[Misc] John Cleese Blacklists Himself From Cambridge University Event

[sydney]

Well, facts are always more nuanced than people think. But I don't have much more to add to what Sid said when he schooled you a few posts back. I especially enjoyed it as you have tried to lecture me on Zimbabwe a few times and it's obvious your knowledge of the subject is very biased and severely limited.

Your mistake, as per, was to assume you are the only one who knows about these places or has experience of them. Hence your rather startled reaction to being put straight.

It's a good lesson in humility.

You are a travelled man and although heavily biased, are clearly educated but it serves us well to be reminded that there is always someone a little more travelled and a little more knowledgeable than us out there. Sid did you a favour back there. You'd do well to remember that.

totally agreed , i think you know i'll admit when im wrong , i have spent a lot of time in that part of the world and my wife's family have quite literally lost a fortune in Zim , we are now supporting them so i guess i have a skewed perspective, as for being schooled , well , Callahan was the p.m when Zanu were mortaring farms and executing entire families and offered no assistance , they had to rely on mercenaries resulting in atrocities on both sides , a tragic demise to a country that was once a fantastic , prosperous place.

 

[The Clamp]

totally agreed , i think you know i'll admit when im wrong , i have spent a lot of time in that part of the world and my wife's family have quite literally lost a fortune in Zim , we are now supporting them so i guess i have a skewed perspective, as for being schooled , well , Callahan was the p.m when Zanu were mortaring farms and executing entire families and offered no assistance , they had to rely on mercenaries resulting in atrocities on both sides , a tragic demise to a country that was once a fantastic , prosperous place.

Fair play. I was a tad harsh. My Zim colleagues say the same thing. I know you know your stuff.

 

[Sid in the Sharknado]

I really enjoyed reading that. The bit about carving the south african landscape out of the ether made me laugh.

As for actual buildings and their provenance...I wonder if the Egyptians still hanker for the pharoas who carved the pyramids out of the Nile valley? Do they worship them as men of vision?

There is an irony that the best and most lasting buildings and monuments from the past were largely built by slaves (a bit like the stadia for the next world cup!). I suspect most people are happy to turn a blind eye to how all this stuff was built, but that's no reason to revere the builders. I'm happy we have got these buildings to marvel at (apologies for wandering off topic a bit) but I still think that Rhodes should be reviled not lauded. Times change...

You simply couldn't build stuff like the Lewes Road viaduct, let alone the Napoleonic era Hythe to Rye canal, where I went this afternoon, with the labour costs and health and safety regulations we have today. So be it. With the current resources available, should we build Palaces for Kings and royal-sanctioned Pirates, or decent homes for the plebs? It's got to be the latter. Before [MENTION=17322]Lenny Rider[/MENTION] comes along to tell me off, I am not advocating dismantling the palaces - they are tremendous, and I do not subscripe to culture wiping, a la the Taliban and their defacing of everything not Islamic Pashtunwali.

Yet....times change. I am very happy to have the Churcill statue in Parliament square, and I have always nodded at it when I cycle past it on the way to work. In fifty years time, however, maybe Churchill will be widely regarded less favourably (not simply reviled by eco warriors and the like) and his foibles given more weight and subjected to more opprobrium. We can't rewrite history but our attitudes to it are bound to evolve.. We're humans and it's what we do

I'll jump on the reference to the Lewes Road viaduct and the canals, since that sort of thing is my gig.

In my first few months after leaving university, I was having what at the time I thought was a particularly stressful day at work (in a civil engineering design office) and asked my then manager what his worst day at work was.

"On my first day at work someone was killed".

That rather put my problems in perspective. The health and safety issues and labour costs in modern construction might seem frustrating, but they're better than the days when 100 people would be killed digging a rail tunnel without anybody being surprised. The more annoying problem is when a contractor refuses point blank to help push a broken down car out of a contraflow in case something happens and they end up getting sued.

At least the designers of the Victorian infrastructure often shared in the danger, off the top of my head Brunel was nearly drowned during the digging of the first Thames tunnel, and Robert Stevenson (the lighthouse one, not the one who designed Rocket) spent months on the Bell Rock during construction there.

 

[Sid in the Sharknado]

i'll stand corrected on the chronology of Rhodes's Prime Ministership , with respect to Smith , the country was booming , huge productive farms , plenty of food , schools and hospitals for all regardless of colour and Smith had the support of his people. You could interpret it as UDI or you could look at as Zim being cut loose to defend itself against communist backed rebels , the fact that the Labour govt didn't offer assistance to the mostly English population is still a sore point..

Thank you for the edited version of this reply.

At the time the white population of South Rhodesia made up about 5% of the total. The British government were never going to agree to independence while the overwhelming majority were excluded from power. Smith declared independence hoping his government would be recognised by other countries, that didn't happen. By the time Callaghan was PM, they'd declared themselves a Republic in the hope it would encourage other countries to recognise them and it still didn't work.

