In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
Especially as the border is the other side of Plymouth from Exeter ...
But did anyone ask the eponymous insects used on their logo if it was okay? If not isn't that also a form of cultural appropriation? To deny it is surely pure speciesism.
Essentially I think the whole idea of cultural appropriation is utter bullshit. Just another grievance to get worked up about (usually on behalf of someone else who doesn't give a shit). All of human history is cultural appropriation. We associated potatoes with the british diet, yet they were appropriated from South America. Same for chillies - no more Indian take aways with chillies to spice them up. We copy fashion, dance, literature, language, dress. The idea that certain things should be protected, such as the stereotypical (and frankly mostly ficticious) Indian of Cowboys and Indians fantasy is just one ludicrous example.
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
Dear RP
You voted for Brexit didnt you?
Regards
some arse
Brexit is leaving the EU.
Our problems now are because we have left the EEA
The EEA is not the EU.
We could have created a free trade deal with the EU which allowed free trade to continue to flow. We have chosen not to. That was done by the Conservative government elected in 2019. Which I did not vote for.
When we voted in the referendum, we had to weigh up: - what was the outcome we wanted. - a few scenarios of what might have happened had we voted remain, the positives and negatives of each, and the chances of each - a few scenarios of what might have happened had we voted leave, the positives and negatives of each, and the chances of each.
I don't think anyone can be wholly blamed for not getting the outcome they wanted, as long as they went into the process with their eyes open.
My preference was also an EEA-type deal. I thought the chances of getting it were less than 50% - though I thought we would be prevented from getting it more out of European spite than Remainer obstinance. I hold 2017-2019 Remainers partly responsible, though in all honesty European spite played a not insignificant part in Theresa May's deal not being particularly attractive, along with Theresa May's negotiating team not negotiating particularly effectively. But there we are.
We may still end up with an EEA deal - which we never would had we voted Remain.
I took - and still take - the slightly niche position that Remain was the high risk option, and that the worst case scenario of leaving is nothing like as scary as the worst case scenario of remaining: further integration, democracy whittling away bit by bit, incompetent technocrats in power, the Euro exploding and being significantly on the hook for it. Troublesome borders seem minor and soluble problems in comparison.
Anyway, the point is, it was a massively complex weighing up exercise and Rochdale's decisions were reasonable at the time.
Nothing to do with the ERG die-hards. Oh no, nothing at all.
The public starting to agree with you and I (and seemingly almost no-one else on here), that the PM’s wife bringing a cake to the office on his birthday, really isn’t the big story the Lobby and Opposition are trying to spin here?
Yeah, breaking the law then lying about it to parliament - who cares?
There is no law against having a slice of cake in the office on somebody's birthday and there never has been.
As for lying to Parliament I don't think even the most strait-laced boring individual would consider a slice of cake in the office to be a "party" let alone someone as hedonistic as Boris.
The other stories are concerning but that's just dumb.
Let's imagine I'm a Tory MP, and I'm thinking - well, Boris is over the worst on Partygate, and there's some evidence that the polls are shifting back towards us a bit. So maybe I'll stick with him.
But I then ask myself a second question. If Boris has ridden out this storm, am I confident that there won't be any more huge pratfalls between now and the next GE? And the answer I give is no. It's almost certain that even if he gets over this one, there will be more to come on something or other - he's bound to get himself into a heap of trouble. So I think I'll write to Mr. Brady anyway.
Yes, and I think Cummings is still the other crucial factor there, too. He seems to have several allies in government, and he's going to keep going on and on. The Nowzat Dogs stuff is from way after most of the pandemic, for instance.
He was the right-hand man of the current Secretary of State for Levelling Up and he's married to the commissioning editor of the house journal of the Conservative Party. You bet he has allies in government.
Dentist appointment in central Manchester today. Thought the best choice of transport from my suburb 6 miles out would be bike. The journey was fine, and cheaper and more reliable than any of other options. Which was a positive. And it also allowed me to call by a deli in Chorlton on the way home and get something for tea and some cake. Since when I have been absolutely starving and have done little but eat cake. My point is this: the health benefits of cycling may well be overstated. (I'm not convinced the day's been a positive dentally, either, to be frank).
LOL! Totally understand and plays into our previous discussion (or the discussion on here) which noted that some people "exercise to eat" which I appreciate isn't the case here.
I do remember however that I was at my fittest (while at an office) when I had a sausage bap (+ red sauce, obvs) every day then went to smash it at the gym as I had a lot of energy.
Did you have breakfast before you started out because that might be a clue - if you exercise hungry then your body begins to crave calories that will overshoot what you have used up.
Sadly I do not have that excuse! I had a perfectly adequate breakfast. I think I've just managed to trick myself into eating an excess of cake.
Get with the programme. You didn't trick yourself into eating the cake. You were ambushed with it.
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
Dear RP
You voted for Brexit didnt you?
Regards
some arse
Brexit is leaving the EU.
Our problems now are because we have left the EEA
The EEA is not the EU.
We could have created a free trade deal with the EU which allowed free trade to continue to flow. We have chosen not to. That was done by the Conservative government elected in 2019. Which I did not vote for.
Not surprisingly I suppose, I agree with you 100%. Even worse this is not 20:20 hindsight. There were plenty of us saying this before the referendum.
Mind you it is why I am both still very happy with my vote and in the long term prospects. Get some adults in number 10 - from whatever party it might be - and the fixes are not that difficult. It just takes willing and common sense. I believe Starmer gets this, as do a fair few on the Tory side. Get rid of Boris one way or another and we can start to put things right.
I have a mate (yeah, yeah, I know) who is a v senior economist bod. You would have heard of him.
He put it to me that the EEA wouldn't have had us as we would have swamped the organisation; our economy was simply too big to be in such a set up, which apart from anything else was (EFTA court notwithstanding) virtually a rule-taker from the EU.
Would we have/could we have? Who knows I'm just passing on what he said.
The public starting to agree with you and I (and seemingly almost no-one else on here), that the PM’s wife bringing a cake to the office on his birthday, really isn’t the big story the Lobby and Opposition are trying to spin here?
Yeah, breaking the law then lying about it to parliament - who cares?
There is no law against having a slice of cake in the office on somebody's birthday and there never has been.
The other stories are concerning but that's just dumb.
AIUI there was a law against social indoor gatherings of this nature. But let's see what Sue Gray, the Met, and then most importantly, the public at large make of it.
I see Dave Nellist is standing in the Erdington By Election
As an MP he only ever took the Salary of his "average Constituent" donated the rest to his CLP
He was still a councillor in Coventry until a decade ago. He has continued standing there under the TUSC banner. He got nearly 20% in 2016 but he only got 9% last year.
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
Dear RP
You voted for Brexit didnt you?
Regards
some arse
Brexit is leaving the EU.
Our problems now are because we have left the EEA
The EEA is not the EU.
We could have created a free trade deal with the EU which allowed free trade to continue to flow. We have chosen not to. That was done by the Conservative government elected in 2019. Which I did not vote for.
When we voted in the referendum, we had to weigh up: - what was the outcome we wanted. - a few scenarios of what might have happened had we voted remain, the positives and negatives of each, and the chances of each - a few scenarios of what might have happened had we voted leave, the positives and negatives of each, and the chances of each.
I don't think anyone can be wholly blamed for not getting the outcome they wanted, as long as they went into the process with their eyes open.
My preference was also an EEA-type deal. I thought the chances of getting it were less than 50% - though I thought we would be prevented from getting it more out of European spite than Remainer obstinance. I hold 2017-2019 Remainers partly responsible, though in all honesty European spite played a not insignificant part in Theresa May's deal not being particularly attractive, along with Theresa May's negotiating team not negotiating particularly effectively. But there we are.
We may still end up with an EEA deal - which we never would had we voted Remain.
I took - and still take - the slightly niche position that Remain was the high risk option, and that the worst case scenario of leaving is nothing like as scary as the worst case scenario of remaining: further integration, democracy whittling away bit by bit, incompetent technocrats in power, the Euro exploding and being significantly on the hook for it. Troublesome borders seem minor and soluble problems in comparison.
Anyway, the point is, it was a massively complex weighing up exercise and Rochdale's decisions were reasonable at the time.
Nothing to do with the ERG die-hards. Oh no, nothing at all.
