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So here is Farage trying to redefine the world, by saying that if he gets re-relected in Clacton, then "the people of Clacton" will have judged that he didn't do anything wrong in not disclosing certain gifts, and therefore it's OK, he didn't do anything he shouldn't have. If no other serious...

I got the record player working again after a five-year interval. It has a SME Series V arm (which I bought second-hand, as the new price at the time was beyond me, and it's now even more beyond)! But to set it up you need the specialised tools and protractors, and the box containing them...

You expressed very emphatic personal views about landlines in your original post #29. I simply pointed out circumstances in which a landline is useful.

I travelled on SWR from Whitchurch to Waterloo and back last Friday. 10.39 from Whitchurch: just three coaches, and crowded. With only one train per hour on the West of England line instead of the normal two, there must have been spare units which could have been used. 16.25 from Waterloo...

A waste if money for you apparently, but very convenient for us. The landline handsets are lighter than a mobile phone and designed to be comfortable to hold, unlike the large heavy rectangular slab of a mobile. We have two landline handsets upstairs and two downstairs, so we are always...

About 25 years ago I arrived at St. Pancras to travel to Manchester. It was at the time when Midland Main Line were running a Manchester service because of major works on the line from Euston. There had been a problem and no trains were operating. Passengers were advised to go to Euston...

You're right, it did apply to the Conservatives. Senior figures in the party took "soundings", which presumably means that they sought the views of other senior figures, MPs, local party chairmen, and the individual considered most likely to do the job most effectively, and have the widest...

Wilson was definitely the most recent example. The tendency of leaders of main parties to resign once they've lost an election is another factor leading to instability. It's encouraged by speculation in the media. There are too many other figures in each party who delude themselves into...

The "lauded saviour" of the Labour Party, which appears to think that a new leader will magically change their fortunes in the opinion polls. But as you've noted, the economic situation Burnham is about to face is the same as faced Starmer. Yes, he is a better communicator, but if he gives a...

In the past ten years we've had six Prime Ministers: Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson, Sunak, Starmer. It looks as if we may be about to get a seventh. Changing Prime Minister that frequently does not help in addressing the longer-term issues that the country faces. Of course the media just...

I don't recall any demos of radioactivity at secondary school, but we did use mercury, and I remember chasing little balls of it around the workbench, and rubbing it over a penny in the hope that it might be passed off as half a crown. One science master owned a magneto from an old fighter...

And even more sense since "Arterio" is a silly and meaningless name.

In line with that, the sign for westbound trains should always have been H OFF, as a reminder that they were about to enter a tunnel. For eastbound trains, in the winter months it should have been H ON, and H OFF at other times. My memory now is somewhat hazy about what these signs were...

There were some just west of Arnos Grove in the 1950s. My understanding was that they conveyed instructions about the heating. I seem to recall that what they displayed didn't always accord with what common sense suggested they should.

Related to that, and still more or less relevant to this thread, there was a black American orchestral conductor named Dean Dixon. There was also a famous critic of both music and cricket named Neville Cardus, who in the 1960s worked in both capacities for The Guardian. It was customary for a...

We don't have a contraption! We usually drink Maxwell House. We do have filter coffee gadgets which we use now and then. Maybe that indicates that we ourselves are becoming anachronistic. Yes, outside Southgate Underground station in the 1940s and early 1950s, the man shouting "Star News...

Maybe "at death's door" rather than meeting my maker, but there are three occasions where without modern medical treatments I'd probably have gone through it, sooner rather than later. The first was in November 2000, when I had a heart attack - a myocardial infarction (MI). It was probably a...

I'm certainly old - in my mid-80s. As for the 2020s.... I think there is much more uncertainty internationally, largely as a result of the activities of Donald Trump, but already before that because Russia invaded Ukraine. But there was a great deal of uncertainty when I was much younger...

When was aged 11 to 13 or 14 I used to check the times Piccadilly Line trains took between stations from Southgate to Holborn when travelling to and from school. This was in the days of standard stock, and later the 1938 stock trains as well. I disposed of the relevant notebooks many years...

Let's say that at the next General Election the turnout is 70% (probably optimistic), and 51% of those voting support Reform. Would you say that that is "the electorate generally", or that the other 49% also deserve what they get? You may be defeatist in your views about effectively countering...