Best Of

Liverpool fans boo the national anthem then the crowd prevent the full minute silence for Jota

What have we become as a nation

https://x.com/BBCSport/status/1954547342440649136?t=30KveTdfBh6O3sRk7hK1Pw&s=19

I don't know how long you've been following football for but Liverpool have booed the national anthem since the eighties at least after the rest of the country, led by the Tories, left them to out to dry.

Seriously, you spend so much time clutching your pearls I'm amazed your fingers have enough strength left to type,

Given lots of the country suffered from de-industrialisation, why do you think it is only Liverpool that take this view?

Because of this, I don't think anything has emerged about similar being said about other areas.

Margaret Thatcher was secretly urged to consider abandoning Liverpool to a fate of "managed decline" after the Toxteth riots in 1981, official papers reveal.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16361170

To his credit Michael Heseltine refused to countenance managed decline for Liverpool & has been, I think, proven right in the long term.

To her credit, so did Thatcher.

"She was urged" doesn't mean "she decided".

She was quite good at figuring out when the “experts” were being fuckwits.

In the aftermath of the Brighton Bombing, they advocated all kinds of idiocy. Most of which would have made things 1000x worse - reintroduction of internment?!!. Thatcher, with the dust on her from the bombing, initiated the twin track policy. Track one - peace process, Track Two - infiltrate and destroy the paramilitaries from within. Which culminated in double agents in the PIRA killing off those opposed to the peace process.

On the flip side, she went against her personal instincts to go with the highly effective socio-medical campaign against AIDS - because the medical advice was coherent and cogent.

This is why she was such a brilliant PM.

She's possibly the most intelligent one we've ever had.

I would quibble slightly.

Harold Wilson, one of the youngest Oxford dons of the century at the age of 21, a lecturer in Economic History at New College from 1937, and a research fellow at University College, was probably more intelligent academically.

But he had terrible judgement, and consigned Britain to managed decline.

Mrs Thatcher had a good, upper-second class mind. But great judgement, self-confidence and perseverance, so the country flourished.

Judgement and intelligence are no more than loosely associated, as Noam Chomsky and all the rest of the Commie intelligensia show all the time.

A smallish country colonising a third of the planet consigns itself thereafter to (relative) decline. So if his contribution was the 'managed' bit then that's a plus.

But you're correct on the main point. Wilson was our cleverest PM. A brain with a pipe, basically.

Wilson was an incredibly shrewd politician. And the poster accusing Wilson of managing decline in the same post as eulogising Thatcher.

Thather's USP was managed decline, see the destruction of manufacturing, the replacement of primary and tertiary domestic production with that of the Common Market countries and Japan, and the sale of national economic treasures to foreign asset strippers.

Hardly, Thatcher made the City of London into the economic powerhouse of Europe, revived Docklands and ended union domination and took the UK from one of the lowest per capita nations in Europe to one of the highest, plus investment in the NE from the likes of Nissan.

More mines closed under Wilson than Thatcher

She increased considerably the wealth generation but also internationalised it. Ultimately she created a serf country with British workers competing with inward migration workers for smaller wages to generate larger and larger wealth for foreign nationals living in Dubai. It's anti-British.

I just bought a handsome William IV mahogany table for £129

wtf. A friend tells me “antique prices have collapsed”. “Especially for old brown stuff”

Is this true? It seems true from this deal

OTOH I might get it and find it collapses on arrival

Yes, for quite a long time.

It's also driven by large furniture and houses getting smaller, and fashion.

Mum and dad were in a 5000sqft former manor house for their last 40 years, of which restoration took 25 years. They had at least 3 full size (8 person) dining tables from relatives, and had amassed a collection of Guy Rogers 1960s Manhattan teak furniture of 3 full size double bed converting sofas, and about 9 chairs, as old friends moved to smaller houses - different period, same principle.

Estate sales of boomers (OK: former boomers) are one place to be.

Big and brown has been difficult to give away for a long time.

When the LAB LEAKED covid killed my mother I burned most of her antique furniture in the paddock of her house in North Yorks because getting rid of it was such a tiresome pain in the dick. There is literally no way to get rid of a massive 300kg 18th C. Flemish oak wardrobe other than burning it.

