Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Go easy on @kinabalu his favourite Labour politician is (now disgraced?) ex public schoolboy Haileyburian Bazza Gardener and he wrestles with that uncomfortable fact daily.
For once you're spot on. That was a genuine shock, the China thing. I still think he'd be great to have a night on the town with but I no longer champion him as a politician.
Just like Boris he was and is the same person before and after the fall. Either your legendary judgement is faulty or you should continue to support him.
I wonder how many people HYUFD has persuaded recently to vote Conservative?
Me, on the other hand have been seriously thinking about voting Labour (particularly if The Clown stays in charge) and then I have @kinabalu and @OnlyLivingBoy remind me just how prejudiced against anyone who choses private healthcare or independent schooling you have to be to vote Labour. Perhaps people only persuade people not to vote for a party rather than for them
It's Keir Starmer in charge, Nigel, not me or OLB, and he wants your vote, no question. He'll be busting a gut to get it.
He will not get mine and if Boris goes I will rejoin the conservatives, otherwise it is abstain or the lib dems
I'm told by Tory MPs that Johnson lieutenants are ringing round trying to convince them that Russia/Ukraine crisis means now would be worst time for leadership contest.
Some apparently agree. But one says: "It's at moments like this that we *don't* want him in charge".
One of the key things that did for Chamberlain in the Norway debate was his explicit call to his parliamentary 'friends' - i.e. Tory MPs - to support him.
The partisan appeal was completely at odds with the need for national unity.
I've had a minor thought on this every now and then over the last few days which I think does deserve a hearing as a possibility, albeit obviously not a central one.
Vladimir Putin was.a clear and open supporter of Brexit, and seems to have engaged a large amount of his social media offices on this front. This is because it was divisive to European unity.
At this crucial moment it probably serves Putin's interests for Johnson to remain.He represents European disunity and discord, and also possibly in the mind of Putin, and maybe in reality , keeps the Germans more suspicious and distanced from the American position.
Therefore it's not entirely inconceivable that Putin could have sped up parts of his operation at this particular time to help Johnson survive. I accept it's not likely to have been a central factor, but it's worth considering as a minor contributing factor, at least to the timings of things.
No, I don’t think so.
I generally believe that Russia’s influence on Brexit (and perhaps other things, like Sindy) is greater than officially accredited, but I doubt Putin is giving Boris more than a moment’s thought.
I also accept it wouldn't be more than a moment's thought or very peripheral factor, but Johnson remaining in place, with his deeply toxic profile in Germany, certainly helps European disunity which is very important to Putin at the moment.
Getting Turkey on board, home of some of Boris' ancestors, is more important to NATO than Germany in military terms.
I for one will be relieved for the report and photographs to be published and to listen to Boris statement after pmqs tomorrow as just reported by Sky
You're a different kind of loyalist from HYUFD, BigG. You want to see the best in people and give them the benefit of the doubt, whereas I think HYUFD sees it more in terms of an abstract principle that's it's very important to defend.
I wonder how many people HYUFD has persuaded recently to vote Conservative?
Me, on the other hand have been seriously thinking about voting Labour (particularly if The Clown stays in charge) and then I have @kinabalu and @OnlyLivingBoy remind me just how prejudiced against anyone who choses private healthcare or independent schooling you have to be to vote Labour. Perhaps people only persuade people not to vote for a party rather than for them
It's Keir Starmer in charge, Nigel, not me or OLB, and he wants your vote, no question. He'll be busting a gut to get it.
He will not get mine and if Boris goes I will rejoin the conservatives, otherwise it is abstain or the lib dems
So glad the Scottish Government has a salaried Gaelic officer, who trusts Google Translate to know the difference between heat burns (losgadh) and the surname Burns (Burns).
I have lost 25kg+ since summer by skipping breakfast, and moderately sticking to a regime of dinners before 7pm, lowish carb, lowish alcohol etc.
And running every second day.
Yep - exercise and lower calorie intake will do it for you. Or anyone.
The point is that apart from initially, and indeed during a week in Greece, I’ve barely watched what I eat.
I just try to follow the simple rules above. And if I don’t, there’s always tomorrow.
The weight continues to come off regardless.
It is why the diet book business is so lucrative. You could write a diet book saying eat hotdogs for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch and a bacon sandwich for supper and it would work because for the vast majority of people it is unregulated/snacking/grazing that increases their calorie intake while not satisfying them. So anything which regulates their food intake will almost always result in them eating less than they usually do regardless of what they actually eat.
Alcohol and fruit juices (if people consume them) is usually the easiest way to lose immediate weight.
Edit: and of course people lose weight by funky diets grazing through the day whatever but it almost always means they regulate their intake vs previously.
This is true. The last time I was this fat I lost it all in about 2 months, simply by watching - quite carefully - what I ate and refusing anything extra, from a biscuit to an extra bit of cheese. And skipping a meal a day. After a fortnight or so it became 2nd nature
I kick started it with a pretty intense fast, however, which really works, whatever dieticians say, because you lose a lot quickly. Sure, its just water or whatever, but it is highly encouraging when you lose 8 pounds in the first two weeks, and that encouragement gives you the enthusiasm to continue
A lot of diets fail because people get discouraged. They don’t see quick results. So: fast first, but then don’t return to your previous intake, stay at a reduced calorie level. And go for a walk instead of lunch
I accept I am speaking as a fat guy (at the moment) here, so it may sound like poor advice, but it isn’t
Yeah, I've done that. It definitely works, and if you've the discipline you can keep it going. Not sure it's healthy, per se, but wasn't really my goal. Much easier to keep it off than the lose it, so my strategy was go hard, lose it quick and keep it off.
I am also speaking as a fat guy at the moment. COVID really sapped any discipline/habits I'd built. What was there other than food or drink? I admit I treated that time like a second studenthood and tried to enjoy it, but recently I'm back to my old ways. We'll see if it works again.
Yep, we are exactly the same
I weighed myself regularly - twice a week - for many years before Covid and stayed at a good healthy weight. Not slim, I’m the rugby player type, but definitely not fat either
Then lockdown made everything seem irrelevant and I blobbed out and it has been a really struggle to master it, since then. As we - God willing - exit the pandemic, it is time to reapply myself. Sri Lanka is a good place to start (despite the tempting curries). Good weather, gyms in hotels, the sea to swim in
I have already been fasting for 6 hours without breaking! And so it begins
Whatever works for you, but I'm less than convinced of the benefits of the "crash diet by skipping meals and starving yourself thin" approach.
IMHO sustainable weight loss is primarily about breaking bad eating and drinking habits, as difficult as that may sometimes be. Once you do that then it may take a little while to shift the excess (though it's quicker with the aid of a more active lifestyle,) but there's absolutely no need to starve yourself. If you try to compensate by skipping meals then the risk is that you fail whilst attempting to lose weight because you get sick of being hungry, or after you lose weight because it starts piling back on as soon as you resume eating like you did before.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Exactly. That macro assessment - which I strongly share - does not devolve to slagging off individuals for their personal choices. It's very common for people to assume it does but it absolutely does not.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
So glad the Scottish Government has a salaried Gaelic officer, who trusts Google Translate to know the difference between heat burns (losgadh) and the surname Burns (Burns).
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Go easy on @kinabalu his favourite Labour politician is (now disgraced?) ex public schoolboy Haileyburian Bazza Gardener and he wrestles with that uncomfortable fact daily.
For once you're spot on. That was a genuine shock, the China thing. I still think he'd be great to have a night on the town with but I no longer champion him as a politician.
Just like Boris he was and is the same person before and after the fall. Either your legendary judgement is faulty or you should continue to support him.
Faulty in this case. Should have guessed he was a bad apple, with the school angle, but I was taken in by the eloquence and the twinkly eyes.
I have to get out of this hotel. NOW. It has the best food per dollar I have ever encountered. Superb, freshly made curries for £4
I need to check into a hostel above a weirdly expensive McDonalds.
I recommend Geneva.
Where some of the cheaper dishes involve piles of bread dipped into a vast vat of melted cheese... or lake fish swamped in butter sauce with a pile of chips.
But yes, the worst value for money hotel I ever stayed in was in Geneva. £250 a night for something hovering around student halls of residence standards.
I had great food in Switzerland last summer, especially in the Italian bit, but my God, it was fucking expensive, luckily I wasn’t paying
For a diet surely the best place in the advanced world is Norway. Obscenely pricey AND it’s shit? Iceland close behind
If the only options were rotting shark then you would lose five stone in a month.
True story: when I was a young man doing my first gigs for the Flint Knappers Gazette I was sent to Iceland with a photographer friend (those were the days), My commission was: Oh just go and find something interesting . Literally (as I say those were the days!)
So I went and had a laugh and we met girls and it was all great and then we got a boat over the Arctic Ocean to the Vestman Islands, and we climbed a live volcano and I took out the two early Ecstasy tablet sI had smuggled in, via my sheepskin coat, and me and my tog friend had one each - this is when E was brilliant, late 80s - and we literally danced on the volcano until we were utterly exhausted with laughter and then we stomped down the lava off the volcano with an appetite like Daniel Lambert after a diet and we marched into the only restaurant to discover that the ONLY dish they were serving was…. Puffin
Two puffin each. Boiled. Beaks and claws on, and heads, everything.
Despite our ravenous hunger we could not eat a morsel. Puffin is disgusting. Like fishy liver, gone rancid.
I think we found a pizzeria the next day and forced them to open at about 10am
Rotted shark (Iceland) Snake blood (China) Snake bile (China) Drunken shrimp [ie live shrimp in a soup] (China)
= the worst culinary experiences of my life although I can taste each of those right this minute so I can't say they weren't memorable.
Balat - half formed chicken embryo in an egg - in Indonesia (actually delicious - meaty egg! - but the concept and the sight, OMG) Fried crickets in avocado dip - Mexico Puffin, like I say, Vestman Islands, Iceland Tarantula, in Skeon, Cambodia Mealy worm things - Australia
But worse, far worse, than any of these - worse even than the gunge-filled thorax of the tarantula in Skeon - was also in Cambodia. In Phnom Penh, bought at their central market
Dried frog
I can’t even begin to describe how bad it was. Like chewing the corpse of a mummified dolphin who had famously bad breath. Jesus
I had fried (I think) tree frog in China. Bit crunchy but OK. Quite small. Yours must have been a big frog, I guess.
Hmm. Wiki says re drunken shrimp:
'Another version is based on shrimp that are submerged in a bowl of rice wine. The rice wine forces the shrimp to expel their wastes. Once done, the shrimp are anesthetized and are taken from the bowl, de-shelled and eaten alive.[4][5]
Consuming uncooked freshwater shrimps may be a serious health hazard due to the risk of paragonimiasis.'
The Chinese propensity to eat living animals is disgusting. It just is
Okay, but we put
milk
into
tea
A filthy habit, which I now abhor. Also black tea is much healthier
But this really does not compare to what the Chinese do to animals. This might sound borderline racist but they seem to lack the compassion-for-animals gene, or meme, or something. Perhaps we are just sentimental westerners and they are morally coherent?
I dunno. They could easily argue that we are hypocrites, and we put our animal cruelty in factory farms and awful slaughterhouuses, and we do it on an industrial scale, but it is out of sight and out of mind. And that’s probably fair.
But I can’t get my head around people that can skin a living cat or fry a living dog in a wok because it tastes better. And they really do this
So fuck knows what THEIR factory farming is like
I think the English used to pluck geese alive for culinary reasons? Bear in mind the chinese may have iphones but they are only just having their industrial revolution. They are in many ways a century off the pace.
And they have mass famine in living memory. 15-60m dead from 1959-1961?
That would make you unsentimental about food sources
However that does not explain their hideous liking for the cooking of live animals, that seems an historic culinary thing. And the Chinese, along with the Vietnamese, are responsible for the near extermination of the rhino and the pangolin because they believe the horns and the scales, or whatever, give you virility, beat cancer and endow status.
I'm told by Tory MPs that Johnson lieutenants are ringing round trying to convince them that Russia/Ukraine crisis means now would be worst time for leadership contest.
Some apparently agree. But one says: "It's at moments like this that we *don't* want him in charge".
One of the key things that did for Chamberlain in the Norway debate was his explicit call to his parliamentary 'friends' - i.e. Tory MPs - to support him.
The partisan appeal was completely at odds with the need for national unity.
I've had a minor thought on this every now and then over the last few days which I think does deserve a hearing as a possibility, albeit obviously not a central one.
Vladimir Putin was.a clear and open supporter of Brexit, and seems to have engaged a large amount of his social media offices on this front. This is because it was divisive to European unity.
