A former Tory MP in one of my WhatsApp groups messages
'If Sir Graham Brady doesn't have enough letter to trigger a VONC he certainly will now after this [the banning of lobbying].'
Obviously bad news for Sir Keir.
If any troughers want a VONC because they can't be paid to be lobbyists then are they fit to be MPs?
There is some karmic justice it seems that those who organised the pressure to save Paterson seem to be those who'll suffer now due to the lobbying ban. Karma's a bitch really.
It seems he has sided with the new red wall mps in taking on the old guard who have infuriated them
It was on full view in today's debate with total disdain for Cash and Chope from the red wallers
A former Tory MP in one of my WhatsApp groups messages
'If Sir Graham Brady doesn't have enough letter to trigger a VONC he certainly will now after this [the banning of lobbying].'
Obviously bad news for Sir Keir.
It could be bad news if the Tories can find someone competent to take over from Boris, though it might be a big stretch for such a person to get elected by the twerps in the party.
The Prime Minister has torpedoed Sir Keir's speech
I've missed what's going on - is this the lobbying thing?
I think it's this; Breaking News from the BBC Boris Johnson has set out plans to ban MPs from working as paid consultants, in the wake of the row over former Conservative MP Owen Paterson.
In a letter to Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the PM said MPs should adopt a ban "as a matter of urgency".
In the space of about a day he's managed to lose the North, the South and the long-standing Tory MP's.
To be fair to Big G, SKS will have to rewrite some of his speech.
The problem was he was delivering it
You're overegging it a bit. What people will remember from today is the government U-turn, not some inconsequential speech from a no mark opposition leader. The first one damages the government far more than a bit of a wayward speech damages Labour.
Depends how many watch tonight's news
The BigG spin zone is in overdrive this evening.
BigG should have a spot on GB News where he regularly summarises the day’s news as a “terrible night for Keir/Labour/LD” etc.
"France clears Dunkirk migrant camp amid UK tensions"
I think we underestimate the salience of this whole story, and how damaging it is for HMG. We Brexited to Take Control of our Borders. What is the damn point if we then Lose Control of our Borders.
I am sure this is as much to blame for Boris' recent woes as all the sleaze. Meanwhile Poland looks firm and tough, refusing to let people cross the border illegally, even as we dutifully ferry people to Dover to have pizza on our sixpence
Not good optics. Not good at all
We're not giving them pizzas, we're giving them Dominos, which is a crime against humanity.
Surely the home office insist on Ham and Pineapple to scare them to return ASAP..
A former Tory MP in one of my WhatsApp groups messages
'If Sir Graham Brady doesn't have enough letter to trigger a VONC he certainly will now after this [the banning of lobbying].'
Obviously bad news for Sir Keir.
Surely the letters won't be being sent now - but they will be being prepared ready for the first justification that would allow them to be sent without them appearing to be self-serving.
Boris has chosen his side and it is not the old guard dinosaurs
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Discussions like this are one of the reasons I come to pb.com.
I love the period between the Romans and the Normans. It's possible I idealise it as a bit of a golden age that never was.
It is a mystery how completely Romano-Celtic culture disappeared in England.
To me it seems bloody stupid timing for the PM to do the reversal just as the LOTO is about to speak. All it means is that Starmer's reaction to the reversal is the primary thing the news are sharing rather than it being the PM's initiative.
If the PM wanted to do this he should have done it this morning or overnight at which point it'd have been leading the headlines as the PM's initiative rather than Starmer leading the headlines.
Seems like terrible, terrible media management. Have I missed anything there?
Yes,
1) Boris only does things when he has no choices left and what's left is unavoidable. 2) Boris and No 10 have been crap at media management for years and definitely since Dominic left.
The media management was better I thought from after Dom left until about August or so.
All through the vaccine bounce the media management was pretty good. In the last few weeks the wheels seem to have truly come off.
Yes agree.
Can’t tell whether factionalism is now noticeably having an effect on media management, or whether it’s just the “past” finally catching up on Boris.
A former Tory MP in one of my WhatsApp groups messages
'If Sir Graham Brady doesn't have enough letter to trigger a VONC he certainly will now after this [the banning of lobbying].'
Obviously bad news for Sir Keir.
Surely the letters won't be being sent now - but they will be being prepared ready for the first justification that would allow them to be sent without them appearing to be self-serving.
Boris has chosen his side and it is not the old guard dinosaurs
Boris has flip-flopped from side to side. We'll see if he actually stands up properly to the dinosaurs - speaking up on camera or in Parliament on the issue would be a good start.
The first rule of when you're doing anything is never to be greedy, and never be seen to be greedy. IF the MPs had just kept away from anything clearly dodgy, they wouldn't be in this position.
Owen Paterson would have been nine days into his suspension had Boris Johnson just left this alone. Instead the government has blown a hole in the bank accounts of the MPs already most inclined to rebellion. #politics #strategy #whipping https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1460633324414722058
I thought 3) in that Tweet was already against the rules as per the committee ruling over Paterson?
This is getting funnier by the day.
He's royally stuffed some of his key and veteran backbenchers. Done like kippers unless there is some weasel way out in the final draftings.
Hasn't Johnson been forced to agree with the position that he previously whipped his MPs to disagree with?
Strategic genius. Surely this was his plan all along?
A former Tory MP in one of my WhatsApp groups messages
'If Sir Graham Brady doesn't have enough letter to trigger a VONC he certainly will now after this [the banning of lobbying].'
Obviously bad news for Sir Keir.
The question surely is, if Sir Graham gets enough letters, will Boris fight or flee? If he fights the Parliamentary Conservative party will be a battleground for weeks. If he flees, his supporters in the country will be up in arms. And if he flees, what will Carrie say? Or do?
I love the idea of Boris fleeing the country, presumably dressed as a humble maidservant.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Discussions like this are one of the reasons I come to pb.com.
I love the period between the Romans and the Normans. It's possible I idealise it as a bit of a golden age that never was.
It is a mystery how completely Romano-Celtic culture disappeared in England.
A former Tory MP in one of my WhatsApp groups messages
'If Sir Graham Brady doesn't have enough letter to trigger a VONC he certainly will now after this [the banning of lobbying].'
Obviously bad news for Sir Keir.
If any troughers want a VONC because they can't be paid to be lobbyists then are they fit to be MPs?
There is some karmic justice it seems that those who organised the pressure to save Paterson seem to be those who'll suffer now due to the lobbying ban. Karma's a bitch really.
It seems he has sided with the new red wall mps in taking on the old guard who have infuriated them
It was on full view in today's debate with total disdain for Cash and Chope from the red wallers
I wish them success
Just a shame it’s the same week he cancels their railway
A former Tory MP in one of my WhatsApp groups messages
'If Sir Graham Brady doesn't have enough letter to trigger a VONC he certainly will now after this [the banning of lobbying].'
Obviously bad news for Sir Keir.
The question surely is, if Sir Graham gets enough letters, will Boris fight or flee? If he fights the Parliamentary Conservative party will be a battleground for weeks. If he flees, his supporters in the country will be up in arms. And if he flees, what will Carrie say? Or do?
I love the idea of Boris fleeing the country, presumably dressed as a humble maidservant.
He does have something of the Mr Toad about him doesn't he. Of course Toad learns the foolishness of his ways and the strength of his true friends.
I have my doubts if Boris is capable of the same thing. Poop Poop.
A former Tory MP in one of my WhatsApp groups messages
'If Sir Graham Brady doesn't have enough letter to trigger a VONC he certainly will now after this [the banning of lobbying].'
Obviously bad news for Sir Keir.
Surely the letters won't be being sent now - but they will be being prepared ready for the first justification that would allow them to be sent without them appearing to be self-serving.
They are secret. No one knows who sent a letter, when, or why. Indeed, you don't even need to state a reason AIUI. Least they haven't before. So they can be as self-serving as they like. There is a serious point here for some. If they get banned, I cannot foresee the circumstances in which they will ever be unbanned again, regardless of who is in charge. Which means quite a few lose a sizeable amount for good. And those with aspirations to milk the system in a few years do too. This is an existential crisis for those who see politics as a stepping stone to easy wealth.
The first rule of when you're doing anything is never to be greedy, and never be seen to be greedy. IF the MPs had just kept away from anything clearly dodgy, they wouldn't be in this position.
how does that work? Owen P is clearly a deeply stupid man who used to run the family leather business. What non-dodgy services which are worth more than a tenner does he possibly have the skills to provide?
BIG questions about how the PM's proposals work 1. Who decides how this works? 2. Will they be able to define "reasonable limits" to outside activity - is that by hours or pay or other 3. Will ban be based on type of organisation you do work for or type of job you do for them?
And if there isn't a cross party consensus because - for EG Labour want to draw definitions wider than Tories - does it collapse? And can it conclude in a timely way?
The first rule of when you're doing anything is never to be greedy, and never be seen to be greedy. IF the MPs had just kept away from anything clearly dodgy, they wouldn't be in this position.
how does that work? Owen P is clearly a deeply stupid man who used to run the family leather business. What non-dodgy services which are worth more than a tenner does he possibly have the skills to provide?
Well indeed. A lot of MPS have nothing but their access which people want.
"France clears Dunkirk migrant camp amid UK tensions"
I think we underestimate the salience of this whole story, and how damaging it is for HMG. We Brexited to Take Control of our Borders. What is the damn point if we then Lose Control of our Borders.
I am sure this is as much to blame for Boris' recent woes as all the sleaze. Meanwhile Poland looks firm and tough, refusing to let people cross the border illegally, even as we dutifully ferry people to Dover to have pizza on our sixpence
Not good optics. Not good at all
We're not giving them pizzas, we're giving them Dominos, which is a crime against humanity.
Surely the home office insist on Ham and Pineapple to scare them to return ASAP..
Apparently, they force them to listen them to Radiohead while eating the pizza. And the only entertainment allowed is a tablet that allows you to read ConHome.
Rumours of the forced Python lessons are so far unconfirmed.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Discussions like this are one of the reasons I come to pb.com.
I love the period between the Romans and the Normans. It's possible I idealise it as a bit of a golden age that never was.
It is a mystery how completely Romano-Celtic culture disappeared in England.
While it endured in Gaul and Spain.
