While it seems that Mr Osbourne has some good ideas for the economy, and seems to be slowly getting us back on an even keel, it is all rather boring. (And that odd Mr Millibean is frankly nauseating…)
Its also a shame there has been no mention at all of the Green Economy… I was rather hoping there might be some reasonable debate about this important topic…
Filed under Timology
I sometimes check the local auctions… just to see if Tibet or Younghusband Mission related items come up on the market. There have been a few over the years, but have all sadly been beyond my meagre pocket.
Its always an interesting browse however, as you would be amazed by the tat that some people try to sell, or that auctioneers deme valuable. If you ever wanted to coat your furniture entirely in formica, or collect small china cats, the local auction house is the place to go.
Anyway, this item ticked my fancy… its not especially ascetic, and I am unsure of its practical use, but it’s a must for any collector of tat, clutter, and ornamentalia: A military issue ear trumpet by R.J. Dowling of London. (With military crows foot stamp, 12.5cm.) Priced at a very optimistic £40-£60 it can be bid for at the Bellman Auction House in Billingshurst.
It does slightly beg the question… what sort of military fighting machine would need a military issue ear trumpet? Have our armed services been cut back to such an extent that we are now sending regiments of octogenarians to the front line… the comedy opportunity and value of this image is priceless… Her Majesty’s Brigade of Armed Mobility Scooters? The Massed Pipes and Slippers of the Welch Fusileers? The Coldshiver Guards? It’s all very well and good beating swords into plough shears, but you will have to make a lot of ear trumpets from an aircraft carrier.
Filed under Technology, Timology
Oxford seems to have a case of verbal diarrhoea regarding the state of its public toilets. And, as ever with the dreaming spires, delusions of grandeur about something so simple its toilets. The Oxford Mail has been exceptionally vocal on this point, and is under the impression that the good citizens of the city, and the manifold tourists that visit us, value us for nothing more than our facilities of ablution and cleanliness of the crapper.
The bigwigs on the City Council have all gone potty (forgive the toilet humour… it’s inevitable!) Councillor John Tanner must constitute a priceless gift for local journalists, comedians, and his own opposition, especially for his reported utterances such as “I would like people to come to Oxford to use our toilets” and “It is an international toilet. People come from all over the world to use the Gloucester Green toilets.”
I just love the idea that tourists from every corner of the world, from Saigon to Swindon, swarm to Oxford not to swoon at the spires, nor marvel at the majestic, almost Disneyesque, fantasy world university, but simply to gawp at the Gloucester Green toilets. I wonder how many visitors from, say, Beijing, Councillor Tanner imagines go home with photographs of themselves posing in front of the public loos in Headington, when compared to the number before the Rad Cam. Hmm… and we elect these people… let alone pay them?
And what is worse is that these people do not even help themselves… in 2008, the City Council closed the toilets on St Giles, slap bang in the middle of town, over health and safety fears. Despite people taking the piss since 1895 (yes 1895!) the council said people caught short risked being run over while crossing the road.
To cap all this madness off, Oxford is now the proud possessor of a ‘Toilet Tzar.’ I am not kidding… The Oxford Mail’s very own ‘Man About Town’ and features editor Jeremy Smith has been appointed the city’s new “toilet tsar,” and proposes fresh flowers, paperback novels, and framed newspaper front pages to brighten our civic bathrooms.
I for one can’t tell if its April Fool’s Day already, or if the whole world has gone round the (U) bend…
But I declare an interest: I lived next door to a public toilet for a couple of years until it was shut in about 2010… it was basically used by drug dealers (I saw numerous junkies stretchered out of there, cold and blue) and taxi drivers. More disgusting was that when the loo was locked at 5pm each afternoon the taxi drivers would piss through the locked gate, or even round the corner in next door’s garden. It’s now used as a council bin store… and if that is not enough to give you an image of the salubrious surroundings, you can always pop into Councillor Tanner’s bookshop and florists at Gloucester Green. I would hold your breath, and hold ‘it’ in!
Filed under Oxford: The Perspiring Dream, Timology
I was thinking yesterday of the best comedy sketch ever written…there are a lot to choose from, old and new. And one has to respect the fact that not all humour is humorous to all people. Think of the Germans for example… their only joke involves a dog that has got no nose…
Anyhow, I thought I would pith this one out there… it’s dated, obscurer, and not the finest bit of acting by either Cleese nor Palin, but the Dead Parrot Sketch has to be up there among them? No?
Even the most stony faced automaton has to find the offering that the Parrot in question is merely ‘pining for the fjords‘ whilst lying on its back (they prefer kipping on their back…) a work of comic genius. Its just pure silly comedy. Nothing clever, nothing fancy. Just sheer stupidity.
If you have never seen it… shame on you. Here it is:
The sketch has become a bit of a household comedy touchstone up and down Britain; indeed in an interview John Cleese said that when he and Palin were performing the sketch on Drury Lane, Palin made him laugh by saying, when asked if his slug could talk, “It mutters a bit” instead of “Not really.” When Cleese eventually stopped laughing, he couldn’t remember where they were in the sketch. He turned to the audience and asked them what the next line was, and people shouted it at him, causing him to wonder, “What is the point of this?” It was even used by Mrs Thatcher in a speech in the late 1980’s.
Unbeknownst to the Pythons at the time they wrote the sketch, there are in fact two species of parrot that live in the alpine regions of South Island in New Zealand – an area known as “Fiordland” for the many fjords it contains. Wikipedia and the website Birds of New Zealand (Don’t Google it directly…) inform is that these parrots are the kea and the kakapo, and entirely coincidentally, a gathering or group of Kea is called a “circus.” Obviously. Beautiful plumage…
Filed under Timology
This has amused me all day! Just thought I would share it with you all…
Filed under Timology
and on the abandoned building theme… do check this from a fellow blogger!