At this crucial moment it probably serves Putin's interests for Johnson to remain.He represents European disunity and discord, and also possibly in the mind of Putin, and maybe in reality , keeps the Germans more suspicious and distanced from the American position.
Therefore it's not entirely inconceivable that Putin could have sped up parts of his operation at this particular time to help Johnson survive. I accept it's not likely to have been a central factor, but it's worth considering as a minor contributing factor, at least to the timings of things.
No, I don’t think so.
I generally believe that Russia’s influence on Brexit (and perhaps other things, like Sindy) is greater than officially accredited, but I doubt Putin is giving Boris more than a moment’s thought.
I also accept it wouldn't be more than a moment's thought or very peripheral factor, but Johnson remaining in place, with his deeply toxic profile in Germany, certainly helps European disunity which is very important to Putin at the moment.
Getting Turkey on board, home of some of Boris' ancestors, is more important to NATO than Germany in military terms.
The Turks have a far bigger military than Germany
Um, Turkey still has conscription, given the choice between Professional German soldiers and Turks NATO always went for the Germans.
Most other countries got rid of conscription decades ago as it results in an oversized poorly trained and terribly poorly motivated army for this day and age.
I wonder how many people HYUFD has persuaded recently to vote Conservative?
Me, on the other hand have been seriously thinking about voting Labour (particularly if The Clown stays in charge) and then I have @kinabalu and @OnlyLivingBoy remind me just how prejudiced against anyone who choses private healthcare or independent schooling you have to be to vote Labour. Perhaps people only persuade people not to vote for a party rather than for them
It's Keir Starmer in charge, Nigel, not me or OLB, and he wants your vote, no question. He'll be busting a gut to get it.
He will not get mine and if Boris goes I will rejoin the conservatives, otherwise it is abstain or the lib dems
Cases - Flat. R hovers around 1. This is nearly all driven by cases in the younger groups - the older groups continue a gentle fall. Admission - Down MV beds - Down In Hospital - Down deaths - seeming flat again.
Remember that UUP chap Ladyt Davidson said would save the Union? Having a bit of a sticky time. (Interesting issue of whether he is also showing a failure of leadership. But certainly nobody at the UUP thought to do a bit of searching, it seems.)
'THE Ulster Unionist Party leader has asked colleagues whether he should resign amid a controversy over historical tweets.
Doug Beattie, who Ruth Davidson has said is "quite possibly" the man who'll save the Union, has faced accusations of misogyny and racism over the content of tweets posted before he entered political life.
The Upper Bann MLA conceded that the posts, the majority of which were written around a decade ago, were “horrendous and horrific”.
He told BBC Radio Ulster: “I will speak to my MLA group today and I will speak to my party officers through my chairman, Danny Kennedy, and if either group feels I should step down, then I will.
“Likewise, if they think I should refer myself to the party executive or the wider council on a vote of no confidence then I shall do that as well, and the party will decide whether or not they can follow my leadership.”'
As far as I can see the worst thing Doug Beattie did was insult Edwin Poot's wife.
As his main target voters are middle class soft Unionist Alliance voters he may even end up with a poll bounce from that! (Even if he shouldn't have done it)
"A series of derogatory messages came to light referring to women, Muslims, members of the Travelling community and people with mental health issues."
Care to do a word by word analysis of your comparison with that rather nasty tweet about Mrs Poots? And why should middle class and relatively centrist voters be at all impressed by the Mrs Poots joke? Which was extremely personal - look at it.
As Poots is a hardline DUPer.
Beattie at the end of the day is only targeting a small pool of voters ie relatively wealthy, middle class soft Unionists who might swing between UUP and Alliance.
Nationalists and leftwingers in NI will vote SF or SDLP, hardline Unionists will vote DUP or TUV so he will never win either of those groups whatever he tweets
Their children, as they become voting adults, on the other hand......
And I have a little knowledge of which I speak.
Will still not vote SF or SDLP if Protestants
SDLP...... possible. More likely to vote Alliance, though.
Plenty of young Catholics will also vote Alliance, the long term growth party in NI is Alliance, not SF or DUP, followed by UUP and SDLP.
That is more a shift to moderation than to Nationalists
Obviously you’re a NI expert, but I’d suggest there are three things happening at once.
1. A split in Unionism, occasioned by Brexit 2. A shift to moderation, probably generational 3. A de-toxification of Sinn Fein, perhaps aided by success south of the border, although this has allowed them to “stabilise” their vote rather than increase it.
Quite a complex picture.
I had assumed that Unionists - appalled by the prospect of a Sinn Fein FM - would “swing back” to the DUP or perhaps rally around the UUP, but it doesn’t seem to be happening.
Unionists, especially those now voting TUV, will only swing back to DUP once Donaldson has collapsed the Stormont Executive.
That will happen if the UK government has not triggered Article 16 by April
The great risk for unionists is that Sinn Fein governs well and appears to be non-mental, attracting votes from SDLP/Alliance etc.
See SNP for details.
It won't, first NI has 2 nationalist parties as there is also the SDLP and second NI has full STV PR without even any constituencies at Stormont
Wrong. There are constituencies = 18 five-seaters.
I have lost 25kg+ since summer by skipping breakfast, and moderately sticking to a regime of dinners before 7pm, lowish carb, lowish alcohol etc.
And running every second day.
Yep - exercise and lower calorie intake will do it for you. Or anyone.
The point is that apart from initially, and indeed during a week in Greece, I’ve barely watched what I eat.
I just try to follow the simple rules above. And if I don’t, there’s always tomorrow.
The weight continues to come off regardless.
It is why the diet book business is so lucrative. You could write a diet book saying eat hotdogs for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch and a bacon sandwich for supper and it would work because for the vast majority of people it is unregulated/snacking/grazing that increases their calorie intake while not satisfying them. So anything which regulates their food intake will almost always result in them eating less than they usually do regardless of what they actually eat.
Alcohol and fruit juices (if people consume them) is usually the easiest way to lose immediate weight.
Edit: and of course people lose weight by funky diets grazing through the day whatever but it almost always means they regulate their intake vs previously.
This is true. The last time I was this fat I lost it all in about 2 months, simply by watching - quite carefully - what I ate and refusing anything extra, from a biscuit to an extra bit of cheese. And skipping a meal a day. After a fortnight or so it became 2nd nature
I kick started it with a pretty intense fast, however, which really works, whatever dieticians say, because you lose a lot quickly. Sure, its just water or whatever, but it is highly encouraging when you lose 8 pounds in the first two weeks, and that encouragement gives you the enthusiasm to continue
A lot of diets fail because people get discouraged. They don’t see quick results. So: fast first, but then don’t return to your previous intake, stay at a reduced calorie level. And go for a walk instead of lunch
I accept I am speaking as a fat guy (at the moment) here, so it may sound like poor advice, but it isn’t
Yeah, I've done that. It definitely works, and if you've the discipline you can keep it going. Not sure it's healthy, per se, but wasn't really my goal. Much easier to keep it off than the lose it, so my strategy was go hard, lose it quick and keep it off.
I am also speaking as a fat guy at the moment. COVID really sapped any discipline/habits I'd built. What was there other than food or drink? I admit I treated that time like a second studenthood and tried to enjoy it, but recently I'm back to my old ways. We'll see if it works again.
Yep, we are exactly the same
I weighed myself regularly - twice a week - for many years before Covid and stayed at a good healthy weight. Not slim, I’m the rugby player type, but definitely not fat either
Then lockdown made everything seem irrelevant and I blobbed out and it has been a really struggle to master it, since then. As we - God willing - exit the pandemic, it is time to reapply myself. Sri Lanka is a good place to start (despite the tempting curries). Good weather, gyms in hotels, the sea to swim in
I have already been fasting for 6 hours without breaking! And so it begins
Whatever works for you, but I'm less than convinced of the benefits of the "crash diet by skipping meals and starving yourself thin" approach.
IMHO sustainable weight loss is primarily about breaking bad eating and drinking habits, as difficult as that may sometimes be. Once you do that then it may take a little while to shift the excess (though it's quicker with the aid of a more active lifestyle,) but there's absolutely no need to starve yourself. If you try to compensate by skipping meals then the risk is that you fail whilst attempting to lose weight because you get sick of being hungry, or after you lose weight because it starts piling back on as soon as you resume eating like you did before.
Except that this method is exactly what I did before. I started with a serious bout of fasting, followed by reduced calorie intake, more exercise, and again the odd fast (not as severe as the first) to maintain the downward pressure and keep me encouraged
And it entirely worked. I lost 24 pounds in two months, and it stayed off for 6 years - until lockdown
Lots of dieticians say that shouldn’t happen or it won’t work - yet it did
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Go easy on @kinabalu his favourite Labour politician is (now disgraced?) ex public schoolboy Haileyburian Bazza Gardener and he wrestles with that uncomfortable fact daily.
For once you're spot on. That was a genuine shock, the China thing. I still think he'd be great to have a night on the town with but I no longer champion him as a politician.
Just like Boris he was and is the same person before and after the fall. Either your legendary judgement is faulty or you should continue to support him.
Faulty in this case. Should have guessed he was a bad apple, with the school angle, but I was taken in by the eloquence and the twinkly eyes.
Don't be hard on yourself. Not everyone is a good judge of character; plenty of people are taken in by smart operators.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Perhaps you should ask some of the public sector "servants" to take a little less for their gold plated pensions to make the services better? Particularly doctors. Do you think they might agree? No chance.
I for one will be relieved for the report and photographs to be published and to listen to Boris statement after pmqs tomorrow as just reported by Sky
Craig might have got that the wrong way round? If you were Boris you would make statement first if you could, to pour vinegar all over the coming stings? And he did get his statement in first last time too?
I'm told by Tory MPs that Johnson lieutenants are ringing round trying to convince them that Russia/Ukraine crisis means now would be worst time for leadership contest.
Some apparently agree. But one says: "It's at moments like this that we *don't* want him in charge".
One of the key things that did for Chamberlain in the Norway debate was his explicit call to his parliamentary 'friends' - i.e. Tory MPs - to support him.
The partisan appeal was completely at odds with the need for national unity.
I've had a minor thought on this every now and then over the last few days which I think does deserve a hearing as a possibility, albeit obviously not a central one.
Vladimir Putin was.a clear and open supporter of Brexit, and seems to have engaged a large amount of his social media offices on this front. This is because it was divisive to European unity.
At this crucial moment it probably serves Putin's interests for Johnson to remain.He represents European disunity and discord, and also possibly in the mind of Putin, and maybe in reality , keeps the Germans more suspicious and distanced from the American position.
Therefore it's not entirely inconceivable that Putin could have sped up parts of his operation at this particular time to help Johnson survive. I accept it's not likely to have been a central factor, but it's worth considering as a minor contributing factor, at least to the timings of things.
No, I don’t think so.
I generally believe that Russia’s influence on Brexit (and perhaps other things, like Sindy) is greater than officially accredited, but I doubt Putin is giving Boris more than a moment’s thought.
I also accept it wouldn't be more than a moment's thought or very peripheral factor, but Johnson remaining in place, with his deeply toxic profile in Germany, certainly helps European disunity which is very important to Putin at the moment.
European disunity is driven by those who would sacrifice anything Ukrainian rather than have any kind of conflict/dispute with Russia.
In German the reasons for this are
1) WWII 2) Pacifism (related to above) 3) Fear of the gas supply being cut off in winter & the economy in general 4) East Politics 4) People who have taken Putin's Shilling
It's more about 1-4, with silly noises from 5 - my German acquaintances made rude jokes about the obvious Putin puppets.
The PM of the UK is not of interest in any of that.
I have lost 25kg+ since summer by skipping breakfast, and moderately sticking to a regime of dinners before 7pm, lowish carb, lowish alcohol etc.
And running every second day.
Yep - exercise and lower calorie intake will do it for you. Or anyone.
The point is that apart from initially, and indeed during a week in Greece, I’ve barely watched what I eat.
I just try to follow the simple rules above. And if I don’t, there’s always tomorrow.
The weight continues to come off regardless.
It is why the diet book business is so lucrative. You could write a diet book saying eat hotdogs for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch and a bacon sandwich for supper and it would work because for the vast majority of people it is unregulated/snacking/grazing that increases their calorie intake while not satisfying them. So anything which regulates their food intake will almost always result in them eating less than they usually do regardless of what they actually eat.
Alcohol and fruit juices (if people consume them) is usually the easiest way to lose immediate weight.
