I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You are all projecting.
And I am off to the gym, so your bowels can stop liquifying for at least 50 minutes
For my two pennth, the best meal I have ever had was at a restaurant that doesn't even have a michelin star. It wasn't cheap, but it certainly isn't the most expensive meal I have had.
Most of my best meals have been at non-Michelin places
Random top ten (I could choose eighty more)
Eating at Marco Pierre White's very first place, in south London (forget where) - before he had a star, wow
A crab and asparagus dish in a restaurant made from a garage outside Chiang Mai, Thailand
A beef massaman curry on a beach in Ko Tao, also Thailand
Eating at the first Barrafina off the Strand
Osyters and foie gras and gingerbread in some brilliant old school brasserie in Nantes, France
Dinner by Heston (that has a star or two)
A steak at G W Bush's favourite steak restaurant in Austin Texas
Another steak at Cabana Las Lilas in Buenos Aires
Tiny gnocchi in a private restaurant on a private vineyard on the island of Pantelleria, Italy
Some sardines, recently, in a scruffy cafe above a fish market in Sagres, Portugal
How much of this is about company, location, mood, weather, post-coital bliss - rather than food? At least half of it
I am not sure where to even begin with best food, overall.
For steak, I do. The Tasting Room in Frederick MD does a filet mignon that is the best I have had anywhere, including the best that Buenos Aires or Texas has to offer.
For Indian food, sorry to say that my best experience has been neither in India nor in the UK, but in downtown Washington DC. Rasika (chef was in London prior to moving to the US). Their palak chaat is the most delicious single Indian dish I have ever eaten. For Northern Indian, Bukhara in New York used to be the place.
For the most inventive, surprising and incredible meal I've ever eaten, Contra in lower Manhattan wins: https://contra.nyc It has one star.
For the single ingredient of a dish, Brian Voltaggio at Volt (now sadly gone) outdid everything else I have ever experienced. He does molecular cuisine, which is not my favorite style. But he made 'caviar' out of virgin olive oil. It was the most intensely pleasurable tasting experience of my life to date.
I realize this is a very US-centric list. I have had many spectacular meals in France, Italy, the UK, and Switzerland. But none of them truly stand out from the rest.
I must be incredibly unlucky because 98% of my eating experiences in America are mediocre or worse. And I have been there a LOT, and all over, and in all kinds of joints, from top NYC starred places to innovative California pop-ups to famous BBQ shacks in the Deep South
The one exception is Louisiana especially New Orleans. The food there is consistently great, and they don't do the off-puttingly enormous servings you commonly get in the USA. How can such a rich country still believe "great food = tons of food"?
I think we forget how much better food in the UK has got. Because not many pubs can survive as shitty boozers and huge competition in the restaurant sector, "bog standard" offers across the board have got a hell of a lot better in the past 20-30 years. Sure we still have cheap and crap, but that £10 for a main range has got infinity better in lots of places, and many more people are willing to pay for really good stuff (I presume tv chefs lot has helped this).
Its not that long ago that the Olympic Breakfast at a Little Chef was what people did...now they queue for the overpriced but still better offering from the likes of the Breakfast Club.
The US its seems to be cheap and shit, middle price range, eat your weight in meat...then the small niche high end.
WE DEMAND JUBILEE PANCAKES.
(Which used to be 99p)
Used to be the one of the highlight of my family holidays to Cornwall as a kid....stopping off at a Little Chef for jubilee pancakes.
Now I imagine the kids of today in Cornwall are having organic fresh hand crafted crepes with matcha ice cream...
I'm not sure things have changed that much. When we go to Cornwall we usually have a few meals at the cafe on the cliff top above Treganhawke that does all day breakfasts. Plus a few cream teas, fish and chips and ice creams. The fanciest food is usually consumed at the Eden Project.
I go to Cornwall all the time and all my extended family live there. You're really not trying very hard. There is fine food in every major town. You can get excellent Indian and Thai everywhere, for a start
This wasn't intended as a criticism. I live in London so don't go to Cornwall for interesting world cuisine, but things like cream teas and fish and chips on the beach are things we can't get at home and are handy on walks or days on the beach which is what we tend to be doing. We usually go self catering and cook dinner at the chalet anyway, it's more relaxing than eating out with kids. And we don't really visit the major towns either - we always stay in the SE corner so the only close town is across the Tamar in Plymouth which is not especially nice (it is the city of many of my forebears, so I am well disposed to it but it is not an attractive place).
Fair enough
I know I am in a TINY minority here, but I love Plymouth. It is an extraordinary city. Extraordinarily hideous in places, but extraordinarily beautiful and historic in others. An amazing topography. Also some good places to eat!
I have a Plymouth Fine Dining story. On a business trip, having dinner in Spoons. Pissed up blokes a few tables away obviously on a session. Another guy comes in and comes over to tell his friends about his crabbing adventures!
Yep, you guessed it. Pulls an Asda bag onto the table and removes from it a large crab which proceeds to protest with claws towards crabbing gentleman. At which point bar maiden demands that he leave and take his crab with him.
Was that the Spoons in the Plymouth Barbican? if so I know it well and can imagine it.
On the subject of China this video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCVyDHPnyL4&t=312s ) suggests that they have closed down a lot of heavy industry in the Beijing area in preparation for the Winter Olympics. I'm not sure how reliable this is though: the people making the video are fairly obviously not fans of the CCP.
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
"Not that I haven’t very much enjoyed the recent articles by gentlemen of a certain age who have FINALLY found a woman they care about in the long-running Epstein story. Unsurprisingly, perhaps – it’s the Queen! Here at last is a lady tangentially connected to the grimness whose honour and dignity actually matters, as opposed to those of the other ladies involved, whose tribulations they have at no point been interested in writing about.
Even Ghislaine Maxwell has elicited more sympathy in some quarters than the actual victims of Epstein. And, indeed, the victims of Maxwell herself."
The entire of this is utterly misleading, and I cannot think of a scintilla of evidence for the bizarre assertion in the last sentence. A Grauniad classic 'Will This Do?' article to cut out and keep.
On the subject of China this video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCVyDHPnyL4&t=312s ) suggests that they have closed down a lot of heavy industry in the Beijing area in preparation for the Winter Olympics. I'm not sure how reliable this is though: the people making the video are fairly obviously not fans of the CCP.
I can confirm that this is routine. They do this to heavy industry up to a 1000 miles or so away, not just for international sporting events but even for fairly run of the mill diplomatic meet ups. They find the air pollution embarrassing. It often causes a complete cluster in the private sector in heavy industry, which tends to run their liquidity hand to mouth. The result is usually the cessation of paying wages for weeks or months and the default against suppliers, customers and creditors. Sometimes they work them selves out the hole, sometimes not.
Xian seems to be on everyone's lips but Delta or Omicron they were hard locking the place down ages (weeks?) ago. Because the city is hosting the Winter Olympics so "just in case" China is blitzing it to get Covid cases down because they don't want the global spotlight to show any pox there.
Can we draw any other lessons from it? Nope.
We can't draw any lessons, but we can ask questions
Why are they apparently using flamethrowers to disinfect neighborhoods and bus stops etc?
I find it hard to believe this "malfunctioning foam sprayer" argument. I'm not dismissing it, but how would that work?
Also:
1 We have never seen these malfunctions before
2 There are several videos showing this bizarre "malfunction"
3 And the men using the foam sprayers that instead squirt flame don't look at all surprised. They don't react or back away, and frankly if my foam sprayer suddenly started ejecting napalm I would be a little alarmed, and my body language would show that
Hmmmm
The thing that really gives you a clue something isn't quite right, the story keeps changings. Its a few VHF cases, its a few Delta cases, its the local officials to blame, no its senior officials etc and of course now widespread food shortages. That didn't even happen in Wuhan.
As i said previously, i reckon they have Omicron, with no natural immunity and vaccines don't work, the party are shitting it as there isn't much they can do beyond hope Viagra hard lockdown works.
Yes, that's still my supposition. Tho there is also the chance that
1. They have a coincidental outbreak of VHF or whatever
2. They have a pretty fucking horrible new variant
Something is definitely up
Incidentally, on the veracity of the videos, out of curiosity I spent an hour or two the other day looking at the first videos that came out of Wuhan (you can still find them easily on Twitter)
Some of the most famous ones - bat-eating woman - moped filming bodies in the street - turn out to be fake. The bat was eaten in Indonesia, the bodies were actually rough sleepers in Shenzen
Yet sone of the most notorious ones - corpses piled high in hospitals, body bags filling up trucks, convulsing patients dying in chaos - turn out to be real. For a start, they have been repeated many times outside China. From Ecuador to Iran to Lombardy
And many of these horrific early videos were dismissed as fakes at the time
There is a third option: they have omicron, and it is spreading. They have expended a heck of a lot of effort convincing their population that their response to Covid has been brilliant, and they don't want the story muddied - especially with the Olympics coming up. So they do what oppressive regimes do: overreact to show that they are doing things. WE ARE STRONG!
An interesting question is what the official state media (i.e. virtually all of it) is saying about the situation there.
I suspect we are discovering the answer to the question of how bad is omicron when you haven't been subjected to the previous variants and your vaccines don't protect from it.
And the only places that could answer that sort of questions are the Covid zero places such as China and New Zealand / Australia but even those latter places have vaccines in place.
Jeez. We are discovering the answer to the question of how much an authoritarian government wants to ensure that a global event attended by people from over a hundred countries and covered by the global media goes ahead with as few issues as possible which might derail this, their flagship event, in particular Covid.
I mean that is pretty brutal but that is really "all" there is to it.
If they are cracking down just to protect the Olympics, why Xian? Xian is quite a long way from the Winter olympic sites. What in Xian is causing the crack-down?
There is an outbreak of Covid there and they don't want it to get anywhere near the WO sites. Which we know that eg. Omicron could do.
So it is pretty bad that the CCP is hammering Xian for this reason but as I said earlier, that's "all" it is. They are locking it down because they can; not because it is anything other than a run of the mill Omicron outbreak.
You have absolutely no idea if this is definitely the case. The CCP keeps changing its story. Chinese official media have themselves talked about "Delta".
@StephenMcDonell · Dec 29, 2021 Replying to @dizzylimit So far, officials in #Xian have said they are dealing with a Delta outbreak rather than #Omicron. #China #COVID19"
So what is it? Omicron is a good guess, but that's all it is. A guess. The idea that "topping" has personally and finally worked it all out is piquant
"The CCP keeps changing its story."
LOL. NO I REFUSE TO BELIEVE IT.
The Chinese Communist Party isn't giving you, King of Twitter ("I spent an hour or two on Twitter looking at the Wuhan oubreak") a consistent story of what's happening in China?!?
I simply don't believe it.
And hemorrhagic fever, so Google tells me, is endemic in China. Why here's a quote:
"Hemorrhagic fever is a common infectious disease in northern China," the paper said. "Starting from October every year, some areas of Shaanxi [of which Xi'an is the provincial capital] enter the high incidence season of hemorrhagic fever."
But look we understand the function PB provides for you at these times of uncertainty so we are happy to be the voice of reason for your hysterical outpourings.
I consider myself PB's comforting tartan blanket as you writhe in spasms of fear
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
We shall have to wait and see. But yes I hold my hand up as I for one didn't at first buy into the whole aliens thing and I am ashamed of that.
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
You're certainly right that the Tories' full-throated support of the Iraq debacle seems to have been almost entirely expunged from the public's memory - or at least that of the rightwing press.
You never would have guessed from the Daily Mail's hysterical coverage of the Blair honours that many, if not all, Tory backbenchers ( and frontbenchers ) were even more enthusiastic for the war than Campbell and Blair themselves.
However, it's an excellent way of chipping away at Labour, so the tabloids will apply their usual morality and history-free approach to the particular topic.
You're also right that Charles Kennedy's intelligent and brave stance has been much too much forgotten. I also personally was much more in sympathy with his LD party than more recent incarnations.
Robin Cook gave the stand out performance.
As for the Tories Blair was apparently privately disgusted by IDS's unqualified support and called him "Little Sir Echo." If there was a war crime, given they were allowed a vote, the entire HoC should be in the dock.
Yet Iraq is now a democracy and free of Saddam and by backing Blair to the hilt on Iraq along with the George W Bush administration (IDS met Vice President Cheney at the White House too) IDS helped split the Labour vote and push leftwingers to the LDs.
That in turn helped Michael Howard slash Labour's majority by 100 in 2005 and gain over 30 seats for the Tories.
An interesting counterfactual is if Ken Clarke had won the Tory leadership in 2001. He may even have got a hung parliament in 20p5 due to his opposition to the Iraq War with opponents of the war going direct to a Clarke led Tories rather than the Charles Kennedy led LDs
For my two pennth, the best meal I have ever had was at a restaurant that doesn't even have a michelin star. It wasn't cheap, but it certainly isn't the most expensive meal I have had.
Most of my best meals have been at non-Michelin places
Random top ten (I could choose eighty more)
Eating at Marco Pierre White's very first place, in south London (forget where) - before he had a star, wow
A crab and asparagus dish in a restaurant made from a garage outside Chiang Mai, Thailand
A beef massaman curry on a beach in Ko Tao, also Thailand
Eating at the first Barrafina off the Strand
Osyters and foie gras and gingerbread in some brilliant old school brasserie in Nantes, France
Dinner by Heston (that has a star or two)
A steak at G W Bush's favourite steak restaurant in Austin Texas
Another steak at Cabana Las Lilas in Buenos Aires
Tiny gnocchi in a private restaurant on a private vineyard on the island of Pantelleria, Italy
Some sardines, recently, in a scruffy cafe above a fish market in Sagres, Portugal
How much of this is about company, location, mood, weather, post-coital bliss - rather than food? At least half of it
I am not sure where to even begin with best food, overall.
For steak, I do. The Tasting Room in Frederick MD does a filet mignon that is the best I have had anywhere, including the best that Buenos Aires or Texas has to offer.
For Indian food, sorry to say that my best experience has been neither in India nor in the UK, but in downtown Washington DC. Rasika (chef was in London prior to moving to the US). Their palak chaat is the most delicious single Indian dish I have ever eaten. For Northern Indian, Bukhara in New York used to be the place.
For the most inventive, surprising and incredible meal I've ever eaten, Contra in lower Manhattan wins: https://contra.nyc It has one star.
For the single ingredient of a dish, Brian Voltaggio at Volt (now sadly gone) outdid everything else I have ever experienced. He does molecular cuisine, which is not my favorite style. But he made 'caviar' out of virgin olive oil. It was the most intensely pleasurable tasting experience of my life to date.
I realize this is a very US-centric list. I have had many spectacular meals in France, Italy, the UK, and Switzerland. But none of them truly stand out from the rest.
I must be incredibly unlucky because 98% of my eating experiences in America are mediocre or worse. And I have been there a LOT, and all over, and in all kinds of joints, from top NYC starred places to innovative California pop-ups to famous BBQ shacks in the Deep South
The one exception is Louisiana especially New Orleans. The food there is consistently great, and they don't do the off-puttingly enormous servings you commonly get in the USA. How can such a rich country still believe "great food = tons of food"?
I think we forget how much better food in the UK has got. Because not many pubs can survive as shitty boozers and huge competition in the restaurant sector, "bog standard" offers across the board have got a hell of a lot better in the past 20-30 years. Sure we still have cheap and crap, but that £10 for a main range has got infinity better in lots of places, and many more people are willing to pay for really good stuff (I presume tv chefs lot has helped this).
Its not that long ago that the Olympic Breakfast at a Little Chef was what people did...now they queue for the overpriced but still better offering from the likes of the Breakfast Club.
The US its seems to be cheap and shit, middle price range, eat your weight in meat...then the small niche high end.
WE DEMAND JUBILEE PANCAKES.
(Which used to be 99p)
Used to be the one of the highlight of my family holidays to Cornwall as a kid....stopping off at a Little Chef for jubilee pancakes.
Now I imagine the kids of today in Cornwall are having organic fresh hand crafted crepes with matcha ice cream...
I'm not sure things have changed that much. When we go to Cornwall we usually have a few meals at the cafe on the cliff top above Treganhawke that does all day breakfasts. Plus a few cream teas, fish and chips and ice creams. The fanciest food is usually consumed at the Eden Project.
I go to Cornwall all the time and all my extended family live there. You're really not trying very hard. There is fine food in every major town. You can get excellent Indian and Thai everywhere, for a start
This wasn't intended as a criticism. I live in London so don't go to Cornwall for interesting world cuisine, but things like cream teas and fish and chips on the beach are things we can't get at home and are handy on walks or days on the beach which is what we tend to be doing. We usually go self catering and cook dinner at the chalet anyway, it's more relaxing than eating out with kids. And we don't really visit the major towns either - we always stay in the SE corner so the only close town is across the Tamar in Plymouth which is not especially nice (it is the city of many of my forebears, so I am well disposed to it but it is not an attractive place).
Fair enough
I know I am in a TINY minority here, but I love Plymouth. It is an extraordinary city. Extraordinarily hideous in places, but extraordinarily beautiful and historic in others. An amazing topography. Also some good places to eat!
I have a Plymouth Fine Dining story. On a business trip, having dinner in Spoons. Pissed up blokes a few tables away obviously on a session. Another guy comes in and comes over to tell his friends about his crabbing adventures!
Yep, you guessed it. Pulls an Asda bag onto the table and removes from it a large crab which proceeds to protest with claws towards crabbing gentleman. At which point bar maiden demands that he leave and take his crab with him.
Barmaid says: “get out of my pub and take your crabs with you”.
Thing that stood out for me in that story was that you were ‘dining’ in Wetherspoons.
Er, why on Earth would you do that?
Whats wrong with Spoons?
Tim "Brexit" Martin tops my list
Honestly doesn't bother me. He's the guy who owns it not the business itself. And there are plenty of other businesses owned by corporate wankers - if we start to boycott them all there won't be much left.
Mr Martin was particularly vocal at the time of Brexit and I have never darkened his door since.
Mind you, I have never been that keen on ad-water-and-stir pubs.
For my two pennth, the best meal I have ever had was at a restaurant that doesn't even have a michelin star. It wasn't cheap, but it certainly isn't the most expensive meal I have had.
Most of my best meals have been at non-Michelin places
Random top ten (I could choose eighty more)
Eating at Marco Pierre White's very first place, in south London (forget where) - before he had a star, wow
A crab and asparagus dish in a restaurant made from a garage outside Chiang Mai, Thailand
A beef massaman curry on a beach in Ko Tao, also Thailand
Eating at the first Barrafina off the Strand
Osyters and foie gras and gingerbread in some brilliant old school brasserie in Nantes, France
Dinner by Heston (that has a star or two)
A steak at G W Bush's favourite steak restaurant in Austin Texas
Another steak at Cabana Las Lilas in Buenos Aires
Tiny gnocchi in a private restaurant on a private vineyard on the island of Pantelleria, Italy
Some sardines, recently, in a scruffy cafe above a fish market in Sagres, Portugal
How much of this is about company, location, mood, weather, post-coital bliss - rather than food? At least half of it
I am not sure where to even begin with best food, overall.
For steak, I do. The Tasting Room in Frederick MD does a filet mignon that is the best I have had anywhere, including the best that Buenos Aires or Texas has to offer.
For Indian food, sorry to say that my best experience has been neither in India nor in the UK, but in downtown Washington DC. Rasika (chef was in London prior to moving to the US). Their palak chaat is the most delicious single Indian dish I have ever eaten. For Northern Indian, Bukhara in New York used to be the place.
For the most inventive, surprising and incredible meal I've ever eaten, Contra in lower Manhattan wins: https://contra.nyc It has one star.
For the single ingredient of a dish, Brian Voltaggio at Volt (now sadly gone) outdid everything else I have ever experienced. He does molecular cuisine, which is not my favorite style. But he made 'caviar' out of virgin olive oil. It was the most intensely pleasurable tasting experience of my life to date.
