Oh, those are just to stop the kids escaping from the paedodungeon.

I think you’re going to need some Blackadder to go along with your Monty Python.

Start with the second series though, as the first series is a little weaker (the characters and style are a bit different), and might put you off.

I agree that “not voting for the Tories” was pretty much the main driver, but these are not “new options”.

The Brexit Party’s “surprise” increase this year, was in many ways just returning to the 10-15% that they received as UKIP in 2015.

In the two elections in between, they agreed to not contest many of the Tory seats, to not risk “splitting the vote” to help keep “evil Jeremy” out of power.

The Tory vote + Brexit Party vote, added together, is lower than the number who voted for either Boris Johnson, Theresa May or 2017 Jeremy Corbyn. Fewer people voted for Keir Starmer than Jeremy Corbyn in 2017 or 2019 - so technically the biggest change in vote is probably “did not/unable to vote this year”, with an increase of 3 million.

As ever, “didn’t/unable to vote this year” won yet another successive landslide victory of about 20 million, or about the same as the top three parties added together.

Anyway, apologies for the tangent. The graph is particularly looking at younger people, who are on average more left leaning, and have become more so in the last 40 years. Though the recent mainstream politics/media shift towards the far right is absolutely terrifying, I don’t think it’s reflected in the young people shown in this graph.

The graph appears to show that from approximately 2010 (Libdem & Tory coalition) onwards for women, and a few years later (when we somehow got a full Tory government) for men, the younger people shown on the graph, said or thought something along the lines of “this Tory government is awful and we need to move in the opposite direction”.

Great, I’ll look in to that, thank you - and I hope you do write such a book one day :)

This is fascinating stuff. Is there anywhere where more of this kind of thing is written down?

I suddenly picked up “allergies*” in my late 30s - couldn’t work out what they were, other than antihistamines (cetirizine or loratidine) made them “not as bad”, and I also needed to avoid certain things in particular (breathing in dust, aerosols, perfumes, other chemical fumes, car fumes, cigarette fumes, wood dust and drinking alcohol).

Turned out to be Nasal Polyps. I was due for surgery to remove them in 2020, but then Covid happened and I’ve been on a waiting list since. Surgery may completely remove the problem, or at least lessen it - but they could grow back within five years.

Basically every day is like I’ve got cold or sometimes flu. Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in phlegm. If I take antihistamines, it’s pretty mild or controllable, as long as I can reasonably avoid those triggers. Sometimes I have to drink lemsip in the morning (powdered hot drink of paracetamol, lemon flavour & decongestant). It’s there every day, permanently, but how severe it is varies between “slightly inconvenient” and “too unwell to work”.

Antihistamines are essential for me to function at all, and make a huge difference - though I feel they’ve become less effective in the last year or so. Thankfully they’re very cheap over the counter (~£1.30 for 30 days’ worth). I also use a saltwater nasal spray sometimes, and I sometimes eat a lot of menthol sweets. I have to be careful with decongestants to avoid “rebound congestion” where your nose adjusts to life with decongestants, then becomes twice as blocked up if you stop.

If I drink alcohol or breathe perfume etc, my sinuses block up within half an hour, I can get an asthmatic response, and I get crippling arthritic pain in my hands and joints. Sometimes perfume and other sprays can cause severe, possibly dangerous breathing problems. I have an asthma inhaler for these emergencies, and always have to carry it with me, in case someone sprays perfume in an enclosed space (which might cause me to die).

If I keep reasonable control over these things, I can live pretty “normally”. If I actually get a cold, it’s like I’ve got a “double cold”, and it can make me too ill to go to work.

When it’s bad, it’s a pretty miserable existence to be honest, but in the larger scale of things it’s not a serious or life-threatening illness, so you feel guilty for complaining.

When it’s not so bad, I can normally ignore it for most of the day - and I have a pretty active job and am otherwise fairly healthy. It’s worst in the morning/night when I’m horizontal.

Your case outlined in the original post sounds particularly upsetting and you have my sympathies. You’re not being a baby.

*technically it’s an intolerance or hypersensitivity, and not truly an allergy, though it behaves in much the same way, and symptoms can be controlled in much the same way.

From where I lived, just the lager and cider together was snakebite, and with blackcurrant it was a “snakebite and black” - but I think there was a lot of regional variety (in the UK, at least).

I have heard lager/cider/blackcurrant called a snakebite before though (I remember it causing a disagreement in the pub) - but I’ve also heard it called a “diesel” (which elsewhere was something mixed with guinness). I’m pretty sure you sometimes got different things in different pubs in the same town.

I suppose pre-internet, we were just relying on the drunk people ordering things to decide what they wanted to call stuff (“what was that purple mixed drink called that made me throw up on my own shoes?”).

Mix rice up with tomato sauce, melt a bit of mozzarella cheese in, some slices of pepperoni in it, sprinkle in some basil and oregano… check behind you that nobody can see you commit culinary crimes… delicious.

To (controversially) go one step further, all unsweetened carbohydrate bases are interchangeable.

You can put pasta topping on a pizza, you can put pizza topping on rice, you can put toastie fillings on a potato waffle and it always ends up nice.

Pubs in the UK used to (or still do?) have blackcurrant and lime cordial for this.

“Lager and Lime”, “Lager and Blackcurrant” and “Cider and Blackcurrant” were pretty common 20-30 years ago. A shot of cordial (concentrated juice), then filled up with lager beer.

There was also orange cordial behind the bar, but nobody ever drank “Lager and orange”. I believe it was some form of crime.

Hahaha, Five points! I’ve hardly ever got five points on an Only Connect. Bit of a cheeky guess though :) I love these, please do more :)

[Edit] couldn’t make spoiler work. Anyway, I didn’t specify the timeline bit, but you said that was fine in a different response

It’s a bit weird, isn’t it?

Technically, the navigational tool is “a compass” and the geometric draw-a-circle tool is “a pair of compasses” (I don’t know why) - but in general use, people just call both of them “a compass”.

We’ve had hundreds of years to rename one of them, but for some reason haven’t bothered.

You might be right, actually. There’s only one way to find out: re-watch it all again :)

Only in Rimmer’s logic :)

I think it was something like “If Lister hadn’t been imprisoned in stasis for smuggling a cat on board, he would have been there to help me mend the drive plate, so I wouldn’t have made the mistake which caused the failure, which killed all the crew”.

Me “Hi, is that, umm… Phones, number four, uhhhh?”

Phones4u “Haha, yes, but It’s pronounced ‘Phones For You’”

Me “Oh, it’s it a wrong number? I’ve got it written down here, it’s a number four, not a word ‘for’ f-o-r, and it’s not the word ‘you’, but just a letter U on its own, which is pronounced ‘uh’”

Phones4u “yes, that’s how we write it”

Me “Why? Why didn’t you do it properly? It’s just like that argument with the 90s boyband Fiveive all over again.”

Etc etc

As far as I’m aware, in English, the punctuation goes outside the quotes, unless it’s part of the original quote.

In American, the punctuation goes inside the quotes, even if it’s not part of the sentence being quoted.

I’m unsure of the habits of other English-speaking countries.

To a lot of laptop manufacturers, it certainly seems that way as of late - that’s why I’m ever hopeful that a modular laptop, such as the framework, might give us the option of how we want to control a mouse cursor.

Fingers crossed for a touchpad with physical buttons.

Great link! I love the little story in there.

I actually use “shevelled” alongside many other words which to my mind “should logically exist” - for example, at the weekend I dismantled and then remantled a wall in my garden.