PeterRS

Hong Kong The reason for the breaking the rules was basically an indirect result of of the 1992 General Election in the UK. This was the first after Margaret Thatcher had been booted out and her party, the Conservatives, were expected to lose. The party Chairman was a man named Chris Patten who was an MP. By a stroke of extremely good fortune, Patten steered the Party to a small victory, but in the process lost his own parliamentary seat. The Prime Minister, John Major, wanted to elevate him to the House of Lords. Patten declined. He was offered a number of senior cabinet positions in the House of Commons. He rejected these as well. Somewhat exaxperated, i expect, Major asked him what he did want. "To become the last Governor of Hong Kong," was the reply. That Major agreed to this is staggering. Ever since the British took over Hong Kong following the Opium Wars, the Governor had always been a senior civil servant. Since WWII at least, all had spent time serving in the British Embassy in Beijing, all spoke Mandarin Chinese and knew - and were known by - the Chinese leadership. Patten was a self-serving politician. He had never served in China. Knew no Chinese and none of the country's leaders. He also had a particular disliking of the British Civil Service! Hong Kong had had no democracy of note until a Democratic Party was formed in 1994. Its membership was small and it never gained more than a few seats in elections. In Hong Kong the Governor was all powerful, in fact wielding more power than the British Prime Minister in the UK. Successive Governors had squashed the idea of democracy. And with the 1984 signing of the Joint Agreement on Hong Kong's future after 1997 and the subsequent Basic Law agreed by both parties in 1990, neither party wanted any furtherance of democracy - in the short term, although the Chinese promised under the Agreements gradually to expand the democratic franchise over the following decade (whch incidentally they did). Patten arrived in Hong Kong without the usual pomp and ceremony of the arrival of Governors. But he had a secret agenda. He was going to be Hong Kong's saviour by immediately extending the electoral franchise to root democracy so firmly the Chinese could not unravel it. To do this, he gathered around him a very small group of like-minded officials who spent a year going through the Joint Agreement and Basic Law with a tooth comb to pick apart every phrase and comma to find a means to achieve his end. Far worse than this being in secret, he had an old pal of his, the highly respected BBC journalist Jonathan Dimbleby, secretly come to Hong Kong several times during to film him devising this new future for Hong Kong. The resultant book and TV series The Last Governor came as a complete surprise to the people of Hong Kong with whose lives he was playing. When the Chinese heard what was going on, they were - as can be expected - fury personified. Since there was no way they would agree to Patten breaking the Agreements, he held a media conference and announced them himself, all but daring the Chinese to oppose them. Not surprisingly, the Chinese broke off all negotiations and informed the British that the "through train", the political term for the continuation of the form of British administration after 1997, would be abandoned. They would put in their own legilature and other political machinery. Patten had gambled with the lives of amost 6 million people - and lost. I will leave the last word with one of Patten's predecessors in the government of Hong Kong. This is an excerpt from a Huffington Post article. The late John Walden, director of home affairs in the colonial government until the early 1980s, lived through this British hypocrisy most of his life. Calling the late introduction of democracy to Hong Kong a "grand illusion." he added "If I personally find it difficult to believe in the sincerity of this sudden and unexpected official enthusiasm for democratic politics it is because throughout the 30 years I was an official myself, from 1951 to 1981, 'democracy' was a dirty word. Officials were convinced that the introduction of democratic politics into Hong Kong would be the quickest and surest way to ruin Hong Kong's economy and create social and political instability." Very sadly, how right he proved to be!

Just for information, as many readers are aware I post unattributed photos of nude guys in the photo thread. In purely legal terms, pornography on the internet is banned in Thailand. Yet the vast majority of my pics are non-pronographic. Yet the sites keep being banned. The latest one that I have been using I discovered has been banned from today. According to CTN News on May 11, 22% of sites allegedly showing pronigraphy are banned in the Kingdom. https://www.chiangraitimes.com/tech/internet-censorship-in-thailand/

Two days ago it started around 5:00 am with the loudest crack of thunder which woke me up. Today it started about an hour ago (10:50 am) and it remains very gray outside with rain lashing down.