I realize this is a very US-centric list. I have had many spectacular meals in France, Italy, the UK, and Switzerland. But none of them truly stand out from the rest.
I must be incredibly unlucky because 98% of my eating experiences in America are mediocre or worse. And I have been there a LOT, and all over, and in all kinds of joints, from top NYC starred places to innovative California pop-ups to famous BBQ shacks in the Deep South
The one exception is Louisiana especially New Orleans. The food there is consistently great, and they don't do the off-puttingly enormous servings you commonly get in the USA. How can such a rich country still believe "great food = tons of food"?
I think we forget how much better food in the UK has got. Because not many pubs can survive as shitty boozers and huge competition in the restaurant sector, "bog standard" offers across the board have got a hell of a lot better in the past 20-30 years. Sure we still have cheap and crap, but that £10 for a main range has got infinity better in lots of places, and many more people are willing to pay for really good stuff (I presume tv chefs lot has helped this).
Its not that long ago that the Olympic Breakfast at a Little Chef was what people did...now they queue for the overpriced but still better offering from the likes of the Breakfast Club.
The US its seems to be cheap and shit, middle price range, eat your weight in meat...then the small niche high end.
WE DEMAND JUBILEE PANCAKES.
(Which used to be 99p)
Used to be the one of the highlight of my family holidays to Cornwall as a kid....stopping off at a Little Chef for jubilee pancakes.
Now I imagine the kids of today in Cornwall are having organic fresh hand crafted crepes with matcha ice cream...
I'm not sure things have changed that much. When we go to Cornwall we usually have a few meals at the cafe on the cliff top above Treganhawke that does all day breakfasts. Plus a few cream teas, fish and chips and ice creams. The fanciest food is usually consumed at the Eden Project.
I go to Cornwall all the time and all my extended family live there. You're really not trying very hard. There is fine food in every major town. You can get excellent Indian and Thai everywhere, for a start
This wasn't intended as a criticism. I live in London so don't go to Cornwall for interesting world cuisine, but things like cream teas and fish and chips on the beach are things we can't get at home and are handy on walks or days on the beach which is what we tend to be doing. We usually go self catering and cook dinner at the chalet anyway, it's more relaxing than eating out with kids. And we don't really visit the major towns either - we always stay in the SE corner so the only close town is across the Tamar in Plymouth which is not especially nice (it is the city of many of my forebears, so I am well disposed to it but it is not an attractive place).
Fair enough
I know I am in a TINY minority here, but I love Plymouth. It is an extraordinary city. Extraordinarily hideous in places, but extraordinarily beautiful and historic in others. An amazing topography. Also some good places to eat!
I have a Plymouth Fine Dining story. On a business trip, having dinner in Spoons. Pissed up blokes a few tables away obviously on a session. Another guy comes in and comes over to tell his friends about his crabbing adventures!
Yep, you guessed it. Pulls an Asda bag onto the table and removes from it a large crab which proceeds to protest with claws towards crabbing gentleman. At which point bar maiden demands that he leave and take his crab with him.
Barmaid says: “get out of my pub and take your crabs with you”.
Thing that stood out for me in that story was that you were ‘dining’ in Wetherspoons.
Er, why on Earth would you do that?
Whats wrong with Spoons?
Tim "Brexit" Martin tops my list
Honestly doesn't bother me. He's the guy who owns it not the business itself. And there are plenty of other businesses owned by corporate wankers - if we start to boycott them all there won't be much left.
The microwaved food is far more objectionable than the owner. I mean Bezos by all accounts is Bond villain level evil but everyone uses Amazon.
Liverpool Football Club can confirm an application has been submitted for the postponement of Thursday’s Carabao Cup semi-final, first-leg tie with Arsenal due to an escalating number of suspected positive COVID-19 cases and player availability.
The Reds have formally requested to the EFL that the fixture is rescheduled after further suspected positive tests were registered among players and staff, allied to other factors impacting selection, including illness and injury.
In response, the club halted preparations at the AXA Training Centre, meaning Tuesday’s first-team training session was cancelled.
Among the considerations which led to today’s application to the EFL is the need for travelling supporters to be given as much notice as possible of any potential postponement.
With no prospect of the current situation improving ahead of Thursday’s fixture and the potential for it to worsen, the club considers it both prudent and reasonable to ask for the fixture to be rescheduled.
Liverpool FC will offer a further update on the application process, as well as the resumption of training, in due course.
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
I hate to defend the Tories over this ... but they can reasonably say that they were assured by Blair & Campbell & Co that the security evidence was overwhelming.
It probably did not cross the Tories' collective mind -- such as it is -- that anyone would lie to take the country to war.
It certainly did not cross my mind.
Balls. They should have said, bland assurances are not good enough. You want our support you give us the raw data and we'll assess it for ourselves.
Shaun Lintern @ShaunLintern NEW: @UHP_NHS has today declared a critical incident. Message to staff warns of 15 ambulances waiting and no space in A&E and 475 Covid staff absences. Full details:
I keep saying it – the seven-day isolation rules are now a far greater threat than the virus itself. They need looking at, sharpish.
For my two pennth, the best meal I have ever had was at a restaurant that doesn't even have a michelin star. It wasn't cheap, but it certainly isn't the most expensive meal I have had.
Most of my best meals have been at non-Michelin places
Random top ten (I could choose eighty more)
Eating at Marco Pierre White's very first place, in south London (forget where) - before he had a star, wow
A crab and asparagus dish in a restaurant made from a garage outside Chiang Mai, Thailand
A beef massaman curry on a beach in Ko Tao, also Thailand
Eating at the first Barrafina off the Strand
Osyters and foie gras and gingerbread in some brilliant old school brasserie in Nantes, France
Dinner by Heston (that has a star or two)
A steak at G W Bush's favourite steak restaurant in Austin Texas
Another steak at Cabana Las Lilas in Buenos Aires
Tiny gnocchi in a private restaurant on a private vineyard on the island of Pantelleria, Italy
Some sardines, recently, in a scruffy cafe above a fish market in Sagres, Portugal
How much of this is about company, location, mood, weather, post-coital bliss - rather than food? At least half of it
I am not sure where to even begin with best food, overall.
For steak, I do. The Tasting Room in Frederick MD does a filet mignon that is the best I have had anywhere, including the best that Buenos Aires or Texas has to offer.
For Indian food, sorry to say that my best experience has been neither in India nor in the UK, but in downtown Washington DC. Rasika (chef was in London prior to moving to the US). Their palak chaat is the most delicious single Indian dish I have ever eaten. For Northern Indian, Bukhara in New York used to be the place.
For the most inventive, surprising and incredible meal I've ever eaten, Contra in lower Manhattan wins: https://contra.nyc It has one star.
For the single ingredient of a dish, Brian Voltaggio at Volt (now sadly gone) outdid everything else I have ever experienced. He does molecular cuisine, which is not my favorite style. But he made 'caviar' out of virgin olive oil. It was the most intensely pleasurable tasting experience of my life to date.
I realize this is a very US-centric list. I have had many spectacular meals in France, Italy, the UK, and Switzerland. But none of them truly stand out from the rest.
I must be incredibly unlucky because 98% of my eating experiences in America are mediocre or worse. And I have been there a LOT, and all over, and in all kinds of joints, from top NYC starred places to innovative California pop-ups to famous BBQ shacks in the Deep South
The one exception is Louisiana especially New Orleans. The food there is consistently great, and they don't do the off-puttingly enormous servings you commonly get in the USA. How can such a rich country still believe "great food = tons of food"?
I think we forget how much better food in the UK has got. Because not many pubs can survive as shitty boozers and huge competition in the restaurant sector, "bog standard" offers across the board have got a hell of a lot better in the past 20-30 years. Sure we still have cheap and crap, but that £10 for a main range has got infinity better in lots of places, and many more people are willing to pay for really good stuff (I presume tv chefs lot has helped this).
Its not that long ago that the Olympic Breakfast at a Little Chef was what people did...now they queue for the overpriced but still better offering from the likes of the Breakfast Club.
The US its seems to be cheap and shit, middle price range, eat your weight in meat...then the small niche high end.
WE DEMAND JUBILEE PANCAKES.
(Which used to be 99p)
Used to be the one of the highlight of my family holidays to Cornwall as a kid....stopping off at a Little Chef for jubilee pancakes.
Now I imagine the kids of today in Cornwall are having organic fresh hand crafted crepes with matcha ice cream...
I'm not sure things have changed that much. When we go to Cornwall we usually have a few meals at the cafe on the cliff top above Treganhawke that does all day breakfasts. Plus a few cream teas, fish and chips and ice creams. The fanciest food is usually consumed at the Eden Project.
I go to Cornwall all the time and all my extended family live there. You're really not trying very hard. There is fine food in every major town. You can get excellent Indian and Thai everywhere, for a start
This wasn't intended as a criticism. I live in London so don't go to Cornwall for interesting world cuisine, but things like cream teas and fish and chips on the beach are things we can't get at home and are handy on walks or days on the beach which is what we tend to be doing. We usually go self catering and cook dinner at the chalet anyway, it's more relaxing than eating out with kids. And we don't really visit the major towns either - we always stay in the SE corner so the only close town is across the Tamar in Plymouth which is not especially nice (it is the city of many of my forebears, so I am well disposed to it but it is not an attractive place).
Fair enough
I know I am in a TINY minority here, but I love Plymouth. It is an extraordinary city. Extraordinarily hideous in places, but extraordinarily beautiful and historic in others. An amazing topography. Also some good places to eat!
I have a Plymouth Fine Dining story. On a business trip, having dinner in Spoons. Pissed up blokes a few tables away obviously on a session. Another guy comes in and comes over to tell his friends about his crabbing adventures!
Yep, you guessed it. Pulls an Asda bag onto the table and removes from it a large crab which proceeds to protest with claws towards crabbing gentleman. At which point bar maiden demands that he leave and take his crab with him.
Barmaid says: “get out of my pub and take your crabs with you”.
Thing that stood out for me in that story was that you were ‘dining’ in Wetherspoons.
Er, why on Earth would you do that?
Whats wrong with Spoons?
Tim "Brexit" Martin tops my list
I go to the pub to get away from thinking about politics. Last time I went to go in a Wetherspoons my eye was caught by a beer mat on the outside table, some idiot rant about Brexit. Do they still do that? Cos I might go back if they've stopped but fuck me no thanks if they still do it.
'We can’t vaccinate the planet every six months', says JCVI chief Fourth Covid jabs should not be offered until there is more evidence, the head of Britain's vaccine body has said - as he warned that giving boosters to people every six months was “not sustainable”.
6 monthly jabs may or may not be the right thing, but his remit is not "THE PLANET". It's the UK. Once again heading outside their remit.
Unless we vaccinate the planet - collectively - then we aren't immune from the next mutation.
That's another covid myth apparently: Myth #1,765 in a regular series...
We should share Covid vaccines with the world, because it is the right thing to do, but not because it will limit of emergence of 'variants' - vaccines don't generate variants but they don't preclude their emergence either - it's all a bit unclear and complicated.
Not just people either, Covid is a general mammalian phenomenon
Nevertheless a world with Covid raging is more likely to throw up things which come and fuck us up than a world with Covid under control. And the quicker we vaccinate the world the quicker we get from that first situation to the second. It's as much a practical imperative as a moral one.
No it isn't necessarily a practical or moral one and probably not a scientific one either. All governments have their first responsibility to their own population. IMHO, the first priority of Western governments is to figure out how to defeat or contain the virus. The strategies that they use will then inform them how they support other governments to do the same.
The virus respects no borders. It's a global pandemic and the best response to it is global. The more inefficient and illogical is the vaccine rollout - eg 5 or 6 jabs in one country and zero in another - the longer the pandemic will last, and the longer it lasts the more the damage will be and the more likely it is that we will be impacted.
The question then is this - to what extent should the normal rules of national centric politics - which you outline - be flexed in order to facilitate the optimum globally efficient solution?
I say the answer to this is "to a very great extent" and I think this is the correct answer. After all, this is a once-a-century emergency with an awful lot at stake. If we can't get our (global) act together for this, at least better than we are atm, when will we ever be able to?
So I am going to ask a question. I don't claim it is a fair question or perhaps even valid but it is the question that any politician has to be able to answer if they wish to accept your view.
How many people should we allow to die in this country, who could otherwise be saved, so that we can save lives of people in Africa, India, Russia or Poland?
As I say I am not saying it is a fair question but it is the question that cannot be dodged by politicians choosing to follow the route of putting global well being ahead of national well being.
And I know the obvious answer to you and probably to me is that in the long term we might actually save more lives here. But that is not certain and you are asking people to accept deaths now for fewer deaths tomorrow. That is a hard, if not impossible, sell for any politician.
I'll avoid the obvious answer and instead acknowledge what you say - that it's hard for any national government not to be driven entirely by high viz short term national interest, eg (for here) what booster strategy gets us out of all restrictions asap this year, end of story.
So, in practice, I guess the best we can hope for is that the global case is pushed by the likes of the WHO and various leading scientists and that it gets at least some traction with decision makers. Ie I feel the dead opposite to those who see that case being made by such people and respond "They should shut up. Not in their brief". I think the more noise is made about this the better.
Imagine we reach end of 2023 and Covid is conquered (for now) in the developed world but still raging most everywhere else. That, given the early brilliance in developing vaccines and treatments, would be such a shame - and furthermore a depressing sign that for all our tech and intelligence and progress we can't meet the big challenges.
The issue is -
- The supply of vaccines is no longer the issue. We are looking at 24 billion doses manufactured by the middle of this year. There are about 8 Billion people on the planet. - So Harry Hair Shirting about not "hoarding" vaccinations doesn't actually make sense. Not doing boosters or vaccinating children in the UK will not materially effect vaccine availability world wide.
There's loads of issues. Affordable Supply + Logistics & Distribution + Population Demand = Vaccination Outcome. There are problems to fix with all the inputs there.
But my strong sense is that the assertion "the domestic vaccine strategy of rich countries and their interaction with the pharmaceutical giants has no impact on the vaccination outcome in the rest of the world" is a self-comforting falsehood.
Is that like a Spidey Sense?
The fact remains that vaccines are now being made faster than the take-up - to the point where makers are questioning what their strategy in the second half of 2022 will be.
I suppose we could build a nice, comforting mountain of out-of-date vaccine doses. That should make someone feel nice.
Well by "strong sense" I meant "certain knowledge" but I'm feeling a bit shy today.
As for your last sentence I'm afraid that's Reactionary Reductive speak - I'll file along with things like "if you worry about the global poor so much why don't you go and be a missionary in Africa?" Or of course the iconic "if you're so keen on a wealth tax what's stopping you sending a cheque to hmrc?"
It's a bulging file but there's room.
Sigh.
The point is that not doing boosters and child vaccinations in the UK will not, of itself, effect the actual number of people getting vaccinated in poor countries.
The supply bit of the equation is not the problem. The other bits are. So do the other bits.
Don't go sighing at me or saying I'm ignoring important bits. By Supply I mean affordable available supply plus distribution logistics. Obviously. You are being utterly disingenuous and reductive and treating me like a strawman. It's like you and many on here are reading a wholly different Covid book to the one I have on the go. Quite bizarre.
No, you didn't mean supply *and* distribution logistics.
Otherwise you would have been talking about improving distribution logistics in Africa, rather than coyly trying on the idea of limiting further vaccination in UK/Europe/etc.
You are obviously not a strawman. I wouldn't want to offend Worzel Gummidge with such a comparison.
I'm surprised to hear @HYUFD speak so highly of Tony Blair given he walloped the Conservatives not once, not twice but three times.
From a non-Conservative, non-Labour perspective my main sense of Tony Blair is one of disappointment, of an opportunity to change Britain forever squandered. Blair had a majority of 179 - he literally had the power to do what he wanted and had an electorate at that time willing to go down a more radical path.
Blair could have transformed the politics and governance of the whole of the UK and you can't argue he didn't effect change in Scotland and Wales but for England it was the sum total of bugger all. The devolution settlement offered to other parts of the UK wasn't offered in England and that was, I think, a mistake.
Perhaps there were plans for something more radical in the second term but these were thwarted by events in New York which came to dominate the time and his legacy.
I don't define Blair by Iraq - I define him by the fact he could have been as radical a Prime Minister as Thatcher or Attlee but achieved so little.
Perhaps he was as much a conservative as many believed.
On the subject of China this video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCVyDHPnyL4&t=312s ) suggests that they have closed down a lot of heavy industry in the Beijing area in preparation for the Winter Olympics. I'm not sure how reliable this is though: the people making the video are fairly obviously not fans of the CCP.
They did that in advance of the Summer Olympics in 2008 to improve the air quality.
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
We shall have to wait and see. But yes I hold my hand up as I for one didn't at first buy into the whole aliens thing and I am ashamed of that.
Well we still don’t know enough about UAP to equate them with aliens, however much some of us might think the evidence points that way. What almost all of you refused to take on board, now underlined by the new Congressional legislation passed last week (Gillibrand Amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act), is that the organs of power in the US are taking UAPs very seriously indeed. Even as you lot laugh it all off.
I'm surprised to hear @HYUFD speak so highly of Tony Blair given he walloped the Conservatives not once, not twice but three times.
From a non-Conservative, non-Labour perspective my main sense of Tony Blair is one of disappointment, of an opportunity to change Britain forever squandered. Blair had a majority of 179 - he literally had the power to do what he wanted and had an electorate at that time willing to go down a more radical path.
Blair could have transformed the politics and governance of the whole of the UK and you can't argue he didn't effect change in Scotland and Wales but for England it was the sum total of bugger all. The devolution settlement offered to other parts of the UK wasn't offered in England and that was, I think, a mistake.
Perhaps there were plans for something more radical in the second term but these were thwarted by events in New York which came to dominate the time and his legacy.
I don't define Blair by Iraq - I define him by the fact he could have been as radical a Prime Minister as Thatcher or Attlee but achieved so little.
Perhaps he was as much a conservative as many believed.
Ironically I was not a great Blair fan in 1997 or 2001 where I supported Major and Hague and considered him too pro EU and sympathetic to the Euro. However as a right of centre conservative I respected him a bit more after he backed Bush in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars which I backed and pushed for more choice in public services. I was the reverse of the left who loved him in 1997 but often hated him by 2005.
Once Brown got in as PM it was clear Blair was the one keeping tax down and controlling spending not Brown too
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
You're certainly right that the Tories' full-throated support of the Iraq debacle seems to have been almost entirely expunged from the public's memory - or at least that of the rightwing press.
You never would have guessed from the Daily Mail's hysterical coverage of the Blair honours that many, if not all, Tory backbenchers ( and frontbenchers ) were even more enthusiastic for the war than Campbell and Blair themselves.
However, it's an excellent way of chipping away at Labour, so the tabloids will apply their usual morality and history-free approach to the particular topic.
You're also right that Charles Kennedy's intelligent and brave stance has been much too much forgotten. I also personally was much more in sympathy with his LD party than more recent incarnations.
Robin Cook gave the stand out performance.
As for the Tories Blair was apparently privately disgusted by IDS's unqualified support and called him "Little Sir Echo." If there was a war crime, given they were allowed a vote, the entire HoC should be in the dock.
Remarkable that he didn’t see the irony, given his relationship with Bush.
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
I hate to defend the Tories over this ... but they can reasonably say that they were assured by Blair & Campbell & Co that the security evidence was overwhelming.
It probably did not cross the Tories' collective mind -- such as it is -- that anyone would lie to take the country to war.
It certainly did not cross my mind.
Balls. They should have said, bland assurances are not good enough. You want our support you give us the raw data and we'll assess it for ourselves.
It so happens that this is what I would have done -- but almost everyone does not.
Point stands.
The person who invents a wicked lie is in a worse category than the person who merely believes a wicked lie.