Well they bear responsiblity too of course. But uniquely in all this they got the result that they wanted and were explicit about wanting and voted for consistently.
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
All fair points - but equally I would be astonished were Native Americans up in arms because of the brand identity of a rugby club from Devon.
If they did find out, they'd probably demand a casino booth in the stand.
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
This is what you voted for. They literally said we'd leave the Single Market and Customs Union during the campaign.
And there isn't a single non-EU EEA nation in the Customs Union anyway.
So if you wanted to leave the EU but still have all EU benefits then I'm sorry but that's your own mistake.
And we actually have diverged. UK customs rules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. UK tariff schedules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. So the divergence is very real which is what we voted for.
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
Dear RP
You voted for Brexit didnt you?
Regards
some arse
Brexit is leaving the EU.
Our problems now are because we have left the EEA
The EEA is not the EU.
We could have created a free trade deal with the EU which allowed free trade to continue to flow. We have chosen not to. That was done by the Conservative government elected in 2019. Which I did not vote for.
I also was inclined to an "out of the EU, in the EEA" scenario.
However, I concluded that a Brexit made by those likely to be in power at the time would have virtually no chance of ending up there, so I ended up voting Remain as the only plausible option to stay in the EEA.
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
Dear RP
You voted for Brexit didnt you?
Regards
some arse
Brexit is leaving the EU.
Our problems now are because we have left the EEA
The EEA is not the EU.
We could have created a free trade deal with the EU which allowed free trade to continue to flow. We have chosen not to. That was done by the Conservative government elected in 2019. Which I did not vote for.
Not surprisingly I suppose, I agree with you 100%. Even worse this is not 20:20 hindsight. There were plenty of us saying this before the referendum.
Mind you it is why I am both still very happy with my vote and in the long term prospects. Get some adults in number 10 - from whatever party it might be - and the fixes are not that difficult. It just takes willing and common sense. I believe Starmer gets this, as do a fair few on the Tory side. Get rid of Boris one way or another and we can start to put things right.
I have a mate (yeah, yeah, I know) who is a v senior economist bod. You would have heard of him.
He put it to me that the EEA wouldn't have had us as we would have swamped the organisation; our economy was simply too big to be in such a set up, which apart from anything else was (EFTA court notwithstanding) virtually a rule-taker from the EU.
Would we have/could we have? Who knows I'm just passing on what he said.
Well if he was saying that the EFTA countries are just rule takers then clearly he is not very well versed in the way he system actually works. That particular myth was comprehensively disproved long ago.
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
This is what you voted for. They literally said we'd leave the Single Market and Customs Union during the campaign.
And there isn't a single non-EU EEA nation in the Customs Union anyway.
So if you wanted to leave the EU but still have all EU benefits then I'm sorry but that's your own mistake.
And we actually have diverged. UK customs rules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. UK tariff schedules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. So the divergence is very real which is what we voted for.
So fill in the forms and quit moaning.
Since when has Norway (and Liechtenstein) been an EU member?
“Sadly Barry Cryer passed away today, aged 86. Do you know who he was?”
“I’m sorry, I haven’t a clue”.
Very sad news. I love the older ISIHAC episodes with Barry&Graeme vs Tim&guest. During lockdown I must have got through at least 100 of those episodes.
Strangely, for decades one of the standing jokes was how close to the end of life Barry was (and of course Humph).
It’s Holocaust Memorial Day. This year, I’m thinking of a woman called Sulamita Szapiro. Here she is as a student. We weren’t related and I don’t even know much about her, but I’m pretty sure that remembering her still falls to me. This is a thread about why. https://twitter.com/hugorifkind/status/1486733736083292163/photo/1
“Sadly Barry Cryer passed away today, aged 86. Do you know who he was?”
“I’m sorry, I haven’t a clue”.
Am I correct in thinking that a lot of his best work you won't know it was him as he was ghost writer of lots of jokes for much more famous comedians?
Yes, he was a very prolific comedy writer. Wrote for many TV shows across decades, and indeed it’s rumoured a lot of jokes for standup comics, something which usually goes uncredited. Standups almost always credit their shows as written and performed by just themselves, but they often work with other comics and writers as part of the creative process. Cryer was well known as someone who could give ‘notes’ to a comedian, he had an ear for the funniest form of words to use in a sentence.
It’s Holocaust Memorial Day. This year, I’m thinking of a woman called Sulamita Szapiro. Here she is as a student. We weren’t related and I don’t even know much about her, but I’m pretty sure that remembering her still falls to me. This is a thread about why. https://twitter.com/hugorifkind/status/1486733736083292163/photo/1
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
Dear RP
You voted for Brexit didnt you?
Regards
some arse
Brexit is leaving the EU.
Our problems now are because we have left the EEA
The EEA is not the EU.
We could have created a free trade deal with the EU which allowed free trade to continue to flow. We have chosen not to. That was done by the Conservative government elected in 2019. Which I did not vote for.
Not surprisingly I suppose, I agree with you 100%. Even worse this is not 20:20 hindsight. There were plenty of us saying this before the referendum.
Mind you it is why I am both still very happy with my vote and in the long term prospects. Get some adults in number 10 - from whatever party it might be - and the fixes are not that difficult. It just takes willing and common sense. I believe Starmer gets this, as do a fair few on the Tory side. Get rid of Boris one way or another and we can start to put things right.
I have a mate (yeah, yeah, I know) who is a v senior economist bod. You would have heard of him.
He put it to me that the EEA wouldn't have had us as we would have swamped the organisation; our economy was simply too big to be in such a set up, which apart from anything else was (EFTA court notwithstanding) virtually a rule-taker from the EU.
Would we have/could we have? Who knows I'm just passing on what he said.
The issue is really as RP says we are spending a lot of time checking items that don't generate any revenue and really don't require any checking.
What we are missing is a trusted trader scheme or similar that allows all these lorries to sail through while spending times on others that may contain vatable produce or items that require actual checks.
And we won't have that until both us and the EU have grown ups in the room and stop the petty point scoring for political gain.
The public starting to agree with you and I (and seemingly almost no-one else on here), that the PM’s wife bringing a cake to the office on his birthday, really isn’t the big story the Lobby and Opposition are trying to spin here?
Yeah, breaking the law then lying about it to parliament - who cares?
There is no law against having a slice of cake in the office on somebody's birthday and there never has been.
The other stories are concerning but that's just dumb.
AIUI there was a law against social indoor gatherings of this nature. But let's see what Sue Gray, the Met, and then most importantly, the public at large make of it.
Indeed it will be interesting what they say. I doubt they'll say that people who were gathered primarily for work reasons anyway having a slice of cake during the work day was against the law.
And I think you'll find plenty of normal law-abiding citizens around the country would have had a slice of cake on the birthday of someone they were working with and never for one second would have thought that's criminal behaviour.
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form or flattery ?
The thing to ask yourself is whether you would be annoyed if, say, a football team in, say, China, called itself 'Xian English FC', and gave itself a sort of portmanteau English identity of bowler hats and suits of armour and so forth. I'd be amused but unoffended.
- Cases. Looks like R is dropping back to 1. Cases are flat(ish). Falling in the older groups - Admissions - Down. R is solidly below 1 for admissions - MV beds - Down - In hospital - Down - Deaths - a slow fall is firming up in the data
Imagine if in 30's Germany , a football team called themselves (say) Berlin Israelites and had a picture of Moses as its badge. Hitler would not have been impressed no doubt. To those who bullied Exeter into changing their name , think about who else in history did not like cultural appropriation.
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
Dear RP
You voted for Brexit didnt you?
Regards
some arse
Brexit is leaving the EU.
Our problems now are because we have left the EEA
The EEA is not the EU.
We could have created a free trade deal with the EU which allowed free trade to continue to flow. We have chosen not to. That was done by the Conservative government elected in 2019. Which I did not vote for.
Not surprisingly I suppose, I agree with you 100%. Even worse this is not 20:20 hindsight. There were plenty of us saying this before the referendum.
Mind you it is why I am both still very happy with my vote and in the long term prospects. Get some adults in number 10 - from whatever party it might be - and the fixes are not that difficult. It just takes willing and common sense. I believe Starmer gets this, as do a fair few on the Tory side. Get rid of Boris one way or another and we can start to put things right.