We've been clearing my late MIL's house most of the year, it seems never ending. Most of the furniture has gone to charity. Attempts to sell stuff online have not really been worth the hassle. Problems like the 4 piece suite which doesn't have fire certificates on it (meaning charities will not trust it) have had us pulling our hair out.
.
Dinning room table with 6 matching chairs, crockery sideboards, glass cabinets, we literally cannot give them away.

We did ours via an auction house - they took all the stuff we did not want as a package, sold the good and the rest went to a charity they worked with for the purpose.

We ended up with about 3k, but it was 3 decent sized vans of furniture - so low prices.

And there was a gorgeous 1880s mirror backed sideboard which was about 8ft long and 8ft high, with arts and crafts decoration, but which just would not fit in a modern house and would need to go to the type of house for which it was made.

Most people will come across this problem sometime. The game ought to have rules.

Rule 1: Price is what you can get.There is no other measure. Madness follows if you overlook this.
Rule 2: It is massively in the public interest that Local Authorities have a statutory duty to collect and dispose of otherwise impossible items from domestic premises at no or small charge. (This prevents fly tipping).
Rule 3: What you can get depends on whether you want to make getting maximum price your full time job for an indefinite period. This especially applies to books.
Rule 4: The piano should never have been invented. It should be a criminal offence to try to own a grand piano.
Rule 5: No-one ever moves house/clears a house without leaving behind at least one piece of unfinished business.

I have had several friends say that they were reduced almost to tears when doing house clearance for their late parents, items of furniture and china that their parents really treasured and were convinced were worth a lot went for peanuts at auction because currently they are not fashionable.

When my old dad finally died his house on S.Harris was full of brown furniture from my then recently deceased gran. Out of sentimental attachment we spent quite a lot on transporting it back to the mainland, even then we were aware it wasn’t really financially sensible. Ironically there was quite a lot of modular Ercol furniture bought from the previous owner (widow of the retired head of SOE as it happens) which we left for the new owner, it would be worth a handy chunk of money now.

Ercol is definitely popular, including with younger generation. Has a bit of that Scandi design shtick abiut it. And it fits!

OTOH you simply cannot give away pianos, as am discovering with a perfectly nice upright that I'm trying to find a home for. Depressing really.

Aren't you near Portsmouth? The RN like to have old pianos to catapult off their aircraft carriers. Or used to.

Well, that would be a diverting way of saying Godspeed to the old Joanna. Sadly at the wrong end of the country. Wonder if the RAF could help out - they are somewhat more proximate.

You could phone the RN and ask them when a carrier is next visiting Rosyth.

Surely the correct way to dispose of a piano is to dangle it over a pavement and place a banana skin beneath it. The gods of slapstick will handle the rest

What you need is a fat man and a thin man in bowler hats moving it down a flight of steps.

Liverpool fans boo the national anthem then the crowd prevent the full minute silence for Jota

What have we become as a nation

https://x.com/BBCSport/status/1954547342440649136?t=30KveTdfBh6O3sRk7hK1Pw&s=19

I don't know how long you've been following football for but Liverpool have booed the national anthem since the eighties at least after the rest of the country, led by the Tories, left them to out to dry.

Seriously, you spend so much time clutching your pearls I'm amazed your fingers have enough strength left to type,

Given lots of the country suffered from de-industrialisation, why do you think it is only Liverpool that take this view?

Because of this, I don't think anything has emerged about similar being said about other areas.

Margaret Thatcher was secretly urged to consider abandoning Liverpool to a fate of "managed decline" after the Toxteth riots in 1981, official papers reveal.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16361170

To his credit Michael Heseltine refused to countenance managed decline for Liverpool & has been, I think, proven right in the long term.

To her credit, so did Thatcher.

"She was urged" doesn't mean "she decided".

She was quite good at figuring out when the “experts” were being fuckwits.

In the aftermath of the Brighton Bombing, they advocated all kinds of idiocy. Most of which would have made things 1000x worse - reintroduction of internment?!!. Thatcher, with the dust on her from the bombing, initiated the twin track policy. Track one - peace process, Track Two - infiltrate and destroy the paramilitaries from within. Which culminated in double agents in the PIRA killing off those opposed to the peace process.

