Quatloos!

longdog wrote:

TheNewSaint wrote:As odd as this may sound, I think these contradictory definitions can co-exist. Many English words have different meanings depending on context (e.g., present tense "read" vs past tense "read"). Since this phrase and its two meanings sprang to life organically, I am loath to declare one correct and the other incorrect. You just have to be clear which you mean:

Could we not distinguish between the various Crawfords by the simple expedient of using subscripts? A Crawford1 being the loss of the value of the property and a Crawford2 being the loss of the value of the property plus an equal amount in legal fees etc.

This principle could of course be extended to apply to VICTORYS!!!!11!! such that when somebody is given a free house by the courts like Tom and that lunatic client of ExpertInFuckAll were hoping for. On those occasions we can simply use a superscript as in "With the help of ExpertInFuckAll I am now the outright owner of 17 and 17A... A Crawford2" These will of course rarely be used and could best be described as totally-fucking-irrational numbers.

Or maybe what you get when you multiply a transfinite by the null set.

Burnaby49 wrote:I agree. This is getting too caught up in absolute numbers rather than as a method of comparison. There are just so many factors unique to each situation that a simple numbers criteria does not convey the depth of stupidity in each individual case.

As an example compare Crawford to Patel. Even if Tom ends up losing more money than Rheka I'd still give her a much higher rating because she started over a trivial issue with little at risk. She lost her house over a pittance because of her overwhelming obsession to fight a pointless battle she couldn't win. Tom apparently started with his property at risk (assuming he couldn't meet the mortgage) and was trying to save it. Each fought a magnificent take-no-prisoners campaign with little to chose between the actual fights but I believe a full Patel should have a higher rating than a full Crawford.

Like the difference between a pintus and a pintca?

Speaking about awards for proportionate loss, how about in non-financial terms and award for people who do things like turn a parking ticket into an 8 month prison sentence? Called something like an "Andyroo" after the guy who did exactly that.
http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?sho ... 73264&st=0
http://www.visordown.com/news/general/s ... d-on-forum

aesmith wrote:Speaking about awards for proportionate loss, how about in non-financial terms and award for people who do things like turn a parking ticket into an 8 month prison sentence? Called something like an "Andyroo" after the guy who did exactly that.
http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?sho ... 73264&st=0
http://www.visordown.com/news/general/s ... d-on-forum

I fear we may heading towards having a vast number of separate but similar units when we could easily use just the one unit for pretty much all circumstances.

Carrying on with my theme of using the 'Crawford' with subscripts and superscripts I propose that in case like the one in the link we use a preceding superscript to indicate a jail sentence in months giving the guy an 8Crawford and Ollie Pinnock a 1Crawford.

Using this principle we could, through the cunning use of letter codes indicate non-custodial convictions and civil actions thus giving Crawford himself a cdCrawford2 (cd = Conditional Discharge) and Robert White a ctl-bCrawfordx where ctl = Council Tax Liability Order, b = bankruptcy and x = an as yet unknown multiplication of the original debt. In due course he could become a ctl-b-cc4Crawfordx when he gets jailed for contempt of court for four months (cc4).

If we place the preceding superscripts in chronological order we can see at a glance the progress of our heroes at as they go merrily down the primrose path to self-inflicted ruin.

ETA: I'm taking it as read that to earn a Crawford of any description there has to be a conscious effort on the part of the laureate to make a bad situation worse and simple criminality no matter the degree does not in itself earn a Crawford of any kind.

You're all missing the point, the Full Crawford is when you piss away all you equity, doesn't matter how much that might be, you had some equity, you pissed it all away...Full Crawford, and we don't need to know the amount, its just all gone

A Full Rekha, is by extension a Full Crawford, with the proviso that you you started with a house that was paid for and the equity you pissed away at least equaled but could exceed, the value of the house, again, without reference to how much it was.

Gregg wrote:You're all missing the point, the Full Crawford is when you piss away all you equity, doesn't matter how much that might be, you had some equity, you pissed it all away...Full Crawford, and we don't need to know the amount, its just all gone

A Full Rekha, is by extension a Full Crawford, with the proviso that you you started with a house that was paid for and the equity you pissed away at least equaled but could exceed, the value of the house, again, without reference to how much it was.

How very dare you!!!!11!!

This is exactly the point behind my proposed, and dare I say brilliant (I dare, I dare) use of the Crawford with subscript and superscript modifiers. A Crawford1 represents a losing of the entire equity in a property, a Crawford2 represents a loss of all equity and an equal amount lost through being a monumental twonk about things. The figures themself are not of importance only the multiplication factor denoted by the subscript.

By extension the multiplication of a £30 parking ticket into a £6000 legal bill would be a Crawford200 as I seem to recall some Goofer genius achieved.

In cases where the exact quantities are unknown a tilde can be used to give an approximation so that Rekha Patel could be said to have achieved a Crawford~1 or alternatively a range can be specified giving a Crawford1-2.

Gregg wrote:a Full Rekha, is by extension a Full Crawford, with the proviso that you you started with a house that was paid for

Do we know that, though? I don't think we ever determined if the former Patel Cottage was paid off or had an ongoing mortgage.

TheNewSaint wrote:

Gregg wrote:a Full Rekha, is by extension a Full Crawford, with the proviso that you you started with a house that was paid for

Do we know that, though? I don't think we ever determined if the former Patel Cottage was paid off or had an ongoing mortgage.

Under my proposal the value of the house and whether or not it was paid off becomes irrelevant when she is awarded a Crawford. If she started out with a £9000 bill for the damages to the neighbour's property and has, through her frivolous over-litigation turned it into a £90,000 legal bill she would be awarded a Crawford10 . If she is convicted in due course of a contempt charge she will move up to a xCrawford10 where x will denote the conviction and sentence.