Edit: and of course people lose weight by funky diets grazing through the day whatever but it almost always means they regulate their intake vs previously.
This is true. The last time I was this fat I lost it all in about 2 months, simply by watching - quite carefully - what I ate and refusing anything extra, from a biscuit to an extra bit of cheese. And skipping a meal a day. After a fortnight or so it became 2nd nature
I kick started it with a pretty intense fast, however, which really works, whatever dieticians say, because you lose a lot quickly. Sure, its just water or whatever, but it is highly encouraging when you lose 8 pounds in the first two weeks, and that encouragement gives you the enthusiasm to continue
A lot of diets fail because people get discouraged. They don’t see quick results. So: fast first, but then don’t return to your previous intake, stay at a reduced calorie level. And go for a walk instead of lunch
I accept I am speaking as a fat guy (at the moment) here, so it may sound like poor advice, but it isn’t
Yeah, I've done that. It definitely works, and if you've the discipline you can keep it going. Not sure it's healthy, per se, but wasn't really my goal. Much easier to keep it off than the lose it, so my strategy was go hard, lose it quick and keep it off.
I am also speaking as a fat guy at the moment. COVID really sapped any discipline/habits I'd built. What was there other than food or drink? I admit I treated that time like a second studenthood and tried to enjoy it, but recently I'm back to my old ways. We'll see if it works again.
Yep, we are exactly the same
I weighed myself regularly - twice a week - for many years before Covid and stayed at a good healthy weight. Not slim, I’m the rugby player type, but definitely not fat either
Then lockdown made everything seem irrelevant and I blobbed out and it has been a really struggle to master it, since then. As we - God willing - exit the pandemic, it is time to reapply myself. Sri Lanka is a good place to start (despite the tempting curries). Good weather, gyms in hotels, the sea to swim in
I have already been fasting for 6 hours without breaking! And so it begins
Whatever works for you, but I'm less than convinced of the benefits of the "crash diet by skipping meals and starving yourself thin" approach.
IMHO sustainable weight loss is primarily about breaking bad eating and drinking habits, as difficult as that may sometimes be. Once you do that then it may take a little while to shift the excess (though it's quicker with the aid of a more active lifestyle,) but there's absolutely no need to starve yourself. If you try to compensate by skipping meals then the risk is that you fail whilst attempting to lose weight because you get sick of being hungry, or after you lose weight because it starts piling back on as soon as you resume eating like you did before.
Except that this method is exactly what I did before. I started with a serious bout of fasting, followed by reduced calorie intake, more exercise, and again the odd fast (not as severe as the first) to maintain the downward pressure and keep me encouraged
And it entirely worked. I lost 24 pounds in two months, and it stayed off for 6 years - until lockdown
Lots of dieticians say that shouldn’t happen or it won’t work - yet it did
Dieticians are idiots.
I think they fail to incorporate human psychology and they also seem to think all calories are equal.
As you say, once you skip breakfast, it becomes habitual. I don’t feel hungry until midday and then it is a very virtuous hunger.
I hardly ever used to allow myself to feel hungry; that’s how I got fat.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Perhaps you should ask some of the public sector "servants" to take a little less for their gold plated pensions to make the services better? Particularly doctors. Do you think they might agree? No chance.
Have a look at the actual pension schemes before you pontificate in such a prejudiced manner. Even in the old days the Treasury made damn sure that the salaries were significantly cut to compensate. And in recent years the pension schemes have been greatly degraded to follow the stellar lead of the private sector (and make more money for the private sector).
I for one will be relieved for the report and photographs to be published and to listen to Boris statement after pmqs tomorrow as just reported by Sky
Craig might have got that the wrong way round? If you were Boris you would make statement first if you could, to pour vinegar all over the coming stings? And he did get his statement in first last time too?
There is a set order to a Parliamentary day - questions come first then urgent Statements / Questions and then that day's business.
So it's not possible for Boris to provide a statement prior to PMQs even if he wanted to. But he could try and get something in as he answers the first (set) question.
I for one will be relieved for the report and photographs to be published and to listen to Boris statement after pmqs tomorrow as just reported by Sky
Craig might have got that the wrong way round? If you were Boris you would make statement first if you could, to pour vinegar all over the coming stings? And he did get his statement in first last time too?
No - It does seem the report will be released before Boris speaks
I have to get out of this hotel. NOW. It has the best food per dollar I have ever encountered. Superb, freshly made curries for £4
I need to check into a hostel above a weirdly expensive McDonalds.
I recommend Geneva.
Where some of the cheaper dishes involve piles of bread dipped into a vast vat of melted cheese... or lake fish swamped in butter sauce with a pile of chips.
But yes, the worst value for money hotel I ever stayed in was in Geneva. £250 a night for something hovering around student halls of residence standards.
I had great food in Switzerland last summer, especially in the Italian bit, but my God, it was fucking expensive, luckily I wasn’t paying
For a diet surely the best place in the advanced world is Norway. Obscenely pricey AND it’s shit? Iceland close behind
If the only options were rotting shark then you would lose five stone in a month.
True story: when I was a young man doing my first gigs for the Flint Knappers Gazette I was sent to Iceland with a photographer friend (those were the days), My commission was: Oh just go and find something interesting . Literally (as I say those were the days!)
So I went and had a laugh and we met girls and it was all great and then we got a boat over the Arctic Ocean to the Vestman Islands, and we climbed a live volcano and I took out the two early Ecstasy tablet sI had smuggled in, via my sheepskin coat, and me and my tog friend had one each - this is when E was brilliant, late 80s - and we literally danced on the volcano until we were utterly exhausted with laughter and then we stomped down the lava off the volcano with an appetite like Daniel Lambert after a diet and we marched into the only restaurant to discover that the ONLY dish they were serving was…. Puffin
Two puffin each. Boiled. Beaks and claws on, and heads, everything.
Despite our ravenous hunger we could not eat a morsel. Puffin is disgusting. Like fishy liver, gone rancid.
I think we found a pizzeria the next day and forced them to open at about 10am
Rotted shark (Iceland) Snake blood (China) Snake bile (China) Drunken shrimp [ie live shrimp in a soup] (China)
= the worst culinary experiences of my life although I can taste each of those right this minute so I can't say they weren't memorable.
Balat - half formed chicken embryo in an egg - in Indonesia (actually delicious - meaty egg! - but the concept and the sight, OMG) Fried crickets in avocado dip - Mexico Puffin, like I say, Vestman Islands, Iceland Tarantula, in Skeon, Cambodia Mealy worm things - Australia
But worse, far worse, than any of these - worse even than the gunge-filled thorax of the tarantula in Skeon - was also in Cambodia. In Phnom Penh, bought at their central market
Dried frog
I can’t even begin to describe how bad it was. Like chewing the corpse of a mummified dolphin who had famously bad breath. Jesus
I had fried (I think) tree frog in China. Bit crunchy but OK. Quite small. Yours must have been a big frog, I guess.
Hmm. Wiki says re drunken shrimp:
'Another version is based on shrimp that are submerged in a bowl of rice wine. The rice wine forces the shrimp to expel their wastes. Once done, the shrimp are anesthetized and are taken from the bowl, de-shelled and eaten alive.[4][5]
Consuming uncooked freshwater shrimps may be a serious health hazard due to the risk of paragonimiasis.'
The Chinese propensity to eat living animals is disgusting. It just is
Okay, but we put
milk
into
tea
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
We put tea into milk!
You might. Others...
One of the better jokes in Carry on up The Khyber
Kenneth Williams as "The Mad Khazi" is complaining that the siege of the Residence is getting nowhere "These British are impossible! Shell their cities, kill their women and they don't bat an eyelid, but put the tea in before the milk and they go berserk"
In the tea! In the tea! They all put milk in the tea!
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Perhaps you should ask some of the public sector "servants" to take a little less for their gold plated pensions to make the services better? Particularly doctors. Do you think they might agree? No chance.
Have a look at the actual pension schemes before you pontificate in such a prejudiced manner. Even in the old days the Treasury made damn sure that the salaries were significantly cut to compensate. And in recent years the pension schemes have been greatly degraded to follow the stellar lead of the private sector (and make more money for the private sector).
The VOA contribute the equivalent of 26+% of a person's salary into their pension scheme. It's rather generous compared to the private sector.
I only know this because Eek twin A's apprenticeship is with them. Pay a mere £25k a year with 1 day off a week to do the degree course they are also paying for.
To say she has won the work jackpot would be a slight understatement.
Can’t get haggis in New York except out of a tin, at great expense.
So I’ll have to dispense with that tradition for a while, or perhaps just get better prepared for next year.
There are several really decent Haggis Neeps and Tatties ready meals in Lidl which I eat when can't be arsed making anything. Haven't bothered tonight and think Burns like all poetry is tedious. May have a wee dram though because its a day with a Y on the end...
I would at this moment in time like to propose a sincere and genuine vote of thanks to all those responsible for PB as it is without doubt the best medium for information leaving Sky, BBC and others way behind
It is the go to forum for upto date news and views
I'm told by Tory MPs that Johnson lieutenants are ringing round trying to convince them that Russia/Ukraine crisis means now would be worst time for leadership contest.
Some apparently agree. But one says: "It's at moments like this that we *don't* want him in charge".
One of the key things that did for Chamberlain in the Norway debate was his explicit call to his parliamentary 'friends' - i.e. Tory MPs - to support him.
The partisan appeal was completely at odds with the need for national unity.
I've had a minor thought on this every now and then over the last few days which I think does deserve a hearing as a possibility, albeit obviously not a central one.
Vladimir Putin was.a clear and open supporter of Brexit, and seems to have engaged a large amount of his social media offices on this front. This is because it was divisive to European unity.
At this crucial moment it probably serves Putin's interests for Johnson to remain.He represents European disunity and discord, and also possibly in the mind of Putin, and maybe in reality , keeps the Germans more suspicious and distanced from the American position.
Therefore it's not entirely inconceivable that Putin could have sped up parts of his operation at this particular time to help Johnson survive. I accept it's not likely to have been a central factor, but it's worth considering as a minor contributing factor, at least to the timings of things.
No, I don’t think so.
I generally believe that Russia’s influence on Brexit (and perhaps other things, like Sindy) is greater than officially accredited, but I doubt Putin is giving Boris more than a moment’s thought.
I also accept it wouldn't be more than a moment's thought or very peripheral factor, but Johnson remaining in place, with his deeply toxic profile in Germany, certainly helps European disunity which is very important to Putin at the moment.
European disunity is driven by those who would sacrifice anything Ukrainian rather than have any kind of conflict/dispute with Russia.
In German the reasons for this are
1) WWII 2) Pacifism (related to above) 3) Fear of the gas supply being cut off in winter & the economy in general 4) East Politics 4) People who have taken Putin's Shilling
It's more about 1-4, with silly noises from 5 - my German acquaintances made rude jokes about the obvious Putin puppets.
The PM of the UK is not of interest in any of that.
I agree and don't agree with that. Those are certainly the German domestic political reasons, but Britain's role since World War II in these situations, even now after Brexit, has always been as an international link player. Therefore it matters if the traditional transatlantic link-up military player is persona non grata in Europe.
I for one will be relieved for the report and photographs to be published and to listen to Boris statement after pmqs tomorrow as just reported by Sky
Craig might have got that the wrong way round? If you were Boris you would make statement first if you could, to pour vinegar all over the coming stings? And he did get his statement in first last time too?
Yes it was all fairly speculative based on DS getting the report tonight
Can’t get haggis in New York except out of a tin, at great expense.
So I’ll have to dispense with that tradition for a while, or perhaps just get better prepared for next year.
There are several really decent Haggis Neeps and Tatties ready meals in Lidl which I eat when can't be arsed making anything. Haven't bothered tonight and think Burns like all poetry is tedious. May have a wee dram though because its a day with a Y on the end...
Good idea.
I think I’ll go and buy some whiskey, make a tiny contribution to the Scottish economy.
Plus, something in the house for if/when Boris finally fucks off.
Can’t get haggis in New York except out of a tin, at great expense.
So I’ll have to dispense with that tradition for a while, or perhaps just get better prepared for next year.
There are several really decent Haggis Neeps and Tatties ready meals in Lidl which I eat when can't be arsed making anything. Haven't bothered tonight and think Burns like all poetry is tedious. May have a wee dram though because its a day with a Y on the end...
Good idea.
I think I’ll go and buy some whiskey, make a tiny contribution to the Scottish economy.
Plus, something in the house for if/when Boris finally fucks off.
Can’t get haggis in New York except out of a tin, at great expense.
So I’ll have to dispense with that tradition for a while, or perhaps just get better prepared for next year.
