You flounced before the end of the 1st half?

Not sure what they are like in other parts of the World , but the TV adverts for banks over here are vomit inducing. The worst two are NAB and Westpac. If you did not know you would think they were charities.

over here, some bank ads are ok (like Natwest), but others like Lloyds/Halifax/Nationwide are similarly shit like you say. Its all 'we're here for you' 'always by your side' 'always part of your community' etc. Really, really overselling their self importance.

People who can see a slow moving vehicle up ahead yet still drive right up behind it and then cause everyone to have to break as they try to pull out from behind it and get back up to a decent speed.

Only if it is a plantain. Your standard 'Cavendish' yellow banana is unripe when green and should be left until it is yellow or left until later depending on taste. Black or bruised bananas make fantastic banana cake and smoothies.

They're all broken? :sob:

Yep - good spot Kylie M and TK - the reality is that you negotiate your way through a maze of options on the telephone 'using your keypad' or even worse with some dodgy Facejacker-esque 'voice recognition' system only to then have to sit in a queue to a dodgy call centre for 45 minutes before being put on hold and then redirected 5 times.

After all that your request for 'help' is subject to a highly complex and powerful points-based algorithm calculated on a supercomputer with a processing power of more than a petaflop that costs tens of millions of pounds which decides that you are not risk-averse enough to be considered for a £500 loan.

Yes, indeedy. You never need to waste a banana. We always have too many, and thus have a constant supply of lovely banana bread.
Which is nice...

Not really annoying, but along similar lines, all the car insurance companies are seeming trying to out "comedy" each other at this time.

Actually they are doing a pretty good job and some are pretty funny in a classic commercial type of way.

I digress...

Back to annoyances... The trees all around me finally shed their last leaves about 3 weeks back... now they have started to blossom and the back yard is covered in seed shells and pollen.

Funny thing is, it happens every year. Who knew! :wallbash:

"It's what you do" ?

Yes, GIECO seem to be the leaders, but they all seem to be getting on the bandwagon.

Also Farmers "We know a thing or two, because we've seen a thing or two".

You should have given me a call when you were here in Aus .:rolleyes::D

People that start posts with “Errr” or “wow.....”

I think you’re fukkin morons

Wow, that’s not very nice.

Err I see his point.

I think WOW has a purpose. If something is truly amazing, someone so talented, someone or something is beyond contempt or shows staggering arrogance or hypocrisy, a single WOW is perfect. Maybe Porto's game against Juventus, but not Fernandes scoring a penalty.

Same as using HI fecking LARIOUS when something is mildy amusing and instantly forgetable at best.

Mushroom, I am here for you Babe if you need to talk. (Code for - give me half a chance and I will get in your knickers).

Is Geico still using the louche, English accented, gecko character?

Yes, although I've never quite understood the connection between a mockney accented gecko and car insurance.

Maybe that's why I was not in advertising.

As an aside, my wife said the other day that should could not stand his (the gecko's) accent. I said, "Isn't it a bit like mine"? To which she just said, "Umm".

Their was another ad from the US (maybe insurance, not sure) that fascinated me when I was in Jamaica sometime back and this was a rather striking woman with a hairband and amazing eyes working in a virtual shop...I think I posted her pic up in Guilty fancies thread at the time. Later time I searched for a pic, she had got a bit older and had acquired a tv family for the ads....struggling to remember the company though.

Having another all-night breathing attack and getting no sleep once again, only for my lungs to finally clear just as the guys building the loft conversion next door turn up, to be joined by council workers doing tree work out in the street with a wood chipper.

Leeroooooooooooy Jenkins!!!!!

Not Flo from Progressive Insurance?

Might be a guilty fancy, as I'm not sure she is Googleperve material.

:supergrin:

Chatbots AGAIN

"Ask us a question"

"How big is it?