I have a mate (yeah, yeah, I know) who is a v senior economist bod. You would have heard of him.
He put it to me that the EEA wouldn't have had us as we would have swamped the organisation; our economy was simply too big to be in such a set up, which apart from anything else was (EFTA court notwithstanding) virtually a rule-taker from the EU.
Would we have/could we have? Who knows I'm just passing on what he said.
Well if he was saying that the EFTA countries are just rule takers then clearly he is not very well versed in the way he system actually works. That particular myth was comprehensively disproved long ago.
No that wasn't the main thrust of his point; it was that the UK would not have fit in the EEA as simply as some might have wanted if at all.
As for the EFTA court we discussed this five years ago and I'm not about to do so again.
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
Dear RP
You voted for Brexit didnt you?
Regards
some arse
Brexit is leaving the EU.
Our problems now are because we have left the EEA
The EEA is not the EU.
We could have created a free trade deal with the EU which allowed free trade to continue to flow. We have chosen not to. That was done by the Conservative government elected in 2019. Which I did not vote for.
Not surprisingly I suppose, I agree with you 100%. Even worse this is not 20:20 hindsight. There were plenty of us saying this before the referendum.
Mind you it is why I am both still very happy with my vote and in the long term prospects. Get some adults in number 10 - from whatever party it might be - and the fixes are not that difficult. It just takes willing and common sense. I believe Starmer gets this, as do a fair few on the Tory side. Get rid of Boris one way or another and we can start to put things right.
I still hope an EEA-type solution is possible. It's unfortunate - at the least - that a combination of Cameron flouncing, May failing to understand the public and continuity Remainers fighting against any form of Brexit meant that we didn't get it from the start. There was always probably a majority in the country for it.
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
This is what you voted for. They literally said we'd leave the Single Market and Customs Union during the campaign.
And there isn't a single non-EU EEA nation in the Customs Union anyway.
So if you wanted to leave the EU but still have all EU benefits then I'm sorry but that's your own mistake.
And we actually have diverged. UK customs rules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. UK tariff schedules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. So the divergence is very real which is what we voted for.
So fill in the forms and quit moaning.
Since when has Norway (and Liechtenstein) been an EU member?
Since when has either Norway or Liechtenstein been in the EU's customs union?
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
Especially as the border is the other side of Plymouth from Exeter ...
But did anyone ask the eponymous insects used on their logo if it was okay? If not isn't that also a form of cultural appropriation? To deny it is surely pure speciesism.
If this trend continues Saracens are in deep doo-doo.
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
I think the rugby team has been nicknamed 'the Chiefs' for the best part of a century. But associating the name with Native American imagery is only a recent phenomenon.
It’s Holocaust Memorial Day. This year, I’m thinking of a woman called Sulamita Szapiro. Here she is as a student. We weren’t related and I don’t even know much about her, but I’m pretty sure that remembering her still falls to me. This is a thread about why. https://twitter.com/hugorifkind/status/1486733736083292163/photo/1
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
The irony is that the whole Chiefs/Tigers/Whatever thing is itself cultural appropriation of American sports because some marketing guru convinced the ruling bodies that *that* was what fans cared about.
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
Dear RP
You voted for Brexit didnt you?
Regards
some arse
Brexit is leaving the EU.
Our problems now are because we have left the EEA
The EEA is not the EU.
We could have created a free trade deal with the EU which allowed free trade to continue to flow. We have chosen not to. That was done by the Conservative government elected in 2019. Which I did not vote for.
I also was inclined to an "out of the EU, in the EEA" scenario.
However, I concluded that a Brexit made by those likely to be in power at the time would have virtually no chance of ending up there, so I ended up voting Remain as the only plausible option to stay in the EEA.
Ironically the 2015-2017 parliament and 2017-2019 were much more likely to give us Brexit in the EEA, if they gave us Brexit - though less likely to get Brexit at all. I also thought though that if we remained then the out of the EU, in the EEA scenario would never happen - whereas if we left there was a chance of it happening further down the road.
Like 50 million people all playing 3D chess at once.
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
All fair points - but equally I would be astonished were Native Americans up in arms because of the brand identity of a rugby club from Devon.
If they did find out, they'd probably demand a casino booth in the stand.
It’s Holocaust Memorial Day. This year, I’m thinking of a woman called Sulamita Szapiro. Here she is as a student. We weren’t related and I don’t even know much about her, but I’m pretty sure that remembering her still falls to me. This is a thread about why. https://twitter.com/hugorifkind/status/1486733736083292163/photo/1
As an aside, at PMQs yesterday only the SNP's Ian Blackford mentioned Holocaust Memorial Day in the prelude to his questions.
It’s Holocaust Memorial Day. This year, I’m thinking of a woman called Sulamita Szapiro. Here she is as a student. We weren’t related and I don’t even know much about her, but I’m pretty sure that remembering her still falls to me. This is a thread about why. https://twitter.com/hugorifkind/status/1486733736083292163/photo/1
Thanks for that Scott. That is terribly sad but also wonderful.
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
Completely agreed. I backed the BLM protests and defended the acquittal of the statue pullers, I too think I'm very woke on race but the one thing I can not understand is 'cultural appropriation'.
Isn't cultural appropriation what we used to call multiculturalism or being a melting pot.
Learning and adopting and adapting elements from other cultures is a key strength and benefit of immigration and having an open and welcoming society so how can it be a bad thing?
A couple of weeks ago Barry Cryer rang me up and, as he often did, signed off by sharing a joke.
A man and his wife are out walking one day when they spot a lone fellow on the other side of the road. "That looks like the Archbishop of Canterbury over there" says the woman. "
" Go and see if it is,” she adds.
The husband crosses the road and asks the man if he is indeed the Archbishop of Canterbury.
"Fuck off," says the man.
The husband crosses back to his wife who asks "What did he say? Is he the Archbishop of Canterbury?"
"He told me to fuck off," says the husand.
"Oh no," replies the wife, "Now we'll never know".
And then Barry cackled with delight because he’d told the gag to a real Bishop - who’d roared with laughter. And nothing made Barry happier than that.
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
I think the rugby team has been nicknamed 'the Chiefs' for the best part of a century. But associating the name with Native American imagery is only a recent phenomenon.
I did not know that bit still fail to see whats wrong . In a way its a bit of self identification - you may feel an affinity with native americans (maybe felt sorry for them in John Wayne films!) and thus like to dress up as one on your Saturday trip to rugby - What is wrong with that ? Its rather nice in a way. I though self identification was all the rage anyway these days
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
This is what you voted for. They literally said we'd leave the Single Market and Customs Union during the campaign.
And there isn't a single non-EU EEA nation in the Customs Union anyway.
So if you wanted to leave the EU but still have all EU benefits then I'm sorry but that's your own mistake.
And we actually have diverged. UK customs rules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. UK tariff schedules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. So the divergence is very real which is what we voted for.
So fill in the forms and quit moaning.
There was no need to leave the Single Market when we left the EU. That is a specific decision taken by he post-referendum Government. The EEA always was and still is an option - indeed the best option. It is only he idiocy of the Governments since 2016 that has prevented it being seriously considered.
Seemingly this is the last joke Barry Cryer wrote before he died:
A man and his wife are out walking one day when they spot a lone fellow on the other side of the road. “That looks like the Archbishop of Canterbury over there,” says the woman. “Go and see if it is.” The husband crosses the road and asks the man if he is indeed the Archbishop of Canterbury. “F— off,” says the man. The husband crosses back to his wife, who asks, “What did he say? Is he the Archbishop of Canterbury?” “He told me to f— off,” says the husband. “Oh no,” replies the wife, “Now we’ll never know.”
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
Completely agreed. I backed the BLM protests and defended the acquittal of the statue pullers, I too think I'm very woke on race but the one thing I can not understand is 'cultural appropriation'.
Isn't cultural appropriation what we used to call multiculturalism or being a melting pot.
Learning and adopting and adapting elements from other cultures is a key strength and benefit of immigration and having an open and welcoming society so how can it be a bad thing?
I am agnostic on the sports teams' names issue. But I do agree that the names are not chosen as terms of ridicule or disrepect, but more out of a wish to project a fierce, proud image. Teams don't chose to go by wimpy or rubbish names. That Indians, Chiefs, Redskins were all chosen by professional US sports teams is not, in my mind, an intentional show of disrespect. Perhaps, though, if I were of American Indian descent, I'd think it does rather trivialize my culture.
