CoffeeHousers' Wall, 11 August - 17 August

THX1138

How about The Speccie organizing a social do for regular contributors, Pete knows who we all are.

We could all meet up & carry on face to face get to know each other, Pete could be ring master it would be fun.

After all we keep this board alive the least they could do is give us a glass of cheap plonk & a few nibbles.

What do you think?

Pete Hoskin

THX1138: Yes, 'twould be good to have a get-together and meet a few CoffeeHousers. And I'd certainly be happy to organise things.

So, just to repeat THX1138's question: what do you think? Would anyone CoffeeHousers be interested? I guess any meet-up would be have to be in London. But do you have any preferences otherwise? Night or daytime? Weekday or weekend? etc. etc.

I'll probably be able to rope a few other Spectator staff members in.

Glasses of cheap plonk and a few nibbles await...

Tim Carpenter

I would be very happy to meet up with the housers (tho' not as regular as I want to be).

The Chocolate Orange Inspector

We have people posting from all over Britain and all over the world. So a little London/Home Counties clique is going to develop.

In addition to which, part of the pleasure of posting here is the anonymity.

Finally, I cannot imagine walking out of the house to go to a gathering where I'd encounter THX1138, the fundamentalist atheist bore of the Anglophone world.

Keith

Sadly, much as I'd like to, I'm not travelling from darkest Lincolnshire for a glass of plonk and a peanut.
Think of the carbon footprint....shock, horror.

Max Kaye

THX1138 - a great idea - but with some caveats.

Mainly that it doesn't become a 'London-centric' event - or a tedious gathering of blogo-bores. This can be ensured by holding such an even no more than, say, once a year (if the first gathering is a roaring success).

I agree that (for some) anonymity is important (though not to me in this forum, at least).

Finally, Chocolate Orange Inspector, the prospect of meeting any bore is not an attractive one. But surely being a regular Speccie reader automatically disqualifies one from that category.

Max Kaye

A completely different subject:

I've just moved to a small town of about 8,000 inhabitants. Walking down the street this morning I came across a car that I owned 15 years ago at a time when I was living and working in London.

It was a 1971 Citroen DS. When I first received it (as a 'company car'!) in 1992, it had been professionally rebuilt and restored, painted in immaculate black with black leather seats (armchairs really) and lovingly polished chrome.

It was - and despite much evidence 14 years of deterioration since I was forced to give it up - remains my 'dream car'.

I hope the current owner enjoys it as much as I did then.

The odds of my old, reasonably rare, car turning up in a small town in South England must be pretty high.

Has any other reader experience something similar?

The Chocolate Orange Inspector

Max Kaye - Of course it would become London-centric!

Even if I lived in Britain, I wouldn't go, because London's a tip. Even the "Deputy Prime Minister" goes out clad in Kelvar and the Home Secretary goes out accompanied by bodyguards.

Tim Carpenter LPUK

It would be illegal to make and sell a new DS in volume these days. That to me shows we have gone backwards.

Michael

Max Kaye-A completely different subject:
many years ago having moved from London to Kent I decided to purchase a pub/restaurant on the Cambridgeshire borders. Upon explaining to my Kentish neighbour of my new asset and address, she, looking shocked explained that it was the very pub in which she had been born some 40 years before. as was my daughter some years later.

DW

I can't be alone in wondering what Verity is like.

Verity

Michael - Sweet story. Thanks.

Re meeting up, why would it have to be organised by The Speccie? Why do the Brits want things done for them? Why not do what American bloggers do, who just post something - let's say on LGF - saying, "Any commenters in the greater Chicago area [greater San Diego area; greater Houston area] we'll be at So-and-So's bar on Friday from 6 p.m. if you want to come join us." Sorted.

Why do the English want it organised for them? If you want to meet up in your area, just post a note, FGS!