"How may we help you"

"Read the question"

"I'll be happy to assist what's your location"


"UP YOUR ******* ARSE"

Moonpig :hmph:

What an utterly soul-destroying experience that is. In fact, the entire tradition of sending cards to people is a load of old cobblers as well.

To the Mayor of London and TFL - every journey matters.

Possibly the most insincere statement of the last ten years.

I'm afraid Mayor Khan annoys me too ; and he really shouldn't.

I would normally agree with you wholeheartedly on this but I have been instructed to isolate for ten days by the government T&T app, a period of time that covers both Mothers Day and my sister’s 50th birthday, so I have used the services of this kind of company.

It says a lot about London that he will be re-elected when he is possibly the most abject failure imaginable - save perhaps for that bloke in charge of Wales.

I have to say that is a queer statement to make Maz.

Fancy explaining that one?

He has implemented a lot of policies without consultation. And they are not all good ones, for instance closing bus lanes to all traffic even outside peak times.


There is no sense to this, other than the anti-road lobby got to him. As if driving in London (and some people have to) isn't hard/expensive enough.



Likewise the congestion charge now stands at a massive £15 and runs seven days a week from between 7:00 am to 10:00 pm. So all those people who used to go into the city to dine or go to the theatre will now be caught as well. It will be interesting to see how this hits those businesses come the end of lockdown : but I rather think those with less ready cash will be less inclined to stump up.



It's a tax now; nothing to do with congestion and it's a tax on the poorer folk who don't fancy walking or cycling, which is Khan's proposed alternative.

Wasnt the cc extension one of the government's conditions for bailing out TfL?

London Mayor = joke.Boris I won`t close Tube ticket offices I will keep them open as focal points,oops.Garden bridge 50 mill,oops.Boris bikes Red Ken started that scheme off,oops.I`m going to buy water canon,Chancellor ,no you won`t there is no legal precedent to be able to use them,bought them anyway,sold a few years later for scrap,oops.

In theory, yes. But a more competent politician would have managed a compromise.

All those charities with the same sales pitch. Give us £3 a month and we can cure war, disease and famine, save ecvery species og wildlife etc Cue the violins. They havent yet , why should we believe them now. Change the record guys

You still chained up to that radiator Maz?

:eek:;)

You forget I AM THE VICTOR!!

You and Khan both.

You rate him?

I don’t really have an opinion other than he’s not Shaun Bailey... which is hardly a ringing endorsement. His plans to make London as car free as possible are laudable, there’s always the train, particularly outside of peak for your dining and theatre trips.

He was stitched up like a kipper by the government over the LT subsidies etc. and I don’t know what else he could have done.

However, let’s not derail / politicise this thread.:p

That is his saving grace.

Enough now of endless close ups of people sticking swabs up their noses on the news.

Like not extending it to the north and south circular?

Aaaah. I took a different interpretation of your 'shouldn't'.

Auf Wiedersehen.

And a needle being stuck in peoples arms... I cringe every time.

I think we all know what having a jab looks like... we don't need to see it being done to someone every night! :eek:

Not really annoyed with these ones. First is somethin that is perhaps personal to me, the other is something I find irritating when I socialise with Chileans - and that is down to my cultural bias.

Personally, I really don't like eating messy food, and I will rather go hungry than eat messy food in public with others. A regular sized burger with not so many dripping sauces, no problem. A restaurant with my wide or family, no problem with knives and forks, napkins etc..

My angst in Chile. I think this applies to most Chileans, although I only have one Chilean mate really. When we organise a drink in a pub or bar in the evening, I am still in UK mode, I like to go for a DRINK - this doesn't mean a maximum of two pints with food. That is fine for lunch. It immediately irritates me when the server comes over (usually with a menu) and my friend immediately starts looking at the food options.
I actualy insist we get a pint in first and sit and talk without having our faces in the fecking trough from get go. It is something I would expect my wife to go to the pub for.

