Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
This "yebbut Africans enslaved other Africans" stuff really is whataboutery in its purest form. Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions.
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions
Doesn't that translate as "it doesn't matter what the Africans did, and sometimes still do, to other Africans as they do not have our beliefs" ?
A rather racist view perhaps ?
And wasn't it part of the reasoning of the enlightenment slave owner that they were ultimately lifting up their slaves to a higher level of civilisation ? While taking the current profit from so doing
Given that the number of descendants of slavery who have migrated to Africa, whether from the USA, Brazil, Columbia, Jamaica or even Haiti is approximately zero they would doubtless say that 'lifting up' was achieved.
Jesus Christ, you seem to have caught whatever MrEd is ailing from.
"It is OK for me to do things to black men because other black men did similar things to a third set of black men" is about the most sht argument ever advanced, and the person advancing it in this case is MrEd. The relevance of Christianity etc etc is only that, almost unbelievably, it makes it even shitter than it was in the first place. For A to enslave B is always and everywhere a terribly, terribly wrong thing to do, colour and creed notwithstanding. Clear now?
While I agree that what MrEd wrote was textbook whataboutery, I don't have a clue why "Christianity" makes it "even shittier".
What makes the holocaust even shittier is that Hitler was (sometimes) a vegetarian!
When I first heard Hitler was vegetarian, I was not in the least surprised. I just shrugged. In fact another piece of the jigsaw falls into place.
Really, care to explain? Otherwise your comment comes across as pretty obnoxious.
Yes happy to explain. I am not normally obnoxious, perhaps towards my brother, but it’s fair of you to say I can come across as obnoxious when showing my strong dislike for vegetarians and vegans. I have no time for them. I’m not even ambivalent - in fact if they are forcing that insane diet on their children, making them all wan and sickly, they should be locked up.
🥓🍔🥩🍗🍖🥘🍤🍳
PS if I am talking to a vegetarian, Hitler was vegetarian: suck it down.
Thanks for clearing it up. Is it just "vegetarians and vegans" you have a "strong dislike for", or is it anyone who follows any kind of diet? People who don't drink? People who don't put milk in their tea? People who have any kind of religious belief? People who wear their hair long?
Don't feed the troll - even if it's only a vegan sausage roll.
Did you mean to sound so poetic? 🙂
It was an accidental rhyme, though I noticed it at the time.
Anyway I must fly, bacon in a pan I must fry.
I'm a vegetarian, like that famous Aryan - so I will find my niche, and finish off the quiche.
I thought you were on my side! Your one of THEM 🙁
Ha ha, no, sorry, I have been one of THEM for almost 35 years but I have a sense of humour. 😜
Can you not smell this bacon I have frying, calling you like a religious calling?
Anointed now with Daddies Sauce
Come back to the light. It says.
Bacon is the toughest, but I am strong. I can even fry it for my kids without eating it.
Bacon is practically poison anyway. Leaving aside the atrocity of treating the animal like shit and killing it.
Agreed on all counts, which is why I don't eat it and buy it only after extremely pronounced lobbying.
You’ve gone up 110% in my estimation OLB that you feed your kids bacon. You are a truly balanced one of them.
Everything Dura Ace said is true - but it’s also true bacon is delicious. 😋
Despite being a vegetarian for almost 35 years I believe strongly that it's up to my kids what dietary choices they make. I frequently cook meat for the rest of the family.
The problem is that this Omicron picture is similar but *bigger*. Before we get ONS regional prevalences (tomorrow), reported cases per 100k will be an imperfect proxy, but they suggest the North is going past London's peak. Hospitals there are buckling because it's worse. (2/2).
Hospitalisations in London appearsto have peaked and is declining.
Hospitalisations in the North West appears to be surpassing last winter's peak.
Which is quite surprising - the impression I got from London was that pretty much everyone had it, but it certainly doesn't feel like that here. 'A lot of it about', certainly. But no worse than any cold in any winter.
But perhaps that's because I don't know that many old people, and it's considerably worse for them.
Younger v older population centres?
Terrace Housing?
Bingo? Whippets? Timothy Taylor’s Landlord?
The hospitalisations are definitely starting to fall, in London....
Buckland on R4 saying that nobody could watch Colston's statue being torn down and thrown in the harbour without feeling appalled. An odd thing to say since clearly many people were pretty happy about it.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
This "yebbut Africans enslaved other Africans" stuff really is whataboutery in its purest form. Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions.
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions
Doesn't that translate as "it doesn't matter what the Africans did, and sometimes still do, to other Africans as they do not have our beliefs" ?
A rather racist view perhaps ?
And wasn't it part of the reasoning of the enlightenment slave owner that they were ultimately lifting up their slaves to a higher level of civilisation ? While taking the current profit from so doing
Given that the number of descendants of slavery who have migrated to Africa, whether from the USA, Brazil, Columbia, Jamaica or even Haiti is approximately zero they would doubtless say that 'lifting up' was achieved.
Jesus Christ, you seem to have caught whatever MrEd is ailing from.
"It is OK for me to do things to black men because other black men did similar things to a third set of black men" is about the most sht argument ever advanced, and the person advancing it in this case is MrEd. The relevance of Christianity etc etc is only that, almost unbelievably, it makes it even shitter than it was in the first place. For A to enslave B is always and everywhere a terribly, terribly wrong thing to do, colour and creed notwithstanding. Clear now?
While I agree that what MrEd wrote was textbook whataboutery, I don't have a clue why "Christianity" makes it "even shittier".
What makes the holocaust even shittier is that Hitler was (sometimes) a vegetarian!
When I first heard Hitler was vegetarian, I was not in the least surprised. I just shrugged. In fact another piece of the jigsaw falls into place.
Really, care to explain? Otherwise your comment comes across as pretty obnoxious.
Yes happy to explain. I am not normally obnoxious, perhaps towards my brother, but it’s fair of you to say I can come across as obnoxious when showing my strong dislike for vegetarians and vegans. I have no time for them. I’m not even ambivalent - in fact if they are forcing that insane diet on their children, making them all wan and sickly, they should be locked up.
🥓🍔🥩🍗🍖🥘🍤🍳
PS if I am talking to a vegetarian, Hitler was vegetarian: suck it down.
Thanks for clearing it up. Is it just "vegetarians and vegans" you have a "strong dislike for", or is it anyone who follows any kind of diet? People who don't drink? People who don't put milk in their tea? People who have any kind of religious belief? People who wear their hair long?
Don't feed the troll - even if it's only a vegan sausage roll.
Did you mean to sound so poetic? 🙂
It was an accidental rhyme, though I noticed it at the time.
Anyway I must fly, bacon in a pan I must fry.
I'm a vegetarian, like that famous Aryan - so I will find my niche, and finish off the quiche.
I thought you were on my side! Your one of THEM 🙁
Ha ha, no, sorry, I have been one of THEM for almost 35 years but I have a sense of humour. 😜
Can you not smell this bacon I have frying, calling you like a religious calling?
Anointed now with Daddies Sauce
Come back to the light. It says.
Bacon is the toughest, but I am strong. I can even fry it for my kids without eating it.
Bacon is practically poison anyway. Leaving aside the atrocity of treating the animal like shit and killing it.
Agreed on all counts, which is why I don't eat it and buy it only after extremely pronounced lobbying.
You’ve gone up 110% in my estimation OLB that you feed your kids bacon. You are a truly balanced one of them.
Everything Dura Ace said is true - but it’s also true bacon is delicious. 😋
I disagree with @Dura_Ace. Not all pigs are treated like shit and not all bacon is poisonous.
I regularly cycle past some free range pigs which literally do seem to enjoy lives in clover. Sure, they meet a grisly end but they wouldn't live at all if it weren't for the the demand for bacon pork and sausages etc.
And nitrite free bacon is not so bad for you AIUI.
Buckland on R4 saying that nobody could watch Colston's statue being torn down and thrown in the harbour without feeling appalled. An odd thing to say since clearly many people were pretty happy about it.
I wonder his thoughts on tearing down Saddam's statue in Baghdad (actually stage-managed by the Americans). Was he equally appalled?
The problem is that this Omicron picture is similar but *bigger*. Before we get ONS regional prevalences (tomorrow), reported cases per 100k will be an imperfect proxy, but they suggest the North is going past London's peak. Hospitals there are buckling because it's worse. (2/2).
Hospitalisations in London appearsto have peaked and is declining.
Hospitalisations in the North West appears to be surpassing last winter's peak.
Which is quite surprising - the impression I got from London was that pretty much everyone had it, but it certainly doesn't feel like that here. 'A lot of it about', certainly. But no worse than any cold in any winter.
But perhaps that's because I don't know that many old people, and it's considerably worse for them.
Younger v older population centres?
Terrace Housing?
Bingo? Whippets? Timothy Taylor’s Landlord?
The hospitalisations are definitely starting to fall, in London....
Is it that unlike Lancashire, sometimes the sun comes out in London and it’s a bit warmer?
What do your monoliths show for conurbation v rural split?
Buckland on R4 saying that nobody could watch Colston's statue being torn down and thrown in the harbour without feeling appalled. An odd thing to say since clearly many people were pretty happy about it.
I wonder his thoughts on tearing down Saddam's statue in Baghdad (actually stage-managed by the Americans). Was he equally appalled?
Or for that matter the vandalism of the Bruce statue at Bannockburn around Colston-swimming-lesson time, about which the Scottish government failed to get all aerated BTW.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
This "yebbut Africans enslaved other Africans" stuff really is whataboutery in its purest form. Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions.
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions
Doesn't that translate as "it doesn't matter what the Africans did, and sometimes still do, to other Africans as they do not have our beliefs" ?
A rather racist view perhaps ?
And wasn't it part of the reasoning of the enlightenment slave owner that they were ultimately lifting up their slaves to a higher level of civilisation ? While taking the current profit from so doing
Given that the number of descendants of slavery who have migrated to Africa, whether from the USA, Brazil, Columbia, Jamaica or even Haiti is approximately zero they would doubtless say that 'lifting up' was achieved.
Jesus Christ, you seem to have caught whatever MrEd is ailing from.
"It is OK for me to do things to black men because other black men did similar things to a third set of black men" is about the most sht argument ever advanced, and the person advancing it in this case is MrEd. The relevance of Christianity etc etc is only that, almost unbelievably, it makes it even shitter than it was in the first place. For A to enslave B is always and everywhere a terribly, terribly wrong thing to do, colour and creed notwithstanding. Clear now?
While I agree that what MrEd wrote was textbook whataboutery, I don't have a clue why "Christianity" makes it "even shittier".
What makes the holocaust even shittier is that Hitler was (sometimes) a vegetarian!
When I first heard Hitler was vegetarian, I was not in the least surprised. I just shrugged. In fact another piece of the jigsaw falls into place.
Really, care to explain? Otherwise your comment comes across as pretty obnoxious.
Yes happy to explain. I am not normally obnoxious, perhaps towards my brother, but it’s fair of you to say I can come across as obnoxious when showing my strong dislike for vegetarians and vegans. I have no time for them. I’m not even ambivalent - in fact if they are forcing that insane diet on their children, making them all wan and sickly, they should be locked up.
🥓🍔🥩🍗🍖🥘🍤🍳
PS if I am talking to a vegetarian, Hitler was vegetarian: suck it down.
Thanks for clearing it up. Is it just "vegetarians and vegans" you have a "strong dislike for", or is it anyone who follows any kind of diet? People who don't drink? People who don't put milk in their tea? People who have any kind of religious belief? People who wear their hair long?
Don't feed the troll - even if it's only a vegan sausage roll.
Did you mean to sound so poetic? 🙂
It was an accidental rhyme, though I noticed it at the time.
Anyway I must fly, bacon in a pan I must fry.
I'm a vegetarian, like that famous Aryan - so I will find my niche, and finish off the quiche.
I thought you were on my side! Your one of THEM 🙁
Ha ha, no, sorry, I have been one of THEM for almost 35 years but I have a sense of humour. 😜
Can you not smell this bacon I have frying, calling you like a religious calling?
Anointed now with Daddies Sauce
Come back to the light. It says.
Bacon is the toughest, but I am strong. I can even fry it for my kids without eating it.
Bacon is practically poison anyway. Leaving aside the atrocity of treating the animal like shit and killing it.
Agreed on all counts, which is why I don't eat it and buy it only after extremely pronounced lobbying.
You’ve gone up 110% in my estimation OLB that you feed your kids bacon. You are a truly balanced one of them.
Everything Dura Ace said is true - but it’s also true bacon is delicious. 😋
Despite being a vegetarian for almost 35 years I believe strongly that it's up to my kids what dietary choices they make. I frequently cook meat for the rest of the family.
Day 6 of a meat-free diet for me. So far, so good.
The problem is that this Omicron picture is similar but *bigger*. Before we get ONS regional prevalences (tomorrow), reported cases per 100k will be an imperfect proxy, but they suggest the North is going past London's peak. Hospitals there are buckling because it's worse. (2/2).
Hospitalisations in London appearsto have peaked and is declining.
Hospitalisations in the North West appears to be surpassing last winter's peak.
Which is quite surprising - the impression I got from London was that pretty much everyone had it, but it certainly doesn't feel like that here. 'A lot of it about', certainly. But no worse than any cold in any winter.
But perhaps that's because I don't know that many old people, and it's considerably worse for them.
Younger v older population centres?
Terrace Housing?
Bingo? Whippets? Timothy Taylor’s Landlord?
The hospitalisations are definitely starting to fall, in London....
Is it that unlike Lancashire, sometimes the sun comes out in London and it’s a bit warmer?
What do your monoliths show for conurbation v rural split?
The problem is that this Omicron picture is similar but *bigger*. Before we get ONS regional prevalences (tomorrow), reported cases per 100k will be an imperfect proxy, but they suggest the North is going past London's peak. Hospitals there are buckling because it's worse. (2/2).
Hospitalisations in London appearsto have peaked and is declining.
Hospitalisations in the North West appears to be surpassing last winter's peak.
Which is quite surprising - the impression I got from London was that pretty much everyone had it, but it certainly doesn't feel like that here. 'A lot of it about', certainly. But no worse than any cold in any winter.
But perhaps that's because I don't know that many old people, and it's considerably worse for them.
Younger v older population centres?
Terrace Housing?
Bingo? Whippets? Timothy Taylor’s Landlord?
While we're casting around for reasons, I've also long suspected that winters in the North West kill more with respiratory illnesses than they do in the south - I love my native region, but can't help but admit it's a tad damper than some others.
The problem is that this Omicron picture is similar but *bigger*. Before we get ONS regional prevalences (tomorrow), reported cases per 100k will be an imperfect proxy, but they suggest the North is going past London's peak. Hospitals there are buckling because it's worse. (2/2).
Hospitalisations in London appearsto have peaked and is declining.
Hospitalisations in the North West appears to be surpassing last winter's peak.
Which is quite surprising - the impression I got from London was that pretty much everyone had it, but it certainly doesn't feel like that here. 'A lot of it about', certainly. But no worse than any cold in any winter.
But perhaps that's because I don't know that many old people, and it's considerably worse for them.
Younger v older population centres?
Terrace Housing?