It has arrived earlier than usual. And the amount of rain has been considerably greater than usual. Normally you could expect an hour or so fo rain followed by some nice sunny weather. Two days ago Bangkok had five hours of continuous rain.

The China issue is fascinating on several levels - economic, military, socially around the world. and so on.We know that China is going through a lot of economic pain right now. The real estate market is totally bankrupt and this used to be a key factor in determining the country's GDP. Youth unemployment has passed the 21% mark. It is now so bad the Chinese have stopped issuing monthly figures. Yet we also know that with US markets increasingly subject to sanctions, the Chinese have not been idle. They have been carving out markets in many other parts of the world. President Xi's Belt & Road initiative is expressely intent on expanding China's markets. Yet its sabre-rattling continues over Taiwan, an issue I have discussed in several other threads here if only because I believe China historically and diplomatically does in fact have the legitimate claim to the island. But it is an island and a people I love and visit 3 or 4 times a year. Interestingly, I think, not one of my friends there believes China will try to take back Taiwan by force. Having lived and worked in Hong Kong for the better part of four decades since the end of the 1970s, I believed China's promises re the 1997 handover. And I believe China did fulfil its promises. It was the British and their idiotic and ultimately impossible attempt to introduce democracy in the last years of their rule when they totally broke their Agreements with China and as a result opened a massive pandora's box. Why had they waited more than a century before atempting to introduce any form of democracy when they had specifically promised the Chinese there would be no change in the status quo? China has every right to blame the British - and I write as a citizen of that country. By 2012 Hong Kong was progressing towards a form of anarchy which China would never have allowed on its borders. It is especially sensitive about these borders - as we have seen sadly in both Tibet and with the Uighurs in Xinjiang Province and we are now seeing in war-torn Myanmar. Even earlier at the end of the 1960s, there was amost a nuclear war between China and Russia re a border dispute. With riots and the attempts to build on Britain's last governor's hollow promises, it had no option - it had to do something in Hong Kong. Having been there several times last year, I abhor what is happening. But anyone with any real knowledge of modern China would have known that by breaking the jointly negotiated Agreements Britain's last governor was playing with a deadly fire and his actions were bound to result in a crackdown of some description. So in terms of Taiwan, I believe had Britain allowed Deng Xiao-ping's concept of one-country-two-systems actually to work in Hong Kong, it could have been a model for Taiwan. That is now a dead duck. The assumption of most in the west seems to be that the Taiwanese want independence. That is just not true! What most fail to realise is that Taiwan is split virtually down the middle on whether it wishes to become an independent sovereign state or retain the status quo or become part of China. In the latest 2023 poll, just under 50% wanted independence. And I find it hard to think of any other reason why the USA would find itself in a war with China. Although there is an Agreement (not sure if it is a Treaty as such) that the US will come to Taiwan's aid if attacked by China, realistically what can it possibly do? China is a massive military and nuclear power. It is no Vetnam, Iraq or Afghanistan! Will the American public stand for yet another war in Asia when it lost the last one so badly? I suspect there is presently a majority of hawks in Congress who would quickly vote in favour - until their constituents come down on them like a ton of bricks saying "stop". A war on the basis of trade? That won't happen if only because it is in neither side's interest to allow it to happen in my view.