One can see why earlier historians would conclude that the Roman British population were just massacred/driven out by the incoming Germans, but as Richard will point out, the evidence from archaeology and DNA argues against this. White English people are very much the descendants of people who have lived thousands of years in this country. But, the cultural impact of the incoming Germans, like the later Danes and Normans, was immense.
The reports on YCCC are awful, but so is the reporting. We do not need to have Paki and Monkey etc bleeped out - lets hear it. Its not being used as an abuse term now, its being used to call out the racists. Lets hear it so that we can shame them.
Naive. People have lost careers for using the n word, even when in context - eg to show how the word was used by someone else. That can now get you fired and cancelled
How is anyone to know if and when this arbitrary rule will be extended to the P word and beyond? They can’t. So they are understandably super cautious
I recall predicting many years ago that one day racist terms would be seen as much more toxic and offensive than swear words in the 1950s
And so it is. Perhaps that is a good thing, but my inner libertarian still thinks “they are just words, however stupid and ugly”
I don't see a binary distinction between words and actions. Words are the result of an action - the action of writing or speaking. And this action, the writing or speaking of words, can do real damage. It can do just as much damage as other types of actions, eg punching and slapping, sometimes more.
Do you think someone should lose their job for just quoting someone else using the N word?
Maybe. I'd have to know the circumstances. Also 'lose their job' would need clarifying. Eg fired vs feeling shamed out vs loss of freelance income, these are different.
General point, though, is that I sometimes hear "it's only words" as if words exist in a separate milder dimension to actions, and I don't really view it like that myself.
You're so tediously myopic. Do you never do any research? Explore? Find out stuff? Or is it just easier to sit in a contented little bien pensant bubble in your leafy Belsize Park pub.
I'm bored of educating you, and I shall stop interacting with you shortly. But there are countless examples of people being sacked for using the N word
One of my favourites, a professor replaced for using a Chinese word that SOUNDS like the N word
"In a controversial decision, the University of Southern California replaced a professor of business communication with another instructor in one of his classes for saying a Chinese word that sounds like an English slur."
There's hundreds. That's 2 minutes Googling. Which you are apparently unable to do
I'm aware there are sometimes false accusations of racism which can lead to injustices to the individuals on the receiving end. However imo the problem of real and actual racism in society dwarfs that of false accusations of racism or hair trigger sensitivity to it. So I simply cannot get as animated as you do about the latter stuff. Indeed I find it pretty odd when people do. I also disagree that 'words' are inherently and always less harmful than actions and that the 'policing' of them is an affront to liberty. I find that view pretty odd too. So, you know, fine, you plough on in your 'space', but don't pretend you're educating anybody on this. All you're doing is riding a hobby horse.
There is a clip going round of AI Wei Wei. He says that we are already living in an authoritarian society, but don't yet realise it.
If we are we need a new term for societies where freedom of speech and behaviour is severely restricted.
Has it entered your tiny tiny brain that when you have Vladimir Putin AND Ai Weiwei both saying the exact same thing: the West is having a Cultural Revolution, Woke is like Marxism, we are damaging our own societies, then there may just be a fucking problem? Maybe they have a point?
Excitable reactionary bloke who thinks the West is committing suicide so that men can go into women's toilets argues with a slightly calmer and less reactionary bloke who rather doubts this. He mentions brain size for some odd reason. And Vladimir Putin.
Quite funny that PB Tories are representing Ai Weiei as a critic of political correctness, when in fact he was comparing Donald Trump to Chairman Mao!
That truly is something to worry about - the influence of Trump and the chance he might return to the presidency.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Discussions like this are one of the reasons I come to pb.com.
I love the period between the Romans and the Normans. It's possible I idealise it as a bit of a golden age that never was.
It is a mystery how completely Romano-Celtic culture disappeared in England.
I've often wondered how Latin died out. Has always seemed weird to me that something so incredibly useful as being able to all communicate could somehow fade away. (I know the arguments - I'm fairly sure I've mentioned it on PB before - nonetheless, despite all of the wise thoughts it still baffles me.)
A former Tory MP in one of my WhatsApp groups messages
'If Sir Graham Brady doesn't have enough letter to trigger a VONC he certainly will now after this [the banning of lobbying].'
Obviously bad news for Sir Keir.
Surely the letters won't be being sent now - but they will be being prepared ready for the first justification that would allow them to be sent without them appearing to be self-serving.
They are secret. No one knows who sent a letter, when, or why. Indeed, you don't even need to state a reason AIUI. Least they haven't before. So they can be as self-serving as they like. There is a serious point here for some. If they get banned, I cannot foresee the circumstances in which to they will ever be unbanned again, regardless of who is in charge. Which means quite a few lose a sizeable amount for good. And those with aspirations to milk the system in a few years do too. This is an existential crisis for those who see politics as a stepping stone to easy wealth.
It is irrevrsible, and it has been nailed on since the decision to defend Paterson. So they might vonc him out of spite, but not to achieve anything. It is striking that this only brings hoc into line with the lords, scotland and wales.
"France clears Dunkirk migrant camp amid UK tensions"
I think we underestimate the salience of this whole story, and how damaging it is for HMG. We Brexited to Take Control of our Borders. What is the damn point if we then Lose Control of our Borders.
I am sure this is as much to blame for Boris' recent woes as all the sleaze. Meanwhile Poland looks firm and tough, refusing to let people cross the border illegally, even as we dutifully ferry people to Dover to have pizza on our sixpence
Not good optics. Not good at all
Didn't someone in (the UK) govt tell France the other day to close its, France's, border with Belgium.
"France clears Dunkirk migrant camp amid UK tensions"
I think we underestimate the salience of this whole story, and how damaging it is for HMG. We Brexited to Take Control of our Borders. What is the damn point if we then Lose Control of our Borders.
I am sure this is as much to blame for Boris' recent woes as all the sleaze. Meanwhile Poland looks firm and tough, refusing to let people cross the border illegally, even as we dutifully ferry people to Dover to have pizza on our sixpence
Not good optics. Not good at all
We're not giving them pizzas, we're giving them Dominos, which is a crime against humanity.
Surely the home office insist on Ham and Pineapple to scare them to return ASAP..
Just realised the downside of that argument.
These pizza orders make us look like uncivilised barbarians - which may make those from Iraq and Syria feel at home.
The reports on YCCC are awful, but so is the reporting. We do not need to have Paki and Monkey etc bleeped out - lets hear it. Its not being used as an abuse term now, its being used to call out the racists. Lets hear it so that we can shame them.
Naive. People have lost careers for using the n word, even when in context - eg to show how the word was used by someone else. That can now get you fired and cancelled
How is anyone to know if and when this arbitrary rule will be extended to the P word and beyond? They can’t. So they are understandably super cautious
I recall predicting many years ago that one day racist terms would be seen as much more toxic and offensive than swear words in the 1950s
And so it is. Perhaps that is a good thing, but my inner libertarian still thinks “they are just words, however stupid and ugly”
I don't see a binary distinction between words and actions. Words are the result of an action - the action of writing or speaking. And this action, the writing or speaking of words, can do real damage. It can do just as much damage as other types of actions, eg punching and slapping, sometimes more.
Do you think someone should lose their job for just quoting someone else using the N word?
Maybe. I'd have to know the circumstances. Also 'lose their job' would need clarifying. Eg fired vs feeling shamed out vs loss of freelance income, these are different.
General point, though, is that I sometimes hear "it's only words" as if words exist in a separate milder dimension to actions, and I don't really view it like that myself.
You're so tediously myopic. Do you never do any research? Explore? Find out stuff? Or is it just easier to sit in a contented little bien pensant bubble in your leafy Belsize Park pub.
I'm bored of educating you, and I shall stop interacting with you shortly. But there are countless examples of people being sacked for using the N word
One of my favourites, a professor replaced for using a Chinese word that SOUNDS like the N word
"In a controversial decision, the University of Southern California replaced a professor of business communication with another instructor in one of his classes for saying a Chinese word that sounds like an English slur."
There's hundreds. That's 2 minutes Googling. Which you are apparently unable to do
I'm aware there are sometimes false accusations of racism which can lead to injustices to the individuals on the receiving end. However imo the problem of real and actual racism in society dwarfs that of false accusations of racism or hair trigger sensitivity to it. So I simply cannot get as animated as you do about the latter stuff. Indeed I find it pretty odd when people do. I also disagree that 'words' are inherently and always less harmful than actions and that the 'policing' of them is an affront to liberty. I find that view pretty odd too. So, you know, fine, you plough on in your 'space', but don't pretend you're educating anybody on this. All you're doing is riding a hobby horse.
There is a clip going round of AI Wei Wei. He says that we are already living in an authoritarian society, but don't yet realise it.
If we are we need a new term for societies where freedom of speech and behaviour is severely restricted.
Has it entered your tiny tiny brain that when you have Vladimir Putin AND Ai Weiwei both saying the exact same thing: the West is having a Cultural Revolution, Woke is like Marxism, we are damaging our own societies, then there may just be a fucking problem? Maybe they have a point?
Excitable reactionary bloke who thinks the West is committing suicide so that men can go into women's toilets argues with a slightly calmer and less reactionary bloke who rather doubts this. He mentions brain size for some odd reason. And Vladimir Putin.
Quite funny that PB Tories are representing Ai Weiei as a critic of political correctness, when in fact he was comparing Donald Trump to Chairman Mao!
That truly is something to worry about - the influence of Trump and the chance he might return to the presidency.
But, Ai Weiwei is criticising - very very harshly - political correctness. Wokeness. He sees it as a much bigger threat than Trump
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I love this stuff, and like to imagine that one or two lonely Latin speakers managed to somehow keep the lights on (floors heated) right up to the Conquest, hah.
"France clears Dunkirk migrant camp amid UK tensions"
I think we underestimate the salience of this whole story, and how damaging it is for HMG. We Brexited to Take Control of our Borders. What is the damn point if we then Lose Control of our Borders.
I am sure this is as much to blame for Boris' recent woes as all the sleaze. Meanwhile Poland looks firm and tough, refusing to let people cross the border illegally, even as we dutifully ferry people to Dover to have pizza on our sixpence
Not good optics. Not good at all
We're not giving them pizzas, we're giving them Dominos, which is a crime against humanity.
Surely the home office insist on Ham and Pineapple to scare them to return ASAP..
Apparently, they force them to listen them to Radiohead while eating the pizza. And the only entertainment allowed is a tablet that allows you to read ConHome.
Rumours of the forced Python lessons are so far unconfirmed.