Martin Cox

Commentators frequently ask how David Cameron would fund the excellent policies that have been announced.
The answer should be the one which Margaret Thatcher used all those years ago: to abolish a majority of the Quangos.
there are now well over six hundred of them, employing - how many members? at least ten per quango: over six thousand, with premises (either rented or bought), well paid staffs, some of whom travel by business class flights and stay in top hotels.
How many of these bodies are ever closed when their deliberations end? I've never read of one. The usual Labour reaction to any problem is to create a Quango to deal with it, as it is unaccountable.
Most matters should be dealt with by accountable ministers, in the departments which exist for the purposes.
Even the title 'Quango' is misleading: there cannot be an almost autonomous (quasi) non-government organisation. If the Government creates it,and pays for it (with our money), and determines its terms and its life, and what happens to its deliberations (if anything), it is an arm of government, and should be accountable.
Get rid, I say, and spend the money on something useful.
Like compensating the Equitable Life victims (tongue in cheek!).

Verity

Martin Cox - an excellently argued post and I concur. Except I believe there are now over 1,100 quangoes, so they must have pupped since you last checked.

I have argued for ages that they should all be destroyed. Their tasks are tasks we have Whitehall for.

I am for slashing the entire public sector, which, as you rightly say, includes quangoes, by one-third. Most of their clingers-on will be unemployable, but it will be cheaper to give them "benefits" than quangocrat salaries and perks and pensions. Even if they have to be on "benefits" for life, we gain.

cuffleyburgers

Wine and nibbles - good, London bad, how about Tuscany?

Agree about slashing quangoes, too, must get small government onto the Sun editorial pages, howabout some fit young birds going round the country in an open topped bus called the "small government, personal responsibility, free market libertarian express" - bit of a handful I know but if their tits were big enough people would be prepared to overlook that...

Verity

Well, the United Nations has declares flights to and from Tuscany as carbonly neutral, so that is a possibility.

Why don't you just take it upon yourselves to meet up?

Frank Pulley

Why not arrange the get together for 17th November at Royal Hospital Gardens? That way you could all meet the ‘brilliant luminaries’ of the Speccie’s editorial staff:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/events-and-offers/

Incidentally Pete, how come you’re not depicted with them? Was it because you were designated to write the copy for the advert and decided it would be immodest to include your own mugshot, having coined such a grand description for the noted scribblers? And what’s this £149 shtick? Why not a round £150 a head? You’re marketing it like Tesco plonk at £3.99 a bottle (screw-top). Given the Speccie reputation for enjoying the high/low life, they’ll likely be a few postprandial bottles screwed after the ball, I’ll be bound (as Max Mosely said to Miss Whiplash)!

And if you spike this on the grounds that Max will sue the magazine, I shall personally gate-crash on 17th November and dance on the top table among the looming hairies.

Pattison-Appleton

Pete, following Frank`s point why do you not have a mugshot on the Coffee House site (as your colleagues do)?

Verity

David Cameron has a piece in today's (Wednedsday's) Telegraph of such drivelling idiocy it can only have been ghost-written by Neil Kinnock.

My vision began to swim and I stopped reading at this paragraph: "But how should we respond to this crisis? I believe three things need to happen. First, the UN, Nato and EU need to speak clearly and with one voice about what has happened."

Anyone who believes that Dave will get involved in the restoration of British sovereignty is whistling in the dark. Dave loves these grotesque, fascist, multinational,one-worlder, undemocratic monoliths.

If you believe for one minute he is going to start negotiations to free us of the EU chains we never voted for, you are mistaken. He loves the EU and sees his future at the top table, once he has got his stint of Governor of Britain out of the way.

Anyone who thinks Dave would stop mass immigration - or begin a programme of mass repatriation, and reclaim British sovereignty over our own borders is tragically mistaken.

I have long said that David Cameron is a nasty piece of work and I cannot think of any more damning insult than to say he truly is the heir to Blair.

Frank Pulley

Am I imagining things or has the price of the 180th Anniversary Edition gone up? £4.95?? You were knocking out the left-overs at three quid recently, were you not? Stop kidding around and just dispatch them free to your subscribers, which is what you should have done in the first place, you tightwads. You can tell there's a strong Scottish contingent aboard this here ship.

Sterence

Rebecca Adlington just won her second medal at the Olympics. This is a wonderful achievement. But is it really too much to ask that the Union Flag that she held up for the world's press should be the right way up?