There are several really decent Haggis Neeps and Tatties ready meals in Lidl which I eat when can't be arsed making anything. Haven't bothered tonight and think Burns like all poetry is tedious. May have a wee dram though because its a day with a Y on the end...
Good idea.
I think I’ll go and buy some whiskey, make a tiny contribution to the Scottish economy.
Plus, something in the house for if/when Boris finally fucks off.
Whisky. Not whiskey.
Mind, Bushmills single malt wasn't bad when we tried some a few years back.
Can’t get haggis in New York except out of a tin, at great expense.
So I’ll have to dispense with that tradition for a while, or perhaps just get better prepared for next year.
There are several really decent Haggis Neeps and Tatties ready meals in Lidl which I eat when can't be arsed making anything. Haven't bothered tonight and think Burns like all poetry is tedious. May have a wee dram though because its a day with a Y on the end...
Good idea.
I think I’ll go and buy some whiskey, make a tiny contribution to the Scottish economy.
Plus, something in the house for if/when Boris finally fucks off.
Whisky. Not whiskey.
Auto-correct. The Irish have infiltrated my iPhone.
I'm told by Tory MPs that Johnson lieutenants are ringing round trying to convince them that Russia/Ukraine crisis means now would be worst time for leadership contest.
Some apparently agree. But one says: "It's at moments like this that we *don't* want him in charge".
One of the key things that did for Chamberlain in the Norway debate was his explicit call to his parliamentary 'friends' - i.e. Tory MPs - to support him.
The partisan appeal was completely at odds with the need for national unity.
I've had a minor thought on this every now and then over the last few days which I think does deserve a hearing as a possibility, albeit obviously not a central one.
Vladimir Putin was.a clear and open supporter of Brexit, and seems to have engaged a large amount of his social media offices on this front. This is because it was divisive to European unity.
At this crucial moment it probably serves Putin's interests for Johnson to remain.He represents European disunity and discord, and also possibly in the mind of Putin, and maybe in reality , keeps the Germans more suspicious and distanced from the American position.
Therefore it's not entirely inconceivable that Putin could have sped up parts of his operation at this particular time to help Johnson survive. I accept it's not likely to have been a central factor, but it's worth considering as a minor contributing factor, at least to the timings of things.
No, I don’t think so.
I generally believe that Russia’s influence on Brexit (and perhaps other things, like Sindy) is greater than officially accredited, but I doubt Putin is giving Boris more than a moment’s thought.
I have a few thoughts on this too 🙂
Firstly, wasn’t Churchill responsible for the Norway fiasco - in echoes of the fall of Afghanistan he was side tracked not by dogs but a nephew?
I have lost 25kg+ since summer by skipping breakfast, and moderately sticking to a regime of dinners before 7pm, lowish carb, lowish alcohol etc.
And running every second day.
Yep - exercise and lower calorie intake will do it for you. Or anyone.
The point is that apart from initially, and indeed during a week in Greece, I’ve barely watched what I eat.
I just try to follow the simple rules above. And if I don’t, there’s always tomorrow.
The weight continues to come off regardless.
It is why the diet book business is so lucrative. You could write a diet book saying eat hotdogs for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch and a bacon sandwich for supper and it would work because for the vast majority of people it is unregulated/snacking/grazing that increases their calorie intake while not satisfying them. So anything which regulates their food intake will almost always result in them eating less than they usually do regardless of what they actually eat.
Alcohol and fruit juices (if people consume them) is usually the easiest way to lose immediate weight.
Edit: and of course people lose weight by funky diets grazing through the day whatever but it almost always means they regulate their intake vs previously.
This is true. The last time I was this fat I lost it all in about 2 months, simply by watching - quite carefully - what I ate and refusing anything extra, from a biscuit to an extra bit of cheese. And skipping a meal a day. After a fortnight or so it became 2nd nature
I kick started it with a pretty intense fast, however, which really works, whatever dieticians say, because you lose a lot quickly. Sure, its just water or whatever, but it is highly encouraging when you lose 8 pounds in the first two weeks, and that encouragement gives you the enthusiasm to continue
A lot of diets fail because people get discouraged. They don’t see quick results. So: fast first, but then don’t return to your previous intake, stay at a reduced calorie level. And go for a walk instead of lunch
I accept I am speaking as a fat guy (at the moment) here, so it may sound like poor advice, but it isn’t
Yeah, I've done that. It definitely works, and if you've the discipline you can keep it going. Not sure it's healthy, per se, but wasn't really my goal. Much easier to keep it off than the lose it, so my strategy was go hard, lose it quick and keep it off.
I am also speaking as a fat guy at the moment. COVID really sapped any discipline/habits I'd built. What was there other than food or drink? I admit I treated that time like a second studenthood and tried to enjoy it, but recently I'm back to my old ways. We'll see if it works again.
Yep, we are exactly the same
I weighed myself regularly - twice a week - for many years before Covid and stayed at a good healthy weight. Not slim, I’m the rugby player type, but definitely not fat either
Then lockdown made everything seem irrelevant and I blobbed out and it has been a really struggle to master it, since then. As we - God willing - exit the pandemic, it is time to reapply myself. Sri Lanka is a good place to start (despite the tempting curries). Good weather, gyms in hotels, the sea to swim in
I have already been fasting for 6 hours without breaking! And so it begins
Whatever works for you, but I'm less than convinced of the benefits of the "crash diet by skipping meals and starving yourself thin" approach.
IMHO sustainable weight loss is primarily about breaking bad eating and drinking habits, as difficult as that may sometimes be. Once you do that then it may take a little while to shift the excess (though it's quicker with the aid of a more active lifestyle,) but there's absolutely no need to starve yourself. If you try to compensate by skipping meals then the risk is that you fail whilst attempting to lose weight because you get sick of being hungry, or after you lose weight because it starts piling back on as soon as you resume eating like you did before.
Except that this method is exactly what I did before. I started with a serious bout of fasting, followed by reduced calorie intake, more exercise, and again the odd fast (not as severe as the first) to maintain the downward pressure and keep me encouraged
And it entirely worked. I lost 24 pounds in two months, and it stayed off for 6 years - until lockdown
Lots of dieticians say that shouldn’t happen or it won’t work - yet it did
Dieticians are idiots.
I think they fail to incorporate human psychology and they also seem to think all calories are equal.
As you say, once you skip breakfast, it becomes habitual. I don’t feel hungry until midday and then it is a very virtuous hunger.
I hardly ever used to allow myself to feel hungry; that’s how I got fat.
Yes, psychology is crucial. Knowing when to weigh yourself is vital for a start
So let’s say you are doing this quite severe weight loss regime, low calorie, high exercise, pretty strict
There will come a time when you have to go out and eat quite a lot socially, that’s human nature. It is rude to go to a family dinner and say Nope, just a carrot
So you eat a hefty dinner and next day you’ve probably put on a pound or two, and you get seriously discouraged. My rule was - after one of those big unavoidable meals - go on a strict fast for two days - THEN weigh yourself. Bingo, no weight gain, and quite probably continuing loss. Duly enthused, you continue
Fast weight loss regimes work (or they did for me) because you get fast results, it is a positive feedback loop
I also got into the habit of skipping breakfast, and sometimes lunch as well. You can train your body to expect less. Mild hunger also keeps the brain sharp, whereas satiation does the opposite
Has anyone heard the Sumption interview at lunchtime? He raised some interesting legal arguments. Now I think legal arguments are - to a very great extent - missing the point about why this is a political problem for the Tories. The sense of solidarity, of all being in this together, has been trashed.
But the police can only investigate a breach of the law. And if you look at the Regulations - not the guidance - which were in place at the time, the offence was being away from your home without a "reasonable excuse".
This was not defined though a number of examples are given. Being at work - if this could not reasonably be done at home - would be a reasonable excuse.
So let's take all those people at No 10 on the day of Boris's birthday. If they had to be at work they were not committing any offence by being away from home because they had a reasonable excuse. There was no separate offence of eating cakes, birthday or otherwise. If someone brought a cake to celebrate a birthday this does not automatically make their presence at work unreasonable.
Ah but what about the numbers of people there you ask? Well Regulation 7 did indeed impose restrictions on gatherings but in "public places".
Offices at No 10 are not public places are they? So it is not clear to me that there has been a breach of this regulation in relation to the birthday party. It may of course depend on precisely where the gathering was etc.
I only point this out because the police will not simply have to collect the facts but also understand the relevant legal restrictions and ensure that they apply the law to the facts. Not guidance. Not what people thought it all meant. And one thing we do know is that when they tried prosecuting people before under these Regulations they were found, once the CPS looked into it, to have often got it wrong.
All of this is is utterly irrelevant to the political impact, which is what should be concerning Tory MPs. That political impact is two-fold:-
1. The general 2-fingers up approach to the rest of us. 2. The lies in Parliament about it all.
But the idea that the police can cheerfully hand out Fixed Penalty Notices to everyone who was singing Happy Birthday to the PM while they were in the office because "they broke the law" may not survive legal scrutiny by those acting for those in the police's sights.
Lots of people are saying I couldn't have a birthday party etc. But that was because you could not go to someone's home for any sort of celebration. But if you had a reasonable excuse for being somewhere I struggle to see what law was in place which made it a crime to share a cake with the people also at that place of work.
No doubt other lawyers on here will put me right if I've got this wrong.
Interesting as all of this is to those of us without a life, the reality is that Tory MPs need to stop outsourcing their consciences to Sue Gray or the Met and grow a spine.
I have lost 25kg+ since summer by skipping breakfast, and moderately sticking to a regime of dinners before 7pm, lowish carb, lowish alcohol etc.
And running every second day.
Yep - exercise and lower calorie intake will do it for you. Or anyone.
The point is that apart from initially, and indeed during a week in Greece, I’ve barely watched what I eat.
I just try to follow the simple rules above. And if I don’t, there’s always tomorrow.
The weight continues to come off regardless.
It is why the diet book business is so lucrative. You could write a diet book saying eat hotdogs for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch and a bacon sandwich for supper and it would work because for the vast majority of people it is unregulated/snacking/grazing that increases their calorie intake while not satisfying them. So anything which regulates their food intake will almost always result in them eating less than they usually do regardless of what they actually eat.
Alcohol and fruit juices (if people consume them) is usually the easiest way to lose immediate weight.
Edit: and of course people lose weight by funky diets grazing through the day whatever but it almost always means they regulate their intake vs previously.
This is true. The last time I was this fat I lost it all in about 2 months, simply by watching - quite carefully - what I ate and refusing anything extra, from a biscuit to an extra bit of cheese. And skipping a meal a day. After a fortnight or so it became 2nd nature
I kick started it with a pretty intense fast, however, which really works, whatever dieticians say, because you lose a lot quickly. Sure, its just water or whatever, but it is highly encouraging when you lose 8 pounds in the first two weeks, and that encouragement gives you the enthusiasm to continue
A lot of diets fail because people get discouraged. They don’t see quick results. So: fast first, but then don’t return to your previous intake, stay at a reduced calorie level. And go for a walk instead of lunch
I accept I am speaking as a fat guy (at the moment) here, so it may sound like poor advice, but it isn’t
Yeah, I've done that. It definitely works, and if you've the discipline you can keep it going. Not sure it's healthy, per se, but wasn't really my goal. Much easier to keep it off than the lose it, so my strategy was go hard, lose it quick and keep it off.
I am also speaking as a fat guy at the moment. COVID really sapped any discipline/habits I'd built. What was there other than food or drink? I admit I treated that time like a second studenthood and tried to enjoy it, but recently I'm back to my old ways. We'll see if it works again.
Yep, we are exactly the same
I weighed myself regularly - twice a week - for many years before Covid and stayed at a good healthy weight. Not slim, I’m the rugby player type, but definitely not fat either
Then lockdown made everything seem irrelevant and I blobbed out and it has been a really struggle to master it, since then. As we - God willing - exit the pandemic, it is time to reapply myself. Sri Lanka is a good place to start (despite the tempting curries). Good weather, gyms in hotels, the sea to swim in
I have already been fasting for 6 hours without breaking! And so it begins
Whatever works for you, but I'm less than convinced of the benefits of the "crash diet by skipping meals and starving yourself thin" approach.
IMHO sustainable weight loss is primarily about breaking bad eating and drinking habits, as difficult as that may sometimes be. Once you do that then it may take a little while to shift the excess (though it's quicker with the aid of a more active lifestyle,) but there's absolutely no need to starve yourself. If you try to compensate by skipping meals then the risk is that you fail whilst attempting to lose weight because you get sick of being hungry, or after you lose weight because it starts piling back on as soon as you resume eating like you did before.
