HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: david@guadet.gr.osf.org (David George)
Subject: Re: MAJOR WINS MAJORITY!!!
Organization: Open Software Foundation
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1992 11:31:49 GMT

In article <CC.92Apr16172221@carna.dcs.ed.ac.uk> cc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Chris Cooke)  
writes:
> we now have homeless people and beggars all over the place; we used to care
> for them.

What you mean is "we used to abdicate responisbility to the 'state' to care for  
them".  Bang 'em up in Rampton and forget about them.  Not that 'community  
care' shouldn't be taken for the sham it is.

> Our public transport system is far worse than it was

Debatable - we've got nice new electric trains (Wessex class) on the Weymouth  
(or is that Budmouth line) instead of the antiquated MK1 rolling stock.  A nice  
little private bus service comes down my grans' road and picks her up from her  
door and takes her into town, poor old dear.

There have been lots of bad things over the last decade.  The British are a  
very conservative bunch and hate any change - but not all change is bad.   
Certainly a return to the 1970s is a prospect we should all resist.

David.
From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: oh bugger
Date: 10 Apr 92 17:52:40 GMT
Distribution: soc
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <NICKH.92Apr10110316@VOILA.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU> nickh@CS.CMU.EDU (Nick Haines) writes:
>Well, I'll be emigrating. Any recommendations? I hear New Zealand is
>nice.

When Thatcher came to power, a despondent rural English family thought
hard about where they could emigrate to that had a British flavour, but
was so far away and out of things that politics could be forgotten.

They went to the Falklands.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Marmite & The Miller's Tale
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 05:18:59 GMT

Sue Miller writes:

	Robert Bailey writes:

		I have a friend who is having serious Marmite 
		withdrawal problems. Is there a place in San 
		Francisco, or nearby, where she can get some?

	The question is more like "Where can't she get marmite in the 
	SF bay area?"  I see it on the shelves of most major supermarkets,
	and often in the smaller sorts of shops as well.  Safeway near
	Stanford (El Camino Real) has it For Sure.  Also the Buy & Save
	Market at Willow & Middlefield in Menlo Park.  For some reason I
	notice when this item is in stock, even though I personally abhor
	the stuff.  :-)

While Miss Miller's tale is strictly true there is a little bit more to
Marmite in America than meets the casual eyeball. There are two kinds of
Marmite. Marmite from Canada and Marmite from Great Britain. The first
come in rather small bottles with flat sides, whereas the latter comes
in giant quantities of 500g, is 100% Vegetarian (Approved by the Vegetarian
Society), and comes in a bottle with three beautifully convex surfaces.
Best of all, it comes from Burton-on-Trent, whose waters are a byword for
the beers from them derived. This is the Marmite sans pareil. I know it
can be bought from the British market in Los Altos, CA, and it is possible
(MIss Miller?) that the Campbell, CA, shop has it also.

						Francis Muir

francis@sep.stanford.edu
From: mmh@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: British leftist losers
Date: 15 Apr 92 15:13:24 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept, QMW, University of London, UK.

From: baker@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Andrew Baker)
>Rather than whining about how Britain doesn't have proportional
>representation, why don't Labour and the Liberal Democrats form
>an alliance, and stand as a single party in the next election?
>Have there been any polls (!) indicating what percentage of Liberals
>would switch to the Tories rather than voting for a Liberal-Labour
>Party?  If you apply this percentage uniformly across all constituencies,
>how many seats would the Liberal-Labour Party have won in the last
>election?

Firstly, the Labour Party does not support proportional
representation. Secondly, whereas most Labour supporters would
put the Liberal Democrats as their second choice, Liberal
Democrat supporters split almost evenly to the Conservatives
and Labour as their second choice. So such an agreement would
have no effect on Conservative-Labour marginals. The only seats
it would affect are that small number which are Conservative
held on less than 50% of the vote with the Liberal Democrats
second. There are only a dozen or so of these, and even here it
may well be the case that some of the Liberal Democrat
supporters would go to the Conservatives if they felt their
Liberal Democrat vote was in some sense also a Labour vote.

