Does the British Prime Minister reall walk around with out body gaurd or security?

md2000 · June 15, 2012, 11:53pm

Yeah. See, by the time of the Conquest, Harold had a big bullseye, but not on his back, so to speak… It was on his… Oh, nevermind.

(I bleame the keybroad)

China_Guy · June 16, 2012, 12:57am

Tony Blair spoke at my company a while back. I was with a group of customers and we were trying to literally walk about 30 feet across a parking lot to a stand alone little tiny building the size of a full container. We had security types stop us on the sidewalk, there were 2 local police cars and several uniformed officers, there were a couple men in black with earpieces, and we could clearly see Tony’s bullet proof black SUV.

It took about 15 minutes to finally get permission to be escorted to the little container building.

Tony was inside the building, with more layers of security, speaking and not due to come out for about 30 minutes. He had left by the time we came back out, so never saw him.

amanset · June 18, 2012, 10:36am

The_Great_Cornholio:

The sort of place you take kids into is not called a pub either. It’s probably called a Harvester, which is a building which once might have been a pub, but is more likely to have been thrown up in the past 20 years, furnished with shite from a central warehouse - stuff like old church pews, wrought iron farming implements and stone flagons marked with “Ye Olde Ale”. They will apparently serve Stella, but get so little of it through the pump (because the building is not placed to be anyone’s local within walking distance, so no serious drinkers come in) that it will taste like piss. Flat piss. On the other hand, they will happily charge you an arm and a leg for an orange juice and lemonade, after filling 75% of the glass with ice, and they will keep a straight face whilst they do it.

These places excel at “Pub Grub” which is a British Tradition where “kitchen staff” (as opposed to “Chefs”) will skilfully lob your scran into a microwave to finish it to perfection, it having been delivered by a Brake Brothers refrigerated truck that very morning with the rest of the menu. Extensive training ensures your meal pings at the exact time your chips come out of the deep fat frier. Hmmm, yummy. Banoffee pie for dessert?

If you are lucky, there may be a monstrous shed made of corrugated iron tacked onto the side of the “pub” which will resemble the monkey house at Twycross Zoo. Having amped up your snot-nosed kids on fizzy pop and crisps, you can let them loose inside this building to shake it all up until they are ready to spew all over nice Uncle Cornholio’s new shirt when he tries to be helpful and pick up the little shit who is crying after being launched out of the ball pit by bigger kids.

This “pub” will be choc-a-bloc in school holidays and at weekends, but expect to be given a frosty welcome after 8.30pm, they will be winding down to close by then. “The chef” will be clearing up (or rather, the work experience kid will have wiped out the microwave) and the staff will eye you suspiciously if you just want an alcoholic drink and are not interested in Sky Sports. You are probably one of them weirdos who wants to go to a pub and wind-down. Eeewww.

Real pubs should be devoid of children at 7.30pm sharp, and possibly wives/girlfriends of the excessively stroppy variety too. It is acceptable to leave any minors you have been unable to offload out in the beer garden with a packet of crisps and a bottle of coke. If they are well-behaved (ie. you don’t hear a peep from them, yet don’t have to send out the police helicopter to find them after they wander off down the canal towpath in the dark), it is acceptable to buy them a glass of Shandy Bass. They can then pretend to have been out supping piss with their coolest uncle ALL night, and when their mother smells their breath, she will believe every fucking word of it and you will never hear the last of it. On the plus side, you are excused babysitting duties FOREVER.

