The Off Topic Topic

[Admiral Yi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgz3p4cEXZU

[Syt]

For the past decades a guy in Bavaria has been building a skyscraper city from cardboard.

[The Brain]

Cool.

[Richard Hakluyt]

looks a bit like the original Sim city 

[KRonn]

That cardboard city is amazing! The guy does some great work. 

[Josquius]

Very Sim City yes. So very square.

[celedhring]

Language question: what would be a very British  equivalent to "hell in a handbasket", which I understand is a mostly American idiom?

[Richard Hakluyt]

I can think of three right now, there are probably more :

go(ne) to pot
gone pear-shaped
gone tits up

The first is possibly archaic by now, the second is probably the most common and the third slightly vulgar. I've heard the American expression used as well, it is being (re)-naturalised.

[Josquius]

I'd say pear shaped is more archaic than gone to pot. Hear gone to pot fairly often

Ballsed up?

[Richard Hakluyt]

Might be that gone to pot is favoured by people in the North-East 

[Eddie Teach]

Gone to pot is recognized here, pear-shaped is more obviously British.

[Valmy]

I never understood why something being in the shape of a pear was so bad. I like pears.

[grumbler]

"It's gone pear-shaped" originated in the RAF, fairly recently (like maybe 1970s or 1980s - it was in use when I was in the UK in the early '80s) and means, insofar as I have ever known, literally the shape of a woman's tit pointing up; in other words, it means "tits up" without using the word "tit."

[Josephus]

"It's gone pear-shaped" originated in the RAF, fairly recently (like maybe 1970s or 1980s - it was in use when I was in the UK in the early '80s) and means, insofar as I have ever known, literally the shape of a woman's tit pointing up; in other words, it means "tits up" without using the word "tit."

not according to this: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pear%20shaped

[crazy canuck]

"It's gone pear-shaped" originated in the RAF, fairly recently (like maybe 1970s or 1980s - it was in use when I was in the UK in the early '80s) and means, insofar as I have ever known, literally the shape of a woman's tit pointing up; in other words, it means "tits up" without using the word "tit."

gone pear shaped was a pretty common phrase around here back in the day.  I never understood it to be a reference to "tits".  "Tits up" was also a common phrase.  Pear shaped meant the plan had become misshapen.