Footprintsofagigantichound

History, Art, Countryside, Nature, Food, Music, Architecture, Archaeology, Bollocks to Brexit.

[Footprintsofagigantichound @Footprintsofag1]

@PulpLibrarian I once gave a bottle as a present to a sommelier I knew who had confided in me that he had a fetish for nuns. It didn't go down well.

[Orpheus @OrpheusL]

Happy birthday Maestro Solti!

[Tom Scott 🇺🇦 @Tom___Scott]

Here's Boris Johnson the morning after he gave his Foreign Secretary security detail the slip & partied at the palazzo of Russian oligarch Evgeny Lebedev (whom he later made a peer), and met with the oligarch's father, a former senior KGB officer.

[Footprintsofagigantichound @Footprintsofag1]

@RobDaMugg @ideanoc17 I bought one from Argos two weeks ago for £139. An independent retailer in a nearby town sells them at £159.

[Footprintsofagigantichound @Footprintsofag1]

@BorisJohnson Perhaps the Security Services couldn't trust you with the information.

[Footprintsofagigantichound @Footprintsofag1]

@stekkerauto @EU_Commission @eurochallenges @euacchq You just need to push the lid all the way back and it clicks into a secure open position. It's actually very well designed.

[Footprintsofagigantichound @Footprintsofag1]

@KlKESLAMMER You just push the lid all the way back and it clicks into a secure open position. Its actually very well designed.

[Socialist Opera Singer @OperaSocialist]

Jeffrey Archer would have been right at home in today's Reform with Farage for like-minded company.

[Dr Peter Caddick-Adams #StandwithUkraine @militaryhistori]

Mystery solved.
The Fairford Five were mounting a cosplay tribute to this famous book

[Footprintsofagigantichound @Footprintsofag1]

@bmay @RoyalMail I bought a book from the USA recently. The international tracking was amazing, logging each step. As soon as it reached Royal Mail the tracking just stopped. (It was however delivered.)

[Footprintsofagigantichound @Footprintsofag1]

@hwallop Waitrose have been selling minced veal in this packaging for a long time. It's absolutely fine. No problems at all.

[Footprintsofagigantichound @Footprintsofag1]

@Kulambq Except for the last chapter of approximately thirty pages of endlessly boring philosophical and esoteric ramblings. The rest is magnificent. One of the great books.

[Footprintsofagigantichound @Footprintsofag1]

@happybrightmoon Make your own marzipan! It's really easy. Its so much better than anything you can buy. Most commercial ones use far more sugar in proportion to almonds because sugar is much cheaper than almonds. It's really easy to make at home. Bought ground almonds are fine.

[Footprintsofagigantichound @Footprintsofag1]

@PetronellaWyatt I've just been watching the film again for the first time in years and I'm amazed how bright eyed, (literally so), and bushy tailed Peter O'Toole is given the amount of alcohol he was consuming at the time.

[Footprintsofagigantichound @Footprintsofag1]

@RichardBratby For what it's worth, there was a letter in yesterday's Telegraph complaining that some male orchestra players at the last night of the Proms pinned their floral button holes to their labels with the stems visible rather than threading them through the button holes.

[Footprintsofagigantichound @Footprintsofag1]

@adriawildlife Photo taken just now in the Cotswolds.

[Footprintsofagigantichound @Footprintsofag1]

@adriawildlife It's at bonkers levels in the UK and very limited enforcement seems to take place. Photos from the Cotswolds, ( near Stroud) , "area of outstanding natural beauty". No excuse but doesn't help that 2 of the 3 public tips in the Glos/Chelt/Stroud area are closed.

[Footprintsofagigantichound @Footprintsofag1]

@HiddenYorkshire I can never quite get a handle on why Julia can't marry Charles. Her first marriage to Rex is invalid from a Catholic point of view as he was already married and Charles married before converting so from a Catholic point of view his marriage is not recognised by the Church.

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

BROKE AT 18, HONOURED AT 30

Christopher Head OBE @chrish9070 took over the West Boldon Post Office near Sunderland in 2006. He was 18. Youngest sub-postmaster in Britain. A teenager running a business while his mates were still working out how to do their own laundry.

By 2014 the Horizon system, built by Fujitsu and treated by the @PostOffice as basically infallible, decided Chris owed £88,000. Not because he stole but because a computer said so, and apparently that was good enough for one of Britain's most trusted institutions.

Post Office questioned him under caution. Searched his home. Treated him like a criminal for months. Then dropped the case because there was nothing there.

You would think an apology might follow. Instead the Post Office turned around and chased him through the civil courts for the same £88,000 it could never prove he took.

His name was mud in his own town. He could not find work locally after being accused of robbing his own community. So he left. He rebuilt his life in Greece, because starting over somewhere nobody had read the headlines was easier than staying where everyone had.

Years later Chris Head OBE received his honour for campaigning on behalf of more than 400 other sub-postmasters caught in the same scandal. A genuinely remarkable thing to do for people the state had already failed once.

He said the honour does not pay the bills, which might be the politest way anyone has ever described getting a medal instead of the money they are actually owed.

This is the Horizon scandal in one life. A teenager builds a business. A faulty computer system destroys it. The institution that built the faulty system chases him for cash instead of checking its own code. He rebuilds abroad and comes home anyway to fight for everyone else the same system chewed up.

Britain loves handing out medals for surviving things it should never have allowed to happen in the first place.

SOURCES
@itvtynetees @SunderlandEcho @BBCNews

[Footprintsofagigantichound @Footprintsofag1]

@sitsio I think tour guides sometimes just make things up, knowingly or otherwise. Years ago I heard a guide in Tewkesbury Abbey tell a group that just before the Reformation the monks had taken down the Lady Chapel with the intention of building a more magnificent one.