The WTF? Thread

[Sean of the Shed]

The WTF? Thread

I do wonder if there are people out there who deliberately feed this stuff to the Mail to see if they bite. I hope there are.

[ursus arctos]

The WTF? Thread

There almost certainly are, but in this case they were just doing their usual unattributed appropriation of an "expose" by the local paper in Louisville.

[Gerontophile]

The WTF? Thread

Gay concentration camps in Chechnya.

Sickening.

[Sam]

The WTF? Thread

So, the Foreign Affairs Editor of the Sky News website (whose name sounds disturbingly similar to mine) has written this article on why millennials are rubbish. [WARNING: LINK IS TO MURDOCH WEBSITE]

Heads bowed, they stood in silent respect on the pavements of Wootton Bassett and tossed roses onto the hearses carrying soldiers who fell in Afghanistan.

This week, London was stilled and many moved to tears as the last post was played on a bugle over the casket of PC Keith Palmer.

After the attack on Westminster, in which he gave his life defending parliament against a knife-wielding lunatic, flags were at half-mast while mountains of flowers marked the spot where he and others died.

These are moments when the British agree, as a nation, to "Silence the pianos and with muffled drum" so that they can "Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come" as WH Auden put it in a poem that was given global fame in the achingly sentimental Four Weddings And A Funeral.

But why? Has the United Kingdom surrendered to a form of mawkish mass sentimentality? Has everyone become an actor in mass moments of theatrical reverence? That, in the end, signify nothing?

No.

It's worse than that.

The country comes to a standstill to honour those who have been killed defending it because, these days, people of that type are so rare, so exceptional.

Britons are no longer made of the stuff that is written in granite on the memorials to two world wars on every single village in the country.

Indeed they're not even made of the stuff of those dead young men before they went to war. The ploughmen and labourers, and miners led by youth from the middle and upper classes tempered and toughened in the forges of public school.

The British are now too wet to work in agriculture. Those who do turn up, my East Anglian farmer friends tell me, are so lazy and feckless they're useful only to fill potholes - with their bodies.

If you want to get buildings built, potatoes picked, work done and taxes paid, get a Pole.

Public schools are overpriced country clubs for the buttery spawn of oligarchs. Gone are the days when playing for the 3rd XV involved fingers frozen to twigs and doing battle with a homicidal ape from Dulwich College with the IQ of a tadpole.

No one wants to see a return to the sexual abuse that Alex Renton has revealed in his masterful expose of private school perversion Stiff Upper Lip, but the olden day public schoolboy knew, or rather learned, what it was to get bashed then get up and play on.

These days, the public schools can no more produce the sort of chap capable of running a large chunk of Africa at 21 with the assistance only of supernatural self-belief, and a passion for Ovid, than they can turn out a youngster capable of putting a kettle on without the supervision of a Filipina.

As for Millennials with their thin skins, wobbly chins, and sense of immediate entitlement to unearned greatness? They just need a good spanking - and not in a fun, kinky way.

Britain's problem is that the outside world is made of sterner stuff. In Mosul, people who survived life under IS thugs and coalition bombs are burying their dead and sweeping the streets one block from the combat zones.

Syria's citizens are no less robust. Hundreds of thousands of Africans living as refugees are marching across deserts to reach Europe.

These are resilient people. Tough people. People who don't curl up and suck their thumbs when the going gets tough. And they want what we have - someday they'll come and get it too.

The solution to soggy wet Britain? How will we make more of the brave few whom we now see almost as characters in fiction? National service.

I wonder whether he'd have chosen the same poem to quote in the opening if he knew Auden was a bender.

(Having said that, the line about 'my East Anglian farmer friends' did give me an Alan Partridge-style laugh.)

[Ginger Yellow]

The WTF? Thread

That reads like a Private Eye pisstake.

[Gangster Octopus]

The WTF? Thread

Sean of the Shed wrote: Surely it's their own fault for all looking the same?

Who? Americans?

[Ginger Yellow]

The WTF? Thread

More marketing WTF. I cannot understand how trolling people's smart devices got through however many layers of approval a Burger King ad has. It's bad enough when people do it on podcasts for kicks. But having a massive corporation do it to advertise at you involuntarily from your own phone? WTF indeed.

[San Bernardhinault]

The WTF? Thread

Sam's link is real WTF stuff. Wow.

Meanwhile, a former mayor of San Diego is suing the city. So far, so normal. But he's doing it because of ""the loss of support, service, love, companionship, society, affection, relations and solace from his wife". His wife tripped on a sidewalk and popped her fake boobs.

[tracteurgarcon]

The WTF? Thread

It costs upwards of Ł30,000 to train an infantry soldier, probably more for a sailor or RAF personnel, then you've got accommodation costs, food, living expenses.

Roughly 750,000 people turn 18 each year in the UK = Ł22.5Billion just for training costs.

