour, not snarkiness."No no. Oh man... internet translation. I thought you were being humorously snarky. As I was too.
Dammit. *shake fist at..."
Oh that is such a relief! I really thought I'd p***** you off. Now I can enjoy my breakfast properly :-)
Never!!Now please do enjoy yourself and stop thinking about little ol' me.
I have no idea how to read that, but as long as you're happy, I am :P
Ha! I'm just glad it's UK politics in the hot seat at the moment. I thought I would pull my hair out during our last general election in the US. Of course, I also thought all the nutsness, add that new word to the dictionary, would die down after the votes were in, but no such luck on that count either. Even though I feel for all of you and the "right mess" as Rus calls it, it's sort of heartening to know that politics is headache-inducing the world over.
Relevant to our eventful week of politics here in Aus, in the UK, and in the European Union, I thought you may all enjoy this.In Australianisms, to refer to someone as a Galah is that you're an idiot, a silly and sometimes amusing idiot, but an idiot. Like you use the term "clown". Sometimes accompanied with other adjectives, most usually "ya flaming galah!". One or two of our pollies have been referred to as a bit of a galah in the past couple of weeks.
A Galah actually is a pink and grey parrot, smaller than a cockatoo, but about 20cms or so tall. They are all over the place, and tend to spend a lot of time on the ground eating grass seed and other morsels (when they aren't in trees ripping them to shreds).
The whole point of this, is that they are ridiculous and stupidly playful. And this video just came up on my instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx6L9DyBp...
I know about the galah stuff from Neighbours. Haha!I thought exit polls were illegal for EU elections because voting occurs on different days for the reason Rusalka mentioned. Anyway, results will be announced tonight.
Sarah wrote: "I know about the galah stuff from Neighbours. Haha!."Actually, Home and Away. It's been Alf(?)'s catch phrase for 30 years. So much so you can know about it without ever watching an episode.
Unless it's an old Neighbours thing too... I just realised I accidentally mansplained terrible Australian tv drama to you.
He (the galah in the video) just loves that stick!
Love the video, Rusalka! I agree, he does have a soft spot for that stick. Maybe he thinks he is a dog...
I am making my famous potato salad for a memorial day picnic. I did not know It was famous until my nieces husband told me. LOL. It seems his side has specifically requested it. They even want me to bring extra cause last year there were no leftovers. I have a feeling I will be making it for every picnic.
Rusalka wrote: "Sarah wrote: "I know about the galah stuff from Neighbours. Haha!."Actually, Home and Away. It's been Alf(?)'s catch phrase for 30 years. So much so you can know about it without ever watching an..."
Haha! Yes I recall Ald saying it too now you mention it. But pretty sure Joe Mangle used to say it a lot too. It has been a long time since I've watched either show now but I watched both on a daily basis for YEARS in my teens!
Renee wrote: "I am making my famous potato salad for a memorial day picnic. I did not know It was famous until my nieces husband told me. LOL. It seems his side has specifically requested it. They even want me t..."Sounds delicious, Renee 😋
Rusalka wrote: "I have no idea how to read that, but as long as you're happy, I am :P"Sorry, was big news over here. Unusually high support for the green party. Finally people get the environment IS a big issue. Less than predicted swing to far left nationalist parties. We appear to be headed for an early general election but that's not unexpected as we have a weak government.
Out general elections are always a two horse race between centre-left parties resulting in a coalition government. We have proportion -representation which makes for very entertaining counting of votes. It has been known to last a week.
Margo wrote: "Rusalka wrote: "I have no idea how to read that, but as long as you're happy, I am :P"Sorry, was big news over here. Unusually high support for the green party. Finally people get the environment..."
That is very exciting! I just didn't know the parties and what they stood for to make sense of it. I've heard through all our Greens channels here that the Greens did really well in the EU elections.
Oh the galah front. This is the most talked about photo out of our Parliamentary Press Gallery today:
(link for bigger image: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7jKZX0UI...)
That's a flock of galahs on Parliament House (the grass is the roof of the House). Many comments about galahs inside and out of that particular building :D
This must have been taken on Saturday, and very biasedly, how pretty is my city?! And that is really the colour of our sky on a clear day.
Why it wasn't taken today, is because it is the first winter's day we've had this year (4 days before winter proper, really late season change this year, should have been like this two months to 5 weeks ago). It's been 10C, grey, sleeting, so very windy (our garbage bin blew down the street), and the apparent temp was -1C for most of the day. It's been a public holiday here so I have sat in front of the fire and read while Lexx has baked bread all day. It's very homely and warm in here, I don't want to go back to work tomorrow...