Many Liberal Democrats support their party precisely because
they oppose the two-party system. It would thereore be anathema
to them to join up with either of the two establishment
parties. As for the idea of a temporary alliance between Labour
and Liberal Democrat, many Liberal Democrats have bitter
memories of the supposed temporary alliance between the Liberal
and Social Democratic parties, which ended up with the two
parties being forced by the press into a shotgun marriage which
at one stage looked as if it would destroy the lot of them.

Matthew Huntbach
From: proberts@informix.com (Paul Roberts)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: The Green Party
Date: 13 Apr 92 18:11:56 GMT
Organization: Informix Software, Inc.

In article <1992Apr13.130210.24037@cs.brown.edu> ST402679@brownvm.brown.edu (Simon Bandler) writes:
>I was just wondering, from these fields afar remote, as to what what to those
>Greens in this most recent election of April 9. Do they now command such little
>support as to not justify even a mention on the net ? Under 1% ?
>
>I dont think they are about to start a new revolution, but surely their message
>should still be considered seriously.

In the handful of returns that I saw on TV, the Greens were consistently
getting around 500 votes. This seems to indicate that they are getting
slightly more than 1% of the vote, based on my very small sample and some
wild estimates (about 40,000 votes cast in the average constituency?).

Paul
From: martinb@bottomdog.uk.sun.com (Martin Baines - Sun UK - SE Manager Cambridge/Gatwick)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: British Bill: of Rights? of Goods?
Date: 14 Apr 92 13:54:34 GMT
Reply-To: martinb@bottomdog.uk.sun.com
Organization: Sun Microsystems
NNTP-Posting-Host: bottomdog.uk.sun.com

In article 20476@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU, baker@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Andrew Baker) writes:
>
>If you don't have a written Constitution that requires some kind
>of super-majority to amend, then what is there to stop the current
>government from changing the election rules any which way it wants (besides
>fear of riots).  Surely, the government couldn't just unilaterally
>declare that elections would henceforth be held every 7 years or that
>the incumbent party could put a "lock" on a hundred constituencies of its
>choice, or could they?   And if they could not do this, then what would
>be the appropriate mechanism for amending the election rules?


The UK does have a constitution: it's just not all written down in one
place. There are various acts of parliament that govern elections,
including the representation of the people acts. These are considered
to be "constitutional" laws, in that they control the make up
and organisation of parliament itself. The current rules are
(if I remember correctly) that a parliament has a maximum term
of 5 years, if it has not called for an elcetion by then, the
soverign is bound by the act to disolve parliament and declare
an election. Extentions of the period of office (including
the amendment of the acts) are the only case where the Lords
consent is required (i.e. if the Commons wants to extend
its life and the Lords says no, tough the bill fails). Some
constitional lawyers also argue that this is also a valid
area for the Royal perogative: i.e. if parliament tries
to extend its term, the Monarch can still disolve parliament
and call an election. The last time the life of parliament
was extended beyond its normal term, was in World War II.

Of course these checks rely on the good will of the Monarch
and the Lords, so it would be possible in theory for them
all to gang up on the unsuspecting masses, but I am not sure
a single written constitution would help a lot more: we would
simply substitute, unelected judges for unelected legislators.

Martin

P.S. If anyone is interested, I *would* support a written
constition, I am just not as certain it would make as
much difference as some of its supporters think.
---
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You might say that, but I couldn't possibly comment"

Martin Baines, Sales Support Manager,
Sun Microsystems Ltd, 306 Science Park, Cambridge, CB4 4WG, UK
Phone: +44 223 420421                 Fax: +44 223 420257
JANET:     Martin.Baines@uk.co.sun    Other UK:  Martin.Baines@sun.co.uk
Internet:  Martin.Baines@UK.sun.com
X.400:     g=martin s=baines prmd=sunir admd=mci c=us
From: sharder@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Soren Harder)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: MAJOR WINS MAJORITY!!!
Date: 11 Apr 92 20:41:57 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

axd7104@acfcluster.nyu.edu writes:

>In article <1992Apr10.144725.2121@bristol.ac.uk>, smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee) writes:
> In article <1992Apr10.052826.28630@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca> jswilson@mta.ca writes:

>Oh, please.  In case you haven't noticed, the WORLD is in recession
>right now.  The UK, The USA, Japan...things are bad all over. 

