Best Of

Oliver Stirling
@OWS1892
·
2h
Freaks. An absolute menagerie of full-blown freaks.

https://x.com/OWS1892/status/1964353905120117045

At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…

This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?

You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.

You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.

Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.

I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.

So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.

It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.

If you don't have much, at least you have your country. I'm proud of being from Scotland (and the UK), but it constitutes only a small part of my self-worth because of my education, my job, my stable relationship, my experiences travelling around the world. If I didn't have those things, being Scottish would be much more important.

I think that's what explains these different attitudes to nationalism.

(I know that having children delivers a huge amount of self-worth to people too, which I think explains why people don't have them as much any more - that self-worth is now delivered by all these other experiences.)

There are very many people who are a great deal better educated, better travelled, wealthier, and with longer marriages and relationships on the clock than you, who are also a great deal more patriotic than you. Claiming that patriotism is some sort of substitute for success and happiness is patronisingly obtuse almost to the point of parody.

Done right, patriotism is simply a realisation that we are all part of a larger community. (Our family, street, neighbourhood, football club and, ultimately country).

Singing “God save the King” is a recognition of that relationship has a focal point. But it’s also a statement that there is a social contract between the governed and the governor:

May he defend our laws, and ever give us cause to sing with one heart and voice: God save the King!” is statement of his obligation to us (it’s “our” not “his” laws) and a warning that we are *choosing* to support him (“may he ever give us cause”) and that consent can be withdrawn at any time

I have never sung the national anthem because the words are ridiculous and infers that we are all subservient to the monarchy

I would not bow to any member of the royal family, but would be perfectly happy to receive a handshake

I was brought up in a family that generally were happy to sing the anthem, and at the late Queens coronation in 1953 my grandmother jumped to attention every time the anthem was played

I support the monarchy, as I do not think a republic would be any better, but subservience, no

That’s very interesting. A total surprise, and a useful reminder to the patriotism police on here. It doesn’t make you any less patriotic than the rest of us.

I quite happily sing the anthem, though opportunities to do so out loud are somewhat limited to live sports events.

Oliver Stirling
@OWS1892
·
2h
Freaks. An absolute menagerie of full-blown freaks.

https://x.com/OWS1892/status/1964353905120117045

At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…

This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?

You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.

You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.

Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.

I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.

So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.

It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.

If you don't have much, at least you have your country. I'm proud of being from Scotland (and the UK), but it constitutes only a small part of my self-worth because of my education, my job, my stable relationship, my experiences travelling around the world. If I didn't have those things, being Scottish would be much more important.

I think that's what explains these different attitudes to nationalism.

(I know that having children delivers a huge amount of self-worth to people too, which I think explains why people don't have them as much any more - that self-worth is now delivered by all these other experiences.)

There are very many people who are a great deal better educated, better travelled, wealthier, and with longer marriages and relationships on the clock than you, who are also a great deal more patriotic than you. Claiming that patriotism is some sort of substitute for success and happiness is patronisingly obtuse almost to the point of parody.

Done right, patriotism is simply a realisation that we are all part of a larger community. (Our family, street, neighbourhood, football club and, ultimately country).

Singing “God save the King” is a recognition of that relationship has a focal point. But it’s also a statement that there is a social contract between the governed and the governor:

May he defend our laws, and ever give us cause to sing with one heart and voice: God save the King!” is statement of his obligation to us (it’s “our” not “his” laws) and a warning that we are *choosing* to support him (“may he ever give us cause”) and that consent can be withdrawn at any time

I have never sung the national anthem because the words are ridiculous and infers that we are all subservient to the monarchy

I would not bow to any member of the royal family, but would be perfectly happy to receive a handshake

I was brought up in a family that generally were happy to sing the anthem, and at the late Queens coronation in 1953 my grandmother jumped to attention every time the anthem was played

I support the monarchy, as I do not think a republic would be any better, but subservience, no

I don't like the national anthem either.

It isn't really a national anthem, it is a monarchist anthem, and also carries theological baggage about the nature of salvation.

…

Wow. I must just jaw drop wow...

Aaron Rupar
@atrupar

This is frankly one of the worst things Donald Trump has ever posted, which is really saying something

https://x.com/atrupar/status/1964370370607403086

He looks like the prison guard in Cool Hand Luke.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=greenall+whitney+cool+hand+luke+commercial#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:cd8c1547,vid:J46OAfaAu9A,st:0

Cool Hand Luke forgive me doing a Leon but perhaps the most significant commercial of my career. I'd been asked by the agency to shoot a poster for Greenhall using the commercials location and actor. We shot in Almeria and Shepperton.The producer was Tony Scott's wife Glynnis and the first assistant was Roger Lyons.

Two Rogers we became friends. He wanted to direct and the agency creative asked me if I'd like to give it a try. I was a fashion photographer at the time . We both went on to direct. Roger L became the hottest director in town and did Levi's Laundrette among other stuff.

He later had a shoot in Italy and fell over a cliff and died. Tony left Glynnis and later took his own life....Back at Shepperton Ridley shot 1984 Apple with Roger L as his first assistant Reckoned to be the best commercial ever made......