All the above assumes that the release of a wrongly accused person will result in his having the rest of his life to enjoy new found riches. The effect of wrong incarceration may not give the released that chance. In 1976 in the UK, 23-year old Stefan Kiszcko, a young man of Ukrainian heritage discovered to have a mental age of 12, was sentenced to life in prison for sexual assault and the murder of a young woman. His conviction partly hinged on three 13-year old girls having accused him of indecent exposure days earlier. One of the girls had told a major newspaper that Kiszco was "a monster". The police had advised him he could "go home" if he confessed. The confession was later retracted. It was only a result of his mother's continued persistence in pursuing her son's innocence that irregularities in the actions of both the police and her son's defence team resulted in the sentence being quashed. He was finally released 16 years later in 1992 after he was found to be infertile whereas sperm had been found in the victim. The girls then withdrew their allegations, stating they had only made the accusation "for a laugh". The real culprit was eventually found and jailed. In the meantime, Kiszco, emotionally and mentally broken, suffered a massive heart attack and died after just one year of liberty. His ordeal was described by one member of parliament as "the worst miscarriage of justice of all time." Neither he nor his mother received the full £500,000 he had been promised. There was an interesting programme on UK television more than a year ago. It was an experiment to try to find out what goes on as a jury deliberates. Following a mock trial, with cameras following their deliberations both juries eventually delivered a verdict. The result - one of "guilty" and the other of "not guilty"! Which in my view helps to prove that trial by a jury of one's peers is not the ideal way of procuring justice.

Why should it be up to anyone else to comment of another's affairs of the heart? Shakespeare said it best in the first Act of A Midsummer Night's Dream - "the course of true love never did run smooth." Beware, though. That play features the magic potion which, when applied to the eyelids of somone who is asleep, on wakening that person falls instantly in love with the first living thing he sets eyes on. Just in case such a potion is available in Pattaya, make sure there are no geckos or frogs in your bedroom! You might have a problem with your air ticket home! LOL

As we have been experiencing, the heavy rain is forecast to last until around May 25. The Thai Meteorological Department has forecast the onset of the rainy season, with continuous rainfall expected from May 13-17 and May 18-22, 2025, driven by a strengthening southwest monsoon. The department warns of widespread rain, with 70-80% of Central, Eastern Thailand, and Bangkok affected, while the South faces risks of flash flooding. photo and story: Pattaya Daily News

I fully accept your point. My point was much more mundane. In 1986 and 1987, the years prior to this poor man's incarceration, the Mir Space station had just been launched, Pixar had just been invented, the Space Shuttle Challenger expoded, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded, the Big Mac was introduced, The Phantom of the Opera opened in London, the British car Ferry The Herald of Free Enterpise sank in 90 seconds killing 193, first-ever RugbyWorld Cup was held, Agreement between Britain and France to build the Channel Tunnel signed, Black Monday when the DJ ndex lost 508 points etc. These are all happenings which may still be in the memory of Mr. Sullivan. We have no idea how much he read the newspapers or whether he watched tlevision news, but out of prison he can talk to no-one basically about what happened outside for the last 38 years. Does he know about buying in supermarkets, riding in buses, smartphones, tablets, laptop computers, ATM machines, computer banking - in other words all the things we take for granted if only because we have been living normal lives. How active is his brain? Does he know how to integrate socially? For more than half his life he has virtually only been talking with prisoners and guards. Feeling confortable talking with other people is not something that just happens! In other words, how is he going to fit into this new world socially - not economically.