I wouldn't call myself an expert in these matters, but as a Dane
who moved to Scotland half a year ago, I am of the impression that
this is not true. I hadn't heard about The World Recession before I
came here. Small ups and downs, OK. But Britain seems to be on a major
(no pun intended) dip, that has been going down for a
long time, and will be going down for some time more.

Soren Harder

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Soren Harder, (MSc student)
Centre for Cognitive Science, 2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh
E-mail: sharder@cogsci.ed.ac.uk
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
From: jmb@ukc.ac.uk (Mike Bremner)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Bouncy Castles and Scholars
Date: 9 Apr 92 19:19:51 GMT
Organization: Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Kent

When I was in Scotland last summer, or the summer before, I noticed
several adverts in the local papers from companies offering "bouncy
castles" for hire.  These, in my bouncing days down south (before my son
attained an age which meant that I could no longer use him as an excuse
for indulging in a little bouncing myself) were known as "bounce castles",
so I was interested to see this local variation.  But now I see they're
calling them "bouncy castles" down here too.  Is this an example of
"where Scotland leads, England follows"?

Changing the subject completely, but still on vocabulary matters: does
my memory serve me right in bringing back an image, seen from a train
on the viaduct over the marketplace in Chester-le-Street in the sixties,
of a bus bearing the legend "SCHOLARS" on its destination board?  Was
this common usage in the north-east at that time?  Is it still?
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
From: baker@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Andrew Baker)
Subject: Re: The Decline of Britain (was Re: Great Britain as a malfunctioning democracy)
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University.
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 03:31:15 GMT

In article <1992Apr14.181347.10942@informix.com> proberts@informix.com (Paul Roberts) writes:
>In article <1992Apr14.133600.10682@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> baker@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Andrew Baker) writes:
>>In article <1992Apr14.101803@axion.bt.co.uk> ravis@axion.bt.co.uk (Richard Avis) writes:
>>
>>>To be honest, I have (personally) lost all respect and sympathy for
>>>the squalid little people who keep voting the Conservatives in. Frankly,
>>>I think they are turning into a bunch of bigotted, self-interested morons
>>>who seem unable to understand that the country
>>
>>If it is self-interested for a rich person to vote Conservative, is it also
>>self-interested for a poor person to vote for Labour?
>>If yes, why the whine?  If no, what's the point of the Labour Party??
>>
>
>This reminds me of a marvelous exchange in "Claudius the God". The corn
>merchants are conspiring to keep the price of grain high. Someone objects
>that this is selfish of them.
>
>Corn merchant: the people that sell the grain want it to be expensive,
>the people that buy it want it to be cheap. Why are the wants of one more
>valid that the wants of the other?
>
>Reply: Well, there are far more people who want it to be cheap.
>
>CM: That would seem to add up to more selfishness, rather than less.
>
>Reply (exasperated): Bah, mere sophistry!
>
>
>Paul (paraphrasing and reconstructing from memory)

It is not sophistry at all.  It just shows that accusing the other side
of being self-interested does not get you very far intellectually.  And
calling them "self-interested morons" is even sillier (it would seem
that a self-interested moron would *fail* to achieve his self-interest!).
Sorry, I think that if you want to turn us conservatives into leftists, it
will probably take more than moral invective -- economic arguments might
have an effect, however (using economics, it would be easy to answer the corn
merchants for instance).
From: cbenson@bazooka.Altos.COM (Christopher Benson)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Driving in US with UK license
Summary: driving in California with a UK license
Date: 10 Apr 92 21:27:33 GMT
Organization: AMB Research Labs, Sunnyvale, CA


I caught this one late, but in California, a Briton (me!) may take not
only the written driving test, but also the road test practical and need
not surrender any license. Without the driving part though, they will
indeed confiscate the UK license that doesn't belong to them.

No doubt someone will disagree with this, but anyone who has passed a
British driving test has only to remember which side of the road to
drive on to pass the driving part of the California test. In a 4 minute
drive, I obtained a score enabling me to immediately become a state
certified driving instructor.

