Gloucester Saint

Tanglefoot is a classic. Wicked Wyvern was in Morrisons and Tescos but seem to have stopped doing it. Very good beer on cask or keg. Never tried Shapwick Monster. Mont Blanc La Rousse is a good stuff. Alpine cycling trip sounds amazing. I’m a fairly moderate drinker - 5-6 units a week but really enjoy what I have. If I’m going to a beer festival I’ll leave off the stuff a few days beforehand. Walking in the local Cotswold Hills keeps me trim. Lots of cyclists around here, there’s a few steep hills to keep the more handy cyclists interested but nothing on a par with the Dales (Fleet Moss, Park Rash) and Lakes (Hardknott, Honister and Kirkstone).

At the Southampton Beer Festival at the Guildhall early 00s there was a stand full of anti-EU/Brexit merchandise including that t-shirt which had a bulldog cocking its leg all over the EU stars😀 I do have beard these days but far more of a striped shirt kind of guy. Politics is generally off the menu because we’re all too busy enjoying the ale. The beer festival which sticks out in my mind is the National Great British Beer Festival, again early 00s at the former Earls Court, when it was still mostly blokes (about 50/50 on festival attendance with gender these days) and by early evening there wasn’t enough men’s toilets. The queue for the blokes toilets was so huge that by the time I left being a dozens of blokes around the perimeter urinating up the interior walls of Earls Court! You watching Harrogate at Cheltenham on Sky Sports+? Crap game it has to be said. The travelling supporters (50 or so) will be able to give the whippets a run out in nearby Pitville Park before they head north.

We have an optical illusion. It looks for all of the world like a pale ale, or IPA, but no, this is Stroud Brewery’s enigmatic Arctic Cat White Stout. The nose has coffee, the palate more coffee, quite significant vanilla notes and some chocolate discerned. I did pick up some bitterness from hop but very much a walk on part. Enjoyed this whilst watching Gloucestershire beat Birmingham Bears in a thrilling T20 QF at Edgbaston. As Hampshire are out, I hope my adopted county prevail in Finals Day next Saturday. Now I need to select a different beer to watch Cheltenham v Harrogate with tomorrow.

This was on the front page of the ‘I’ today. When it does eventually come in it will push food prices up considerably for most shoppers and more needless Brexit red tape https://www.politico.eu/article/united-kingdom-brexit-border-food-checks-delay-inflation/

Thanks for sharing, really interesting to hear an account from that period seeing the aftermath and some of the clues as to sequence of the tragic events. There seemed to be a lot of industrial unrest in BEA at the time. It sounds like the pilot and co-pilot were trying to do different things to recover the first stall with the end result nobody really controlling it, with the very experienced pilot’s medical emergency a major exacerbating factor. There were reports before the flight that he’d had an heated altercation with some other BEA crew about industrial relations matters.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c89wneepgj3o

Think that was this one, very experienced pilot had a massive heart attack IIRC and the co-pilot was quite green? https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/staines-air-crash-50-years-on/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_European_Airways_Flight_548

Taxi for Picard please 🤦‍♂️

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/chris-hayes-gobsmacked-by-trumps-rambling-response-thats-the-quality-of-the-brains-right-now/ https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-weave-speech-rally-election-b2606293.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-trumps-rambling-getting-worse-104018148.html https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-age-harris-ramble-rcna168979

And suggested that if it ever happened, it would happen under UN supervision. No way that the ‘no surrender to the IRA’ brigade would have tolerated that. It would have needed another £10bn to send even a handful of rejected refugee claimants and tax rises to pay for it, which the same bankrupt (bar the Mail) non dom owned tabloid outfits would have screamed about. Pity about that £40bn economic black hole that a hard Brexit causes.

What I think will happen is that this will be in effect an interim appointment followed by another heavy defeat, and then the more serious candidates start to emerge. If Trump loses, whoever the members select will already look as up to date as an Artex ceiling. Plus the tabloids and members are still in populist, shouty, culture war mode, and need to get it out of their system with a Badenoch or Jenryck. By 2029 or 2030 there will also be some structural changes amongst the newspapers. I’m not sure Reach can afford to keep the Express on life support when it’s bleeding cash and the Sun has taken a turn away from party politics. Telegraph’s future is still unclear and also in serious financial difficulty so the main shouting might from the Mail by then. Also, new MPs will have joined, especially the likes of Andy Street who isn’t tainted like the rest of the former cabinet.

Another article on that site from polling shows Patel, Cleverley and Badenoch were the only ones more than 50% of respondents who voted Tory in July could identify and Jenrick is regarded as ‘smug’, ‘slimy’ and ‘wooden’. https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/voters-are-beginning-to-view-tories-as-weird-382193/

I like the colour of Anderlecht’s shirts but the sponsor and design let it down a bit. Hope Samuel has a good spell there and adds some of the end product missing from his time at SFC so far. Are Anderlecht in European competition this year?

It isn’t difficult, Jan and Jack need to concentrate on finding one of the CMs and sometimes hitting a more direct ball to BBD/Cornet or AA if it’s on to stop the opposition getting set. It doesn’t mean we have to go back to the Branfoot era (God forbid). If there’s a danger situation and there’s no out ball then the opposition can’t score from a throw in. We just need to grow into games and gain confidence, and that’s not happening whilst the opposition are waiting for a trigger movement to mug Jan, Jack, THB or the deepest lying CM. The manager’s reward if he keeps us up longer-term is to upgrade in those positions where people are more comfortable building from the back all of the time but that’s not where we are. I like Russell Martin but this heavily possession based style didn’t entirely work last season and it 100% isn’t this. Happy if he changes to be more pragmatic but SR will pull the trigger sooner rather than later if he doesn’t and the 2-3 gifts per game keep happening.