Bingo? Whippets? Timothy Taylor’s Landlord?
The hospitalisations are definitely starting to fall, in London....
Is it that unlike Lancashire, sometimes the sun comes out in London and it’s a bit warmer?
What do your monoliths show for conurbation v rural split?
I'll give you the former but winters in the north west are actually warmer than in the south east, I think. It's the gulf stream. The price of which, though, is that it is cloudier and damper.
Buckland on R4 saying that nobody could watch Colston's statue being torn down and thrown in the harbour without feeling appalled. An odd thing to say since clearly many people were pretty happy about it.
Not those people, obviously.
(I do wonder if some conservatives a making a bit of a strategic blunder here, hitching themselves to a side of the Culture war just as it goes from winning 60:40 to losing 40:60. A bit like the way some commentators started moaning about the wokeness of the England football team and had to reverse ferret when their kneeling stance turned out to be respected by the public and the team did well at playing football...
Now getting fanatical loyalty from 40% is good going in a FPTP system, but that depends on the 40% not falling further.)
Aficionados of the State of the Union may find this piece interesting. Don't necessarily agree with it - muddling through can be the most effective approach - food for thought nevertheless on the possible imminent demise of the Union.
It was interesting if overly long. I'm assuming the demise of Britishness is a matter of some regret for the author? I thought the point that Britain is not a traditional country like most others was well made. Intriguing to speculate on who the person of Austro-Hungarian descent with the public profile who feared the same fate (as A-H) for the UK.
Oddly half the accompanying photos were of Scottish subjects which didn't really reflect the space Scotland took up in the essay, or even really the bits of Scotland to which the author travelled.
I would regret the passing of the Union. I actually have some empathy with those that mourned the loss of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I can see myself being that person.
It was certainly a thought-provoking article. The Union - in its current form - is broken. We either reform it so that it functions or it will fall apart.
A key takeaway that many PBers may not grasp is the point made about how the British state barely exists north of the wall. Its true - so much of what we do up here is physically and legally separate.
Aficionados of the State of the Union may find this piece interesting. Don't necessarily agree with it - muddling through can be the most effective approach - food for thought nevertheless on the possible imminent demise of the Union.
It was interesting if overly long. I'm assuming the demise of Britishness is a matter of some regret for the author? I thought the point that Britain is not a traditional country like most others was well made. Intriguing to speculate on who the person of Austro-Hungarian descent with the public profile who feared the same fate (as A-H) for the UK.
Oddly half the accompanying photos were of Scottish subjects which didn't really reflect the space Scotland took up in the essay, or even really the bits of Scotland to which the author travelled.
I would regret the passing of the Union. I actually have some empathy with those that mourned the loss of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I can see myself being that person.
Mournful regret is quite a Scottish trait, I have a fair bit of it myself. I would regret your and others' regret, but I'm afraid the 2014 referendum and subsequent events have pretty much burnt out all regret I might have for the Union itself.
The k.u.k. Reich was indeed an interesting comparison.
BTW now read 3 of the 4 Otto Prohaska books: saving the 4th for a treat as AFAIK there are no more; currently revisiting the also, coincidentally, declinist Uhtred series by Bernard Cornwall in between.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
This "yebbut Africans enslaved other Africans" stuff really is whataboutery in its purest form. Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions.
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions
Doesn't that translate as "it doesn't matter what the Africans did, and sometimes still do, to other Africans as they do not have our beliefs" ?
A rather racist view perhaps ?
And wasn't it part of the reasoning of the enlightenment slave owner that they were ultimately lifting up their slaves to a higher level of civilisation ? While taking the current profit from so doing
Given that the number of descendants of slavery who have migrated to Africa, whether from the USA, Brazil, Columbia, Jamaica or even Haiti is approximately zero they would doubtless say that 'lifting up' was achieved.
Jesus Christ, you seem to have caught whatever MrEd is ailing from.
"It is OK for me to do things to black men because other black men did similar things to a third set of black men" is about the most sht argument ever advanced, and the person advancing it in this case is MrEd. The relevance of Christianity etc etc is only that, almost unbelievably, it makes it even shitter than it was in the first place. For A to enslave B is always and everywhere a terribly, terribly wrong thing to do, colour and creed notwithstanding. Clear now?
While I agree that what MrEd wrote was textbook whataboutery, I don't have a clue why "Christianity" makes it "even shittier".
What makes the holocaust even shittier is that Hitler was (sometimes) a vegetarian!
When I first heard Hitler was vegetarian, I was not in the least surprised. I just shrugged. In fact another piece of the jigsaw falls into place.
Really, care to explain? Otherwise your comment comes across as pretty obnoxious.
Yes happy to explain. I am not normally obnoxious, perhaps towards my brother, but it’s fair of you to say I can come across as obnoxious when showing my strong dislike for vegetarians and vegans. I have no time for them. I’m not even ambivalent - in fact if they are forcing that insane diet on their children, making them all wan and sickly, they should be locked up.
🥓🍔🥩🍗🍖🥘🍤🍳
PS if I am talking to a vegetarian, Hitler was vegetarian: suck it down.
Thanks for clearing it up. Is it just "vegetarians and vegans" you have a "strong dislike for", or is it anyone who follows any kind of diet? People who don't drink? People who don't put milk in their tea? People who have any kind of religious belief? People who wear their hair long?
Don't feed the troll - even if it's only a vegan sausage roll.
Did you mean to sound so poetic? 🙂
It was an accidental rhyme, though I noticed it at the time.
Anyway I must fly, bacon in a pan I must fry.
I'm a vegetarian, like that famous Aryan - so I will find my niche, and finish off the quiche.
I thought you were on my side! Your one of THEM 🙁
Ha ha, no, sorry, I have been one of THEM for almost 35 years but I have a sense of humour. 😜
Can you not smell this bacon I have frying, calling you like a religious calling?
Anointed now with Daddies Sauce
Come back to the light. It says.
Bacon is the toughest, but I am strong. I can even fry it for my kids without eating it.
Bacon is practically poison anyway. Leaving aside the atrocity of treating the animal like shit and killing it.
Agreed on all counts, which is why I don't eat it and buy it only after extremely pronounced lobbying.
You’ve gone up 110% in my estimation OLB that you feed your kids bacon. You are a truly balanced one of them.
Everything Dura Ace said is true - but it’s also true bacon is delicious. 😋
I disagree with @Dura_Ace. Not all pigs are treated like shit and not all bacon is poisonous.
I regularly cycle past some free range pigs which literally do seem to enjoy lives in clover. Sure, they meet a grisly end but they wouldn't live at all if it weren't for the the demand for bacon pork and sausages etc.
And nitrite free bacon is not so bad for you AIUI.
You can’t keep pigs as both pets and food though. I missed Jack John and Tony after we ate them. I missed their sense of humour how they creep up behind me and push their snouts into my bottom if I bent over trying to knock me over for a wrestle. And they always finding inventive new ways to escape! Tunnels, piggy backs, group fence push.
Buckland on R4 saying that nobody could watch Colston's statue being torn down and thrown in the harbour without feeling appalled. An odd thing to say since clearly many people were pretty happy about it.
Not those people, obviously.
(I do wonder if some conservatives a making a bit of a strategic blunder here, hitching themselves to a side of the Culture war just as it goes from winning 60:40 to losing 40:60. A bit like the way some commentators started moaning about the wokeness of the England football team and had to reverse ferret when their kneeling stance turned out to be respected by the public and the team did well at playing football...
Now getting fanatical loyalty from 40% is good going in a FPTP system, but that depends on the 40% not falling further.)
It also ignores the fact that, for a proportion of them, you can never be hard-line enough in your views.
Buckland on R4 saying that nobody could watch Colston's statue being torn down and thrown in the harbour without feeling appalled. An odd thing to say since clearly many people were pretty happy about it.
OK I am going to ask what is probably an idiotic question but I'm struggling to get this gas prices issue. I understand why it happened in the first place but we have had it for a few months now and gas is a commodity type product and not (I believe) something that has a huge timeline in changing supply volumes so why is it still an issue? I appreciate the UK storage issue, but the price issue isn't unique to the UK.
AIUI gas prices increased worldwide as Asia and Europe competed for LNG as the world restarted industrial boilers coming out of a Covid lull. Normally Europe would revert to Russian gas and leave the more expensive LNG to Asia in that situation. For reasons that are not quite clear, Western Europe is not buying Russian gas on the spot markets and only taking contracted amounts. Is that because Russia is deliberately withholding gas beyond what it is contracted to supply, or is it because the market price of that gas is too high and Western Europe is refusing to buy and instead is running down reserves?
Despite not consuming much Russian gas the UK is in the same market as the rest of Europe for alternative supplies - Norwegian gas and LNG - and so pays the same prices.
For reasons not clear Europe isn't buying Russian Gas?
The Ukraine and Nord Stream 2 are reasons why Russia is playing politics with European gas supplies.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
This "yebbut Africans enslaved other Africans" stuff really is whataboutery in its purest form. Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions.
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions
Doesn't that translate as "it doesn't matter what the Africans did, and sometimes still do, to other Africans as they do not have our beliefs" ?
A rather racist view perhaps ?
And wasn't it part of the reasoning of the enlightenment slave owner that they were ultimately lifting up their slaves to a higher level of civilisation ? While taking the current profit from so doing
Given that the number of descendants of slavery who have migrated to Africa, whether from the USA, Brazil, Columbia, Jamaica or even Haiti is approximately zero they would doubtless say that 'lifting up' was achieved.
Jesus Christ, you seem to have caught whatever MrEd is ailing from.
"It is OK for me to do things to black men because other black men did similar things to a third set of black men" is about the most sht argument ever advanced, and the person advancing it in this case is MrEd. The relevance of Christianity etc etc is only that, almost unbelievably, it makes it even shitter than it was in the first place. For A to enslave B is always and everywhere a terribly, terribly wrong thing to do, colour and creed notwithstanding. Clear now?
While I agree that what MrEd wrote was textbook whataboutery, I don't have a clue why "Christianity" makes it "even shittier".
What makes the holocaust even shittier is that Hitler was (sometimes) a vegetarian!
When I first heard Hitler was vegetarian, I was not in the least surprised. I just shrugged. In fact another piece of the jigsaw falls into place.
Really, care to explain? Otherwise your comment comes across as pretty obnoxious.
Yes happy to explain. I am not normally obnoxious, perhaps towards my brother, but it’s fair of you to say I can come across as obnoxious when showing my strong dislike for vegetarians and vegans. I have no time for them. I’m not even ambivalent - in fact if they are forcing that insane diet on their children, making them all wan and sickly, they should be locked up.
🥓🍔🥩🍗🍖🥘🍤🍳
PS if I am talking to a vegetarian, Hitler was vegetarian: suck it down.
Thanks for clearing it up. Is it just "vegetarians and vegans" you have a "strong dislike for", or is it anyone who follows any kind of diet? People who don't drink? People who don't put milk in their tea? People who have any kind of religious belief? People who wear their hair long?
Don't feed the troll - even if it's only a vegan sausage roll.
Did you mean to sound so poetic? 🙂
It was an accidental rhyme, though I noticed it at the time.
Anyway I must fly, bacon in a pan I must fry.
I'm a vegetarian, like that famous Aryan - so I will find my niche, and finish off the quiche.
I thought you were on my side! Your one of THEM 🙁
Ha ha, no, sorry, I have been one of THEM for almost 35 years but I have a sense of humour. 😜
Can you not smell this bacon I have frying, calling you like a religious calling?
Anointed now with Daddies Sauce
Come back to the light. It says.
Bacon is the toughest, but I am strong. I can even fry it for my kids without eating it.
Bacon is practically poison anyway. Leaving aside the atrocity of treating the animal like shit and killing it.
Agreed on all counts, which is why I don't eat it and buy it only after extremely pronounced lobbying.
You’ve gone up 110% in my estimation OLB that you feed your kids bacon. You are a truly balanced one of them.
Everything Dura Ace said is true - but it’s also true bacon is delicious. 😋
Despite being a vegetarian for almost 35 years I believe strongly that it's up to my kids what dietary choices they make. I frequently cook meat for the rest of the family.
Day 6 of a meat-free diet for me. So far, so good.
What is remarkable to me in the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the British Empire is that despite fierce opposition, a majority decision was taken to end an extremely lucrative trade on almost solely moral grounds. There are few precedents. I'd say I was proud, but that would imply I'm ashamed of the slave trade that preceded it, which I'm not, not being responsible for either.
On Djokovic, I see it was discussed here earlier but I didn't notice the crucial detail that I heard on the radio mentioned. Apologies if I missed it, but..
The State rule for domestic travel to Victoria is that you can have been previously infected, rather than vaccinated. Apparently all that Djokovic has is "proof" that he's been infected.
The Federal rule for entering Australia has no such exemption. You have to prove that you are unable to be vaccinated. It's quite clear that any State rules are in addition.
"Proof that you cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons when coming to Australia If you are coming to Australia and have a medical contraindication recorded in the Australian Immunisation Register (AIR) you can show an Australian COVID-19 digital certificate to airline staff. You can otherwise show your immunisation history statement.
If you do not have your medical contraindication recorded in the AIR you will need to show airline staff a medical certificate that indicates you are unable to be vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine because of a medical condition. The medical certificate must be in English and include the following information:
your name (this must match your travel identification documents) date of medical consultation and details of your medical practitioner details that clearly acknowledge that you have a medical condition which means you cannot receive a COVID-19 vaccination (vaccination is contraindicated). Airlines are responsible for ensuring your proof meets these requirements.
People who have received non-TGA approved or recognised vaccines should not be certified in this category and cannot be treated as vaccinated for the purposes of their travel.
You should check any requirements, particularly quarantine and post-arrival testing requirements, in the state or territory to which you are travelling as this will impact your travel arrangements.
If you are planning on traveling onwards to or through a different state or territory when you arrive in Australia, you need to check domestic travel restrictions. States and territories can apply their own travel restrictions.
You are responsible for complying with travel restrictions and requirements that apply to you. Please note: proof that you cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons is separate to a Commissioner’s travel exemption." https://covid19.homeaffairs.gov.au/vaccinated-travellers#toc-6
I'm sure they won't let him in. He might be able to sue his airline.
My reading is the Federal has overrode the State in this one case for political reasons. Djokovic is getting special treatment. Special *adverse* treatment. It's a misuse of power imo but I'd think it has sufficient technical validity to stand. We'll see. It's potentially a big problem for Djokovic longer term because countries other than Oz might take a similar approach.
The Australian lawyer on the radio earlier was very clear on this: Federal always overrides State.
Politicians will talk tough for political reasons, but the decision will have nothing to do with the politics.
I wonder if the prosecutor might try and have him charged with making false statements to government officials, or whatever is the exact offence in Australia, for getting the doc to lie for him on the forms.
That would completely screw his career, as he would need to explain this to every country he ever visits, and they would be well within their rights to deny him a visa as a result.
On Djokovic, I see it was discussed here earlier but I didn't notice the crucial detail that I heard on the radio mentioned. Apologies if I missed it, but..
The State rule for domestic travel to Victoria is that you can have been previously infected, rather than vaccinated. Apparently all that Djokovic has is "proof" that he's been infected.