On the flip side, she went against her personal instincts to go with the highly effective socio-medical campaign against AIDS - because the medical advice was coherent and cogent.

This is why she was such a brilliant PM.

She's possibly the most intelligent one we've ever had.

I would quibble slightly.

Harold Wilson, one of the youngest Oxford dons of the century at the age of 21, a lecturer in Economic History at New College from 1937, and a research fellow at University College, was probably more intelligent academically.

But he had terrible judgement, and consigned Britain to managed decline.

Mrs Thatcher had a good, upper-second class mind. But great judgement, self-confidence and perseverance, so the country flourished.

Judgement and intelligence are no more than loosely associated, as Noam Chomsky and all the rest of the Commie intelligensia show all the time.

A smallish country colonising a third of the planet consigns itself thereafter to (relative) decline. So if his contribution was the 'managed' bit then that's a plus.

But you're correct on the main point. Wilson was our cleverest PM. A brain with a pipe, basically.

Wilson was an incredibly shrewd politician. And the poster accusing Wilson of managing decline in the same post as eulogising Thatcher.

Thather's USP was managed decline, see the destruction of manufacturing, the replacement of primary and tertiary domestic production with that of the Common Market countries and Japan, and the sale of national economic treasures to foreign asset strippers.

Hardly, Thatcher made the City of London into the economic powerhouse of Europe, revived Docklands and ended union domination and took the UK from one of the lowest per capita nations in Europe to one of the highest, plus investment in the NE from the likes of Nissan.

More mines closed under Wilson than Thatcher

Only with the boost of North Sea oil, though. Any fool could do a lot with North Sea oil money.

No sovereign wealth fund, either. Compare and contrast: Norway.

This must now be one of the sunniest and maybe warmest summers on record? And spring was remarkably nice

Not 1976 but very pleasant

On Starmer's watch.

Feels like almost every day is “nice” or “really nice”

Not “nice but a bit fucking hot” like Italy or Spain or indeed Nice

Just highly agreeable. 25C and a few clouds

So far we’re tracking pretty similar to 1976, but a bit warmer if you include May.

1976 vs 2025 so far, in the CET:

1976:
May 12.0C
June 16.9C
July 18.6C
August 17.6C
September 13.3C

2025:
May 13.2C (1.2C warmer)
June 17.0C (0.1C warmer)
July 18.4C (0.2C cooler)
August TBA - likely to be above 17 but how much?
September TBA

It’s been exceptionally sunny too, the sunniest spring on record followed by well above average sunshine in June and July. Rainfall has been less uniformly low than 1976 though - record breaking dry in parts of the West country but quite wet in July in the SE.

The next 3 weeks will determine where 2025 ends up in the record books.

In England

Yes, the Central England temperature record is in England.

Liverpool fans boo the national anthem then the crowd prevent the full minute silence for Jota

What have we become as a nation

https://x.com/BBCSport/status/1954547342440649136?t=30KveTdfBh6O3sRk7hK1Pw&s=19

I don't know how long you've been following football for but Liverpool have booed the national anthem since the eighties at least after the rest of the country, led by the Tories, left them to out to dry.

Seriously, you spend so much time clutching your pearls I'm amazed your fingers have enough strength left to type,

Given lots of the country suffered from de-industrialisation, why do you think it is only Liverpool that take this view?

Because of this, I don't think anything has emerged about similar being said about other areas.

Margaret Thatcher was secretly urged to consider abandoning Liverpool to a fate of "managed decline" after the Toxteth riots in 1981, official papers reveal.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16361170

To his credit Michael Heseltine refused to countenance managed decline for Liverpool & has been, I think, proven right in the long term.

To her credit, so did Thatcher.

"She was urged" doesn't mean "she decided".

She was quite good at figuring out when the “experts” were being fuckwits.

In the aftermath of the Brighton Bombing, they advocated all kinds of idiocy. Most of which would have made things 1000x worse - reintroduction of internment?!!. Thatcher, with the dust on her from the bombing, initiated the twin track policy. Track one - peace process, Track Two - infiltrate and destroy the paramilitaries from within. Which culminated in double agents in the PIRA killing off those opposed to the peace process.