That last bit is beyond cruel - no computer language should use whitespace for anything beyond formatting for easy of reading
BIG questions about how the PM's proposals work 1. Who decides how this works? 2. Will they be able to define "reasonable limits" to outside activity - is that by hours or pay or other 3. Will ban be based on type of organisation you do work for or type of job you do for them?
And if there isn't a cross party consensus because - for EG Labour want to draw definitions wider than Tories - does it collapse? And can it conclude in a timely way?
The question of unions lobbying and funding will be interesting
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Discussions like this are one of the reasons I come to pb.com.
I love the period between the Romans and the Normans. It's possible I idealise it as a bit of a golden age that never was.
It is a mystery how completely Romano-Celtic culture disappeared in England.
I've often wondered how Latin died out. Has always seemed weird to me that something so incredibly useful as being able to all communicate could somehow fade away. (I know the arguments - I'm fairly sure I've mentioned it on PB before - nonetheless, despite all of the wise thoughts it still baffles me.)
A great shame, and very recent. The 18th century in general could still write Latin.
I suspect it was a numbers game, and the market fror vernacular lit just got more profitable.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Discussions like this are one of the reasons I come to pb.com.
I love the period between the Romans and the Normans. It's possible I idealise it as a bit of a golden age that never was.
It is a mystery how completely Romano-Celtic culture disappeared in England.
I've often wondered how Latin died out. Has always seemed weird to me that something so incredibly useful as being able to all communicate could somehow fade away. (I know the arguments - I'm fairly sure I've mentioned it on PB before - nonetheless, despite all of the wise thoughts it still baffles me.)
It didn't die out though, did it? It just evolved.
European languages evolved from Latin and other languages which is something that has happened even within the English language over centuries.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I love this stuff, and like to imagine that one or two lonely Latin speakers managed to somehow keep the lights on (floors heated) right up to the Conquest, hah.
BIG questions about how the PM's proposals work 1. Who decides how this works? 2. Will they be able to define "reasonable limits" to outside activity - is that by hours or pay or other 3. Will ban be based on type of organisation you do work for or type of job you do for them?
And if there isn't a cross party consensus because - for EG Labour want to draw definitions wider than Tories - does it collapse? And can it conclude in a timely way?
The question of unions lobbying and funding will be interesting
Not really unless you wish to ban all political fundraising and insist parties are funded nationally with no ability to raise funds from other none public sources.
For every talk of unions I'm sure Labour can find a dodgy contribution to the Tory party that could be liked to say VIP access to PPE contracts.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Discussions like this are one of the reasons I come to pb.com.
I love the period between the Romans and the Normans. It's possible I idealise it as a bit of a golden age that never was.
It is a mystery how completely Romano-Celtic culture disappeared in England.
While it endured in Gaul and Spain.
One can see why earlier historians would conclude that the Roman British population were just massacred/driven out by the incoming Germans, but as Richard will point out, the evidence from archaeology and DNA argues against this. White English people are very much the descendants of people who have lived thousands of years in this country. But, the cultural impact of the incoming Germans, like the later Danes and Normans, was immense.
Do we have evidence as to which DNA is it? Paternal or maternal. Maternal would to some extent tick the massacre box..... slaughter the men and rape the women. However, I wonder if the effect of the climate change was greater in England that perhaps in France, while leaving the West less affected.
Goodness me - over the last 11 years of Con PMs I must have read literally hundreds if not thousands of posts on here saying "Con backbenchers are sending in letters now, Brady will have enough letters very soon ........."
These posts are always wrong.
It is the Golden Rule of PB - people want something to happen or think it should happen - but rather than just posting that they dress it up as a prediction.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Discussions like this are one of the reasons I come to pb.com.
I love the period between the Romans and the Normans. It's possible I idealise it as a bit of a golden age that never was.
It is a mystery how completely Romano-Celtic culture disappeared in England.
I've often wondered how Latin died out. Has always seemed weird to me that something so incredibly useful as being able to all communicate could somehow fade away. (I know the arguments - I'm fairly sure I've mentioned it on PB before - nonetheless, despite all of the wise thoughts it still baffles me.)
It didn't die out though, did it? It just evolved.
European languages evolved from Latin and other languages which is something that has happened even within the English language over centuries.
Spanish is basically Latin (more so than Italian is, a bit oddly) but it is Latin as lingua franca which is being lamented.
"France clears Dunkirk migrant camp amid UK tensions"
I think we underestimate the salience of this whole story, and how damaging it is for HMG. We Brexited to Take Control of our Borders. What is the damn point if we then Lose Control of our Borders.
I am sure this is as much to blame for Boris' recent woes as all the sleaze. Meanwhile Poland looks firm and tough, refusing to let people cross the border illegally, even as we dutifully ferry people to Dover to have pizza on our sixpence
Not good optics. Not good at all
We're not giving them pizzas, we're giving them Dominos, which is a crime against humanity.
Surely the home office insist on Ham and Pineapple to scare them to return ASAP..
Apparently, they force them to listen them to Radiohead while eating the pizza. And the only entertainment allowed is a tablet that allows you to read ConHome.
Rumours of the forced Python lessons are so far unconfirmed.
That last bit is beyond cruel - no computer language should use whitespace for anything beyond formatting for easy of reading
The first rule of when you're doing anything is never to be greedy, and never be seen to be greedy. IF the MPs had just kept away from anything clearly dodgy, they wouldn't be in this position.
If Tory MPs had kept away from anything clearly dodgy then they'd not have had the leader who won many of them their seats
The Prime Minister has torpedoed Sir Keir's speech
I've missed what's going on - is this the lobbying thing?
I think it's this; Breaking News from the BBC Boris Johnson has set out plans to ban MPs from working as paid consultants, in the wake of the row over former Conservative MP Owen Paterson.
In a letter to Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the PM said MPs should adopt a ban "as a matter of urgency".
In the space of about a day he's managed to lose the North, the South and the long-standing Tory MP's.
To be fair to Big G, SKS will have to rewrite some of his speech.
The problem was he was delivering it
You're overegging it a bit. What people will remember from today is the government U-turn, not some inconsequential speech from a no mark opposition leader. The first one damages the government far more than a bit of a wayward speech damages Labour.
That "no-mark opposition leader" has just forced a Conservative (INO) PM to suggest that a law will be brought in to prevent MPs working as paid consultants has he not? I personally think such a move unnecessary and possibly damaging, but the politics is clear: the "no-mark opposition leader" has just completely outflanked The Clown and possibly damaged him seriously.
A former Tory MP in one of my WhatsApp groups messages
'If Sir Graham Brady doesn't have enough letter to trigger a VONC he certainly will now after this [the banning of lobbying].'
Obviously bad news for Sir Keir.
If any troughers want a VONC because they can't be paid to be lobbyists then are they fit to be MPs?
There is some karmic justice it seems that those who organised the pressure to save Paterson seem to be those who'll suffer now due to the lobbying ban. Karma's a bitch really.
It seems he has sided with the new red wall mps in taking on the old guard who have infuriated them
It was on full view in today's debate with total disdain for Cash and Chope from the red wallers
I wish them success
But Chope and Cash are legal boffins and the crux of Paterson's argument was that the committee had overstretched in their judgement which was based on a sort of moral zeitgeist rather than an application of the actual laid-down rules.
The announcement today that Johnson is backing the call to ban paid lobbying implies - indeed confirms - that it wasn't banned at the time of Paterson's actions.
Does this not tie-in with his claim that he was treated unfairly? See his quote below, made after the committee ruling against him:
“My arguments and witnesses are not properly represented in the report. My lawyers are astounded by the procedure and said if Parliamentary privilege were surrendered and we had open access to a judge in court, the whole process would be chucked out.”
And later, prior to his resignation:
“The process I was subjected to did not comply with natural justice, no proper investigation was undertaken by the commissioner or committee.The Standards Commissioner has admitted making up her mind before speaking to me or any witnesses.”
Is there not a chance that this guy has genuinely been badly treated?
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I love this stuff, and like to imagine that one or two lonely Latin speakers managed to somehow keep the lights on (floors heated) right up to the Conquest, hah.
Alfred the Great spoke Latin, and encouraged its learning in his clerics, clerks and nobles
Incidentally, I wonder if all this rail cancellation is going to do Sunak's chances any good.
It is the Treasury which is stopping this spending, isn't it. That's down to Sunak, no. If so, torpedoing the Tories' chance of reinventing themselves as a more Northern party is not very sensible. The risk is that they lose those voters but don't get back any more voters in the South either.
Not sure that it is. The machinery of government is very good at restraining cash and projects. Sunak IS a northern Tory, he knows what is needed and is close colleagues with other northern Tories including the Chief Secretary.
Once all this washes through Sunak is going to blame Boris. "The boss forced me tio spend down south" etc.
"Any outside activity undertaken by a MP, whether remunerated or unremunerated, should be within reasonable limits and should not prevent them from fully carrying out their range of duties."
When I was doing translation at weekends in 2008+, I'd certainly have argued that it was "within reasonable limits" and that I was fully carrying out my duties as an MP. Who would judge whether that was true, and on what basis? It sounds very much a matter of opinion, and I can imagine someone honestly thinking he was doing his job properly and someone else disagreeing. Moreover, that is also true even without outside work. I knew MPs who never answered constituent letters ("My job is to hold the government to account, not attend to someone's drains").
Who decides what constitutes fully carrying out duties?
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Discussions like this are one of the reasons I come to pb.com.
I love the period between the Romans and the Normans. It's possible I idealise it as a bit of a golden age that never was.
It is a mystery how completely Romano-Celtic culture disappeared in England.
I've often wondered how Latin died out. Has always seemed weird to me that something so incredibly useful as being able to all communicate could somehow fade away. (I know the arguments - I'm fairly sure I've mentioned it on PB before - nonetheless, despite all of the wise thoughts it still baffles me.)
Probably due to how it was controlled by the Church, which were the only ones which used it, so the 'low people' just continued to develop what they always had and the other languages then just developed.
Ian Dale on Politics Live says that members of staff at Sky were livid that they were cutting the sound on the Rafiq testimony today. Apparently Sky played it unfiltered after they had complaints from their staff.
Did they cover the bit when Rafiq criticised David Lloyd?
I haven't seen the testimony myself, just heard what Dale said about it.
On the Digital Spy thread, it was suggested that Lloyd tried to influence journalists into playing down the allegations.