Even if the British governments of the day (Labour and Conservative) had the resources and inclination, it's unlikely they could have kept Smith in power for very long without turning the situation into larger Cold War proxy conflict, which would probably have made everything worse.

totally agreed , i think you know i'll admit when im wrong , i have spent a lot of time in that part of the world and my wife's family have quite literally lost a fortune in Zim , we are now supporting them so i guess i have a skewed perspective, as for being schooled , well , Callahan was the p.m when Zanu were mortaring farms and executing entire families and offered no assistance , they had to rely on mercenaries resulting in atrocities on both sides , a tragic demise to a country that was once a fantastic , prosperous place.

Aside from anything I've written on this thread up to now, I am sorry to read what happened to your wife's family.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

totally agreed , i think you know i'll admit when im wrong , i have spent a lot of time in that part of the world and my wife's family have quite literally lost a fortune in Zim , we are now supporting them so i guess i have a skewed perspective, as for being schooled , well , Callahan was the p.m when Zanu were mortaring farms and executing entire families and offered no assistance , they had to rely on mercenaries resulting in atrocities on both sides , a tragic demise to a country that was once a fantastic , prosperous place.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I'll jump on the reference to the Lewes Road viaduct and the canals, since that sort of thing is my gig.

In my first few months after leaving university, I was having what at the time I thought was a particularly stressful day at work (in a civil engineering design office) and asked my then manager what his worst day at work was.

"On my first day at work someone was killed".

That rather put my problems in perspective. The health and safety issues and labour costs in modern construction might seem frustrating, but they're better than the days when 100 people would be killed digging a rail tunnel without anybody being surprised. The more annoying problem is when a contractor refuses point blank to help push a broken down car out of a contraflow in case something happens and they end up getting sued.

At least the designers of the Victorian infrastructure often shared in the danger, off the top of my head Brunel was nearly drowned during the digging of the first Thames tunnel, and Robert Stevenson (the lighthouse one, not the one who designed Rocket) spent months on the Bell Rock during construction there.

Given that you are unfailingly courteous I should have realised that you are a civil engineer.










I'll get my lo-viz coat.

 

[Sid in the Sharknado]

Given that you are unfailingly courteous I should have realised that you are a civil engineer.




I'll get my lo-viz coat.

Never gets old.

Ever.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Never gets old.

Ever.

 

[Wardy's twin]

Personally disagree with all this re-writing of history , it happened leave it alone and learn from it to improve the present and the future. Note I accept what's written is likely to be incorrect or biased but it's what we have.

There has been a whole concentration recently about Britain's contribution to slavery, some implying we invented it and that we were the world's biggest slavers. Slavery has been going on from the time man became organised and where the strong dominated the weak. What is wrong is that it continues especially in the middle east, sure the people aren't loaded in chains on to slave ships but they were forced by starvation to move to areas where they might earn a subsistence living and do as their owners bid.

The focus on Southern Africa is another example of trying to remove facts, a small white mainly British set of colonialist succeeded not because of imperial might but because they exploited the local political situation where various african tribes/nations hated each other and were used against each other. It was not a straight black versus white struggle.

I do I despise Rhodes yes but trying to change what happened by changing the narrative or removing statues opens up the whole of history for revision - should we knock the Colloseum down given it was a slaughter house .

 

[sydney]

Thank you for the edited version of this reply.

At the time the white population of South Rhodesia made up about 5% of the total. The British government were never going to agree to independence while the overwhelming majority were excluded from power. Smith declared independence hoping his government would be recognised by other countries, that didn't happen. By the time Callaghan was PM, they'd declared themselves a Republic in the hope it would encourage other countries to recognise them and it still didn't work.

Even if the British governments of the day (Labour and Conservative) had the resources and inclination, it's unlikely they could have kept Smith in power for very long without turning the situation into larger Cold War proxy conflict, which would probably have made everything worse.



Aside from anything I've written on this thread up to now, I am sorry to read what happened to your wife's family.

thankyou , it is very much a perspective thing , my wife's dad and uncles all had beautiful farms , they would have employed thousands of workers in season , one uncle built the largest privately owned dam in Harare with a 2 million U.S dollar loan from the African development bank , he payed the loan off quickly as it put his farm on another level production wise with the gravity fed irrigation. Two months after he made the last payment he was run of his farm by Mugabes war vets , a charming man name Hitler Hunzvi brought 2 coach loads of men to the farm and marched him and his family out at gunpoint , they thought they were done for , we had only all been on the farm a few days before...........Tony Blair made noises about compensating the white farmers but it never happened. The uncles are all gone now and my wife's dad passed away last Tuesday so i'm afraid i have probably been a bit emotional in my debating with you ....appologies. As said it was a beautiful country and i spent many months there , it's ruined now.