Except that this method is exactly what I did before. I started with a serious bout of fasting, followed by reduced calorie intake, more exercise, and again the odd fast (not as severe as the first) to maintain the downward pressure and keep me encouraged
And it entirely worked. I lost 24 pounds in two months, and it stayed off for 6 years - until lockdown
Lots of dieticians say that shouldn’t happen or it won’t work - yet it did
Personally, I live by intermittent fasting. As long term WFHer until recently, I found it essential in order to restrict calorie intake and stop weight gain.
When i first started WFH, i piled on pounds, but switching to IF the weight dropped off. I don't buy any of the more out there claims about what it does, but at its core, what you are doing is giving yourself a limited window to eat and thus making it much harder to exceed a certain calorie intake.
I'm told by Tory MPs that Johnson lieutenants are ringing round trying to convince them that Russia/Ukraine crisis means now would be worst time for leadership contest.
Some apparently agree. But one says: "It's at moments like this that we *don't* want him in charge".
One of the key things that did for Chamberlain in the Norway debate was his explicit call to his parliamentary 'friends' - i.e. Tory MPs - to support him.
The partisan appeal was completely at odds with the need for national unity.
I've had a minor thought on this every now and then over the last few days which I think does deserve a hearing as a possibility, albeit obviously not a central one.
Vladimir Putin was.a clear and open supporter of Brexit, and seems to have engaged a large amount of his social media offices on this front. This is because it was divisive to European unity.
At this crucial moment it probably serves Putin's interests for Johnson to remain.He represents European disunity and discord, and also possibly in the mind of Putin, and maybe in reality , keeps the Germans more suspicious and distanced from the American position.
Therefore it's not entirely inconceivable that Putin could have sped up parts of his operation at this particular time to help Johnson survive. I accept it's not likely to have been a central factor, but it's worth considering as a minor contributing factor, at least to the timings of things.
No, I don’t think so.
I generally believe that Russia’s influence on Brexit (and perhaps other things, like Sindy) is greater than officially accredited, but I doubt Putin is giving Boris more than a moment’s thought.
I also accept it wouldn't be more than a moment's thought or very peripheral factor, but Johnson remaining in place, with his deeply toxic profile in Germany, certainly helps European disunity which is very important to Putin at the moment.
European disunity is driven by those who would sacrifice anything Ukrainian rather than have any kind of conflict/dispute with Russia.
In German the reasons for this are
1) WWII 2) Pacifism (related to above) 3) Fear of the gas supply being cut off in winter & the economy in general 4) East Politics 4) People who have taken Putin's Shilling
It's more about 1-4, with silly noises from 5 - my German acquaintances made rude jokes about the obvious Putin puppets.
The PM of the UK is not of interest in any of that.
I agree and don't agree with that. Those are certainly the German domestic reasons, but Britain's role since World War II in these situations, even now after Brexit, has always been as an international link player. Therefore it matters if the traditional transatlantic player is persona non grata in Europe.
Even if it was Maggie Thatcher in No. 10, I don't think you could get the Germans to move. It's too big a coalition of interests within Germany.
The other option - helping Ukraine - doesn't have much tangible benefit for Germany. Do that, and it's economic problems from sanctions on Russia (a big trading partner) at the very least.
Germany (the collective summation of politics, that is) won't move, unless Russia does something like take all of Ukraine to the river, or shoots down another airliner - something massive, like that.
I have lost 25kg+ since summer by skipping breakfast, and moderately sticking to a regime of dinners before 7pm, lowish carb, lowish alcohol etc.
And running every second day.
Yep - exercise and lower calorie intake will do it for you. Or anyone.
The point is that apart from initially, and indeed during a week in Greece, I’ve barely watched what I eat.
I just try to follow the simple rules above. And if I don’t, there’s always tomorrow.
The weight continues to come off regardless.
It is why the diet book business is so lucrative. You could write a diet book saying eat hotdogs for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch and a bacon sandwich for supper and it would work because for the vast majority of people it is unregulated/snacking/grazing that increases their calorie intake while not satisfying them. So anything which regulates their food intake will almost always result in them eating less than they usually do regardless of what they actually eat.
Alcohol and fruit juices (if people consume them) is usually the easiest way to lose immediate weight.
Edit: and of course people lose weight by funky diets grazing through the day whatever but it almost always means they regulate their intake vs previously.
This is true. The last time I was this fat I lost it all in about 2 months, simply by watching - quite carefully - what I ate and refusing anything extra, from a biscuit to an extra bit of cheese. And skipping a meal a day. After a fortnight or so it became 2nd nature
I kick started it with a pretty intense fast, however, which really works, whatever dieticians say, because you lose a lot quickly. Sure, its just water or whatever, but it is highly encouraging when you lose 8 pounds in the first two weeks, and that encouragement gives you the enthusiasm to continue
A lot of diets fail because people get discouraged. They don’t see quick results. So: fast first, but then don’t return to your previous intake, stay at a reduced calorie level. And go for a walk instead of lunch
I accept I am speaking as a fat guy (at the moment) here, so it may sound like poor advice, but it isn’t
Yeah, I've done that. It definitely works, and if you've the discipline you can keep it going. Not sure it's healthy, per se, but wasn't really my goal. Much easier to keep it off than the lose it, so my strategy was go hard, lose it quick and keep it off.
I am also speaking as a fat guy at the moment. COVID really sapped any discipline/habits I'd built. What was there other than food or drink? I admit I treated that time like a second studenthood and tried to enjoy it, but recently I'm back to my old ways. We'll see if it works again.
Yep, we are exactly the same
I weighed myself regularly - twice a week - for many years before Covid and stayed at a good healthy weight. Not slim, I’m the rugby player type, but definitely not fat either
Then lockdown made everything seem irrelevant and I blobbed out and it has been a really struggle to master it, since then. As we - God willing - exit the pandemic, it is time to reapply myself. Sri Lanka is a good place to start (despite the tempting curries). Good weather, gyms in hotels, the sea to swim in
I have already been fasting for 6 hours without breaking! And so it begins
Whatever works for you, but I'm less than convinced of the benefits of the "crash diet by skipping meals and starving yourself thin" approach.
IMHO sustainable weight loss is primarily about breaking bad eating and drinking habits, as difficult as that may sometimes be. Once you do that then it may take a little while to shift the excess (though it's quicker with the aid of a more active lifestyle,) but there's absolutely no need to starve yourself. If you try to compensate by skipping meals then the risk is that you fail whilst attempting to lose weight because you get sick of being hungry, or after you lose weight because it starts piling back on as soon as you resume eating like you did before.
Except that this method is exactly what I did before. I started with a serious bout of fasting, followed by reduced calorie intake, more exercise, and again the odd fast (not as severe as the first) to maintain the downward pressure and keep me encouraged
And it entirely worked. I lost 24 pounds in two months, and it stayed off for 6 years - until lockdown
Lots of dieticians say that shouldn’t happen or it won’t work - yet it did
Dieticians are idiots.
I think they fail to incorporate human psychology and they also seem to think all calories are equal.
As you say, once you skip breakfast, it becomes habitual. I don’t feel hungry until midday and then it is a very virtuous hunger.
I hardly ever used to allow myself to feel hungry; that’s how I got fat.
Again, whatever works for you, but as a general principle going without meals really isn't necessary.
Can’t get haggis in New York except out of a tin, at great expense.
So I’ll have to dispense with that tradition for a while, or perhaps just get better prepared for next year.
There are several really decent Haggis Neeps and Tatties ready meals in Lidl which I eat when can't be arsed making anything. Haven't bothered tonight and think Burns like all poetry is tedious. May have a wee dram though because its a day with a Y on the end...
Good idea.
I think I’ll go and buy some whiskey, make a tiny contribution to the Scottish economy.
Plus, something in the house for if/when Boris finally fucks off.
Whisky. Not whiskey.
Mind, Bushmills single malt wasn't bad when we tried some a few years back.
Nothing wrong with whiskey, just if you're talking Scotch it's no e. Of course I do prefer whisky to whiskey, because I like the peat, but horses for courses.
Totally O/t but tomorrow I am logging into a discussion about electric cars (etc) vs Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) ones. Some of the questions posed are: 1. I have heard that ICE cars cannot refuel at home while you sleep. How often do you have to refill elsewhere? Is this several times a year? Will there be a solution for refuelling at home?
2. Which parts will I need service on and how often? The car salesperson mentioned a box with gears in it. What is this, and will I receive a warning with an indicator when I need to change gear? What about mufflers, tailpipes, filters, oil, and pollution control equipment. The sales rep said I have to change those frequently.
3. Can I accelerate and brake with one pedal as I do today with my electric car?
4. Do I get fuel back when I slow down or drive downhill? I assume so, but need to ask to be sure.
5. The car I test drove seemed to have a delay from the time I pressed the accelerator pedal until it began to accelerate. Is that normal in petrol cars?
6. We currently pay about £2/100 kilometres to drive our electric car. I have heard that petrol can cost up to five times as much, so I reckon we will lose some money in the beginning. We drive about 20,000 kilometres a year. Let’s hope more people start using petrol so prices go down.
7. Is it true that petrol is flammable? Should I empty the tank and store the petrol somewhere else while the car is in the garage?
8. Is there an automatic system to prevent petrol from catching fire or exploding in a collision? What does this cost?
9. I’m told ICE cars are noisy. Will that upset my neighbours?
10. I understand the main ingredient in petrol is oil. Is it true that the extraction and refining of oil causes environmental problems as well as conflicts and major wars that over the last 100 years have cost millions of lives? Is there a solution to these problems?
I have a Tesla. I am almost as smug about that as Leon is about his foreign trips, but I do not feel the need to post on PB when I am driving it.
Tesla = the new Range Rover, BMW and Audi in one.
Are Tesla another manufacturer who only include indicators as expensive optional extras?
Nope. There are virtually no optional extras on Tesla. The colour is one and full autopilot is the other IIRC
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Believing in the principle of the NHS, but going private because the current condition of the NHS is not good isn't really a contradiction so much as pragmatism.
Quite. I don't criticise those who come to that conclusion. As individuals we all have to do what we can for ourselves and our families. But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense. To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
I for one will be relieved for the report and photographs to be published and to listen to Boris statement after pmqs tomorrow as just reported by Sky
Craig might have got that the wrong way round? If you were Boris you would make statement first if you could, to pour vinegar all over the coming stings? And he did get his statement in first last time too?
There is a set order to a Parliamentary day - questions come first then urgent Statements / Questions and then that day's business.
So it's not possible for Boris to provide a statement prior to PMQs even if he wanted to. But he could try and get something in as he answers the first (set) question.
The Great Apology was in the response to the first Q
The great risk for unionists is that Sinn Fein governs well and appears to be non-mental, attracting votes from SDLP/Alliance etc.
See SNP for details.
It won't, first NI has 2 nationalist parties as there is also the SDLP and second NI has full STV PR without even any constituencies at Stormont so a divided Unionist vote still produces a lot of Unionist MLAs.
Protestants would never consider voting for SF regardless of how competent it was, though of course SF is not economically competent anyway, its manifesto is basically Corbynite
I was raised as a Unionist. If the choice was only DUP or SF, I would have to vote SF, because the Unionist parties are either confrontational idiots or a bunch of 18th century bigots who have no place in a modern society. Luckily for me, the Alliance Party is around
SF seem to have got the message that politics is the way forward. That is a huge step for Ulster politicians.
This conversation is ridiculous. Haggis is just made from durum wheat semolina which is shaped and dried. Anybody telling you differently is playing a prank on you.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Perhaps you should ask some of the public sector "servants" to take a little less for their gold plated pensions to make the services better? Particularly doctors. Do you think they might agree? No chance.
Have a look at the actual pension schemes before you pontificate in such a prejudiced manner. Even in the old days the Treasury made damn sure that the salaries were significantly cut to compensate. And in recent years the pension schemes have been greatly degraded to follow the stellar lead of the private sector (and make more money for the private sector).
Sorry to burst your bubble but that is bollox. Have you seen the pension an NHS doctor gets? They will get more in their 80s or 90s per annum than the vast majority of taxpayers earn when they are in full time employment. Most comparable jobs in the public sector pay the same or better than private, so even though the pension may be a little lower than it was a few years ago a comparable public sector worker has a higher gross package. I could dig out the hard data on this but I really haven't the time.
I have lost 25kg+ since summer by skipping breakfast, and moderately sticking to a regime of dinners before 7pm, lowish carb, lowish alcohol etc.