I can see it is a cultural difference. In the UK we may well eat something before we go out, and we have a takeaway culture that is almost set up for the post beer market.

Why does it irk me so? And I think CT will add his voice backing me, and yes I accept differing cultures. If I haven't seen my mate or this group of mates for a few months and we finally agree a meet up where most can attend, I look forward to a decent, and fairly long evening. I am gearing myself up for, say, 5 pints . the beer is stronger here.
When mr worms immediately reaches for the menu I am instantly deflated. I know that the evening is already curtailed. If everyone decides to pick and share we fill our stomachs up and the beer makes us bloated. We perhaps struggle through the third pint before calling it a night early. And we have hardly had a good catch up.

If I decide not to eat, because I am in drinking mode, then the others call it a night early and I go home insatiated or I am left ordering another pint on my own.

In Harry Enfield and Chums speak NO. I have yet to get the chap into 3rd pint territory before his food or the table's food arrives.

I eat in pubs, daytime. If Palace are playing. A lunchtime drink requires something to line the stomach or you get home at 5pm and the rest of the day is a washout. Th early evening hangover. This is a social meet up in the evenings between blokes.

I guess I am just so used to 6 or more pints and post pub curry or take out in front of the telly. I just want to get home after these meet ups feeling a bit pissed.

Indeed I will back you up on this. A major cause is the licensing laws here. There's one type of license for a proper bar/pub and there's another (easier to get) license for a restaurant that serves alcohol. This means that even if you rock up to what looks like a proper bar, it will have a restaurant license for booze which requires that the punters are there to eat with a drink, not just get boozed up like me and Peter. As a result you should buy something to eat even if it is a bowl of onion rings or chips. (Thankfully many bars will overlook this farce, possibly because we both look ridiculously gringo :D and as such can bend a few rules )
Anyway, all this encourages your average Chilean to go for the nosebag almost immediately, when it should beer time.

Sounds pretty similar to it is here.

My straight up boozing days are over, but still found it annoying when going to a retirement or leaving after works drink, it ended up with food (albeit appetizer type stuff). One sure way to kill the standing around chatting to folks with a beer in your hand, which I guess is the old school way we think of from England and pubs.

At the last World Cup I went to a local pub here to watch England, and half the people in there were sitting at tables stuffing their faces with fish and chips or bangers and mash etc.. No way to watch football!

Oh, and don't get me started on who pays for what when food gets involved! Certain people got quite a reputation for paying the minimum, yet consuming the most food... But that's for a different post. God I don't miss the politics of work!

Indeed Bob, very similar. Although I have to say that we were spoiled in CT with some nice little boozers where food was available but not required socially, to which Stonepenge can attest

We have a few small Gastro Pubs popping up (pre-COVID) that have a bar you can sit on a stool or stand at and not worry about having to get food.

Great if there is just a couple of mates I guess, but "drinking" culture just seems a thing of the past generally speaking... well for me anyway (Billy no mates!)

Ref. Drinking culture: In CT I was a member of the First Thursday of the Month Club. Eight of us (English blokes) who lived in 2 relatively nearby towns. As some of us wouldn’t get off the train from Grand Central until 8-8:30pm, we met up at 9pm, by which time the bar was emptying out. By 11 we were often the only ones left. Sad isn’t it?

LOL. Unless we meet up downtown for a toxic pisco sour session and forget to eat. I probably staggered in a zig zag session past some of my evening students leaving the campus for the last metro. You may well have got off the metro at a station that wasn't the one you were supposed to.....You hadn't been here long, that was a great night and a bit of lesson in sobriety.

I did, but I knew it wasn’t my stop. My bladder on the other hand persuaded me it was.
To this day I don’t know how Andrew biked it home. Mind you he probably doesn’t either. I think he was happy just to have managed to get the lock and chain off it. LOL

Agree with HH.

I love the barbecue here, but again I don't want a choripan stuffed into my mitts when I am in the process of opening the first bottle of wine.