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
This is what you voted for. They literally said we'd leave the Single Market and Customs Union during the campaign.
And there isn't a single non-EU EEA nation in the Customs Union anyway.
So if you wanted to leave the EU but still have all EU benefits then I'm sorry but that's your own mistake.
And we actually have diverged. UK customs rules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. UK tariff schedules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. So the divergence is very real which is what we voted for.
So fill in the forms and quit moaning.
There was no need to leave the Single Market when we left the EU. That is a specific decision taken by he post-referendum Government. The EEA always was and still is an option - indeed the best option. It is only he idiocy of the Governments since 2016 that has prevented it being seriously considered.
Blimey it's deja vu all over again. Single market = free movement.
You are one of the enlightened come all ye Brexiters. Plenty weren't and would have been apoplectic at the thought of a continuation of free movement. Where's @isam with that Brexit wordcloud again. .
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
This is what you voted for. They literally said we'd leave the Single Market and Customs Union during the campaign.
And there isn't a single non-EU EEA nation in the Customs Union anyway.
So if you wanted to leave the EU but still have all EU benefits then I'm sorry but that's your own mistake.
And we actually have diverged. UK customs rules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. UK tariff schedules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. So the divergence is very real which is what we voted for.
So fill in the forms and quit moaning.
There was no need to leave the Single Market when we left the EU. That is a specific decision taken by he post-referendum Government. The EEA always was and still is an option - indeed the best option. It is only he idiocy of the Governments since 2016 that has prevented it being seriously considered.
There was no legal need to do so, but there was no legal need to leave the EU post referendum either if you want to play that game.
During the referendum both parties (leavers and remainers) said that we'd leave the Single Market if we voted Leave. Boris literally said it in yes/no format during the referendum as did Gove as did Cummings' Vote Leave campaign.
So ethically we had to. Not legally. And we knew that pre referendum.
There was no need to leave the Single Market when we left the EU. That is a specific decision taken by he post-referendum Government. The EEA always was and still is an option - indeed the best option. It is only he idiocy of the Governments since 2016 that has prevented it being seriously considered.
Subject to the unanimous consent of 31 other countries, of course.
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
I think the rugby team has been nicknamed 'the Chiefs' for the best part of a century. But associating the name with Native American imagery is only a recent phenomenon.
I did not know that bit still fail to see whats wrong . In a way its a bit of self identification - you may feel an affinity with native americans (maybe felt sorry for them in John Wayne films!) and thus like to dress up as one on your Saturday trip to rugby - What is wrong with that ? Its rather nice in a way. I though self identification was all the rage anyway these days
The only thing I see wrong is if it trivializes the culture in question.
It’s Holocaust Memorial Day. This year, I’m thinking of a woman called Sulamita Szapiro. Here she is as a student. We weren’t related and I don’t even know much about her, but I’m pretty sure that remembering her still falls to me. This is a thread about why. https://twitter.com/hugorifkind/status/1486733736083292163/photo/1
As an aside, at PMQs yesterday only the SNP's Ian Blackford mentioned Holocaust Memorial Day in the prelude to his questions.
Though, in fairness, there's a substantial debate on it today. Perhaps he's not able to participate in that?
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
This is what you voted for. They literally said we'd leave the Single Market and Customs Union during the campaign.
And there isn't a single non-EU EEA nation in the Customs Union anyway.
So if you wanted to leave the EU but still have all EU benefits then I'm sorry but that's your own mistake.
And we actually have diverged. UK customs rules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. UK tariff schedules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. So the divergence is very real which is what we voted for.
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
I think the rugby team has been nicknamed 'the Chiefs' for the best part of a century. But associating the name with Native American imagery is only a recent phenomenon.
I did not know that bit still fail to see whats wrong . In a way its a bit of self identification - you may feel an affinity with native americans (maybe felt sorry for them in John Wayne films!) and thus like to dress up as one on your Saturday trip to rugby - What is wrong with that ? Its rather nice in a way. I though self identification was all the rage anyway these days
The only thing I see wrong is if it trivializes the culture in question.
i think most cultures can take a bit of trivialisation if done with no harm . All helps spread it
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
Completely agreed. I backed the BLM protests and defended the acquittal of the statue pullers, I too think I'm very woke on race but the one thing I can not understand is 'cultural appropriation'.
Isn't cultural appropriation what we used to call multiculturalism or being a melting pot.
Learning and adopting and adapting elements from other cultures is a key strength and benefit of immigration and having an open and welcoming society so how can it be a bad thing?
There is no such thing as cultural appropriation. Ideas are free.
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
I think the rugby team has been nicknamed 'the Chiefs' for the best part of a century. But associating the name with Native American imagery is only a recent phenomenon.
Unless I am wrong the head honcho (is that OK?) of a Scots clan (itself a 19th C invention, at least in part) is described as a Chief. Chief of the Clan Mackay or something like that. How would the chap (or chapess) have been described in the 16th C?
And I agree with Mr Go Away; my ancestors, like others in these islands appear to be a mixture of Celt and Saxon, and three of my grandchildren have mixed British Isles/Thai and possibly Cambodian heritage.
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
This is what you voted for. They literally said we'd leave the Single Market and Customs Union during the campaign.
And there isn't a single non-EU EEA nation in the Customs Union anyway.
So if you wanted to leave the EU but still have all EU benefits then I'm sorry but that's your own mistake.
And we actually have diverged. UK customs rules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. UK tariff schedules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. So the divergence is very real which is what we voted for.
So fill in the forms and quit moaning.
There was no need to leave the Single Market when we left the EU. That is a specific decision taken by he post-referendum Government. The EEA always was and still is an option - indeed the best option. It is only he idiocy of the Governments since 2016 that has prevented it being seriously considered.
There was no legal need to do so, but there was no legal need to leave the EU post referendum either if you want to play that game.
During the referendum both parties (leavers and remainers) said that we'd leave the Single Market if we voted Leave. Boris literally said it in yes/no format during the referendum as did Gove as did Cummings' Vote Leave campaign.
So ethically we had to. Not legally. And we knew that pre referendum.
This was not my view, and while I am probably as biased as you (in opposite direction) I did follow it pretty closely. This issue was largely left ambiguous by Leave, and quite deliberately. If a hard Brexit had been offered it would have scared the horses. Many people thought we would end up with an EEA solution, and I suspect had the Leave campaign been more explicit they might have lost. . If Cameron hadn't been so arrogant, the sensible thing would have been to have given three options: Hard Brexit (like we ended up with) EEA or status quo/remain with a single transferable vote for those who wish to use it. There then should have been a confirmatory vote to confirm the final deal. It was absolutely dumb to have had a binary vote on something so complex and important. I suspect we would have ended up with EEA as a good compromise, which of course is not what the headbangers want, so they essentially conned the British electorate.
Too late now though, and in case you are wondering I am not in favour of rejoin.
Off-topic but one that MaxPB and others will understand
Mike Butcher @mikebutcher Big tech entrepreneur messages me: "Stuck at the UK border (non-UK, EU, US) in LHR for 4+ hrs. Last time it was 2.5+. Kids crying all around. Officers drift in & out. Barely a quarter booths occupied. I was thinking of opening an office in London, but now I doubt I will." #Brexit
I've known Mike for 25 years so this is a true story it ain't point scoring and shows how the little things matter.
This shit happened before Brexit, the issue is always the same - e-gates have stopped working and right now the incessant checks on COVID stuff at the border. The US border in SF is pretty awful too right now, I know some people who just went and were stuck for hours.
Anyone who is basing investment decisions on COVID travel probably makes pretty poor decisions overall, though that doesn't excuse the border agents not being staffed properly or actually working.
London Heathrow IME is normally one of the more efficient airport experiences. They've figured out that in security you should have multiple stations for people taking off shoes for each x-ray scanner, rather than making it go one-by-one. Why other countries can't do this, I do not know.
Heathrow is pretty efficient to get airside, but the border is variable. When the e-gates are working it's not an issue for basically anyone coming from the e-gates approved countries. When they aren't it can take literally hours to get through. I've waited 6 hours before in the UK queue and when we got to the desk the border person said my wife would have to go and queue up separately because she's a Swiss citizen and needs to go into the non-UK queue. I bitched at him and eventually he scanned her passport and let us through, but said that from then we should queue separately. Idiot.
