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

You May leave


But you're welcome back any time!

I've gotten it out of my system now.

Congrats.

I still can't force myself to fill out the forms. I know I'M in denial but it's getting ridiculous now. The thought of doing it makes me cry.
I really (given how exasperated and cross and angry I am with the British Government right now and the brexiters) can't understand why I'm being like this.

Ah Camelot! I saw that off-Broadway, not with Julie Andrews, but with Richard Burton, who made a good fist of the singing, something I never heard before or since. That was 1962 and I was 14.

I much preferred the Broadway version's original cast album to the movie soundtrack .

i don't know if many people know this, but Julie Andrews went for a screen test in the late 1940s and was rejected as not photogenic enough. When she finally did get movie roles that showed off her talents, she became a huge box office draw, until about 1969, when her movie musicals began sinking at the box office.

Being as wise as she was talented, she regrouped and began a very long writing career, which is beginning to pay off in theatrical adaptations.* She also has a career as a theatrical career as a director*

*http://www.goodspeed.org/productions/2012/mousical

Julie is a natural connector. Her first husband, Tony Walton, has continued to do production and design for many of her movies, and is connected with this show. Her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton has been her literary collaborator for decades, and there is a new generation of Hamiltons in the wings, ready (perhaps).to keep the family theater going.

Congrats, TC!

I'm with you on being angry you had to go through all this, though.
What a bloody mess politicians make of things.

I agree!

*fans self in amazement* Gosh,hello Bel.

The Brexit situation is getting more and more ridiculous. By the way, I was pictured in the local paper along with my Scottish friend when we received our certificates. Although there were over 70 candidates and only 5 of us were British, the headline read "Brexit swells the number of new citizens"'

Yesterday I picked up my first ever, credit-card-sized, biometric ID card. The passport should be ready in a couple of weeks. Everybody congratulated me at choir practice last night.

Now I don't have to lug my passport round with me all the time, as my ID fits neatly into my purse, along with my driving licence.

The ID card also comes with a PIN and a PUK Apparently this now enables me to do a couple of "official" procedures on line, a service which will no doubt be expanded on in due course.

What is a biometric ID card?

we're now 2 weeks into the process. Can't wait for it to be over

Biometric ID cards and passports have fingerprints and facial details recorded on a chip. At least, I think that's what it is.

I used to run a book discussion group. The ladies in the group were mostly in their seventies or eighties, and they could remember what America was like in the early twentieth century, when people didn't need so many forms of identification.


Nowadays, we even have stores that charge you money just to go in the front door. We can't fly from one part of the U.S. to another part of the U.S. without an enhanced driver's license or our passport. What;s the next step after building high walls along the borders between the U.S.and its neighbors? Walls along state borders? Perimeter walls around U.S. cities to keep the Visigoths out?

Where did this atmosphere of distrust come form?

talking about passports - just booked a flight for Gruesome #1 to visit her granny in the UK and there are big warnings all over the booking site about having at least 6 months left on your passport in case there's a hard Brexit.

That's depressing

Do people ever really know what they want? Or need, for that matter? The British voted to leave the EEC. The Americans ( at least many of the Americans in rural and/or Southern states) voted for Donald Trump. Did some of the support for these acts amount to a cri de coeur about elites that no longer listened to people who weren't well-connected? Was future shock involved as well? Too much change to get used to? Am I overthinking this?

You've got to give it those elitists like Trump, Farage, Jacob Rees-Mogg etc who actually have the gall (and get away with) to accuse others of being in an 'elite' - it really is gobsmacking sometimes.

Okay, that's a point I hadn't fully grappled with.

I prefer to think of *both* political parties as excessive in their view of their own importance. There seems t be a bloc of voters who vote for whichever party is out of power as a way of making the two parties check each others delusions of grandeur.

So, it's like a type of government in exile when your side is not running things. You feel as if no one is giving you the sort of attention that you are *sure* you deserve. Those ivory-tower elitists, or those super-wealthy tycoons who have never had to scrounge for food.

I think a cri de coeur was part of it all right, both sides of the Atlantic. People who don't see themselves as prospering under the old regime are ready to plump for almost any change. If it hurts a lot of people, well, they're hurting already.

I pay attention to what Michael Moore says. He called Trump's election before any other non-Trump supporter, by a long way. "Trump is going to win. Get used to it." Because the Trump supporters were highly motivated, and the Clinton ones were not.

Even non-controversial politicians can take controversial decicions, like spending 680 million euros on getting a (possible) vote in one airline company, instead of spending that amount on massively improving the country's whole educational system.

Is education funded at the national level in your country? In my country, most funding comes from cities or towns. Maybe the states or national government will offer supplementary funds for specific purposes, but mostly it's local communities that are supporting the schools.

Missiles and other defense items are strictly a national responsibility.

Buildings and maintenance are financed locally. All educational costs are paid nationally (teachers salaries, books etc.)This is a lump sum based on the amount of pupils the year before. Within certain boundaries, the schools are then free to decide how to spend the money. Big changes in the number of pupils from year to year can pose a real problem. (Like: We need an extra teacher now, but we can only pay for that next year)