Wetherspoon's was surprisingly quiet, so the conversation rolled along rather solemn and serious lines.
First up was what was to me the shocking level of racial abuse the Irish had to put up with when landing in England - say Liverpool or Fishguard - during the 1960's. I had been vaguely aware of signs on rooming houses saying things like 'No blacks, no Irish' - although I cannot now say whether I ever actually saw such a thing for myself - but I had not been aware of abuse administered by the officers of Her Majesty's Customs.
Second up were our various culinary affairs. My contribution to the entertainment was an extended version of the tale of the crumpet. See reference 3.
Third up was what I thought was rather a good suggestion for our new white elephant, the giant aircraft carrier without aircraft. We could stock the thing up with tents, blankets, food and drink, and then deploy it as a floating tent city to accommodate a few thousand - perhaps as many as twenty thousand - homeless refugees - a few thousand miles away. A tent city with state of the art operating theatres and gymnasiums. Maybe able to offer engineering apprenticeships down in the engine rooms to well motivated young adults. This way we would salve our consciences a bit without having to take them in here at home.
A few glasses down, we moved onto the question of one's office computer being used for the consumption of pornography. My opening position was - and remains - that I would be very surprised if the computer in question did not contain a large amount of active pornography at the time in question. My closing position was that any serious workplace - and I am sure that the Palace of Westminster qualifies - both bans the use of office computers for the consumption of pornography and does its best to stop such stuff getting onto them. A reasonable supplementary rule would be that you are responsible for what is on your computer, and if you allow other people to use your computer, to use your email account, you are responsible for whatever they might get up to. The only cop-out would be if it turned out that the computer support people were the culprits. Computer support people who, of necessity, have to hold all the keys. So guilty as charged, at least for the purposes of office management. Criminal charges quite another matter.
Lastly, we pondered on what I believe is the practise in county of Devon for the placement of people who need to live in some kind of supported or enclosed environment, given that the public provision of such places has, in large part, been sold off for housing estates. As I understand things, when the county needs to place a client or group of clients, they make up what amounts to an invitation to tender document. This is then made available to the various commercial and charitable providers in the area, perhaps by being posted on some suitable private website, in the hope that one or more of them will submit a tender. And then, hopefully, one of the tenders can be accepted. Job done. Which all sounds a bit like a cattle market, a bit mercenary, but given a bit of thought seemed perfectly reasonable. We could not think of anything better.
On the way out, I picked up copies of the books at reference 1 and 2, with the second of these noticed in the last post. BH has been very pleased with the first - and I learn of people in the backwoods of British Columbia who actually made their own paper. I wonder?
Out in the street I noticed that the Guleed Internet Café - illustrated above - appeared to have shut up shop. A place which I have found convenient - and very cheap - on various occasions in the past - although I may have baulked at deploying my google password there. Strictly research only.
Reference 1: The cure for death by lighting - Gail Anderson-Dargatz - 1996.
Reference 2: From Berlin to Jerusalem - Gershom Scholem - 1977.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/crumpets.html.
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