And if there are women involved, there has to be a table laid and plates with cutlery, and various salads. I just want someone to chuck the occasional rib my way.

Andrew cycled home, and fell off three times on route, following us demolishing 9 bottles of wine together one Christmas Day.

Pubs and bars make more.money on food than they do booze.

People.

Not when me and Peter are on a sesh they don't :p

If you're saying that you did 9 bottles between the two of you, you’re either speaking from beyond the grave or your nose is longer than your country of residence:)

The refuge was so empty for our Palace games that if we didn't eat then they made nothing on food.

Even on busy evenings, at those prices, I reckon Darren made more on the beer. For reference, getting vlose to 5 quid a pint in Santiago. Not cheap on what we take home.

I think the restart will see the industry (and commercial rents) kill itself off. Or what is left of it after 18 months out (pre-pandemic protests included).

People just entertain at home with the barbecue and everyone chips in. Pubs become restaurants that happen to sell beer. Reliant on the lunch trade.

My wife had one bottle, my kids probably shared one.

7 bottles from 2pm to 2am with Christams food. That is only 3 and a half bottles each.

I have done more than 2 bottles on my own in a session this year with barbecues...I open the first and my wife takes half a glass. I may even finish that. I open a second - same story.

Add a pre beer or a post Baileys.


Fly over here and you can join me in the challenge.

We could get it on Faceache and make a trend of it. Get pissed up and nominate a friend for charity.

At any one time on here he sounds like he's consumed 9 bottles of wine.

I wouldn’t make it to half-time!

Sounds pretty much like the way some pubs over here dealt with the substantial meal requirement back last autumn.

Similar offence, albeit in massively different circumstances.

People that don't indicate on roundabouts

Utter Cunts the lot of them. The delay it causes drives me nuts.

Sorry if that offends but it is so dumb, it slows the whole system down because some people are too damn lazy to move one of their fingers, what, maybe an inch?

I’d have them have a finger amputated for each time as a driver they are so self centred that they didn’t bother to indicate their intentions on a roundabout.

Just to remind them.

Glad im not the only one :D

Let’s see them take tea with the queen with no pinkies.

Ha

Indeed.

However I don't understand why Palace midfielders need to stop, look in their mirrors and signal every time they turn right.

People who refer to their family as 'Team...'. Twats.

Anyone and everyone using 'unprecedented', appropriate context or not. C*nts.

Thought this rang a bell...

A while ago, I was at a small roundabout waiting to pull out and I could see a car opposite pulling off but not signalling right. Something about the car and driver made me think “I bet they’re not going straight and they’ll turn right and come all the way round, despite not signalling”, so I waited...sure enough, they did. I threw my hands up in exasperation and shook my head and that was enough for the lady to stop in front of me on the roundabout, get out and came round to my window. We had a fairly civil disagreement about the Highway Code for about 30 seconds until my wife lost her patience (along with the queue of cars behind us) and told her to **** off, at which point she tried to reach into my window to take my keys whilst shouting something disparaging about my wife. I deflected her arm away and she scarpered back to her car and sped off. She was in her 60s and spoke and looked a lot like Hyacinth Bouquet. A very weird incident, but perhaps representative of the halfwits who don’t signal on roundabouts.

So there is a four road roundabout, let call the exits North, East, South and West.

You are driving up to the roundabout from the South and want to go straight on and exit at the North road.

I would not indicate left until I had passed the West exit while keeping to the inside lane (if there was that option). Is that wrong? Sounds like what Hyacinth Bouquet may have been doing as above.

I've forgotten what the code is, or is this more a point of etiquette at this time?

I'm off to Google it.