It's an interesting discussion - who was worse? Much as i absolutely loathe Trump for all the reasons so far expounded, I also agree that by the thinnest of margins, Bush was worse. First he should never have become President. All that ridiculous hanging chad business should have seen Al Gore succeed Clinton. I think most now agree with that. It did highlight, though, how backward the US voting system is. Not in terms of voting for governors or congressmen and women or even District Attorneys and Sheriff's - although I think the USA takes this idea of democracy way too far. No! I mean in terms of a General Election in which the entire nation paricipates. I know how much states' rights etc. are valued, but a General Election affects not just states, it affects the country as a whole. And if a country of the size and importance of the USA cannot get a standard voting system that is as accurate and fair as in, say, the UK (despite the little flaws it may possess), something is seriously wrong. Equally, as have written before, the seemingly desperate desire for all in US public life to cling on to what worked 200 or more years ago is just ridiculous, surely! Why wait for more than two entire months between the results of votes being announced and a new President taking office. What mayhem could an existing President indulge in during that period. In the UK, the result is announced one day and the incoming Prime Minister is installed the next. The US no longer has to work on hand count after hand count and then use covered wagons in relaying the results to Washington does it? Then there is the four year term limit. 200 years ago that might have made sense. Today it makes none - unless the US votes more often than not for idiots to the top job! Internationally you cannot have one President start a raft of programmes and then another ditch them in favour of his own a few years later. Example 1. Clinton with assistance from Bill Richardson and Madelyn Albright was making progress - how much we do not know but it was definitely progress - with North Korea. In comes idiot 1 in the shape of Bush 2, calls North Korea part of an axis of evil - and boom, back to the drawing board on one nuclear state. Example 2. Iran. As long as the USA backed the Shah and the Shah happily sided with the USA but only because of all the $$$ and weaponry it gained, the US was perfectly happy for Iran to start an atomic programme and Iran agreed to regular inspections. Having totally misread the Iranian people, the USA continued with this fiction until the Iranians were fed up of their corrupt, megalomaniac leader, kicked him out and welcomed back the Ayatollah Khomeini. All change again and again back to the drawing board - but arguably a more dangerous one this time! Example 3. Iraq. The US happily propped up Saddam Hussein as a stablising force in the turbulent Middle East. Even during the 8-year Iran-Iraq war it fed oodles of cash and even more weapons to Hussein. When that ended in stalemate and Hussein was discovered to be the bully and thug he always had been by attacking Kuwait, the US changes tack once again. Bush 1 attacks but stops short of dethroning him. To save papa's face, on false pretenses Bush 2 lunches a full-out war. He then puts a cigar-chomping cowboy-boot wearing idiot like Paul Bremer with little foreign policy experience other than being a staffer in that warmonger Henry Kissinger's company into Baghdad to run the country. His first job is abolishing the Iraqi army which directly leads to ISIS - and we know where that led. Example 4. Iran again. In 2015 under Obama, the US announced its participation in a joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to permit Iran to start a simpified programme of nuclear activity in return for getting rid of sanctions. The Agreement was signed by the USA, the UK, China, France, Germany, Russia, Iran and the EU. Throughout IEAE inspectors confirmed iran's adherence to the Agreement. In April and July 2017, Trump's administration confirmed Iran was sticking to the deal. Trump then pulled out of the deal and it collapsed. So in my view four years in a term of office is not nearly long enough. The top men in the US' main opponents Russia and China have no term limits that cannot be broken virtually at will. They can view the future through a long term lens. How can the US compete in our hugely complex world of 2025 when election depends on achievements during four year terms? Yet the US happily elects Supreme Court Justices on the basis of their politics, they adhere to no known ethics standards and are there for life! How can a sub-standard lawyer with only 2 years judicial experience like Clarence Thomas be allowed to vent his spleen and accept bribes on those who opposed his stupid nomination for almost 34 years? It surely makes no sense whatever! But I still believe Bush wins the more loathed President - at least until next week when goodness knows what Trump might do. After all, Bush is the one who claimed after his first meeting with Putin in 2001, "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy . . . I was able to get a sense of his soul." What an idiot! Bush had not the faintest grasp of foreign affairs.