Brilliant picture Rus! You guys have a great parliament building, as you say, pity aboit the inmates lolI woke up today to the sound of familiar birdsong and knew i was home. The last 2 days, waking up so close to the Shannon, I must have woken to what I imagine Sarah does. Water sounds and water birds. The difference in birdsong surprised me as I live a the countryside anyway and am not far from water but the sounds were comletely different.
I am back to reality with a twisted/sprained ankle :( I had a fall in the hotel room in the wee hours. It was my own daft fault as I was walking around in the dim light without a walking aid. The ankle will take my weight so nothing broken but is swollen, bruised and hurts like hell! Ah well, that's life!
Oh no Margo. I hope your ankle recovers well.Ah the exit poll was gor your locals Margo, not EU.
Results mostly in this morning. NI and Scotland results still to come. Brexit Party got a lot of seats but not a majority thankfully. Greens and Lib Dems did well. Not great result but could have been worse.
Hope your ankle heals quickly Margo! Did you have a good break besides the fall?
Oh yes! We both felt like we'd had a week away. We had planned a longer break but Pete was swamped with work so it wasn't to be.As fir the fall, I was well cushioned by the extra thick carpet - the room was in a new part of the hotel only open 3 weeks so plush new, bouncy flooring lol No, seriously I was very luck!
We were bowled over (literally in my case hehe) by the room. It was 2 floors below ground level, with glass doors opening onto a suspended walkway about 20 above the river. We did have a think about flood defences but lets hope the engineers also did :-D
Sorry about your ankle, Margo. I hope it heals soon.
I'm having a pretty rubbish end to the Bank Holiday weekend. I have been sick 5 times already since waking up this morning and feel like I will be again soon. I think I must have picked up a stomach bug, although from where is anyone's guess. Either that or it's food poisoning.
Oh you poor thing, Lisa. I hate being sick sick. It's the worst. Hope you get whatever it is out of your system and can flop on the couch in front of trashy TV with lemon water soon.
Oh no Lisa, such a waste of your holiday weekend! Hope you feel better soon.
I'm not into politics a lot, but last Sunday we voted in Belgium and I'm still very dissapointed how the people here voted. I can't get my head around it. These will be very interesting 5 years...On the bright side: I thought about selling my ticket for Rammstein, because I had to go alone with train and metro and I'm not a hero for that. Today there was an anouncement that Rammstein has made it possible to put busses in different cities to take us to the concert. So, it won't cost me a lot to take the bus to the concert and afterwards safely home with the bus.
@Margo: I hope your anckle will feel better soon.
@Lisa: I think there's a bug going around. Something like the summer flue.
Hope you feel better Lisa!When's the concert Saar? Are you going by yourself or meeting someone there? Cool that there will be buses.
I'm going to a Triggerfinger concert on Sunday, and then Tool later in June.
@Peggy: in Brussels. So with the train, that's a bit more than an hour. Normally I'm going alone. I have this friend and she wants to go together, but I'm not sure about it, because it's her 'speciality' to cancel meetings on the last moment...As an introvert I don't have a lot of friends, so that will be a big step for me.Oh, enjoy Triggerfinger and Tool! I love them :) I'm going also to Oscar and the Wolfe and I want to go to Tool and Sabaton and maybe Volbeat, if they come, but it's a lot of money.
Yes, it's expensive. Also because most concerts are in the Amsterdam area it takes time and money to get there. And because we live too far away we can't get back home by train so have to stay the night if we want to use public transport.
Eek! We just bought a two man canoe. Very excited about it. Obviously, we can use it on the canal, and the nearby river. Some friends of ours have one and we thought it would be nice to meet up and spend the day canoeing. It made sense to get it at the beginning of the Summer season. Really looking forward to using it.It seems like I've spent out loads of money recently. I bought new sandals. A week later I dumped a load of motor oil on one of them. Don't look great for work so I ended up buying another pair and I'll use the first pair around the boat. I then had to buy a new phone as my current one is playing up. Need to have a few weeks off spending now!
You do have a thing for boats Sarah! Enjoy :-D
@Peggy: that makes it very expensive, indeed. I don't have a driver's license, so I'm depending on public transport to go somewhere. I could ask my husband, but then we need to look for a babysitter, so not much concerts here.@Sarah: enjoy your new purchase! I'm not a hero on water, but seems like fun in the summer.
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You'll love this one...!! A book club & more
Books mentioned in this topic
The Rithmatist (other topics)The Starless Sea (other topics)
The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire (other topics)
The Doll Factory (other topics)
The Binding (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Jamie Ford (other topics)Madeline Miller (other topics)
Jamie Ford (other topics)
Madeline Miller (other topics)
Ruta Sepetys (other topics)
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@Rus - our voting is today! I am in the irish republic :-)
Ugh - ABB - a..."
I would add ABG - anyone but Gove and ABH - anyone but Hunt to that as well.