h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Apparently many editors of the world's leading news publications strongly disagree with the Daily Fail.

On Thursday, The Daily Mail called The Guardian, "the paper that helps Britain's enemies". Here are the responses:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/10/guardian-democracy-editors

The Mail have pretty much painted themselves into a corner, and I don't think they know it or, if they do, are that bothered. Either way, they're not in a position to back down now, and I hear that they're selling out on newstands... or maybe it's that newstands aren't stocking as many as before. I don't think this has hurt their circulation numbers, and that's a sad comment on, well, I'm not sure what.

It's a sad statement on the general state of discourse in the Western world that so many prefer to have their "news" parsed and spoon fed to match their bias. "You've got your news sources, I've got mine" is too common a refrain now. Objectivity in journalism is all but dead now.

I was about to say that I don't ever recall politics, and society, being as polarised as they are now, but I'm forgetting the whole of the 1980s. Margaret Thatcher was determined to grind the left and everything it stands for into the ground, and she did a pretty good job of it.

It has undoubtedly got worse lately though. The Tea Party here, UKIP in the UK (I heard the Tea Party described as UKIP with guns), although the Tea Party is exerting a much greater influence than I think UKIP is ever likely to.

12. People who say they feel worthless, a non-person or somehow diminished when they don't have a job.

Work, ie having a job, be it 9-5, shiftwork, white collar, blue collar, indoors, outdoors is one of the most evil and unpleasant inventions of humankind. Not many people enjoy their job, plenty hate it, most despise having to drag themselves out of the house five or more days a week to go and do it, hardly anyone thinks they get paid enough (many actually don't), feeling under-appreciated is common, as is feeling like part of a machine or a cost-benefit spreadsheet instead of a living, breathing human being, the vast majority are worried about losing their job and are frightened to rock any boats or blow any whistles or make even the smallest of waves, and bosses will almost always have the upper hand.

The lack of money, which almost inevitably comes with not having a job, can most definitely have an effect on someone when there isn't enough to pay the basic bills and necessities, and consumerism has instilled desire and greed in many people to the point where not being able to buy the things they want causes intense grief and distress.

But the idea that you're completely defined by your job and are nothing without one is utterly beyond my comprehension. I would do many things to avoid having one, including being a househusband/kept man, self-employment, self-sufficiency, writing something that earns me huge royalties, or a massive lottery win. It pains me greatly that now I'm only seven years from retirement it's looking increasingly as if 65 isn't going to be retirement age any more.

Bum.

Yeah, that is a bummer. What is really appalling in the US is that there are a lot of educated people who are no longer middle class and are competeing with the really underprivledged at soup kitchens and food banks! And dummies in Congress that don't accept that there should not be a high enough minimum wage so that the working poor can't afford to feed their family while working perhaps two or three jobs at a time! Nickled and dimed to death while the 1% gets richer and richer.

13. Sausage casserole.

Bangers should only ever be fried or grilled, or perhaps roasted, which is a very fine way of cooking them and is my preferred choice if I have time. They need to be dry. Cooking them in a gravy makes them wet. It makes them soggy and wet and floppy. And it's wrong. And I don't believe anyone could do anything as nasty and unpleasant as that to a sausage.

Besides, sausages are a prepared food; processed, in a way, but in a good way. And the only meat that should go into a stew or a casserole is fresh meat. Beef, lamb, pork, chicken, game. Not sausages. Not ever.

You're living in Texas. Have you not had some good smoked sausage yet?

What about sausage etouffee? That's a bit like a casserole. And andouille in gumbo is sort of like a stew.

Smoked, whether it be hot- or cold-smoked is fine, just as long as it isn't put into any kind of gravy, which those other two are. That's not right.

Oh, by the way, the breakfast sausages I had when I was in the UK were horrid, tasteless, sad little things.

Well, everything, from sausages to skyscrapers, has its good and its bad. You were clearly staying at a naff hotel

Unless you had them in a greasy spoon, in which case it was a naff caff

I'm with you on this one 100%. It isn't so much the meat in the sausage that goes wrong, but the skin. If you cook a sausage in liquid, the skin is like chewing rubber.
Sometimes a gravy or a sauce can be nice on a sausage, like Currywurst, but they should be put on top, and only after the sausage has been properly cooked first.

This is true.

I like sausage hotpot though, but I haven't had it for a long long time. But, I think, they are fried first then added. Not that it makes much difference.

In other news, apparently the German sausage Cartel has been fined 338 million euros.

from the article:

>>there are more than 1,500 kinds of wurst according to the German Food Guide website<<

now, is it just me or does that sound like a challenge?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/15/german-sausage-cartel-caught-bangers-to-rights-wurst

For the love of Bob, don't tell 2legs

"Bangers to rights" "...one of the wurst"

cool, eh? there were some pretty good puns BTL - one of the few Grauniad articles where one dare go below the line...

14. Flying cars. As in "This is the year 2014, we were supposed to have flying cars by now".

And yet... http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-28460739

I really wish I could share my impersonation of George Jetson's car here.



BBBBBBBBBBBB-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b

That just doesn't do it justice.

This'll have to do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdWswvLPdE0

That's one of my most favourite cartoon sounds of all

Here's a thing though. The area where this 'flying car' er, flew, is utterly flat http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=52.710013,-0.243309&spn=0.012103,0.033023&t=h&z=16&layer=c&cbll=52.709938,-0.243235&panoid=OVzSeYiFp7ZjV1bsvJxqnw&cbp=12,7.2,,0,6.02

How... just how, did it end up hitting the house on the first floor?

Unless it really is a real, honest-to-goodness flying car Maybe there's more to the Google self-drive car than Google is letting on