You think security at Heathrow is good?
I recently travelled to Johannesburg from London via Zurich. I went through all the normal security checks without problem.
At Johannesburg I attempted to board a local plane down to Pietermaritzburg but the girl on security was troubled by my hand luggage, a small attache case. She emptied it, shook it out, and listened to my words of reassurance but she was convinced 'there's something in there'. She then took a penknife to one of the penholder pockets and withdrew a four inch long bullet. I recognised it immediately. It came from my Dad's war momentoes and I'd put it in the case a few months previous intending to have it checked out by a local gunsmith, but I'd forgotten all about it and it wasn't visible so I overlooked it when I decided to use the case on the trip.
Happily the SA police accepted my story but it was an awkward moment, and left me pondering how this live round had escaped scrutiny at Heathrow/Zurich/Joburg.
I think the round was for a WW2 machine gun but I'll never find out now because I left it with the cops in Joburg.
Presumably because you didn't have the correct gun to fire it!
SA Police are widely maligned and probably with good reason but the two I dealt with were perfect gents. My SA friends to a man and woman said they were surprised they didn't at least put me in the cells until I offered a few hundred rand 'compensation', but no. They were faultlessly civil and proper.
I've had worse experiences with the fuzz over here.
With all due respect, you consider Cape Town to be “reasonably safe” despite it having the highest murder rate in Africa, the highest murder rate outside the Americas, and a top ten ranking for global homicides
My comments were based on personal experience rather than statistics, and my own subjective feelings of how safe it felt generally. I was mostly in and around Pietermaritzburg, and spent some time in Durban and the resorts north of Durban beach. Naturally I avoided the more obvious hotspots but even so I've been in much more threatening places in the UK.....Cold Blow Lane and The Shed End for starters.
i wasn’t trying to wind you up, I’m glad you had nice holibobs. But, objectively, nowhere in the UK is as dangerous as urban South Africa
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
Completely agreed. I backed the BLM protests and defended the acquittal of the statue pullers, I too think I'm very woke on race but the one thing I can not understand is 'cultural appropriation'.
Isn't cultural appropriation what we used to call multiculturalism or being a melting pot.
Learning and adopting and adapting elements from other cultures is a key strength and benefit of immigration and having an open and welcoming society so how can it be a bad thing?
There is no such thing as cultural appropriation. Ideas are free.
It's universities going on about it that baffles me, because if you take the culturally appropriated out of any course on anything, there's not much left.
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
I think the rugby team has been nicknamed 'the Chiefs' for the best part of a century. But associating the name with Native American imagery is only a recent phenomenon.
I did not know that bit still fail to see whats wrong . In a way its a bit of self identification - you may feel an affinity with native americans (maybe felt sorry for them in John Wayne films!) and thus like to dress up as one on your Saturday trip to rugby - What is wrong with that ? Its rather nice in a way. I though self identification was all the rage anyway these days
The only thing I see wrong is if it trivializes the culture in question.
i think most cultures can take a bit of trivialisation if done with no harm . All helps spread it
Yeah, but from the other side, I can see that watching 50,000 Atlanta Braves fans standing waving foam tomahawks in their hands over their heads and doing some faux Indian chant might engender the feeling of "And that is all they care to know about and take from my culture" The more I think about it, the more I am siding with the Native Americans.
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
Completely agreed. I backed the BLM protests and defended the acquittal of the statue pullers, I too think I'm very woke on race but the one thing I can not understand is 'cultural appropriation'.
Isn't cultural appropriation what we used to call multiculturalism or being a melting pot.
Learning and adopting and adapting elements from other cultures is a key strength and benefit of immigration and having an open and welcoming society so how can it be a bad thing?
[SNIP] But I do agree that the names are not chosen as terms of ridicule or disrepect, but more out of a wish to project a fierce, proud image. .
Still, the sport with the best names in the world - ancient and modern, here and abroad - is, I have to admit, football. Consider England: Sheffield Wednesday. That would baffle the Americans. Is Wednesday the fiercest day of the week? possibly not. Kudos to Sheffield Wednesday for sticking with it into the modern age. Consider Scotland: Inverness Caledonian Thistle. Really, really Scottish. More Scottish than Partick Thistle. Consider also the bafflingly poetic Heart of Midlothian and Queen of the South. Again, would baffle the Americans. Consider the wonderful semi-final of the (I think) 1904 FA Cup, between Thornaby Utopians and Middlesbrough Ironopolis. Consider Bolivia, where, historically, the two most successful teams are called "The Strongest" and "Always Ready". The Strongest normally win - apart from, presumably, when they are not ready. Consider Europe: Go-Ahead Eagles, Young Boys of Berne. Helpfully, these advertise their silliness by naming themselves in English: I'm sure there are names just as baffling if you are able to delve into other languages.
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
This is what you voted for. They literally said we'd leave the Single Market and Customs Union during the campaign.
And there isn't a single non-EU EEA nation in the Customs Union anyway.
So if you wanted to leave the EU but still have all EU benefits then I'm sorry but that's your own mistake.
And we actually have diverged. UK customs rules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. UK tariff schedules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. So the divergence is very real which is what we voted for.
So fill in the forms and quit moaning.
There was no need to leave the Single Market when we left the EU. That is a specific decision taken by he post-referendum Government. The EEA always was and still is an option - indeed the best option. It is only he idiocy of the Governments since 2016 that has prevented it being seriously considered.
If either May or Boris had gone for full EEA and full free movement then no way would the Tories have won a majority in 2019 and Brexit would not have got done as Farage's Brexit Party would have got about 15-20% of the vote. The Leave vote would thus still have been split rather than united as it was in December 2019 behind Boris' Brexit Deal
There was no need to leave the Single Market when we left the EU. That is a specific decision taken by he post-referendum Government. The EEA always was and still is an option - indeed the best option. It is only he idiocy of the Governments since 2016 that has prevented it being seriously considered.
Subject to the unanimous consent of 31 other countries, of course.
I think that could have been achieved. They would probably have seen it as ideal. No damage to the single market and the troublesome Rosbifs not interfering in where they wanted to take the EU in future
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
Completely agreed. I backed the BLM protests and defended the acquittal of the statue pullers, I too think I'm very woke on race but the one thing I can not understand is 'cultural appropriation'.
Isn't cultural appropriation what we used to call multiculturalism or being a melting pot.
Learning and adopting and adapting elements from other cultures is a key strength and benefit of immigration and having an open and welcoming society so how can it be a bad thing?
There is no such thing as cultural appropriation. Ideas are free.
It's universities going on about it that baffles me, because if you take the culturally appropriated out of any course on anything, there's not much left.
yes its almost anti-learning . Maybe universities think any discussion or copying of culture needs to have a phd thesis behind it and it is not for the low or middle brow - Its a bit sinister if you ask me.
It’s Holocaust Memorial Day. This year, I’m thinking of a woman called Sulamita Szapiro. Here she is as a student. We weren’t related and I don’t even know much about her, but I’m pretty sure that remembering her still falls to me. This is a thread about why. https://twitter.com/hugorifkind/status/1486733736083292163/photo/1
As an aside, at PMQs yesterday only the SNP's Ian Blackford mentioned Holocaust Memorial Day in the prelude to his questions.
Though everybody from PM to LOTO seemed to be wearing Holocaust Memorial Day pins.
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
I think the rugby team has been nicknamed 'the Chiefs' for the best part of a century. But associating the name with Native American imagery is only a recent phenomenon.
I did not know that bit still fail to see whats wrong . In a way its a bit of self identification - you may feel an affinity with native americans (maybe felt sorry for them in John Wayne films!) and thus like to dress up as one on your Saturday trip to rugby - What is wrong with that ? Its rather nice in a way. I though self identification was all the rage anyway these days
The only thing I see wrong is if it trivializes the culture in question.
But what is “trivialization”? To some it will be “just a laugh” to others it will be “cruel mockery”
It’s all nonsense. As we discussed the other day, global cuisine would be infinitely poorer if Asia had not “appropriated” the chili pepper, and tomatoes, and much else
And as for music, the glorious golden age of pop and rock - 1955-2005 - was all about black and white cultures borrowing from each other, and making it better. Should white people not play the Blues, or jazz? Should black people be barred from playing Mozart, or borrowing Rodrigo’s Guitar Concerto to make Sketches of Spain?