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
We shall have to wait and see. But yes I hold my hand up as I for one didn't at first buy into the whole aliens thing and I am ashamed of that.
Well we still don’t know enough about UAP to equate them with aliens, however much some of us might think the evidence points that way. What almost all of you refused to take on board, now underlined by the new Congressional legislation passed last week (Gillibrand Amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act), is that the organs of power in the US are taking UAPs very seriously indeed. Even as you lot laugh it all off.
I am not laughing it off. I am laughing it off a lot.
On the subject of China this video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCVyDHPnyL4&t=312s ) suggests that they have closed down a lot of heavy industry in the Beijing area in preparation for the Winter Olympics. I'm not sure how reliable this is though: the people making the video are fairly obviously not fans of the CCP.
I can confirm that this is routine. They do this to heavy industry up to a 1000 miles or so away, not just for international sporting events but even for fairly run of the mill diplomatic meet ups. They find the air pollution embarrassing. It often causes a complete cluster in the private sector in heavy industry, which tends to run their liquidity hand to mouth. The result is usually the cessation of paying wages for weeks or months and the default against suppliers, customers and creditors. Sometimes they work them selves out the hole, sometimes not.
The report on C4 news on air pollution in Delhi was quite something last night. Decarbonising India and China energy would be good for them, even more than the rest of us.
It's nearly 30 years since I was in Mumbai, but the stench of the air is still with me. Diesel, slums and rotting stuff in the harbour. Interesting place otherwise.
For my two pennth, the best meal I have ever had was at a restaurant that doesn't even have a michelin star. It wasn't cheap, but it certainly isn't the most expensive meal I have had.
Most of my best meals have been at non-Michelin places
Random top ten (I could choose eighty more)
Eating at Marco Pierre White's very first place, in south London (forget where) - before he had a star, wow
A crab and asparagus dish in a restaurant made from a garage outside Chiang Mai, Thailand
A beef massaman curry on a beach in Ko Tao, also Thailand
Eating at the first Barrafina off the Strand
Osyters and foie gras and gingerbread in some brilliant old school brasserie in Nantes, France
Dinner by Heston (that has a star or two)
A steak at G W Bush's favourite steak restaurant in Austin Texas
Another steak at Cabana Las Lilas in Buenos Aires
Tiny gnocchi in a private restaurant on a private vineyard on the island of Pantelleria, Italy
Some sardines, recently, in a scruffy cafe above a fish market in Sagres, Portugal
How much of this is about company, location, mood, weather, post-coital bliss - rather than food? At least half of it
I am not sure where to even begin with best food, overall.
For steak, I do. The Tasting Room in Frederick MD does a filet mignon that is the best I have had anywhere, including the best that Buenos Aires or Texas has to offer.
For Indian food, sorry to say that my best experience has been neither in India nor in the UK, but in downtown Washington DC. Rasika (chef was in London prior to moving to the US). Their palak chaat is the most delicious single Indian dish I have ever eaten. For Northern Indian, Bukhara in New York used to be the place.
For the most inventive, surprising and incredible meal I've ever eaten, Contra in lower Manhattan wins: https://contra.nyc It has one star.
For the single ingredient of a dish, Brian Voltaggio at Volt (now sadly gone) outdid everything else I have ever experienced. He does molecular cuisine, which is not my favorite style. But he made 'caviar' out of virgin olive oil. It was the most intensely pleasurable tasting experience of my life to date.
I realize this is a very US-centric list. I have had many spectacular meals in France, Italy, the UK, and Switzerland. But none of them truly stand out from the rest.
I must be incredibly unlucky because 98% of my eating experiences in America are mediocre or worse. And I have been there a LOT, and all over, and in all kinds of joints, from top NYC starred places to innovative California pop-ups to famous BBQ shacks in the Deep South
The one exception is Louisiana especially New Orleans. The food there is consistently great, and they don't do the off-puttingly enormous servings you commonly get in the USA. How can such a rich country still believe "great food = tons of food"?
I think we forget how much better food in the UK has got. Because not many pubs can survive as shitty boozers and huge competition in the restaurant sector, "bog standard" offers across the board have got a hell of a lot better in the past 20-30 years. Sure we still have cheap and crap, but that £10 for a main range has got infinity better in lots of places, and many more people are willing to pay for really good stuff (I presume tv chefs lot has helped this).
Its not that long ago that the Olympic Breakfast at a Little Chef was what people did...now they queue for the overpriced but still better offering from the likes of the Breakfast Club.
The US its seems to be cheap and shit, middle price range, eat your weight in meat...then the small niche high end.
WE DEMAND JUBILEE PANCAKES.
(Which used to be 99p)
Used to be the one of the highlight of my family holidays to Cornwall as a kid....stopping off at a Little Chef for jubilee pancakes.
Now I imagine the kids of today in Cornwall are having organic fresh hand crafted crepes with matcha ice cream...
I'm not sure things have changed that much. When we go to Cornwall we usually have a few meals at the cafe on the cliff top above Treganhawke that does all day breakfasts. Plus a few cream teas, fish and chips and ice creams. The fanciest food is usually consumed at the Eden Project.
I go to Cornwall all the time and all my extended family live there. You're really not trying very hard. There is fine food in every major town. You can get excellent Indian and Thai everywhere, for a start
This wasn't intended as a criticism. I live in London so don't go to Cornwall for interesting world cuisine, but things like cream teas and fish and chips on the beach are things we can't get at home and are handy on walks or days on the beach which is what we tend to be doing. We usually go self catering and cook dinner at the chalet anyway, it's more relaxing than eating out with kids. And we don't really visit the major towns either - we always stay in the SE corner so the only close town is across the Tamar in Plymouth which is not especially nice (it is the city of many of my forebears, so I am well disposed to it but it is not an attractive place).
Fair enough
I know I am in a TINY minority here, but I love Plymouth. It is an extraordinary city. Extraordinarily hideous in places, but extraordinarily beautiful and historic in others. An amazing topography. Also some good places to eat!
I have a Plymouth Fine Dining story. On a business trip, having dinner in Spoons. Pissed up blokes a few tables away obviously on a session. Another guy comes in and comes over to tell his friends about his crabbing adventures!
Yep, you guessed it. Pulls an Asda bag onto the table and removes from it a large crab which proceeds to protest with claws towards crabbing gentleman. At which point bar maiden demands that he leave and take his crab with him.
Barmaid says: “get out of my pub and take your crabs with you”.
Thing that stood out for me in that story was that you were ‘dining’ in Wetherspoons.
Er, why on Earth would you do that?
Whats wrong with Spoons?
Tim "Brexit" Martin tops my list
Honestly doesn't bother me. He's the guy who owns it not the business itself. And there are plenty of other businesses owned by corporate wankers - if we start to boycott them all there won't be much left.
Mr Martin was particularly vocal at the time of Brexit and I have never darkened his door since.
Mind you, I have never been that keen on ad-water-and-stir pubs.
Apart from the dodgy food, and dodgy politics, the reason I'll never set foot in a Wetherspoons again is the way they treated their staff at the start of the pandemic. Even knowing the government was going to hand over furlough money, they still chose to cut staff loose on the basis the government payouts would take "weeks to arrive".
'We can’t vaccinate the planet every six months', says JCVI chief Fourth Covid jabs should not be offered until there is more evidence, the head of Britain's vaccine body has said - as he warned that giving boosters to people every six months was “not sustainable”.
6 monthly jabs may or may not be the right thing, but his remit is not "THE PLANET". It's the UK. Once again heading outside their remit.
Unless we vaccinate the planet - collectively - then we aren't immune from the next mutation.
That's another covid myth apparently: Myth #1,765 in a regular series...
We should share Covid vaccines with the world, because it is the right thing to do, but not because it will limit of emergence of 'variants' - vaccines don't generate variants but they don't preclude their emergence either - it's all a bit unclear and complicated.
Not just people either, Covid is a general mammalian phenomenon
Nevertheless a world with Covid raging is more likely to throw up things which come and fuck us up than a world with Covid under control. And the quicker we vaccinate the world the quicker we get from that first situation to the second. It's as much a practical imperative as a moral one.
No it isn't necessarily a practical or moral one and probably not a scientific one either. All governments have their first responsibility to their own population. IMHO, the first priority of Western governments is to figure out how to defeat or contain the virus. The strategies that they use will then inform them how they support other governments to do the same.
The virus respects no borders. It's a global pandemic and the best response to it is global. The more inefficient and illogical is the vaccine rollout - eg 5 or 6 jabs in one country and zero in another - the longer the pandemic will last, and the longer it lasts the more the damage will be and the more likely it is that we will be impacted.
The question then is this - to what extent should the normal rules of national centric politics - which you outline - be flexed in order to facilitate the optimum globally efficient solution?
I say the answer to this is "to a very great extent" and I think this is the correct answer. After all, this is a once-a-century emergency with an awful lot at stake. If we can't get our (global) act together for this, at least better than we are atm, when will we ever be able to?
So I am going to ask a question. I don't claim it is a fair question or perhaps even valid but it is the question that any politician has to be able to answer if they wish to accept your view.
How many people should we allow to die in this country, who could otherwise be saved, so that we can save lives of people in Africa, India, Russia or Poland?
As I say I am not saying it is a fair question but it is the question that cannot be dodged by politicians choosing to follow the route of putting global well being ahead of national well being.
And I know the obvious answer to you and probably to me is that in the long term we might actually save more lives here. But that is not certain and you are asking people to accept deaths now for fewer deaths tomorrow. That is a hard, if not impossible, sell for any politician.
I'll avoid the obvious answer and instead acknowledge what you say - that it's hard for any national government not to be driven entirely by high viz short term national interest, eg (for here) what booster strategy gets us out of all restrictions asap this year, end of story.
So, in practice, I guess the best we can hope for is that the global case is pushed by the likes of the WHO and various leading scientists and that it gets at least some traction with decision makers. Ie I feel the dead opposite to those who see that case being made by such people and respond "They should shut up. Not in their brief". I think the more noise is made about this the better.
Imagine we reach end of 2023 and Covid is conquered (for now) in the developed world but still raging most everywhere else. That, given the early brilliance in developing vaccines and treatments, would be such a shame - and furthermore a depressing sign that for all our tech and intelligence and progress we can't meet the big challenges.
The issue is -
- The supply of vaccines is no longer the issue. We are looking at 24 billion doses manufactured by the middle of this year. There are about 8 Billion people on the planet. - So Harry Hair Shirting about not "hoarding" vaccinations doesn't actually make sense. Not doing boosters or vaccinating children in the UK will not materially effect vaccine availability world wide.
There's loads of issues. Affordable Supply + Logistics & Distribution + Population Demand = Vaccination Outcome. There are problems to fix with all the inputs there.
But my strong sense is that the assertion "the domestic vaccine strategy of rich countries and their interaction with the pharmaceutical giants has no impact on the vaccination outcome in the rest of the world" is a self-comforting falsehood.
Is that like a Spidey Sense?
The fact remains that vaccines are now being made faster than the take-up - to the point where makers are questioning what their strategy in the second half of 2022 will be.
I suppose we could build a nice, comforting mountain of out-of-date vaccine doses. That should make someone feel nice.
Well by "strong sense" I meant "certain knowledge" but I'm feeling a bit shy today.
As for your last sentence I'm afraid that's Reactionary Reductive speak - I'll file along with things like "if you worry about the global poor so much why don't you go and be a missionary in Africa?" Or of course the iconic "if you're so keen on a wealth tax what's stopping you sending a cheque to hmrc?"
It's a bulging file but there's room.
Sigh.
The point is that not doing boosters and child vaccinations in the UK will not, of itself, effect the actual number of people getting vaccinated in poor countries.
The supply bit of the equation is not the problem. The other bits are. So do the other bits.
Don't go sighing at me or saying I'm ignoring important bits. By Supply I mean affordable available supply plus distribution logistics. Obviously. You are being utterly disingenuous and reductive and treating me like a strawman. It's like you and many on here are reading a wholly different Covid book to the one I have on the go. Quite bizarre.
No, you didn't mean supply *and* distribution logistics.
Otherwise you would have been talking about improving distribution logistics in Africa, rather than coyly trying on the idea of limiting further vaccination in UK/Europe/etc.
You are obviously not a strawman. I wouldn't want to offend Worzel Gummidge with such a comparison.
We are not communicating well. I'll try again at my earliest convenience. Because it's an important point and you're worth it.
I don't think the BBC even showed this week's Prime Ministerial pep talk to the notion - they had a programme on called "Pointless".
Hmm...
The nature of Omicron means some will be alarmed by rising case numbers but probably shouldn't be. The position in the hospitals needs and no doubt is being closely monitored and staff shortages will cause localised issues as we're seeing with train services in my part of the world.
Having read about what a real lockdown looks like from China, it's curious to see the term thrown around so glibly by so many. I know it's linguistic shorthand but it covers a multitude of sins it would seem from not being able to stand at the bar to have a drink to being sealed inside your home without food.
I'm surprised to hear @HYUFD speak so highly of Tony Blair given he walloped the Conservatives not once, not twice but three times.
From a non-Conservative, non-Labour perspective my main sense of Tony Blair is one of disappointment, of an opportunity to change Britain forever squandered. Blair had a majority of 179 - he literally had the power to do what he wanted and had an electorate at that time willing to go down a more radical path.
Blair could have transformed the politics and governance of the whole of the UK and you can't argue he didn't effect change in Scotland and Wales but for England it was the sum total of bugger all. The devolution settlement offered to other parts of the UK wasn't offered in England and that was, I think, a mistake.
Perhaps there were plans for something more radical in the second term but these were thwarted by events in New York which came to dominate the time and his legacy.
I don't define Blair by Iraq - I define him by the fact he could have been as radical a Prime Minister as Thatcher or Attlee but achieved so little.
Perhaps he was as much a conservative as many believed.
Were it not for the reputation ending error of hanging onto the Bush family's coat tails for their retributive war with Saddam, he could have kept on and on serving the grey porridge that we lapped up.
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
We shall have to wait and see. But yes I hold my hand up as I for one didn't at first buy into the whole aliens thing and I am ashamed of that.
Well we still don’t know enough about UAP to equate them with aliens, however much some of us might think the evidence points that way. What almost all of you refused to take on board, now underlined by the new Congressional legislation passed last week (Gillibrand Amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act), is that the organs of power in the US are taking UAPs very seriously indeed. Even as you lot laugh it all off.
I think they're taking it seriously because it's a tactical ruse of their own making. We're going to see lots of extraordinary stories as the USA desperately tries to cling on to its world dominance. They're not going to drift into genteel insignificance the way that Britain did.
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
We shall have to wait and see. But yes I hold my hand up as I for one didn't at first buy into the whole aliens thing and I am ashamed of that.
Well we still don’t know enough about UAP to equate them with aliens, however much some of us might think the evidence points that way. What almost all of you refused to take on board, now underlined by the new Congressional legislation passed last week (Gillibrand Amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act), is that the organs of power in the US are taking UAPs very seriously indeed. Even as you lot laugh it all off.
For all its later flaws, the first third of Don’t Look Up is a superb depiction of Normalcy Bias
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
You're certainly right that the Tories' full-throated support of the Iraq debacle seems to have been almost entirely expunged from the public's memory - or at least that of the rightwing press.
You never would have guessed from the Daily Mail's hysterical coverage of the Blair honours that many, if not all, Tory backbenchers ( and frontbenchers ) were even more enthusiastic for the war than Campbell and Blair themselves.
However, it's an excellent way of chipping away at Labour, so the tabloids will apply their usual morality and history-free approach to the particular topic.
You're also right that Charles Kennedy's intelligent and brave stance has been much too much forgotten. I also personally was much more in sympathy with his LD party than more recent incarnations.
Robin Cook gave the stand out performance.
As for the Tories Blair was apparently privately disgusted by IDS's unqualified support and called him "Little Sir Echo." If there was a war crime, given they were allowed a vote, the entire HoC should be in the dock.
Yet Iraq is now a democracy and free of Saddam and by backing Blair to the hilt on Iraq along with the George W Bush administration (IDS met Vice President Cheney at the White House too) IDS helped split the Labour vote and push leftwingers to the LDs.
That in turn helped Michael Howard slash Labour's majority by 100 in 2005 and gain over 30 seats for the Tories.
An interesting counterfactual is if Ken Clarke had won the Tory leadership in 2001. He may even have got a hung parliament in 20p5 due to his opposition to the Iraq War with opponents of the war going direct to a Clarke led Tories rather than the Charles Kennedy led LDs
I think most of the former lab voters who opposed the war, would never vote Tory so I don't think Clarke would have benefited much.
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
We shall have to wait and see. But yes I hold my hand up as I for one didn't at first buy into the whole aliens thing and I am ashamed of that.
Well we still don’t know enough about UAP to equate them with aliens, however much some of us might think the evidence points that way. What almost all of you refused to take on board, now underlined by the new Congressional legislation passed last week (Gillibrand Amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act), is that the organs of power in the US are taking UAPs very seriously indeed. Even as you lot laugh it all off.
I am not laughing it off. I am laughing it off a lot.
That says rather a lot about the way you think about the world.
I'm surprised to hear @HYUFD speak so highly of Tony Blair given he walloped the Conservatives not once, not twice but three times.
From a non-Conservative, non-Labour perspective my main sense of Tony Blair is one of disappointment, of an opportunity to change Britain forever squandered. Blair had a majority of 179 - he literally had the power to do what he wanted and had an electorate at that time willing to go down a more radical path.
Blair could have transformed the politics and governance of the whole of the UK and you can't argue he didn't effect change in Scotland and Wales but for England it was the sum total of bugger all. The devolution settlement offered to other parts of the UK wasn't offered in England and that was, I think, a mistake.
Perhaps there were plans for something more radical in the second term but these were thwarted by events in New York which came to dominate the time and his legacy.
I don't define Blair by Iraq - I define him by the fact he could have been as radical a Prime Minister as Thatcher or Attlee but achieved so little.
Perhaps he was as much a conservative as many believed.
I've often heard this over the years: that Blair squandered an opportunity to radically change Britain for ever. But I've always wondered what exactly he could have done that would have been so revolutionary. The huge Leftist projects such as the NHS, the welfare state, nationalization had already been attempted.
I'm surprised to hear @HYUFD speak so highly of Tony Blair given he walloped the Conservatives not once, not twice but three times.
From a non-Conservative, non-Labour perspective my main sense of Tony Blair is one of disappointment, of an opportunity to change Britain forever squandered. Blair had a majority of 179 - he literally had the power to do what he wanted and had an electorate at that time willing to go down a more radical path.
Blair could have transformed the politics and governance of the whole of the UK and you can't argue he didn't effect change in Scotland and Wales but for England it was the sum total of bugger all. The devolution settlement offered to other parts of the UK wasn't offered in England and that was, I think, a mistake.
Perhaps there were plans for something more radical in the second term but these were thwarted by events in New York which came to dominate the time and his legacy.
I don't define Blair by Iraq - I define him by the fact he could have been as radical a Prime Minister as Thatcher or Attlee but achieved so little.
Perhaps he was as much a conservative as many believed.
Ironically I was not a great Blair fan in 1997 or 2001 where I supported Major and Hague and considered him too pro EU and sympathetic to the Euro. However as a right of centre conservative I respected him a bit more after he backed Bush in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars which I backed and pushed for more choice in public services. I was the reverse of the left who loved him in 1997 but often hated him by 2005.
Once Brown got in as PM it was clear Blair was the one keeping tax down and controlling spending not Brown too
What a mixed up post.
I suspect it was Brown. Chancellors don’t like PM’s getting credit for spending ‘their’ money, particularly if they fancy the top job themselves. If only I could think of a contemporary parallel to illustrate the point….
Ironically I was not a great Blair fan in 1997 or 2001 where I supported Major and Hague and considered him too pro EU and sympathetic to the Euro. However as a right of centre conservative I respected him a bit more after he backed Bush in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars which I backed and pushed for more choice in public services. I was the reverse of the left who loved him in 1997 but often hated him by 2005.