I have adored that play since I first read it - even before I saw it on stage. I suspect there is a part of Hamlet in every gay of the older generation and perhaps even of the younger. I find myself at times wanting to scream at the page "Don't do this!" "Can't you see where this is leading?" Yet we can change nothing in the play and we know it is not going to end at all well for almost any character. If you love Hamlet, you absolutely have to read/see what I call it's companion play by the superb writer Tom Stoppard, Rosenkranz and Guildenstern Are Dead. They are perhaps only bit players in Shakespeare's play, but Stoppard effectively imagines a play next to a play. In other words, as you read or watch it, you have to imagine that much of Shakespeare's Hamlet is being performed just offstage to your left or right. Rosenkranz and Guildenstern are of course the two pals of Hamlet but in Shakespeare as in Stppard's play they have little idea what is really going on. They are almost permanently confused. Stoppard brilliantly starts the play with just the two characters on stage flipping coins. They are trying to work out the probability of how often they will come up 'heads' and how often 'tails'. As the curtain goes up, the coin has landed 'heads' 85 times in a row. They speculate on chance and the meaning of chance. Then they realise they have no idea why they have been summoned to Elsinore, their lives are chance and the first clue that they are as in little control of their own destinies as the coin landing 'heads' so many times. And as the title implies, they eventually have an inkling that death will be the end of their journey to England, just as most of the characters in Hamlet are dead before the curtain falls. A fabulous play!

I agree entirely with @Riobard. I have ionly just read that New York post article and find major flaws near the very start - Yes, controllers can take 45 days off to handle alleged “trauma” caused by … equipment failures. Yes, preventing plane crashes is a high-stress job, and it’s surely freaky when your radar cuts out — but that’s not trauma, and treating it as such is deeply irresponsible. One, it’s yet another major intrusion of therapy culture into everyday life, in which the slightest adverse event gets magnified into a life-altering disaster that requires endless healing time. Two, it’s literally putting other people’s lives in danger. The italics and bold face are my insertions. If I am an air traffic controller and I am responsible for - I don't know how many each controller handles at any one time but let's assume - six incoming aircraft, if my radar cuts out I'd be in a state of some considerable panic. I have the lives of, say, 1,500 people in my hands. I do not know where they are, I cannot advise them to climb or descend because I have no idea what other aircraft are in the vicinity. I have no idea if they can continue to land because I do not know what is on the runway. And the NYP terms this FREAKY? It is a helluvalot more than freaky! It's not TRAUMA? It's life-threatening in the first instance and could cost a gazillion in insurance costs if one or more plane goes down. Indeed, would any airport's insurance policies cover a total hull loss due to equipment failure. Somehow I doubt it. Lost in the discussion seems to be one reason for the stress/trauma - as stated in the NBC article in the OP "four experienced controllers and one trainee were on leave." I have no idea how many controllers are on the rota system at Newark, but if you take out that number of controllers and the possbility of others being sick, the airport surely has a problem. Why were they permitted to be on leave at the same time? Was this putting lives in danger? Only Newark management can answer that. With all respect to other responders, I do not believe for one moment that you can compare jobs of a doctor/surgeon or a firefighter with an air traffic controller. Coming from a family amost all of whom are in the medical profession. I have the utmost respect for those working in that field. An operating theatre requires the skills and 100% attention of all present, not simply the lead surgeon. But equipment failure is likely to lead to - very sadly - one death per theatre. A pandemic like covid is different and does require an "all hands on deck" working horribly long hours to keep patients alive. But that scenario is, I am pretty certain, a relatively rare occurrence in each country. Similarly one out-of-order fire hydrant, intensely frustrating though it may be, is not the end of the world for a firefighter. I wonder who remembers the television series titled "Air Crash Investigation". This focussed on a considerable number of air crashes and the reasons for them. The series covered a long time span. I recall one programme about the crash of a full Turkish Airlines DC10 outside Paris in 1973 due to the aft cargo door being closed incorrectly. Some involved air traffic control. One of these focussed on a 2002 nightime crash over the Swiss German border in an area with Swiss air traffic controllers. A DHL 757 cargo jet was flying from Italy to Belgium. In control were two very experienced pilots. At the same time a Russian Tupolev with a equally experienced crew was on an overnight chartered flight from Moscow to Barcelona. Of the complement of 69 passangers and crew, 46 were schoolchildren flying to some UNESCO arranged camp. With Swiss airspace virtually dead at that time of night, only two air traffic controllers were on duty. One was resting in an adjacent room. Although against regulations, it had been practiced for years. Only one therefore handled the very limited air traffic movements. It is a supreme irony that the children should have been on a flight two days earlier. Having arrived in Moscow by overnight train, their driver took them to the wrong airport and they missed their flight. They had to wait two days for what was to be their fatal flight. Again for reasons I cannot recall, both aircraft were permitted to ascend to the same height - effectively putting them on a collision course. About one minute prior to the collision, the air traffic controller finally realised the situation and ordered the Russian aircraft to descend immediately. But most aircraft have a TCAS system (Traffic Alert and Collission Avoidance System) which warns it of an impending collision and automatically takes avoiding action. The DHL 757 did just that and that aircraft also started automatically to descend. Moments later the planes collided. The accident enquiry found that the air traffic controller had given incorrect information about the positions of the aircraft relative to each other. Maintainenance work also meant that one radar system was out of operation. For whatever reason, the ground based optical warning system had also been switched off for maintenance. Had it been operational, it would have given the controller sufficent warning about a potential collision. The air traffic controller understandably required leave due to traumatic stress Three managers of the air traffic control company were given suspended prison sentences. The worst effect occurred 21 months after the accident. Devastated by the death of his wife and two children, one Russian father tracked down the air traffic controller at his home near the airport and stabbed him to death in front of his wife and three children. One further result of the accident enquiry was improvements to the TCAS system. That murder was definitely an extreme example of what could possibly happen to a flight controller. But who is to say it might not happen again? And some say there is little stress management required for controllers?