The Federal rule for entering Australia has no such exemption. You have to prove that you are unable to be vaccinated. It's quite clear that any State rules are in addition.
"Proof that you cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons when coming to Australia If you are coming to Australia and have a medical contraindication recorded in the Australian Immunisation Register (AIR) you can show an Australian COVID-19 digital certificate to airline staff. You can otherwise show your immunisation history statement.
If you do not have your medical contraindication recorded in the AIR you will need to show airline staff a medical certificate that indicates you are unable to be vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine because of a medical condition. The medical certificate must be in English and include the following information:
your name (this must match your travel identification documents) date of medical consultation and details of your medical practitioner details that clearly acknowledge that you have a medical condition which means you cannot receive a COVID-19 vaccination (vaccination is contraindicated). Airlines are responsible for ensuring your proof meets these requirements.
People who have received non-TGA approved or recognised vaccines should not be certified in this category and cannot be treated as vaccinated for the purposes of their travel.
You should check any requirements, particularly quarantine and post-arrival testing requirements, in the state or territory to which you are travelling as this will impact your travel arrangements.
If you are planning on traveling onwards to or through a different state or territory when you arrive in Australia, you need to check domestic travel restrictions. States and territories can apply their own travel restrictions.
You are responsible for complying with travel restrictions and requirements that apply to you. Please note: proof that you cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons is separate to a Commissioner’s travel exemption." https://covid19.homeaffairs.gov.au/vaccinated-travellers#toc-6
I'm sure they won't let him in. He might be able to sue his airline.
My reading is the Federal has overrode the State in this one case for political reasons. Djokovic is getting special treatment. Special *adverse* treatment. It's a misuse of power imo but I'd think it has sufficient technical validity to stand. We'll see. It's potentially a big problem for Djokovic longer term because countries other than Oz might take a similar approach.
The Australian lawyer on the radio earlier was very clear on this: Federal always overrides State.
Politicians will talk tough for political reasons, but the decision will have nothing to do with the politics.
I wonder if the prosecutor might try and have him charged with making false statements to government officials, or whatever is the exact offence in Australia, for getting the doc to lie for him on the forms.
That would completely screw his career, as he would need to explain this to every country he ever visits, and they would be well within their rights to deny him a visa as a result.
I think his unwillingness to get vaccinated will be increasingly causing issues for his career as his entry to most countries for the foreseeable future will require proof of vaccination....I think it is going to become a defacto requirement in at least all developed countries.
The problem is that this Omicron picture is similar but *bigger*. Before we get ONS regional prevalences (tomorrow), reported cases per 100k will be an imperfect proxy, but they suggest the North is going past London's peak. Hospitals there are buckling because it's worse. (2/2).
Hospitalisations in London appearsto have peaked and is declining.
Hospitalisations in the North West appears to be surpassing last winter's peak.
Which is quite surprising - the impression I got from London was that pretty much everyone had it, but it certainly doesn't feel like that here. 'A lot of it about', certainly. But no worse than any cold in any winter.
But perhaps that's because I don't know that many old people, and it's considerably worse for them.
Younger v older population centres?
Terrace Housing?
Bingo? Whippets? Timothy Taylor’s Landlord?
The hospitalisations are definitely starting to fall, in London....
Is it that unlike Lancashire, sometimes the sun comes out in London and it’s a bit warmer?
What do your monoliths show for conurbation v rural split?
I'll give you the former but winters in the north west are actually warmer than in the south east, I think. It's the gulf stream. The price of which, though, is that it is cloudier and damper.
Really? I find London warmer than north this time of year. All year really.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
This "yebbut Africans enslaved other Africans" stuff really is whataboutery in its purest form. Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions.
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions
Doesn't that translate as "it doesn't matter what the Africans did, and sometimes still do, to other Africans as they do not have our beliefs" ?
A rather racist view perhaps ?
And wasn't it part of the reasoning of the enlightenment slave owner that they were ultimately lifting up their slaves to a higher level of civilisation ? While taking the current profit from so doing
Given that the number of descendants of slavery who have migrated to Africa, whether from the USA, Brazil, Columbia, Jamaica or even Haiti is approximately zero they would doubtless say that 'lifting up' was achieved.
Jesus Christ, you seem to have caught whatever MrEd is ailing from.
"It is OK for me to do things to black men because other black men did similar things to a third set of black men" is about the most sht argument ever advanced, and the person advancing it in this case is MrEd. The relevance of Christianity etc etc is only that, almost unbelievably, it makes it even shitter than it was in the first place. For A to enslave B is always and everywhere a terribly, terribly wrong thing to do, colour and creed notwithstanding. Clear now?
While I agree that what MrEd wrote was textbook whataboutery, I don't have a clue why "Christianity" makes it "even shittier".
What makes the holocaust even shittier is that Hitler was (sometimes) a vegetarian!
When I first heard Hitler was vegetarian, I was not in the least surprised. I just shrugged. In fact another piece of the jigsaw falls into place.
Really, care to explain? Otherwise your comment comes across as pretty obnoxious.
Yes happy to explain. I am not normally obnoxious, perhaps towards my brother, but it’s fair of you to say I can come across as obnoxious when showing my strong dislike for vegetarians and vegans. I have no time for them. I’m not even ambivalent - in fact if they are forcing that insane diet on their children, making them all wan and sickly, they should be locked up.
🥓🍔🥩🍗🍖🥘🍤🍳
PS if I am talking to a vegetarian, Hitler was vegetarian: suck it down.
Thanks for clearing it up. Is it just "vegetarians and vegans" you have a "strong dislike for", or is it anyone who follows any kind of diet? People who don't drink? People who don't put milk in their tea? People who have any kind of religious belief? People who wear their hair long?
Don't feed the troll - even if it's only a vegan sausage roll.
Did you mean to sound so poetic? 🙂
It was an accidental rhyme, though I noticed it at the time.
Anyway I must fly, bacon in a pan I must fry.
I'm a vegetarian, like that famous Aryan - so I will find my niche, and finish off the quiche.
I thought you were on my side! Your one of THEM 🙁
Ha ha, no, sorry, I have been one of THEM for almost 35 years but I have a sense of humour. 😜
Can you not smell this bacon I have frying, calling you like a religious calling?
Anointed now with Daddies Sauce
Come back to the light. It says.
Bacon is the toughest, but I am strong. I can even fry it for my kids without eating it.
Bacon is practically poison anyway. Leaving aside the atrocity of treating the animal like shit and killing it.
Agreed on all counts, which is why I don't eat it and buy it only after extremely pronounced lobbying.
You’ve gone up 110% in my estimation OLB that you feed your kids bacon. You are a truly balanced one of them.
Everything Dura Ace said is true - but it’s also true bacon is delicious. 😋
A good friend of mine is a Muslim vegetarian. He can still be persuaded by the occasional bacon sandwich!
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
This "yebbut Africans enslaved other Africans" stuff really is whataboutery in its purest form. Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions.
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions
Doesn't that translate as "it doesn't matter what the Africans did, and sometimes still do, to other Africans as they do not have our beliefs" ?
A rather racist view perhaps ?
And wasn't it part of the reasoning of the enlightenment slave owner that they were ultimately lifting up their slaves to a higher level of civilisation ? While taking the current profit from so doing
Given that the number of descendants of slavery who have migrated to Africa, whether from the USA, Brazil, Columbia, Jamaica or even Haiti is approximately zero they would doubtless say that 'lifting up' was achieved.
Jesus Christ, you seem to have caught whatever MrEd is ailing from.
"It is OK for me to do things to black men because other black men did similar things to a third set of black men" is about the most sht argument ever advanced, and the person advancing it in this case is MrEd. The relevance of Christianity etc etc is only that, almost unbelievably, it makes it even shitter than it was in the first place. For A to enslave B is always and everywhere a terribly, terribly wrong thing to do, colour and creed notwithstanding. Clear now?
While I agree that what MrEd wrote was textbook whataboutery, I don't have a clue why "Christianity" makes it "even shittier".
What makes the holocaust even shittier is that Hitler was (sometimes) a vegetarian!
When I first heard Hitler was vegetarian, I was not in the least surprised. I just shrugged. In fact another piece of the jigsaw falls into place.
Really, care to explain? Otherwise your comment comes across as pretty obnoxious.
Yes happy to explain. I am not normally obnoxious, perhaps towards my brother, but it’s fair of you to say I can come across as obnoxious when showing my strong dislike for vegetarians and vegans. I have no time for them. I’m not even ambivalent - in fact if they are forcing that insane diet on their children, making them all wan and sickly, they should be locked up.
🥓🍔🥩🍗🍖🥘🍤🍳
PS if I am talking to a vegetarian, Hitler was vegetarian: suck it down.
Thanks for clearing it up. Is it just "vegetarians and vegans" you have a "strong dislike for", or is it anyone who follows any kind of diet? People who don't drink? People who don't put milk in their tea? People who have any kind of religious belief? People who wear their hair long?
Don't feed the troll - even if it's only a vegan sausage roll.
Did you mean to sound so poetic? 🙂
It was an accidental rhyme, though I noticed it at the time.
Anyway I must fly, bacon in a pan I must fry.
I'm a vegetarian, like that famous Aryan - so I will find my niche, and finish off the quiche.
I thought you were on my side! Your one of THEM 🙁
Ha ha, no, sorry, I have been one of THEM for almost 35 years but I have a sense of humour. 😜
Can you not smell this bacon I have frying, calling you like a religious calling?
Anointed now with Daddies Sauce
Come back to the light. It says.
Bacon is the toughest, but I am strong. I can even fry it for my kids without eating it.
Bacon is practically poison anyway. Leaving aside the atrocity of treating the animal like shit and killing it.
Agreed on all counts, which is why I don't eat it and buy it only after extremely pronounced lobbying.
You’ve gone up 110% in my estimation OLB that you feed your kids bacon. You are a truly balanced one of them.
Everything Dura Ace said is true - but it’s also true bacon is delicious. 😋
I disagree with @Dura_Ace. Not all pigs are treated like shit and not all bacon is poisonous.
I regularly cycle past some free range pigs which literally do seem to enjoy lives in clover. Sure, they meet a grisly end but they wouldn't live at all if it weren't for the the demand for bacon pork and sausages etc.
And nitrite free bacon is not so bad for you AIUI.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
This "yebbut Africans enslaved other Africans" stuff really is whataboutery in its purest form. Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions.
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions
Doesn't that translate as "it doesn't matter what the Africans did, and sometimes still do, to other Africans as they do not have our beliefs" ?
A rather racist view perhaps ?
And wasn't it part of the reasoning of the enlightenment slave owner that they were ultimately lifting up their slaves to a higher level of civilisation ? While taking the current profit from so doing
Given that the number of descendants of slavery who have migrated to Africa, whether from the USA, Brazil, Columbia, Jamaica or even Haiti is approximately zero they would doubtless say that 'lifting up' was achieved.
Jesus Christ, you seem to have caught whatever MrEd is ailing from.
"It is OK for me to do things to black men because other black men did similar things to a third set of black men" is about the most sht argument ever advanced, and the person advancing it in this case is MrEd. The relevance of Christianity etc etc is only that, almost unbelievably, it makes it even shitter than it was in the first place. For A to enslave B is always and everywhere a terribly, terribly wrong thing to do, colour and creed notwithstanding. Clear now?
While I agree that what MrEd wrote was textbook whataboutery, I don't have a clue why "Christianity" makes it "even shittier".
What makes the holocaust even shittier is that Hitler was (sometimes) a vegetarian!
When I first heard Hitler was vegetarian, I was not in the least surprised. I just shrugged. In fact another piece of the jigsaw falls into place.
Really, care to explain? Otherwise your comment comes across as pretty obnoxious.
Yes happy to explain. I am not normally obnoxious, perhaps towards my brother, but it’s fair of you to say I can come across as obnoxious when showing my strong dislike for vegetarians and vegans. I have no time for them. I’m not even ambivalent - in fact if they are forcing that insane diet on their children, making them all wan and sickly, they should be locked up.
🥓🍔🥩🍗🍖🥘🍤🍳
PS if I am talking to a vegetarian, Hitler was vegetarian: suck it down.
Thanks for clearing it up. Is it just "vegetarians and vegans" you have a "strong dislike for", or is it anyone who follows any kind of diet? People who don't drink? People who don't put milk in their tea? People who have any kind of religious belief? People who wear their hair long?
Don't feed the troll - even if it's only a vegan sausage roll.
Did you mean to sound so poetic? 🙂
It was an accidental rhyme, though I noticed it at the time.
Anyway I must fly, bacon in a pan I must fry.
I'm a vegetarian, like that famous Aryan - so I will find my niche, and finish off the quiche.
I thought you were on my side! Your one of THEM 🙁
Ha ha, no, sorry, I have been one of THEM for almost 35 years but I have a sense of humour. 😜
Can you not smell this bacon I have frying, calling you like a religious calling?
Anointed now with Daddies Sauce
Come back to the light. It says.
Bacon is the toughest, but I am strong. I can even fry it for my kids without eating it.
Bacon is practically poison anyway. Leaving aside the atrocity of treating the animal like shit and killing it.
Agreed on all counts, which is why I don't eat it and buy it only after extremely pronounced lobbying.
You’ve gone up 110% in my estimation OLB that you feed your kids bacon. You are a truly balanced one of them.
Everything Dura Ace said is true - but it’s also true bacon is delicious. 😋
I disagree with @Dura_Ace. Not all pigs are treated like shit and not all bacon is poisonous.
I regularly cycle past some free range pigs which literally do seem to enjoy lives in clover. Sure, they meet a grisly end but they wouldn't live at all if it weren't for the the demand for bacon pork and sausages etc.
And nitrite free bacon is not so bad for you AIUI.
You can’t keep pigs as both pets and food though. I missed Jack John and Tony after we ate them. I missed their sense of humour how they creep up behind me and push their snouts into my bottom if I bent over trying to knock me over for a wrestle. And they always finding inventive new ways to escape! Tunnels, piggy backs, group fence push.
My wife tells me of when she was child, the chickens were pets and then food. One chicken was a particular friend. She cried though the meal, in between asking for more, because it was so delicious...
Buckland on R4 saying that nobody could watch Colston's statue being torn down and thrown in the harbour without feeling appalled. An odd thing to say since clearly many people were pretty happy about it.
I'm too busy to do more than occasionally dive in and out, but is much of the debate about Juries because of the Colson case?
Juries can acquit for whatever reason they like. Its a demonstrable fact that the 4 tits pushed the statue into the water, but the jury have decided that it doesn't constitute criminal damage.
Isn't that the whole point of a jury system? Or can we now expect Priti Vacant to try and abolish trial by jury? Mind you, with both mega cuts and Covid the legal system has defacto done so with so big a backlog...
Your middle paragraph sums up my position entirely. I might have added a weary sigh, but that's all.
*Edit* - Why the weary sigh, I ask myself. Clearly not because I'm keen for a big statue of a slaver in Bristol. Nor, if I'm honest, because I'd have rather the council had taken it down themselves - that is true, but doesn't elicit a weary sigh. The weary sigh is because the four tits are just so unbearably pleased with themselves. And you can't jail someone for that, no matter how much you'd like to.