So that's how you got started, 🫡

Number 2 son has gone into your line of work, at a small agency down in the Smoke. Mostly he is editing and fettling the videos, as befits a junior, but he is very creative and ambitious, and beginning to catch the eye of the bosses.

Yep, them poor old bosses need all the help they can get

Well, that is actually what he is paid to do!

It’s a quote from Cool Hand Luke. I wondered whether you’d used ‘bosses’ as a nod to the film

Ah, I missed that. Strangely I watched Cool Hand Luke a few weeks back too. I think it was on BBC iplayer. It's an odd film, and I don't think would be made the same way now. I haven't got round to writing a letterboxd review yet as still mulling over what I made of it.

I’ve watched it dozens of times. The book reveals more about Luke and the reasons behind his unusual behaviour. WW2 has a lot to do with it.

Paul Newman plays a very similar character in Hombre, another of my favourite films.

Yes, it's really a film about post-traumatic stress disorder.

I have seen a fair number of homeless ex-soldiers get into trouble in a very similar way.

I don't support the poppy appeal any more, but one of my favourite charities is "Combat Stress" for their workers on soldiers with PTSD. Civilian health care systems don't understand it and the military ones don't care after discharge.

https://combatstress.org.uk/about-us

Why don't you support the Poppy Appeal anymore?

I stopped in 2018 as I thought 100 years was long enough.

I think it has degenerated into mawkish sentimentality tinged with jingoism. I do care about ex soldiers, so I support a number of disability charities aimed at them, particularly Combat Stress. I just can't stand Poppymas and it's absurdities.

Thanks for answering. I find that illogical though. It's certainly not '100years' since the last soldiers were sent on our behalf into God knows what (Barely 10years) . They are still young and will need and deserve our support for years to come.
Your choice.
Combat Stress is an excellent charity but so is the RBL imo and Remembrance Sunday always strikes me as an increasingly rare opportunity for a truly collective national occasion and coming together.

The Guardian report on the Reform conference is fascinating

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/05/such-a-vibrant-feeling-reform-uk-devotees-gather-party-conference

It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future

That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context

It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping

As I was at pains to point out, the Greens also have/had an optimistic view of the future:

https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/05/12/solarpunk/

I disagree.

The Greens, along with the fruit and nut party (yet to be formally named), are a melange of apology/guilt (for Great Britain's imperial past), protest (with an obsession about Gaza) and whining, with a doom and gloom message if the UK government doesn't make a radical left turn in its policy direction. They fail to recognise the dire economic situation of the UK, similar to 1976, and the need to cut state profligacy and immigration drastically, unlike Reform.

UK governments in the last 20 years have used massive immigration cynically to grow the overall GDP. However, the GDP per capita hasn't increased over this period, while prices have gone up generally, so individuals feel worse off. Immigration has also been a prime cause of the stresses on housing and public services, as well as changing the character of many areas. As in 1905, the British people don't like those with different customs who keep themselves apart.

The Greens haven't done themselves any favours in the choice of their new leader, whose views and background are an anathema to most Britons.

If Reform sustain a vote share exceeding 30% at the time of the next GE, and shares for other parties are at or below 20% or thereabouts, they could win under FPTP. In Europe, different electoral arrangements enable traditional mainstream parties to erect a cordon sanitaire to exclude far right parties such as the AfD from government.

It makes you despair

Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance

It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!

That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?

I'm with you that the response time is slow, even though it is non-emergency. Did they get a paramedic? I had a look at response time targets.

Wales has a live page of E&A Dept status - is there one for ambulances?
https://aeinfo.nhs.wales/

It's devolved by nation, remember. These are the Welsh categories:

The categories for the response model are as follows:

“Red” refers to immediately life-threatening incidents
“Amber” refers to incidents that are serious, but not immediately life-threatening
“Green” refers to neither serious, nor life-threatening incidents

Wales has no target response standard for non-life-threatening response times (which I did not know).

Ambulance response standards for Wales
Only Red calls have a set response standard. 65% of these types of calls are expected to have an emergency response at the scene within 8 minutes.

ESNI are comprehensive in defined response times. The Scottish targets are interestingly different to E & NI, which are afaics aligned. Wales only has a target for life-threatening cases, which is a decision taken to 'focus on the immediately life-threatening".

https://analysisfunction.civilservice.gov.uk/government-statistical-service-and-statistician-group/user-facing-pages/health-and-care-statistics/summary-of-ambulance-response-time-data-in-the-uk/

Good morning

The RNLI crew stayed with her for the whole 9 hours monitoring her stats and keeping her as comfortable as possible

They are trained in casualty care and did provide relief crew

She was seriously injured and it is simply unacceptable that an ambulance took nine hours to take her to hospital

Absolutely.

Someone in my block of flats suffered a major crush injury to their right foot 10 weeks ago on the lawn, due to an RTA. A neighbour kindly drove them to the nearest A&E, as the ambulance response time (in England) was predicted to exceed 6 hours.

IMV the issue for Greens in the UK (*) is that whilst they do have a pleasant vision for the future of the country, they also do not sell that vision very well, support policies and issues (often fringe) that do not align with that vision, and take an unrealistic view of how to get to those sunny uplands. In fact, they often come across more as a collection of disparate campaign groups rather than a holistic party.