So, real pub = Lots of proper beer and lager - no Blue WKD, no fridges with more non-alcoholic beverage than booze; no kids; no stroppy birds; no telly (unless it’s a tiny CRT behind the bar, tucked behind the till, that you can’t actually see properly); no poncy food - only Pork Scratchings, Ready Salted crisps and Big D peanuts (displayed on a card with a picture of Beverly Pilkington. It is acceptable to have alternative brands, featuring up to the minute modern models like Donna Ewin or Linda Lusardi. These ladies must be oh-so-close to having their nipples shown, but bar staff must be trained to only take the packets from the part of the card covering her lower leg, or Hurricane fucking Higgins, so no-one ever gets to see “the reveal”); no ball pits; no jukebox; no uppity parents who get shirty when you stride into the bar, catch sight of your mate and shout “Heyyyyyy Tom, you dirty old cunt! How’d you get on last night with that bird with the massive tits? Let me smell your fingers you fucker!”
I mean, come on, if you don’t want your kids to enjoy interacting with adults and learning new words, stay the fuck out of anywhere they serve alcohol after 7.30pm, or live with the consequences - (“Mummy, what’s a cumguzzler?”).
Acceptable pub games are skittles (with an oche screwed to the floor just outside the ladies’ toilets, perfectly placed to trip any woman who has managed to escape the curfew, thus showing that they really can’t handle their drink, that’s why they are falling all over the place. Time to go home pet.), darts, cards and dominoes. Anything that looks like it came from a giant’s Toys R Us (ie. Connect 4), or has a large Health and Safety notice next to it, or instructions, is prohibited unless you are a pretentious ponce.
The Holy Grail of pub games is Bar Billiards. Just put your 20p on the side, if you aren’t a local then your turn will be sometime next Tuesday. Oh, and we play Midland League rules here (Version 38c), so in fact, your turn is next Thursday. At 1.15pm.

Special Branch detectives are allowed in, but only if they don’t sup too much and have to be held back by their client (“Leave him Wilson, he’s not worth it, let’s go back to Chequers and you can have a dip in the pool and Sam will bring us bacon butties, won’t you sweetie? Are the kids still outside in the snow where we left them?”) - they invariably are tooled up and this is very unsporting, especially in light of the demise of the good old glass pint mug, every man’s weapon of choice when it all kicks off, even if you are a big Wendy who is drinking halves out of a straight glass.

Oh, and if you are walking home after a lock-in, remember to stay off the moors and stick to the path.

God I need a pint…

And I am still trying to work out if you’re taking the piss or not. I’ve met far too many people saying this sort of bullshit seriously.

Gyrate · June 18, 2012, 11:16am

Tony made a lot of people very very angry with several of his government’s policies, and in particular by his support of the Iraq War (as the recent protester at the Leveson inquiry demonstrates). He’s probably more in danger of a pie to the face than a knife or bullet but I bet he gets a lot of hate mail still.

Don’t listen to amanset, Mr Clarkson, and may I say welcome to the SDMB.

njtt · June 18, 2012, 4:01pm

And yet, somehow, under his leadership, Britain changed more (and mostly for the better, and largely by intention) than under any other Prime Minister of the last century.

The_Great_Cornholio · June 19, 2012, 11:27am

Really? You think there are “far too many people” who think that when a PLC turns a large inn into a Harvester it’s not a pub anymore? You know lots of people who think a pub should be a haven for ADULTS to relax over a few pints without being assailed by children,fruit machines, jukeboxes and Sky Sports? Where your beer is served by bar staff who pull your pint and can tot up the round in their head, rather than press the dispense button and wait for the total to come up on the EPOS?

Well, maybe those people, “far too many” though they may be to you, are the reason that the pub trade is in what many see is a terminal decline? Better to stay at home than go to the nearest “Vertical Drinking” establishment, where there is a manager rather than a Landlord, owned by a Pubco or PLC who see the building as “a Unit”, rather than a Public House?

There was some piss-taking in my post, obviously, but the underlying theme is serious. Alas, those days are part of history - pubs are closing at a record rate, converted into houses, leaving those, who don’t go into a “pub” to see how many pints of Snakebite they can have before they have to have a stomach pump, with the likes of Wetherspoons…FFS!

Thankfully, there are still independent boozers, where you can get a good, well-looked after pint; where you can call someone a “C…” (Clarkson?) at 8pm without having to worry about a nipper hearing you; where they are not trying to be pub/restaurant/amusement arcade rolled into one. Those places where you can get some food cooked on the premises, but where you aren’t considered to be an annoyance if you are there to have a drink, rather than dine, are still about, and long may they stay afloat.