Once Brown got in as PM it was clear Blair was the one keeping tax down and controlling spending not Brown too
Interesting - I wonder idly whether had Blair remained how he would have fared against David Cameron in 2010. From your argument it might seem the former might be more to the right of centre than the latter.
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
You're certainly right that the Tories' full-throated support of the Iraq debacle seems to have been almost entirely expunged from the public's memory - or at least that of the rightwing press.
You never would have guessed from the Daily Mail's hysterical coverage of the Blair honours that many, if not all, Tory backbenchers ( and frontbenchers ) were even more enthusiastic for the war than Campbell and Blair themselves.
However, it's an excellent way of chipping away at Labour, so the tabloids will apply their usual morality and history-free approach to the particular topic.
You're also right that Charles Kennedy's intelligent and brave stance has been much too much forgotten. I also personally was much more in sympathy with his LD party than more recent incarnations.
Robin Cook gave the stand out performance.
As for the Tories Blair was apparently privately disgusted by IDS's unqualified support and called him "Little Sir Echo." If there was a war crime, given they were allowed a vote, the entire HoC should be in the dock.
Remarkable that he didn’t see the irony, given his relationship with Bush.
Good point.
What I despise him most for is his claim to have said to Bush, about Iraq, "I'm in." Not the sort of thing adults say in real life, but obviously him saying what he wanted George Clooney to say when playing him in his biopic.
For my two pennth, the best meal I have ever had was at a restaurant that doesn't even have a michelin star. It wasn't cheap, but it certainly isn't the most expensive meal I have had.
Most of my best meals have been at non-Michelin places
Random top ten (I could choose eighty more)
Eating at Marco Pierre White's very first place, in south London (forget where) - before he had a star, wow
A crab and asparagus dish in a restaurant made from a garage outside Chiang Mai, Thailand
A beef massaman curry on a beach in Ko Tao, also Thailand
Eating at the first Barrafina off the Strand
Osyters and foie gras and gingerbread in some brilliant old school brasserie in Nantes, France
Dinner by Heston (that has a star or two)
A steak at G W Bush's favourite steak restaurant in Austin Texas
Another steak at Cabana Las Lilas in Buenos Aires
Tiny gnocchi in a private restaurant on a private vineyard on the island of Pantelleria, Italy
Some sardines, recently, in a scruffy cafe above a fish market in Sagres, Portugal
How much of this is about company, location, mood, weather, post-coital bliss - rather than food? At least half of it
I am not sure where to even begin with best food, overall.
For steak, I do. The Tasting Room in Frederick MD does a filet mignon that is the best I have had anywhere, including the best that Buenos Aires or Texas has to offer.
For Indian food, sorry to say that my best experience has been neither in India nor in the UK, but in downtown Washington DC. Rasika (chef was in London prior to moving to the US). Their palak chaat is the most delicious single Indian dish I have ever eaten. For Northern Indian, Bukhara in New York used to be the place.
For the most inventive, surprising and incredible meal I've ever eaten, Contra in lower Manhattan wins: https://contra.nyc It has one star.
For the single ingredient of a dish, Brian Voltaggio at Volt (now sadly gone) outdid everything else I have ever experienced. He does molecular cuisine, which is not my favorite style. But he made 'caviar' out of virgin olive oil. It was the most intensely pleasurable tasting experience of my life to date.
I realize this is a very US-centric list. I have had many spectacular meals in France, Italy, the UK, and Switzerland. But none of them truly stand out from the rest.
I must be incredibly unlucky because 98% of my eating experiences in America are mediocre or worse. And I have been there a LOT, and all over, and in all kinds of joints, from top NYC starred places to innovative California pop-ups to famous BBQ shacks in the Deep South
The one exception is Louisiana especially New Orleans. The food there is consistently great, and they don't do the off-puttingly enormous servings you commonly get in the USA. How can such a rich country still believe "great food = tons of food"?
I think we forget how much better food in the UK has got. Because not many pubs can survive as shitty boozers and huge competition in the restaurant sector, "bog standard" offers across the board have got a hell of a lot better in the past 20-30 years. Sure we still have cheap and crap, but that £10 for a main range has got infinity better in lots of places, and many more people are willing to pay for really good stuff (I presume tv chefs lot has helped this).
Its not that long ago that the Olympic Breakfast at a Little Chef was what people did...now they queue for the overpriced but still better offering from the likes of the Breakfast Club.
The US its seems to be cheap and shit, middle price range, eat your weight in meat...then the small niche high end.
WE DEMAND JUBILEE PANCAKES.
(Which used to be 99p)
Used to be the one of the highlight of my family holidays to Cornwall as a kid....stopping off at a Little Chef for jubilee pancakes.
Now I imagine the kids of today in Cornwall are having organic fresh hand crafted crepes with matcha ice cream...
I'm not sure things have changed that much. When we go to Cornwall we usually have a few meals at the cafe on the cliff top above Treganhawke that does all day breakfasts. Plus a few cream teas, fish and chips and ice creams. The fanciest food is usually consumed at the Eden Project.
I go to Cornwall all the time and all my extended family live there. You're really not trying very hard. There is fine food in every major town. You can get excellent Indian and Thai everywhere, for a start
This wasn't intended as a criticism. I live in London so don't go to Cornwall for interesting world cuisine, but things like cream teas and fish and chips on the beach are things we can't get at home and are handy on walks or days on the beach which is what we tend to be doing. We usually go self catering and cook dinner at the chalet anyway, it's more relaxing than eating out with kids. And we don't really visit the major towns either - we always stay in the SE corner so the only close town is across the Tamar in Plymouth which is not especially nice (it is the city of many of my forebears, so I am well disposed to it but it is not an attractive place).
Fair enough
I know I am in a TINY minority here, but I love Plymouth. It is an extraordinary city. Extraordinarily hideous in places, but extraordinarily beautiful and historic in others. An amazing topography. Also some good places to eat!
I have a Plymouth Fine Dining story. On a business trip, having dinner in Spoons. Pissed up blokes a few tables away obviously on a session. Another guy comes in and comes over to tell his friends about his crabbing adventures!
Yep, you guessed it. Pulls an Asda bag onto the table and removes from it a large crab which proceeds to protest with claws towards crabbing gentleman. At which point bar maiden demands that he leave and take his crab with him.
Barmaid says: “get out of my pub and take your crabs with you”.
Thing that stood out for me in that story was that you were ‘dining’ in Wetherspoons.
Er, why on Earth would you do that?
Whats wrong with Spoons?
Tim "Brexit" Martin tops my list
Honestly doesn't bother me. He's the guy who owns it not the business itself. And there are plenty of other businesses owned by corporate wankers - if we start to boycott them all there won't be much left.
Mr Martin was particularly vocal at the time of Brexit and I have never darkened his door since.
Mind you, I have never been that keen on ad-water-and-stir pubs.
Apart from the dodgy food, and dodgy politics, the reason I'll never set foot in a Wetherspoons again is the way they treated their staff at the start of the pandemic. Even knowing the government was going to hand over furlough money, they still chose to cut staff loose on the basis the government payouts would take "weeks to arrive".
Almost, but not quite, on the level of BA, who took th opportunity to fire staff so that they could rehire them on wages that were a fraction of what they previously paid.....
I'm surprised to hear @HYUFD speak so highly of Tony Blair given he walloped the Conservatives not once, not twice but three times.
From a non-Conservative, non-Labour perspective my main sense of Tony Blair is one of disappointment, of an opportunity to change Britain forever squandered. Blair had a majority of 179 - he literally had the power to do what he wanted and had an electorate at that time willing to go down a more radical path.
Blair could have transformed the politics and governance of the whole of the UK and you can't argue he didn't effect change in Scotland and Wales but for England it was the sum total of bugger all. The devolution settlement offered to other parts of the UK wasn't offered in England and that was, I think, a mistake.
Perhaps there were plans for something more radical in the second term but these were thwarted by events in New York which came to dominate the time and his legacy.
I don't define Blair by Iraq - I define him by the fact he could have been as radical a Prime Minister as Thatcher or Attlee but achieved so little.
Perhaps he was as much a conservative as many believed.
Ironically I was not a great Blair fan in 1997 or 2001 where I supported Major and Hague and considered him too pro EU and sympathetic to the Euro. However as a right of centre conservative I respected him a bit more after he backed Bush in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars which I backed and pushed for more choice in public services. I was the reverse of the left who loved him in 1997 but often hated him by 2005.
Once Brown got in as PM it was clear Blair was the one keeping tax down and controlling spending not Brown too
What a mixed up post.
I suspect it was Brown. Chancellors don’t like PM’s getting credit for spending ‘their’ money, particularly if they fancy the top job themselves. If only I could think of a contemporary parallel to illustrate the point….
It was only under Brown's premiership the top rate of income tax went up to 50% and it was Brown who drove the extra spending in the Labour government, certainly post 2001
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
I hate to defend the Tories over this ... but they can reasonably say that they were assured by Blair & Campbell & Co that the security evidence was overwhelming.
It probably did not cross the Tories' collective mind -- such as it is -- that anyone would lie to take the country to war.
It certainly did not cross my mind.
Balls. They should have said, bland assurances are not good enough. You want our support you give us the raw data and we'll assess it for ourselves.
Certainly after Colin Powell’s utterly embarrassing performance at the UN they should have done.
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
We shall have to wait and see. But yes I hold my hand up as I for one didn't at first buy into the whole aliens thing and I am ashamed of that.
Well we still don’t know enough about UAP to equate them with aliens, however much some of us might think the evidence points that way. What almost all of you refused to take on board, now underlined by the new Congressional legislation passed last week (Gillibrand Amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act), is that the organs of power in the US are taking UAPs very seriously indeed. Even as you lot laugh it all off.
I am not laughing it off. I am laughing it off a lot.
It's funny, but even though moonshine and I come from completely different political perspectives, I agree with him that you shouldn't laugh it off. The US defence establishment isn't, after all.
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
We shall have to wait and see. But yes I hold my hand up as I for one didn't at first buy into the whole aliens thing and I am ashamed of that.
Well we still don’t know enough about UAP to equate them with aliens, however much some of us might think the evidence points that way. What almost all of you refused to take on board, now underlined by the new Congressional legislation passed last week (Gillibrand Amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act), is that the organs of power in the US are taking UAPs very seriously indeed. Even as you lot laugh it all off.
I am not laughing it off. I am laughing it off a lot.
That says rather a lot about the way you think about the world.
It absolutely does.
Reading her website she is evidently playing to a national security angle which is all fine and dandy and no doubt gets support from the square States. You seem to be saying that there has been some kind of breakthrough in determining what a UAP is.
I'm surprised to hear @HYUFD speak so highly of Tony Blair given he walloped the Conservatives not once, not twice but three times.
From a non-Conservative, non-Labour perspective my main sense of Tony Blair is one of disappointment, of an opportunity to change Britain forever squandered. Blair had a majority of 179 - he literally had the power to do what he wanted and had an electorate at that time willing to go down a more radical path.
Blair could have transformed the politics and governance of the whole of the UK and you can't argue he didn't effect change in Scotland and Wales but for England it was the sum total of bugger all. The devolution settlement offered to other parts of the UK wasn't offered in England and that was, I think, a mistake.
Perhaps there were plans for something more radical in the second term but these were thwarted by events in New York which came to dominate the time and his legacy.
I don't define Blair by Iraq - I define him by the fact he could have been as radical a Prime Minister as Thatcher or Attlee but achieved so little.
Perhaps he was as much a conservative as many believed.
I've often heard this over the years: that Blair squandered an opportunity to radically change Britain for ever. But I've always wondered what exactly he could have done that would have been so revolutionary. The huge Leftist projects such as the NHS, the welfare state, nationalization had already been attempted.
He could have more properly reformed the House of lords.
or more controversially he could of moved the NHS to a 'Bismarck style' heath system like Germany.
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
We shall have to wait and see. But yes I hold my hand up as I for one didn't at first buy into the whole aliens thing and I am ashamed of that.
Well we still don’t know enough about UAP to equate them with aliens, however much some of us might think the evidence points that way. What almost all of you refused to take on board, now underlined by the new Congressional legislation passed last week (Gillibrand Amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act), is that the organs of power in the US are taking UAPs very seriously indeed. Even as you lot laugh it all off.
For all its later flaws, the first third of Don’t Look Up is a superb depiction of Normalcy Bias
Yes it is excellent in that regard although more illustrates that beliefs are contingent upon political views than normalcy bias but yes that is there too.
Xian seems to be on everyone's lips but Delta or Omicron they were hard locking the place down ages (weeks?) ago. Because the city is hosting the Winter Olympics so "just in case" China is blitzing it to get Covid cases down because they don't want the global spotlight to show any pox there.
Can we draw any other lessons from it? Nope.
We can't draw any lessons, but we can ask questions
Why are they apparently using flamethrowers to disinfect neighborhoods and bus stops etc?
I find it hard to believe this "malfunctioning foam sprayer" argument. I'm not dismissing it, but how would that work?
Also:
1 We have never seen these malfunctions before
2 There are several videos showing this bizarre "malfunction"
3 And the men using the foam sprayers that instead squirt flame don't look at all surprised. They don't react or back away, and frankly if my foam sprayer suddenly started ejecting napalm I would be a little alarmed, and my body language would show that
Hmmmm
The thing that really gives you a clue something isn't quite right, the story keeps changings. Its a few VHF cases, its a few Delta cases, its the local officials to blame, no its senior officials etc and of course now widespread food shortages. That didn't even happen in Wuhan.
As i said previously, i reckon they have Omicron, with no natural immunity and vaccines don't work, the party are shitting it as there isn't much they can do beyond hope Viagra hard lockdown works.
Yes, that's still my supposition. Tho there is also the chance that
1. They have a coincidental outbreak of VHF or whatever
2. They have a pretty fucking horrible new variant
Something is definitely up
Incidentally, on the veracity of the videos, out of curiosity I spent an hour or two the other day looking at the first videos that came out of Wuhan (you can still find them easily on Twitter)
Some of the most famous ones - bat-eating woman - moped filming bodies in the street - turn out to be fake. The bat was eaten in Indonesia, the bodies were actually rough sleepers in Shenzen
Yet sone of the most notorious ones - corpses piled high in hospitals, body bags filling up trucks, convulsing patients dying in chaos - turn out to be real. For a start, they have been repeated many times outside China. From Ecuador to Iran to Lombardy
And many of these horrific early videos were dismissed as fakes at the time
There is a third option: they have omicron, and it is spreading. They have expended a heck of a lot of effort convincing their population that their response to Covid has been brilliant, and they don't want the story muddied - especially with the Olympics coming up. So they do what oppressive regimes do: overreact to show that they are doing things. WE ARE STRONG!
An interesting question is what the official state media (i.e. virtually all of it) is saying about the situation there.
I suspect we are discovering the answer to the question of how bad is omicron when you haven't been subjected to the previous variants and your vaccines don't protect from it.
And the only places that could answer that sort of questions are the Covid zero places such as China and New Zealand / Australia but even those latter places have vaccines in place.
Jeez. We are discovering the answer to the question of how much an authoritarian government wants to ensure that a global event attended by people from over a hundred countries and covered by the global media goes ahead with as few issues as possible which might derail this, their flagship event, in particular Covid.
I mean that is pretty brutal but that is really "all" there is to it.
If they are cracking down just to protect the Olympics, why Xian? Xian is quite a long way from the Winter olympic sites. What in Xian is causing the crack-down?
There is an outbreak of Covid there and they don't want it to get anywhere near the WO sites. Which we know that eg. Omicron could do.
So it is pretty bad that the CCP is hammering Xian for this reason but as I said earlier, that's "all" it is. They are locking it down because they can; not because it is anything other than a run of the mill Omicron outbreak.
You have absolutely no idea if this is definitely the case. The CCP keeps changing its story. Chinese official media have themselves talked about "Delta".
@StephenMcDonell · Dec 29, 2021 Replying to @dizzylimit So far, officials in #Xian have said they are dealing with a Delta outbreak rather than #Omicron. #China #COVID19"
So what is it? Omicron is a good guess, but that's all it is. A guess. The idea that "topping" has personally and finally worked it all out is piquant
"The CCP keeps changing its story."
LOL. NO I REFUSE TO BELIEVE IT.
The Chinese Communist Party isn't giving you, King of Twitter ("I spent an hour or two on Twitter looking at the Wuhan oubreak") a consistent story of what's happening in China?!?
I simply don't believe it.
And hemorrhagic fever, so Google tells me, is endemic in China. Why here's a quote:
"Hemorrhagic fever is a common infectious disease in northern China," the paper said. "Starting from October every year, some areas of Shaanxi [of which Xi'an is the provincial capital] enter the high incidence season of hemorrhagic fever."
But look we understand the function PB provides for you at these times of uncertainty so we are happy to be the voice of reason for your hysterical outpourings.
I consider myself PB's comforting tartan blanket as you writhe in spasms of fear
A rancid towlette of doom!
A piece of soiled toilet paper blowing along the street. Sometimes he’s on this side, sometimes he’s right over on the other side, but regardless the best advice is not to pick it up.
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
We shall have to wait and see. But yes I hold my hand up as I for one didn't at first buy into the whole aliens thing and I am ashamed of that.
Well we still don’t know enough about UAP to equate them with aliens, however much some of us might think the evidence points that way. What almost all of you refused to take on board, now underlined by the new Congressional legislation passed last week (Gillibrand Amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act), is that the organs of power in the US are taking UAPs very seriously indeed. Even as you lot laugh it all off.
I am not laughing it off. I am laughing it off a lot.
It's funny, but even though moonshine and I come from completely different political perspectives, I agree with him that you shouldn't laugh it off. The US defence establishment isn't, after all.
I am not laughing off UAPs the key being the U. But it for all the world looks like Gillibrand is playing to a particular constituency in her amendment.
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
I hate to defend the Tories over this ... but they can reasonably say that they were assured by Blair & Campbell & Co that the security evidence was overwhelming.
It probably did not cross the Tories' collective mind -- such as it is -- that anyone would lie to take the country to war.
It certainly did not cross my mind.
Balls. They should have said, bland assurances are not good enough. You want our support you give us the raw data and we'll assess it for ourselves.
Certainly after Colin Powell’s utterly embarrassing performance at the UN they should have done.
And I am afraid that is why PMs ought ideally to be lawyers. Due fcking process, and show us the fcking evidence, as I was screaming at the telly at the time.
For my two pennth, the best meal I have ever had was at a restaurant that doesn't even have a michelin star. It wasn't cheap, but it certainly isn't the most expensive meal I have had.
Most of my best meals have been at non-Michelin places
Random top ten (I could choose eighty more)
Eating at Marco Pierre White's very first place, in south London (forget where) - before he had a star, wow
A crab and asparagus dish in a restaurant made from a garage outside Chiang Mai, Thailand
A beef massaman curry on a beach in Ko Tao, also Thailand
Eating at the first Barrafina off the Strand
Osyters and foie gras and gingerbread in some brilliant old school brasserie in Nantes, France
Dinner by Heston (that has a star or two)
A steak at G W Bush's favourite steak restaurant in Austin Texas
Another steak at Cabana Las Lilas in Buenos Aires
Tiny gnocchi in a private restaurant on a private vineyard on the island of Pantelleria, Italy
Some sardines, recently, in a scruffy cafe above a fish market in Sagres, Portugal
How much of this is about company, location, mood, weather, post-coital bliss - rather than food? At least half of it
I am not sure where to even begin with best food, overall.
For steak, I do. The Tasting Room in Frederick MD does a filet mignon that is the best I have had anywhere, including the best that Buenos Aires or Texas has to offer.
