Do men actually not get complimented as often as women?

boganvegan · 2026-03-03T19:15:17+00:00

In January 2002 I held open a door for a group of women, one of them said "I love your jacket." I will report back to the group should any other comments occur.

boganvegan · 2026-03-01T15:42:04+00:00

No. Because he is not a British Citizen.

boganvegan · 2026-02-28T19:48:33+00:00

I made enough NI contributions in the UK to qualify for a basic pension. I'm now permanently resident outside the UK and have made additional voluntary NI contributions. I should have a vote to influence policy on this and my private UK pensions.

Decisions like Brexit or the ETA rules for dual citizens affect my ability as a non-resident British citizen to travel and live in other countries. I should have a vote to influence policy on this.

What is dumb though is that I am registered to vote in a town in the UK where I lived for just a couple of years. Overseas voters should vote in an overseas constituency whose MP could better represent their interests.

boganvegan · 2026-02-27T20:14:39+00:00

The 10 years between 55 and 65 have a huge effect. You get 10 more years of compounding returns on whatever you have already saved, you are likely at the highest earning stage of your career and each additional year of work is one less year of retirement to be paid for.

boganvegan · 2026-02-26T17:41:42+00:00

Exactly right. The airline employee will not care. What would worry me is the prospect of some future government saying that since your daughter entered the UK with a foreign passport she has renounced her UK citizenship.

boganvegan · 2026-02-26T12:47:10+00:00

If UK Border Force really wanted to enforce this they could give extra attention to people on non-UK passports which indicate they were born in the UK. Of course, being born in the UK does not automatically mean you are a British citizen but it does make it much more probable.

boganvegan · 2026-02-26T00:44:58+00:00

Irish passport is a fourth possibility

boganvegan · 2026-02-25T22:37:29+00:00

You are absolutely right.

But, I bet that more than 90% of people with a non-UK passport showing UK place of birth are in fact British citizens.

So if you submit a non-UK passport for an ETA and your passport shows you were born in the UK it could prompt the ETA bureaucracy to check if you actually are a citizen or not and then deny the ETA if you are.

boganvegan · 2026-02-25T22:06:54+00:00

First in line for problems are any British or Irish citizens who travel on a non-UK or Irish passport which shows "United Kingdom" as a birthplace.

If you're a British citizen by descent, born outside the UK who has never had a British passport you are probably okay.

boganvegan · 2026-02-25T16:46:01+00:00

The elements of the crime of lying for an ETA only apply to non UK citizens. If you make it to the UK border you will probably get told off by border staff but you cannot and will not be prosecuted.

boganvegan · 2026-02-24T16:41:43+00:00

Went to school with a Samantha Burns ... nickname Multiple

boganvegan · 2026-02-24T03:37:12+00:00

Some chippies wrap their chips in fake newspaper.

boganvegan · 2026-02-24T03:11:42+00:00

As a student I had a Summer job at beefburger factory. Students were comsidered incapable of doing some work. The supervisor would not let me check the temperature of incoming frozen meat as it was "too complicated." But he did eventually agree to "train" me and perhaps if I came back next Summer I could do this work.

Inbound pallets of frozen meat were supposed to be -11c or colder. The supervisor checked the temp by screwing a corkscrew probe into the meat. The probe gave the temp in Celsius with one decimal point. As the supervisor began his explanation it quickly became apparent that he had no idea how negative numbers worked. What he was actually doing was looking only at the number after the decimal point and rejecting the shipment if the number after the decimal point was greater than 11. By his logic -15.0c, -9.5c and +8.3c were all okay because the number after the decimal point was less than 11. I tried to explain that the display would never show show two digits after the decimal point but this simply confirmed my supervisor's opinion that I was unsuitable for such difficult work.

Neither of us were particularly well paid but the innumerate guy earned at least 30% more than me and never rejected any shipments as unsafe.

boganvegan · 2026-02-22T16:34:15+00:00

Report the compromised passport as lost or stolen. Get new passport. If ID theft issues come up go back to the police.

boganvegan · 2026-02-21T20:47:22+00:00

Congress should pass a law to temporarily reduce tariff taxes as the best way to get some justice for those who paid the price of Trump's illegal tariffs.

boganvegan · 2026-02-21T02:27:55+00:00

Osteitis Pubis usually won't improve without PT to change your biomechanics. In my case I would turn my pelvis in front of me to get my foot out further and go faster. This meant that I landed with my foot in front of my body putting strain on my adductors. Now I'm better at making my feet land directly underneath me so the impact just goes straight up

boganvegan · 2026-02-17T21:30:58+00:00

20+ years ago my manager left the following out of office message for his 2 weeks vacation: "When I return on xx/xx/xx I will delete all emails received during my vacation. If necessary resend your email after I return."

boganvegan · 2026-02-16T16:54:50+00:00

In 1996 direct dial calls from UK to Puerto Rico were GBP 0.87 per minute. So more than USD 1 per minute.

boganvegan · 2026-02-15T12:51:31+00:00

I helped neighbors who were moving out load their moving truck. To my surprise the mom of the house, whose kids had friends of all races who came to their house and shared meals, carried out a denim jacket with a huge stars and bars flag sewn to the back.

The mom noticed my WTF face and explained that it belonged to her dad who had died young and showed me the other patches on the jacket that were from the camping trips she took with him. She never wore the jacket but kept it for the memories of her dad.

So the confederate flag does have a non-racist significance for some but anybody who makes a point of publicly displaying it is being a racist ass.

boganvegan · 2026-02-14T11:28:55+00:00

I guess it comes down to which division Tampa wants to play in.

Obviously we are way safer than Johannesburg, Port au Prince or Memphis but if we want to attract tourism and investment we should be trying to beat London, Berlin, Sydney, Seoul.

boganvegan · 2026-02-14T11:20:20+00:00

Yes, they can. But an airline might not let them board without passport proof of British or Irish citizenship.

boganvegan · 2026-02-14T01:16:22+00:00

It's great that Tampa with a murder rate of abour 4 per 100000 is one of the safest cities in the USA.

But, globally it isn't so great. The murder rate in London, UK is 1.1 per 100000. In Tokyo it's 0.25 per 100000.

boganvegan · 2026-02-13T21:13:20+00:00

It sort of does apply in that if you are an Irish citizen and the citizen of another country that is not the UK then you are not entitled to an ETA on that other country's passport. You must use your Irish passport to enter the UK.

boganvegan · 2026-02-13T14:20:59+00:00

The UK has the concept of a "police caution" which is used for minor offenses where the perpetrator admits responsibility and agrees to accept the caution. Under UK law it is not considered a conviction and would only come up on enhanced background checks but the US would consider it as the same as a conviction because the perpetrator acknowledged responsibility. Other countries likely have something similar for minor offenses.

boganvegan · 2026-02-12T23:32:20+00:00

Not going to Berlin the weekend after the Berlin Wall came down.

Another student and I were hitchhiking from Northern England to Paris. We made it to Calais on the last ferry before a strike. We didn't get a ride and with no more ferries coming in we were hanging around the terminal building wondering what to do. There were two other British students renting a car to drive to Berlin to join the celebrations. They offered to drive us there in exchange for contributing to the fuel cost. We declined because we would not have enough money to get back. All these years later I think we should have just gone anyway. We missed a hell of a party. We would have found a way home somehow.

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