QUOTE OF THE DAY. TRIPPS ORIGINAL

[Stanley]

So do I. I follow Ernie Roberts' dictum. "Don't tell me about pain! I have seven!"

[Stanley]

I came across this in PE letters yesterday and it seems worth repeating. I was torn between here and Politics so I'll post it in both.
A man called John Evans wrote that whilst Nye Bevan's reference to vermin is often connected with the formation of the NHS it was a different context. He made it during a speech in Manchester on 4 July 1948 the day before the NHS commenced. The context was the hated Means Test and the pitiful level of relief given to poor families when the bread-winner was unemployed. He was referring to his experiences in the Welsh Valleys in the 1920s when he suffered under the Means Test.
"That is why no amount of cajolery and no attempts at ethical or social seduction can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. I warn young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now... They have not changed.. if they have, they are slightly worse than they were".
It seems to me that these words apply today but we haven't got a Nye Bevan.......

[Tripps]

It seems to me that these words apply today

Really? That's a ridiculous thing to say. Have a deeper think about it.

The quote was of its time, and probably appropriate then. Now? I don't think so.

[Stanley]

No David, I am not wrong and it is not ridiculous. Read what I have posted in Politics.

[Tripps]

Kenneth Baker - Baron Baker of Dorking - he of the 'Baker Days', said on LBC this morning

The pass mark for A level Maths has been reduced to 17.5 % - that means they can get 72.5 % of the answers wrong and still pass.

Shades of the Gisburn Primary School story from the Jokes thread.

[plaques]

Some while ago I did a course on German. Multiple choice questions where you got one mark for each correct answer. One question contained five possible answers with four of them being correct. Ie: one mark for each correct answer ticked. This meant that any four answers would give you a minimum of three marks. And so it went on. The overall result was that total random chance answers could have given a 60 % pass rate.

[chinatyke]

Kenneth Baker - Baron Baker of Dorking - he of the 'Baker Days', said on LBC this morning

The pass mark for A level Maths has been reduced to 17.5 % - that means they can get 72.5 % of the answers wrong and still pass.

Shades of the Gisburn Primary School story from the Jokes thread.

Love it. Has he been coached by Diane Abbot?

[Stanley]

I once did a Summer School in Modern History at NYU and all the papers were multiple choice, the first I had ever seen.... When the papers were marked the very small but fierce Jewish Professor took me out into the corridor, pinned me to the wall and asked why I had ticked multiple answers. I told her I could argue for all the ones I had ticked. She said "Multiple choice doesn't mean multiple answers Dummy! Strike out the ones you want to discard!" I did so and got an 'A'. She was a good teacher but was locked in the system.

[Tripps]

From Andrew Neil's twitter thingy. I think he's being a bit ironic.

Venezuelan Prez Maduro has decreed increase in minimum wage of 6,000%. Those with ID card of his United Socialist Party, will get extra bonus equivalent to 600,000 bolivars. He’s also declared a nationwide price freeze.

Job done. I reckon The Venezuelan Economic Crisis is over.

[Stanley]

If you've tried everything else, why not?

[Tizer]

I hope Trump doesn't see that on Twitter or he'll be using the same trick to keep his supporters on side.

[Stanley]

He's broken every other rule......

[Tizer]

This Eleanor Roosevelt quote was in my diary recently:
`Remember, no-one can make you feel inferior without your consent'

[Stanley]

She was a good woman. Behind the scenes she was actually running the US!

[Tizer]

Prof Alan Woodward (University of Surrey) told the BBC that the malicious computer hack at BA may have been done via 3rd party software...
"You can put the strongest lock you like on the front door," he said, "but if the builders have left a ladder up to a window, where do you think the burglars will go?" BBC

[Stanley]

I also heard that Tiz and it makes sense..... Janet once told me that software engineers often leave back doors open in the programmes for their own convenience and never disclosed them. It made it easier for them to work miracles or to adjust something they had got wrong without disclosing it to anyone else (often the same thing!).

[Stanley]

Heard this morning from a senior Tory politician, I missed the name but I like it!
"I am not an apologist for the former Home Secretary, that requires a portfolio of skills which I do not possess"

[Tizer]

More comment about the BA hack...
"Hacks like this make use of an increasingly common phenomenon, in which large websites embed multiple pieces of code from other sources or third-party suppliers. Such code may be needed to do specific jobs, such as authorise a payment or present ads to the user. But malicious code can be slipped in instead - this is known as a supply chain attack." (BBC)

"There is a very clear emerging risk where the weakest link in payment processes is being actively targeted," cyber-security expert Kevin Beaumont told the BBC. "And that weakest link in the chain is often by placing older systems or third-party code into the payment chain." Andrew Dwyer, a cyber-security researcher at the University of Oxford added that the attackers appeared to have gone to "extraordinary lengths" to tailor their code to the BA site. According to RiskIQ, they even went so far as to acquire a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate - which suggests to web browsers that a web page is safe to use. If this was indeed how the attack worked, he added, there are ways of preventing third-party code taking data from sensitive web pages. "BA should have been able to see this," he told the BBC. LINK

That last sentence can be my `quote of the day'!

[Tripps]

S.Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner -

"In addition to reporting hate crime, please report non-crime hate incidents, which can include things like offensive or insulting comments, online, in person or in writing. Hate will not be tolerated in South Yorkshire. Report it and put a stop to it #HateHurtsSY"

Beyond comment. . . .

[Tizer]

That should keep the SY police force busy. I suppose if I said the commissioner was foolish they'd come and get me?

Back to quotes...I heard that well-known one on the radio this morning, `The dangerous man is the one who has nothing to lose' and thought how appropriate it still is to the UK's social and economic situation.

[Stanley]

"Beware the Ides of March....."

[Stanley]

"A pessimist is a well-informed optimist"
Spanish saying.......

[Tizer]

I noted this on the BBC site: `Mr Carney, who has just agreed to stay on as governor of the central bank until 2020, has faced strong criticism in the past, with Brexiteers accusing him of being part of the Remain camp.'
Accusing him of being part of the Remain camp is rather like accusing your doctor of being part of the Stay Healthy camp when he recommends that you take exercise and don't smoke.

[Stanley]

Quite......

[Stanley]

Vince Cable at the Libdem conference..... "Brexit The erotic spasm of fundamentalists who don't care about the economic damage".