Back when the Tiger Woods infidelity allegations came out (12 years ago now!) there was an interview with an ex-golfing journalist who had tried to write a story on Woods, many years before. Woods' management got to hear about it, and the golfing journalist was immediately an ex-golfing journalist. Others received threats about losing access if they wrote stories.
Threats to journalists can work, sadly.
Didn't some journalists have their careers ruined over Lance Armstrong?
It wouldn't surprise me. But wasn't that a slightly different situation? From memory, allegations had always surrounded Armstrong, and he had always been cleared. That makes writing 'the truth' somewhat harder - especially given his backstory wrt cancer.
Everybody, even if only tangentially involved, in pro cycling knew exactly what was going on with Lance. And every other GC contender before and after him. It was way more encompassing than just not reporting on Lance.
I remember watching the Tour in a shared house in the early 90's and someone there had been a keen amateur competitor but had given it up. She told me that they all had their little medical kits and that it was all fake. Rather naively I couldn't quite believe that they were all cheats, but she was of course right.
It isn't just cycling that had (or has) an Omerta though.
With regard to the cricket, I wonder if it isn't really drinking culture that is at the heart of this. If you aren't a drinker, then you can never be 'part of the team'. The clubhouse is never quite separated from the competitive sport.
What sad little people if the only way they can socialise is by getting pissed.
Is that anyway to refer to your fellow PBers?
Seeing as how 95% of us appear to be pissed (usually in more ways than one) about 105% of the time!
BIG questions about how the PM's proposals work 1. Who decides how this works? 2. Will they be able to define "reasonable limits" to outside activity - is that by hours or pay or other 3. Will ban be based on type of organisation you do work for or type of job you do for them?
And if there isn't a cross party consensus because - for EG Labour want to draw definitions wider than Tories - does it collapse? And can it conclude in a timely way?
The question of unions lobbying and funding will be interesting
Not really unless you wish to ban all political fundraising and insist parties are funded nationally with no ability to raise funds from other none public sources.
For every talk of unions I'm sure Labour can find a dodgy contribution to the Tory party that could be liked to say VIP access to PPE contracts.
Would like to join the Union I am starting - The Amalgamated Union of Boiler Makers And Hedge Fund Managers?
We will be getting Dior to do the designs for the picket line clothing. The braziers for keeping warm will be hand made by a Japanese grill producer.
Goodness me - over the last 11 years of Con PMs I must have read literally hundreds if not thousands of posts on here saying "Con backbenchers are sending in letters now, Brady will have enough letters very soon ........."
These posts are always wrong.
It is the Golden Rule of PB - people want something to happen or think it should happen - but rather than just posting that they dress it up as a prediction.
Except in 2018.
Reminiscent of a letter to Viz: "Dear sir, people make a big fuss about drinking and driving, but I've done it all my life and never had any trouble (except for one head-on collision which left my wife paralysed from the neck down)."
"Any outside activity undertaken by a MP, whether remunerated or unremunerated, should be within reasonable limits and should not prevent them from fully carrying out their range of duties."
When I was doing translation at weekends in 2008+, I'd certainly have argued that it was "within reasonable limits" and that I was fully carrying out my duties as an MP. Who would judge whether that was true, and on what basis? It sounds very much a matter of opinion, and I can imagine someone honestly thinking he was doing his job properly and someone else disagreeing. Moreover, that is also true even without outside work. I knew MPs who never answered constituent letters ("My job is to hold the government to account, not attend to someone's drains").
Who decides what constitutes fully carrying out duties?
Well that's indeed part of the practical problems with any of this. It's easy to ban everything, or allow everything, but when you have 'this but not that' etc etc, then it gets very complicated very quickly.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I love this stuff, and like to imagine that one or two lonely Latin speakers managed to somehow keep the lights on (floors heated) right up to the Conquest, hah.
Yet you are typing that in an unholy mix of creole Latin and several barbarian tongues from NW Europe, lightly salted with badly spelt and pronounced Latin and Hellenic.
Edit: and the odd bit of Syriac too from the holy books.
Incidentally, I wonder if all this rail cancellation is going to do Sunak's chances any good.
It is the Treasury which is stopping this spending, isn't it. That's down to Sunak, no. If so, torpedoing the Tories' chance of reinventing themselves as a more Northern party is not very sensible. The risk is that they lose those voters but don't get back any more voters in the South either.
Not sure that it is. The machinery of government is very good at restraining cash and projects. Sunak IS a northern Tory, he knows what is needed and is close colleagues with other northern Tories including the Chief Secretary.
Once all this washes through Sunak is going to blame Boris. "The boss forced me tio spend down south" etc.
The rail cuts (or cuts against what was promised) have Sunak’s fingers all over them.
The first rule of when you're doing anything is never to be greedy, and never be seen to be greedy. IF the MPs had just kept away from anything clearly dodgy, they wouldn't be in this position.
how does that work? Owen P is clearly a deeply stupid man who used to run the family leather business. What non-dodgy services which are worth more than a tenner does he possibly have the skills to provide?
Not many deeply stupid people go to Corpus Christi college, Cambridge as he did and he managed to run the family business before he became an MP without it going bust
Ian Dale on Politics Live says that members of staff at Sky were livid that they were cutting the sound on the Rafiq testimony today. Apparently Sky played it unfiltered after they had complaints from their staff.
Did they cover the bit when Rafiq criticised David Lloyd?
I haven't seen the testimony myself, just heard what Dale said about it.
On the Digital Spy thread, it was suggested that Lloyd tried to influence journalists into playing down the allegations.
Back when the Tiger Woods infidelity allegations came out (12 years ago now!) there was an interview with an ex-golfing journalist who had tried to write a story on Woods, many years before. Woods' management got to hear about it, and the golfing journalist was immediately an ex-golfing journalist. Others received threats about losing access if they wrote stories.
Threats to journalists can work, sadly.
Didn't some journalists have their careers ruined over Lance Armstrong?
It wouldn't surprise me. But wasn't that a slightly different situation? From memory, allegations had always surrounded Armstrong, and he had always been cleared. That makes writing 'the truth' somewhat harder - especially given his backstory wrt cancer.
Everybody, even if only tangentially involved, in pro cycling knew exactly what was going on with Lance. And every other GC contender before and after him. It was way more encompassing than just not reporting on Lance.
I remember watching the Tour in a shared house in the early 90's and someone there had been a keen amateur competitor but had given it up. She told me that they all had their little medical kits and that it was all fake. Rather naively I couldn't quite believe that they were all cheats, but she was of course right.
It isn't just cycling that had (or has) an Omerta though.
With regard to the cricket, I wonder if it isn't really drinking culture that is at the heart of this. If you aren't a drinker, then you can never be 'part of the team'. The clubhouse is never quite separated from the competitive sport.
What sad little people if the only way they can socialise is by getting pissed.
Is that anyway to refer to your fellow PBers?
Seeing as how 95% of us appear to be pissed (usually in more ways than one) about 105% of the time!
Well I'm just off for my (and my wife's) pre-dinner drinks, so see you all tomorrow!
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I love this stuff, and like to imagine that one or two lonely Latin speakers managed to somehow keep the lights on (floors heated) right up to the Conquest, hah.
Alfred the Great spoke Latin, and encouraged its learning in his clerics, clerks and nobles
Yes, but I mean via apostolic succession, as it were.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Carlisle too. Or LVGVVALIVM as it should be wrote proper.
A former Tory MP in one of my WhatsApp groups messages
'If Sir Graham Brady doesn't have enough letter to trigger a VONC he certainly will now after this [the banning of lobbying].'
That'd be a fight Boris could at least win - people angry they cannot be paid for such.
It depends on whether they bide their time. Johnson is bound to give them plenty of more publicly supportable reasons to oust him. Give it 6 months ( I hope!)
Incidentally, I wonder if all this rail cancellation is going to do Sunak's chances any good.
It is the Treasury which is stopping this spending, isn't it. That's down to Sunak, no. If so, torpedoing the Tories' chance of reinventing themselves as a more Northern party is not very sensible. The risk is that they lose those voters but don't get back any more voters in the South either.
Not sure that it is. The machinery of government is very good at restraining cash and projects. Sunak IS a northern Tory, he knows what is needed and is close colleagues with other northern Tories including the Chief Secretary.
Once all this washes through Sunak is going to blame Boris. "The boss forced me tio spend down south" etc.
The rail cuts (or cuts against what was promised) have Sunak’s fingers all over them.
Oh they may have, he isn't going to admit it though and will be doing his best to pin the blame at the person next door.
Someone (Boris) so hapless that he hasn't even noticed that he will be copping the blame for breaking Manifesto commitments.
"Any outside activity undertaken by a MP, whether remunerated or unremunerated, should be within reasonable limits and should not prevent them from fully carrying out their range of duties."
When I was doing translation at weekends in 2008+, I'd certainly have argued that it was "within reasonable limits" and that I was fully carrying out my duties as an MP. Who would judge whether that was true, and on what basis? It sounds very much a matter of opinion, and I can imagine someone honestly thinking he was doing his job properly and someone else disagreeing. Moreover, that is also true even without outside work. I knew MPs who never answered constituent letters ("My job is to hold the government to account, not attend to someone's drains").
Who decides what constitutes fully carrying out duties?
Parliament is in danger of bringing in some half-cocked rules in haste which will produce all sorts of unforeseen consequences.
As I said the other day the public simultaneously wants MPs to earn no more than their salary whilst not wanting career-politicians.
The Prime Minister has torpedoed Sir Keir's speech
I've missed what's going on - is this the lobbying thing?
I think it's this; Breaking News from the BBC Boris Johnson has set out plans to ban MPs from working as paid consultants, in the wake of the row over former Conservative MP Owen Paterson.
In a letter to Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the PM said MPs should adopt a ban "as a matter of urgency".
In the space of about a day he's managed to lose the North, the South and the long-standing Tory MP's.
To be fair to Big G, SKS will have to rewrite some of his speech.
The problem was he was delivering it
You're overegging it a bit. What people will remember from today is the government U-turn, not some inconsequential speech from a no mark opposition leader. The first one damages the government far more than a bit of a wayward speech damages Labour.
That "no-mark opposition leader" has just forced a Conservative (INO) PM to suggest that a law will be brought in to prevent MPs working as paid consultants has he not? I personally think such a move unnecessary and possibly damaging, but the politics is clear: the "no-mark opposition leader" has just completely outflanked The Clown and possibly damaged him seriously.