On the flip side, she went against her personal instincts to go with the highly effective socio-medical campaign against AIDS - because the medical advice was coherent and cogent.

This is why she was such a brilliant PM.

She's possibly the most intelligent one we've ever had.

I would quibble slightly.

Harold Wilson, one of the youngest Oxford dons of the century at the age of 21, a lecturer in Economic History at New College from 1937, and a research fellow at University College, was probably more intelligent academically.

But he had terrible judgement, and consigned Britain to managed decline.

Mrs Thatcher had a good, upper-second class mind. But great judgement, self-confidence and perseverance, so the country flourished.

Judgement and intelligence are no more than loosely associated, as Noam Chomsky and all the rest of the Commie intelligensia show all the time.

A smallish country colonising a third of the planet consigns itself thereafter to (relative) decline. So if his contribution was the 'managed' bit then that's a plus.

But you're correct on the main point. Wilson was our cleverest PM. A brain with a pipe, basically.

Wilson was an incredibly shrewd politician. And the poster accusing Wilson of managing decline in the same post as eulogising Thatcher.

Thather's USP was managed decline, see the destruction of manufacturing, the replacement of primary and tertiary domestic production with that of the Common Market countries and Japan, and the sale of national economic treasures to foreign asset strippers.

Well, the pyroclastic flow coming off Arthur's Seat has made this afternoon's run a bit more exciting than usual. Extinct - yeah right!

I'm heading SW to avoid wrecking my lungs any further.

This was too flippant. It's now very significant from my vantage point and there are likely hundreds if not thousands of tourists up there.

At this point I would like to point anyone to my favourite novel, which is Stephen Baxter's Moonseed.

Alien nanobug destroys planet, starting at Arthur's Seat (via Moon and Venus).

Great quote from the Express here:

"The blaze is reportedly a gorse fire - a wildfire involving the plant of the same name"

I do hope people don't get trapped. It's easy to make mistakes like going uphill or whatever is not a good idea in the specific context.

The SG really is going to have to think about buying or hiring in a CL-415 or similar water bomber for future incidents around Scotland, and loaned to North England etc., though I don't suppose Duddingston Loch is big enough - you'd need a helicopter for a lift from that.

There were plenty of helicopters helping with the Dava fire. I found a detailed article somewhere explaining how that was all funded and organised, will see if I can fish it out.

I spoke with a fire officer a few years ago and I think there were nascent plans to have the military support them (Pumas, but they have now been retired). But actually from his perspective the helicopters would be more useful to get kit and staff to remote fires, car crashes etc before the vehicles managed to get there.

This must now be one of the sunniest and maybe warmest summers on record? And spring was remarkably nice

Not 1976 but very pleasant

On Starmer's watch.

Feels like almost every day is “nice” or “really nice”

Not “nice but a bit fucking hot” like Italy or Spain or indeed Nice

Just highly agreeable. 25C and a few clouds

So far we’re tracking pretty similar to 1976, but a bit warmer if you include May.

1976 vs 2025 so far, in the CET:

1976:
May 12.0C
June 16.9C
July 18.6C
August 17.6C
September 13.3C

2025:
May 13.2C (1.2C warmer)
June 17.0C (0.1C warmer)
July 18.4C (0.2C cooler)
August TBA - likely to be above 17 but how much?
September TBA

It’s been exceptionally sunny too, the sunniest spring on record followed by well above average sunshine in June and July. Rainfall has been less uniformly low than 1976 though - record breaking dry in parts of the West country but quite wet in July in the SE.

The next 3 weeks will determine where 2025 ends up in the record books.

The trouble with temperature averages is that, while we remember the warm sunny days they can be balanced by cool clear nights.
A day with a maximum of 26deg and a night minimum of 8deg will have the same average as a day with a maximum of 20deg and a minimum of 14deg.
If I had the time and the inclination I would compare the daily maxima between 1976 and 2025. I suspect 2025 will still be warmer than 1976, but significantly more humid. So now we need to compare wet bulb temperatures.

The mean maximum anomaly for most of the UK this summer so far has been warmer than the mean temperature or mean minimum. So it’s been a summer of very warm days and not quite so exceptional nights.

My own vineyard stats bear that out. A number of pretty cool night minima.