Paul Brownjohn @Paulos_the_fog@social.cleverlibre.org

@CharlesTannock

I think the question should be
"If the UK expressed a desire to rejoin the EU, would there be a consensus amongst the present membership to say 'yes' to that. I'm pretty certain the answer to that is a resounding 'NO!'".

All existing members of the EU have to affirm their support for applicant countries joining and I think it likely that the tories have fucked that up!

What I do not understand is why the filthy feckin lying scumbags who were executives and senior managers at the Post Office and Fujitsu who KNEW full well that there were massive problems with the Horizon system, have not been prosecuted - they should be serving LONG prison sentences!

@mattsheffield
Yes but she's black so therefore automatically guilty of something utterly horrendous and unforgivable!

@ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs

Personally, I think it's a good idea as most carnivores will not eat the flesh of other carnivores, probably because they carry diseases that might infect or kill them.

I suspect that eating the flesh of dogs or cats is, therefore, a rather bad idea!

@lerg

I think the 'clowns' are running the assembly lines rather than designing aircraft!

@freemo

To be explicit about this I do not consider myself to be any different to the 1000s of refugees who call Luxembourg their home nor indeed to the 1000s of others who, like me, for one reason or another, moved to Luxembourg to make a living.

Living in Luxembourg shines a bright spotlight on the immigrant -v- expat question as an astonishing 47%+ of the population of Luxembourg are immigrants (yes, that isn't a typo - the official government figure is more than 47% of Luxembourg residents, were born outside the country making them immigrants like me). Even more surprisingly, taking the population of the capital city alone, more than 70% of population are immigrants - yes 70%!

I never intended to remain in Luxembourg for the 20 years that I have lived here and certainly didn't anticipate retiring here although that is what has happened. At what stage did I morph from being an 'expat' into an immigrant, I wonder? (I'm a white, sedentary, office worker and therefore absolutely "entitled" to call myself an expat according to the way that I have seen it used)

@freemo

Yes, but the problem with it is that I have never once heard of the epithet 'expat' applied to anyone except a white man or woman.

Generally, the way it is used by Brits is definitely to maintain the social distinction between themselves and other foreigners of different skin colour or doing more lowly jobs; a sort of way of extending the still very prevalent class system from the UK to lands further afield

@freemo

I'm a Brit living in Luxembourg and am therefore an immigrant. One of the most annoying habits of Brits living in foreign countries is to describe themselves as 'expats'. Like they are a cut above the rest of us mere immigrants!

Having wondered for some years whether it was in fact an old wives tale, the other day I proved to my own satisfaction that it wasn't!

I'm talking about eggs. I was told years ago, I cannot remember by whom, that if you put eggs in water, they should sink and, that if they float, they are either bad or extremely stale. The other day I grabbed a carton of six eggs with five eggs left in it and put the five eggs in a saucepan of water to hard boil them. All five of the eggs floated and I was slightly surprised at this as I was sure that the carton of eggs with one missing was fresh as I'd only bought it the day before; For that reason, I dismissed it as a problem. Then one of the eggs actually burst and the smell that came out was not pleasant, so I fished the carton they came in out of the wastepaper bin and checked the use-by date on it. Sure enough, the use by date had been and gone several months previously, somehow the carton of eggs had got hidden under other things and overlooked when I threw out all the eggs that were past their use-by date. As you might guess, I took them out of the saucepan and threw them straight on the compost heap where no doubt the local Pine Martens will deal with a few lightly boiled stale eggs without further ado.
I thought the business of eggs floating or not was an old wives tale but it seems that that is not the case at all!

@karinnelson

Once the prostate starts to expand due to age related BPH (benign prostatic hyperplasia) or prostate cancer, it is, indeed, much easier to induce the bladder to empty completely in the seated position rather than standing up.

I wouldn't, ordinarily, have thought that that constituted an attack on 'manliness' but north American men do seem to have the most fantastically fragile male egos!

The proof, as if proof were needed, what a worthless, lying scumbag Theresa May was!!

https://www.richardcorbett.org.uk/falsehoods-failures-fibs-fabrications/

I learned when exposed to a case of 'open' TB on a long haul flight, that the BCG vaccine that my generation of kids were given at around age 11, is pretty nearly completely ineffective against pulmonary TB - the type that we all know and love - consumption - the scourge of Victorian life in the big cities. In fact , the BCG vaccine targeted meningitis caused by the same bacterium that causes tuberculosis of the lungs, mycobacterium tuberculosis.

In most patients, the immune reaction to the vaccine subsides 20 or so years after vaccination, however when they gave me the standard test for TB, the Mantoux tuberculin skin test, it was massively positive, suggesting either an active or recent TB infection. The local health authorities where I live then ran a Quantiferon Gold test; a test that is much more accurate, sensitive and can discriminate between people vaccinated with BCG and actual cases of TB. The Quantiferon Gold test came back reassuringly negative as did a second round of Quantiferon Gold testing six months later.

In summary, if the inexorable spread of TB in India and other developing nations is to be halted, the world needs an effective vaccine against pulmonary TB!

However, it is as well to remember that most people who are well fed are not susceptible to TB and that India, at least is no longer a poor country so perhaps they should be doing something themselves to ameliorate the nutrition status of its people!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-67647054