If the 4Ts haven't reflected on the fact they've had a lucky escape then they'll likely do something else ill-advised and come in front of a less sympathetic jury.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
This "yebbut Africans enslaved other Africans" stuff really is whataboutery in its purest form. Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions.
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions
Doesn't that translate as "it doesn't matter what the Africans did, and sometimes still do, to other Africans as they do not have our beliefs" ?
A rather racist view perhaps ?
And wasn't it part of the reasoning of the enlightenment slave owner that they were ultimately lifting up their slaves to a higher level of civilisation ? While taking the current profit from so doing
Given that the number of descendants of slavery who have migrated to Africa, whether from the USA, Brazil, Columbia, Jamaica or even Haiti is approximately zero they would doubtless say that 'lifting up' was achieved.
Jesus Christ, you seem to have caught whatever MrEd is ailing from.
"It is OK for me to do things to black men because other black men did similar things to a third set of black men" is about the most sht argument ever advanced, and the person advancing it in this case is MrEd. The relevance of Christianity etc etc is only that, almost unbelievably, it makes it even shitter than it was in the first place. For A to enslave B is always and everywhere a terribly, terribly wrong thing to do, colour and creed notwithstanding. Clear now?
While I agree that what MrEd wrote was textbook whataboutery, I don't have a clue why "Christianity" makes it "even shittier".
What makes the holocaust even shittier is that Hitler was (sometimes) a vegetarian!
When I first heard Hitler was vegetarian, I was not in the least surprised. I just shrugged. In fact another piece of the jigsaw falls into place.
Really, care to explain? Otherwise your comment comes across as pretty obnoxious.
Yes happy to explain. I am not normally obnoxious, perhaps towards my brother, but it’s fair of you to say I can come across as obnoxious when showing my strong dislike for vegetarians and vegans. I have no time for them. I’m not even ambivalent - in fact if they are forcing that insane diet on their children, making them all wan and sickly, they should be locked up.
🥓🍔🥩🍗🍖🥘🍤🍳
PS if I am talking to a vegetarian, Hitler was vegetarian: suck it down.
Thanks for clearing it up. Is it just "vegetarians and vegans" you have a "strong dislike for", or is it anyone who follows any kind of diet? People who don't drink? People who don't put milk in their tea? People who have any kind of religious belief? People who wear their hair long?
Don't feed the troll - even if it's only a vegan sausage roll.
Did you mean to sound so poetic? 🙂
It was an accidental rhyme, though I noticed it at the time.
Anyway I must fly, bacon in a pan I must fry.
I'm a vegetarian, like that famous Aryan - so I will find my niche, and finish off the quiche.
I thought you were on my side! Your one of THEM 🙁
Ha ha, no, sorry, I have been one of THEM for almost 35 years but I have a sense of humour. 😜
Can you not smell this bacon I have frying, calling you like a religious calling?
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
This "yebbut Africans enslaved other Africans" stuff really is whataboutery in its purest form. Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions.
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions
Doesn't that translate as "it doesn't matter what the Africans did, and sometimes still do, to other Africans as they do not have our beliefs" ?
A rather racist view perhaps ?
And wasn't it part of the reasoning of the enlightenment slave owner that they were ultimately lifting up their slaves to a higher level of civilisation ? While taking the current profit from so doing
Given that the number of descendants of slavery who have migrated to Africa, whether from the USA, Brazil, Columbia, Jamaica or even Haiti is approximately zero they would doubtless say that 'lifting up' was achieved.
Jesus Christ, you seem to have caught whatever MrEd is ailing from.
"It is OK for me to do things to black men because other black men did similar things to a third set of black men" is about the most sht argument ever advanced, and the person advancing it in this case is MrEd. The relevance of Christianity etc etc is only that, almost unbelievably, it makes it even shitter than it was in the first place. For A to enslave B is always and everywhere a terribly, terribly wrong thing to do, colour and creed notwithstanding. Clear now?
While I agree that what MrEd wrote was textbook whataboutery, I don't have a clue why "Christianity" makes it "even shittier".
What makes the holocaust even shittier is that Hitler was (sometimes) a vegetarian!
When I first heard Hitler was vegetarian, I was not in the least surprised. I just shrugged. In fact another piece of the jigsaw falls into place.
Really, care to explain? Otherwise your comment comes across as pretty obnoxious.
Yes happy to explain. I am not normally obnoxious, perhaps towards my brother, but it’s fair of you to say I can come across as obnoxious when showing my strong dislike for vegetarians and vegans. I have no time for them. I’m not even ambivalent - in fact if they are forcing that insane diet on their children, making them all wan and sickly, they should be locked up.
🥓🍔🥩🍗🍖🥘🍤🍳
PS if I am talking to a vegetarian, Hitler was vegetarian: suck it down.
Thanks for clearing it up. Is it just "vegetarians and vegans" you have a "strong dislike for", or is it anyone who follows any kind of diet? People who don't drink? People who don't put milk in their tea? People who have any kind of religious belief? People who wear their hair long?
Don't feed the troll - even if it's only a vegan sausage roll.
Did you mean to sound so poetic? 🙂
It was an accidental rhyme, though I noticed it at the time.
Anyway I must fly, bacon in a pan I must fry.
I'm a vegetarian, like that famous Aryan - so I will find my niche, and finish off the quiche.
I thought you were on my side! Your one of THEM 🙁
Ha ha, no, sorry, I have been one of THEM for almost 35 years but I have a sense of humour. 😜
Can you not smell this bacon I have frying, calling you like a religious calling?
Anointed now with Daddies Sauce
Come back to the light. It says.
Bacon is the toughest, but I am strong. I can even fry it for my kids without eating it.
Bacon is practically poison anyway. Leaving aside the atrocity of treating the animal like shit and killing it.
Agreed on all counts, which is why I don't eat it and buy it only after extremely pronounced lobbying.
You’ve gone up 110% in my estimation OLB that you feed your kids bacon. You are a truly balanced one of them.
Everything Dura Ace said is true - but it’s also true bacon is delicious. 😋
I disagree with @Dura_Ace. Not all pigs are treated like shit and not all bacon is poisonous.
I regularly cycle past some free range pigs which literally do seem to enjoy lives in clover. Sure, they meet a grisly end but they wouldn't live at all if it weren't for the the demand for bacon pork and sausages etc.
And nitrite free bacon is not so bad for you AIUI.
You can’t keep pigs as both pets and food though. I missed Jack John and Tony after we ate them. I missed their sense of humour how they creep up behind me and push their snouts into my bottom if I bent over trying to knock me over for a wrestle. And they always finding inventive new ways to escape! Tunnels, piggy backs, group fence push.
Disagree.
I am always happier when I know my lunch's former name.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
This "yebbut Africans enslaved other Africans" stuff really is whataboutery in its purest form. Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions.
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions
Doesn't that translate as "it doesn't matter what the Africans did, and sometimes still do, to other Africans as they do not have our beliefs" ?
A rather racist view perhaps ?
And wasn't it part of the reasoning of the enlightenment slave owner that they were ultimately lifting up their slaves to a higher level of civilisation ? While taking the current profit from so doing
Given that the number of descendants of slavery who have migrated to Africa, whether from the USA, Brazil, Columbia, Jamaica or even Haiti is approximately zero they would doubtless say that 'lifting up' was achieved.
Jesus Christ, you seem to have caught whatever MrEd is ailing from.
"It is OK for me to do things to black men because other black men did similar things to a third set of black men" is about the most sht argument ever advanced, and the person advancing it in this case is MrEd. The relevance of Christianity etc etc is only that, almost unbelievably, it makes it even shitter than it was in the first place. For A to enslave B is always and everywhere a terribly, terribly wrong thing to do, colour and creed notwithstanding. Clear now?
While I agree that what MrEd wrote was textbook whataboutery, I don't have a clue why "Christianity" makes it "even shittier".
What makes the holocaust even shittier is that Hitler was (sometimes) a vegetarian!
When I first heard Hitler was vegetarian, I was not in the least surprised. I just shrugged. In fact another piece of the jigsaw falls into place.
Really, care to explain? Otherwise your comment comes across as pretty obnoxious.
Yes happy to explain. I am not normally obnoxious, perhaps towards my brother, but it’s fair of you to say I can come across as obnoxious when showing my strong dislike for vegetarians and vegans. I have no time for them. I’m not even ambivalent - in fact if they are forcing that insane diet on their children, making them all wan and sickly, they should be locked up.
🥓🍔🥩🍗🍖🥘🍤🍳
PS if I am talking to a vegetarian, Hitler was vegetarian: suck it down.
Thanks for clearing it up. Is it just "vegetarians and vegans" you have a "strong dislike for", or is it anyone who follows any kind of diet? People who don't drink? People who don't put milk in their tea? People who have any kind of religious belief? People who wear their hair long?
Don't feed the troll - even if it's only a vegan sausage roll.
Did you mean to sound so poetic? 🙂
It was an accidental rhyme, though I noticed it at the time.
Anyway I must fly, bacon in a pan I must fry.
I'm a vegetarian, like that famous Aryan - so I will find my niche, and finish off the quiche.
I thought you were on my side! Your one of THEM 🙁
Ha ha, no, sorry, I have been one of THEM for almost 35 years but I have a sense of humour. 😜
Can you not smell this bacon I have frying, calling you like a religious calling?
Anointed now with Daddies Sauce
Come back to the light. It says.
Bacon is the toughest, but I am strong. I can even fry it for my kids without eating it.
Bacon is practically poison anyway. Leaving aside the atrocity of treating the animal like shit and killing it.
Agreed on all counts, which is why I don't eat it and buy it only after extremely pronounced lobbying.
You’ve gone up 110% in my estimation OLB that you feed your kids bacon. You are a truly balanced one of them.
Everything Dura Ace said is true - but it’s also true bacon is delicious. 😋
I disagree with @Dura_Ace. Not all pigs are treated like shit and not all bacon is poisonous.
I regularly cycle past some free range pigs which literally do seem to enjoy lives in clover. Sure, they meet a grisly end but they wouldn't live at all if it weren't for the the demand for bacon pork and sausages etc.
And nitrite free bacon is not so bad for you AIUI.
You can’t keep pigs as both pets and food though. I missed Jack John and Tony after we ate them. I missed their sense of humour how they creep up behind me and push their snouts into my bottom if I bent over trying to knock me over for a wrestle. And they always finding inventive new ways to escape! Tunnels, piggy backs, group fence push.
My wife tells me of when she was child, the chickens were pets and then food. One chicken was a particular friend. She cried though the meal, in between asking for more, because it was so delicious...
Growing up, our neighbours used to have a lamb as a pet each year. They couldn't face eating that specific lamb, so they used to trade....or at least that is what they told the kids.
I thought it was generally agreed to be a bad thing...
Been reading up about Scotland's links with slavery for work in local history. Interesting to see how some moaned about abolitionists because it would disrupt business, damage economic viability etc.[deleted in the interests of harmony]
The problem is that this Omicron picture is similar but *bigger*. Before we get ONS regional prevalences (tomorrow), reported cases per 100k will be an imperfect proxy, but they suggest the North is going past London's peak. Hospitals there are buckling because it's worse. (2/2).
Hospitalisations in London appearsto have peaked and is declining.
Hospitalisations in the North West appears to be surpassing last winter's peak.
Which is quite surprising - the impression I got from London was that pretty much everyone had it, but it certainly doesn't feel like that here. 'A lot of it about', certainly. But no worse than any cold in any winter.
But perhaps that's because I don't know that many old people, and it's considerably worse for them.
Younger v older population centres?
Terrace Housing?
Bingo? Whippets? Timothy Taylor’s Landlord?
The hospitalisations are definitely starting to fall, in London....
Is it that unlike Lancashire, sometimes the sun comes out in London and it’s a bit warmer?
What do your monoliths show for conurbation v rural split?
I'll give you the former but winters in the north west are actually warmer than in the south east, I think. It's the gulf stream. The price of which, though, is that it is cloudier and damper.
Really? I find London warmer than north this time of year. All year really.
North West specifically – and snow more common in London than Manchester for the same reason. The SE is exposed to easterlies, whereas the NW is not. Cookie is right (although the Lake District winters can be harsh in a cold polar maritime flow).
Good for him. I'm with JRM: I don't think the decision was the one I would have made (though I did not sit through the trial, and the jury did) but I'm totally in favour of the jury system. The fact we have human juries mean we get human verdicts. Unfortunately in this case it means allowing four very tedious people their moment in the sun. But if anything I'm more in favour of the jury system than ever. What if one day I'm had up for something which the law says is wrong but humans taking into account the context would say should be allowed? A jury system is exactly what I'd want.
Just heard a report from Melbourne that Djokovic is claiming he has natural immunity to covid/omicron
Good luck with that
Guy is obviously a fruitcake
Based on prior infection, which is an exemption allowed by the state government. Hardly a fruitcake for claiming that. The problem is the federal government doesn't recognise that, and those are the people you deal with when entering the country.
I thought it was generally agreed to be a bad thing...
Been reading up about Scotland's links with slavery for work in local history. Interesting to see how some moaned about abolitionists because it would disrupt business, damage economic viability etc. Sounded just like backbench Tories and covid precautions (which tbf they'd equate to slavery, no doubt).
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
This "yebbut Africans enslaved other Africans" stuff really is whataboutery in its purest form. Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions.
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions
Doesn't that translate as "it doesn't matter what the Africans did, and sometimes still do, to other Africans as they do not have our beliefs" ?
A rather racist view perhaps ?
And wasn't it part of the reasoning of the enlightenment slave owner that they were ultimately lifting up their slaves to a higher level of civilisation ? While taking the current profit from so doing
Given that the number of descendants of slavery who have migrated to Africa, whether from the USA, Brazil, Columbia, Jamaica or even Haiti is approximately zero they would doubtless say that 'lifting up' was achieved.
Jesus Christ, you seem to have caught whatever MrEd is ailing from.
"It is OK for me to do things to black men because other black men did similar things to a third set of black men" is about the most sht argument ever advanced, and the person advancing it in this case is MrEd. The relevance of Christianity etc etc is only that, almost unbelievably, it makes it even shitter than it was in the first place. For A to enslave B is always and everywhere a terribly, terribly wrong thing to do, colour and creed notwithstanding. Clear now?
While I agree that what MrEd wrote was textbook whataboutery, I don't have a clue why "Christianity" makes it "even shittier".
What makes the holocaust even shittier is that Hitler was (sometimes) a vegetarian!
When I first heard Hitler was vegetarian, I was not in the least surprised. I just shrugged. In fact another piece of the jigsaw falls into place.
Really, care to explain? Otherwise your comment comes across as pretty obnoxious.
Yes happy to explain. I am not normally obnoxious, perhaps towards my brother, but it’s fair of you to say I can come across as obnoxious when showing my strong dislike for vegetarians and vegans. I have no time for them. I’m not even ambivalent - in fact if they are forcing that insane diet on their children, making them all wan and sickly, they should be locked up.
🥓🍔🥩🍗🍖🥘🍤🍳
PS if I am talking to a vegetarian, Hitler was vegetarian: suck it down.