“Cultural Appropriation” is one of the most sterile, desolating concepts humans have ever created. Stay in your lane. Get in your silo. Shut your eyes and ears. Do not borrow anything, get offended by everything. UGH
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
I think the rugby team has been nicknamed 'the Chiefs' for the best part of a century. But associating the name with Native American imagery is only a recent phenomenon.
I did not know that bit still fail to see whats wrong . In a way its a bit of self identification - you may feel an affinity with native americans (maybe felt sorry for them in John Wayne films!) and thus like to dress up as one on your Saturday trip to rugby - What is wrong with that ? Its rather nice in a way. I though self identification was all the rage anyway these days
The only thing I see wrong is if it trivializes the culture in question.
i think most cultures can take a bit of trivialisation if done with no harm . All helps spread it
Yeah, but from the other side, I can see that watching 50,000 Atlanta Braves fans standing waving foam tomahawks in their hands over their heads and doing some faux Indian chant might engender the feeling of "And that is all they care to know about and take from my culture" The more I think about it, the more I am siding with the Native Americans.
I suggest, Tim, that you keep well away from the old firm soccer match between Rangers and Celtic.
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
Completely agreed. I backed the BLM protests and defended the acquittal of the statue pullers, I too think I'm very woke on race but the one thing I can not understand is 'cultural appropriation'.
Isn't cultural appropriation what we used to call multiculturalism or being a melting pot.
Learning and adopting and adapting elements from other cultures is a key strength and benefit of immigration and having an open and welcoming society so how can it be a bad thing?
[SNIP] But I do agree that the names are not chosen as terms of ridicule or disrepect, but more out of a wish to project a fierce, proud image. .
Still, the sport with the best names in the world - ancient and modern, here and abroad - is, I have to admit, football. Consider England: Sheffield Wednesday. That would baffle the Americans. Is Wednesday the fiercest day of the week? possibly not. Kudos to Sheffield Wednesday for sticking with it into the modern age. Consider Scotland: Inverness Caledonian Thistle. Really, really Scottish. More Scottish than Partick Thistle. Consider also the bafflingly poetic Heart of Midlothian and Queen of the South. Again, would baffle the Americans. Consider the wonderful semi-final of the (I think) 1904 FA Cup, between Thornaby Utopians and Middlesbrough Ironopolis. Consider Bolivia, where, historically, the two most successful teams are called "The Strongest" and "Always Ready". The Strongest normally win - apart from, presumably, when they are not ready. Consider Europe: Go-Ahead Eagles, Young Boys of Berne. Helpfully, these advertise their silliness by naming themselves in English: I'm sure there are names just as baffling if you are able to delve into other languages.
AC Milan also have an English name, weirdly. They are not AC Milano.
And I can't believe you missed out Grasshoppers Zurich!
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
This is what you voted for. They literally said we'd leave the Single Market and Customs Union during the campaign.
And there isn't a single non-EU EEA nation in the Customs Union anyway.
So if you wanted to leave the EU but still have all EU benefits then I'm sorry but that's your own mistake.
And we actually have diverged. UK customs rules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. UK tariff schedules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. So the divergence is very real which is what we voted for.
So fill in the forms and quit moaning.
There was no need to leave the Single Market when we left the EU. That is a specific decision taken by he post-referendum Government. The EEA always was and still is an option - indeed the best option. It is only he idiocy of the Governments since 2016 that has prevented it being seriously considered.
There was no legal need to do so, but there was no legal need to leave the EU post referendum either if you want to play that game.
During the referendum both parties (leavers and remainers) said that we'd leave the Single Market if we voted Leave. Boris literally said it in yes/no format during the referendum as did Gove as did Cummings' Vote Leave campaign.
So ethically we had to. Not legally. And we knew that pre referendum.
No we didn´t. Dan Hannam was quite clear during the campaign that Leaving could and should still mean UK presence in the single market. The decisions that TMay and others took to withdraw from all levels of EU cooperation, even including Erasmus, was as stupid and unnecessary as it was wrong headed. The most common view was that voters liked the economic cooperation, but were not ready to deal with the politics. Ending the political engagement was popular, but if people had not been destracted with lies, they would have looked far more carefully at the economic costs. Even when Leave won, a soft deal could have been the basis of a national compromise, but it was never offered.
Now we will need to change course, find a softer deal and and re-engage with a great deal of the EU processes, because UK PLC can not take much more damage from the Hard Brexit policies that the Tories are inflicting.
Meanwhiule, to be honest "Partygate" IS trivial, and yet that is still causing serious damage to the Conservatives, as and when it becomes clear that their flagship policy is also more or less an unmitigated disaster, then the outlook for the Tories could very well become terminal.
However the Russian choice for war now seems very close, and so we will need to brace ourselves for a crisis that could even lead to the use of nuclear weapons, so we may need to rally round Ben Wallace, who has at least been on top of his brief in the last few weeks and simply ignore the mess in Number 10 for a while.
The mood music from the tyrant in the Kremlin has not changed today, even though the West is trying to offer an off ramp to smooth Russian amour propre. Reinforcements within NATO, while welcome, are as yet insufficient to deter a Russian attack, and that is about as serious as it gets. If Russia goes into Ukraine, very bad things will happen.
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
I think the rugby team has been nicknamed 'the Chiefs' for the best part of a century. But associating the name with Native American imagery is only a recent phenomenon.
I did not know that bit still fail to see whats wrong . In a way its a bit of self identification - you may feel an affinity with native americans (maybe felt sorry for them in John Wayne films!) and thus like to dress up as one on your Saturday trip to rugby - What is wrong with that ? Its rather nice in a way. I though self identification was all the rage anyway these days
The only thing I see wrong is if it trivializes the culture in question.
i think most cultures can take a bit of trivialisation if done with no harm . All helps spread it
Yeah, but from the other side, I can see that watching 50,000 Atlanta Braves fans standing waving foam tomahawks in their hands over their heads and doing some faux Indian chant might engender the feeling of "And that is all they care to know about and take from my culture" The more I think about it, the more I am siding with the Native Americans.
I suggest, Tim, that you keep well away from the old firm soccer match between Rangers and Celtic.
Especially wearing a name badge. (Not a joke, alas.)
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
I think the rugby team has been nicknamed 'the Chiefs' for the best part of a century. But associating the name with Native American imagery is only a recent phenomenon.
I did not know that bit still fail to see whats wrong . In a way its a bit of self identification - you may feel an affinity with native americans (maybe felt sorry for them in John Wayne films!) and thus like to dress up as one on your Saturday trip to rugby - What is wrong with that ? Its rather nice in a way. I though self identification was all the rage anyway these days
The only thing I see wrong is if it trivializes the culture in question.
But what is “trivialization”? To some it will be “just a laugh” to others it will be “cruel mockery”
It’s all nonsense. As we discussed the other day, global cuisine would be infinitely poorer if Asia had not “appropriated” the chili pepper, and tomatoes, and much else
And as for music, the glorious golden age of pop and rock - 1955-2005 - was all about black and white cultures borrowing from each other, and making it better. Should white people not play the Blues, or jazz? Should black people be barred from playing Mozart, or borrowing Rodrigo’s Guitar Concerto to make Sketches of Spain?
“Cultural Appropriation” is one of the most sterile, desolating concept humans have ever created. Stay in your lane. Get in your silo. Shut your eyes and ears. Do not borrow anything, get offended by everything. UGH
It is about respect for another's culture. Borrowing and even copying is fine, but mocking and parodying is not. So we no longer have blackface minstrel shows for example.
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
I think the rugby team has been nicknamed 'the Chiefs' for the best part of a century. But associating the name with Native American imagery is only a recent phenomenon.
I did not know that bit still fail to see whats wrong . In a way its a bit of self identification - you may feel an affinity with native americans (maybe felt sorry for them in John Wayne films!) and thus like to dress up as one on your Saturday trip to rugby - What is wrong with that ? Its rather nice in a way. I though self identification was all the rage anyway these days
The only thing I see wrong is if it trivializes the culture in question.