(*) Green parties in other countries can be rather different.

The UK Green Party (or technically the Green Party of England and Wales) has historically been anti-Progress.

They don't want a prosperous, successful society based around clean energy generation. They want a world with fewer people in it, living pre-industrial lives.

Read Green Alternatives to Globalisation, by Caroline Lucas, if you don't believe me. That is a manifesto that should chill you to the bone.

I think that progress requires limiting our impact on the planet, and that economic growth is not an untramelled good if it adversely impacts on nature and climate.

Greens are not anti-progress, they care deeply about the progress of society, they just want to progress to a different goal.

I fully expect greens to adopt some sort of degrowth agenda in future.

I’m afraid all our actions have an impact. We need to try to mitigate not stop. It’s easy for the wealthy and privileged to rail against growth. However there are many communities where there has been little and could do with some

A slightly controversial argument: someone in the lowest 5% of income in the UK, has a far better life than someone in the lowest 5% of income 100 years ago. Or even 50 years ago. Whilst the improvement for someone in the top 5% has increased much less.

I don’t doubt that but it’s all relative. I had a much better life than my Dad who had a better life than his.

You really want to keep improving that for people. Some people still live awful lives in awful places

William Dalrymple
@DalrympleWill
·
3h
BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage

Reform conference shows party's growing ambition

https://x.com/DalrympleWill/status/1964408520989708621

He's probably just annoyed that the BBC isn't being positively anti-Reform for the first time ever.

The BBC have spent the last few months fawning over Reform which came to a head today with Masons article .

How absurd you are! A newish party comfortably leads in all the polls and you object because the BBC reports on the phenomenon. If the government showed a modicum of competence on any of the key issues Reform would be no threat. When you add bucket loads of corruption and hypocrisy... The plain truth is that the Labour seat majority flatters to deceive when you look at votes cast. It hasn't required much to leave them holes below the waterline. They are now objects of contempt and ridicule and to expect the important news outlets to pretend otherwise is utterly absurd.

What’s absurd is writing an article which omits any counter on the day they invited two people to the conference which any other party would have been severely criticised for .

I have zero issue with Reforms conference being reported as optimistic , a big event etc . And I agree with your post about Labours majority and current state . I don’t expect the media to ignore that .

This doesn’t mean that other parties issues are ignored . And that’s the point !

The Guardian report on the Reform conference is fascinating

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/05/such-a-vibrant-feeling-reform-uk-devotees-gather-party-conference

It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future

That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context

It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping

It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read

“Centrist” has had quite the journey. From term of abuse by very online lefties at people they consider worse than Tories, to term of abuse by very online righties at people they consider worse than communists.

It’s no more a term of abuse than ‘leftie’ or ‘rightie’, and many people apply the label to themselves.

Yes, I am quite happy being called a Centrist Dad, because I am one.

(It does depend on what is meant by centrist of course. I am dry as dust on economic matters very liberal on social issues, so it averages out overall.

Sp what are you plans to cutting government spending so we live within our means?

William Dalrymple
@DalrympleWill
·
3h
BBC News is now running a full-blown recruitment campaign for Reform. This report, by the BBC political editor, doesn't even make a stab at neutrality in its breathless enthusiasm for Farage

Reform conference shows party's growing ambition

https://x.com/DalrympleWill/status/1964408520989708621

He's probably just annoyed that the BBC isn't being positively anti-Reform for the first time ever.

The BBC have spent the last few months fawning over Reform which came to a head today with Masons article .

How absurd you are! A newish party comfortably leads in all the polls and you object because the BBC reports on the phenomenon. If the government showed a modicum of competence on any of the key issues Reform would be no threat. When you add bucket loads of corruption and hypocrisy... The plain truth is that the Labour seat majority flatters to deceive when you look at votes cast. It hasn't required much to leave them holes below the waterline. They are now objects of contempt and ridicule and to expect the important news outlets to pretend otherwise is utterly absurd.

I am concerned just how poorly Labour supporters are reacting to the coverage of Farage and Reform

The way to tackle Reform is to govern properly and frankly stop trying to mimic them

And as for media bias they are only reacting to what is clearly a very new political climate and Raynergate has just ramped up the problems for Starmer and labour

I do not support Farage or Reform in any way whatsoever but the reality is Farage is taking all the headlines and all Labour are doing is adding to his publicity

My advise to those who are really upset and even trying to close down media coverage of Farage is reflect on why Starmer and labour have created space for this change in politics

I think Reform are largely taking Tory votes. Its the failure of the Tory party that has turbocharged their rise. A more competent Tory party would have them leading in the polls.

Starmer is clearly trying to do everything he can to address the grievances of Reform voters, to the point that he is surely losing more votes to his left than his right.

We had this conversation yesterday. The boffins who have looked at the changes on support agree with you.

As to the motives, the classy thing to do is to ask people "why do you think that?" I can think of various reasons why people want to blame Starmer for a collapse in Conservative support since the election, but I'm not sure any of them are very good. There must be better ones out there.