Thanks for clearing it up. Is it just "vegetarians and vegans" you have a "strong dislike for", or is it anyone who follows any kind of diet? People who don't drink? People who don't put milk in their tea? People who have any kind of religious belief? People who wear their hair long?
Don't feed the troll - even if it's only a vegan sausage roll.
Did you mean to sound so poetic? 🙂
It was an accidental rhyme, though I noticed it at the time.
Anyway I must fly, bacon in a pan I must fry.
I'm a vegetarian, like that famous Aryan - so I will find my niche, and finish off the quiche.
I thought you were on my side! Your one of THEM 🙁
Ha ha, no, sorry, I have been one of THEM for almost 35 years but I have a sense of humour. 😜
Can you not smell this bacon I have frying, calling you like a religious calling?
Anointed now with Daddies Sauce
Come back to the light. It says.
Bacon is the toughest, but I am strong. I can even fry it for my kids without eating it.
Bacon is practically poison anyway. Leaving aside the atrocity of treating the animal like shit and killing it.
Agreed on all counts, which is why I don't eat it and buy it only after extremely pronounced lobbying.
You’ve gone up 110% in my estimation OLB that you feed your kids bacon. You are a truly balanced one of them.
Everything Dura Ace said is true - but it’s also true bacon is delicious. 😋
I disagree with @Dura_Ace. Not all pigs are treated like shit and not all bacon is poisonous.
I regularly cycle past some free range pigs which literally do seem to enjoy lives in clover. Sure, they meet a grisly end but they wouldn't live at all if it weren't for the the demand for bacon pork and sausages etc.
And nitrite free bacon is not so bad for you AIUI.
You can’t keep pigs as both pets and food though. I missed Jack John and Tony after we ate them. I missed their sense of humour how they creep up behind me and push their snouts into my bottom if I bent over trying to knock me over for a wrestle. And they always finding inventive new ways to escape! Tunnels, piggy backs, group fence push.
My wife tells me of when she was child, the chickens were pets and then food. One chicken was a particular friend. She cried though the meal, in between asking for more, because it was so delicious...
Friends of ours couldn't bear to give their chooks the chop. Now their garden is a poultry retirement home - elderly, grumpy, no longer laying fowl!
Just heard a report from Melbourne that Djokovic is claiming he has natural immunity to covid/omicron
Good luck with that
Guy is obviously a fruitcake
Based on prior infection, which is an exemption allowed by the state government. Hardly a fruitcake for claiming that. The problem is the federal government doesn't recognise that, and those are the people you deal with when entering the country.
Well with Omicron it is no longer true. Before Omicron reinfection rates were rounding errors (hence the recovery from prior infection exemption in some places), now it extremely common.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
This "yebbut Africans enslaved other Africans" stuff really is whataboutery in its purest form. Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions.
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions
Doesn't that translate as "it doesn't matter what the Africans did, and sometimes still do, to other Africans as they do not have our beliefs" ?
A rather racist view perhaps ?
And wasn't it part of the reasoning of the enlightenment slave owner that they were ultimately lifting up their slaves to a higher level of civilisation ? While taking the current profit from so doing
Given that the number of descendants of slavery who have migrated to Africa, whether from the USA, Brazil, Columbia, Jamaica or even Haiti is approximately zero they would doubtless say that 'lifting up' was achieved.
Jesus Christ, you seem to have caught whatever MrEd is ailing from.
"It is OK for me to do things to black men because other black men did similar things to a third set of black men" is about the most sht argument ever advanced, and the person advancing it in this case is MrEd. The relevance of Christianity etc etc is only that, almost unbelievably, it makes it even shitter than it was in the first place. For A to enslave B is always and everywhere a terribly, terribly wrong thing to do, colour and creed notwithstanding. Clear now?
While I agree that what MrEd wrote was textbook whataboutery, I don't have a clue why "Christianity" makes it "even shittier".
What makes the holocaust even shittier is that Hitler was (sometimes) a vegetarian!
When I first heard Hitler was vegetarian, I was not in the least surprised. I just shrugged. In fact another piece of the jigsaw falls into place.
Really, care to explain? Otherwise your comment comes across as pretty obnoxious.
Yes happy to explain. I am not normally obnoxious, perhaps towards my brother, but it’s fair of you to say I can come across as obnoxious when showing my strong dislike for vegetarians and vegans. I have no time for them. I’m not even ambivalent - in fact if they are forcing that insane diet on their children, making them all wan and sickly, they should be locked up.
🥓🍔🥩🍗🍖🥘🍤🍳
PS if I am talking to a vegetarian, Hitler was vegetarian: suck it down.
Thanks for clearing it up. Is it just "vegetarians and vegans" you have a "strong dislike for", or is it anyone who follows any kind of diet? People who don't drink? People who don't put milk in their tea? People who have any kind of religious belief? People who wear their hair long?
Don't feed the troll - even if it's only a vegan sausage roll.
Did you mean to sound so poetic? 🙂
It was an accidental rhyme, though I noticed it at the time.
Anyway I must fly, bacon in a pan I must fry.
I'm a vegetarian, like that famous Aryan - so I will find my niche, and finish off the quiche.
I thought you were on my side! Your one of THEM 🙁
Ha ha, no, sorry, I have been one of THEM for almost 35 years but I have a sense of humour. 😜
Can you not smell this bacon I have frying, calling you like a religious calling?
Anointed now with Daddies Sauce
Come back to the light. It says.
Bacon is the toughest, but I am strong. I can even fry it for my kids without eating it.
Bacon is practically poison anyway. Leaving aside the atrocity of treating the animal like shit and killing it.
Agreed on all counts, which is why I don't eat it and buy it only after extremely pronounced lobbying.
You’ve gone up 110% in my estimation OLB that you feed your kids bacon. You are a truly balanced one of them.
Everything Dura Ace said is true - but it’s also true bacon is delicious. 😋
I disagree with @Dura_Ace. Not all pigs are treated like shit and not all bacon is poisonous.
I regularly cycle past some free range pigs which literally do seem to enjoy lives in clover. Sure, they meet a grisly end but they wouldn't live at all if it weren't for the the demand for bacon pork and sausages etc.
And nitrite free bacon is not so bad for you AIUI.
You can’t keep pigs as both pets and food though. I missed Jack John and Tony after we ate them. I missed their sense of humour how they creep up behind me and push their snouts into my bottom if I bent over trying to knock me over for a wrestle. And they always finding inventive new ways to escape! Tunnels, piggy backs, group fence push.
My wife tells me of when she was child, the chickens were pets and then food. One chicken was a particular friend. She cried though the meal, in between asking for more, because it was so delicious...
I didn’t have a as big a problem eating the chickens, even though i named them (after gigs I’d been to) spent most time letting them out first thing in mornings as my bedroom was closest and could hear them getting restless and calling me.
I was most upset when a fox half ate Paloma Faith.
Aficionados of the State of the Union may find this piece interesting. Don't necessarily agree with it - muddling through can be the most effective approach - food for thought nevertheless on the possible imminent demise of the Union.
It was interesting if overly long. I'm assuming the demise of Britishness is a matter of some regret for the author? I thought the point that Britain is not a traditional country like most others was well made. Intriguing to speculate on who the person of Austro-Hungarian descent with the public profile who feared the same fate (as A-H) for the UK.
Oddly half the accompanying photos were of Scottish subjects which didn't really reflect the space Scotland took up in the essay, or even really the bits of Scotland to which the author travelled.
I would regret the passing of the Union. I actually have some empathy with those that mourned the loss of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I can see myself being that person.
It was certainly a thought-provoking article. The Union - in its current form - is broken. We either reform it so that it functions or it will fall apart.
A key takeaway that many PBers may not grasp is the point made about how the British state barely exists north of the wall. Its true - so much of what we do up here is physically and legally separate.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
What is remarkable to me in the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the British Empire is that despite fierce opposition, a majority decision was taken to end an extremely lucrative trade on almost solely moral grounds. There are few precedents. I'd say I was proud, but that would imply I'm ashamed of the slave trade that preceded it, which I'm not, not being responsible for either.
What I also find interesting is that the campaign to extirpate it that followed wasn't just a half-hearted then effort. It was full on in every way. I'm thinking of such things as the enthusiasm with which the RN used the slightest resistance by slavers to charge them with piracy and hang them, among other things.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
This "yebbut Africans enslaved other Africans" stuff really is whataboutery in its purest form. Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions.
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions
Doesn't that translate as "it doesn't matter what the Africans did, and sometimes still do, to other Africans as they do not have our beliefs" ?
A rather racist view perhaps ?
And wasn't it part of the reasoning of the enlightenment slave owner that they were ultimately lifting up their slaves to a higher level of civilisation ? While taking the current profit from so doing
Given that the number of descendants of slavery who have migrated to Africa, whether from the USA, Brazil, Columbia, Jamaica or even Haiti is approximately zero they would doubtless say that 'lifting up' was achieved.
Jesus Christ, you seem to have caught whatever MrEd is ailing from.
"It is OK for me to do things to black men because other black men did similar things to a third set of black men" is about the most sht argument ever advanced, and the person advancing it in this case is MrEd. The relevance of Christianity etc etc is only that, almost unbelievably, it makes it even shitter than it was in the first place. For A to enslave B is always and everywhere a terribly, terribly wrong thing to do, colour and creed notwithstanding. Clear now?
While I agree that what MrEd wrote was textbook whataboutery, I don't have a clue why "Christianity" makes it "even shittier".
What makes the holocaust even shittier is that Hitler was (sometimes) a vegetarian!
When I first heard Hitler was vegetarian, I was not in the least surprised. I just shrugged. In fact another piece of the jigsaw falls into place.
Really, care to explain? Otherwise your comment comes across as pretty obnoxious.
Yes happy to explain. I am not normally obnoxious, perhaps towards my brother, but it’s fair of you to say I can come across as obnoxious when showing my strong dislike for vegetarians and vegans. I have no time for them. I’m not even ambivalent - in fact if they are forcing that insane diet on their children, making them all wan and sickly, they should be locked up.
🥓🍔🥩🍗🍖🥘🍤🍳
PS if I am talking to a vegetarian, Hitler was vegetarian: suck it down.
Thanks for clearing it up. Is it just "vegetarians and vegans" you have a "strong dislike for", or is it anyone who follows any kind of diet? People who don't drink? People who don't put milk in their tea? People who have any kind of religious belief? People who wear their hair long?
Don't feed the troll - even if it's only a vegan sausage roll.
Did you mean to sound so poetic? 🙂
It was an accidental rhyme, though I noticed it at the time.
Anyway I must fly, bacon in a pan I must fry.
I'm a vegetarian, like that famous Aryan - so I will find my niche, and finish off the quiche.
I thought you were on my side! Your one of THEM 🙁
Ha ha, no, sorry, I have been one of THEM for almost 35 years but I have a sense of humour. 😜
Can you not smell this bacon I have frying, calling you like a religious calling?
Anointed now with Daddies Sauce
Come back to the light. It says.
Bacon is the toughest, but I am strong. I can even fry it for my kids without eating it.
Bacon is practically poison anyway. Leaving aside the atrocity of treating the animal like shit and killing it.
Agreed on all counts, which is why I don't eat it and buy it only after extremely pronounced lobbying.
You’ve gone up 110% in my estimation OLB that you feed your kids bacon. You are a truly balanced one of them.
Everything Dura Ace said is true - but it’s also true bacon is delicious. 😋
I disagree with @Dura_Ace. Not all pigs are treated like shit and not all bacon is poisonous.
I regularly cycle past some free range pigs which literally do seem to enjoy lives in clover. Sure, they meet a grisly end but they wouldn't live at all if it weren't for the the demand for bacon pork and sausages etc.
And nitrite free bacon is not so bad for you AIUI.
You can’t keep pigs as both pets and food though. I missed Jack John and Tony after we ate them. I missed their sense of humour how they creep up behind me and push their snouts into my bottom if I bent over trying to knock me over for a wrestle. And they always finding inventive new ways to escape! Tunnels, piggy backs, group fence push.
My wife tells me of when she was child, the chickens were pets and then food. One chicken was a particular friend. She cried though the meal, in between asking for more, because it was so delicious...
Friends of ours couldn't bear to give their chooks the chop. Now their garden is a poultry retirement home - elderly, grumpy, no longer laying fowl!
Sounds like my mum.
Speaking of which I better go over there now. 🙋♀️
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
This "yebbut Africans enslaved other Africans" stuff really is whataboutery in its purest form. Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions.
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions
Doesn't that translate as "it doesn't matter what the Africans did, and sometimes still do, to other Africans as they do not have our beliefs" ?
A rather racist view perhaps ?
And wasn't it part of the reasoning of the enlightenment slave owner that they were ultimately lifting up their slaves to a higher level of civilisation ? While taking the current profit from so doing
Given that the number of descendants of slavery who have migrated to Africa, whether from the USA, Brazil, Columbia, Jamaica or even Haiti is approximately zero they would doubtless say that 'lifting up' was achieved.
Jesus Christ, you seem to have caught whatever MrEd is ailing from.
"It is OK for me to do things to black men because other black men did similar things to a third set of black men" is about the most sht argument ever advanced, and the person advancing it in this case is MrEd. The relevance of Christianity etc etc is only that, almost unbelievably, it makes it even shitter than it was in the first place. For A to enslave B is always and everywhere a terribly, terribly wrong thing to do, colour and creed notwithstanding. Clear now?
While I agree that what MrEd wrote was textbook whataboutery, I don't have a clue why "Christianity" makes it "even shittier".
What makes the holocaust even shittier is that Hitler was (sometimes) a vegetarian!
When I first heard Hitler was vegetarian, I was not in the least surprised. I just shrugged. In fact another piece of the jigsaw falls into place.
Really, care to explain? Otherwise your comment comes across as pretty obnoxious.
Yes happy to explain. I am not normally obnoxious, perhaps towards my brother, but it’s fair of you to say I can come across as obnoxious when showing my strong dislike for vegetarians and vegans. I have no time for them. I’m not even ambivalent - in fact if they are forcing that insane diet on their children, making them all wan and sickly, they should be locked up.
🥓🍔🥩🍗🍖🥘🍤🍳
PS if I am talking to a vegetarian, Hitler was vegetarian: suck it down.
Thanks for clearing it up. Is it just "vegetarians and vegans" you have a "strong dislike for", or is it anyone who follows any kind of diet? People who don't drink? People who don't put milk in their tea? People who have any kind of religious belief? People who wear their hair long?
Don't feed the troll - even if it's only a vegan sausage roll.
Did you mean to sound so poetic? 🙂
It was an accidental rhyme, though I noticed it at the time.
Anyway I must fly, bacon in a pan I must fry.
I'm a vegetarian, like that famous Aryan - so I will find my niche, and finish off the quiche.
I thought you were on my side! Your one of THEM 🙁
Ha ha, no, sorry, I have been one of THEM for almost 35 years but I have a sense of humour. 😜
Can you not smell this bacon I have frying, calling you like a religious calling?
Anointed now with Daddies Sauce
Come back to the light. It says.
Bacon is the toughest, but I am strong. I can even fry it for my kids without eating it.