And running every second day.
Yep - exercise and lower calorie intake will do it for you. Or anyone.
The point is that apart from initially, and indeed during a week in Greece, I’ve barely watched what I eat.
I just try to follow the simple rules above. And if I don’t, there’s always tomorrow.
The weight continues to come off regardless.
It is why the diet book business is so lucrative. You could write a diet book saying eat hotdogs for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch and a bacon sandwich for supper and it would work because for the vast majority of people it is unregulated/snacking/grazing that increases their calorie intake while not satisfying them. So anything which regulates their food intake will almost always result in them eating less than they usually do regardless of what they actually eat.
Alcohol and fruit juices (if people consume them) is usually the easiest way to lose immediate weight.
Edit: and of course people lose weight by funky diets grazing through the day whatever but it almost always means they regulate their intake vs previously.
This is true. The last time I was this fat I lost it all in about 2 months, simply by watching - quite carefully - what I ate and refusing anything extra, from a biscuit to an extra bit of cheese. And skipping a meal a day. After a fortnight or so it became 2nd nature
I kick started it with a pretty intense fast, however, which really works, whatever dieticians say, because you lose a lot quickly. Sure, its just water or whatever, but it is highly encouraging when you lose 8 pounds in the first two weeks, and that encouragement gives you the enthusiasm to continue
A lot of diets fail because people get discouraged. They don’t see quick results. So: fast first, but then don’t return to your previous intake, stay at a reduced calorie level. And go for a walk instead of lunch
I accept I am speaking as a fat guy (at the moment) here, so it may sound like poor advice, but it isn’t
Yeah, I've done that. It definitely works, and if you've the discipline you can keep it going. Not sure it's healthy, per se, but wasn't really my goal. Much easier to keep it off than the lose it, so my strategy was go hard, lose it quick and keep it off.
I am also speaking as a fat guy at the moment. COVID really sapped any discipline/habits I'd built. What was there other than food or drink? I admit I treated that time like a second studenthood and tried to enjoy it, but recently I'm back to my old ways. We'll see if it works again.
Yep, we are exactly the same
I weighed myself regularly - twice a week - for many years before Covid and stayed at a good healthy weight. Not slim, I’m the rugby player type, but definitely not fat either
Then lockdown made everything seem irrelevant and I blobbed out and it has been a really struggle to master it, since then. As we - God willing - exit the pandemic, it is time to reapply myself. Sri Lanka is a good place to start (despite the tempting curries). Good weather, gyms in hotels, the sea to swim in
I have already been fasting for 6 hours without breaking! And so it begins
Whatever works for you, but I'm less than convinced of the benefits of the "crash diet by skipping meals and starving yourself thin" approach.
IMHO sustainable weight loss is primarily about breaking bad eating and drinking habits, as difficult as that may sometimes be. Once you do that then it may take a little while to shift the excess (though it's quicker with the aid of a more active lifestyle,) but there's absolutely no need to starve yourself. If you try to compensate by skipping meals then the risk is that you fail whilst attempting to lose weight because you get sick of being hungry, or after you lose weight because it starts piling back on as soon as you resume eating like you did before.
Except that this method is exactly what I did before. I started with a serious bout of fasting, followed by reduced calorie intake, more exercise, and again the odd fast (not as severe as the first) to maintain the downward pressure and keep me encouraged
And it entirely worked. I lost 24 pounds in two months, and it stayed off for 6 years - until lockdown
Lots of dieticians say that shouldn’t happen or it won’t work - yet it did
Dieticians are idiots.
I think they fail to incorporate human psychology and they also seem to think all calories are equal.
As you say, once you skip breakfast, it becomes habitual. I don’t feel hungry until midday and then it is a very virtuous hunger.
I hardly ever used to allow myself to feel hungry; that’s how I got fat.
Again, whatever works for you, but as a general principle going without meals really isn't necessary.
But intermittent fasting is how we evolved. It’s what our bodies are designed for. What they are not designed for is an endless, plentiful supply of fats, sugars and carbs, with extra yummy things like MSG, chocolate and cheese
Hence the entire world getting fat
And you really don’t need three meals a day, That’s what coal miners need. Or harvesters with scythes
One serious meal plus a light snack/salad at some other time makes much more sense. To me
I'm told by Tory MPs that Johnson lieutenants are ringing round trying to convince them that Russia/Ukraine crisis means now would be worst time for leadership contest.
Some apparently agree. But one says: "It's at moments like this that we *don't* want him in charge".
One of the key things that did for Chamberlain in the Norway debate was his explicit call to his parliamentary 'friends' - i.e. Tory MPs - to support him.
The partisan appeal was completely at odds with the need for national unity.
I've had a minor thought on this every now and then over the last few days which I think does deserve a hearing as a possibility, albeit obviously not a central one.
Vladimir Putin was.a clear and open supporter of Brexit, and seems to have engaged a large amount of his social media offices on this front. This is because it was divisive to European unity.
At this crucial moment it probably serves Putin's interests for Johnson to remain.He represents European disunity and discord, and also possibly in the mind of Putin, and maybe in reality , keeps the Germans more suspicious and distanced from the American position.
Therefore it's not entirely inconceivable that Putin could have sped up parts of his operation at this particular time to help Johnson survive. I accept it's not likely to have been a central factor, but it's worth considering as a minor contributing factor, at least to the timings of things.
No, I don’t think so.
I generally believe that Russia’s influence on Brexit (and perhaps other things, like Sindy) is greater than officially accredited, but I doubt Putin is giving Boris more than a moment’s thought.
I also accept it wouldn't be more than a moment's thought or very peripheral factor, but Johnson remaining in place, with his deeply toxic profile in Germany, certainly helps European disunity which is very important to Putin at the moment.
European disunity is driven by those who would sacrifice anything Ukrainian rather than have any kind of conflict/dispute with Russia.
In German the reasons for this are
1) WWII 2) Pacifism (related to above) 3) Fear of the gas supply being cut off in winter & the economy in general 4) East Politics 4) People who have taken Putin's Shilling
It's more about 1-4, with silly noises from 5 - my German acquaintances made rude jokes about the obvious Putin puppets.
The PM of the UK is not of interest in any of that.
I agree and don't agree with that. Those are certainly the German domestic reasons, but Britain's role since World War II in these situations, even now after Brexit, has always been as an international link player. Therefore it matters if the traditional transatlantic player is persona non grata in Europe.
Even if it was Maggie Thatcher in No. 10, I don't think you could get the Germans to move. It's too big a coalition of interests within Germany.
The other option - helping Ukraine - doesn't have much tangible benefit for Germany. Do that, and it's economic problems from sanctions on Russia (a big trading partner) at the very least.
Germany (the collective summation of politics, that is) won't move, unless Russia does something like take all of Ukraine to the river, or shoots down another airliner - something massive, like that.
I roughly agree with all this, but Putin's perceptions of the weak links in the Western Alliance might be different, however.
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us An’ foolish notion: What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us, And ev’n Devotion!
Frfom 'A man's a man for a that':
A Prince can mak a belted knight, A marquis, duke, an a that! But an honest man’s aboon his might – Guid faith, he mauna fa that! For a that, an a that, Their dignities, an a that, The pith o Sense an pride o Worth Are higher rank than a that.
And finally a PB favourite:
And there's a hand, my trusty fiere, And gie's a hand o thine, And we'll tak a right gude willie waught For auld lang syne!
I'm told by Tory MPs that Johnson lieutenants are ringing round trying to convince them that Russia/Ukraine crisis means now would be worst time for leadership contest.
Some apparently agree. But one says: "It's at moments like this that we *don't* want him in charge".
One of the key things that did for Chamberlain in the Norway debate was his explicit call to his parliamentary 'friends' - i.e. Tory MPs - to support him.
The partisan appeal was completely at odds with the need for national unity.
I've had a minor thought on this every now and then over the last few days which I think does deserve a hearing as a possibility, albeit obviously not a central one.
Vladimir Putin was.a clear and open supporter of Brexit, and seems to have engaged a large amount of his social media offices on this front. This is because it was divisive to European unity.
At this crucial moment it probably serves Putin's interests for Johnson to remain.He represents European disunity and discord, and also possibly in the mind of Putin, and maybe in reality , keeps the Germans more suspicious and distanced from the American position.
Therefore it's not entirely inconceivable that Putin could have sped up parts of his operation at this particular time to help Johnson survive. I accept it's not likely to have been a central factor, but it's worth considering as a minor contributing factor, at least to the timings of things.
No, I don’t think so.
I generally believe that Russia’s influence on Brexit (and perhaps other things, like Sindy) is greater than officially accredited, but I doubt Putin is giving Boris more than a moment’s thought.
I have a few thoughts on this too 🙂
Firstly, wasn’t Churchill responsible for the Norway fiasco - in echoes of the fall of Afghanistan he was side tracked not by dogs but a nephew?
Norway is a complex one... Churchill had been arguing to go in first - before the Germans.
And the Battles of Narvik (Navy) were the only successes of the campaign - the Germans got pounded like cheap veal. Which started the the run of successes that kept the German Surface fleet almost subservient to the British Home Fleet.
Everyone in the country knows the service isn't good enough. The question is, who will put the most effort into fixing it, someone who has always relied on it or someone who has chosen not to use it?
Well, for a start, effort isn't everything; a fool who has an obsession with purity but realises the service is poor might well put in a lot of effort, but a fat lot of good that effort will do if it's uninformed or blinded by ideology. What you want is someone with understanding of how huge organisations work, how to improve them, and how to get value for money from them, against the hugely difficult problems of political interference, the institutional inertia, the changing technology, and the reluctance to learn from best practice elsewhere.
Whether a candidate uses private healthcare is just about the most irrelevant criterion you could come up with, especially since nearly all qualified candidates will have done.
It might not the most relevant factor but neither is it anywhere near the least. Somebody who believes in public healthcare to the extent they don't go private despite being able to afford it is likely to be a better choice to run it than somebody with similar profile and abilities who lacks that strength of belief. Ditto with education. Double ditto with education in fact.
You clearly know very little about hiring if you think there are ever two equal profiles. People who support Labour need to grow up on the public sector/ private divide. It was clearly one of the things Blair never succeeded in changing. The approach you have borders on the fanatical. You are public sector puritans, where the public sector, and the NHS in particular is some repository of all virtue, and anyone that doesn't align is a heretic or infidel. Sorry to break it to you but there really are just as many selfish nasty self serving people in the public sector as there are in private. They just manifest their behaviours in slightly different ways. As for education, I can tell you as someone that went to a comp (a pretty bad one) and sent my kids privately, the public sector could learn a lot from the private, double ditto, if you like, but the puritans just don't want to hear it.
Similar not equal. And it's hardly fanatical to consider a strong & genuine belief in the thing they are looking to run to be one of the key attributes a candidate ought to have.
So when did he say he didn't? I am quite happy to "believe" in the NHS IF it provides a good service, but if I have to wait for 6 months to see a consultant, because the system allows consultants to moonlight (yep it was Labour that allowed such a ludicrous system) then I chose a different system does that make me a heretic in your eyes? The fundamental is choice. I think people should be allowed it and you don't. You think you should be allowed to go on holidays to the Maldives, or whatever else your middle class salary allows you to do, but I shouldn't be allowed to spend my surplus cash on providing what is without any shadow of doubt in my mind a better education for my kids than I had? That is the fundamental philosophical problem with Labour supporters. They are judgmental and bossy.
I look around me and I see two fundamental facts. First, our public services are falling apart, starved of cash, failing. Second, many, maybe most, of the powerful and influential people involved in running the country don't actually use these services themselves. It strikes me as rather plausible that these two facts are related. It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
Perhaps you should ask some of the public sector "servants" to take a little less for their gold plated pensions to make the services better? Particularly doctors. Do you think they might agree? No chance.
Have a look at the actual pension schemes before you pontificate in such a prejudiced manner. Even in the old days the Treasury made damn sure that the salaries were significantly cut to compensate. And in recent years the pension schemes have been greatly degraded to follow the stellar lead of the private sector (and make more money for the private sector).
Sorry to burst your bubble but that is bollox. Have you seen the pension an NHS doctor gets? They will get more in their 80s or 90s per annum than the vast majority of taxpayers earn when they are in full time employment. Most comparable jobs in the public sector pay the same or better than private, so even though the pension may be a little lower than it was a few years ago a comparable public sector worker has a higher gross package. I could dig out the hard data on this but I really haven't the time.
By going private though you only increase the doctors' bargaining power and help them get paid even more!