Amusing nickname.
Wasn't the damage done by no mark's stand in spokesperson during PMQs when no mark was off due to Covid?
If no mark being off causes so much damage to the Tories maybe they should look to replace him permanently? 😉
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Discussions like this are one of the reasons I come to pb.com.
I love the period between the Romans and the Normans. It's possible I idealise it as a bit of a golden age that never was.
It is a mystery how completely Romano-Celtic culture disappeared in England.
I've often wondered how Latin died out. Has always seemed weird to me that something so incredibly useful as being able to all communicate could somehow fade away. (I know the arguments - I'm fairly sure I've mentioned it on PB before - nonetheless, despite all of the wise thoughts it still baffles me.)
Probably due to how it was controlled by the Church, which were the only ones which used it, so the 'low people' just continued to develop what they always had and the other languages then just developed.
Not sure you can control a language. No matter what the French say
Regarding Latin and it's benefits - I've heard it said that it's a very accurate language - not so much ambiguity. No idea if that's true. Overall a plus though if so.
I've also heard it said that nobody really knows what the pronunciation was. Again no idea if it's true.
The first rule of when you're doing anything is never to be greedy, and never be seen to be greedy. IF the MPs had just kept away from anything clearly dodgy, they wouldn't be in this position.
how does that work? Owen P is clearly a deeply stupid man who used to run the family leather business. What non-dodgy services which are worth more than a tenner does he possibly have the skills to provide?
Not many deeply stupid people go to Corpus Christi college, Cambridge as he did and he managed to run the family business before he became an MP without it going bust
His response to "Why did Randox employ you?" of "You'd have to ask them" and wilful failure to understand the difference between not hearing evidence, and not accepting it, suggest pretty lax admissions procedures at Corpus.
"Any outside activity undertaken by a MP, whether remunerated or unremunerated, should be within reasonable limits and should not prevent them from fully carrying out their range of duties."
When I was doing translation at weekends in 2008+, I'd certainly have argued that it was "within reasonable limits" and that I was fully carrying out my duties as an MP. Who would judge whether that was true, and on what basis? It sounds very much a matter of opinion, and I can imagine someone honestly thinking he was doing his job properly and someone else disagreeing. Moreover, that is also true even without outside work. I knew MPs who never answered constituent letters ("My job is to hold the government to account, not attend to someone's drains").
Who decides what constitutes fully carrying out duties?
Parliament is in danger of bringing in some half-cocked rules in haste which will produce all sorts of unforeseen consequences.
As I said the other day the public simultaneously wants MPs to earn no more than their salary whilst not wanting career-politicians.
Surely that's not surprising. Remember most people earn less than £50,000 a year and can only dream of earning £82,000 or so.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Discussions like this are one of the reasons I come to pb.com.
I love the period between the Romans and the Normans. It's possible I idealise it as a bit of a golden age that never was.
It is a mystery how completely Romano-Celtic culture disappeared in England.
I've often wondered how Latin died out. Has always seemed weird to me that something so incredibly useful as being able to all communicate could somehow fade away. (I know the arguments - I'm fairly sure I've mentioned it on PB before - nonetheless, despite all of the wise thoughts it still baffles me.)
Probably due to how it was controlled by the Church, which were the only ones which used it, so the 'low people' just continued to develop what they always had and the other languages then just developed.
Latin has always been the language of choice for the high Church, hence it ensured worship was top down and clergy led and no vernacular translations of the bible until the Reformation so the peasants could not challenge what they were told.
Hence the Latin mass too remains the worship of choice of the most traditional and conservative Roman Catholics
"France clears Dunkirk migrant camp amid UK tensions"
I think we underestimate the salience of this whole story, and how damaging it is for HMG. We Brexited to Take Control of our Borders. What is the damn point if we then Lose Control of our Borders.
I am sure this is as much to blame for Boris' recent woes as all the sleaze. Meanwhile Poland looks firm and tough, refusing to let people cross the border illegally, even as we dutifully ferry people to Dover to have pizza on our sixpence
Not good optics. Not good at all
We're not giving them pizzas, we're giving them Dominos, which is a crime against humanity.
Surely the home office insist on Ham and Pineapple to scare them to return ASAP..
Apparently, they force them to listen them to Radiohead while eating the pizza. And the only entertainment allowed is a tablet that allows you to read ConHome.
Rumours of the forced Python lessons are so far unconfirmed.
That last bit is beyond cruel - no computer language should use whitespace for anything beyond formatting for easy of reading
Amen. Amen.....
They don't even use whitespace for ease of reading at my new workplace. Seriously, they insist on as little whitespace as possible (apart from indentation), which makes C++ bloody hard to read. They have, however, recently relented on whitespace after commas so that word wrap works properly (rolls eyes).
"Any outside activity undertaken by a MP, whether remunerated or unremunerated, should be within reasonable limits and should not prevent them from fully carrying out their range of duties."
When I was doing translation at weekends in 2008+, I'd certainly have argued that it was "within reasonable limits" and that I was fully carrying out my duties as an MP. Who would judge whether that was true, and on what basis? It sounds very much a matter of opinion, and I can imagine someone honestly thinking he was doing his job properly and someone else disagreeing. Moreover, that is also true even without outside work. I knew MPs who never answered constituent letters ("My job is to hold the government to account, not attend to someone's drains").
Who decides what constitutes fully carrying out duties?
Parliament is in danger of bringing in some half-cocked rules in haste which will produce all sorts of unforeseen consequences.
As I said the other day the public simultaneously wants MPs to earn no more than their salary whilst not wanting career-politicians.
That’s my first impression too. What will the new law say? How is it interpreted? How is it policed? What are the punishments?
Any clear answers to these questions in the letter or from this debate?
"Any outside activity undertaken by a MP, whether remunerated or unremunerated, should be within reasonable limits and should not prevent them from fully carrying out their range of duties."
When I was doing translation at weekends in 2008+, I'd certainly have argued that it was "within reasonable limits" and that I was fully carrying out my duties as an MP. Who would judge whether that was true, and on what basis? It sounds very much a matter of opinion, and I can imagine someone honestly thinking he was doing his job properly and someone else disagreeing. Moreover, that is also true even without outside work. I knew MPs who never answered constituent letters ("My job is to hold the government to account, not attend to someone's drains").
Who decides what constitutes fully carrying out duties?
Perhaps we can give them key performance indicators like happens in the real world? MPs could agree in a cross party committee. They are bound to make the bar fairly low, but it is perfectly achievable.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Discussions like this are one of the reasons I come to pb.com.
I love the period between the Romans and the Normans. It's possible I idealise it as a bit of a golden age that never was.
It is a mystery how completely Romano-Celtic culture disappeared in England.
I've often wondered how Latin died out. Has always seemed weird to me that something so incredibly useful as being able to all communicate could somehow fade away. (I know the arguments - I'm fairly sure I've mentioned it on PB before - nonetheless, despite all of the wise thoughts it still baffles me.)
Probably due to how it was controlled by the Church, which were the only ones which used it, so the 'low people' just continued to develop what they always had and the other languages then just developed.
Latin has always been the language of choice for the high Church, hence it ensured worship was top down and clergy led and no vernacular translations of the bible until the Reformation so the peasants could not challenge what they were told.
Hence the Latin mass too remains the worship of choice of the most traditional and conservative Roman Catholics
Pah! Should be in koine Greek, or better still the original Syriac. None of this translation nonsense for the Good Book.
The Indie has it in for the PM's Dad; like son, like father? 'Two women — including Tory MP Caroline Nokes — have accused Boris Johnson’s father Stanley of inappropriately touching them.
Ms Nokes, who is the chair of the parliamentary women and equalities committee, said the 81-year-old smacked her “on the backside about as hard as he could” during a party conference in 2003.
The elder Mr Johnson declined to comment about her allegation made to Sky News, other than to say he has “no recollection of Caroline Nokes at all”.'
Apparently he smacked her hard on the bum and said, "oh, Romsey, you've got a lovely seat." Romsey being her constituency.
It doesn't sound sexual assault territory, and indeed many will find it absolutely trivial and even borderline funny, but I just don't understand the brain chemistry of blokes who behave like this. Where does it come from?
It comes in part from the fact that too many men (not you, I hope) do think it is "trivial" and "borderline funny" and so do not call it out.
How many times were you smacked hard on the bottom at a work event? And how would you have reacted if you had been?
And yet, as I have written, women routinely endure this sort of stuff and worse. Perhaps if we slapped men or punched them in the face every time they did this, the extensive bruising they would suffer might give men a bit of a clue? Dunno. Not in favour of violence. But relying on men being good chaps and calling out those chaps who are being bad chaps hasn't really worked, has it?
My view on this stuff is pretty much the same as yours. And no, it hasn't worked, not really. Just thinking, you know all the fuss about 'critical race theory' in schools? Well one big point of that is to challenge deeply embedded assumptions of white supremacy. So, maybe we should have something similar regarding male supremacy. Eg, teaching about how patriarchy underpins so much of what has happened historically and is still a serious factor in what happens now. There might be some spluttering, but 'the children are the future' is more than just a sugary platitude for pepsi ads.
"France clears Dunkirk migrant camp amid UK tensions"
I think we underestimate the salience of this whole story, and how damaging it is for HMG. We Brexited to Take Control of our Borders. What is the damn point if we then Lose Control of our Borders.
I am sure this is as much to blame for Boris' recent woes as all the sleaze. Meanwhile Poland looks firm and tough, refusing to let people cross the border illegally, even as we dutifully ferry people to Dover to have pizza on our sixpence
Not good optics. Not good at all
We're not giving them pizzas, we're giving them Dominos, which is a crime against humanity.
Surely the home office insist on Ham and Pineapple to scare them to return ASAP..
Apparently, they force them to listen them to Radiohead while eating the pizza. And the only entertainment allowed is a tablet that allows you to read ConHome.
Rumours of the forced Python lessons are so far unconfirmed.
They get to watch Die Hard at Christmas though. And a choice of The Last Jedi or Rogue One all other times of the year.
Ian Dale on Politics Live says that members of staff at Sky were livid that they were cutting the sound on the Rafiq testimony today. Apparently Sky played it unfiltered after they had complaints from their staff.
Did they cover the bit when Rafiq criticised David Lloyd?