Bacon is practically poison anyway. Leaving aside the atrocity of treating the animal like shit and killing it.
Agreed on all counts, which is why I don't eat it and buy it only after extremely pronounced lobbying.
You’ve gone up 110% in my estimation OLB that you feed your kids bacon. You are a truly balanced one of them.
Everything Dura Ace said is true - but it’s also true bacon is delicious. 😋
I disagree with @Dura_Ace. Not all pigs are treated like shit and not all bacon is poisonous.
I regularly cycle past some free range pigs which literally do seem to enjoy lives in clover. Sure, they meet a grisly end but they wouldn't live at all if it weren't for the the demand for bacon pork and sausages etc.
And nitrite free bacon is not so bad for you AIUI.
You can’t keep pigs as both pets and food though. I missed Jack John and Tony after we ate them. I missed their sense of humour how they creep up behind me and push their snouts into my bottom if I bent over trying to knock me over for a wrestle. And they always finding inventive new ways to escape! Tunnels, piggy backs, group fence push.
My wife tells me of when she was child, the chickens were pets and then food. One chicken was a particular friend. She cried though the meal, in between asking for more, because it was so delicious...
Growing up, our neighbours used to have a lamb as a pet each year. They couldn't face eating that specific lamb, so they used to trade....or at least that is what they told the kids.
I've helped butcher a pig at a workplace before. It's a hard and fairly unlovely job, but I value meat a lot as part of a healthy diet, so I'm fIne with it.
The problem is that this Omicron picture is similar but *bigger*. Before we get ONS regional prevalences (tomorrow), reported cases per 100k will be an imperfect proxy, but they suggest the North is going past London's peak. Hospitals there are buckling because it's worse. (2/2).
Hospitalisations in London appearsto have peaked and is declining.
Hospitalisations in the North West appears to be surpassing last winter's peak.
Which is quite surprising - the impression I got from London was that pretty much everyone had it, but it certainly doesn't feel like that here. 'A lot of it about', certainly. But no worse than any cold in any winter.
But perhaps that's because I don't know that many old people, and it's considerably worse for them.
Younger v older population centres?
Terrace Housing?
Bingo? Whippets? Timothy Taylor’s Landlord?
The hospitalisations are definitely starting to fall, in London....
Is it that unlike Lancashire, sometimes the sun comes out in London and it’s a bit warmer?
What do your monoliths show for conurbation v rural split?
I'll give you the former but winters in the north west are actually warmer than in the south east, I think. It's the gulf stream. The price of which, though, is that it is cloudier and damper.
Really? I find London warmer than north this time of year. All year really.
North West specifically – and snow more common in London than Manchester for the same reason. The SE is exposed to easterlies, whereas the NW is not. Cookie is right (although the Lake District winters can be harsh in a cold polar maritime flow).
Yes, snow is fairly rare in Manchester - particularly so in south west Manchester where I am, sadly. Just as Leeds and Newcastle are in rain shadows, sheltered from wet westerly wind, Manchester is in a snow shadow - easterly winds bringin snow tend to drop it all on Yorkshire. I remember a great aerial photo of the UK from the big snow of January 2010, I think - the whole country was white, with the exception of bits of south west Cornwall and a small five mile radius circle around my house.
I thought it was generally agreed to be a bad thing...
Been reading up about Scotland's links with slavery for work in local history. Interesting to see how some moaned about abolitionists because it would disrupt business, damage economic viability etc. [edited for harmony]
That's a disgusting comment.
Sorry, no offence intended, really - that was my actual reaction as the tone was so familiar from the news at the time. But I'll change it for you to keep yoiu happy, if it is not too late.
What is remarkable to me in the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the British Empire is that despite fierce opposition, a majority decision was taken to end an extremely lucrative trade on almost solely moral grounds. There are few precedents. I'd say I was proud, but that would imply I'm ashamed of the slave trade that preceded it, which I'm not, not being responsible for either.
What I also find interesting is that the campaign to extirpate it that followed wasn't just a half-hearted then effort. It was full on in every way. I'm thinking of such things as the enthusiasm with which the RN used the slightest resistance by slavers to charge them with piracy and hang them, among other things.
Something to liven up the days, and also HMG allowed them the prize money sales of the captures, and paid an allowance per head (both ofd the enemy crews, and the slaves rescued) too. But good for them.
Aficionados of the State of the Union may find this piece interesting. Don't necessarily agree with it - muddling through can be the most effective approach - food for thought nevertheless on the possible imminent demise of the Union.
It was interesting if overly long. I'm assuming the demise of Britishness is a matter of some regret for the author? I thought the point that Britain is not a traditional country like most others was well made. Intriguing to speculate on who the person of Austro-Hungarian descent with the public profile who feared the same fate (as A-H) for the UK.
Oddly half the accompanying photos were of Scottish subjects which didn't really reflect the space Scotland took up in the essay, or even really the bits of Scotland to which the author travelled.
I would regret the passing of the Union. I actually have some empathy with those that mourned the loss of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I can see myself being that person.
It was certainly a thought-provoking article. The Union - in its current form - is broken. We either reform it so that it functions or it will fall apart.
A key takeaway that many PBers may not grasp is the point made about how the British state barely exists north of the wall. Its true - so much of what we do up here is physically and legally separate.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
Aficionados of the State of the Union may find this piece interesting. Don't necessarily agree with it - muddling through can be the most effective approach - food for thought nevertheless on the possible imminent demise of the Union.
It was interesting if overly long. I'm assuming the demise of Britishness is a matter of some regret for the author? I thought the point that Britain is not a traditional country like most others was well made. Intriguing to speculate on who the person of Austro-Hungarian descent with the public profile who feared the same fate (as A-H) for the UK.
Oddly half the accompanying photos were of Scottish subjects which didn't really reflect the space Scotland took up in the essay, or even really the bits of Scotland to which the author travelled.
I would regret the passing of the Union. I actually have some empathy with those that mourned the loss of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I can see myself being that person.
It was certainly a thought-provoking article. The Union - in its current form - is broken. We either reform it so that it functions or it will fall apart.
A key takeaway that many PBers may not grasp is the point made about how the British state barely exists north of the wall. Its true - so much of what we do up here is physically and legally separate.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
Its an issue for the Union.
It's not even true. Tax, post, HBMtQ, Mr Johnson's frequent visits to shore up the union, etc. etc.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
This "yebbut Africans enslaved other Africans" stuff really is whataboutery in its purest form. Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions.
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions
Doesn't that translate as "it doesn't matter what the Africans did, and sometimes still do, to other Africans as they do not have our beliefs" ?
A rather racist view perhaps ?
And wasn't it part of the reasoning of the enlightenment slave owner that they were ultimately lifting up their slaves to a higher level of civilisation ? While taking the current profit from so doing
Given that the number of descendants of slavery who have migrated to Africa, whether from the USA, Brazil, Columbia, Jamaica or even Haiti is approximately zero they would doubtless say that 'lifting up' was achieved.
Jesus Christ, you seem to have caught whatever MrEd is ailing from.
"It is OK for me to do things to black men because other black men did similar things to a third set of black men" is about the most sht argument ever advanced, and the person advancing it in this case is MrEd. The relevance of Christianity etc etc is only that, almost unbelievably, it makes it even shitter than it was in the first place. For A to enslave B is always and everywhere a terribly, terribly wrong thing to do, colour and creed notwithstanding. Clear now?
While I agree that what MrEd wrote was textbook whataboutery, I don't have a clue why "Christianity" makes it "even shittier".
What makes the holocaust even shittier is that Hitler was (sometimes) a vegetarian!
When I first heard Hitler was vegetarian, I was not in the least surprised. I just shrugged. In fact another piece of the jigsaw falls into place.
Really, care to explain? Otherwise your comment comes across as pretty obnoxious.
Yes happy to explain. I am not normally obnoxious, perhaps towards my brother, but it’s fair of you to say I can come across as obnoxious when showing my strong dislike for vegetarians and vegans. I have no time for them. I’m not even ambivalent - in fact if they are forcing that insane diet on their children, making them all wan and sickly, they should be locked up.
🥓🍔🥩🍗🍖🥘🍤🍳
PS if I am talking to a vegetarian, Hitler was vegetarian: suck it down.
Thanks for clearing it up. Is it just "vegetarians and vegans" you have a "strong dislike for", or is it anyone who follows any kind of diet? People who don't drink? People who don't put milk in their tea? People who have any kind of religious belief? People who wear their hair long?
Don't feed the troll - even if it's only a vegan sausage roll.
Did you mean to sound so poetic? 🙂
It was an accidental rhyme, though I noticed it at the time.
Anyway I must fly, bacon in a pan I must fry.
I'm a vegetarian, like that famous Aryan - so I will find my niche, and finish off the quiche.
I thought you were on my side! Your one of THEM 🙁
Ha ha, no, sorry, I have been one of THEM for almost 35 years but I have a sense of humour. 😜
Can you not smell this bacon I have frying, calling you like a religious calling?
Anointed now with Daddies Sauce
Come back to the light. It says.
Bacon is the toughest, but I am strong. I can even fry it for my kids without eating it.
Bacon is practically poison anyway. Leaving aside the atrocity of treating the animal like shit and killing it.
Agreed on all counts, which is why I don't eat it and buy it only after extremely pronounced lobbying.
You’ve gone up 110% in my estimation OLB that you feed your kids bacon. You are a truly balanced one of them.
Everything Dura Ace said is true - but it’s also true bacon is delicious. 😋
I disagree with @Dura_Ace. Not all pigs are treated like shit and not all bacon is poisonous.
I regularly cycle past some free range pigs which literally do seem to enjoy lives in clover. Sure, they meet a grisly end but they wouldn't live at all if it weren't for the the demand for bacon pork and sausages etc.
And nitrite free bacon is not so bad for you AIUI.
You can’t keep pigs as both pets and food though. I missed Jack John and Tony after we ate them. I missed their sense of humour how they creep up behind me and push their snouts into my bottom if I bent over trying to knock me over for a wrestle. And they always finding inventive new ways to escape! Tunnels, piggy backs, group fence push.
My wife tells me of when she was child, the chickens were pets and then food. One chicken was a particular friend. She cried though the meal, in between asking for more, because it was so delicious...
I didn’t have a as big a problem eating the chickens, even though i named them (after gigs I’d been to) spent most time letting them out first thing in mornings as my bedroom was closest and could hear them getting restless and calling me.
I was most upset when a fox half ate Paloma Faith.
You got too close to Paloma, and realised that only love can hurt like this?
Buckland on R4 saying that nobody could watch Colston's statue being torn down and thrown in the harbour without feeling appalled. An odd thing to say since clearly many people were pretty happy about it.
Rees-Mogg rather more clever in response "I shall not be going out of here immediately afterwards and drawing a moustache on the statue on Oliver Cromwell much though I am opposed to regicides in principle and think they deserve to be removed from pedestals broadly speaking."
He told MPs that monuments should be protected and only removed through "due process", but added that "one of our greatest monuments is the jury system which is the great sublime protector of our liberties".
"Juries must be free to come to decisions that they choose to come to on the facts that are in front of them in relation to a specific case and what they hear from the prosecuting counsel, from the defence counsel and from the judge," he said. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59893024
Aficionados of the State of the Union may find this piece interesting. Don't necessarily agree with it - muddling through can be the most effective approach - food for thought nevertheless on the possible imminent demise of the Union.
It was interesting if overly long. I'm assuming the demise of Britishness is a matter of some regret for the author? I thought the point that Britain is not a traditional country like most others was well made. Intriguing to speculate on who the person of Austro-Hungarian descent with the public profile who feared the same fate (as A-H) for the UK.
Oddly half the accompanying photos were of Scottish subjects which didn't really reflect the space Scotland took up in the essay, or even really the bits of Scotland to which the author travelled.
I would regret the passing of the Union. I actually have some empathy with those that mourned the loss of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I can see myself being that person.
It was certainly a thought-provoking article. The Union - in its current form - is broken. We either reform it so that it functions or it will fall apart.
A key takeaway that many PBers may not grasp is the point made about how the British state barely exists north of the wall. Its true - so much of what we do up here is physically and legally separate.
'Twas always thus (the separate country bit) to a greater or lesser degree. It worked pretty well as long as the union of consent principle was adhered to and the UK appeared to be a successful project. We're currently observing an interesting experiment on how long it will survive now consent has been dispensed with, not to mention the successful project bit.
Just heard a report from Melbourne that Djokovic is claiming he has natural immunity to covid/omicron
Good luck with that
Guy is obviously a fruitcake
Based on prior infection, which is an exemption allowed by the state government. Hardly a fruitcake for claiming that. The problem is the federal government doesn't recognise that, and those are the people you deal with when entering the country.
Well with Omicron it is no longer true. Before Omicron reinfection rates were rounding errors (hence the recovery from prior infection exemption in some places), now it extremely common.
Yep, but that's the fault of the state government for not changing their guidelines.
What is remarkable to me in the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the British Empire is that despite fierce opposition, a majority decision was taken to end an extremely lucrative trade on almost solely moral grounds. There are few precedents. I'd say I was proud, but that would imply I'm ashamed of the slave trade that preceded it, which I'm not, not being responsible for either.
You do sound more proud of the decision to end than ashamed of the slave trade that preceded it tbh.
Can we be ashamed or proud of things we had no influence over? Hands up those who our proud of Britain's stand against the Nazis, or proud of Scotland's/Wales's/Ireland's/England's heritage, or proud of the influence of Western civilisation on the world, etc. etc.
Personally I find it hard not to be proud of some of these things; I similarly feel ashamed of Britain's role in the slave trade, colonialism, and various other nasty things our country has done in the past.
Aficionados of the State of the Union may find this piece interesting. Don't necessarily agree with it - muddling through can be the most effective approach - food for thought nevertheless on the possible imminent demise of the Union.
It was interesting if overly long. I'm assuming the demise of Britishness is a matter of some regret for the author? I thought the point that Britain is not a traditional country like most others was well made. Intriguing to speculate on who the person of Austro-Hungarian descent with the public profile who feared the same fate (as A-H) for the UK.
Oddly half the accompanying photos were of Scottish subjects which didn't really reflect the space Scotland took up in the essay, or even really the bits of Scotland to which the author travelled.
I would regret the passing of the Union. I actually have some empathy with those that mourned the loss of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I can see myself being that person.
It was certainly a thought-provoking article. The Union - in its current form - is broken. We either reform it so that it functions or it will fall apart.
A key takeaway that many PBers may not grasp is the point made about how the British state barely exists north of the wall. Its true - so much of what we do up here is physically and legally separate.
'Twas always thus (the separate country bit) to a greater or lesser degree. It worked pretty well as long as the union of consent principle was adhered to and the UK appeared to be a successful project. We're currently observing an interesting experiment on how long it will survive now consent has been dispensed with, not to mention the successful project bit.
The Poll Tax in Scotland - with neither consent nor rationality (because Scotland had had a revaluation of rates) did irreparable damage to the notion of Union by consent. I know it's overshadowed in many Tories' minds by Tommy Sheridan et al and their extramural activities regarding the PT but really that was the great dividing boundary.
Buckland on R4 saying that nobody could watch Colston's statue being torn down and thrown in the harbour without feeling appalled. An odd thing to say since clearly many people were pretty happy about it.