OK, found this for International Travels to the UK (Which I now consider myself!):

A. Let’s say you are approaching a 4-junction roundabout at what is effectively a crossroads and you wish to turn right onto another street.
While signaling “right,” you should move to the right-hand lane. When clear to do so, you enter the roundabout and remain in the right-hand lane (nearest the center) until you have passed exit 2, that is, the exit for going straight ahead. As you pass exit 2, you change your turn indicator from right to left and move to the far-left-hand lane ready to leave at exit 3. By first remaining in the right-hand lane, you allow vehicles approaching from exit 1 (on your left) to pull onto the roundabout and take exit 2 unimpeded.

B. If you approach a roundabout but are going straight on, you remain in the left-hand lane and enter the roundabout without signaling, but immediately after you have passed the first exit (exit 1) you signal left.

C. Now let’s say that as you approach the crossroads, your intention is to take the first exit from its roundabout, effectively turning left at quarter-to-nine.
As you approach, you signal “left” and a driver (in car A) following you, who intends turning right, sees your signal and pulls up beside you (to your right). You both note another car (car B) approaching from your right within the roundabout. This car will be indicating “right‚” which confirms that you and car A have to give way to him.
As car B approaches your entrance to the roundabout, its driver changes his signal to blink left, thereby confirming he intends taking the same exit as you. You are still indicating left, and when car B has passed in front of you, you pull forward and proceed left. Car A, on your right, will also have pulled away (and continued around the roundabout).

You and the driver of car B who passed in front of you should still be clearly indicating left so that any traffic waiting to enter the roundabout from the first exit has advance warning that it is clear for them to enter the roundabout unimpeded.

C gets a bit wordy, but I get the gist of it. My problem is I'm a bit dyslexic when it comes to left and right! :supergrin:

Yes 'C' took some getting my head around at this time in the morning!

With roundabouts basically you indicate left as you pass the exit before the one you want to take with the addition of indicating right up to that point if you are turning right or exiting where you started. In the case of 'C' you do get a lot of people who leave their right hand indicator on or never use it at all. :veryangry

Last time I drove in England was when I came over for the Cup Final in 2016.

I think I got away with it, but I suspect I pissed a few drivers off. I recall getting honked at at a roundabout near Heathrow when I was taking the car back. I think he thought I pulled out in front of him, which in fairness I did!

But, heck, the local knowledge needed to navigate around there was off the charts... not good for all the "tourist" picking up or returning rental cars in that area! :hi:

Along the same lines, another time a guy pulls up along side me and tells me to "Turn your ******* fog lights off"!

I thought I had turned the real window defroster on... apparently not. :embarass:

if you were at the east end of Heathrow (Hatton Cross) you would have met this mind bender!

People, especially English people here in America, who refer to St. Patrick's Day as St. Paddy’s Day.

Wrong on so many levels...

Hedgehog caught on video at Hatton Cross...

I just read this and said out loud when I read the indicate left until I had passed the West exit bit "youre not indicating anything Bob, you've crashed the car well before then" ... then I realized you were navigating the roundabout in England.

If you are going straight on this is the correct way

A pretty rare thing out here is a roundabout. In fact I think they call them Traffic Circles... shows how rare they are that after nearly 40 years I'm not sure what they call them!

There is one close to where I live, and I've yet to see anyone indicate while using it (except me!).

Found this:

Circular intersections might've first developed in Europe, but they migrated to America and acquired new regional names. Most of the western part of the country calls them "roundabouts," while in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, they're "traffic circles." In New England, pockets of Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire call them "rotaries."

it might be Tesla's next challenge to invent indicators that work automatically while driving in manual mode. It would save people having to lift a finger every time they wanted to turn somewhere?

Funny you say that, I was following a Tesla the other day, and they made a turning without indicating, and I said under my breath, "I guess you don't want to waste electricity using them pesky indicators!"

Then I got to thinking along the lines of what you are saying. Seems like if you were using a Sat Nav at the time it would be pretty easy to incorporate, unless like me half the time you ignore the Sat Nav!