For Indian food, sorry to say that my best experience has been neither in India nor in the UK, but in downtown Washington DC. Rasika (chef was in London prior to moving to the US). Their palak chaat is the most delicious single Indian dish I have ever eaten. For Northern Indian, Bukhara in New York used to be the place.
For the most inventive, surprising and incredible meal I've ever eaten, Contra in lower Manhattan wins: https://contra.nyc It has one star.
For the single ingredient of a dish, Brian Voltaggio at Volt (now sadly gone) outdid everything else I have ever experienced. He does molecular cuisine, which is not my favorite style. But he made 'caviar' out of virgin olive oil. It was the most intensely pleasurable tasting experience of my life to date.
I realize this is a very US-centric list. I have had many spectacular meals in France, Italy, the UK, and Switzerland. But none of them truly stand out from the rest.
I must be incredibly unlucky because 98% of my eating experiences in America are mediocre or worse. And I have been there a LOT, and all over, and in all kinds of joints, from top NYC starred places to innovative California pop-ups to famous BBQ shacks in the Deep South
The one exception is Louisiana especially New Orleans. The food there is consistently great, and they don't do the off-puttingly enormous servings you commonly get in the USA. How can such a rich country still believe "great food = tons of food"?
I think we forget how much better food in the UK has got. Because not many pubs can survive as shitty boozers and huge competition in the restaurant sector, "bog standard" offers across the board have got a hell of a lot better in the past 20-30 years. Sure we still have cheap and crap, but that £10 for a main range has got infinity better in lots of places, and many more people are willing to pay for really good stuff (I presume tv chefs lot has helped this).
Its not that long ago that the Olympic Breakfast at a Little Chef was what people did...now they queue for the overpriced but still better offering from the likes of the Breakfast Club.
The US its seems to be cheap and shit, middle price range, eat your weight in meat...then the small niche high end.
WE DEMAND JUBILEE PANCAKES.
(Which used to be 99p)
Used to be the one of the highlight of my family holidays to Cornwall as a kid....stopping off at a Little Chef for jubilee pancakes.
Now I imagine the kids of today in Cornwall are having organic fresh hand crafted crepes with matcha ice cream...
I'm not sure things have changed that much. When we go to Cornwall we usually have a few meals at the cafe on the cliff top above Treganhawke that does all day breakfasts. Plus a few cream teas, fish and chips and ice creams. The fanciest food is usually consumed at the Eden Project.
I go to Cornwall all the time and all my extended family live there. You're really not trying very hard. There is fine food in every major town. You can get excellent Indian and Thai everywhere, for a start
This wasn't intended as a criticism. I live in London so don't go to Cornwall for interesting world cuisine, but things like cream teas and fish and chips on the beach are things we can't get at home and are handy on walks or days on the beach which is what we tend to be doing. We usually go self catering and cook dinner at the chalet anyway, it's more relaxing than eating out with kids. And we don't really visit the major towns either - we always stay in the SE corner so the only close town is across the Tamar in Plymouth which is not especially nice (it is the city of many of my forebears, so I am well disposed to it but it is not an attractive place).
Fair enough
I know I am in a TINY minority here, but I love Plymouth. It is an extraordinary city. Extraordinarily hideous in places, but extraordinarily beautiful and historic in others. An amazing topography. Also some good places to eat!
I have a Plymouth Fine Dining story. On a business trip, having dinner in Spoons. Pissed up blokes a few tables away obviously on a session. Another guy comes in and comes over to tell his friends about his crabbing adventures!
Yep, you guessed it. Pulls an Asda bag onto the table and removes from it a large crab which proceeds to protest with claws towards crabbing gentleman. At which point bar maiden demands that he leave and take his crab with him.
Barmaid says: “get out of my pub and take your crabs with you”.
Thing that stood out for me in that story was that you were ‘dining’ in Wetherspoons.
Er, why on Earth would you do that?
Whats wrong with Spoons?
Tim "Brexit" Martin tops my list
Honestly doesn't bother me. He's the guy who owns it not the business itself. And there are plenty of other businesses owned by corporate wankers - if we start to boycott them all there won't be much left.
Mr Martin was particularly vocal at the time of Brexit and I have never darkened his door since.
Mind you, I have never been that keen on ad-water-and-stir pubs.
Apart from the dodgy food, and dodgy politics, the reason I'll never set foot in a Wetherspoons again is the way they treated their staff at the start of the pandemic. Even knowing the government was going to hand over furlough money, they still chose to cut staff loose on the basis the government payouts would take "weeks to arrive".
On the subject of China this video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCVyDHPnyL4&t=312s ) suggests that they have closed down a lot of heavy industry in the Beijing area in preparation for the Winter Olympics. I'm not sure how reliable this is though: the people making the video are fairly obviously not fans of the CCP.
I can confirm that this is routine. They do this to heavy industry up to a 1000 miles or so away, not just for international sporting events but even for fairly run of the mill diplomatic meet ups. They find the air pollution embarrassing. It often causes a complete cluster in the private sector in heavy industry, which tends to run their liquidity hand to mouth. The result is usually the cessation of paying wages for weeks or months and the default against suppliers, customers and creditors. Sometimes they work them selves out the hole, sometimes not.
The report on C4 news on air pollution in Delhi was quite something last night. Decarbonising India and China energy would be good for them, even more than the rest of us.
It's nearly 30 years since I was in Mumbai, but the stench of the air is still with me. Diesel, slums and rotting stuff in the harbour. Interesting place otherwise.
I went to Xinjiang several times over the years (mea culpa). It struck me how over the years, the air quality in the east coast became noticeably better. But when you take that flight all the way to the west you realise how. Everything dirty just got moved inland. It was interesting there how you’d get shown 1GWh coal plants, still shiny new because they’d never been turned on. The permits got signed off locally by bribes but then Beijing turned up and pulled the plug just after all the money had been spent.
When we see these videos from Xian it’s always worth bearing in mind that the local party officials tend to be thick corrupt peasants and do bizarre shit all the time. And then when Beijing gets involved a new layer of professionalism gets injected. I can well imagine the disinfecting and scorching of fresh air to be at the order of some local thicko.
But… the scale of the quarantining would need Beijing intervention. And that gives me pause. As I don’t fully understand the rationale or trust their statements.
I'm surprised to hear @HYUFD speak so highly of Tony Blair given he walloped the Conservatives not once, not twice but three times.
From a non-Conservative, non-Labour perspective my main sense of Tony Blair is one of disappointment, of an opportunity to change Britain forever squandered. Blair had a majority of 179 - he literally had the power to do what he wanted and had an electorate at that time willing to go down a more radical path.
Blair could have transformed the politics and governance of the whole of the UK and you can't argue he didn't effect change in Scotland and Wales but for England it was the sum total of bugger all. The devolution settlement offered to other parts of the UK wasn't offered in England and that was, I think, a mistake.
Perhaps there were plans for something more radical in the second term but these were thwarted by events in New York which came to dominate the time and his legacy.
I don't define Blair by Iraq - I define him by the fact he could have been as radical a Prime Minister as Thatcher or Attlee but achieved so little.
Perhaps he was as much a conservative as many believed.
Were it not for the reputation ending error of hanging onto the Bush family's coat tails for their retributive war with Saddam, he could have kept on and on serving the grey porridge that we lapped up.
I'm surprised to hear @HYUFD speak so highly of Tony Blair given he walloped the Conservatives not once, not twice but three times.
From a non-Conservative, non-Labour perspective my main sense of Tony Blair is one of disappointment, of an opportunity to change Britain forever squandered. Blair had a majority of 179 - he literally had the power to do what he wanted and had an electorate at that time willing to go down a more radical path.
Blair could have transformed the politics and governance of the whole of the UK and you can't argue he didn't effect change in Scotland and Wales but for England it was the sum total of bugger all. The devolution settlement offered to other parts of the UK wasn't offered in England and that was, I think, a mistake.
Perhaps there were plans for something more radical in the second term but these were thwarted by events in New York which came to dominate the time and his legacy.
I don't define Blair by Iraq - I define him by the fact he could have been as radical a Prime Minister as Thatcher or Attlee but achieved so little.
Perhaps he was as much a conservative as many believed.
I've often heard this over the years: that Blair squandered an opportunity to radically change Britain for ever. But I've always wondered what exactly he could have done that would have been so revolutionary. The huge Leftist projects such as the NHS, the welfare state, nationalization had already been attempted.
He could have more properly reformed the House of lords.
or more controversially he could of moved the NHS to a 'Bismarck style' heath system like Germany.
If he had even proposed touching the method of funding of the NHS, he would have been out of Downing Street in seconds. The Labour Party has one conviction, left to right, up and down - the NHS is their glory.
Devolution for England was blocked by those within the Labour Party who saw that devolution for England as a unit would mean too much chance of a Tory power base. Once the half hearted attempts at regional devolution within England were dropped for lack of popularity, that was it.
On the subject of China this video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCVyDHPnyL4&t=312s ) suggests that they have closed down a lot of heavy industry in the Beijing area in preparation for the Winter Olympics. I'm not sure how reliable this is though: the people making the video are fairly obviously not fans of the CCP.
I can confirm that this is routine. They do this to heavy industry up to a 1000 miles or so away, not just for international sporting events but even for fairly run of the mill diplomatic meet ups. They find the air pollution embarrassing. It often causes a complete cluster in the private sector in heavy industry, which tends to run their liquidity hand to mouth. The result is usually the cessation of paying wages for weeks or months and the default against suppliers, customers and creditors. Sometimes they work them selves out the hole, sometimes not.
The report on C4 news on air pollution in Delhi was quite something last night. Decarbonising India and China energy would be good for them, even more than the rest of us.
It's nearly 30 years since I was in Mumbai, but the stench of the air is still with me. Diesel, slums and rotting stuff in the harbour. Interesting place otherwise.
I went to Xinjiang several times over the years (mea culpa). It struck me how over the years, the air quality in the east coast became noticeably better. But when you take that flight all the way to the west you realise how. Everything dirty just got moved inland. It was interesting there how you’d get shown 1GWh coal plants, still shiny new because they’d never been turned on. The permits got signed off locally by bribes but then Beijing turned up and pulled the plug just after all the money had been spent.
When we see these videos from Xian it’s always worth bearing in mind that the local party officials tend to be thick corrupt peasants and do bizarre shit all the time. And then when Beijing gets involved a new layer of professionalism gets injected. I can well imagine the disinfecting and scorching of fresh air to be at the order of some local thicko.
But… the scale of the quarantining would need Beijing intervention. And that gives me pause. As I don’t fully understand the rationale or trust their statements.
I found this exceptionally interesting: the Official Party Line is that Xian is a shithole:
"Two years into COVID-19 epidemic control, Xi'an appeared to present an answer sheet below the standard for a mega-city, and the dismay local people expressed is quite understandable, observers said, but they also pointed out that Xi'an is a city that developed quickly in recent years, while its economic growth and governance haven't caught up with its fast-growing population.
It has more than half as many people as Shanghai, which is widely deemed as a model of precise control, but Xi'an's GDP in 2020 was 25 percent of the latter. "
The report on C4 news on air pollution in Delhi was quite something last night. Decarbonising India and China energy would be good for them, even more than the rest of us.
It's nearly 30 years since I was in Mumbai, but the stench of the air is still with me. Diesel, slums and rotting stuff in the harbour. Interesting place otherwise.
I believe another city with abysmal air quality is Ulan Bataar in Mongolia. Part of the reason is the coal they burn - it looks worse than India or China.
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
I hate to defend the Tories over this ... but they can reasonably say that they were assured by Blair & Campbell & Co that the security evidence was overwhelming.
It probably did not cross the Tories' collective mind -- such as it is -- that anyone would lie to take the country to war.
It certainly did not cross my mind.
Balls. They should have said, bland assurances are not good enough. You want our support you give us the raw data and we'll assess it for ourselves.
Certainly after Colin Powell’s utterly embarrassing performance at the UN they should have done.
And I am afraid that is why PMs ought ideally to be lawyers. Due fcking process, and show us the fcking evidence, as I was screaming at the telly at the time.
I'm surprised to hear @HYUFD speak so highly of Tony Blair given he walloped the Conservatives not once, not twice but three times.
From a non-Conservative, non-Labour perspective my main sense of Tony Blair is one of disappointment, of an opportunity to change Britain forever squandered. Blair had a majority of 179 - he literally had the power to do what he wanted and had an electorate at that time willing to go down a more radical path.
Blair could have transformed the politics and governance of the whole of the UK and you can't argue he didn't effect change in Scotland and Wales but for England it was the sum total of bugger all. The devolution settlement offered to other parts of the UK wasn't offered in England and that was, I think, a mistake.
Perhaps there were plans for something more radical in the second term but these were thwarted by events in New York which came to dominate the time and his legacy.
I don't define Blair by Iraq - I define him by the fact he could have been as radical a Prime Minister as Thatcher or Attlee but achieved so little.
Perhaps he was as much a conservative as many believed.
I've often heard this over the years: that Blair squandered an opportunity to radically change Britain for ever. But I've always wondered what exactly he could have done that would have been so revolutionary. The huge Leftist projects such as the NHS, the welfare state, nationalization had already been attempted.
He could have more properly reformed the House of lords.
or more controversially he could of moved the NHS to a 'Bismarck style' heath system like Germany.
There were plenty more bold things he could have done:
- Kept his promise to change the voting system - which would have completely re-written subsequent British political history.
- Joined the Euro.
- Invested in public services from the off, rather than sticking to Tory spending plans for the first few years
- made Cook’s ethical foreign policy a reality rather than a slogan
- told Brown he wasn’t going to get the job after (or even moved him from chancellor)
He could also have done more to avoid or counter some of the damaging trends in society and the economy, particularly on housing. Or take the council tax, inherited from the Tories and left essentially unchanged through three terms, despite being widely seen as a mess.
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
I hate to defend the Tories over this ... but they can reasonably say that they were assured by Blair & Campbell & Co that the security evidence was overwhelming.
It probably did not cross the Tories' collective mind -- such as it is -- that anyone would lie to take the country to war.
It certainly did not cross my mind.
Balls. They should have said, bland assurances are not good enough. You want our support you give us the raw data and we'll assess it for ourselves.
Certainly after Colin Powell’s utterly embarrassing performance at the UN they should have done.
And I am afraid that is why PMs ought ideally to be lawyers. Due fcking process, and show us the fcking evidence, as I was screaming at the telly at the time.
Blair is a lawyer.
I recall talking to some New Labour supporting lawyers about the usage of ancient statutes relating to Royal Parks to arrest little old ladies for politely holding up signs saying "Remember Tibet".
They seemed to use the following reasoning
1) The interpretation of the laws was judged to be legal. 2) Therefore the action was legal. 3) Since the action was legal, questioning it would be an attack on the law. 4) In fact since it was legal, the government were almost duty bound to do it. 5) Attacking the law is unacceptable.
Attempting to outsource commence sense and morality to a rules engine isn't going to work.
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
I hate to defend the Tories over this ... but they can reasonably say that they were assured by Blair & Campbell & Co that the security evidence was overwhelming.
It probably did not cross the Tories' collective mind -- such as it is -- that anyone would lie to take the country to war.
It certainly did not cross my mind.
Balls. They should have said, bland assurances are not good enough. You want our support you give us the raw data and we'll assess it for ourselves.
Certainly after Colin Powell’s utterly embarrassing performance at the UN they should have done.
And I am afraid that is why PMs ought ideally to be lawyers. Due fcking process, and show us the fcking evidence, as I was screaming at the telly at the time.
Wasn't Blair a lawyer....
Yes sorry should have said LOTOs
Though I don't think Blair's grasp on the principles and praactise of the law was the strongest.
'We can’t vaccinate the planet every six months', says JCVI chief Fourth Covid jabs should not be offered until there is more evidence, the head of Britain's vaccine body has said - as he warned that giving boosters to people every six months was “not sustainable”.
6 monthly jabs may or may not be the right thing, but his remit is not "THE PLANET". It's the UK. Once again heading outside their remit.
Unless we vaccinate the planet - collectively - then we aren't immune from the next mutation.
That's another covid myth apparently: Myth #1,765 in a regular series...
We should share Covid vaccines with the world, because it is the right thing to do, but not because it will limit of emergence of 'variants' - vaccines don't generate variants but they don't preclude their emergence either - it's all a bit unclear and complicated.
Not just people either, Covid is a general mammalian phenomenon
Nevertheless a world with Covid raging is more likely to throw up things which come and fuck us up than a world with Covid under control. And the quicker we vaccinate the world the quicker we get from that first situation to the second. It's as much a practical imperative as a moral one.
No it isn't necessarily a practical or moral one and probably not a scientific one either. All governments have their first responsibility to their own population. IMHO, the first priority of Western governments is to figure out how to defeat or contain the virus. The strategies that they use will then inform them how they support other governments to do the same.
The virus respects no borders. It's a global pandemic and the best response to it is global. The more inefficient and illogical is the vaccine rollout - eg 5 or 6 jabs in one country and zero in another - the longer the pandemic will last, and the longer it lasts the more the damage will be and the more likely it is that we will be impacted.
The question then is this - to what extent should the normal rules of national centric politics - which you outline - be flexed in order to facilitate the optimum globally efficient solution?
I say the answer to this is "to a very great extent" and I think this is the correct answer. After all, this is a once-a-century emergency with an awful lot at stake. If we can't get our (global) act together for this, at least better than we are atm, when will we ever be able to?
So I am going to ask a question. I don't claim it is a fair question or perhaps even valid but it is the question that any politician has to be able to answer if they wish to accept your view.
How many people should we allow to die in this country, who could otherwise be saved, so that we can save lives of people in Africa, India, Russia or Poland?
As I say I am not saying it is a fair question but it is the question that cannot be dodged by politicians choosing to follow the route of putting global well being ahead of national well being.
And I know the obvious answer to you and probably to me is that in the long term we might actually save more lives here. But that is not certain and you are asking people to accept deaths now for fewer deaths tomorrow. That is a hard, if not impossible, sell for any politician.
I'll avoid the obvious answer and instead acknowledge what you say - that it's hard for any national government not to be driven entirely by high viz short term national interest, eg (for here) what booster strategy gets us out of all restrictions asap this year, end of story.
So, in practice, I guess the best we can hope for is that the global case is pushed by the likes of the WHO and various leading scientists and that it gets at least some traction with decision makers. Ie I feel the dead opposite to those who see that case being made by such people and respond "They should shut up. Not in their brief". I think the more noise is made about this the better.
Imagine we reach end of 2023 and Covid is conquered (for now) in the developed world but still raging most everywhere else. That, given the early brilliance in developing vaccines and treatments, would be such a shame - and furthermore a depressing sign that for all our tech and intelligence and progress we can't meet the big challenges.
The issue is -
- The supply of vaccines is no longer the issue. We are looking at 24 billion doses manufactured by the middle of this year. There are about 8 Billion people on the planet. - So Harry Hair Shirting about not "hoarding" vaccinations doesn't actually make sense. Not doing boosters or vaccinating children in the UK will not materially effect vaccine availability world wide.
There's loads of issues. Affordable Supply + Logistics & Distribution + Population Demand = Vaccination Outcome. There are problems to fix with all the inputs there.
But my strong sense is that the assertion "the domestic vaccine strategy of rich countries and their interaction with the pharmaceutical giants has no impact on the vaccination outcome in the rest of the world" is a self-comforting falsehood.
Is that like a Spidey Sense?
The fact remains that vaccines are now being made faster than the take-up - to the point where makers are questioning what their strategy in the second half of 2022 will be.
I suppose we could build a nice, comforting mountain of out-of-date vaccine doses. That should make someone feel nice.
Well by "strong sense" I meant "certain knowledge" but I'm feeling a bit shy today.
As for your last sentence I'm afraid that's Reactionary Reductive speak - I'll file along with things like "if you worry about the global poor so much why don't you go and be a missionary in Africa?" Or of course the iconic "if you're so keen on a wealth tax what's stopping you sending a cheque to hmrc?"
