Thursday, 5th February

Today in 1953...

"Sweet rationing ended in Britain after ten years"

"Sweet rations lifted 1950" by flickr user star1950

From the BBC "On This Day" microsite:

"Rationing came into force on 8 January 1940, a few months after the start of World War II.

All sorts of essential and non-essential foods were rationed, as well as clothing, furniture and petrol. Rationing of sweets and chocolate began on 26 July 1942.

The process of de-rationing began in 1948, but made slow progress until 1953. Then Food Minister Gwilym Lloyd-George made it a priority for his department.

As well as sweets, he took eggs, cream, butter, cheese, margarine and cooking fats off the ration books."

and the quote....

"Never light a fire you can't put out"

An anonymous quote again (in which case it was probably Churchill), searching for this in quotes yields 5 results. They are, in full:

• Part of the "signature file" on a website about New Eden, which seems to be a game based on the BBC series Torchwood. Not sure what this means, as the network at the office bans sites about gaming. I suspect it's part of a file which randomly generates signature quotes on forum postings, or something.
• A chinese blog consisting of softcore pictures of gay western men
• "Thought for today" from user foxylady on 20six.com (most likely from her desk calendar, I reckon)
• A page from the defunct-seeming (ie it won't load and all I have to go on is the google search result) theMSSforum.com site. The full text of the search result is "somthing[sic] new a drunk isirsh[sic] man onced[sic] said never light a fire you can't put out you will learn somthing[sic] new everyday[sic] Tag: Where are you? Tag: 111332 ..."[sic]
• The 15th page of a thread from 2007 in a Maximo Park forum. It seems like somewhere around page 4 or 5, someone began a discussion about bandmember Paul not speaking to fans outside the Manchester gig. User purdylola said:

  "Went round the back after and waited over two hours for them to come out. At one point Paul appeared with two girls but he had his head down and swiftly passed through so we assumed he would come back after, but he never did!!!! However i did meet Archis and adorable Duncan who i spoke to for about 20 minutes. Lukas and Tom were also buzzing around. But seriously, what the hell Paul!!!!!! V disappointed, not what i expected, he upset some fans tonight."

  Which obviously 'ignited' a discussion. Ten pages of forum posting later, someone throws that "Dont start a fire" quote right in her face. Nice one!