Six Flags – New Orleans
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and ripped the heart of fun and the amusement out of this park. Almost seven years later, Six Flags in New Orleans is unnaturally silent, no lines and no laughter. This 140-acre surreal setting has morphed into a nightmarish land of twisted dreams.
It seems as if the post-apocalyptic atmosphere might be the perfect place to make a zombie movie. As if lured by a distant echo of scattered screams and the ghost of good times, urban explorers venture out of curiosity and capture the moments and crumbling scenes. They share with us in a virtual urban exploration tour of this creepy abandoned amusement park – Six Flags New Orleans.
Source: LTP
Art is never finished, only abandoned. – Leonardo da Vinci
>>>YOU MAY ALSO LIKE<<<
Vintage Miniature City
The abandoned by Billy
Vintage Rural America
Vans…
View original post 10 more words
Filed under Timology
I have been pottering about with some maths for you… slightly boring I know, but important given the total codswallop we have all been told over the last few years about the EU and its political and financial remits within member states.
Today the “troika” of the IMF, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission agreed to lean Greece 130bn euros, £110bn, or about $170bn.
Let me put that another way:
But what does this number actually mean? Greece has a population of about 11,300,000. Of these approximately half are of working age. Not all of those who are of working age actually do any work, and not all of those who work pay any taxes, but lets keep this simply for the time being. So about 5,650,000 people are trying to pay back this debt.
This all means that every single Greek of a working age has today been lent approximately £19,500
Given that the average annual salary in 2010 in Greece was equivalent to £17,400 this means that they have been lent about 14 months salary each. And this is on top of an even bigger loan last year, and it has already been indicated that there will need to be a third bail out some time before the end of the decade.
And there are serious political impactions to all of this too. As a consequence and requisite for the loan,
Notice that last one… yep… AMEND ITS CONSTITUTION!
Staggeringly Greece has also agreed to put off elections till it can afford to hold them. Yep… Democracy is on hold, and up for ransom, till Greece pays its political and economic masters.
Hmm… whats the price of democracy again?
Well now you know. £19,500
Filed under Timology
Officials in India have begun the lengthy process of creating a digital inventory of priceless treasures unearthed from vaults in the Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple in Kerala.
Five vaults at the temple in Kerala were opened last year amidst a frenzy of speculation and excitement… as their contents were rumoured to contain a king’s ransom. In a tale that could have been lifted straight from Indiana Jones (please forgive the pun in the heading…) local legend has long held that vast riches were interred in the walls and vaults of the temple by the Maharajas of Travancore over many years. The current incumbent is the splendidly titled Maharajah of Travancore, Uthradan Thirunaal Marthanda Varma. I bet any money (including all of his) that he has an amazing ‘tash…
A local court has today ordered the sixth vault to remain closed until the contents of the first five are digitised, and unsurprisingly, security is tight at the temple, as the contents of five vaults alone are now believed to be worth a staggering 900bn rupees, or about £12bn…. roughly the amount it will cost to host the London Olympics…
Neither the state of Kerala nor the descendants of the Travancore royal family, who are the custodians of the temple, have made any claim on the treasure, which they say is the property of the temple and its deity.
In July last year the BBC reported Indian media was awash with wildly speculative reports about the treasures buried in the temple’s six underground vaults. They talk about “very old gold chains, diamonds and precious stones which cannot be valued in terms of money”.
One report talks of 450 golden pots, 2,000 rubies and jewel-studded crowns, 400 gold chairs and the statue of a deity studded with 1,000 diamonds. Apparently, all this amounted to 65 “treasure sacks” which was then estimated to be worth some $20bn – more than India’s annual education budget. There were stories of curses, charms, and snakes that protect the loot… obviously.
Soutik Biswas described how; “A bit of drama accompanied the opening of the vault then. The rusting locks were broken after a two-and-a-half hour effort and an ambulance waited outside to attend to any “emergency”. Floodlights and torches lit up the place, and fans pumped air into the vaults. Officials found “four chests made of brass which contained old coins”; a “granary-like thing” full of gold and silver coins; gold pots; and a six-chamber wooden chest full of diamonds, rubies, emeralds and other precious stones. They also found more than 300 gold pots.”
Perhaps to add an air of mystery and intrigue, non Hindus are not allowed to enter the temple complex, and the Indiana Jones theory also goes back in time; as early as 1933, Emily Gilchrist Hatch wrote a travel guide for Travancore, recording that the “temple had a vast amount of wealth lain in vaults”. She wrote that 25 years earlier, temple authorities would open the vaults and use the wealth “when the state required additional money”. She also added = that a group of people tried to enter the vaults once, found it “infested with cobras” and fled. Why did it have to be snakes?
Filed under Timology
Salut mes petit pois, this one has been doing the rounds on Twitter and t’internet, but thought it was worth sharing here with you…
A few petit facts interesant pour vous: The pig iron structure of the Eiffel Tower weighs 7,300 tonnes… as the tower was initial supposed to be demolished in 1909, and as a demonstration of the economy of design, if the 7,300 tonnes of the metal structure were melted down it would fill the 125-metre-square base to a depth of only 6 cm. And secondly, depending on the ambient temperature, the top of the tower may shift away from the sun by up to 18 cm because of thermal expansion of the metal on the side facing the sun.
And for all those of you who thought you were going to get a glimpse of the actual construction… Bien, et Mange tout alores!
Filed under Technology, Timology
Tim Myatt 