It's a bulging file but there's room.
Sigh.
The point is that not doing boosters and child vaccinations in the UK will not, of itself, effect the actual number of people getting vaccinated in poor countries.
The supply bit of the equation is not the problem. The other bits are. So do the other bits.
Don't go sighing at me or saying I'm ignoring important bits. By Supply I mean affordable available supply plus distribution logistics. Obviously. You are being utterly disingenuous and reductive and treating me like a strawman. It's like you and many on here are reading a wholly different Covid book to the one I have on the go. Quite bizarre.
Distribution logistics in Africa have been a long term issue - heck it was a story point on the West Wing and about the only thing that changed since is that China are now spending money in Africa.
Ireland’s government imposed a minimum unit price on alcoholic beverages on Tuesday, one of a few nations to introduce such a rule as a public health measure intended to curb binge drinking and reduce alcohol-related health issues.
The rule means stores, restaurants and pubs must now sell drinks containing alcohol for no less than about 10 cents per gram of the substance. Officials said the measure was aimed at making cheaper, stronger alcoholic products less readily available, particularly for young people and heavy drinkers.
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
I hate to defend the Tories over this ... but they can reasonably say that they were assured by Blair & Campbell & Co that the security evidence was overwhelming.
It probably did not cross the Tories' collective mind -- such as it is -- that anyone would lie to take the country to war.
It certainly did not cross my mind.
Balls. They should have said, bland assurances are not good enough. You want our support you give us the raw data and we'll assess it for ourselves.
Certainly after Colin Powell’s utterly embarrassing performance at the UN they should have done.
And I am afraid that is why PMs ought ideally to be lawyers. Due fcking process, and show us the fcking evidence, as I was screaming at the telly at the time.
As was I. But I am not sure I am up for being PM as we fall into a sharp recession as the wheels come off in China.
The report on C4 news on air pollution in Delhi was quite something last night. Decarbonising India and China energy would be good for them, even more than the rest of us.
It's nearly 30 years since I was in Mumbai, but the stench of the air is still with me. Diesel, slums and rotting stuff in the harbour. Interesting place otherwise.
I believe another city with abysmal air quality is Ulan Bataar in Mongolia. Part of the reason is the coal they burn - it looks worse than India or China.
I was born a couple of miles from a coal-fired power station in the 1970s. If the wind was blowing from the wrong direction, mum would have to take in the washing off the line because it would get black specks of soot on it. Imagine that, manyfold over. Or talk to someone like my dad, who remembers the London smog.
Except this is much worse.
It must be terrible to live in. If I walk or run through a city here in the UK, I end up with all sorts of gunk up my nose (not, I hasten to add, white powder) - and that's mainly from car exhausts, not heavy industry.
The Clean Air Acts have probably been one of the best bits of legislation ever: for the environment and public health.
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
We shall have to wait and see. But yes I hold my hand up as I for one didn't at first buy into the whole aliens thing and I am ashamed of that.
Well we still don’t know enough about UAP to equate them with aliens, however much some of us might think the evidence points that way. What almost all of you refused to take on board, now underlined by the new Congressional legislation passed last week (Gillibrand Amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act), is that the organs of power in the US are taking UAPs very seriously indeed. Even as you lot laugh it all off.
I think they're taking it seriously because it's a tactical ruse of their own making. We're going to see lots of extraordinary stories as the USA desperately tries to cling on to its world dominance. They're not going to drift into genteel insignificance the way that Britain did.
That’s quite the conspiracy theory, given the breadth of politicians and military officials across both time and the left-right spectrum that would need to be involved. Could be you’re right of course. Or could be that when such a range of credible figures say there is observed ultra tech in the skies and oceans that’s not theirs and “needs advances in science to identify”, that we should take what they say at face value.
I don’t follow US politics as closely as some here but can’t be often that an initiative that is apparently opposed by the Executive, passes both houses in such an overwhelming bipartisan fashion.
'We can’t vaccinate the planet every six months', says JCVI chief Fourth Covid jabs should not be offered until there is more evidence, the head of Britain's vaccine body has said - as he warned that giving boosters to people every six months was “not sustainable”.
6 monthly jabs may or may not be the right thing, but his remit is not "THE PLANET". It's the UK. Once again heading outside their remit.
Unless we vaccinate the planet - collectively - then we aren't immune from the next mutation.
That's another covid myth apparently: Myth #1,765 in a regular series...
We should share Covid vaccines with the world, because it is the right thing to do, but not because it will limit of emergence of 'variants' - vaccines don't generate variants but they don't preclude their emergence either - it's all a bit unclear and complicated.
Not just people either, Covid is a general mammalian phenomenon
Nevertheless a world with Covid raging is more likely to throw up things which come and fuck us up than a world with Covid under control. And the quicker we vaccinate the world the quicker we get from that first situation to the second. It's as much a practical imperative as a moral one.
No it isn't necessarily a practical or moral one and probably not a scientific one either. All governments have their first responsibility to their own population. IMHO, the first priority of Western governments is to figure out how to defeat or contain the virus. The strategies that they use will then inform them how they support other governments to do the same.
The virus respects no borders. It's a global pandemic and the best response to it is global. The more inefficient and illogical is the vaccine rollout - eg 5 or 6 jabs in one country and zero in another - the longer the pandemic will last, and the longer it lasts the more the damage will be and the more likely it is that we will be impacted.
The question then is this - to what extent should the normal rules of national centric politics - which you outline - be flexed in order to facilitate the optimum globally efficient solution?
I say the answer to this is "to a very great extent" and I think this is the correct answer. After all, this is a once-a-century emergency with an awful lot at stake. If we can't get our (global) act together for this, at least better than we are atm, when will we ever be able to?
So I am going to ask a question. I don't claim it is a fair question or perhaps even valid but it is the question that any politician has to be able to answer if they wish to accept your view.
How many people should we allow to die in this country, who could otherwise be saved, so that we can save lives of people in Africa, India, Russia or Poland?
As I say I am not saying it is a fair question but it is the question that cannot be dodged by politicians choosing to follow the route of putting global well being ahead of national well being.
And I know the obvious answer to you and probably to me is that in the long term we might actually save more lives here. But that is not certain and you are asking people to accept deaths now for fewer deaths tomorrow. That is a hard, if not impossible, sell for any politician.
I'll avoid the obvious answer and instead acknowledge what you say - that it's hard for any national government not to be driven entirely by high viz short term national interest, eg (for here) what booster strategy gets us out of all restrictions asap this year, end of story.
So, in practice, I guess the best we can hope for is that the global case is pushed by the likes of the WHO and various leading scientists and that it gets at least some traction with decision makers. Ie I feel the dead opposite to those who see that case being made by such people and respond "They should shut up. Not in their brief". I think the more noise is made about this the better.
Imagine we reach end of 2023 and Covid is conquered (for now) in the developed world but still raging most everywhere else. That, given the early brilliance in developing vaccines and treatments, would be such a shame - and furthermore a depressing sign that for all our tech and intelligence and progress we can't meet the big challenges.
The issue is -
- The supply of vaccines is no longer the issue. We are looking at 24 billion doses manufactured by the middle of this year. There are about 8 Billion people on the planet. - So Harry Hair Shirting about not "hoarding" vaccinations doesn't actually make sense. Not doing boosters or vaccinating children in the UK will not materially effect vaccine availability world wide.
There's loads of issues. Affordable Supply + Logistics & Distribution + Population Demand = Vaccination Outcome. There are problems to fix with all the inputs there.
But my strong sense is that the assertion "the domestic vaccine strategy of rich countries and their interaction with the pharmaceutical giants has no impact on the vaccination outcome in the rest of the world" is a self-comforting falsehood.
Is that like a Spidey Sense?
The fact remains that vaccines are now being made faster than the take-up - to the point where makers are questioning what their strategy in the second half of 2022 will be.
I suppose we could build a nice, comforting mountain of out-of-date vaccine doses. That should make someone feel nice.
Well by "strong sense" I meant "certain knowledge" but I'm feeling a bit shy today.
As for your last sentence I'm afraid that's Reactionary Reductive speak - I'll file along with things like "if you worry about the global poor so much why don't you go and be a missionary in Africa?" Or of course the iconic "if you're so keen on a wealth tax what's stopping you sending a cheque to hmrc?"
It's a bulging file but there's room.
Sigh.
The point is that not doing boosters and child vaccinations in the UK will not, of itself, effect the actual number of people getting vaccinated in poor countries.
The supply bit of the equation is not the problem. The other bits are. So do the other bits.
Don't go sighing at me or saying I'm ignoring important bits. By Supply I mean affordable available supply plus distribution logistics. Obviously. You are being utterly disingenuous and reductive and treating me like a strawman. It's like you and many on here are reading a wholly different Covid book to the one I have on the go. Quite bizarre.
Distribution logistics in Africa have been a long term issue - heck it was a story point on the West Wing and about the only thing that changed since is that China are now spending money in Africa.
Spot a problem there?
Roads, sewers and piped water. It's been the kick starter for economies since before the Romans...
People have every right to object to Tony Blair being given a knighthood. Whilst Mike makes some important points about elections, they aren't the be all and end all. Nixon won the presidency twice. Thatcher won three elections but if her opponents wanted to make noise about her being given honours or distinctions, good luck to them. After all, Oxford never gave her an honorary degree.
The opposition to Blair is also a little misunderstood. Yougov does a very interesting ratings for all prime ministers every quarter. Blair fares very badly, as does Cameron. The poll quoted earlier shows a wide disapproval amongst the public as a whole to him being given a knighthood. It's a big mistake to think all the resistance comes from Labour's twitterati. It's worth wondering why this may be. Iraq is the obvious answer. Those on the left will never forgive him for launching an illegal, avoidable war on a dodgy premise. As for the patriotic right they will never forgive him for the fact the war turned into a disaster. The same people who are stirred by military victory in say the Falklands, will be unforgiving about defeat. I'm not sure Blair understands this preferring to believe that conservatives don't like him because he won three elections. He appeared to capture the centre ground but on Europe, immigration and military action he was in his own way as radical as Thatcher. We never claim to be confused about her being a polarizing figure though.
I wasn't bothered by the knighthood myself but I can respect those who take a different view. Whatever Blair's achievements, dishonestly taking us into a bungled war isn't a minor matter to be swept under the carpet.
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
I hate to defend the Tories over this ... but they can reasonably say that they were assured by Blair & Campbell & Co that the security evidence was overwhelming.
It probably did not cross the Tories' collective mind -- such as it is -- that anyone would lie to take the country to war.
It certainly did not cross my mind.
Balls. They should have said, bland assurances are not good enough. You want our support you give us the raw data and we'll assess it for ourselves.
Certainly after Colin Powell’s utterly embarrassing performance at the UN they should have done.
And I am afraid that is why PMs ought ideally to be lawyers. Due fcking process, and show us the fcking evidence, as I was screaming at the telly at the time.
Wasn't Blair a lawyer....
Yes sorry should have said LOTOs
Though I don't think Blair's grasp on the principles and praactise of the law was the strongest.
Most lawyers are hired hands, seeking to twist the law and its interpretation to their client’s ends. Relatively few are (supposedly) neutral arbiters of the law, like judges.
People have every right to object to Tony Blair being given a knighthood. Whilst Mike makes some important points about elections, they aren't the be all and end all. Nixon won the presidency twice. Thatcher won three elections but if her opponents wanted to make noise about her being given honours or distinctions, good luck to them. After all, Oxford never gave her an honorary degree.
The opposition to Blair is also a little misunderstood. Yougov does a very interesting ratings for all prime ministers every quarter. Blair fares very badly, as does Cameron. The poll quoted earlier shows a wide disapproval amongst the public as a whole to him being given a knighthood. It's a big mistake to think all the resistance comes from Labour's twitterati. It's worth wondering why this may be. Iraq is the obvious answer. Those on the left will never forgive him for launching an illegal, avoidable war on a dodgy premise. As for the patriotic right they will never forgive him for the fact the war turned into a disaster. The same people who are stirred by military victory in say the Falklands, will be unforgiving about defeat. I'm not sure Blair understands this preferring to believe that conservatives don't like him because he won three elections. He appeared to capture the centre ground but on Europe, immigration and military action he was in his own way as radical as Thatcher. We never claim to be confused about her being a polarizing figure though.
I wasn't bothered by the knighthood myself but I can respect those who take a different view. Whatever Blair's achievements, dishonestly taking us into a bungled war isn't a minor matter to be swept under the carpet.
Steve Richards’s book on Prime Ministerial leadership is illuminating on how Blair got fenced in by some rash promises and his determination to appear strong, and by the time he saw the trap he was in, there was no way out other than to press ahead and hope for a happy ending.
My key takeaway from the presser is that 3 jabs provide 88% protection against hospitalisation. So we need to change focus away from let the bodies pile high to how we keep essential services going for the next month or so.
I agree. It’s as I predicted Sunday. Keep the wheels going. But without going to 5 day isolation like France and US, or anything new on indoor spread like indoor masking, what backs up the intention?
So I was wrong, I thought they would announce 5 day isolation and more indoor mask use this week.
I don't think they know. Lets assume a lazy 40% figure for the number who contract Covid with no symptoms. Even if we force them to work, thats still 130k more people every day getting ill. So when you run a factory or a hospital or trains you need to know who is coming in. The last thing you will do when people are dropping like flies is expose more people to the thing thats making them drop.
Triple jabs means no death mountain - great news. But still the tidal wave of sickness which puts enough people in enough hospitals to swamp them and enough people off work to seriously affect business and services. The only positive is that at the rate of infection we have it will start burning itself out...
But why are we taking so long to follow France and US in five day isolation if serious about keeping the country working in the next couple of months?
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
We shall have to wait and see. But yes I hold my hand up as I for one didn't at first buy into the whole aliens thing and I am ashamed of that.
Well we still don’t know enough about UAP to equate them with aliens, however much some of us might think the evidence points that way. What almost all of you refused to take on board, now underlined by the new Congressional legislation passed last week (Gillibrand Amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act), is that the organs of power in the US are taking UAPs very seriously indeed. Even as you lot laugh it all off.
For all its later flaws, the first third of Don’t Look Up is a superb depiction of Normalcy Bias
I absolutely loved Don't Look Up.
I had had a few new year eve drinks but I thought was brilliant. Superb performances. Rylance, as the loon silicon valley exec, just incredible.
The scenes where the two anchors of breakfast TV are just not interested in what the science guy actually has to say are superb. Like sending up the send up that is Apple's 'Morning America'.
People have every right to object to Tony Blair being given a knighthood. Whilst Mike makes some important points about elections, they aren't the be all and end all. Nixon won the presidency twice. Thatcher won three elections but if her opponents wanted to make noise about her being given honours or distinctions, good luck to them. After all, Oxford never gave her an honorary degree.
The opposition to Blair is also a little misunderstood. Yougov does a very interesting ratings for all prime ministers every quarter. Blair fares very badly, as does Cameron. The poll quoted earlier shows a wide disapproval amongst the public as a whole to him being given a knighthood. It's a big mistake to think all the resistance comes from Labour's twitterati. It's worth wondering why this may be. Iraq is the obvious answer. Those on the left will never forgive him for launching an illegal, avoidable war on a dodgy premise. As for the patriotic right they will never forgive him for the fact the war turned into a disaster. The same people who are stirred by military victory in say the Falklands, will be unforgiving about defeat. I'm not sure Blair understands this preferring to believe that conservatives don't like him because he won three elections. He appeared to capture the centre ground but on Europe, immigration and military action he was in his own way as radical as Thatcher. We never claim to be confused about her being a polarizing figure though.
I wasn't bothered by the knighthood myself but I can respect those who take a different view. Whatever Blair's achievements, dishonestly taking us into a bungled war isn't a minor matter to be swept under the carpet.
Beating the Party of Government for three consecutive elections was also unforgivable.
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
I hate to defend the Tories over this ... but they can reasonably say that they were assured by Blair & Campbell & Co that the security evidence was overwhelming.
It probably did not cross the Tories' collective mind -- such as it is -- that anyone would lie to take the country to war.
It certainly did not cross my mind.
Balls. They should have said, bland assurances are not good enough. You want our support you give us the raw data and we'll assess it for ourselves.
Certainly after Colin Powell’s utterly embarrassing performance at the UN they should have done.
And I am afraid that is why PMs ought ideally to be lawyers. Due fcking process, and show us the fcking evidence, as I was screaming at the telly at the time.
Wasn't Blair a lawyer....
Yes sorry should have said LOTOs
Though I don't think Blair's grasp on the principles and praactise of the law was the strongest.
Most lawyers are hired hands, seeking to twist the law and its interpretation to their client’s ends. Relatively few are (supposedly) neutral arbiters of the law, like judges.
Surely anyone who earns a living at anything is a hired hand?
And "twisting the law" is not really what it's about: it's about justifying one case, and testing the opposing case for weaknesses.
I'm surprised to hear @HYUFD speak so highly of Tony Blair given he walloped the Conservatives not once, not twice but three times.
From a non-Conservative, non-Labour perspective my main sense of Tony Blair is one of disappointment, of an opportunity to change Britain forever squandered. Blair had a majority of 179 - he literally had the power to do what he wanted and had an electorate at that time willing to go down a more radical path.
Blair could have transformed the politics and governance of the whole of the UK and you can't argue he didn't effect change in Scotland and Wales but for England it was the sum total of bugger all. The devolution settlement offered to other parts of the UK wasn't offered in England and that was, I think, a mistake.
Perhaps there were plans for something more radical in the second term but these were thwarted by events in New York which came to dominate the time and his legacy.
I don't define Blair by Iraq - I define him by the fact he could have been as radical a Prime Minister as Thatcher or Attlee but achieved so little.
Perhaps he was as much a conservative as many believed.
Ironically I was not a great Blair fan in 1997 or 2001 where I supported Major and Hague and considered him too pro EU and sympathetic to the Euro. However as a right of centre conservative I respected him a bit more after he backed Bush in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars which I backed and pushed for more choice in public services. I was the reverse of the left who loved him in 1997 but often hated him by 2005.
Once Brown got in as PM it was clear Blair was the one keeping tax down and controlling spending not Brown too
What a mixed up post.
I suspect it was Brown. Chancellors don’t like PM’s getting credit for spending ‘their’ money, particularly if they fancy the top job themselves. If only I could think of a contemporary parallel to illustrate the point….
It was only under Brown's premiership the top rate of income tax went up to 50% and it was Brown who drove the extra spending in the Labour government, certainly post 2001
The report on C4 news on air pollution in Delhi was quite something last night. Decarbonising India and China energy would be good for them, even more than the rest of us.
It's nearly 30 years since I was in Mumbai, but the stench of the air is still with me. Diesel, slums and rotting stuff in the harbour. Interesting place otherwise.
I believe another city with abysmal air quality is Ulan Bataar in Mongolia. Part of the reason is the coal they burn - it looks worse than India or China.
It wasn't too bad when I was there, but that was in the summer, when the coal plants were not being used to heat everything as well.
People have every right to object to Tony Blair being given a knighthood. Whilst Mike makes some important points about elections, they aren't the be all and end all. Nixon won the presidency twice. Thatcher won three elections but if her opponents wanted to make noise about her being given honours or distinctions, good luck to them. After all, Oxford never gave her an honorary degree.
The opposition to Blair is also a little misunderstood. Yougov does a very interesting ratings for all prime ministers every quarter. Blair fares very badly, as does Cameron. The poll quoted earlier shows a wide disapproval amongst the public as a whole to him being given a knighthood. It's a big mistake to think all the resistance comes from Labour's twitterati. It's worth wondering why this may be. Iraq is the obvious answer. Those on the left will never forgive him for launching an illegal, avoidable war on a dodgy premise. As for the patriotic right they will never forgive him for the fact the war turned into a disaster. The same people who are stirred by military victory in say the Falklands, will be unforgiving about defeat. I'm not sure Blair understands this preferring to believe that conservatives don't like him because he won three elections. He appeared to capture the centre ground but on Europe, immigration and military action he was in his own way as radical as Thatcher. We never claim to be confused about her being a polarizing figure though.
