I'm assuming that he refused to pay and hence it's going to trial - there was a reference to the case file going to the Crown Prosecution Service, presumably for a charging decision. So he may not end up being prosecuted. There's always the possibility that the Crown Prosecution Service decides there isn't sufficient evidence or that it's not in the public interest to proceed.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 8:05 AM on May 21, 2008

I see demonstrations about cases like this taking place outside the Home Office most weeks. It is so, so nice to see one where the outcome is positive.

The reason it's 5 years rather than a permanent right to remain is that the rules for claiming asylum in the UK were very recently changed. Now all asylum cases that are granted get 5 years, then a review at which they may be granted indefinite leave to remain, or at which the leave may run out (for instance if conditions... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 2:21 PM on May 20, 2008

The closest I can find is this story with basically the same facts, but it's a British pilot.

Yes, I've always heard the story as being the British rear gunner of a Lancaster - the details of falling through pines and into a snow drift are the same, as is the point about the Germans not believing him but then finding his parachute harness separately in a field, and subsequently affirming that he had actually fallen to earth. His name was Nicholas... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 11:32 PM on April 10, 2008

Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who translated far and wide.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 11:36 AM on March 30, 2008

That was great. You have no idea how much that has cheered me up after a crap day at work.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 11:29 AM on March 27, 2008

Also: "Alice, call 020 8133 8141."

I'd do it, except
1) I'm not Alice
2) I'm not in England
3) I'm not that type of person.

Anyone else want to try?

I just phoned the number. It takes you off on the first steps of an ARG... which I assume will be continued in subsequent stories.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 3:19 AM on March 21, 2008

Fantastic post - what a wonderful site.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 10:42 PM on February 5, 2008

Airminded really is a wonderful blog - very glad to see it mentioned here.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 4:19 PM on January 26, 2008

I was always under the impression that there were tacit agreements to not bomb certain monuments on either side.

That's true of some of the older university towns - but lots of culturally important centres did get bombed. For example after the RAF raid on Lubeck (now a UNESCO world heritage site) the Lutwaffe launched a retaliatory series of raids on culturally important towns and cities reputedly picked from the Baedeker guide book - hence they... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 1:20 AM on January 19, 2008

ahem - certainly the German response was motivated by the desire to affect British morale rather than the towns having any strategic importance.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 1:20 AM on January 19, 2008

"Bomber" Harris was a psychopath

Well, quite... the fact that incendiaries were dropped on the mostly wooden buildings of Lubeck belies his claim that it was a strategic attack (never mind Dresden and everything else).
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 12:27 PM on January 19, 2008

No woman is an Iceland.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 12:35 AM on December 29, 2007

Another great post, thomas j wise. These are wonderful to browse through. The whitewashed English examples in particular are brilliant.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 12:06 AM on December 16, 2007

Another Perne Library fan! Isn't it great? (I was an undergraduate there).
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 12:13 AM on December 5, 2007

Thanks for the post, this is going straight into my iTunes.

Andy Zaltzman is a very funny man - I remember seeing his Edinburgh show last year, which was supposed to be with Oliver but which was just him due to Oliver having been snaffled by the Daily Show. All his scripts had to be torn up or adapted about a week before the festival started - he was still brilliant.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 11:30 PM on November 26, 2007

I think he's from Bedfordshire - the accent there is a bit of a mixture of everything.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 12:15 AM on November 27, 2007

My favorite story about an index entry is in Hugh Trevor-Roper's Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans. He'd recently been elected Master of Peterhouse, a college at Cambridge University, and discovered a group of reactionary fellows who loathed him and whom he loathed. The index entry for Peterhouse in the book apparently reads:

"Peterhouse": "high table conversation not very agreeable .. four disagreeable fellows of ... main source for perverts".
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 3:24 AM on November 21, 2007

You can tell it's a crisis because BBC News have adopted the "this is a massive crisis! we must put the headline on our front page in an extra big font size" approach.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 10:22 AM on November 20, 2007

I can't imagine that many American companies would bother to burn files rather than some other type of secure data transfer, but then again, that's me saying this as a non-resident.

Well, the National Audit Office - which is the body that asked for the data, and which is an independent financial watchdog - is on the Government Secure Intranet. So it could theoretically have been transferred. But I suspect the NAO will have requested it direct from... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 10:54 AM on November 20, 2007

I wonder if they'd do Crewe rail yards and environs if I begged abjectly?

Your objective would be to wait for 43 minutes in the Lemon Tree cafe for the connecting train to Colwyn Bay.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 1:41 PM on November 6, 2007

Skip to the end.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 3:59 AM on October 31, 2007

I know Josh Olson a little bit. He's kind of a prick.

That's kind of what I thought after reading the article. The woman's size and loneliness seem to anger him just as much as what she did to his friend. He does come across as a bit of an arsehole.

But still... wow.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 12:26 AM on October 13, 2007

That was fascinating. I suppose it links to general debates more widely in the field of archaeology and the conservation of artefacts - should they be restored, left in situ as they are, or left with additions? But naturally the arguments are slightly different here given that it's an artefact that has come from one place but ended up in another. I don't know - I think I'd rather it had been left there, on balance, even though I suspect this is silly and romantic of me.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 10:51 PM on October 7, 2007

That link is just amazingly cool.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 2:33 PM on October 8, 2007

It's strange finding out that there are people who don't know about Blackadder. I'm very jealous that you're discovering it for the first time.