The great risk for unionists is that Sinn Fein governs well and appears to be non-mental, attracting votes from SDLP/Alliance etc.
See SNP for details.
It won't, first NI has 2 nationalist parties as there is also the SDLP and second NI has full STV PR without even any constituencies at Stormont so a divided Unionist vote still produces a lot of Unionist MLAs.
Protestants would never consider voting for SF regardless of how competent it was, though of course SF is not economically competent anyway, its manifesto is basically Corbynite
I was raised as a Unionist. If the choice was only DUP or SF, I would have to vote SF, because the Unionist parties are either confrontational idiots or a bunch of 18th century bigots who have no place in a modern society. Luckily for me, the Alliance Party is around
SF seem to have got the message that politics is the way forward. That is a huge step for Ulster politicians.
It's also an issue that is almost 50 years old. There is a story from the Maze where Republican prisoners quickly realised that reading and learning was a way to advance themselves (and their cause) while Loyalists contained to hit the gym and tried to work out who was "hardest".
That same logic has continued ever since with Loyalists continually losing out as SF and others make rational choices that help push their arguments forward inch by inch.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 22m Another (losing count now) problem for Boris. Needs strong mobilisation from Ministers tomorrow. But number still furious from this morning’s cabinet. View is they simply can’t trust him to tell them the whole story. Fear if they go in to bat for him he’ll pull the rug from them.
I have lost 25kg+ since summer by skipping breakfast, and moderately sticking to a regime of dinners before 7pm, lowish carb, lowish alcohol etc.
And running every second day.
Yep - exercise and lower calorie intake will do it for you. Or anyone.
The point is that apart from initially, and indeed during a week in Greece, I’ve barely watched what I eat.
I just try to follow the simple rules above. And if I don’t, there’s always tomorrow.
The weight continues to come off regardless.
It is why the diet book business is so lucrative. You could write a diet book saying eat hotdogs for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch and a bacon sandwich for supper and it would work because for the vast majority of people it is unregulated/snacking/grazing that increases their calorie intake while not satisfying them. So anything which regulates their food intake will almost always result in them eating less than they usually do regardless of what they actually eat.
Alcohol and fruit juices (if people consume them) is usually the easiest way to lose immediate weight.
Edit: and of course people lose weight by funky diets grazing through the day whatever but it almost always means they regulate their intake vs previously.
This is true. The last time I was this fat I lost it all in about 2 months, simply by watching - quite carefully - what I ate and refusing anything extra, from a biscuit to an extra bit of cheese. And skipping a meal a day. After a fortnight or so it became 2nd nature
I kick started it with a pretty intense fast, however, which really works, whatever dieticians say, because you lose a lot quickly. Sure, its just water or whatever, but it is highly encouraging when you lose 8 pounds in the first two weeks, and that encouragement gives you the enthusiasm to continue
A lot of diets fail because people get discouraged. They don’t see quick results. So: fast first, but then don’t return to your previous intake, stay at a reduced calorie level. And go for a walk instead of lunch
I accept I am speaking as a fat guy (at the moment) here, so it may sound like poor advice, but it isn’t
Yeah, I've done that. It definitely works, and if you've the discipline you can keep it going. Not sure it's healthy, per se, but wasn't really my goal. Much easier to keep it off than the lose it, so my strategy was go hard, lose it quick and keep it off.
I am also speaking as a fat guy at the moment. COVID really sapped any discipline/habits I'd built. What was there other than food or drink? I admit I treated that time like a second studenthood and tried to enjoy it, but recently I'm back to my old ways. We'll see if it works again.
Yep, we are exactly the same
I weighed myself regularly - twice a week - for many years before Covid and stayed at a good healthy weight. Not slim, I’m the rugby player type, but definitely not fat either
Then lockdown made everything seem irrelevant and I blobbed out and it has been a really struggle to master it, since then. As we - God willing - exit the pandemic, it is time to reapply myself. Sri Lanka is a good place to start (despite the tempting curries). Good weather, gyms in hotels, the sea to swim in
I have already been fasting for 6 hours without breaking! And so it begins
Whatever works for you, but I'm less than convinced of the benefits of the "crash diet by skipping meals and starving yourself thin" approach.
IMHO sustainable weight loss is primarily about breaking bad eating and drinking habits, as difficult as that may sometimes be. Once you do that then it may take a little while to shift the excess (though it's quicker with the aid of a more active lifestyle,) but there's absolutely no need to starve yourself. If you try to compensate by skipping meals then the risk is that you fail whilst attempting to lose weight because you get sick of being hungry, or after you lose weight because it starts piling back on as soon as you resume eating like you did before.
Except that this method is exactly what I did before. I started with a serious bout of fasting, followed by reduced calorie intake, more exercise, and again the odd fast (not as severe as the first) to maintain the downward pressure and keep me encouraged
And it entirely worked. I lost 24 pounds in two months, and it stayed off for 6 years - until lockdown
Lots of dieticians say that shouldn’t happen or it won’t work - yet it did
Dieticians are idiots.
I think they fail to incorporate human psychology and they also seem to think all calories are equal.
As you say, once you skip breakfast, it becomes habitual. I don’t feel hungry until midday and then it is a very virtuous hunger.
I hardly ever used to allow myself to feel hungry; that’s how I got fat.
One of quite a few things I learnt from watching The Crown is that Prince Charles doesn't eat lunch. Also it's not clear he was ever truly in love with Diana - whatever "in love" means.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 22m Another (losing count now) problem for Boris. Needs strong mobilisation from Ministers tomorrow. But number still furious from this morning’s cabinet. View is they simply can’t trust him to tell them the whole story. Fear if they go in to bat for him he’ll pull the rug from them.
Robert Peston on the difficult decision Boris now needs to make regarding the Gray Report
Robert Peston @Peston · 2m Sue Gray LATEST: the police and Gray herself are clear that the PM has discretion to publish both the summary of her findings and the whole of her partygate report; there is no legal impediment to doing so. However as I just said on @itvnews the PM has political discretion to… Robert Peston @Peston · 2m publish only the summary or to publish the whole thing with redactions. It is a hard judgement for him. He may feel that unexpurgated publication would be too damaging for him or for junior officials. But failure to publish it all will lead to charges of a cover up… Robert Peston @Peston · 2m It is looking like publication will happen tomorrow. So not long to wait to find out.
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us An’ foolish notion: What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us, And ev’n Devotion!
Frfom 'A man's a man for a that':
A Prince can mak a belted knight, A marquis, duke, an a that! But an honest man’s aboon his might – Guid faith, he mauna fa that! For a that, an a that, Their dignities, an a that, The pith o Sense an pride o Worth Are higher rank than a that.
And finally a PB favourite:
And there's a hand, my trusty fiere, And gie's a hand o thine, And we'll tak a right gude willie waught For auld lang syne!
In terms of the police, it's a relatively minor investigation (I mean noone's been murdered here / The upper end of the potential punishment would be a large fine - serious as it is for the PM) so I can't see why they wouldn't mind Gray's report also being published.
I mean it's very serious for the PM politically, and lawmakers/lawbreakers but it's not so serious for the police in the grand scheme of things for them.
Cressida Dick made that point earlier saying it is a fixed penalty notice of £100 but of course Boris is very politically exposed and is far from safe
Why not the £10,000 fine the naughty students were getting lumbered with back in 2020?
At just a £100 a pop, Bozza's currently on a fine of around £3.5k.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 22m Another (losing count now) problem for Boris. Needs strong mobilisation from Ministers tomorrow. But number still furious from this morning’s cabinet. View is they simply can’t trust him to tell them the whole story. Fear if they go in to bat for him he’ll pull the rug from them.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 22m Another (losing count now) problem for Boris. Needs strong mobilisation from Ministers tomorrow. But number still furious from this morning’s cabinet. View is they simply can’t trust him to tell them the whole story. Fear if they go in to bat for him he’ll pull the rug from them.
Some must now be beginning to map out where they might fit in when he falls. Will Sunak or Truss give me a job type of thinking? What's my best tactic here?
In terms of the police, it's a relatively minor investigation (I mean noone's been murdered here / The upper end of the potential punishment would be a large fine - serious as it is for the PM) so I can't see why they wouldn't mind Gray's report also being published.
I mean it's very serious for the PM politically, and lawmakers/lawbreakers but it's not so serious for the police in the grand scheme of things for them.
Cressida Dick made that point earlier saying it is a fixed penalty notice of £100 but of course Boris is very politically exposed and is far from safe
Why not the £10,000 fine the naughty students were getting lumbered with back in 2020?
At just a £100 a pop, Bozza's currently on a fine of around £3.5k.
Caution is needed here and @Cyclefree posted the actual process which is very interesting
More dreadful coverage for the government in the Mail today, as predicted earlier on.
"Events had descended into farce by lunchtime today as No 10 insisted that the criminal probe meant that parts of an internal report by Ms Gray would not be published until it was completed.
This stance, seemingly kicking the most potentially damaging parts of the report into the long grass, was swiftly abandoned, however, after Scotland Yard said full publication would not affect its inquiries, which carry fines as the most serious punishments."
I'm told by Tory MPs that Johnson lieutenants are ringing round trying to convince them that Russia/Ukraine crisis means now would be worst time for leadership contest.
Some apparently agree. But one says: "It's at moments like this that we *don't* want him in charge".
One of the key things that did for Chamberlain in the Norway debate was his explicit call to his parliamentary 'friends' - i.e. Tory MPs - to support him.
The partisan appeal was completely at odds with the need for national unity.
I've had a minor thought on this every now and then over the last few days which I think does deserve a hearing as a possibility, albeit obviously not a central one.
Vladimir Putin was.a clear and open supporter of Brexit, and seems to have engaged a large amount of his social media offices on this front. This is because it was divisive to European unity.
At this crucial moment it probably serves Putin's interests for Johnson to remain.He represents European disunity and discord, and also possibly in the mind of Putin, and maybe in reality , keeps the Germans more suspicious and distanced from the American position.
Therefore it's not entirely inconceivable that Putin could have sped up parts of his operation at this particular time to help Johnson survive. I accept it's not likely to have been a central factor, but it's worth considering as a minor contributing factor, at least to the timings of things.
No, I don’t think so.
I generally believe that Russia’s influence on Brexit (and perhaps other things, like Sindy) is greater than officially accredited, but I doubt Putin is giving Boris more than a moment’s thought.
I also accept it wouldn't be more than a moment's thought or very peripheral factor, but Johnson remaining in place, with his deeply toxic profile in Germany, certainly helps European disunity which is very important to Putin at the moment.
European disunity is driven by those who would sacrifice anything Ukrainian rather than have any kind of conflict/dispute with Russia.
In German the reasons for this are
1) WWII 2) Pacifism (related to above) 3) Fear of the gas supply being cut off in winter & the economy in general 4) East Politics 4) People who have taken Putin's Shilling
It's more about 1-4, with silly noises from 5 - my German acquaintances made rude jokes about the obvious Putin puppets.
The PM of the UK is not of interest in any of that.
I agree and don't agree with that. Those are certainly the German domestic reasons, but Britain's role since World War II in these situations, even now after Brexit, has always been as an international link player. Therefore it matters if the traditional transatlantic player is persona non grata in Europe.
Even if it was Maggie Thatcher in No. 10, I don't think you could get the Germans to move. It's too big a coalition of interests within Germany.
The other option - helping Ukraine - doesn't have much tangible benefit for Germany. Do that, and it's economic problems from sanctions on Russia (a big trading partner) at the very least.
Germany (the collective summation of politics, that is) won't move, unless Russia does something like take all of Ukraine to the river, or shoots down another airliner - something massive, like that.
I roughly agree with all this, but Putin's perceptions of the weak links in the Western Alliance might be different, however.
He served in Germany and probably has a pretty good feel for the place. He certainly hasn't made many misjudgements in relations with Germany to date....
Mail: Sue Gray 'has new photos of Boris next to wine bottles at lockdown parties': Damning verdict could be revealed TOMORROW after day of shambles saw No10 fail in attempt to use police partygate probe to delay report.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 22m Another (losing count now) problem for Boris. Needs strong mobilisation from Ministers tomorrow. But number still furious from this morning’s cabinet. View is they simply can’t trust him to tell them the whole story. Fear if they go in to bat for him he’ll pull the rug from them.
Some must now be beginning to map out where they might fit in when he falls. Will Sunak or Truss give me a job type of thinking? What's my best tactic here?