I wasn't bothered by the knighthood myself but I can respect those who take a different view. Whatever Blair's achievements, dishonestly taking us into a bungled war isn't a minor matter to be swept under the carpet.
Beating the Party of Government for three consecutive elections was also unforgivable.
"...on Europe, immigration and military action he was in his own way as radical as Thatcher" - he may have been radical but he was also lazy, superficial, a bit dim and just wrong.
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
We shall have to wait and see. But yes I hold my hand up as I for one didn't at first buy into the whole aliens thing and I am ashamed of that.
Well we still don’t know enough about UAP to equate them with aliens, however much some of us might think the evidence points that way. What almost all of you refused to take on board, now underlined by the new Congressional legislation passed last week (Gillibrand Amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act), is that the organs of power in the US are taking UAPs very seriously indeed. Even as you lot laugh it all off.
I think they're taking it seriously because it's a tactical ruse of their own making. We're going to see lots of extraordinary stories as the USA desperately tries to cling on to its world dominance. They're not going to drift into genteel insignificance the way that Britain did.
That’s quite the conspiracy theory, given the breadth of politicians and military officials across both time and the left-right spectrum that would need to be involved. Could be you’re right of course. Or could be that when such a range of credible figures say there is observed ultra tech in the skies and oceans that’s not theirs and “needs advances in science to identify”, that we should take what they say at face value.
I don’t follow US politics as closely as some here but can’t be often that an initiative that is apparently opposed by the Executive, passes both houses in such an overwhelming bipartisan fashion.
I’m much more sympathetic to your position than many on here, as you know, however your argument here doesn’t quite stand. Because ANY explanation for UAP is going to sound outlandish, will give off conspiracy theory vibes, and will encounter Normalcy Bias
To name the most prominent:
1. The entire US military has been suffering multiple simultaneous technical glitches and mass hallucinations for decades and no one in power in America realises this
2. The elite in America have gone collectively and weirdly mad in exactly the same way, across the political spectrum, as they face the superiority of China, or something
3. The Chinese have developed incredible 30,000mph aircraft, which also go underwater, and they’ve managed to keep this quiet since 1950
4. We are being visited and observed by non-human technology
Which is more, or less, likely? They are all extremely difficult to swallow
Twitter has permanently banned the popular news aggregation service Politics For All, in a sign of how the social media platform has substantial power to deprive news outlets of their audience without warning.
A spokesperson said the account was “suspended for violating the Twitter Rules on platform manipulation and spam” and would not be allowed to return.
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
You're certainly right that the Tories' full-throated support of the Iraq debacle seems to have been almost entirely expunged from the public's memory - or at least that of the rightwing press.
You never would have guessed from the Daily Mail's hysterical coverage of the Blair honours that many, if not all, Tory backbenchers ( and frontbenchers ) were even more enthusiastic for the war than Campbell and Blair themselves.
However, it's an excellent way of chipping away at Labour, so the tabloids will apply their usual morality and history-free approach to the particular topic.
You're also right that Charles Kennedy's intelligent and brave stance has been much too much forgotten. I also personally was much more in sympathy with his LD party than more recent incarnations.
Robin Cook gave the stand out performance.
As for the Tories Blair was apparently privately disgusted by IDS's unqualified support and called him "Little Sir Echo." If there was a war crime, given they were allowed a vote, the entire HoC should be in the dock.
Remarkable that he didn’t see the irony, given his relationship with Bush.
Good point.
What I despise him most for is his claim to have said to Bush, about Iraq, "I'm in." Not the sort of thing adults say in real life, but obviously him saying what he wanted George Clooney to say when playing him in his biopic.
Richards’s book suggests Blair, like Clinton, was focused on what he saw as the critical swing constituency - which at the time was somewhere between Basildon Man and Worcester Woman - and wanted to make sure he didn’t lose support (or give the flat-on-their-back Tories an ‘in’) by appearing soft or anti-American on foreign policy.
He also reminds us that Blair’s first foray into electoral politics was as Labour candidate in the Beaconsfield by-election just after the Falklands War, and he reports Robin Cook, who had gone along to help, finding Blair in awe of the strong support Thatcher was picking up on the back of the war. Richards suggests Blair was hoping to get some of the same for himself.
People have every right to object to Tony Blair being given a knighthood. Whilst Mike makes some important points about elections, they aren't the be all and end all. Nixon won the presidency twice. Thatcher won three elections but if her opponents wanted to make noise about her being given honours or distinctions, good luck to them. After all, Oxford never gave her an honorary degree.
The opposition to Blair is also a little misunderstood. Yougov does a very interesting ratings for all prime ministers every quarter. Blair fares very badly, as does Cameron. The poll quoted earlier shows a wide disapproval amongst the public as a whole to him being given a knighthood. It's a big mistake to think all the resistance comes from Labour's twitterati. It's worth wondering why this may be. Iraq is the obvious answer. Those on the left will never forgive him for launching an illegal, avoidable war on a dodgy premise. As for the patriotic right they will never forgive him for the fact the war turned into a disaster. The same people who are stirred by military victory in say the Falklands, will be unforgiving about defeat. I'm not sure Blair understands this preferring to believe that conservatives don't like him because he won three elections. He appeared to capture the centre ground but on Europe, immigration and military action he was in his own way as radical as Thatcher. We never claim to be confused about her being a polarizing figure though.
I wasn't bothered by the knighthood myself but I can respect those who take a different view. Whatever Blair's achievements, dishonestly taking us into a bungled war isn't a minor matter to be swept under the carpet.
Steve Richards’s book on Prime Ministerial leadership is illuminating on how Blair got fenced in by some rash promises and his determination to appear strong, and by the time he saw the trap he was in, there was no way out other than to press ahead and hope for a happy ending.
I haven't read the prime ministerial book but from what I've read elsewhere I'm not sure I buy Richards' analysis of Blair. He seems to think that Blair felt he had to please Bush/Murdoch etc so had no choice. The reality is that he pretty much goaded Clinton into the Kosovo campaign and appeared to have a strong conviction that the world could be remade through military action.
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
You're certainly right that the Tories' full-throated support of the Iraq debacle seems to have been almost entirely expunged from the public's memory - or at least that of the rightwing press.
You never would have guessed from the Daily Mail's hysterical coverage of the Blair honours that many, if not all, Tory backbenchers ( and frontbenchers ) were even more enthusiastic for the war than Campbell and Blair themselves.
However, it's an excellent way of chipping away at Labour, so the tabloids will apply their usual morality and history-free approach to the particular topic.
You're also right that Charles Kennedy's intelligent and brave stance has been much too much forgotten. I also personally was much more in sympathy with his LD party than more recent incarnations.
Robin Cook gave the stand out performance.
As for the Tories Blair was apparently privately disgusted by IDS's unqualified support and called him "Little Sir Echo." If there was a war crime, given they were allowed a vote, the entire HoC should be in the dock.
Remarkable that he didn’t see the irony, given his relationship with Bush.
Good point.
What I despise him most for is his claim to have said to Bush, about Iraq, "I'm in." Not the sort of thing adults say in real life, but obviously him saying what he wanted George Clooney to say when playing him in his biopic.
Richards’s book suggests Blair, like Clinton, was focused on what he saw as the critical swing constituency - which at the time was somewhere between Basildon Man and Worcester Woman - and wanted to make sure he didn’t lose support by appearing soft or anti-American on foreign policy.
He also reminds us that Blair’s first foray into electoral politics was as Labour candidate in the Beaconsfield by-election just after the Falklands War, and he reports Robin Cook, who had gone along to help, finding Blair in awe of the strong support Thatcher was picking up on the back of the war. Richards suggests Blair was hoping to get some of the same for himself.
On that he was correct, yes he lost votes and a few seats to the LDs in liberal left areas like North London, Cambridge, Manchester and Cardiff. However the redwall, much of Essex and Kent, most of the London outer suburbs and the Midlands stayed New Labour in 2005.
In the US by contrast Kerry won the liberal left intelligentsia in 2004 but lost most of the rustbelt and Midwest and the election to Bush
On the subject of China this video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCVyDHPnyL4&t=312s ) suggests that they have closed down a lot of heavy industry in the Beijing area in preparation for the Winter Olympics. I'm not sure how reliable this is though: the people making the video are fairly obviously not fans of the CCP.
I can confirm that this is routine. They do this to heavy industry up to a 1000 miles or so away, not just for international sporting events but even for fairly run of the mill diplomatic meet ups. They find the air pollution embarrassing. It often causes a complete cluster in the private sector in heavy industry, which tends to run their liquidity hand to mouth. The result is usually the cessation of paying wages for weeks or months and the default against suppliers, customers and creditors. Sometimes they work them selves out the hole, sometimes not.
The report on C4 news on air pollution in Delhi was quite something last night. Decarbonising India and China energy would be good for them, even more than the rest of us.
It's nearly 30 years since I was in Mumbai, but the stench of the air is still with me. Diesel, slums and rotting stuff in the harbour. Interesting place otherwise.
I know a chap who worked in Delhi and had his family over, in fairly recent years. Their accounts were horrifying.
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
We shall have to wait and see. But yes I hold my hand up as I for one didn't at first buy into the whole aliens thing and I am ashamed of that.
Well we still don’t know enough about UAP to equate them with aliens, however much some of us might think the evidence points that way. What almost all of you refused to take on board, now underlined by the new Congressional legislation passed last week (Gillibrand Amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act), is that the organs of power in the US are taking UAPs very seriously indeed. Even as you lot laugh it all off.
For all its later flaws, the first third of Don’t Look Up is a superb depiction of Normalcy Bias
I absolutely loved Don't Look Up.
I had had a few new year eve drinks but I thought was brilliant. Superb performances. Rylance, as the loon silicon valley exec, just incredible.
The scenes where the two anchors of breakfast TV are just not interested in what the science guy actually has to say are superb. Like sending up the send up that is Apple's 'Morning America'.
For me it was half-ruined by the unnecessary, tedious, complacent, laboured and unfunny attacks on Trump voters. Crude and boorish. Like Trump himself, ironically
Which is a shame, because otherwise it was a cracking movie. Great idea, great cast, some great writing (in places)
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
We shall have to wait and see. But yes I hold my hand up as I for one didn't at first buy into the whole aliens thing and I am ashamed of that.
Well we still don’t know enough about UAP to equate them with aliens, however much some of us might think the evidence points that way. What almost all of you refused to take on board, now underlined by the new Congressional legislation passed last week (Gillibrand Amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act), is that the organs of power in the US are taking UAPs very seriously indeed. Even as you lot laugh it all off.
I think they're taking it seriously because it's a tactical ruse of their own making. We're going to see lots of extraordinary stories as the USA desperately tries to cling on to its world dominance. They're not going to drift into genteel insignificance the way that Britain did.
That’s quite the conspiracy theory, given the breadth of politicians and military officials across both time and the left-right spectrum that would need to be involved. Could be you’re right of course. Or could be that when such a range of credible figures say there is observed ultra tech in the skies and oceans that’s not theirs and “needs advances in science to identify”, that we should take what they say at face value.
I don’t follow US politics as closely as some here but can’t be often that an initiative that is apparently opposed by the Executive, passes both houses in such an overwhelming bipartisan fashion.
I’m much more sympathetic to your position than many on here, as you know, however your argument here doesn’t quite stand. Because ANY explanation for UAP is going to sound outlandish, will give off conspiracy theory vibes, and will encounter Normalcy Bias
To name the most prominent:
1. The entire US military has been suffering multiple simultaneous technical glitches and mass hallucinations for decades and no one in power in America realises this
2. The elite in America have gone collectively and weirdly mad in exactly the same way, across the political spectrum, as they face the superiority of China, or something
3. The Chinese have developed incredible 30,000mph aircraft, which also go underwater, and they’ve managed to keep this quiet since 1950
4. We are being visited and observed by non-human technology
Which is more, or less, likely? They are all extremely difficult to swallow
As you spell out, it’s a fascinating puzzle and one worth the close attention of all who are curious about politics and the world.
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
You're certainly right that the Tories' full-throated support of the Iraq debacle seems to have been almost entirely expunged from the public's memory - or at least that of the rightwing press.
You never would have guessed from the Daily Mail's hysterical coverage of the Blair honours that many, if not all, Tory backbenchers ( and frontbenchers ) were even more enthusiastic for the war than Campbell and Blair themselves.
However, it's an excellent way of chipping away at Labour, so the tabloids will apply their usual morality and history-free approach to the particular topic.
You're also right that Charles Kennedy's intelligent and brave stance has been much too much forgotten. I also personally was much more in sympathy with his LD party than more recent incarnations.
Robin Cook gave the stand out performance.
As for the Tories Blair was apparently privately disgusted by IDS's unqualified support and called him "Little Sir Echo." If there was a war crime, given they were allowed a vote, the entire HoC should be in the dock.
Remarkable that he didn’t see the irony, given his relationship with Bush.
Good point.
What I despise him most for is his claim to have said to Bush, about Iraq, "I'm in." Not the sort of thing adults say in real life, but obviously him saying what he wanted George Clooney to say when playing him in his biopic.
Richards’s book suggests Blair, like Clinton, was focused on what he saw as the critical swing constituency - which at the time was somewhere between Basildon Man and Worcester Woman - and wanted to make sure he didn’t lose support (or give the flat-on-their-back Tories an ‘in’) by appearing soft or anti-American on foreign policy.
He also reminds us that Blair’s first foray into electoral politics was as Labour candidate in the Beaconsfield by-election just after the Falklands War, and he reports Robin Cook, who had gone along to help, finding Blair in awe of the strong support Thatcher was picking up on the back of the war. Richards suggests Blair was hoping to get some of the same for himself.
Blair was and always has been a liberal interventionist, it is one of the few things I agree with him on.
It was nothing to do with wanting to emulate Thatcher.
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
You're certainly right that the Tories' full-throated support of the Iraq debacle seems to have been almost entirely expunged from the public's memory - or at least that of the rightwing press.
You never would have guessed from the Daily Mail's hysterical coverage of the Blair honours that many, if not all, Tory backbenchers ( and frontbenchers ) were even more enthusiastic for the war than Campbell and Blair themselves.
However, it's an excellent way of chipping away at Labour, so the tabloids will apply their usual morality and history-free approach to the particular topic.
You're also right that Charles Kennedy's intelligent and brave stance has been much too much forgotten. I also personally was much more in sympathy with his LD party than more recent incarnations.
Robin Cook gave the stand out performance.
As for the Tories Blair was apparently privately disgusted by IDS's unqualified support and called him "Little Sir Echo." If there was a war crime, given they were allowed a vote, the entire HoC should be in the dock.
Remarkable that he didn’t see the irony, given his relationship with Bush.
Good point.
What I despise him most for is his claim to have said to Bush, about Iraq, "I'm in." Not the sort of thing adults say in real life, but obviously him saying what he wanted George Clooney to say when playing him in his biopic.
Richards’s book suggests Blair, like Clinton, was focused on what he saw as the critical swing constituency - which at the time was somewhere between Basildon Man and Worcester Woman - and wanted to make sure he didn’t lose support by appearing soft or anti-American on foreign policy.
He also reminds us that Blair’s first foray into electoral politics was as Labour candidate in the Beaconsfield by-election just after the Falklands War, and he reports Robin Cook, who had gone along to help, finding Blair in awe of the strong support Thatcher was picking up on the back of the war. Richards suggests Blair was hoping to get some of the same for himself.
I think the Falklands War was a disaster for our politics in general. From preventing an SDP victory that would have put Britain on the road to more consensual, Continental-style government and precluded so much polarisation, to fostering some of the delusions that gave us both intimations of Blair's foreign policy, and the neo-imperial delusions of Hard Brexit.
However, it was concretely a good thing for the Falkland Islanders themselves. They've never wanted to be part of Argentina, and still don't. I'm curious about the Falklands themselves as a culture, climate and location, imagining they're quite cold, but also quite starkly or bleakly beautiful.
Twitter has permanently banned the popular news aggregation service Politics For All, in a sign of how the social media platform has substantial power to deprive news outlets of their audience without warning.
A spokesperson said the account was “suspended for violating the Twitter Rules on platform manipulation and spam” and would not be allowed to return.
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
You're certainly right that the Tories' full-throated support of the Iraq debacle seems to have been almost entirely expunged from the public's memory - or at least that of the rightwing press.
You never would have guessed from the Daily Mail's hysterical coverage of the Blair honours that many, if not all, Tory backbenchers ( and frontbenchers ) were even more enthusiastic for the war than Campbell and Blair themselves.
However, it's an excellent way of chipping away at Labour, so the tabloids will apply their usual morality and history-free approach to the particular topic.
You're also right that Charles Kennedy's intelligent and brave stance has been much too much forgotten. I also personally was much more in sympathy with his LD party than more recent incarnations.
Robin Cook gave the stand out performance.
As for the Tories Blair was apparently privately disgusted by IDS's unqualified support and called him "Little Sir Echo." If there was a war crime, given they were allowed a vote, the entire HoC should be in the dock.
Remarkable that he didn’t see the irony, given his relationship with Bush.
Good point.
What I despise him most for is his claim to have said to Bush, about Iraq, "I'm in." Not the sort of thing adults say in real life, but obviously him saying what he wanted George Clooney to say when playing him in his biopic.
Richards’s book suggests Blair, like Clinton, was focused on what he saw as the critical swing constituency - which at the time was somewhere between Basildon Man and Worcester Woman - and wanted to make sure he didn’t lose support by appearing soft or anti-American on foreign policy.
He also reminds us that Blair’s first foray into electoral politics was as Labour candidate in the Beaconsfield by-election just after the Falklands War, and he reports Robin Cook, who had gone along to help, finding Blair in awe of the strong support Thatcher was picking up on the back of the war. Richards suggests Blair was hoping to get some of the same for himself.
On that he was correct, yes he lost votes and a few seats to the LDs in liberal left areas like North London, Cambridge, Manchester and Cardiff. However the redwall, much of Essex and Kent, most of the London outer suburbs and the Midlands stayed New Labour in 2005
But by then, that was more a comment on the opposition’s awfulness than a vote of confidence in him and the war. Again, if only I could think of a contemporary election to cite as a parallel…
Twitter has permanently banned the popular news aggregation service Politics For All, in a sign of how the social media platform has substantial power to deprive news outlets of their audience without warning.
A spokesperson said the account was “suspended for violating the Twitter Rules on platform manipulation and spam” and would not be allowed to return.
All this Blair stuff is not good for Starmer I thihk, as I was saying earlier. He's been steadily and implicitly building a rehabilitation of Blair-type politics, and then along comes this to reunite Lefties and Tories against the idea of Blair again.
However, I don't think it will be much more than temporary - the government's problems and failings are now just much too familiar in the public's imagination.
Am I wrong in thinking that it was his Iraq policy that made Blair so toxic, and that otherwise he was generally regarded as sort of ok?
And I am wrong in thinking that the Conservative Party supported that policy wholeheartedly?
And the LD's opposed it (and that did them no bloody good whatsoever)?
You're certainly right that the Tories' full-throated support of the Iraq debacle seems to have been almost entirely expunged from the public's memory - or at least that of the rightwing press.
You never would have guessed from the Daily Mail's hysterical coverage of the Blair honours that many, if not all, Tory backbenchers ( and frontbenchers ) were even more enthusiastic for the war than Campbell and Blair themselves.
However, it's an excellent way of chipping away at Labour, so the tabloids will apply their usual morality and history-free approach to the particular topic.
You're also right that Charles Kennedy's intelligent and brave stance has been much too much forgotten. I also personally was much more in sympathy with his LD party than more recent incarnations.