Rees-Mogg rather more clever in response "I shall not be going out of here immediately afterwards and drawing a moustache on the statue on Oliver Cromwell much though I am opposed to regicides in principle and think they deserve to be removed from pedestals broadly speaking."
He told MPs that monuments should be protected and only removed through "due process", but added that "one of our greatest monuments is the jury system which is the great sublime protector of our liberties".
"Juries must be free to come to decisions that they choose to come to on the facts that are in front of them in relation to a specific case and what they hear from the prosecuting counsel, from the defence counsel and from the judge," he said. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59893024
Yes I thought that Rees-Mogg's response was uncharacteristically good.
The problem is that this Omicron picture is similar but *bigger*. Before we get ONS regional prevalences (tomorrow), reported cases per 100k will be an imperfect proxy, but they suggest the North is going past London's peak. Hospitals there are buckling because it's worse. (2/2).
Hospitalisations in London appearsto have peaked and is declining.
Hospitalisations in the North West appears to be surpassing last winter's peak.
Which is quite surprising - the impression I got from London was that pretty much everyone had it, but it certainly doesn't feel like that here. 'A lot of it about', certainly. But no worse than any cold in any winter.
But perhaps that's because I don't know that many old people, and it's considerably worse for them.
Younger v older population centres?
Terrace Housing?
Bingo? Whippets? Timothy Taylor’s Landlord?
The hospitalisations are definitely starting to fall, in London....
Is it that unlike Lancashire, sometimes the sun comes out in London and it’s a bit warmer?
What do your monoliths show for conurbation v rural split?
I'll give you the former but winters in the north west are actually warmer than in the south east, I think. It's the gulf stream. The price of which, though, is that it is cloudier and damper.
Really? I find London warmer than north this time of year. All year really.
North West specifically – and snow more common in London than Manchester for the same reason. The SE is exposed to easterlies, whereas the NW is not. Cookie is right (although the Lake District winters can be harsh in a cold polar maritime flow).
Yes, snow is fairly rare in Manchester - particularly so in south west Manchester where I am, sadly. Just as Leeds and Newcastle are in rain shadows, sheltered from wet westerly windows, Manchester is in a snow shadow - easterly winds bringin snow tend to drop it all on Yorkshire. I remember a great aerial photo of the UK from the big snow of January 2010, I think - the whole country was white, with the exception of bits of south west Cornwall and a small five mile radius circle around my house.
London itself and the NW are pretty similar for winter temperature.
Parts of the rural SE (particularly East Anglia) are colder than Liverpool-Manchester, and there is more snow in the SE overall than in the Cheshire / Lancashire plain, although that's partly because of the relief of the Downs and Chilterns.
Aficionados of the State of the Union may find this piece interesting. Don't necessarily agree with it - muddling through can be the most effective approach - food for thought nevertheless on the possible imminent demise of the Union.
It was interesting if overly long. I'm assuming the demise of Britishness is a matter of some regret for the author? I thought the point that Britain is not a traditional country like most others was well made. Intriguing to speculate on who the person of Austro-Hungarian descent with the public profile who feared the same fate (as A-H) for the UK.
Oddly half the accompanying photos were of Scottish subjects which didn't really reflect the space Scotland took up in the essay, or even really the bits of Scotland to which the author travelled.
I would regret the passing of the Union. I actually have some empathy with those that mourned the loss of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I can see myself being that person.
It was certainly a thought-provoking article. The Union - in its current form - is broken. We either reform it so that it functions or it will fall apart.
A key takeaway that many PBers may not grasp is the point made about how the British state barely exists north of the wall. Its true - so much of what we do up here is physically and legally separate.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
Its an issue for the Union.
Yep - it's a big problem and one that isn't fixable while the SNP are in power with control over things.
Aficionados of the State of the Union may find this piece interesting. Don't necessarily agree with it - muddling through can be the most effective approach - food for thought nevertheless on the possible imminent demise of the Union.
It was interesting if overly long. I'm assuming the demise of Britishness is a matter of some regret for the author? I thought the point that Britain is not a traditional country like most others was well made. Intriguing to speculate on who the person of Austro-Hungarian descent with the public profile who feared the same fate (as A-H) for the UK.
Oddly half the accompanying photos were of Scottish subjects which didn't really reflect the space Scotland took up in the essay, or even really the bits of Scotland to which the author travelled.
I would regret the passing of the Union. I actually have some empathy with those that mourned the loss of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I can see myself being that person.
It was certainly a thought-provoking article. The Union - in its current form - is broken. We either reform it so that it functions or it will fall apart.
A key takeaway that many PBers may not grasp is the point made about how the British state barely exists north of the wall. Its true - so much of what we do up here is physically and legally separate.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
How lucky are we Scots that HMG borrows money wisely on our behalf then whacks it onto our nominal deficit?! Thankfully they do it without the merest hint that we impecunious types should be grateful for this (borrowed) largesse.
Aficionados of the State of the Union may find this piece interesting. Don't necessarily agree with it - muddling through can be the most effective approach - food for thought nevertheless on the possible imminent demise of the Union.
It was interesting if overly long. I'm assuming the demise of Britishness is a matter of some regret for the author? I thought the point that Britain is not a traditional country like most others was well made. Intriguing to speculate on who the person of Austro-Hungarian descent with the public profile who feared the same fate (as A-H) for the UK.
Oddly half the accompanying photos were of Scottish subjects which didn't really reflect the space Scotland took up in the essay, or even really the bits of Scotland to which the author travelled.
I would regret the passing of the Union. I actually have some empathy with those that mourned the loss of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I can see myself being that person.
It was certainly a thought-provoking article. The Union - in its current form - is broken. We either reform it so that it functions or it will fall apart.
A key takeaway that many PBers may not grasp is the point made about how the British state barely exists north of the wall. Its true - so much of what we do up here is physically and legally separate.
The bit that leaps out of me is how everything in Scotland is now prefixed with Scottish....
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
Its an issue for the Union.
Yep - it's a big problem and one that isn't fixable while the SNP are in power with control over things.
I don't think you can blame it on the SNP. Much of civil admin was always separate from [edit] the days of the admin devolution before WW1 with perhaps some more in the 1930s-1940s. So of course the departments had to be called 'Scottish this and that'. Including the Scottish Health Service. Albeit all run from the Scottish Office in Whitehall, ultimately.
It was Labour and Conservative administrrations, therefore, who ran the Scottish Health Service till one of the Tory satraps known as Secretaries of State renamed it the NHS in a deliberate attempt to obfuscate matters and create a false sense of union where it didn't exist. Might almost have been his last official act, even, before the Blair victory.
I remember a great aerial photo of the UK from the big snow of January 2010, I think - the whole country was white, with the exception of bits of south west Cornwall and a small five mile radius circle around my house.
Was that an indication to fix your insulation / reduce your heating bills perchance...
I remember a great aerial photo of the UK from the big snow of January 2010, I think - the whole country was white, with the exception of bits of south west Cornwall and a small five mile radius circle around my house.
Was that an indication to fix your insulation / reduce your heating bills perchance...
What is remarkable to me in the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the British Empire is that despite fierce opposition, a majority decision was taken to end an extremely lucrative trade on almost solely moral grounds. There are few precedents. I'd say I was proud, but that would imply I'm ashamed of the slave trade that preceded it, which I'm not, not being responsible for either.
What I also find interesting is that the campaign to extirpate it that followed wasn't just a half-hearted then effort. It was full on in every way. I'm thinking of such things as the enthusiasm with which the RN used the slightest resistance by slavers to charge them with piracy and hang them, among other things.
Something to liven up the days, and also HMG allowed them the prize money sales of the captures, and paid an allowance per head (both ofd the enemy crews, and the slaves rescued) too. But good for them.
And of course once you had seen a slave ship ...
The head & prize money made sure that the best and brightest of the RN headed to the antislavery patrols. IIRC some cruises set petty officers etc for life - pubs bought etc.
It was also part of the commitment - it was a lot of hard cash.
Another interesting one - when they found that slave ships at auction were being bought by other slavers, they started burning or chopping them up. Instead of telling the RN crews "sorry, no prize money", the government paid for the prizes. Which was another serious pile of cash.
OK I am going to ask what is probably an idiotic question but I'm struggling to get this gas prices issue. I understand why it happened in the first place but we have had it for a few months now and gas is a commodity type product and not (I believe) something that has a huge timeline in changing supply volumes so why is it still an issue? I appreciate the UK storage issue, but the price issue isn't unique to the UK.
AIUI gas prices increased worldwide as Asia and Europe competed for LNG as the world restarted industrial boilers coming out of a Covid lull. Normally Europe would revert to Russian gas and leave the more expensive LNG to Asia in that situation. For reasons that are not quite clear, Western Europe is not buying Russian gas on the spot markets and only taking contracted amounts. Is that because Russia is deliberately withholding gas beyond what it is contracted to supply, or is it because the market price of that gas is too high and Western Europe is refusing to buy and instead is running down reserves?
Despite not consuming much Russian gas the UK is in the same market as the rest of Europe for alternative supplies - Norwegian gas and LNG - and so pays the same prices.
For reasons not clear Europe isn't buying Russian Gas?
The Ukraine and Nord Stream 2 are reasons why Russia is playing politics with European gas supplies.
What is clear, European gas buyers are not prepared to pay the prices Russia is demanding. What isn't clear, whether Russia would actually supply the gas at those prices and also whether it is managing to place the gas which would otherwise be sold to W Europe.
What is remarkable to me in the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the British Empire is that despite fierce opposition, a majority decision was taken to end an extremely lucrative trade on almost solely moral grounds. There are few precedents. I'd say I was proud, but that would imply I'm ashamed of the slave trade that preceded it, which I'm not, not being responsible for either.
What I also find interesting is that the campaign to extirpate it that followed wasn't just a half-hearted then effort. It was full on in every way. I'm thinking of such things as the enthusiasm with which the RN used the slightest resistance by slavers to charge them with piracy and hang them, among other things.
Something to liven up the days, and also HMG allowed them the prize money sales of the captures, and paid an allowance per head (both ofd the enemy crews, and the slaves rescued) too. But good for them.
And of course once you had seen a slave ship ...
The head & prize money made sure that the best and brightest of the RN headed to the antislavery patrols. IIRC some cruises set petty officers etc for life - pubs bought etc.
It was also part of the commitment - it was a lot of hard cash.
Another interesting one - when they found that slave ships at auction were being bought by other slavers, they started burning or chopping them up. Instead of telling the RN crews "sorry, no prize money", the government paid for the prizes. Which was another serious pile of cash.
INdeed. And it made up somewhat for the loss of life to tropical disease.
BTW HMS Trincomalee now at Hartlepool (Nelson era tech) and HMS Gannet now at Chatham (1870s) both served on anti slavery duties at different times.
What is remarkable to me in the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the British Empire is that despite fierce opposition, a majority decision was taken to end an extremely lucrative trade on almost solely moral grounds. There are few precedents. I'd say I was proud, but that would imply I'm ashamed of the slave trade that preceded it, which I'm not, not being responsible for either.
You do sound more proud of the decision to end than ashamed of the slave trade that preceded it tbh.
Can we be ashamed or proud of things we had no influence over? Hands up those who our proud of Britain's stand against the Nazis, or proud of Scotland's/Wales's/Ireland's/England's heritage, or proud of the influence of Western civilisation on the world, etc. etc.
Personally I find it hard not to be proud of some of these things; I similarly feel ashamed of Britain's role in the slave trade, colonialism, and various other nasty things our country has done in the past.
I don't feel any kind of shame about things like slavery and colonialism, which happened long before I was born and over which I had no influence. Nobody else should either. Weirdly, I think that it was living in the Caribbean which helped to end any residual feelings of shame, since I realised that they were a barrier to forming friendships with people there. What I do feel is a strong sense of anger. Against the people in the past who profited from others' misery. And against people today who would seek to minimise their crimes in the name of patriotism or to seek political advantage.
Just heard a report from Melbourne that Djokovic is claiming he has natural immunity to covid/omicron
Good luck with that
Guy is obviously a fruitcake
Based on prior infection, which is an exemption allowed by the state government. Hardly a fruitcake for claiming that. The problem is the federal government doesn't recognise that, and those are the people you deal with when entering the country.
Well with Omicron it is no longer true. Before Omicron reinfection rates were rounding errors (hence the recovery from prior infection exemption in some places), now it extremely common.
Citation required. My memory is that it was ~1% and now it's ~3%.
OK I am going to ask what is probably an idiotic question but I'm struggling to get this gas prices issue. I understand why it happened in the first place but we have had it for a few months now and gas is a commodity type product and not (I believe) something that has a huge timeline in changing supply volumes so why is it still an issue? I appreciate the UK storage issue, but the price issue isn't unique to the UK.
AIUI gas prices increased worldwide as Asia and Europe competed for LNG as the world restarted industrial boilers coming out of a Covid lull. Normally Europe would revert to Russian gas and leave the more expensive LNG to Asia in that situation. For reasons that are not quite clear, Western Europe is not buying Russian gas on the spot markets and only taking contracted amounts. Is that because Russia is deliberately withholding gas beyond what it is contracted to supply, or is it because the market price of that gas is too high and Western Europe is refusing to buy and instead is running down reserves?
Despite not consuming much Russian gas the UK is in the same market as the rest of Europe for alternative supplies - Norwegian gas and LNG - and so pays the same prices.
For reasons not clear Europe isn't buying Russian Gas?
The Ukraine and Nord Stream 2 are reasons why Russia is playing politics with European gas supplies.
What is clear, European gas buyers are not prepared to pay the prices Russia is demanding. What isn't clear, whether Russia would actually supply the gas at those prices and also whether it is managing to place the gas which would otherwise be sold to W Europe.
What evidence do you have for any of the assertions you are making above.
You may not have noticed the price of none domestic gas but it's currently way higher than it ever used to be.
I remember a great aerial photo of the UK from the big snow of January 2010, I think - the whole country was white, with the exception of bits of south west Cornwall and a small five mile radius circle around my house.
Was that an indication to fix your insulation / reduce your heating bills perchance...
Maybe everyone there is growing something in their houses/sheds?
I remember a great aerial photo of the UK from the big snow of January 2010, I think - the whole country was white, with the exception of bits of south west Cornwall and a small five mile radius circle around my house.
Was that an indication to fix your insulation / reduce your heating bills perchance...
Just heard a report from Melbourne that Djokovic is claiming he has natural immunity to covid/omicron
Good luck with that
Guy is obviously a fruitcake
Based on prior infection, which is an exemption allowed by the state government. Hardly a fruitcake for claiming that. The problem is the federal government doesn't recognise that, and those are the people you deal with when entering the country.
Well with Omicron it is no longer true. Before Omicron reinfection rates were rounding errors (hence the recovery from prior infection exemption in some places), now it extremely common.
Citation required. My memory is that it was ~1% and now it's ~3%.