I haven't seen the testimony myself, just heard what Dale said about it.
On the Digital Spy thread, it was suggested that Lloyd tried to influence journalists into playing down the allegations.
Back when the Tiger Woods infidelity allegations came out (12 years ago now!) there was an interview with an ex-golfing journalist who had tried to write a story on Woods, many years before. Woods' management got to hear about it, and the golfing journalist was immediately an ex-golfing journalist. Others received threats about losing access if they wrote stories.
Threats to journalists can work, sadly.
Didn't some journalists have their careers ruined over Lance Armstrong?
It wouldn't surprise me. But wasn't that a slightly different situation? From memory, allegations had always surrounded Armstrong, and he had always been cleared. That makes writing 'the truth' somewhat harder - especially given his backstory wrt cancer.
Everybody, even if only tangentially involved, in pro cycling knew exactly what was going on with Lance. And every other GC contender before and after him. It was way more encompassing than just not reporting on Lance.
I remember watching the Tour in a shared house in the early 90's and someone there had been a keen amateur competitor but had given it up. She told me that they all had their little medical kits and that it was all fake. Rather naively I couldn't quite believe that they were all cheats, but she was of course right.
It isn't just cycling that had (or has) an Omerta though.
With regard to the cricket, I wonder if it isn't really drinking culture that is at the heart of this. If you aren't a drinker, then you can never be 'part of the team'. The clubhouse is never quite separated from the competitive sport.
What sad little people if the only way they can socialise is by getting pissed.
Is that anyway to refer to your fellow PBers?
Seeing as how 95% of us appear to be pissed (usually in more ways than one) about 105% of the time!
Goodness me - over the last 11 years of Con PMs I must have read literally hundreds if not thousands of posts on here saying "Con backbenchers are sending in letters now, Brady will have enough letters very soon ........."
These posts are always wrong.
It is the Golden Rule of PB - people want something to happen or think it should happen - but rather than just posting that they dress it up as a prediction.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Has there been much literature or drama set in the later and immediate post-Roman period?
It would seem to be a fascinating setting to look at a society falling apart, and would be an opportunity to do a post-apocalypse scenario that wasn't in an imagined near future.
"France clears Dunkirk migrant camp amid UK tensions"
I think we underestimate the salience of this whole story, and how damaging it is for HMG. We Brexited to Take Control of our Borders. What is the damn point if we then Lose Control of our Borders.
I am sure this is as much to blame for Boris' recent woes as all the sleaze. Meanwhile Poland looks firm and tough, refusing to let people cross the border illegally, even as we dutifully ferry people to Dover to have pizza on our sixpence
Not good optics. Not good at all
We're not giving them pizzas, we're giving them Dominos, which is a crime against humanity.
Surely the home office insist on Ham and Pineapple to scare them to return ASAP..
Apparently, they force them to listen them to Radiohead while eating the pizza. And the only entertainment allowed is a tablet that allows you to read ConHome.
Rumours of the forced Python lessons are so far unconfirmed.
That last bit is beyond cruel - no computer language should use whitespace for anything beyond formatting for easy of reading
Amen. Amen.....
They don't even use whitespace for ease of reading at my new workplace. Seriously, they insist on as little whitespace as possible (apart from indentation), which makes C++ bloody hard to read. They have, however, recently relented on whitespace after commas so that word wrap works properly (rolls eyes).
Why? Sounds like you have a bizarre sound code fascist somewhere in the company....
Goodness me - over the last 11 years of Con PMs I must have read literally hundreds if not thousands of posts on here saying "Con backbenchers are sending in letters now, Brady will have enough letters very soon ........."
These posts are always wrong.
It is the Golden Rule of PB - people want something to happen or think it should happen - but rather than just posting that they dress it up as a prediction.
I often read posts that say “X is happening” as “I hope/want X to happen”.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Discussions like this are one of the reasons I come to pb.com.
I love the period between the Romans and the Normans. It's possible I idealise it as a bit of a golden age that never was.
It is a mystery how completely Romano-Celtic culture disappeared in England.
I've often wondered how Latin died out. Has always seemed weird to me that something so incredibly useful as being able to all communicate could somehow fade away. (I know the arguments - I'm fairly sure I've mentioned it on PB before - nonetheless, despite all of the wise thoughts it still baffles me.)
Probably due to how it was controlled by the Church, which were the only ones which used it, so the 'low people' just continued to develop what they always had and the other languages then just developed.
Latin has always been the language of choice for the high Church, hence it ensured worship was top down and clergy led and no vernacular translations of the bible until the Reformation so the peasants could not challenge what they were told.
Hence the Latin mass too remains the worship of choice of the most traditional and conservative Roman Catholics
The Latin Mass was completely abandoned (and IIRC actually banned by the Vatican) after Vatican 2. It has gradually seeped back with some traditionalists who are so traditional that they somehow have remembered a tradition that was removed before they were born.
The first rule of when you're doing anything is never to be greedy, and never be seen to be greedy. IF the MPs had just kept away from anything clearly dodgy, they wouldn't be in this position.
how does that work? Owen P is clearly a deeply stupid man who used to run the family leather business. What non-dodgy services which are worth more than a tenner does he possibly have the skills to provide?
Not many deeply stupid people go to Corpus Christi college, Cambridge as he did and he managed to run the family business before he became an MP without it going bust
He was deeply stupid as was Boris JRM and others no matter how educated they may be
The first rule of when you're doing anything is never to be greedy, and never be seen to be greedy. IF the MPs had just kept away from anything clearly dodgy, they wouldn't be in this position.
how does that work? Owen P is clearly a deeply stupid man who used to run the family leather business. What non-dodgy services which are worth more than a tenner does he possibly have the skills to provide?
Not many deeply stupid people go to Corpus Christi college, Cambridge as he did and he managed to run the family business before he became an MP without it going bust
You really haven't been to a Cambridge college have you?
Occasionally standards slip, not as often as the other place, but occasionally.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Has there been much literature or drama set in the later and immediate post-Roman period?
It would seem to be a fascinating setting to look at a society falling apart, and would be an opportunity to do a post-apocalypse scenario that wasn't in an imagined near future.
At least one Alfred Duggan novel. Checking my memory with Wikipedia:
Conscience of the King (1951). A speculative life of Cerdic, founder of the kingdom of Wessex - about 450 The Little Emperors (1951). A succession of coups in late Roman Britain - about 405-410
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Discussions like this are one of the reasons I come to pb.com.
I love the period between the Romans and the Normans. It's possible I idealise it as a bit of a golden age that never was.
It is a mystery how completely Romano-Celtic culture disappeared in England.
I've often wondered how Latin died out. Has always seemed weird to me that something so incredibly useful as being able to all communicate could somehow fade away. (I know the arguments - I'm fairly sure I've mentioned it on PB before - nonetheless, despite all of the wise thoughts it still baffles me.)
Probably due to how it was controlled by the Church, which were the only ones which used it, so the 'low people' just continued to develop what they always had and the other languages then just developed.
Latin has always been the language of choice for the high Church, hence it ensured worship was top down and clergy led and no vernacular translations of the bible until the Reformation so the peasants could not challenge what they were told.
Hence the Latin mass too remains the worship of choice of the most traditional and conservative Roman Catholics
I never heard a Latin Mass in my c. 10 years of devotion some 40 years ago. It was deeply frowned upon.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Discussions like this are one of the reasons I come to pb.com.
I love the period between the Romans and the Normans. It's possible I idealise it as a bit of a golden age that never was.
It is a mystery how completely Romano-Celtic culture disappeared in England.
I've often wondered how Latin died out. Has always seemed weird to me that something so incredibly useful as being able to all communicate could somehow fade away. (I know the arguments - I'm fairly sure I've mentioned it on PB before - nonetheless, despite all of the wise thoughts it still baffles me.)
Probably due to how it was controlled by the Church, which were the only ones which used it, so the 'low people' just continued to develop what they always had and the other languages then just developed.
Latin has always been the language of choice for the high Church, hence it ensured worship was top down and clergy led and no vernacular translations of the bible until the Reformation so the peasants could not challenge what they were told.
Hence the Latin mass too remains the worship of choice of the most traditional and conservative Roman Catholics
The Latin Mass was completely abandoned (and IIRC actually banned by the Vatican) after Vatican 2. It has gradually seeped back with some traditionalists who are so traditional that they somehow have remembered a tradition that was removed before they were born.
It was but allowed back by Pope Benedict, the hero of traditionalist, conservative Roman Catholics and now Pope Francis, who many of them despise as a wet liberal, is trying to restrict it again.
LOL, this is magnificent, a few weeks ago Boris Johnson wanted Kathryn Stone gone, now he's given her unlimited power.
Will it be up to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to determine what ‘reasonable limits’ on outside activity means? To date MPs have argued its up to them to determine how they fulfil their role - so who can decide if they are fulfilling ‘their range of duties’?
Another woman, this time a journalist, alleges she was groped by the PM's Dad.
Although this was story brushed off last night, I’m not sure.
1. Complainant 1 is a TORY MP 2. Without suggesting Boris is guilty of the same (although he has been accused of such by the journalist Charlotte Edwardes), the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree here, does it?
The first rule of when you're doing anything is never to be greedy, and never be seen to be greedy. IF the MPs had just kept away from anything clearly dodgy, they wouldn't be in this position.
how does that work? Owen P is clearly a deeply stupid man who used to run the family leather business. What non-dodgy services which are worth more than a tenner does he possibly have the skills to provide?
Not many deeply stupid people go to Corpus Christi college, Cambridge as he did and he managed to run the family business before he became an MP without it going bust
Very smart people are still capable of doing very stupid things. Particularly when they are deeply arrogant.
The first rule of when you're doing anything is never to be greedy, and never be seen to be greedy. IF the MPs had just kept away from anything clearly dodgy, they wouldn't be in this position.
how does that work? Owen P is clearly a deeply stupid man who used to run the family leather business. What non-dodgy services which are worth more than a tenner does he possibly have the skills to provide?
Not many deeply stupid people go to Corpus Christi college, Cambridge as he did and he managed to run the family business before he became an MP without it going bust
Yes he's bright enough. He's certainly done some stupid things though. He and David Davis' trip to the US to make deals with the individual states (or some such) was a memorable example.
Davis of course is a thickie and the laziest man on the planet. I genuinely think that many of the Brexit problems are entirely due to him.