Another GM gem, along with the predictions on Deutsche Bank, numerous elections etc. Difference was that this was in particularly poor taste when he posted it.

One bit of learning from the Post Office Enquiry is that it shouldn’t be taking anywhere near as long as it does to make corporate manslaughter and other serious charges stick, especially when there’s just been a lengthy public enquiry. To say that the Met and CPS are needing to go through the enquiry evidence for a further 2-3 years simply doesn’t cut it. It’s just giving some of the parties a window to escape to somewhere without extradition treaties with their illegal earnings. Get the assets frozen.

It would take time to bed in, but the status quo is leaking easy mistakes and is unlikely to come right whereas at least if you start with the strongest line up and way of playing which suits the above players, there’s more of a chance that familiarity happens and a few results string together. Unlikely we will stay up this season anyway but if we did the manager can then build on it and upgrade the CBs for example to ones better with the ball. It’s what we did 2012-16, gradually phasing out Jos and others, until Les Reed got too much power and autonomy unchecked. Until then, better to be pragmatic and get the best out of what you to put club above philosophy.

Copied from another thread, didn’t see one had started here Grenfell Inquiry report finally in. All the various deregulations of agencies have led to is an £170m bill paid for by us for the enquiry alone and 72 losses of life. None of the political parties emerge with much if any credit, and a lot of bullshitting and ‘that’ll do’ mentality without evidence and anywhere near sufficient testing leading to failure of the product markets and by the companies. This should lead to much better regulation of the construction and insulation industries but we know it won’t, the lobbyists and newspapers will be at it again. Not good for the council or fire brigade either. I can’t share it as seeing it on Apple News but The Telegraph’s article is very good and states that the chief fire safety officer or equivalent at the council was ex-fire brigade but seemingly falsified qualifications and was left with around 650 properties to oversee post-austerity. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c049yvrd5qxo Watch the tail end of this documentary from 1984 which was primarily about the very poor construction of high rises which caused the likes of the Ronan Point disaster in 1968 but comes onto future risks from fire when the buildings were starting to be renovated

Grenfell Inquiry report finally in. All the various deregulations of agencies have led to is an £170m bill paid for by us for the enquiry alone and 72 losses of life. None of the political parties emerge with much if any credit, and a lot of bullshitting and ‘that’ll do’ mentality without evidence and anywhere near sufficient testing leading to failure of the product markets and by the companies. This should lead to much better regulation of the construction and insulation industries but we know it won’t, the lobbyists and newspapers will be at it again. Not good for the council or fire brigade either. I can’t share it as seeing it on Apple News but The Telegraph’s article is very good and states that the chief fire safety officer or equivalent at the council was ex-fire brigade but seemingly falsified qualifications and was left with around 650 properties to oversee post-austerity. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c049yvrd5qxo Watch the tail end of this documentary from 1984 which was primarily about the very poor construction of high rises which caused the likes of the Ronan Point disaster in 1968 but comes onto future risks from fire when the buildings were starting to be renovated

A couple of years ago a Land Rover Defender caught fire on the hard shoulder of the M5 near Gloucester Services and got bad quite quickly before the Fire Brigade could get there. There’s people slowing down to gawp at it, the flames were heading towards the petrol tank and the heat could be felt through our car. Had to depress the horn to force the gawpers to accelerate away from trouble.

That’s terrible. Hastings can be violent at times but sounds like you are not near there. Lovely part of the world, we love Eastbourne and Severn Sisters, plus the Weald towards Kent. But it does show that knife crime can effect anywhere. 395 knife and gun crimes in Gloucestershire last year and by no means were they all in Gloucester or Cheltenham although around two-thirds were. https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/gloucester-news/gloucestershire-saw-least-one-knife-8985159 This year’s knife amnesty went well https://www.gloucestershire.police.uk/news/gloucestershire/2024/may/knife-amnesty-sees-almost-300-bladed-weapons-handed-in/ and this project in Tuffley, a very deprived part of Gloucester https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cl7ykp0zjgko

Yes, I like Badger’s range, although not all of their pubs keep their beers as well as they should to get the full flavour profile. Master Stoat I’d love to try on draft but only ever seen it in the bottle. It’s also available in Aldi under the label ‘Coffee Stout’. Coming into the time of year when the plum and blackberry notes of their stronger Cranborne Poacher really hit the mark.

Yes, as it can help place people to times and events, as well as hint at any motive. It’s not just law enforcement at the more extreme end of things, and the content posted by Lucy Connolly was vile, inflammatory and unacceptable at any time, on an everyday level it’s also used by employers when recruiting and selecting. I was told many years ago that nothing on SM is ever truly deleted.

It’s appalling. Not sure what part of the country you are in but I’m guessing it’s not an urban farm in say Peckham. Knife crime was still higher before the pandemic, but escalating back towards that 2019 peak. https://aoav.org.uk/2024/knife-crime-on-the-rise-in-the-uk-analysing-the-data-and-exploring-solutions/#:~:text=According to the latest figures,increase in robberies involving knives.