Dare I suggest the ever present possibility of a hangover rendering whatever the scene as boring as the drill in your head? Oops!

Oh dear, I am just not a gin drinker! On the other hand, if you made it with Belvedere Polish vodka and a dash of ginger or lime, I'd join you next time you're in Bangkok - as I assume you'l be paying. 🤣🤣🤣

I find the concept of restitution a total cop out. Nothing can restore what has been unlawfully taken away. Daily life is not something that can be bought. Seeing the sunrise, the first sip of the morning's brewed coffee, getting the kids ready for school, hearing the birds sing and the swish of the trees, setting off for work, the joys of a family holiday and Christmas, a child's wedding, the first grandchild . . . how do you compensate for missing that year in year out? A few million $$ may help to buy a nice home and take nice holidays and so on. But how does it help anyone adjust to a society and even more importantly mix in with that society that has moved on 38 years since you last tasted freedom? Does it in any way help you face the minefields of the ordinary day-to-day discourse of life in 2025 when the last you remember is life in 1987? Does living in a lovely apartment or house with gardens take away the remembrance of all those years and the clang of the cell doors of your tiny cage? Easy questions - and I just have no answer. I cannot understand how a mega-dollop of cash can compensate.

Qatar also had flights to/from Chiang Mai. But their UTP and CNX flights were not non-stops. At least one of the legs also stopped at another Thai destination - most likely Phuket.

You have excited my curiosity. I just ordered the kindle edition of Call Me By Your Name. For a while in my late teens I thought it would be fashionable to read some Russian literature. I loved Anna Karenina, got through War and Peace but can recall little about it, and failed to finish The Brothers Karamazov. My reading habits then took a major turn downwards!

Apologies. I must have been in one of @Olddaddy's trains of thought!

Surely that depends to a very large extent where you are? Sorry I expect this will highjack the thread a bit but it is only to illustrate a point. Hope it pisses no one off!

I have a fertile and quite active imagination, unfortunately LOL

@Pete1111 - many thanks for your list. Can you perhaps elaborate a little on how at least some of the movie of Call Me By Your Name differs from the book? I was thrilled that James ivory won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for the movie, if only because I admired his Merchant/Ivory movie collaborations so much, especially The Remains of the Day, Howards End and Room With A View. I have only read one Mary Renault book: The Persian Boy, part 2 of her Alexander Trilogy. Her superb writing brings her subjects completely alive and must have been something of a revolution for a female writer in her day.

