Bendy bananas

[The Natural Philosopher]

ROFLMAO!

My sister used to live along the Moselle river and would always proclaim the excellence of the local wines.

Most of us know why they added antifreeze.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well Germany is now firmly in that category thanks to pretend renewable energy and cheap Russian gas...not.

[Spike]

People don’t seem to grasp that it is the function of regulators to regulate, and if they are not regulating they might be put out of a job. Hence, you get more and more regulation, whether it’s good, bad, or indifferent.

One chap I knew worked in the Civil Service, which had brought in some regulation or other for the staff. After a year, he rang up the people who had formulated it, to ask how it was going, him being a staff rep and having an interest in the area in question.

“Oh, we regulate, we don’t monitor, we have no idea how it’s working” was the answer he received.

Now extrapolate that to the billions-a-year Common Agricultural Policy, which wasn’t monitored either, enabling some very nice mini-palaces to be built on ‘farms’ in Eastern Europe.

[Sn!pe]

From personal experience: English fizz (e.g. Chapel Down) is very nice indeed and has won international awards.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed. Its is the disconnect between policy, its implementers and its effects that so characterises the modern 'technocracy'.

Round Robin speed cameras have appeared in all the local villages, someone is employed to run them for a day or two, take them down and move them to another location.

The excuse is of course to 'save lives'.

There has not been a fatal accident in decades in any of these villages. In fact the only fatal accident I could find was a motorbike outside of any village, who simply lost it.

The greatest source of car damage is from wild animals and birds, and potholes

Realistically only local people whose cars are recognised drive through these villages. There is simply not any speeding problem except technically.

The potholes that cause *serious* damage are, however, not filled. And every year there is another road calming solution that causes SERIOUS suspension damage or creates an actual accident. I no longer use the 'main' road into the local town because it has 6 speed calming measures on it that increase the journey time and are downright dangerous, and one speed hump that realistically everyone slows down to 10mph to take. Its in a 30mph limit.

I cannot recall any accidents on that road *in the villages* before all this. In the last thirty years.

The bureaucrats simply work on the unwarranted *assumption* that all this stuff works and improves road safety, even when it causes accidents, and increases fuel consumption and damages cars.

Go figure...

[Joe]

Yes. When we had roads that weren't made of potholes tied together with bits of tarmac. And a more functional NHS. And many other things that are 'too expensive' to do now.

I won't say 'when the trains ran on time', because that's never happened.

[alan_m]

Very many years ago I went around the Heineken brewery which included a film presentation on how Heineken was a world beer. They mentioned every country where it was brewed EXCEPT the UK. Perhaps they weren't too proud of the inferior "brewed under licence" product sold in the UK, which tasted completely different to the continental version.

[wasbit]

Do you mean there is a wine that is actually nice?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed. During the 7 years of my youth when I commuted to school by train, at the time of British Railways, whilst in general trains were fairly *close* to scheduled time, they were seldom *on time* especially once joining the main trunk lines into London.

Given that on that route (into Waterloo) there was about a train a minute, any slight deviation from schedule had a ripple through effect on all the other trains

But given the more frequent and more local signal boxes, the staff did a pretty god job of shuffling trains around, and it was common for the Waterloo platforms to be shuffled around at a moments notice to accommodate trains that had arrived but whose normal platform was occupied.

Personally, I think it ran rather better then.

[wasbit]

Ah yes, the EU butter mountain.

[Rod Speed]

Jeff Gaines [e-mail] wrote

Neither say anything about subsidys.

No need for that given that neither say anything about subsidys.

[Bob Henson]

Lucky girl to live there. It's well worth visiting just for the scenery along the Moselle and the Rhine. Our wine tastings were part of a River Cruise along both rivers and it was well worth the trip - but not for the wines. Some of the auslesen and spätlesen were quite pleasant with puddings as the sugar covers up the flintiness, but that was about it apart from one Chardonnay that must have crept over the border near Trier somewhere. The latter was the best we had all week. Never saw a rotwein all week, but I don't suppose I missed much/anything.

To be entirely fair to the Germans, the only wine tasting I went to in France was at a "medal winning" vineyard that produced wines that would have been wonderful for getting the verdigris off brass doorknobs.

When I was a youngster more or less all you could buy in the UK (unless you were rich) was Blue Nun, Mateus Rosé from Portugal and Asti Spumanti from Italy and a couple of others. Some things in life have improved.

I think that was the Austrians. I've never had any of their wines, but I don't think I regret it. :-)

[The Natural Philosopher]

IIRC British tastes differ from continental to such an extent that continental beers are a minority taste here.

I myself prefer hot country lagers with no hops. Spain. Mexico. Far East

[Bob Henson]

We do have some top-drawer regulators in the UK, though. Ours have totally wrecked the NHS in a way that the Brussels Mafia would almost envy. They will be working hard now on how to get their knighthoods, OBEs etc when the new "farmed out to private enterprise" NHS is formed.

Side note:- I find it very sad that Belgium could host the EU mafia when it's the only other country in the continent that can brew decent beer and cook chips correctly.

[Ian Jackson]

It's difficult to see how your followup relates to JR-M's complaint about how the EU had meddled with the Dartford Tunnel signage - but I'm working on it.

[Bob Henson]

The only reason they wanted us in was because we weren't poor - they realised that we could be screwed for huge amounts of cash to prop up their doomed to failure 4th Reich. And, boy, we were screwed.

[Ottavio Caruso]

Found the Anglican. A Catholic would know when wine is good.

[Bob Henson]

But these things happened AFTER we joined and gave away all our money so that the 4th Reich could recruit the really poor countries. Before that the NHS ran quite well, and the roads were fine until we let the EU standard Juggleyournuts lorries smash our roads to pieces.

[alan_m]

Where I live the local council seems to be doing a good job with respect to potholes and fixing them rapidly when reported. Where friends of mine live the lunatics are firmly in control of the roads fixing asylum. First someone will come out and measure the pothole and paint mark the largest. A month or two later the repair crew will turn up and only fix the holes that have been marked ignoring any pot holes feet away that may have increased in size and depth in the months it took them to turn up. To make matters worse, for safety, they will close a road all day for a hour of actual work.

And a more functional NHS. And many other things that

Judging from the observations I've seen with regards my elderly mothers care much of the NHS's right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. My Mother has had excellent medical care but administration and record keeping have a lot to be desired. The NHS do seem to have a lot of very underused buildings in my area.

They never did and for a period of 30+ years many lines had old dilapidated rolling stock.

[Jethro_uk]

Actually, I've had some damn good British (English really) white wines. I've also had reds, but best leave that here.

Many Italians have told me that the English climate isn't too bad - we get decent summers. However, it's the autumns that are key. And you can't trust English autumns.