Well let’s take it a few steps further. When we have self driving cars why not have them (within a reasonable distance) all talk to each other, so the car turning right on a roundabout for example simply transmits an indication (see what I did there?) of what it is going to do and all the cars nearby take any required action accordingly like slowing down or changing lanes.

I think that been the long term goal of manufacturers, well at the ones looking at autonomous driving vehicles. It would take a hell of a lot of unity between the manufacturers to come with a universal system though?
The basic system that I saw was mainly detecting cars ahead and in rear avoiding collisions but also that they could pass on information like traffic jams and weather conditions to passing cars.

You need three paracetamol etc. Two come out. Delicately tap the bottle for the third one, two more come out. Try to put one back, one goes back in but one falls on the floor. Worse if you're late for work.

And anti diorrhea tablets. You're already shitting your pants, so let's wrap them in packaging more difficult to remove than Mary Whitehouse's bra at a bible reading

What's your excuse?

Can you provide a list of all the levels?

I will start - St Patrick's Day shouldn't be a THING outside of Ireland. It is just an International Guinness commercial.
Real Irish people can celebrate any way they choose. We don¿t have global public celebrations for Scotland orr Wales. And we don't die rivers green.

2...

2. Call it St. Paddy's day sounds like a term of endearment, it's a bloody random day that should not be celebrated by an English person.

Unless you have an affection for corn beef and cabbage and drinking green beer.

3. The couple across the street from us are Filipino... they have cardboard four leaf clovers in their window... WTF!

4. The local police here put out road blocks on SPD night to catch drunk drivers... WTF!

Oh. We are singing from the same song sheet. I don't mind the celebration to be fair. It's all a bit twee, I suspect SOME Irish people might not like it's globalisation so much. They will certainly hate hordes of English drinking Guinness once a year.

Was driving down a street in West LA on Tuesday and saw a tree surrounded by flowers, balloons and candles. Not a good sign as that usually means someone was killed at or near that spot.

Got home and found out a 32 year old girl was killed in an car wreck on her way home from work the day before at that location. The driver of the other vehicle was a 17 year old boy driving a Lamborghini SUV! There is talk of him doing in excess of 100mph at the time, and believe me this is not a wide open road but a pretty residential street albeit a busy main artery road.

The Lamborghini was his 17th birthday present... no words.

Needless to say the kid pretty much walked away from the accident.

Roundabouts are such fun here in Spain as the rules here are totally contradictory to anywhere else in the world I have driven.

For example, if you approach Hoggsys theoretical 4 exit roundabout here, and you wanted to take the East road and you approached from the North you have to drive round in the outside lane..And indicate as you reach the exit.

Factor.in that, until relatively recently, you used to have to give way to vehicles coming onto the roundabout, plus the Spanish drivers natural aversion to indicating, courtesy and common sense, it all becomes a.massive demolition derby.

My real.Irish mates hate it, it attracts amateur drinkers. Septics are so self.loathing they want to latch onto any culture that makes them think they're not Septics....but at the end of the day.....they're just septics

Which is why the police are always out in force here on that day.

Yes Septics love to find a European in their DNA...

I've always found the whole 'I'm Italian/Irish/Polak etc thing a bit cringy when a lot of them are 3rd or 4th generation, maybe more, but I guess it comes down to their history. When they first arrived the sought out fellow countrymen for work, safely, communication, and something as simple as recognition of tradition and, more importantly at the time, religion. Those things have just passed through from generation to generation, I guess the importance of identity is still high on the agenda.

I feel like giving that Gangs of New York another go now having written all that self indulgent waffle. I didn't rate it first time around, maybe I'll appreciate a bit more this time.

Whatever attacked my garden last night. Have spent the last week preparing the ground to take a variety of flowers and shrubs. All neatly prepared I even raked it. This morning it has a ciuple if mounds a few dug holes. One of which has half a cabbage leaf in it. When it gets lighter hopefully be able to check out whether its a cat or more likely a fox.....