QUOTE OF THE DAY. TRIPPS ORIGINAL

[Stanley]

Nah....... I expect nothing else from the weird Barclay brothers!

[Stanley]

Quoted on R4 this morning.... "Today I threw away my condom. It had reached its 'best before' date"
from Adrian Mole, the social desert years by Lynn Truss.

[Stanley]

"Barbed wire, used properly, can be a beautiful sight"
President Donald Trump on the Mexican border while electioneering in Montana.

[Stanley]

From Bob's Bits.....
If i am asked 'what is good'? my answer is that good is good, and that is the end of the matter. G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, 1904.

[Tizer]

Aaron Banks's response to the Information Commissioner who said more than a million emails sent to Leave.EU subscribers contained marketing for the Eldon Insurance firm's GoSkippy services:
"Gosh we communicated with our supporters and offered them a 10% Brexit discount after the vote! So what?"

[Stanley]

I suspect he works to different ground rules than the rest of us.....

[Tripps]

" The invasion of Iraq was an unfortunate mistake"

General Stanley McChrystal during an interview to plug his recent book 'Leadership myth and reality'. on BBC Radio 5live. I didn't hear him say 'sorry' though.

[Stanley]

I also heard him David. Add Vietnam and 'bombing Cambodia back into the stone age'? See 'Sideshow' by William Shawcross, the full story of how Nixon and Kissinger illegally sent the B52s in to carpet bomb the Cambodian border with Vietnam. A shameful episode.

[Stanley]

"Brexit is the undefined being negotiated by the unprepared in order to get the unspecified for the uninformed"
Richard Broughton in Politics corner.

[Tripps]

House of Commons this evening from an MP -

"The High Court is open to everyone . . . . . .Just like the Ritz Hotel.

[Stanley]

That'll be right..... It's the prices that sort the wheat from the chaff.

[Tizer]

From the BBC...
The Matt cartoon in the Telegraph neatly ties two of its front page stories together - a badger about to be culled by a shotgun wielding farmer implores: "WAIT! I've just come up with a solution to the Irish backstop."

[Stanley]

Nice.... The badger cull is descending into farce. About 34,000 estimated as having been killed with negligible effect.

[chinatyke]

Nice.... The badger cull is descending into farce. About 34,000 estimated as having been killed with negligible effect.

I once went to a meeting and the after dinner speaker told us it wasn't badgers or hedgehogs that spread TB in cattle. I've forgotten what he said but the gist was badgers got bad press. Hedgehogs were similarly blamed because they were attracted by milk leakage from udders as cows laid in fields at night. I'm told there is a lot smaller hedgehog population in Britain nowadays so TB in cattle should be decreasing if they are to blame.

[PanBiker]

Hedgehogs are lactose intolerant so why would they seek out milk leakage?

[chinatyke]

I don't know why we were told that, perhaps to detract the blame from badgers. This was an after dinner speech probably by some guy who represented some pro-badger society or perhaps he needed them preserving for badger-baiting! I remember him saying they had campaigned successfully to get badger tunnels incorporated into motorway designs so that badgers could safely cross under the new motorways.

[Tizer]

Panbiker, hedgehogs might be lactose intolerant but they still drink milk if people put it out for them. A bit like us smoking tobacco and eating too much sugar I suppose!

This I saw on a geologist's web page...
"Don't take life too seriously... no one gets out alive anyway"

[chinatyke]

I've looked into this a bit more. I tend to accept what I'm told in good faith but it is an old folklore that hedgehogs drink from cows udders at night, though they may be opportunist thieves.
The same guy told us that someone in Yorkshire had done a lot of research on badgers in the county, and despite being advised not to, he published the sett locations. The badger baiters had a field day and wiped out entire populations.

[Stanley]

Could anyone really be that stupid?

[Tripps]

From Grand Master Nigel Short yesterday - after 11 consecutive draws in the World Championship final

"Bookies' favourite for the Nobel Peace Prize - Magnus Carlsen & Fabiano Caruana"

Wonder what he will say after today's 12th draw, when it looked like a result was likely.

Wednesday should be good though.

[plaques]

Wednesday should be good though

Which super computer are you backing? These players have such good memories that unless one of them thinks up a move that has never been played before the end result is another draw.

[Tripps]

It's a bit odd to offer a draw on move 31 (an offer of a draw is not allowed until after 30 moves), when in a stronger position, and well ahead on time remaining. Surely premeditated?

Here's what Kasparov says -
"In light of this shocking draw offer from Magnus in a superior position with more time, I reconsider my evaluation of him being the favorite in rapids. Tiebreaks require tremendous nerves and he seems to be losing his."

I just checked the betting - didn't know there was any - Magnus is 3/10, and Fabio is 5/2 to win the tournament. I think it's closer than that. I won't say who I fancy, but then again - I'm usually wrong.

[Stanley]

Well beyond my pay grade....... I don't even understand the odds!

[plaques]

Tiebreaks require tremendous nerves and he seems to be losing his. (Carlsen)"

I'm not too sure about this. The next four games are speed games. Carlsen and Caruana will first face off in four speed chess games, with each player limited to only 25 minutes to play all his moves. The first 25 moves are generally copies of 'traditional' games. So its all down to preparation. I would still back Carlsen but I must say I've been impressed with Caruana.

[Tizer]

Sir Michael Fallon on May's Brexit deal: "My fear is that this deal gives us the worst of all worlds. We're doomed, I tell ye, we're all doomed!" (Well, no, he didn't actually say that second sentence - but he should have done.)