Best Of

Apart from the fact that Wolves only played one match away at Villa in the Eighties, Jenrick was 8 years old in 1990.

His rose tinted glasses also seem to have missed pretty much all the football hooliganism of the Eighties, not least the 96 police injured when Leeds came to Villa Park.

I usually agree with you on most issues but the determination of people like your good self to pretend that there is no problem with Islam in the UK is why I suspect we will be heading towards a Reform-led government.

I dont think that I have ever said that.

My attitude to Islam is much more nuanced than that. I dislike Islamist politics, and loathe Islamist terrorists like Hamas and ISIS. I think Islamic traditions are often misogynistic and patriarchal. On the other hand a lot of Muslim cultural values very positive, particularly the family and kinship networks, emphasis on charity and personal piety etc. I have many observant Muslim friends and colleagues and in many ways we have a similar world view.

I am a liberal and am perfectly happy for people to live their lives and dress as they choose, and see that perfectly compatible with being English. What I don't approve of is people enforcing their values on the rest of society, but this is as true of MAGA as much as any Islamist. Indeed such enforcement of values is not limited to Religion, as we will shortly see when the Poppy Police swing into action.

Last week, after some consideration, I took two books to the charity shop (Band of Brothers, and a book by Robert Harris) Now I find out that Marie LeConte eliminated 36 in the same fashion, leaving only 130. This concerns me. The solution to TooManyBooks is MoreShelves, not LessBooks. You can buy them from Argos.

https://bsky.app/profile/youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com/post/3m3g6uyrejk26

Trouble isn't having too many books, it's carrying on buying more after all the shelves are full. Eventually you need to build an extension to house all the new shelves.

There's no point owning a book that you are never going to read again.

Pass it on so that someone else can read it.

Yes, but they are also objects of memory: they tether a memory to a place and time. You throw them away, you lose part of your brain.

Perhaps this has already been noticed, so forgive the repetition if it is, but yesterday in Surrey there were six by-elections. The Lib Dems won all six (which is perhaps to be expected) but the surprise for me is that, on average, the Conservatives polled 15%. That's got to be a cause for concern in Conservative Party HQ. They really ought to be getting a lot more than 15% in Surrey.

I’ve made my peace that for the next four years elections for the Tories including the general election will be like the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

Bad on the left flank but highly successful in the south (as long as the French are there)?

First day of the Somme is both a terrible tragedy and a missed opportunity. The inability to communicate easily to the front and the lack of ability to get follow up troops lost the chance of cracking the front wide open. In the South the cavalry were set to go in, and the line was broken.

As a student I couldn't process the fact my teacher said British casualties on the first day numbered 57,000.

To some extent I still cannot.

Yep. Basically a full Anfield. A third dead, the rest injured. In one day, and actually for the most part fairly early on in the day.

The signs had been there in the American Civil War, but truly the lesson of how to assault heavily fortified trenches covered by machine guns and artilliary took a lot of learning.

The conspiracy theory is to look at how many of those casualties were loyal to Carson personally rather than the British state. And then to remember what a complete and utter bastard Lloyd George was.

I don’t buy that. Lloyd George had no control over which troops fought over which bit of the line. And before the day a lot of the brass thought that the bombardment would have wiped out the Germans, as it pretty much had in the south, adjacent to the French. For the French 1st July, 1916 was one of their best days of the war.

In the words of the song:

So, come gather round my comrades all, this First of July morn,

When Ulstermen are proud and glad of the land where they were born,

And we’ll never more be led away for to fight in a foreign land,

Or to die for someone else’s cause, at an Englishman’s command.

Lloyd George was influential in where the UVF were posted and where the attack was made.

Evidence that Lloyd George decided on which divisions attacked where?

He had input into the strategic plan & there were arguments that he intervened to rotate the UVF to the Somme. There were letters, I believe, but it’s been 30+ years since I wrote a dissertation on it

I certainly don’t believe he set them up to be killed.

I dont think anyone was deliberately trying to kill British troops.

The disaster of the first day of the Somme (at least on the left flank) was largely down to a belief that the preparation artillery barrage would cut the wire and slaughter the German troops in the trenches. Both were incorrect.

My grandfather was an infantry private there with the Manchester regiment. I think not on the first day, but the renewed offensive on the 15th.

My grandfather was on the Somme too - but not sure when.

There are times I'm surprised I am here - and you too obviously.

I've known for years that my great grandfather was in the British Indian Army (it was he who encouraged my grandfather to more to the UK) but recently I found out his brother-in-law died at Monte Cassino.