I shall return interfrastically.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 11:24 AM on September 15, 2007

Firstworldwar.com
The war to end all wars

Hmmm. Rather bathetic subtitle for the site. A brilliant post, though. The first thing I thought of was Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est - which has almost become cliched, but for me its descriptions of a gas attack still make me want to choke. It's still an incredibly powerful image it conjures up. To add to the links, here are two British veterans talking about the effects of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 11:14 PM on September 14, 2007

Cowabunga... err, or something.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 11:06 PM on September 14, 2007

One of my friends applied for and won one of these Fellowships a few years ago after finishing his undergraduate degree at Oxford. I remember him saying that the ominously titled "An essay" under paragraph 9 was an essay question with a one-word title. I can't remember what it was, but something along the lines of "Money" or "War". The benefits were wonderful - a lovely set of rooms in a beautiful college with no students, so hence no teaching, just pure research in... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 8:04 AM on September 12, 2007

Current Issues

OUR CONCERN OF CIRCUMSTANCES

There are some concern about how we do our concerns of circumstances.

Genius.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 11:18 PM on September 10, 2007

I think part of me thought of her as a younger person

This is exactly what I thought. I think there was something about her campaigning zeal that made me shocked to discover she was in her sixties. Very sad news.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 11:15 PM on September 10, 2007

they were a typically ill-thought out Labour response geared towards having numbers to point at come election time.

Perhaps - but they do get taken out of context. ASBOs aren't Labour's one-stop, magic bullet solution to crime. They were never pitched as a solution to stopping reoffending or the reoccurence of low-level anti-social behaviour. What they do well, though, when used correctly, is stop the misery that anti-social behaviour can cause for... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 10:42 AM on September 6, 2007

This strikes me as one of those situations where cultural understanding sort of fails.

This much is true. It's like the occasional threads on British CCTV where US MeFites bust a gut proclaiming Orwellian Britain is here, and a few lone British MeFites shrug their shoulders. I was amazed at the reaction when someone posted about the CCTV with loudspeakers linked to a real person operating it, so they can tell people. It just didn't strike me as much... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 2:35 PM on September 6, 2007

Brilliant post. That's my listening for today sorted.

There is a moment in an early X-Files episode - I think it's in the second series - where Mulder chats to a US senator and they discuss the fact that the Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 is the first piece of music (as opposed to other sounds) that any alien finding the probe would hear. What a wonderful place they would think the earth is, says the senator.

I still think about that scene... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 3:42 AM on September 5, 2007

US only. Bah.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 11:14 PM on September 4, 2007

.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 2:01 PM on August 10, 2007

Thank you, lastobelus, for that very reasoned criminological treatise.

This was a really interesting read. I know less about the US side of things but it rang true with the experience in the UK, where we're seeing something similar to the effects outlined in this article. The prison population here has risen significantly since the downturn in crime in the mid-1990s (which was mirrored in the UK as in the states). It was around 60,000 in 1995, and is now inching past 80,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 5:02 AM on July 20, 2007

it stopped being a mobile phone after its owner was murdered and stopped moving around, but it was still a cell phone even after that.

*sees pedantry and raises it with further pedantry* Well, it's still capable of moving or of being moved. Or does the phone in my pocket stop being a mobile phone every time I sit down?
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 11:25 AM on July 18, 2007

Still, he did save ancient history A-level from extinction.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 2:18 PM on July 16, 2007

ALSO KNOWN AS JUSTIFIED ANCIENTS OF MU MU
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 2:42 PM on July 12, 2007

Fantastic news.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 11:18 PM on July 3, 2007

ok i bought a $3,000 item on ebay a laptop, i never recieved it, i paypaled him the money, and he transfered those funds to his bank account, and then withrdrew it. He then informed me that on the day he was going to ship it out, his car was robbed, and everything (including the laptop and $3,000 cash) was stolen. he lives clear across the country from me, and i know i can get a charge back to my credit card, but is this guy going to get away with it? i mean its not like paypal or ebay can... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 3:22 AM on July 1, 2007

The UK has institutionalized Evil?

It's actually COBR. Or are we not allowed to respond in a coordinated way to this kind of thing?
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 12:14 PM on June 30, 2007

After googling my excuse for sense of humour failure is that GI Joe was not big in the UK.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 12:17 PM on June 30, 2007

I thought it was alright, actually. Some good one liners - "what does Charlie Chaplin have to do with Adolf Hitler?". And beret aside, I do know people like JP...
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 12:27 AM on June 16, 2007

So very nearly eponysterical.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 12:13 PM on June 13, 2007

Oh and a fantastic post. The Aerospaceweb link in particular was great, I spent ages exploring the site as a result.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 12:14 PM on June 13, 2007

I haven't looked at the original Greek for 10 years, so I'm really pleased that this is going up under a CC licence rather than with limited access rights. What a brilliant decision - thank you, whoever made it.

On the subject of translations, Martin Hammond's translation (the Penguin Books one) is also very good, and for me captures both the intensity and the alien quality of Homeric Greek.

Oh and thank you EB for the long comment,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 11:33 PM on June 5, 2007

Blue Peter has never been the same since Christopher Trace left...

Never mind that, what about the dream team of John Noakes, Peter Purves and Val Singleton?
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 11:40 PM on May 31, 2007

(Assumes world-weary tone). Come on guys it's clearly viral marketing... probably for that new film Otter Attack: Tarka's Revenge. You're just playing into the hands of the film studio by posting it!
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 11:29 PM on May 31, 2007

Going, going, gone.
posted to MetaFilter by greycap at 11:06 AM on May 11, 2007