Best Of

There was a GE this day in 1983.

A one Tony Blair was elected for the first time.

Bernie Grant became the first black MP to be elected to Parliament at that election.

Sorry, just checked - 1987 in fact. Memory playing tricks on me. I think Diane Abbot was also in that intake.

I think Paul Boateng was elected at that election too, wasn't he?

I remember because he made the staggeringly fatuous comment, "Brent South today, Soweto tomorrow" on that election night.

And, deservedly, never quite lived it down.

Although his comment was actually technically correct as he went on to South African High Commissionaire.

Fans of "World War Z" and "Greyhound" may be pleased to know that sequels may be happening:

• "World War Z 2": https://youtu.be/2BdAbRsTIok?si=lJHekyCCZP8k25jA&t=45
  
• "Greyhound 2": https://youtu.be/2BdAbRsTIok?si=00xo1g4uVSPDzyUb&t=946
  

At least people won't be able to moan that WWZ 2 is nothing at all like the book, as with the first film.

It's like "Foundation": they bought the rights, threw away the book, kept the title, did a whole new film. I actually like the WWZ film despite owning (and loving) the book. But they are two different things.

I've deliberately not read any of the Silo books as I'm enjoy the TV version too much to risk it. Maybe once the TV version wraps up I'll give the books a go (which is what I did with The Expanse). S3 of Silo is just a few weeks away.

That's probably a good call. For what it is worth I have read the books and I do like the TV show.

Fans of "World War Z" and "Greyhound" may be pleased to know that sequels may be happening:

• "World War Z 2": https://youtu.be/2BdAbRsTIok?si=lJHekyCCZP8k25jA&t=45
  
• "Greyhound 2": https://youtu.be/2BdAbRsTIok?si=00xo1g4uVSPDzyUb&t=946
  

At least people won't be able to moan that WWZ 2 is nothing at all like the book, as with the first film.

It's like "Foundation": they bought the rights, threw away the book, kept the title, did a whole new film. I actually like the WWZ film despite owning (and loving) the book. But they are two different things.

I've deliberately not read any of the Silo books as I'm enjoy the TV version too much to risk it. Maybe once the TV version wraps up I'll give the books a go (which is what I did with The Expanse). S3 of Silo is just a few weeks away.

Rolf Degen is a serious observer of the latest scientific news.

"Rolf Degen
@DegenRolf

India is the latest country to join the “sex recession,” with a marked decline in the frequency of sexual intercourse among men, and Japanese men are finding it increasingly difficult to achieve penile rigidity for penetration.
International studies have shown a steady decline in marital sexual frequency in the recent decades. Data from South Asia remain scarce, despite anecdotal clinical reports suggesting a similar trend. To evaluate generational differences in marital coital frequency among Indian men and to compare these findings with international trends.
Across five decades, a clear generational decline in marital coital frequency was observed among Indian men. The downward trend persisted across all marital durations, with younger generations maintaining nearly half the sexual frequency of older cohorts at comparable stages of marriage. This mirrors international trends."

https://x.com/DegenRolf/status/2064219917201625428

This sounds like a hard one to fix. Hopefully no one trivialises the issue by trying to get a rise out of it.

Looks like I'll have to postpone my attempt to do Northern Ireland Railways for another year.

Fuck sake Sunil where is your sense of adventure. Anyway its buses we burn not trains.

My hypothetical plan of, er, "attack" is:

The Larne and Bangor branches on Day 1.
Portrush branch on Day 2, also taking in the Causeway (can't go all that way and NOT visit the Causeway!)
Out to Derry and back on Day 3.
And the Newry line on Day 4.

You have to go causeway on a sunny day. If the weather is grim its really just a bunch of badly made patio paving laid by lazy workers
Newry has the lovely Craigmore Viaduct on the way in, which you don't really see on the train since you are on it. The stop at Portadown on the way to Newry from Belfast just makes the town look like a retail park if you are sitting on the left. Edit, you can stop off at Titanic on the way out or in from Bangor, have a look a set of shipyard gates....

Hello from Belfast where the great unwashed of Loyalism have declared an evening of rioting and house clearance.

There are I'm sure quite a few with Republican communities who would like to do their own but the orthodoxy that Irish Republicans love the asylum seekers and welcome them with open arms is strong. Some very burly looking community workers keeping locals from gathering....

I will lay it out and I suspect plenty a UK city is the same. We have had a lot of inward migration last 10 years from outside EU/wider Europe and its easy to stratify into its main groups:

Indians: Often come as families, work in tech and health. Younger members of family often seen in retail. Well integrated and have set up small clusters
West Africans: not clustered, seen all the time usually on way or going from the care homes and hospitals in which they work
Filipinos: Brought specifically in for the NHS over recent years
North East African. Somali, Sudanese. Disproportionately younger male, don't seem to be as much in the working population
Middle East Arab: Some families but disproportionately younger males,

The last two groups are the asylum seekers, the former three economic and legal migrants.

I will give you one guess where the social interaction issues with the natives lie.