"France clears Dunkirk migrant camp amid UK tensions"
I think we underestimate the salience of this whole story, and how damaging it is for HMG. We Brexited to Take Control of our Borders. What is the damn point if we then Lose Control of our Borders.
I am sure this is as much to blame for Boris' recent woes as all the sleaze. Meanwhile Poland looks firm and tough, refusing to let people cross the border illegally, even as we dutifully ferry people to Dover to have pizza on our sixpence
Not good optics. Not good at all
We're not giving them pizzas, we're giving them Dominos, which is a crime against humanity.
Surely the home office insist on Ham and Pineapple to scare them to return ASAP..
Apparently, they force them to listen them to Radiohead while eating the pizza. And the only entertainment allowed is a tablet that allows you to read ConHome.
Rumours of the forced Python lessons are so far unconfirmed.
That last bit is beyond cruel - no computer language should use whitespace for anything beyond formatting for easy of reading
Amen. Amen.....
They don't even use whitespace for ease of reading at my new workplace. Seriously, they insist on as little whitespace as possible (apart from indentation), which makes C++ bloody hard to read. They have, however, recently relented on whitespace after commas so that word wrap works properly (rolls eyes).
Why? Sounds like you have a bizarre sound code fascist somewhere in the company....
No idea - it's really weird. I've never seen C++ written like this before - all squashed up together - but they seem to accept it as normal. I've only been there 3 months, but I did ask why they write it like that. Apparently it's so they can search for member variable initialisations more easily, but seems a pretty feeble reason to me. Once I'm more established there, I shall campaign for normal code spacing!
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Discussions like this are one of the reasons I come to pb.com.
I love the period between the Romans and the Normans. It's possible I idealise it as a bit of a golden age that never was.
It is a mystery how completely Romano-Celtic culture disappeared in England.
I've often wondered how Latin died out. Has always seemed weird to me that something so incredibly useful as being able to all communicate could somehow fade away. (I know the arguments - I'm fairly sure I've mentioned it on PB before - nonetheless, despite all of the wise thoughts it still baffles me.)
Probably due to how it was controlled by the Church, which were the only ones which used it, so the 'low people' just continued to develop what they always had and the other languages then just developed.
Latin has always been the language of choice for the high Church, hence it ensured worship was top down and clergy led and no vernacular translations of the bible until the Reformation so the peasants could not challenge what they were told.
Hence the Latin mass too remains the worship of choice of the most traditional and conservative Roman Catholics
Pah! Should be in koine Greek, or better still the original Syriac. None of this translation nonsense for the Good Book.
Is that right? My understanding is the NT was written in Greek, though reporting stuff which was said in Aramaic or Latin, and that Syriac is a version of Aramaic cooked up a bit later in Edessa (now Sanliurfa) (which is a fascinating place which I've been to, and the jumping off point if you want to visit Gobekli teke and/or the site of the battle of Carrhae. Famous for its fish ponds.)
The first rule of when you're doing anything is never to be greedy, and never be seen to be greedy. IF the MPs had just kept away from anything clearly dodgy, they wouldn't be in this position.
how does that work? Owen P is clearly a deeply stupid man who used to run the family leather business. What non-dodgy services which are worth more than a tenner does he possibly have the skills to provide?
Not many deeply stupid people go to Corpus Christi college, Cambridge as he did and he managed to run the family business before he became an MP without it going bust
Very smart people are still capable of doing very stupid things. Particularly when they are deeply arrogant.
Very stupid things when money and/or sex is involved.
The Indie has it in for the PM's Dad; like son, like father? 'Two women — including Tory MP Caroline Nokes — have accused Boris Johnson’s father Stanley of inappropriately touching them.
Ms Nokes, who is the chair of the parliamentary women and equalities committee, said the 81-year-old smacked her “on the backside about as hard as he could” during a party conference in 2003.
The elder Mr Johnson declined to comment about her allegation made to Sky News, other than to say he has “no recollection of Caroline Nokes at all”.'
Apparently he smacked her hard on the bum and said, "oh, Romsey, you've got a lovely seat." Romsey being her constituency.
It doesn't sound sexual assault territory, and indeed many will find it absolutely trivial and even borderline funny, but I just don't understand the brain chemistry of blokes who behave like this. Where does it come from?
It comes in part from the fact that too many men (not you, I hope) do think it is "trivial" and "borderline funny" and so do not call it out.
How many times were you smacked hard on the bottom at a work event? And how would you have reacted if you had been?
And yet, as I have written, women routinely endure this sort of stuff and worse. Perhaps if we slapped men or punched them in the face every time they did this, the extensive bruising they would suffer might give men a bit of a clue? Dunno. Not in favour of violence. But relying on men being good chaps and calling out those chaps who are being bad chaps hasn't really worked, has it?
Interesting that you added "at a work event". Are you implying that it may be different at a social event??
For the record I, 100% male, have had my bottom pinched many times in busy nightclubs. Not recently though I admit.
Goodness me - over the last 11 years of Con PMs I must have read literally hundreds if not thousands of posts on here saying "Con backbenchers are sending in letters now, Brady will have enough letters very soon ........."
These posts are always wrong.
It is the Golden Rule of PB - people want something to happen or think it should happen - but rather than just posting that they dress it up as a prediction.
Really, 2018 says hello.
I was lurking at the time but did not the majority of 2018 have inaccurate predictions of the number of letters sent to Sir Graham only for the required number to stagger over the line in December?
Another woman, this time a journalist, alleges she was groped by the PM's Dad.
Although this was story brushed off last night, I’m not sure.
1. Complainant 1 is a TORY MP 2. Without suggesting Boris is guilty of the same (although he has been accused of such by the journalist Charlotte Edwardes), the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree here, does it?
I was wondering how long it would be until we had the old sins of one’s father.
"France clears Dunkirk migrant camp amid UK tensions"
I think we underestimate the salience of this whole story, and how damaging it is for HMG. We Brexited to Take Control of our Borders. What is the damn point if we then Lose Control of our Borders.
I am sure this is as much to blame for Boris' recent woes as all the sleaze. Meanwhile Poland looks firm and tough, refusing to let people cross the border illegally, even as we dutifully ferry people to Dover to have pizza on our sixpence
Not good optics. Not good at all
We're not giving them pizzas, we're giving them Dominos, which is a crime against humanity.
Surely the home office insist on Ham and Pineapple to scare them to return ASAP..
Apparently, they force them to listen them to Radiohead while eating the pizza. And the only entertainment allowed is a tablet that allows you to read ConHome.
Rumours of the forced Python lessons are so far unconfirmed.
That last bit is beyond cruel - no computer language should use whitespace for anything beyond formatting for easy of reading
Amen. Amen.....
They don't even use whitespace for ease of reading at my new workplace. Seriously, they insist on as little whitespace as possible (apart from indentation), which makes C++ bloody hard to read. They have, however, recently relented on whitespace after commas so that word wrap works properly (rolls eyes).
Why? Sounds like you have a bizarre sound code fascist somewhere in the company....
No idea - it's really weird. I've never seen C++ written like this before - all squashed up together - but they seem to accept it as normal. I've only been there 3 months, but I did ask why they write it like that. Apparently it's so they can search for member variable initialisations more easily, but seems a pretty feeble reason to me. Once I'm more established there, I shall campaign for normal code spacing!
"search for member variable initialisations" - WUT?
Goodness me - over the last 11 years of Con PMs I must have read literally hundreds if not thousands of posts on here saying "Con backbenchers are sending in letters now, Brady will have enough letters very soon ........."
These posts are always wrong.
It is the Golden Rule of PB - people want something to happen or think it should happen - but rather than just posting that they dress it up as a prediction.
It is always a game of chicken and second guessing, wanting to send the letters and sounding off about sending the letters is different from sending the letters.
And the letters won't be sent until and unless disgruntled MPs have a sense they can get their way (win or force the leader's hand - and Boris's hand may not be forcible) in the second stage confidence vote.
Absent a total killer blow scandal, there is a lot of to'ing and fro'ing to be done, a lot of big Labour poll leads to be argued over to be had before Graham Brady's sack is opened. And by then, it may be quite late in the day in this parliament before any move is made.
King Cole, the bit after the Western Empire falls and before the Norman Conquest (especially pre-Alfred) is not the most popular in history for the general public.
What annoys me is every single damned documentary or drama (well, the vast majority) are fixated retelling stories of Henry VIII and Elizabeth II when (even just looking at England) there are so many more interesting and neglected events and characters to consider.
"The Vikings" did rather well from depicting the period, and the spin off "Vikings: Valhalla" covering the later period before the Norman conquest looks promising.
The period that seems to be lacking is the early post Roman period. In a generation or two, we abandoned roads, towns and the trappings of urban life, turning back to subsistence farming and more egalitarian social structures.
Perhaps we can find out about the latter in person, second time around?
The Dark Ages were only dark in the sense of the abandonment of Christianity, and also literacy. It happened between 409 and 450 or so, so a couple of generations. There seems surprisingly little evidence of resistance to going back to a simpler more sustainable communitarian lifestyle once the Romans stopped enforcing the alternative.
Who abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so? Not really my period.
(or is that the joke I just edited out?) (Blockquote maybe borked warning)
The reason that there was little resistance was that when armed, competent invaders showed up, the locals had next to no military capability. Sharp swords make sharp arguments.
The process of robbing the locals when you felt like it, evolved into "You can't tax those peasants. They are my peasants"....
You could call that an egalitarian social structure. Depends which end of the sword you are holding, I suppose.
But who (or where) abandoned Christianity in 409->450 or so?
New one to me as well - in England, the Saxons who turned up to occupy senior management positions after the Romans divested their offshore holdings were initially pagan, but converted fairly rapidly to Christianity....
It seems very early for that.
Even the Edict of Milan (Constantine) wasn't until 313 (?) AD.
I've always associated Dark Ages with a period in either the second part of the first millenium 1000 AD, or a period in the middle ages, which is why I'm asking.
Dark Ages to me means that period when the absence of Christianity/literacy means there was a bit of a lacuna in recorded history. In England a relatively short period maybe AD400 - 800. We really know very little about the end of Roman Britain and the Germanic settlers had started to make their presence known. In Scandinavia it is different: not a lot is known pre 1000 or so, and in Sweden everything before 1200 might as well be Prehistory.
The absence of a real written record tells its own story of economic collapse and population decline, IMHO.