Robin Cook gave the stand out performance.
As for the Tories Blair was apparently privately disgusted by IDS's unqualified support and called him "Little Sir Echo." If there was a war crime, given they were allowed a vote, the entire HoC should be in the dock.
Remarkable that he didn’t see the irony, given his relationship with Bush.
Good point.
What I despise him most for is his claim to have said to Bush, about Iraq, "I'm in." Not the sort of thing adults say in real life, but obviously him saying what he wanted George Clooney to say when playing him in his biopic.
Richards’s book suggests Blair, like Clinton, was focused on what he saw as the critical swing constituency - which at the time was somewhere between Basildon Man and Worcester Woman - and wanted to make sure he didn’t lose support by appearing soft or anti-American on foreign policy.
He also reminds us that Blair’s first foray into electoral politics was as Labour candidate in the Beaconsfield by-election just after the Falklands War, and he reports Robin Cook, who had gone along to help, finding Blair in awe of the strong support Thatcher was picking up on the back of the war. Richards suggests Blair was hoping to get some of the same for himself.
I think the Falklands War was a disaster for our politics in general. From stopping an SDP consensus government that would have put Britain on the road to more Continental-style government, to fostering some of the neo-imperial delusions that gave us both Hard Brexit and Blair's foreign policy.
However, it was concretely a good thing for the Falkland Islanders themselves. They've never wanted to be part of Argentina, and still don't. I'm curious about the Falklands as a culture, climate and location, imagining they're quite cold, but also looking quite starkly or bleakly beautiful.
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
We shall have to wait and see. But yes I hold my hand up as I for one didn't at first buy into the whole aliens thing and I am ashamed of that.
Well we still don’t know enough about UAP to equate them with aliens, however much some of us might think the evidence points that way. What almost all of you refused to take on board, now underlined by the new Congressional legislation passed last week (Gillibrand Amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act), is that the organs of power in the US are taking UAPs very seriously indeed. Even as you lot laugh it all off.
I think they're taking it seriously because it's a tactical ruse of their own making. We're going to see lots of extraordinary stories as the USA desperately tries to cling on to its world dominance. They're not going to drift into genteel insignificance the way that Britain did.
That’s quite the conspiracy theory, given the breadth of politicians and military officials across both time and the left-right spectrum that would need to be involved. Could be you’re right of course. Or could be that when such a range of credible figures say there is observed ultra tech in the skies and oceans that’s not theirs and “needs advances in science to identify”, that we should take what they say at face value.
I don’t follow US politics as closely as some here but can’t be often that an initiative that is apparently opposed by the Executive, passes both houses in such an overwhelming bipartisan fashion.
I’m much more sympathetic to your position than many on here, as you know, however your argument here doesn’t quite stand. Because ANY explanation for UAP is going to sound outlandish, will give off conspiracy theory vibes, and will encounter Normalcy Bias
To name the most prominent:
1. The entire US military has been suffering multiple simultaneous technical glitches and mass hallucinations for decades and no one in power in America realises this
2. The elite in America have gone collectively and weirdly mad in exactly the same way, across the political spectrum, as they face the superiority of China, or something
3. The Chinese have developed incredible 30,000mph aircraft, which also go underwater, and they’ve managed to keep this quiet since 1950
4. We are being visited and observed by non-human technology
Which is more, or less, likely? They are all extremely difficult to swallow
"Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent" is my position. What are we meant to do about any of this? We are the primitive savages of Apocalypto gazing at the European ship of the line lying off our coast: impossible for us to deduce fron looking at it, what it is or where it comes from,
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
We shall have to wait and see. But yes I hold my hand up as I for one didn't at first buy into the whole aliens thing and I am ashamed of that.
Well we still don’t know enough about UAP to equate them with aliens, however much some of us might think the evidence points that way. What almost all of you refused to take on board, now underlined by the new Congressional legislation passed last week (Gillibrand Amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act), is that the organs of power in the US are taking UAPs very seriously indeed. Even as you lot laugh it all off.
I think they're taking it seriously because it's a tactical ruse of their own making. We're going to see lots of extraordinary stories as the USA desperately tries to cling on to its world dominance. They're not going to drift into genteel insignificance the way that Britain did.
That’s quite the conspiracy theory, given the breadth of politicians and military officials across both time and the left-right spectrum that would need to be involved. Could be you’re right of course. Or could be that when such a range of credible figures say there is observed ultra tech in the skies and oceans that’s not theirs and “needs advances in science to identify”, that we should take what they say at face value.
I don’t follow US politics as closely as some here but can’t be often that an initiative that is apparently opposed by the Executive, passes both houses in such an overwhelming bipartisan fashion.
I’m much more sympathetic to your position than many on here, as you know, however your argument here doesn’t quite stand. Because ANY explanation for UAP is going to sound outlandish, will give off conspiracy theory vibes, and will encounter Normalcy Bias
To name the most prominent:
1. The entire US military has been suffering multiple simultaneous technical glitches and mass hallucinations for decades and no one in power in America realises this
2. The elite in America have gone collectively and weirdly mad in exactly the same way, across the political spectrum, as they face the superiority of China, or something
3. The Chinese have developed incredible 30,000mph aircraft, which also go underwater, and they’ve managed to keep this quiet since 1950
4. We are being visited and observed by non-human technology
Which is more, or less, likely? They are all extremely difficult to swallow
As you spell out, it’s a fascinating puzzle and one worth the close attention of all who are curious about politics and the world.
It could of course be combination, in various ways, of these
Twitter has permanently banned the popular news aggregation service Politics For All, in a sign of how the social media platform has substantial power to deprive news outlets of their audience without warning.
A spokesperson said the account was “suspended for violating the Twitter Rules on platform manipulation and spam” and would not be allowed to return.
People have every right to object to Tony Blair being given a knighthood. Whilst Mike makes some important points about elections, they aren't the be all and end all. Nixon won the presidency twice. Thatcher won three elections but if her opponents wanted to make noise about her being given honours or distinctions, good luck to them. After all, Oxford never gave her an honorary degree.
The opposition to Blair is also a little misunderstood. Yougov does a very interesting ratings for all prime ministers every quarter. Blair fares very badly, as does Cameron. The poll quoted earlier shows a wide disapproval amongst the public as a whole to him being given a knighthood. It's a big mistake to think all the resistance comes from Labour's twitterati. It's worth wondering why this may be. Iraq is the obvious answer. Those on the left will never forgive him for launching an illegal, avoidable war on a dodgy premise. As for the patriotic right they will never forgive him for the fact the war turned into a disaster. The same people who are stirred by military victory in say the Falklands, will be unforgiving about defeat. I'm not sure Blair understands this preferring to believe that conservatives don't like him because he won three elections. He appeared to capture the centre ground but on Europe, immigration and military action he was in his own way as radical as Thatcher. We never claim to be confused about her being a polarizing figure though.
I wasn't bothered by the knighthood myself but I can respect those who take a different view. Whatever Blair's achievements, dishonestly taking us into a bungled war isn't a minor matter to be swept under the carpet.
Steve Richards’s book on Prime Ministerial leadership is illuminating on how Blair got fenced in by some rash promises and his determination to appear strong, and by the time he saw the trap he was in, there was no way out other than to press ahead and hope for a happy ending.
I haven't read the prime ministerial book but from what I've read elsewhere I'm not sure I buy Richards' analysis of Blair. He seems to think that Blair felt he had to please Bush/Murdoch etc so had no choice. The reality is that he pretty much goaded Clinton into the Kosovo campaign and appeared to have a strong conviction that the world could be remade through military action.
No, he paints the story as Blair thinking he had choices (in particular by hanging on the UN route) when in reality, and partly through his own rashness, he had passed the point of no return from the beginning.
And his remembering how Thatcher had benefited from suddenly being seen as a strong national war leader, during his first election campaign, isn’t incompatible with believing that liberal intervention could remake the world. If the latter had been true, a payoff as per the former would have been more likely.
I see we are back to hysterical conspiracy theories about Xian on here.
Jesus wept. It’s the Olympics. Move on FFS.
Look, I know that you are shitting yourself, like Topping and Ian, but I can't help the fact a genuine mystery is unfolding in Xi'an. Which is probably Omicron, but possibly not
And it's not like this isn't a major news story (whatever the cause) - if they have Omicron and they can't control it - or they need to lockdown large chunks of China to do so - that is going to have serious consequences for the global economy, as supply chains fail, again. So we can't really "move on"
Two possible scenarios:
1) The several people trying to reply rationally and calmly to one person's hysterical outpourings are shitting themselves; or 2) The one person responsible for said hysterical outpouring is shitting himself.
Tough call. Or are we all projecting.
You lot always miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the benign version. This is just omicron. That China is taking these steps in Xian indicates they may very likely be prepared to announce a nationwide lockdown before Chinese New Year, given we all probably agree it’s a bugger to contain it once it’s out there.
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
We shall have to wait and see. But yes I hold my hand up as I for one didn't at first buy into the whole aliens thing and I am ashamed of that.
Well we still don’t know enough about UAP to equate them with aliens, however much some of us might think the evidence points that way. What almost all of you refused to take on board, now underlined by the new Congressional legislation passed last week (Gillibrand Amendment to the National Defense Authorisation Act), is that the organs of power in the US are taking UAPs very seriously indeed. Even as you lot laugh it all off.
For all its later flaws, the first third of Don’t Look Up is a superb depiction of Normalcy Bias
I absolutely loved Don't Look Up.
I had had a few new year eve drinks but I thought was brilliant. Superb performances. Rylance, as the loon silicon valley exec, just incredible.
The scenes where the two anchors of breakfast TV are just not interested in what the science guy actually has to say are superb. Like sending up the send up that is Apple's 'Morning America'.
For me it was half-ruined by the unnecessary, tedious, complacent, laboured and unfunny attacks on Trump voters. Crude and boorish. Like Trump himself, ironically
Which is a shame, because otherwise it was a cracking movie. Great idea, great cast, some great writing (in places)
And yes Rylance. Eerily good
The Rylance act was almost uncanny, like he was channelling a bit of the Thomas Cromwell role into the 21st century.
Comments
And I am off to the gym, so your bowels can stop liquifying for at least 50 minutes
What we know of the underlying virulence of omicron says that this might all be unjustified but it’s tricky to say for sure given we haven’t seen it properly in action in a country with no immunity and little in the way of western approved vaccines.
A Chinese nationwide lockdown most likely causes a global recession this year.
There are less benign versions of this story than a global recession this year, whether you want to hear them or not.
Sure, VHF is endemic in Shanxi. But only strains that spread from rodents to humans.
That in turn helped Michael Howard slash Labour's majority by 100 in 2005 and gain over 30 seats for the Tories.
An interesting counterfactual is if Ken Clarke had won the Tory leadership in 2001. He may even have got a hung parliament in 20p5 due to his opposition to the Iraq War with opponents of the war going direct to a Clarke led Tories rather than the Charles Kennedy led LDs
Mind you, I have never been that keen on ad-water-and-stir pubs.
Omicron is like a cold for most people.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10368417/Rishi-Sunak-takes-tumble-ice-skating-daughter.html
Otherwise you would have been talking about improving distribution logistics in Africa, rather than coyly trying on the idea of limiting further vaccination in UK/Europe/etc.
You are obviously not a strawman. I wouldn't want to offend Worzel Gummidge with such a comparison.
I'm surprised to hear @HYUFD speak so highly of Tony Blair given he walloped the Conservatives not once, not twice but three times.
From a non-Conservative, non-Labour perspective my main sense of Tony Blair is one of disappointment, of an opportunity to change Britain forever squandered. Blair had a majority of 179 - he literally had the power to do what he wanted and had an electorate at that time willing to go down a more radical path.
Blair could have transformed the politics and governance of the whole of the UK and you can't argue he didn't effect change in Scotland and Wales but for England it was the sum total of bugger all. The devolution settlement offered to other parts of the UK wasn't offered in England and that was, I think, a mistake.
Perhaps there were plans for something more radical in the second term but these were thwarted by events in New York which came to dominate the time and his legacy.
I don't define Blair by Iraq - I define him by the fact he could have been as radical a Prime Minister as Thatcher or Attlee but achieved so little.
Perhaps he was as much a conservative as many believed.
Once Brown got in as PM it was clear Blair was the one keeping tax down and controlling spending not Brown too
Point stands.
The person who invents a wicked lie is in a worse category than the person who merely believes a wicked lie.
It's nearly 30 years since I was in Mumbai, but the stench of the air is still with me. Diesel, slums and rotting stuff in the harbour. Interesting place otherwise.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-wetherspoon-tim-martin-pub-closed-tesco-supermarket-uk-a9420906.html
Hmm...
The nature of Omicron means some will be alarmed by rising case numbers but probably shouldn't be. The position in the hospitals needs and no doubt is being closely monitored and staff shortages will cause localised issues as we're seeing with train services in my part of the world.
Having read about what a real lockdown looks like from China, it's curious to see the term thrown around so glibly by so many. I know it's linguistic shorthand but it covers a multitude of sins it would seem from not being able to stand at the bar to have a drink to being sealed inside your home without food.
Oh that and Brown's long overdue sacking.
I suspect it was Brown. Chancellors don’t like PM’s getting credit for spending ‘their’ money, particularly if they fancy the top job themselves. If only I could think of a contemporary parallel to illustrate the point….
What I despise him most for is his claim to have said to Bush, about Iraq, "I'm in." Not the sort of thing adults say in real life, but obviously him saying what he wanted George Clooney to say when playing him in his biopic.
Reading her website she is evidently playing to a national security angle which is all fine and dandy and no doubt gets support from the square States. You seem to be saying that there has been some kind of breakthrough in determining what a UAP is.
or more controversially he could of moved the NHS to a 'Bismarck style' heath system like Germany.
Sharp but short workout?
When we see these videos from Xian it’s always worth bearing in mind that the local party officials tend to be thick corrupt peasants and do bizarre shit all the time. And then when Beijing gets involved a new layer of professionalism gets injected. I can well imagine the disinfecting and scorching of fresh air to be at the order of some local thicko.
But… the scale of the quarantining would need Beijing intervention. And that gives me pause. As I don’t fully understand the rationale or trust their statements.
...that failed to happen.
Devolution for England was blocked by those within the Labour Party who saw that devolution for England as a unit would mean too much chance of a Tory power base. Once the half hearted attempts at regional devolution within England were dropped for lack of popularity, that was it.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202201/1245105.shtml
"Two years into COVID-19 epidemic control, Xi'an appeared to present an answer sheet below the standard for a mega-city, and the dismay local people expressed is quite understandable, observers said, but they also pointed out that Xi'an is a city that developed quickly in recent years, while its economic growth and governance haven't caught up with its fast-growing population.
It has more than half as many people as Shanghai, which is widely deemed as a model of precise control, but Xi'an's GDP in 2020 was 25 percent of the latter. "
- Kept his promise to change the voting system - which would have completely re-written subsequent British political history.
- Joined the Euro.
- Invested in public services from the off, rather than sticking to Tory spending plans for the first few years
- made Cook’s ethical foreign policy a reality rather than a slogan
- told Brown he wasn’t going to get the job after (or even moved him from chancellor)
He could also have done more to avoid or counter some of the damaging trends in society and the economy, particularly on housing. Or take the council tax, inherited from the Tories and left essentially unchanged through three terms, despite being widely seen as a mess.
I recall talking to some New Labour supporting lawyers about the usage of ancient statutes relating to Royal Parks to arrest little old ladies for politely holding up signs saying "Remember Tibet".
They seemed to use the following reasoning
1) The interpretation of the laws was judged to be legal.
2) Therefore the action was legal.
3) Since the action was legal, questioning it would be an attack on the law.
4) In fact since it was legal, the government were almost duty bound to do it.
5) Attacking the law is unacceptable.
Attempting to outsource commence sense and morality to a rules engine isn't going to work.
Though I don't think Blair's grasp on the principles and praactise of the law was the strongest.
Spot a problem there?
The rule means stores, restaurants and pubs must now sell drinks containing alcohol for no less than about 10 cents per gram of the substance. Officials said the measure was aimed at making cheaper, stronger alcoholic products less readily available, particularly for young people and heavy drinkers.
NY Times
Except this is much worse.
It must be terrible to live in. If I walk or run through a city here in the UK, I end up with all sorts of gunk up my nose (not, I hasten to add, white powder) - and that's mainly from car exhausts, not heavy industry.
The Clean Air Acts have probably been one of the best bits of legislation ever: for the environment and public health.
I don’t follow US politics as closely as some here but can’t be often that an initiative that is apparently opposed by the Executive, passes both houses in such an overwhelming bipartisan fashion.
The opposition to Blair is also a little misunderstood. Yougov does a very interesting ratings for all prime ministers every quarter. Blair fares very badly, as does Cameron. The poll quoted earlier shows a wide disapproval amongst the public as a whole to him being given a knighthood. It's a big mistake to think all the resistance comes from Labour's twitterati. It's worth wondering why this may be. Iraq is the obvious answer. Those on the left will never forgive him for launching an illegal, avoidable war on a dodgy premise. As for the patriotic right they will never forgive him for the fact the war turned into a disaster. The same people who are stirred by military victory in say the Falklands, will be unforgiving about defeat. I'm not sure Blair understands this preferring to believe that conservatives don't like him because he won three elections. He appeared to capture the centre ground but on Europe, immigration and military action he was in his own way as radical as Thatcher. We never claim to be confused about her being a polarizing figure though.
I wasn't bothered by the knighthood myself but I can respect those who take a different view. Whatever Blair's achievements, dishonestly taking us into a bungled war isn't a minor matter to be swept under the carpet.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-omicron-daily-overview
I had had a few new year eve drinks but I thought was brilliant. Superb performances. Rylance, as the loon silicon valley exec, just incredible.
The scenes where the two anchors of breakfast TV are just not interested in what the science guy actually has to say are superb. Like sending up the send up that is Apple's 'Morning America'.
A funny New Yorker cartoon
And "twisting the law" is not really what it's about: it's about justifying one case, and testing the opposing case for weaknesses.
To name the most prominent:
1. The entire US military has been suffering multiple simultaneous technical glitches and mass hallucinations for decades and no one in power in America realises this
2. The elite in America have gone collectively and weirdly mad in exactly the same way, across the political spectrum, as they face the superiority of China, or something
3. The Chinese have developed incredible 30,000mph aircraft, which also go underwater, and they’ve managed to keep this quiet since 1950
4. We are being visited and observed by non-human technology
Which is more, or less, likely? They are all extremely difficult to swallow
A spokesperson said the account was “suspended for violating the Twitter Rules on platform manipulation and spam” and would not be allowed to return.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/04/twitter-permanently-bans-news-aggregation-service-politics-for-all?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
He also reminds us that Blair’s first foray into electoral politics was as Labour candidate in the Beaconsfield by-election just after the Falklands War, and he reports Robin Cook, who had gone along to help, finding Blair in awe of the strong support Thatcher was picking up on the back of the war. Richards suggests Blair was hoping to get some of the same for himself.
In the US by contrast Kerry won the liberal left intelligentsia in 2004 but lost most of the rustbelt and Midwest and the election to Bush
Which is a shame, because otherwise it was a cracking movie. Great idea, great cast, some great writing (in places)
And yes Rylance. Eerily good
It was nothing to do with wanting to emulate Thatcher.
However, it was concretely a good thing for the Falkland Islanders themselves. They've never wanted to be part of Argentina, and still don't. I'm curious about the Falklands themselves as a culture, climate and location, imagining they're quite cold, but also quite starkly or bleakly beautiful.
Has anyone from PB been there ?
BREAKING: Twitter suspends PoliticsForAll account.
And his remembering how Thatcher had benefited from suddenly being seen as a strong national war leader, during his first election campaign, isn’t incompatible with believing that liberal intervention could remake the world. If the latter had been true, a payoff as per the former would have been more likely.