Mandy Lifeboats
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Posts posted by Mandy Lifeboats
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19 hours ago, sharkyvilla said:
I often wondered how Americans coped with going on holiday and not being able to take their guns anywhere. Never realised they were allowed to check them in as luggage.
Amazingly it's true. They only have to be unloaded and in a hard sided case rather than fabric sided one.
It's not uncommon for USA tourists to be detained at UK airports due to the odd bullet being inadvertently imported in case linings or interior pockets. It normally only leads to a caution, confiscation and being highlighted as a risk for future visits.
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Another shooting. This time at an airport.
The NRA will undoubtedly conclude that USA will be safer if all plane passengers are allowed to carry assault rifles as hand luggage.
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Mark Twain commenting upon Jane Austen:
“When I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I wanted to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
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One of the selling points of Brexit was that it would allow the UK to be governed by the UK legal system.
The UK legal system decides that Brexit needs to go through parliament and the papers are up in arms.
Unlike rain on your wedding day.....that is ironic.
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Here's a slight change of focus.
Which could have been good signings if they hadn't been surrounded by a rubbish team?
Although I despise Richards I'd have liked to have him as RB alongside two rock solid CB.
Steer is a decent 2nd/3rd choice keeper.
I think Gil could have achieved much more in a decent side. As could Veretout.
Lescott would have been a great signing if.............give me a minute..........err..............for the women's over 80s third team........as a backup to Gertrude Rathbone if her hip needed replacement.
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I would still give Flabby a clean slate if:
1. He is the fittest he has ever been.
2. His attitude in training and on match day is exemplary.
3. He has really made a big effort to welcome his new team mates and build some sort of team spirit.
He didn't rape anyone*, kill someone whilst drunk driving or punch a schoolgirl in the face. He was just a complete an utter knob at the time when Villa needed him most.
Personally, I think he's still a knob and hasn't done the things I list above. If he had, I doubt any manager/owner would not have given him a chance.
* just like another footballer in the news yesterday. Who said satire was dead?
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Tuesday- Will Young quits Strictly.
Wednesday - Villa to announce new manager.
Coincidence?
Yes.
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As this thread seems to be in demand every few months may I suggest we all adopt a standard format.
*delete as applicable.
I thought it was a mistake to go for old and experienced/young and full of potential*
We should go for the opposite this time.
Nigel Pearson is proven at this level/a complete knob*
Big Sam is worth a try/should not be touched with a barge pole*
Rowett is a Villa fan/Remember Mcleish*
Remember that Moyes did well at Everton.
Agbonlahor shouldn't be given a fresh start/definitely shouldn't be given a fresh start/definitely, definitely shouldn't be given a fresh start* by the new boss.
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The prisoner dilemma answer at the time was to throw open the doors.
The rationale was that if there was a false alarm, a person making a decision to leave people to starve to death in locked cells could be accused of attempted mass murder. I have no idea if that still stands. But I can't see why it would have changed.
It was reasonably expected that quite a few would survive and flourish in a lawless society.
Sleep well. Pleasant dreams.
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I have tried to include a picture of one of the doomsday computers on this post. If it's worked imagine about 20 -30 of these on a table in a circle. Add known values into disk 1 and get some assumed values. Add those assumed values into disk 2 and get another set of assumed values to enter in disk 3. Keep going until your have completed all.
As further known values became known you would change the assumed values and then work around the circle. You had to factor in human error and faulty readings.
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15 minutes ago, blandy said:
Ah yes, like Winson Green prison only a little more Churchillian.
Have you never met Winston Green? He's a great bloke. I can't remember where he lives. But his house was called "Jail View Terrace".
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As Villa’s season is going so well I thought I’d bring everyone down to earth with a bump and writing about my experience of Armageddon.
Everything I’m writing about refers to the 1980s and has long since been declassified and been in the public domain.
As I explained earlier in the thread I had a place in the “Civil Defence Shelter” in Harborne. I think it was on Meadow Road? Meadow Lane?
In the early stages of an emergency I would be whisked into the shelter. Once inside it was my job to operate what became known as the doomsday computer. It wasn’t a computer. It was a series of plastic disks where you entered known facts and a connected disk would give you some assumptions. For instance if radiation levels in Birmingham were x that suggested that we’d been attacked with a weapon yield of y. If we have been attacked by a weapon yield of y that was likely to have caused total devastation for z miles. All of these facts and assumptions were fed in and communicated to any other shelter still operating. That shelter would them use that data to predict problems coming their way. For instance if you know the yield of a weapon, its height when detonating and the wind-speed you can map fall-out accurately. With the prevailing UK winds, Birmingham was mainly at risk from fallout from Bristol. So knowing when it was due to arrive was handy. It gave surviors time to put on a extra jumper and give the lawn a quick mow. I would keep adding facts and testing assumptions to either strengthen or discount them. It sounds complicated but it wasn’t. It was just sole destroying when you set a certain parameter and the disks told you that meant 100,000 dead. But it wasn’t all fun and games.
