OT: Shop assistant didn't know what "half a dozen"meant!

Yes :)

Unfortunately there's a downside to giving accurate pithy answers to that question!

That is one of the places where you have to use all you can to keep a straight face, like in front of a drill sergeant.

Mark told that he has never been so astonised in his whole life.

Maybe the immigrator had the same idea as in an Austrian T-shirt, with a kangaroo in the middle of an alpine meadow and the text 'No kangaroos in Austria'.

Meaningless, since you don't specify where "here" is.

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Yes, *hopefully* is the word. There are some well-connected 5th Columnists, Marxist Sloman types doing their best to de-rail Brexit at the moment. These morons have no respect for democracy. Hopefully they'll fail and will all be shot (or otherwise put out of their misery) in due course.

A few years ago my wife and I were on vacation in Carcassonne, and had walked from our hotel (outside the walled city) to a small store to buy some food for lunches. As we were shopping, a somewhat harried-looking elderly gentleman came into the store, looked around, made a beeline over to us and asked "Do you by chance speak English?".

As his accent was also English, I felt honor-bound to reply "American... close enough." :-)

He was greatly relieved, as he and his wife had been circling the city in their rent-a-car trying to figure out how to get to their hotel (inside the walls). I suggested that he continue on the road until he saw the cemetery (it's by the main gate), leave his car in the car park there, and walk in (driving and parking inside the walls is difficult-to-impossible). He seemed a bit doubtful but said he'd give it a try.

We ran into him and his wife at a restaurant later that evening, and he said that our directions had worked perfectly... and we now have an invite to stay with them if we're ever in their area of England.

If you're ever in Carcassonne, do try the cassoulet... it's the local specialty and it's very good.

I guess halving a number does probably constitute "a problem in arithmetic" of an insurmountable nature to state school educated kids today.

to the US at JFK, was asked 'Do you speak English'? "

Well, not that I REALLY want to get started on that but if things keep going the way they are Britain, Australia and Canada might sue to keep us from calling the language "English".

Now that the speaker of the Parliament noted that you can't vote about the same issue more han once, it appears that PM May can only ask EU for extension past May 29th. An extension would require a unanimous agreement by all EU27 countries.

Just wondering, how some EU27 countries, such as Hungary, would agree on this, since the EU commission has been harassing Hungary with multiple issues recently.

If there are no extension until Mar 29th, the UK will automatically exit EU, with a hard Brexit.

Since the UK has been moaning for more than two years (actually several decades), I hope there will be a real _hard_ brexit, such as closing all (air)ports and flooding the Channel Tunnel:-).

?????????? wrote

Since the UK has been moaning for more than two years (actually several decades), I hope there will be a real _hard_ brexit, such as closing all (air)ports and flooding the Channel Tunnel:-).

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Why flood it? Just install prison bars and a door at the British end and use it for a prison. Let the French worry about any escapees! :)

Brexiteers /claim/ they are campaigning for the sovereignty of the UK parliament.

Two prominent brexiteers, Aaron Banks and Nigel Farage have been touring Italy and Hungary and talking to the far-right powers, trying to get them to not agree to any further changes.

Yes, they are trying to use foreign governments to override the will of the UK parliament. Ironic - certainly. Hypocritical- certainly. Treasonous - we are too relaxed to consider that.

I emigrated when 5 weeks old, and arrived at Ellis Island when I was 6 weeks old.

The immigration official dryly noted that I'd just missed being eligible to run for president.

By the time I returned to NY as an adult, the entry officials at JFK was far more rude, unlike Chicago and SF.

I hear that and thought it a strange idea, given that the basis of finite-term parliaments is that the same election (=vote?) is held repeatedly...

Mike.

Most of them know enough about economics to realise what a disaster a no-de al Brexit would be. Cursitor Doom doesn't.

Neither did the pro-Brexit campaigners who lied more or less nonstop during their campaign to fool the more gullible bits of the British electorate - and Cursitor Doom is about as gullible as they come.

ir misery) in due course.

No need to shoot them. Starvation is slower, but equally reliable. Of cours e the rest of the population will starve too (Cursitor Doom included) until it get reduced to the people realistic enough to realise that the pro-Brex it crowd are a dangerous menace, and edible.

UK agriculture isn't up to much - the UK has to export stuff to pay for the fertiliser it imports to grow what food it does - but halving the populati on by getting rid of the people gullible enough to vote "leave" would proba bly thin them out enough to let survivors get by on what they could grow on their own.

I think it's more that the first vote is ok, the second vote for the same thing is an appeal but you can't appeal an appeal so can't have a third vote.

I'm sure Nigel Farage would have little difficulty in persuading the Hungarian chap to object, but AIUI, the Italian PM has already offered to for similar reasons, so that would be fantastic. So many countries have had a bellyful of being pushed around and interfered with by Brussels.

Amen, bro! Great minds think alike! :-D

I think some MPs complained about it previously, but the Speaker (who's an anti-democrat Remainer) resisted until more came forward and quoted Erskine - May chapter & verse and by that point he didn't really have any choice but to block it.

As you say, the fact that Bill, in the course of his life, has collected welfare benefits from just about every Western country that has a welfare system does not qualify him to opine knowledgeably on world affairs. Every time he writes something it displays his bigotry and short- sightedness. He derives all he knows from watching CNN. *ALL* he knows.

I've lived - and paid taxes - in the UK, the Netherlands and Australia. I've also got government services in all three countries. I'm not sure that any of them were labelled "welfare".

The fact Curistor Doom has extrapolated from this to "just about every western country" is a revealing indicator of the precision of his thinking.

Only in the sense of demonstrating that I don't share Cursitor Doom's particular bigotries and short-sightednesses, which are remarkably idiotic.

I haven't watched CNN since I got back to Australia, and I didn't watch it much when I lived in Europe. There are other sources of information.

Cursitor Doom admits to reading the Daily Mail and following Russia Today, which does explain a lot of his sillier ideas.

I do read widely enough to be a whole lot better informed than Cursitor Doom (which isn't claiming much), and the fact that I think that he's a gullible and under-informed sucker does follow from that.

He seesm to think that I ought to share his opinions, which means that he rather over-values the opinions he's got.

What progress??? We still sell hot dogs 10 to a pack and hot dog buns in packs of 8. But I suppose those are metric numbers. Maybe we should call the hot dog pack a dekahotdog.

Rick C.