Two court judgements today have hit the headlines, one in the USA and one in the UK. The one which will be most talked about is the resentencing of the Lyle Brothers in the USA. In 1989 they were convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possiblity of parole for the brutal murder of their parents. They had basically alleged they snapped one evening and could take no more of the regular sexual molestation by their father. A judge has resentenced the pair to 50 years in prison but now with the possibility of parole. The brothers have admitted to the murder. Relatives say the brothers have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation and have undertaken and paid for a variety of major improvements for prisoners, adding that the severity of the sentence should be revisited because of an evolving understanding of childhood sexual abuse. A cousin, Diane Hernandez, testified that she lived with the Menendez family in their Beverly Hills home and viewed herself as an older sister to the boys. On the stand, she described how their father Jose Menendez intimidated and terrorized the house, and testified about his “hallway rule” that when he was with the brothers, no one else could be. A parole board hearing is scheduled for June 13. If approved, the result must then go to the State Governor who has the right to accept or reject it. The one that will go unnoticed by most is that of Peter Sullivan in the UK whose life sentence has just been quashed on DNA evidence proving he could not have been guilty. He has been in jail for 38 years for the horrific murder of a 21 year old florist. Now 68, his life has been wrongly cut short by virtually half a lifetime. Remarkably he has said to the media, "I am not angry, I am not bitter. I am simply anxious to return to my loved ones and family as I’ve got to make the most of what is left of the existence I am granted in this world.” We have heard in the past about prison releases due to wrongful convictions, tainted evidence etc. The first that come to mind are the Central Park Five in the New York, two of whom had been aged only 14 and 16 at the time of the crime - although their sentences were for little more than a decade. In the UK four men were given life sentences for a pub bombing which resulted in several deaths in 1975, later confirmed to be as a result of confessions under torture and massively tainted police evidence. One died in prison. the others were freed and exonerated after 15 years in jail. But I sometimes wonder how I would feel if, like Peter Sullivan, I had had to spend 38 years in jail on the basis of a wrongful conviction. Would I not be so eaten up by anger and bitterness that I might have become the person the system thought it was sentencing? How could I seriously start to enjoy life knowing that all my most productive years had been taken away from me with perhaps only 10-15 years of life left? How do you while away 38 years productively? The thought horrifies me. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/13/us/menendez-brothers-resentencing-hearing https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/may/13/peter-sullivan-jail-murder-conviction-quashed-diane-sindall

CNN has obviously seen @unicorn's post! There is an article on the website today illustrating how to pronounce some British place names - including at the end the name of that that massively long Welsh village (although I still defy anyone actually to pronounce it anything like correctly!!) https://edition.cnn.com/travel/commonly-mispronounced-british-place-names

The next little nugget from "Original Sin" appears in today's CNN website. When Biden arrived at the mega-George Clooney fundraiser, he did not know who Clooney was! "The president appeared 'severely diminished', as if he’d aged a decade since Clooney last saw him in December 2022 . . . 'You know George,' the assisting aide told the president, gently reminding him who was in front of him. 'Yeah, yeah,' the president said to one of the most recognizable men in the world, the host of this lucrative fundraiser. 'Thank you for being here' . . . "Biden’s apparent inability to recognize Clooney was one of the starkest signs of his physical and mental decline in the final year of his presidency . . . The Clooney fundraiser took place on June 15, less than two weeks before the debate. Clooney was 'shaken to his core' by the interaction with a man he’d known for years, Tapper and Thompson report." https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/13/politics/biden-book-george-clooney

I had assumed that the escort was not intending providing his actual "identity card". Why else would he have mentioned blocking out certain information? It would ony be a copy. I therefore assumed - I believe reasonably - that anyone reading my response would fully understand that by providing a driving licence that would also be a copy. It could hardly be the original as he could not block out details! More importantly, he would also have to see the prospective client in person when showing the original! I have been told that photocopies of driving licences are not that difficult to forge.