The only way the UK would be able to afford National Service would be to shelve Trident or some other major defence contract (the F-35?).

Also, on average, 9 British service personnel die each year in training, so you might be looking at anything up to 10 times that number of 18 year olds being killed each year.

[Ginger Yellow]

The WTF? Thread

I doubt peacetime conscripts are trained on average to the same standard (and hence cost) as volunteer recruits.

[WOM]

The WTF? Thread

Ginger Yellow wrote: More marketing WTF. I cannot understand how trolling people's smart devices got through however many layers of approval a Burger King ad has. It's bad enough when people do it on podcasts for kicks. But having a massive corporation do it to advertise at you involuntarily from your own phone? WTF indeed.

Really? I thought it was smart as hell. Even if they pull the spot, the free publicity this has generated over the past 48 hours is unreal. And the actual downside...blah blah blah privacy issues....none. The worst thing that happened was someone's smart device read them a list of ingredients and the device's owner though "That was neat / that was creepy." This went viral, which is what all those layers of approval ultimately wanted.

[tracteurgarcon]

The WTF? Thread

Ginger Yellow wrote: I doubt peacetime conscripts are trained on average to the same standard (and hence cost) as volunteer recruits.

True, but they still have to be fed, watered and housed.

[Levin]

The WTF? Thread

Re: the Burger King ad, the plan not only relied on Google not doing anything to stop it (which they did) but also that the wiki page about the whopper said what BK wanted it to say. Hence the pleas of a user on the talk page after it got semi protected and their copy removed.

In other WTF news, you can get internet of things aga ovens.

[Levin]

The WTF? Thread

I know it's not really news that there are companies who tart up iPhones but Caviar is something else.

Russian luxury smartphone brand Caviar has launched three Orthodoxy and prayer-themed smartphones to mark Easter.

Two of the iPhone 7 models are dedicated to the “Save and protect” and “Our Father” prayers, with the third featuring the “Life-giving Spring” icon. All the phones were consecrated at Nizhny Novgorod's Gorodetsky Fedorovsky Monastery.

Each intricate design was created by engraving near pure 999 gold, with the elaborate patterns covering both the back and sides of the phone.



They, of course, do gold plated phones with images of Putin.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The WTF? Thread

The solution to soggy wet Britain? How will we make more of the brave few whom we now see almost as characters in fiction? [strike]National service.[/strike] Admit more Syrians, Kurds and Poles.

Fixed it.

[MsD]

The WTF? Thread

I really want one of those Caviar phones.

[Toby Gymshorts]

The WTF? Thread

Ancient ancestor of EIM found.

[NickSTFU]

The WTF? Thread

tracteurgarçon wrote: It costs upwards of Ł30,000 to train an infantry soldier, probably more for a sailor or RAF personnel, then you've got accommodation costs, food, living expenses.

Roughly 750,000 people turn 18 each year in the UK = Ł22.5Billion just for training costs.

The only way the UK would be able to afford National Service would be to shelve Trident or some other major defence contract (the F-35?).

Also, on average, 9 British service personnel die each year in training, so you might be looking at anything up to 10 times that number of 18 year olds being killed each year.

UK armed forces personnel pay for food and accommodation. Accommodation is deducted from pay, while paying for food depends on what system is in place. For example, 'pay as you dine', or deduction. The only time UK armed forces personnel get free food and accommodation is when on operations.

It would be interesting to compare training deaths for armed forces personnel with industrial deaths, but I can't do links on my ipad.

Finally, the amount of people who I came across when I was in the RAF who thought I didn't pay taxes was staggering and a real WTF moment.

[NickSTFU]

The WTF? Thread

In answer to my own query.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/pdf/fatalinjuries.pdf

0.46 per 100,000.

As compared to 4.5 per 100,000 in the UK armed forces. I have included reserves and 'other personnel'.

[Southport Zeb]

The WTF? Thread

Commuters complain about being treated like cattle

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The WTF? Thread

Russian population pyramid. Good God.

[Nocturnal Submission]

The WTF? Thread

Our US posters will know a lot more about this I'm sure, but I was amazed to discover how many memorials there are to KKK founding member Nathan Bedford Forrest in the South, including a sculpture seemingly designed by the same individual responsible for Southampton's Ted Bates "likeness" a few years back:

[ursus arctos]

The WTF? Thread

That one has a more interesting back story than most of the memorials to those who took up arms against this country (of which there are literally hundreds, if not thousands).

[Amor de Cosmos]

The WTF? Thread

“Somebody needs to say a good word for slavery,”

I guess there's a one-word response to that — Why?

I confess I do kinda like the sculpture though.

[Lang Spoon]

The WTF? Thread

Pigeon cpr

It might be Easter, but that was a bit optimistic. It's the limp useless neck of the pigeon as she expectantly loosens her grip that makes it.