It would these days when literacy is universal. But remember in early Western Europe, literacy was a Roman thing, perpetuated by the Church. The withdrawal of Roman control over the British provinces probably did result in economic decline, but I am not so sure about population. At least one usurper may have marched off to Europe with a sizeable army, but the Romans had been settling Germanic foederati here for some time and there was obviously an influx of settlers. At that time, human population density seems to suggest that most places weren't fully exploited and there was room for settlers.
I think the evidence from archaeology these days is pretty clear there was a significant decline in population when the Romans left or rather when the links with the Empire were severed. This was on top of major declines due to plagues throughout the 4th century.
Basically the Romans had cleared much of the settlement from southern and Eastern Britain and brought it into the Villa Landscape which covered the whole south-eastern half of the country. There is little evidence of native, non-Roman settlements in the RB period in those areas. When the Villa landscape collapsed because it lost its markets in the cities and internationally, there seems to have been a rapid drop in rural population. I envisage that much of the late 5th and early 6th century migration by the Germanic tribes was into a largely empty landscape.
Although 409/410 is the date traditionally given for the end of Roman rule, there seems evidence that the inhabitants still thought of themselves as part of the Roman Empire past this date. The impression I get is of Roman rule just fading away throughout the Fifth century, across Western Europe, rather than there being any specific date when it ended. Although he was based in Noricum, I think the Life of St, Severinus gives and idea of what Britain would have been like. There were units of the Roman Army still stationed there into the 470's which gradually disbanded due to lack of pay, before Odoacer evacuated the population.
There is evidence that RB control/lifestyle continued along some parts of the Thames Valley almost to the end of the 5th century and a lot of this is put down to the presence of established Germanic communities of foederati who may have been second or third generation within the Roman Empire by then but were still able to negotiate with the new Germanic settlers coming in. There are also indications of Roman Cirencester being cleaned and repaired for several decades after the supposed withdrawal. Gildas is supposed to have been taught Latin there in the late 5th century.
I think urban life continued in Verulamium well past 410, as well as Wroxeter, Bath, Chester, and Exeter. But, I imagine there was increasing disorder as warlords, both RB and German, battled for supremacy.
Discussions like this are one of the reasons I come to pb.com.
I love the period between the Romans and the Normans. It's possible I idealise it as a bit of a golden age that never was.
It is a mystery how completely Romano-Celtic culture disappeared in England.
I've often wondered how Latin died out. Has always seemed weird to me that something so incredibly useful as being able to all communicate could somehow fade away. (I know the arguments - I'm fairly sure I've mentioned it on PB before - nonetheless, despite all of the wise thoughts it still baffles me.)
Probably due to how it was controlled by the Church, which were the only ones which used it, so the 'low people' just continued to develop what they always had and the other languages then just developed.
Latin has always been the language of choice for the high Church, hence it ensured worship was top down and clergy led and no vernacular translations of the bible until the Reformation so the peasants could not challenge what they were told.
Hence the Latin mass too remains the worship of choice of the most traditional and conservative Roman Catholics
Pah! Should be in koine Greek, or better still the original Syriac. None of this translation nonsense for the Good Book.
Is that right? My understanding is the NT was written in Greek, though reporting stuff which was said in Aramaic or Latin, and that Syriac is a version of Aramaic cooked up a bit later in Edessa (now Sanliurfa) (which is a fascinating place which I've been to, and the jumping off point if you want to visit Gobekli teke and/or the site of the battle of Carrhae. Famous for its fish ponds.)
Quite right - should have said Aramaic. (A uni friend of mine was studying Syriac at one point which must have confused me.)
LOL, this is magnificent, a few weeks ago Boris Johnson wanted Kathryn Stone gone, now he's given her unlimited power.
Will it be up to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to determine what ‘reasonable limits’ on outside activity means? To date MPs have argued its up to them to determine how they fulfil their role - so who can decide if they are fulfilling ‘their range of duties’?
Comments
It was on full view in today's debate with total disdain for Cash and Chope from the red wallers
I wish them success
I love the period between the Romans and the Normans. It's possible I idealise it as a bit of a golden age that never was.
It is a mystery how completely Romano-Celtic culture disappeared in England.
Can’t tell whether factionalism is now noticeably having an effect on media management, or whether it’s just the “past” finally catching up on Boris.
I have my doubts if Boris is capable of the same thing. Poop Poop.
There is a serious point here for some.
If they get banned, I cannot foresee the circumstances in which they will ever be unbanned again, regardless of who is in charge.
Which means quite a few lose a sizeable amount for good. And those with aspirations to milk the system in a few years do too.
This is an existential crisis for those who see politics as a stepping stone to easy wealth.
1. Who decides how this works?
2. Will they be able to define "reasonable limits" to outside activity - is that by hours or pay or other
3. Will ban be based on type of organisation you do work for or type of job you do for them?
https://twitter.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1460649331648876552
And if there isn't a cross party consensus because - for EG Labour want to draw definitions wider than Tories - does it collapse? And can it conclude in a timely way?
Rumours of the forced Python lessons are so far unconfirmed.
One can see why earlier historians would conclude that the Roman British population were just massacred/driven out by the incoming Germans, but as Richard will point out, the evidence from archaeology and DNA argues against this. White English people are very much the descendants of people who have lived thousands of years in this country. But, the cultural impact of the incoming Germans, like the later Danes and Normans, was immense.
These pizza orders make us look like uncivilised barbarians - which may make those from Iraq and Syria feel at home.
I suspect it was a numbers game, and the market fror vernacular lit just got more profitable.
European languages evolved from Latin and other languages which is something that has happened even within the English language over centuries.
For every talk of unions I'm sure Labour can find a dodgy contribution to the Tory party that could be liked to say VIP access to PPE contracts.
However, I wonder if the effect of the climate change was greater in England that perhaps in France, while leaving the West less affected.
These posts are always wrong.
It is the Golden Rule of PB - people want something to happen or think it should happen - but rather than just posting that they dress it up as a prediction.
"A vaccine against Alzheimer’s disease could be on the horizon after scientists carried out successful trials in animals.
"Researchers were able to reverse memory loss in mice and are keen to move quickly to human trials"
https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1460549433167429632?s=20
The announcement today that Johnson is backing the call to ban paid lobbying implies - indeed confirms - that it wasn't banned at the time of Paterson's actions.
Does this not tie-in with his claim that he was treated unfairly? See his quote below, made after the committee ruling against him:
“My arguments and witnesses are not properly represented in the report. My lawyers are astounded by the procedure and said if Parliamentary privilege were surrendered and we had open access to a judge in court, the whole process would be chucked out.”
And later, prior to his resignation:
“The process I was subjected to did not comply with natural justice, no proper investigation was undertaken by the commissioner or committee.The Standards Commissioner has admitted making up her mind before speaking to me or any witnesses.”
Is there not a chance that this guy has genuinely been badly treated?
Once all this washes through Sunak is going to blame Boris. "The boss forced me tio spend down south" etc.
"Any outside activity undertaken by a MP, whether remunerated or unremunerated, should be within reasonable limits and should not prevent them from fully carrying out their range of duties."
When I was doing translation at weekends in 2008+, I'd certainly have argued that it was "within reasonable limits" and that I was fully carrying out my duties as an MP. Who would judge whether that was true, and on what basis? It sounds very much a matter of opinion, and I can imagine someone honestly thinking he was doing his job properly and someone else disagreeing. Moreover, that is also true even without outside work. I knew MPs who never answered constituent letters ("My job is to hold the government to account, not attend to someone's drains").
Who decides what constitutes fully carrying out duties?
Seeing as how 95% of us appear to be pissed (usually in more ways than one) about 105% of the time!
We will be getting Dior to do the designs for the picket line clothing. The braziers for keeping warm will be hand made by a Japanese grill producer.
Reminiscent of a letter to Viz: "Dear sir, people make a big fuss about drinking and driving, but I've done it all my life and never had any trouble (except for one head-on collision which left my wife paralysed from the neck down)."
Edit: and the odd bit of Syriac too from the holy books.
(Mice should really be entirely disease free by now)
Someone (Boris) so hapless that he hasn't even noticed that he will be copping the blame for breaking Manifesto commitments.
As I said the other day the public simultaneously wants MPs to earn no more than their salary whilst not wanting career-politicians.
Wasn't the damage done by no mark's stand in spokesperson during PMQs when no mark was off due to Covid?
If no mark being off causes so much damage to the Tories maybe they should look to replace him permanently? 😉
Regarding Latin and it's benefits - I've heard it said that it's a very accurate language - not so much ambiguity. No idea if that's true. Overall a plus though if so.
I've also heard it said that nobody really knows what the pronunciation was. Again no idea if it's true.
Hence the Latin mass too remains the worship of choice of the most traditional and conservative Roman Catholics
Any clear answers to these questions in the letter or from this debate?
It would seem to be a fascinating setting to look at a society falling apart, and would be an opportunity to do a post-apocalypse scenario that wasn't in an imagined near future.
Oh, Brady don't hurt me
Don't hurt me
No more
Occasionally standards slip, not as often as the other place, but occasionally.
Conscience of the King (1951). A speculative life of Cerdic, founder of the kingdom of Wessex - about 450
The Little Emperors (1951). A succession of coups in late Roman Britain - about 405-410
Will it be up to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to determine what ‘reasonable limits’ on outside activity means? To date MPs have argued its up to them to determine how they fulfil their role - so who can decide if they are fulfilling ‘their range of duties’?
https://twitter.com/DrHannahWhite/status/1460647012735537154
1. Complainant 1 is a TORY MP
2. Without suggesting Boris is guilty of the same (although he has been accused of such by the journalist Charlotte Edwardes), the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree here, does it?
Davis of course is a thickie and the laziest man on the planet. I genuinely think that many of the Brexit problems are entirely due to him.
For the record I, 100% male, have had my bottom pinched many times in busy nightclubs. Not recently though I admit.
Not in the last thirty years probably.
And the letters won't be sent until and unless disgruntled MPs have a sense they can get their way (win or force the leader's hand - and Boris's hand may not be forcible) in the second stage confidence vote.
Absent a total killer blow scandal, there is a lot of to'ing and fro'ing to be done, a lot of big Labour poll leads to be argued over to be had before Graham Brady's sack is opened. And by then, it may be quite late in the day in this parliament before any move is made.