I suspect that has been going on for a long time
Mind you for JRM and Dorries it is a waste of time as they fall with Boris
Robert Peston on the difficult decision Boris now needs to make regarding the Gray Report
Robert Peston @Peston · 2m Sue Gray LATEST: the police and Gray herself are clear that the PM has discretion to publish both the summary of her findings and the whole of her partygate report; there is no legal impediment to doing so. However as I just said on @itvnews the PM has political discretion to… Robert Peston @Peston · 2m publish only the summary or to publish the whole thing with redactions. It is a hard judgement for him. He may feel that unexpurgated publication would be too damaging for him or for junior officials. But failure to publish it all will lead to charges of a cover up… Robert Peston @Peston · 2m It is looking like publication will happen tomorrow. So not long to wait to find out.
So Cummings will just reappear with some / all of the parts that are missing, if he does that. He must know that.
In terms of the police, it's a relatively minor investigation (I mean noone's been murdered here / The upper end of the potential punishment would be a large fine - serious as it is for the PM) so I can't see why they wouldn't mind Gray's report also being published.
I mean it's very serious for the PM politically, and lawmakers/lawbreakers but it's not so serious for the police in the grand scheme of things for them.
Cressida Dick made that point earlier saying it is a fixed penalty notice of £100 but of course Boris is very politically exposed and is far from safe
Why not the £10,000 fine the naughty students were getting lumbered with back in 2020?
At just a £100 a pop, Bozza's currently on a fine of around £3.5k.
The PM was in his own home. To be fined the police will have to be very clear on precisely what offence he has committed on each occasion and refer to the relevant regulations and ensure that both the factual evidence is there and that they have got the law absolutely right.
It is not, I fear, quite the slam dunk some are assuming.
More dreadful coverage for the government in the Mail today, as predicted earlier on.
"Events had descended into farce by lunchtime today as No 10 insisted that the criminal probe meant that parts of an internal report by Ms Gray would not be published until it was completed.
This stance, seemingly kicking the most potentially damaging parts of the report into the long grass, was swiftly abandoned, however, after Scotland Yard said full publication would not affect its inquiries, which carry fines as the most serious punishments."
Comments
You can put coffee into your milk, or milk into your coffee, it just depends which style of coffee you want. Neither option is "wrong".
It's got nothing to do with being judgemental. I would just like to live in a country with well funded, functioning public services. FWIW I would do whatever I needed to do in the interests of my family as anyone else would, and I don't judge those who make different choices to me.
The Turks have a far bigger military than Germany
I will continue to put the milk in before the tea cos that's the way I was brung up.
https://twitter.com/rogermiles/status/1486023503187001347?s=21
IMHO sustainable weight loss is primarily about breaking bad eating and drinking habits, as difficult as that may sometimes be. Once you do that then it may take a little while to shift the excess (though it's quicker with the aid of a more active lifestyle,) but there's absolutely no need to starve yourself. If you try to compensate by skipping meals then the risk is that you fail whilst attempting to lose weight because you get sick of being hungry, or after you lose weight because it starts piling back on as soon as you resume eating like you did before.
I’m all for salaried Gaelic, and Lallans for that matter, officers though - so long as they can do their job.
That would make you unsentimental about food sources
However that does not explain their hideous liking for the cooking of live animals, that seems an historic culinary thing. And the Chinese, along with the Vietnamese, are responsible for the near extermination of the rhino and the pangolin because they believe the horns and the scales, or whatever, give you virility, beat cancer and endow status.
Enough
But I confess that for reasons I don’t understand, the idea of tea-into-milk and cream-onto-jam is slightly less appetising.
Most other countries got rid of conscription decades ago as it results in an oversized poorly trained and terribly poorly motivated army for this day and age.
Can’t get haggis in New York except out of a tin, at great expense.
So I’ll have to dispense with that tradition for a while, or perhaps just get better prepared for next year.
Cases - Flat. R hovers around 1. This is nearly all driven by cases in the younger groups - the older groups continue a gentle fall.
Admission - Down
MV beds - Down
In Hospital - Down
deaths - seeming flat again.
And it entirely worked. I lost 24 pounds in two months, and it stayed off for 6 years - until lockdown
Lots of dieticians say that shouldn’t happen or it won’t work - yet it did
https://www.mashed.com/197299/the-real-reason-scottish-haggis-is-banned-in-the-u-s/
In German the reasons for this are
1) WWII
2) Pacifism (related to above)
3) Fear of the gas supply being cut off in winter & the economy in general
4) East Politics
4) People who have taken Putin's Shilling
It's more about 1-4, with silly noises from 5 - my German acquaintances made rude jokes about the obvious Putin puppets.
The PM of the UK is not of interest in any of that.
I think they fail to incorporate human psychology and they also seem to think all calories are equal.
As you say, once you skip breakfast, it becomes habitual. I don’t feel hungry until midday and then it is a very virtuous hunger.
I hardly ever used to allow myself to feel hungry; that’s how I got fat.
So it's not possible for Boris to provide a statement prior to PMQs even if he wanted to. But he could try and get something in as he answers the first (set) question.
They all put milk in the tea!
I only know this because Eek twin A's apprenticeship is with them. Pay a mere £25k a year with 1 day off a week to do the degree course they are also paying for.
To say she has won the work jackpot would be a slight understatement.
It is the go to forum for upto date news and views
Thank you
I think I’ll go and buy some whiskey, make a tiny contribution to the Scottish economy.
Plus, something in the house for if/when Boris finally fucks off.
The difference is a cream tea is quite nice, whereas the mars bars...
Firstly, wasn’t Churchill responsible for the Norway fiasco - in echoes of the fall of Afghanistan he was side tracked not by dogs but a nephew?
So let’s say you are doing this quite severe weight loss regime, low calorie, high exercise, pretty strict
There will come a time when you have to go out and eat quite a lot socially, that’s human nature. It is rude to go to a family dinner and say Nope, just a carrot
So you eat a hefty dinner and next day you’ve probably put on a pound or two, and you get seriously discouraged. My rule was - after one of those big unavoidable meals - go on a strict fast for two days - THEN weigh yourself. Bingo, no weight gain, and quite probably continuing loss. Duly enthused, you continue
Fast weight loss regimes work (or they did for me) because you get fast results, it is a positive feedback loop
I also got into the habit of skipping breakfast, and sometimes lunch as well. You can train your body to expect less. Mild hunger also keeps the brain sharp, whereas satiation does the opposite
OK time for Archive 81, as recommended by @MaxPB
So far it’s pretty good
Gnight PB
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-cornubian-granite-batholith-10896440.html
And agreed re the MBs. Definitely a tourist thing. Unlike gannets.
Is Boris still PM?
Has anyone heard the Sumption interview at lunchtime? He raised some interesting legal arguments. Now I think legal arguments are - to a very great extent - missing the point about why this is a political problem for the Tories. The sense of solidarity, of all being in this together, has been trashed.
But the police can only investigate a breach of the law. And if you look at the Regulations - not the guidance - which were in place at the time, the offence was being away from your home without a "reasonable excuse".
This was not defined though a number of examples are given. Being at work - if this could not reasonably be done at home - would be a reasonable excuse.
So let's take all those people at No 10 on the day of Boris's birthday. If they had to be at work they were not committing any offence by being away from home because they had a reasonable excuse. There was no separate offence of eating cakes, birthday or otherwise. If someone brought a cake to celebrate a birthday this does not automatically make their presence at work unreasonable.
Ah but what about the numbers of people there you ask? Well Regulation 7 did indeed impose restrictions on gatherings but in "public places".
Offices at No 10 are not public places are they? So it is not clear to me that there has been a breach of this regulation in relation to the birthday party. It may of course depend on precisely where the gathering was etc.
I only point this out because the police will not simply have to collect the facts but also understand the relevant legal restrictions and ensure that they apply the law to the facts. Not guidance. Not what people thought it all meant. And one thing we do know is that when they tried prosecuting people before under these Regulations they were found, once the CPS looked into it, to have often got it wrong.
All of this is is utterly irrelevant to the political impact, which is what should be concerning Tory MPs. That political impact is two-fold:-
1. The general 2-fingers up approach to the rest of us.
2. The lies in Parliament about it all.
But the idea that the police can cheerfully hand out Fixed Penalty Notices to everyone who was singing Happy Birthday to the PM while they were in the office because "they broke the law" may not survive legal scrutiny by those acting for those in the police's sights.
Lots of people are saying I couldn't have a birthday party etc. But that was because you could not go to someone's home for any sort of celebration. But if you had a reasonable excuse for being somewhere I struggle to see what law was in place which made it a crime to share a cake with the people also at that place of work.
No doubt other lawyers on here will put me right if I've got this wrong.
Interesting as all of this is to those of us without a life, the reality is that Tory MPs need to stop outsourcing their consciences to Sue Gray or the Met and grow a spine.
When i first started WFH, i piled on pounds, but switching to IF the weight dropped off. I don't buy any of the more out there claims about what it does, but at its core, what you are doing is giving yourself a limited window to eat and thus making it much harder to exceed a certain calorie intake.
The other option - helping Ukraine - doesn't have much tangible benefit for Germany. Do that, and it's economic problems from sanctions on Russia (a big trading partner) at the very least.
Germany (the collective summation of politics, that is) won't move, unless Russia does something like take all of Ukraine to the river, or shoots down another airliner - something massive, like that.
Of course I do prefer whisky to whiskey, because I like the peat, but horses for courses.
But as a society, I believe that when the elite don't use the same services as everyone else, those services are more likely to be starved of resources. The basis of that belief is threefold: international comparisons (public services in Sweden vs the US for instance, or the example of Jim Crow era "separate but equal" education in the Southern US); my own experience (wealthy people I know through work who don't even know that public services are starved of cash, let alone care or vote to improve things); and simple common sense.
To reiterate, this is not a judgement on individual choices under current circumstances, but a statement on how I would like those circumstances to change, and an explanation of why I think they won't.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0013h0r/prime-ministers-questions-12012022
SF seem to have got the message that politics is the way forward. That is a huge step for Ulster politicians.
Hence the entire world getting fat
And you really don’t need three meals a day, That’s what coal miners need. Or harvesters with scythes
One serious meal plus a light snack/salad at some other time makes much more sense. To me
From 'To a louse':
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
And ev’n Devotion!
Frfom 'A man's a man for a that':
A Prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an a that!
But an honest man’s aboon his might –
Guid faith, he mauna fa that!
For a that, an a that,
Their dignities, an a that,
The pith o Sense an pride o Worth
Are higher rank than a that.
And finally a PB favourite:
And there's a hand, my trusty fiere,
And gie's a hand o thine,
And we'll tak a right gude willie waught
For auld lang syne!
Have a good evening, all.
And the Battles of Narvik (Navy) were the only successes of the campaign - the Germans got pounded like cheap veal. Which started the the run of successes that kept the German Surface fleet almost subservient to the British Home Fleet.
That same logic has continued ever since with Loyalists continually losing out as SF and others make rational choices that help push their arguments forward inch by inch.
@DPJHodges
·
22m
Another (losing count now) problem for Boris. Needs strong mobilisation from Ministers tomorrow. But number still furious from this morning’s cabinet. View is they simply can’t trust him to tell them the whole story. Fear if they go in to bat for him he’ll pull the rug from them.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1486043417582964741
Robert Peston
@Peston
·
2m
Sue Gray LATEST: the police and Gray herself are clear that the PM has discretion to publish both the summary of her findings and the whole of her partygate report; there is no legal impediment to doing so. However as I just said on
@itvnews
the PM has political discretion to…
Robert Peston
@Peston
·
2m
publish only the summary or to publish the whole thing with redactions. It is a hard judgement for him. He may feel that unexpurgated publication would be too damaging for him or for junior officials. But failure to publish it all will lead to charges of a cover up…
Robert Peston
@Peston
·
2m
It is looking like publication will happen tomorrow. So not long to wait to find out.
At just a £100 a pop, Bozza's currently on a fine of around £3.5k.
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https://twitter.com/kallmemeg/status/1486046599323308037?t=fZutb7t_eu6eD9gIwfsqSQ&s=19
"Events had descended into farce by lunchtime today as No 10 insisted that the criminal probe meant that parts of an internal report by Ms Gray would not be published until it was completed.
This stance, seemingly kicking the most potentially damaging parts of the report into the long grass, was swiftly abandoned, however, after Scotland Yard said full publication would not affect its inquiries, which carry fines as the most serious punishments."
@Peston
·
10m
It is looking like publication will happen tomorrow. So not long to wait to find out.
Mind you for JRM and Dorries it is a waste of time as they fall with Boris
It is not, I fear, quite the slam dunk some are assuming.