In California (and most of the States) it is necessary to obtain a
local license to prove that you exist.

Chris Benson (posting from home).
Xref: sparky soc.culture.british:6277 soc.culture.usa:2922
From: eduardol@castle.ed.ac.uk (Eduardo Lopez)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,soc.culture.usa
Subject: Re: Why should Libya hand over the PanAm bombers?
Date: 13 Apr 92 08:33:46 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU (Scott Horne) writes:
> 
> The US *and* the UN?  I thought they were one and the same....
> 
> 					--Scott
> 


That's it: United Nations of America.

Edu....
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
From: albion@bnr.ca (Alan Buchanan)
Subject: Re: British Bill: of Rights? of Goods?
Originator: albion@bcrks63
Reply-To: alanbu@bnr.ca
Organization: Bell-Northern Research Ltd, Ottawa
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 20:26:03 GMT


In article <ji6pdvk@zola.esd.sgi.com>, livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:


> 
> The only thing that is peculiar, really, is that Americans think that 
> they can define a set of "rules", and that having those rules in the
> Constitution makes them special.   We have rules too, and they are to
> a large extent written down.   We just don't enshrine them in a single 
> document.
> 
> jon.

I believe that this demonstrates a deep fundamental difference in the prime
principal of the two nations at this time.

The more important rules are those in the 'Bill of Rights' but the whole 
constitution can be similarly viewed.

These demonstrate an assumption that there are fundamental moral rules
that must be applied in all cases. That the enumerated rights may be flawed 
is less important than the principle.

The UK believes in the sovereign right of Parliament. It assumes that laws
will represent the opinion of reasonable men. The duty of the courts is to
assure fair and equal application of the word of these laws. A similar
allowance for flaws is needed here.

When you pair away the specifics I believe that one finds two points of 
view that exist in measure in all people, and in both countries, but
in different balance.

One view is extreme rationalism that assumes an analytical approach using
logic and fundamental rules applied to a problem.

The other may be more 'spiritual' and believes in 'gut feeling' and general
sentiment.

As both countries engage in rational debate and use various appeals to
sentiment in the construction of laws, the differences are by no means
absolute. However, the difference in balance diminishes the appeal of the
other's system.



                                  Alan


--
Alan Buchanan       Bell-Northern Research, Ltd       Ph.: (613) 763-2750
Silicon Design      P.O. Box 3511, Station C          Fax: (613) 763-3970
  Methods           Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1Y 4H7  

alanbu@bnr.ca        

        Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
                         - William Butler Yeats
From: andrew@DINO.QCI.BIOCH.BCM.TMC.EDU (Andrew Sharff)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: April 9th
Date: 8 Apr 1992 17:22:16 GMT
Distribution: soc.culture.british
Organization: X-Ray Crystallography / Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Well we have finally arrived at the infamous day. Tomorrow is the first vote 
of the year. Yes, I am convinced that there will be another one before the 
end of 1992.

All of the polls over the past three weeks have indicated that the outcome of 
tomorrow's election will be a hung parliament. The Labour lead over the Conservatives has narrowed a little and though it seems likely that they will end up with more seats, it looks as if they will not have many more than the conservatives. I know these polls are notoriuos but I can't ever remember them all being too far from the truth.

Both the Conservatives and now Labour have said that they will NOT deal with 
the Lib Dems, and after all why should either the conservatives or labour want 
to introduce pr. It isn't in their best interests. So where does that leave everybody.

I can't see any Con/Lib Dem or Lab/Lib Dem pact lasting for long if at all. It 
looks like we will end up in the same situation as the US - no majority so nothing ever gets done.

It wont and can't last - there will be another election.
From: smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: The Decline of Britain (was Re: Great Britain as a malfunctioning democracy)
Date: 15 Apr 92 08:02:33 GMT
Reply-To: P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Organization: University of Bristol

In article <1992Apr14.152659.19564@osf.org> david@guadet.gr.osf.org (David George) writes:
>According to Paul Smee (he was going to dig out some  
>figures) they're even ahead of Britain economically ! 

Cor, don't use ME as a reference, even I don't do that...  (Still digging.)