Off-topic but one that MaxPB and others will understand
Mike Butcher @mikebutcher Big tech entrepreneur messages me: "Stuck at the UK border (non-UK, EU, US) in LHR for 4+ hrs. Last time it was 2.5+. Kids crying all around. Officers drift in & out. Barely a quarter booths occupied. I was thinking of opening an office in London, but now I doubt I will." #Brexit
I've known Mike for 25 years so this is a true story it ain't point scoring and shows how the little things matter.
This shit happened before Brexit, the issue is always the same - e-gates have stopped working and right now the incessant checks on COVID stuff at the border. The US border in SF is pretty awful too right now, I know some people who just went and were stuck for hours.
Anyone who is basing investment decisions on COVID travel probably makes pretty poor decisions overall, though that doesn't excuse the border agents not being staffed properly or actually working.
London Heathrow IME is normally one of the more efficient airport experiences. They've figured out that in security you should have multiple stations for people taking off shoes for each x-ray scanner, rather than making it go one-by-one. Why other countries can't do this, I do not know.
Heathrow is pretty efficient to get airside, but the border is variable. When the e-gates are working it's not an issue for basically anyone coming from the e-gates approved countries. When they aren't it can take literally hours to get through. I've waited 6 hours before in the UK queue and when we got to the desk the border person said my wife would have to go and queue up separately because she's a Swiss citizen and needs to go into the non-UK queue. I bitched at him and eventually he scanned her passport and let us through, but said that from then we should queue separately. Idiot.
You think security at Heathrow is good?
I recently travelled to Johannesburg from London via Zurich. I went through all the normal security checks without problem.
At Johannesburg I attempted to board a local plane down to Pietermaritzburg but the girl on security was troubled by my hand luggage, a small attache case. She emptied it, shook it out, and listened to my words of reassurance but she was convinced 'there's something in there'. She then took a penknife to one of the penholder pockets and withdrew a four inch long bullet. I recognised it immediately. It came from my Dad's war momentoes and I'd put it in the case a few months previous intending to have it checked out by a local gunsmith, but I'd forgotten all about it and it wasn't visible so I overlooked it when I decided to use the case on the trip.
Happily the SA police accepted my story but it was an awkward moment, and left me pondering how this live round had escaped scrutiny at Heathrow/Zurich/Joburg.
I think the round was for a WW2 machine gun but I'll never find out now because I left it with the cops in Joburg.
Presumably because you didn't have the correct gun to fire it!
SA Police are widely maligned and probably with good reason but the two I dealt with were perfect gents. My SA friends to a man and woman said they were surprised they didn't at least put me in the cells until I offered a few hundred rand 'compensation', but no. They were faultlessly civil and proper.
I've had worse experiences with the fuzz over here.
With all due respect, you consider Cape Town to be “reasonably safe” despite it having the highest murder rate in Africa, the highest murder rate outside the Americas, and a top ten ranking for global homicides
My comments were based on personal experience rather than statistics, and my own subjective feelings of how safe it felt generally. I was mostly in and around Pietermaritzburg, and spent some time in Durban and the resorts north of Durban beach. Naturally I avoided the more obvious hotspots but even so I've been in much more threatening places in the UK.....Cold Blow Lane and The Shed End for starters.
i wasn’t trying to wind you up, I’m glad you had nice holibobs. But, objectively, nowhere in the UK is as dangerous as urban South Africa
There was no need to leave the Single Market when we left the EU. That is a specific decision taken by he post-referendum Government. The EEA always was and still is an option - indeed the best option. It is only he idiocy of the Governments since 2016 that has prevented it being seriously considered.
Subject to the unanimous consent of 31 other countries, of course.
I think that could have been achieved. They would probably have seen it as ideal. No damage to the single market and the troublesome Rosbifs not interfering in where they wanted to take the EU in future
Yes, probably. But obviously the devil is always in the detail in negotiations like that.
Still, it was academic. Theresa May was absolutely right: there was no way that the bulk of Leavers (Richard Tyndall and a few others notwithstanding) would have accepted an option which left freedom of movement unchanged, and still left us subject to the vast majority of EU rules. The cries of 'Betrayal!' would have been deafening. It was a non-starter.
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
This is what you voted for. They literally said we'd leave the Single Market and Customs Union during the campaign.
And there isn't a single non-EU EEA nation in the Customs Union anyway.
So if you wanted to leave the EU but still have all EU benefits then I'm sorry but that's your own mistake.
And we actually have diverged. UK customs rules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. UK tariff schedules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. So the divergence is very real which is what we voted for.
So fill in the forms and quit moaning.
There was no need to leave the Single Market when we left the EU. That is a specific decision taken by he post-referendum Government. The EEA always was and still is an option - indeed the best option. It is only he idiocy of the Governments since 2016 that has prevented it being seriously considered.
If either May or Boris had gone for full EEA and full free movement then no way would the Tories have won a majority in 2019 and Brexit would not have got done as Farage's Brexit Party would have got about 15-20% of the vote. The Leave vote would thus still have been split rather than united as it was in December 2019 behind Boris' Brexit Deal
Why do you always talk in absolutes? You have no fecking way of knowing whether that is true unless you have access to a parallel universe, though I sometimes wonder whether you inhabit one. You do not know how it might have been sold to the electorate. They might (and I suspect they would) have loved it and overlooked the free movement thing. It is just your (very) narrow opinion.
Try using IMO, or even the more ironic IMHO occasionally and it might give you more cred.
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
I think the rugby team has been nicknamed 'the Chiefs' for the best part of a century. But associating the name with Native American imagery is only a recent phenomenon.
I did not know that bit still fail to see whats wrong . In a way its a bit of self identification - you may feel an affinity with native americans (maybe felt sorry for them in John Wayne films!) and thus like to dress up as one on your Saturday trip to rugby - What is wrong with that ? Its rather nice in a way. I though self identification was all the rage anyway these days
The only thing I see wrong is if it trivializes the culture in question.
i think most cultures can take a bit of trivialisation if done with no harm . All helps spread it
Yeah, but from the other side, I can see that watching 50,000 Atlanta Braves fans standing waving foam tomahawks in their hands over their heads and doing some faux Indian chant might engender the feeling of "And that is all they care to know about and take from my culture" The more I think about it, the more I am siding with the Native Americans.
I suggest, Tim, that you keep well away from the old firm soccer match between Rangers and Celtic.
One interesting Q of obvious relevance to now is whether a leader can recover from ratings as bad as Johnson's are now? The answer generally seems to be "no". Corbyn, Major, Brown and Foot all went on to heavy defeats at the next GE. Thatcher was removed. https://twitter.com/robfordmancs/status/1486750137686937602
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
I think the rugby team has been nicknamed 'the Chiefs' for the best part of a century. But associating the name with Native American imagery is only a recent phenomenon.
I did not know that bit still fail to see whats wrong . In a way its a bit of self identification - you may feel an affinity with native americans (maybe felt sorry for them in John Wayne films!) and thus like to dress up as one on your Saturday trip to rugby - What is wrong with that ? Its rather nice in a way. I though self identification was all the rage anyway these days
The only thing I see wrong is if it trivializes the culture in question.
But what is “trivialization”? To some it will be “just a laugh” to others it will be “cruel mockery”
It’s all nonsense. As we discussed the other day, global cuisine would be infinitely poorer if Asia had not “appropriated” the chili pepper, and tomatoes, and much else
And as for music, the glorious golden age of pop and rock - 1955-2005 - was all about black and white cultures borrowing from each other, and making it better. Should white people not play the Blues, or jazz? Should black people be barred from playing Mozart, or borrowing Rodrigo’s Guitar Concerto to make Sketches of Spain?
“Cultural Appropriation” is one of the most sterile, desolating concept humans have ever created. Stay in your lane. Get in your silo. Shut your eyes and ears. Do not borrow anything, get offended by everything. UGH
It is about respect for another's culture. Borrowing and even copying is fine, but mocking and parodying is not. So we no longer have blackface minstrel shows for example.
But the Wokestapo have going way beyond banning blackface. Indeed they have come for cuisine:
“Jamie Oliver says he's hired cultural appropriation specialists to advise on cookbooks Jeevan Ravindran, CNN • Published 24th January 2022”
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
This is what you voted for. They literally said we'd leave the Single Market and Customs Union during the campaign.