Controlling for vaccine status, age, sex, ethnicity, asymptomatic status, region and specimen date, Omicron was associated with a 5.40 (95% CI: 4.38-6.63) fold higher risk of reinfection compared with Delta. To put this into context, in the pre-Omicron era, the UK “SIREN” study of COVID infection in healthcare workers estimated that prior infection afforded 85% protection against a second COVID infection over 6 months. The reinfection risk estimated in the current study suggests this protection has fallen to 19% (95%CI: 0-27%) against an Omicron infection.
I remember a great aerial photo of the UK from the big snow of January 2010, I think - the whole country was white, with the exception of bits of south west Cornwall and a small five mile radius circle around my house.
Was that an indication to fix your insulation / reduce your heating bills perchance...
That pizza oven must through out some heat!
With a five mile radius it must be a prototype fusion reactor. What are you hiding, Cookie?
OK I am going to ask what is probably an idiotic question but I'm struggling to get this gas prices issue. I understand why it happened in the first place but we have had it for a few months now and gas is a commodity type product and not (I believe) something that has a huge timeline in changing supply volumes so why is it still an issue? I appreciate the UK storage issue, but the price issue isn't unique to the UK.
AIUI gas prices increased worldwide as Asia and Europe competed for LNG as the world restarted industrial boilers coming out of a Covid lull. Normally Europe would revert to Russian gas and leave the more expensive LNG to Asia in that situation. For reasons that are not quite clear, Western Europe is not buying Russian gas on the spot markets and only taking contracted amounts. Is that because Russia is deliberately withholding gas beyond what it is contracted to supply, or is it because the market price of that gas is too high and Western Europe is refusing to buy and instead is running down reserves?
Despite not consuming much Russian gas the UK is in the same market as the rest of Europe for alternative supplies - Norwegian gas and LNG - and so pays the same prices.
For reasons not clear Europe isn't buying Russian Gas?
The Ukraine and Nord Stream 2 are reasons why Russia is playing politics with European gas supplies.
What is clear, European gas buyers are not prepared to pay the prices Russia is demanding. What isn't clear, whether Russia would actually supply the gas at those prices and also whether it is managing to place the gas which would otherwise be sold to W Europe.
What evidence do you have for any of the assertions you are making above.
You may not have noticed the price of none domestic gas but it's currently way higher than it ever used to be.
Like @kjh I was curious about what was actually going on with gas prices so did some poking around on the web. you can do the same if you wish. It's all AIUI.
Good for him. I'm with JRM: I don't think the decision was the one I would have made (though I did not sit through the trial, and the jury did) but I'm totally in favour of the jury system. The fact we have human juries mean we get human verdicts. Unfortunately in this case it means allowing four very tedious people their moment in the sun. But if anything I'm more in favour of the jury system than ever. What if one day I'm had up for something which the law says is wrong but humans taking into account the context would say should be allowed? A jury system is exactly what I'd want.
Agreed. It's one of the ancient liberties, and still a reminder to government that their powers are not entirely unlimited. (Much as I agree it was a somewhat perverse opinion.)
'The Conservative peer Michelle Mone is being investigated by the Metropolitan police for an allegedly racist message she is accused of sending to a man of Indian heritage.
The recipient of the message, Richard Lynton-Jones, complained to the police last summer that during a disagreement following a fatal yacht collision in 2019, Lady Mone told him in a WhatsApp message he was “a waste of a man’s white skin”.'
and
'In a subsequent post on Instagram, Mone denied the WhatsApp message was racist, saying: “Since when did calling out a man on his actions after a manslaughter and his entitled white privilege constitute racism?”
A lawyer for Mone indicated to the Guardian that Mone’s Instagram post did not suggest she now accepted that she sent the message.'
Yes yes I know it's (republished in) the New European, but if anyone fancies being terrified like when they first watched Threads, have a read of this.
What is remarkable to me in the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the British Empire is that despite fierce opposition, a majority decision was taken to end an extremely lucrative trade on almost solely moral grounds. There are few precedents. I'd say I was proud, but that would imply I'm ashamed of the slave trade that preceded it, which I'm not, not being responsible for either.
What I also find interesting is that the campaign to extirpate it that followed wasn't just a half-hearted then effort. It was full on in every way. I'm thinking of such things as the enthusiasm with which the RN used the slightest resistance by slavers to charge them with piracy and hang them, among other things.
Something to liven up the days, and also HMG allowed them the prize money sales of the captures, and paid an allowance per head (both ofd the enemy crews, and the slaves rescued) too. But good for them.
And of course once you had seen a slave ship ...
The head & prize money made sure that the best and brightest of the RN headed to the antislavery patrols. IIRC some cruises set petty officers etc for life - pubs bought etc.
It was also part of the commitment - it was a lot of hard cash.
Another interesting one - when they found that slave ships at auction were being bought by other slavers, they started burning or chopping them up. Instead of telling the RN crews "sorry, no prize money", the government paid for the prizes. Which was another serious pile of cash.
INdeed. And it made up somewhat for the loss of life to tropical disease.
BTW HMS Trincomalee now at Hartlepool (Nelson era tech) and HMS Gannet now at Chatham (1870s) both served on anti slavery duties at different times.
When I was at uni I came across a kind of diary in one of the second shops near the British museum.
It was a book of letters to and from a brother and his sisters. The brother been a teenage midshipman in the RN. The booked ended with a letter from the ships Captain, telling the story of his death at the hands of a slaver crew he was boarding with his boats crew - the boat had been on detached service from the ship itself.
There was a further letter, badly spelt and capitalised from a member of the boats crew - about how he'd been a good officer and everyone in the crew had liked him.
So when he was killed by a shot from the slaver they'd boarded the slaver and killed the entire crew. Including the ones trying to surrender.
On Djokovic, I see it was discussed here earlier but I didn't notice the crucial detail that I heard on the radio mentioned. Apologies if I missed it, but..
The State rule for domestic travel to Victoria is that you can have been previously infected, rather than vaccinated. Apparently all that Djokovic has is "proof" that he's been infected.
The Federal rule for entering Australia has no such exemption. You have to prove that you are unable to be vaccinated. It's quite clear that any State rules are in addition.
"Proof that you cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons when coming to Australia If you are coming to Australia and have a medical contraindication recorded in the Australian Immunisation Register (AIR) you can show an Australian COVID-19 digital certificate to airline staff. You can otherwise show your immunisation history statement.
If you do not have your medical contraindication recorded in the AIR you will need to show airline staff a medical certificate that indicates you are unable to be vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine because of a medical condition. The medical certificate must be in English and include the following information:
your name (this must match your travel identification documents) date of medical consultation and details of your medical practitioner details that clearly acknowledge that you have a medical condition which means you cannot receive a COVID-19 vaccination (vaccination is contraindicated). Airlines are responsible for ensuring your proof meets these requirements.
People who have received non-TGA approved or recognised vaccines should not be certified in this category and cannot be treated as vaccinated for the purposes of their travel.
You should check any requirements, particularly quarantine and post-arrival testing requirements, in the state or territory to which you are travelling as this will impact your travel arrangements.
If you are planning on traveling onwards to or through a different state or territory when you arrive in Australia, you need to check domestic travel restrictions. States and territories can apply their own travel restrictions.
You are responsible for complying with travel restrictions and requirements that apply to you. Please note: proof that you cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons is separate to a Commissioner’s travel exemption." https://covid19.homeaffairs.gov.au/vaccinated-travellers#toc-6
I'm sure they won't let him in. He might be able to sue his airline.
My reading is the Federal has overrode the State in this one case for political reasons. Djokovic is getting special treatment. Special *adverse* treatment. It's a misuse of power imo but I'd think it has sufficient technical validity to stand. We'll see. It's potentially a big problem for Djokovic longer term because countries other than Oz might take a similar approach.
The Australian lawyer on the radio earlier was very clear on this: Federal always overrides State.
Politicians will talk tough for political reasons, but the decision will have nothing to do with the politics.
The more accurate statement is Federal CAN override but have not in similar cases. I'd say that taking a different approach here in response to public opinion does have a great deal to do with politics.
Good afternoon everyone. Form an OKC who has every hope that the arthritic able which has plagued him for months is, temporarily, forced into retreat, as a result of his hospital visit the morning.
In other news, the Guardian has just flashed up Lord Geidt's report on the No 10 flat refurbishment. Our PM apparently acted 'unwisely' but wasn't deliberately misleading. However the noble lord has had his confidence shaken 'precisely because potential and real failures of process occurred in more than one part of the apparatus of government'.
Not sure whether that isn't, in fact, more damning.
Comments
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59890338
Why are Taiwan so interested in all things Lithuanian?
I regularly cycle past some free range pigs which literally do seem to enjoy lives in clover. Sure, they meet a grisly end but they wouldn't live at all if it weren't for the the demand for bacon pork and sausages etc.
And nitrite free bacon is not so bad for you AIUI.
What do your monoliths show for conurbation v rural split?
(I do wonder if some conservatives a making a bit of a strategic blunder here, hitching themselves to a side of the Culture war just as it goes from winning 60:40 to losing 40:60. A bit like the way some commentators started moaning about the wokeness of the England football team and had to reverse ferret when their kneeling stance turned out to be respected by the public and the team did well at playing football...
Now getting fanatical loyalty from 40% is good going in a FPTP system, but that depends on the 40% not falling further.)
A key takeaway that many PBers may not grasp is the point made about how the British state barely exists north of the wall. Its true - so much of what we do up here is physically and legally separate.
BTW now read 3 of the 4 Otto Prohaska books: saving the 4th for a treat as AFAIK there are no more; currently revisiting the also, coincidentally, declinist Uhtred series by Bernard Cornwall in between.
The Ukraine and Nord Stream 2 are reasons why Russia is playing politics with European gas supplies.
Here is one supporter of juries though, through think and thin:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59893024
That would completely screw his career, as he would need to explain this to every country he ever visits, and they would be well within their rights to deny him a visa as a result.
I am always happier when I know my lunch's former name.
I'm with JRM: I don't think the decision was the one I would have made (though I did not sit through the trial, and the jury did) but I'm totally in favour of the jury system. The fact we have human juries mean we get human verdicts.
Unfortunately in this case it means allowing four very tedious people their moment in the sun. But if anything I'm more in favour of the jury system than ever. What if one day I'm had up for something which the law says is wrong but humans taking into account the context would say should be allowed? A jury system is exactly what I'd want.
I was most upset when a fox half ate Paloma Faith.
That's something that is going to be very hard to fix but continually reinforces that all services are Scottish - without revealing that they only exist because of cross subsidies from other parts of the UK*. Which means it's easy for the Scottish Government to play their rulebook of celebrate success and blame London for the failures.
* for MalcolmG and co that isn't an invitation to insult or call me wrong - it's a simple fact of life that Governments borrow money.
Speaking of which I better go over there now. 🙋♀️
I remember a great aerial photo of the UK from the big snow of January 2010, I think - the whole country was white, with the exception of bits of south west Cornwall and a small five mile radius circle around my house.
And of course once you had seen a slave ship ...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10374877/Passengers-Queen-Mary-2-luxury-cruise-spend-days-locked-cabins-catching-Covid.html
He told MPs that monuments should be protected and only removed through "due process", but added that "one of our greatest monuments is the jury system which is the great sublime protector of our liberties".
"Juries must be free to come to decisions that they choose to come to on the facts that are in front of them in relation to a specific case and what they hear from the prosecuting counsel, from the defence counsel and from the judge," he said.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59893024
Can we be ashamed or proud of things we had no influence over? Hands up those who our proud of Britain's stand against the Nazis, or proud of Scotland's/Wales's/Ireland's/England's heritage, or proud of the influence of Western civilisation on the world, etc. etc.
Personally I find it hard not to be proud of some of these things; I similarly feel ashamed of Britain's role in the slave trade, colonialism, and various other nasty things our country has done in the past.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/averages/maps/uk/9120_1km/MeanTemp_Average_1991-2020_16.gif
Parts of the rural SE (particularly East Anglia) are colder than Liverpool-Manchester, and there is more snow in the SE overall than in the Cheshire / Lancashire plain, although that's partly because of the relief of the Downs and Chilterns.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/averages/maps/uk/9120_1km/SnowLying_Average_1991-2020_16.gif
Of course what those lucky Mancunians have which we don't down here is easy access to proper high hills where there's much more snow.
It was Labour and Conservative administrrations, therefore, who ran the Scottish Health Service till one of the Tory satraps known as Secretaries of State renamed it the NHS in a deliberate attempt to obfuscate matters and create a false sense of union where it didn't exist. Might almost have been his last official act, even, before the Blair victory.
It was also part of the commitment - it was a lot of hard cash.
Another interesting one - when they found that slave ships at auction were being bought by other slavers, they started burning or chopping them up. Instead of telling the RN crews "sorry, no prize money", the government paid for the prizes. Which was another serious pile of cash.
BTW HMS Trincomalee now at Hartlepool (Nelson era tech) and HMS Gannet now at Chatham (1870s) both served on anti slavery duties at different times.
What I do feel is a strong sense of anger. Against the people in the past who profited from others' misery. And against people today who would seek to minimise their crimes in the name of patriotism or to seek political advantage.
You may not have noticed the price of none domestic gas but it's currently way higher than it ever used to be.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/232698/omicron-largely-evades-immunity-from-past/
So basically you have extremely low protection against reinfection, and it is something like 3x more transmissible than Delta. Double whammy.
"🤣 Worst haircut- the 1st ever catch by Mark Waugh for Australia. WARNING- strong mullet content
robelinda2"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQi85Qtoc_4
I don't understand your second comment.
https://order-order.com/2022/01/06/read-in-full-geidt-and-boris-flat-refurbishment-letters/
(Much as I agree it was a somewhat perverse opinion.)
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/06/met-investigating-tory-peer-michelle-mone-over-racist-message
'The Conservative peer Michelle Mone is being investigated by the Metropolitan police for an allegedly racist message she is accused of sending to a man of Indian heritage.
The recipient of the message, Richard Lynton-Jones, complained to the police last summer that during a disagreement following a fatal yacht collision in 2019, Lady Mone told him in a WhatsApp message he was “a waste of a man’s white skin”.'
and
'In a subsequent post on Instagram, Mone denied the WhatsApp message was racist, saying: “Since when did calling out a man on his actions after a manslaughter and his entitled white privilege constitute racism?”
A lawyer for Mone indicated to the Guardian that Mone’s Instagram post did not suggest she now accepted that she sent the message.'
*blinks in bemusement*
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/desk-russie-putin-plan-for-europe-and-ukraine/
It was a book of letters to and from a brother and his sisters. The brother been a teenage midshipman in the RN. The booked ended with a letter from the ships Captain, telling the story of his death at the hands of a slaver crew he was boarding with his boats crew - the boat had been on detached service from the ship itself.
There was a further letter, badly spelt and capitalised from a member of the boats crew - about how he'd been a good officer and everyone in the crew had liked him.
So when he was killed by a shot from the slaver they'd boarded the slaver and killed the entire crew. Including the ones trying to surrender.
In other news, the Guardian has just flashed up Lord Geidt's report on the No 10 flat refurbishment. Our PM apparently acted 'unwisely' but wasn't deliberately misleading. However the noble lord has had his confidence shaken 'precisely because potential and real failures of process occurred in more than one part of the apparatus of government'.
Not sure whether that isn't, in fact, more damning.