-- 
Paul Smee, Computing Service, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UD, UK
 P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk - ..!uunet!uknet!bsmail!p.smee - Tel +44 272 303132
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,alt.politics.british
From: preece@sbpexe.enet.dec.com (Ian Preece)
Subject: Re: Rampant paranoia (was Voting slips: what happens to them,DANGER!)
Reply-To: preece@sbpexe.enet.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp.
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 11:56:18 GMT


In article <1992Apr7.112804.8339@aber.ac.uk>, dpl@aber.ac.uk (David
Philip Langstaff) writes:

>
>You tell the official your name & address, s/he checks that you're on the
>roll. 

Not quite... you tell the official your polling number, and he confirms your 
name and address with your polling card.  The books are sorted in number order,
though this does roughly conform to address order.

>
>Part of this ritual is the signing of a declaration of secrecy, quite a large
>part of which is concerned with not attempting to find out the number on the
>back of any particular ballot paper, so obviously given that number and the
>counterfoil book, anyone  can find out who wrote any particular paper.

All fine and good, except that it's not the people present at the count who are
likely to bother.  And declarations of secrecy only usually apply to not 
talking to people not entitled to know.  "They", by definition, would 
feel themselves entitled, in the interests of national something-or-other.

Actually, I suspect that the professionals wouldn't bother, either. 
How you actually vote is of minimal interest to them, it's what you do the rest
of the time they're bothered about.

>Still, 
>checking ballot papers for CPGB & NF candidates may be part of the secret
>vetting procedures - who knows ?

It's *much* easier for them to look at the membership registers of
whoever's out of favour, surely ? ..and much easier to get copies, I'm sure,
than crawling through warehouses of old ballot papers.

If you're going to be PV'ed, your political and personal leanings will be 
assessed on much more than a tick in the box.  At least, I'd like to beleive
that's the case..... these guys get paid out of my taxes, I'd like to think
they're at least doing a professional job of it!

Ian


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ObDisclaimer:

       "I wouldn't *work* for a company that held opinions like mine."      

Ian Preece,                                         Digital Equipment, UK. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: rap@tcom.stc.co.uk (Richard Porter)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Gas stoves
Date: 9 Apr 92 10:49:39 GMT
Reply-To: rap@tcom.stc.co.uk (Richard Porter)
Organization: BNR Europe Limited

In article <pwe.702655289@slipknot> pwe@slipknot.mit.edu (Paul W. Emery) writes:

> In the UK the thermostats on  gas stoves (ovens)are calibrated in"Gas
>marks"can somebody give me the equivalent of this in degrees
>fahrenheit.My Mother's coming over here and if I'm going to get any
>Yorkshire pud she's going to need to know.

Regulo      deg. C      deg. F
.25           110         225
.5            120         250
1             140         275
2             150         300
3             160         325
4             180         350
5             190         375
6             200         400
7             220         425
8             230         450
9             240         475

The above conversions are a guide only and are rounded to the
nearest 10 degrees Celsius or 25 degrees Fahrenheit.
From: sue@netcom.com (Sue Miller)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: The Vogon News Service: 06-Apr-92
Date: 9 Apr 92 17:08:39 GMT
Article-I.D.: netcom.f#sjdbl.sue
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)

In article <xyzzy> francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir) writes:
>
>	Aha! All is explained.  However I think some Americans will find
>	themselves snookered by the jargon that may yet be unleashed in 
>	this thread.......
>
>Lurking Yanks must learn to fend for themselves
>

I find this response amusing!  

1.  Lurkers by definition are reading and not writing, hence won't be 
bothering anybody with requests for help in understanding the dialogue.

2.  This is the first posting by a Yank (and not a lurker) on the
subject.  Why even tell them to "fend for themselves"?  Are you 
warding off a feared barrage of Yank postings asking for help?
And no, PLEASE don't post any snooker advice for me - I've played it
electronically (computer game) and that was quite enough!

Jeepers, Francis, we Yanks invent Use(less)Net, then let you lads
have your own newsgroup so you can natter on cricket (YAWN) and
snooker & other cultural stuff, and you guys want to shut the clubhouse
door on us.  Boo hoo.  :-)