Best Of

Can someone explain how the third runway will end up with a £49bn cost? That just seems so out of this world for what is a land purchase and a few kilometres of tarmac.

Can anyone explain to me how we are considering spending all that money on Heathrow, which is a bloody fool place for an airport anyway, and not on HS2/HS3 where it would make a major difference to the national economy outside London?

Ah, hold on, now I get it.

Because everything has to start and end in the black hole of London, as far as the equally Londoncentric UK management is concerned. Rather reminiscent of the famous tattooed sailor with the fox hunt depicted all over his back, and the fox running down his spine and going to ground in his, erm, its earth.

Vide also the failure to link HS1 and HS2 for the cost of a few bedsits and vape shops in Camden.

Anyhoo, the country has been going to the dogs since we stopped giving our kids the first name Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned and Praise-God

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praise-God_Barebone

I prefer the simple virtues - charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity, prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, etc.

"Modesty Eagles" might have suited you.

For a brief moment I considered "Perseverance" for one of my kids.
Common sense prevailed...


... they really hate the name Common.

I have a friend with 2 daughters Felicity and Constance (known as Fliss and Coco), and such names are quite a marker of poshness, though also quite popular with African Christians. I work with a Mercy and a Sympathy, both great names for nurses.

One of my early cars - a Mk1 Lemon Yellow Ford Fiesta - was named Felicity by it's previous owner.

It got nicked whilst it had one of those gear lever-handbrake sleeve things on it, which was a reminder that cheap 1976 cars usually had screw off gear knobs.

The thieves abandoned it after half a mile.

The linked anecdote is people who tell you that things were better decades ago. I once nearly got into somebody else's similar car because I opened the door with my key - it was one foot in before the thought occurred that "I don't have a handbag like *that*".

Anyhoo, the country has been going to the dogs since we stopped giving our kids the first name Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned and Praise-God

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praise-God_Barebone

I prefer the simple virtues - charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity, prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, etc.

"Modesty Eagles" might have suited you.

For a brief moment I considered "Perseverance" for one of my kids.
Common sense prevailed...


... they really hate the name Common.

I have a friend with 2 daughters Felicity and Constance (known as Fliss and Coco), and such names are quite a marker of poshness, though also quite popular with African Christians. I work with a Mercy and a Sympathy, both great names for nurses.

The latter should get together with a Lucifer.

The ONS list of names is quite interesting.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/datasets/babynamesenglandandwalesbabynamesstatisticsboys

Isaac and Ezra at 37 and 38. Is this from African Christians, who often favour Old Testament names?

I see Leon is sinking fast, only scraping in at 100.

Isaac has been in resurgence for many years, I think - and also other more self-consciously * biblical names such as Hannah & Ruth. Amongst white British (real version not Matt Goodwin version) I would date the start that to the House Church movement from ~1970s, but also to the Pentecostal movements from the 1930s. And with a preserved contribution from traditional non-conformism.

I think Ezra was historically in the same bracket as say Eli, which is also Old Testament but most of us have forgotten (including me until I checked).

Amongst black communities the Pentecostal tradition is parallel, but separate ("Black Lead Churches" was the category used - maybe still is?), with an overlapping set of names.

* Matthew, Mark, Luke, John etc are obviously just as biblical but have gone into the wider culture over centuries. There's a comparison to football anthems being assimiliated - "When The Saints Go Marching In" is probably a late Victorian Gospel Song that came in via jazz.

Yes, and it is striking how common Noah is as a name now, number 1 for boys in a number of localities.

I suspect religiosity makes little difference to these names. Noah is probably more because of the association with animals, which is rather a distraction from the point of the Bible story. I see the story of Noah as demonstrating the futility of trying to wipe out evil by killing bad people. Soon enough the world was in the same mess and God swore never to repeat.

Issac isn't one that I would choose, being a child sacrifice in one of the more disturbing OT stories. Nor Ezra, who was quite intolerant in his approach to the intermarrige of Jews and other tribes on the return from Babylonian exile.

I like Elijah, because of the two she-bears, who quite properly, mauled 42 children who mocked his baldness.