I think people are getting too hung up on what equity Tom Crawford did or didn't manage to piss away. The Crawford unit in my proposal is simply named after him. His actual loses could mean he is awarded a Crawford2 or a Crawford3 depending on how you define his losses. I would say he had an initial debt of £45,000 outstanding on the house. Assuming he could've sold the house for £135,000 but lost everything that would be turning a £45,000 debt into a £90,000 loss plus the outstanding £45,000 so a Crawford3

Siegfried Shrink wrote:

longdog wrote: just as long as there will still be cake.

Cake is a given. Cherry Genoa. Dundee.
A Victoria or any other sponge does not qualify as cake in my book.

As an American, I'm not familiar with those terms, but I'm all in favor of cake.

This is a Victoria;


An example of Britain's obsession with jam-filled sponge cake.

This is a Dundee;


A dried fruit filled abomination.

This is a Cherry Genoa;


Another dried-fruit filled doorstop.

Gregg wrote:You're all missing the point, the Full Crawford is when you piss away all you equity, doesn't matter how much that might be, you had some equity, you pissed it all away...Full Crawford, and we don't need to know the amount, its just all gone

A Full Rekha, is by extension a Full Crawford, with the proviso that you you started with a house that was paid for and the equity you pissed away at least equaled but could exceed, the value of the house, again, without reference to how much it was.

We could award medals to commemorate the various honors; and we can even borrow from the British and Canadian (among others) practice of adding bars for various distinctions. A Full Crawford medal, earned in the way that Rekha has, would earn a Rekha Bar. A medal earned by someone who whines, loud and long, about how UNFAIR the ebil gummint has been to them, get a medal with Crossed Diaper Pins. Someone who tries to buy and/or pay for something with a sketchy financial instrument (a WeRe check, a promissory note which is supposed to be accepted as full payment, and the like) gets their medal with a Plugged Nickel Cluster.

We could have fun with this....

Burnaby,
Of those three, I'll take the Victoria.
But I'll take pecan pie over any of them.

Dr. Caligari wrote:Burnaby,
Of those three, I'll take the Victoria.
But I'll take pecan pie over any of them.

Now we're talking a real dessert.

Here's what I've come to think about the Full Crawford thing:

Walt Whitman wrote:When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

I fear we've gotten too caught up in the mathematical definition, and lost sight of the beauty of the thing itself.

To be so wrongheaded that you lose your freaking HOUSE - six figures' worth of value, and force yourself and your family to sleep on somebody's couch - is a monumental accomplishment. I mean, I wouldn't know how to lose my house if I wanted to. If I tried, Brewster's Millions style, I'd probably come up short. (Or long.) You have to be kind of an anti-genius to pull it off, like Bloody Stupid Johnson from the Discworld books. But stupid isn't enough: you also have to be stubborn enough to never stop believing in your stupid ideas. You must never quit, no matter how many different ways you've been told you're wrong, or how much that cost you.

Wherever they started, and wherever they ended up, anyone who loses that big is worthy of the title Full Crawford. I personally find myself unconcerned whether something is a Single Crawford, Double Crawford, or Triple Crawford Once Removed With A Half Salchow And Whipped Cream. I consider these rare specimens, these Ford Pintos and Battlefield Earths of humanity, more like a work of art to be admired than an object to be measured. But that's just me.

more like a work of art to be admired than an object to be measured. But that's just me.

I'd be unable to argue with that assessment. It is not just you.

So what does everyone think of battenburg cake?

I had way too much British jam-based cake as a child. I'm good with a mango cake from one of Vancouver's chinatown bakeries.

TheNewSaint wrote:

Wherever they started, and wherever they ended up, anyone who loses that big is worthy of the title Full Crawford. I personally find myself unconcerned whether something is a Single Crawford, Double Crawford, or Triple Crawford Once Removed With A Half Salchow And Whipped Cream. I consider these rare specimens, these Ford Pintos and Battlefield Earths of humanity, more like a work of art to be admired than an object to be measured. But that's just me.

That's beautiful, man. I'm with you on that. Let's just bin the mathematical formulae and look at the exquisite beauty of the thing. Rather like Marcel Duchamps urinal, it's a work of art.

The amazing thing is that Crawford YouTubed his way through the whole process without once, as far as I can see, really getting down to the nuts and bolts about what the dickens he and the misses were thinking when they decided to stop paying the mortgage. I may have missed the explanation. I have seen their recounting of their version of the facts regarding the representation of the terms of their loan. But we don't see why they didn't cooperate with the bank enough to understand where they stood on the mortgage.

In each of these cases we see the poor fool's rage and sense of being wronged. We see their intense victimhood and their crazy scholarship. . .but we really didn't see exactly how they convince themselves that the remaining half of their mortgage is going to go away after they send some magic paperwork to the lender.

We can see which guru they followed, which school of woo they graduated from or what forum group they post upon for support. However, to me, it is still a mystery me as to what happens in their heads that allows them to rationalize pissing away the value of their most treasured possession, their home.

I trust banks and lenders about as far as I can throw them. My experience is that not once in my life has any of the lender crowd asked if I really needed what I was borrowing for, or if was getting too far in debt. I have seen lenders lie to me about the terms of loans and then say they got the it wrong by an innocent mistake when I called them on the lie.

But I didn't and won't sacrifice my house (which is all paid up btw) or my car or my credit rating in a futile attempt to make them pay for their bad deeds.

What in the blazes is wrong with these folks?