We had exercises and played out some common scenarios. Some of them are still fresh in my memory. The most common scenario was that NATO struck first when Warsaw Pact tanks crossed the Rhine. USSR retaliated immediately with more than 100 but less than 200 weapons hitting the UK. Three waves of weapons would be launched. Smaller yields targeting strategic and military targets. Medium yields targeting population centres. Larger yields targeting geographical areas not hit by the first 2 waves. The weapon destined for Birmingham would land somewhere between the Baggies Ground and Winston Green. So its not all bad news. The weapon would be targeted there as it would obliterate the city centre but also cause damage across the Black Country into Wolverhampton. It was reasonably well predicted that not all weapons would find their target and that some would fail to detonate. This gave a real possibility that a costal town/city with little military importance might be undamaged. In one exercise the weapon for Liverpool fell into the sea. In this had occured for real we would have built society again using Liverpool as a base and with Scousers as the main population. In which case we were instructed to find a spare bomb from somewhere and launch it at Liverpool ourselves. Armageddon might be awful but it gets no better if everyone is wearing a shell-suit. (This bit might be made up). The population would drop to under 2 million before stabilising. We never practised getting society back to "normal" as we would not be around long enough for that to happen. The future of the UK would be determined by countries that were not destroyed and how they decided to interact with us.
I found the exercises incredibly interesting but also as depressing as hell. After a few years I hung up Doomsday computer.
I’ll leave you with my favourite scenario that I use at a dinner party to make people to leave.
The missiles are inbound and you are the Governor of Top Security Prison. Your inmates are the worst murders, rapists, paedophiles and estate agents in the country. Most of your wardens have returned home to be with their family. Do you open the doors and let everyone out? Or do you keep everyone locked up leave them to almost certain death? This scenario is very real and there is a correct answer that was agreed in case it were ever needed. If there is interest in this post I will post the answer. But it will be the answer that was in place in the 80s. It might have changed. But I doubt it.
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19 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:I briefly worked on a project in Libya to build a two lane highway under the desert.
We used to have the meetings with the Libyans in cars, driving around and around Malta.
I know.
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Russian spy.
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Due to my job, I had a place reserved for me at the Nuclear Shelter in Harborne.
It was a dire place.
In theory we would have moved in at the very early stages of a crisis and remained there until it was safe to emerge. We did one exercise that involved us being there for a complete week.
I remember one of our first briefings. If there was a nuclear war and every single nurse, doctor, ambulance and hospital was unscathed they could only hopen to save 10% of the injured dying in the first 6 months.
I gave up my place.
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USA has criminals with guns, mentally ill people with guns, paranoid people with guns, kids with guns and people who would rather die than surrender their guns. No wonder the Police are trigger happy. The real solution is to vastly reduce gun ownership. Whilst I would never defend the Police in these instances they are just a tiny part of a much larger problem.
I think they should just admit that independence was a mistake, rejoin the UK, burn the constitution, ban guns and rename themselves "Very West Wales".
Or shall we just invade and burn down the Whitehouse............again.
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I can see 4 dots at a time.
Is this a superpower?
Does anyone know of a plot to destroy the world using a method that relies upon only being able to see 1 dot?
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He's given so much to Villa tha I hope his departure hasn't left him with a sour taste in his mouth.
He was a legend yesterday, he's a legend today and he'll still be a legend tomorrow.
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5 minutes ago, Gary Thomas said:
He didn't and it wasn't a loan.
Finding out it wasn't a failed medical (as quoted by the BBC) just makes me despise him even more.
Scunthorpe.
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I don't understand why a failed medical would necessarily stop a loan deal. Surely Rangers/Villa could renegotiate the terms on a "pay per play" basis.
Anything to get rid of this loser.
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22 hours ago, Xela said:
Do women really know how to operate machinery as technically advanced as a shovel?
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I use a simple system called the balanced scorecard.
Define several criteria you want to measure. For instance the simplest criteria would be customers served and items sold.
Then produce league tables for each of those criteria. The overally rating being your average position in each of those league tables.
You may even decide that those criteria need to be based on average values such as customers served per hour worked.
This system tends to reward people who have a balanced approach.
If one criteria is deemed to be exceptionally important simply give it a weighting factor when calculating the balanced score card.
I have found this works well. People who are regularly at the bottom of all criteria stand out like a sore thumb and are "encouraged" to improve performance. But it also prevents people chasing after one performance measure whilst ignoring all the others.
In footballing terms, it allows you to compare a defender, midfielder and striker even though they contribute in different ways to a team goal (pun intended).
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If Leeds take him I am not sure whether to send them a "Thank You" card or one saying "Thinking of you at this sad time".
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1 hour ago, Dr_Pangloss said:
promotion has to be the aim of the game, anything less than that is a poor return and we'd have to at least consider the position of the manager.
That's repeating another mistakes of the past. If we sack this manager we aren't going to attract anyone better. We'd also need to pay him off and several members of his staff.
We need to rebuild. But we also need to rebuild by making good choices at every stage rather than throwing money at it.
The Boring Thread
in Off Topic
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I put the recycling bin out today. But it should have been the normal bin. But they emptied it anyway.
B@st@rds.
No wonder the ice caps are melting