And there isn't a single non-EU EEA nation in the Customs Union anyway.
So if you wanted to leave the EU but still have all EU benefits then I'm sorry but that's your own mistake.
And we actually have diverged. UK customs rules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. UK tariff schedules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. So the divergence is very real which is what we voted for.
So fill in the forms and quit moaning.
There was no need to leave the Single Market when we left the EU. That is a specific decision taken by he post-referendum Government. The EEA always was and still is an option - indeed the best option. It is only he idiocy of the Governments since 2016 that has prevented it being seriously considered.
If either May or Boris had gone for full EEA and full free movement then no way would the Tories have won a majority in 2019 and Brexit would not have got done as Farage's Brexit Party would have got about 15-20% of the vote. The Leave vote would thus still have been split rather than united as it was in December 2019 behind Boris' Brexit Deal
If Cameron hadn't flounced there wouldn't have been a 2017 election, and wecould have been in the EEA before a 2019 or 2020 election.
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
Completely agreed. I backed the BLM protests and defended the acquittal of the statue pullers, I too think I'm very woke on race but the one thing I can not understand is 'cultural appropriation'.
Isn't cultural appropriation what we used to call multiculturalism or being a melting pot.
Learning and adopting and adapting elements from other cultures is a key strength and benefit of immigration and having an open and welcoming society so how can it be a bad thing?
[SNIP] But I do agree that the names are not chosen as terms of ridicule or disrepect, but more out of a wish to project a fierce, proud image. .
Still, the sport with the best names in the world - ancient and modern, here and abroad - is, I have to admit, football. Consider England: Sheffield Wednesday. That would baffle the Americans. Is Wednesday the fiercest day of the week? possibly not. Kudos to Sheffield Wednesday for sticking with it into the modern age. Consider Scotland: Inverness Caledonian Thistle. Really, really Scottish. More Scottish than Partick Thistle. Consider also the bafflingly poetic Heart of Midlothian and Queen of the South. Again, would baffle the Americans. Consider the wonderful semi-final of the (I think) 1904 FA Cup, between Thornaby Utopians and Middlesbrough Ironopolis. Consider Bolivia, where, historically, the two most successful teams are called "The Strongest" and "Always Ready". The Strongest normally win - apart from, presumably, when they are not ready. Consider Europe: Go-Ahead Eagles, Young Boys of Berne. Helpfully, these advertise their silliness by naming themselves in English: I'm sure there are names just as baffling if you are able to delve into other languages.
AC Milan also have an English name, weirdly. They are not AC Milano.
And I can't believe you missed out Grasshoppers Zurich!
There have been a couple of Welsh league teams who changed their team name for sponsors - Total Network Solutions, who now call themselves The New Saints FC; and don’t forget Vauxhall Motors FC, from Ellesmere Port.
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
This is what you voted for. They literally said we'd leave the Single Market and Customs Union during the campaign.
And there isn't a single non-EU EEA nation in the Customs Union anyway.
So if you wanted to leave the EU but still have all EU benefits then I'm sorry but that's your own mistake.
And we actually have diverged. UK customs rules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. UK tariff schedules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. So the divergence is very real which is what we voted for.
So fill in the forms and quit moaning.
There was no need to leave the Single Market when we left the EU. That is a specific decision taken by he post-referendum Government. The EEA always was and still is an option - indeed the best option. It is only he idiocy of the Governments since 2016 that has prevented it being seriously considered.
There was no legal need to do so, but there was no legal need to leave the EU post referendum either if you want to play that game.
During the referendum both parties (leavers and remainers) said that we'd leave the Single Market if we voted Leave. Boris literally said it in yes/no format during the referendum as did Gove as did Cummings' Vote Leave campaign.
So ethically we had to. Not legally. And we knew that pre referendum.
This was not my view, and while I am probably as biased as you (in opposite direction) I did follow it pretty closely. This issue was largely left ambiguous by Leave, and quite deliberately. If a hard Brexit had been offered it would have scared the horses. Many people thought we would end up with an EEA solution, and I suspect had the Leave campaign been more explicit they might have lost. . If Cameron hadn't been so arrogant, the sensible thing would have been to have given three options: Hard Brexit (like we ended up with) EEA or status quo/remain with a single transferable vote for those who wish to use it. There then should have been a confirmatory vote to confirm the final deal. It was absolutely dumb to have had a binary vote on something so complex and important. I suspect we would have ended up with EEA as a good compromise, which of course is not what the headbangers want, so they essentially conned the British electorate.
Too late now though, and in case you are wondering I am not in favour of rejoin.
Yes but Leave did not win because 52% wanted slightly more control of widget making from the EFTA court rather than ECJ and a few fishermen wanted to leave the CFP (which is the only difference between the EU and EEA for us given we were not in the Eurozone anyway).
No, Leave only got 52% in part because the Leave campaign promised to end EU free movement and replace it with a points system, thus getting redwall voters out to vote Leave.
If Leave had just campaigned on EEA I suspect Remain would have won as redwallers would not have bothered to vote.
Tories haven't had a poll lead since the Redfield & Wilton poll on Dec 6th.
And haven't deserved one either.
I think Boris is going to survive this. He's going to have to do something Houdini-like to get the Tories back on track though.
Problem for him is that the less interested in politics electorate sometimes take a while to catch up with someone being a waste of space. It took them a while with Corbyn. Once they get there, there is no going back. I think Labour would have loved it if he had resigned, but he is currently an asset to them staying, so it is a win-win for them.
In more 'woke doesn't exist' news, Exeter Chiefs are to rebrand after being accused of cultural appropriation (by, if I remember the original story correctly, an utter pain in the arse). They will retain the name but base it on Celtic imagery instead. Although I do sort of get it I'm slightly puzzled as to why cultural appropriation of Native Americans is wrong but of Celts is ok. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2022/01/27/exeter-chiefs-replace-native-american-themed-imagery-end-season/
I don't want to get too dragged into this discussion, but most people in the UK are descended from the pre-Saxon native peoples, including Celts, the Anglo-Saxon incomers, AND the Norman incomers post-Hastings. Probably few people here have significant Native American heritage. Moreover, Celtic culture is basically extinct. All that's left are some pockets of Brythonic and Goidelic language, which are grand-daughter languages of any possible proto-Celtic language. Celtic as an identity is distant and loosely held, in much the same way as, say, Goths. There comes a point when there's nobody really left to feel offended. When was the last time you met someone who described their identity as "Celt"?
A lot of what passes for Celtic culture is an invention of the Romantic period, as with much of the ancient origins of the various national identities of Europe. It serves fairly directly as the bedrock for non-English identity in the islands of Britain and Ireland.
Is Exeter far enough West to claim a lineage from the "Celts" in the South West of England? I don't know.
On the one hand it is all a nonsense, but on the other hand it touches at a deep level on people's sense of identity. It's easy to feel a bit annoyed that they're exploiting other people's identity to make money. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.
Exeter has a long and colourful history as a Roman garrison, home to early English poetry, a loyal Royalist city, and more. Surely the rugby club can create a club identity based on some of the real local history instead of lazily appropriating somebody else's?
I consider myself fairly woke on race (if not quite other stuff) as my daughter is mixed race, my wife from a indian muslim heritage and dont believe in borders really . Honestly though I really dont get the argument about cultural appropriation especially when not done to ridicule etc. If the world never did any cultural appropriation then it would be a very insular,ignorant of other cultures and divided world . I am not a huge fan of sports teams being given hyped up names and prefer a straight Exeter/colchester./liverpool FC etc but if they are to have hyped up nicknames I dont think Exeter have anything to feel sorry for with their Chiefs nickname. After all isn't copying a form of flattery ?
I think the rugby team has been nicknamed 'the Chiefs' for the best part of a century. But associating the name with Native American imagery is only a recent phenomenon.
Unless I am wrong the head honcho (is that OK?) of a Scots clan (itself a 19th C invention, at least in part) is described as a Chief. Chief of the Clan Mackay or something like that. How would the chap (or chapess) have been described in the 16th C?
And I agree with Mr Go Away; my ancestors, like others in these islands appear to be a mixture of Celt and Saxon, and three of my grandchildren have mixed British Isles/Thai and possibly Cambodian heritage.
Clans certainly were not C19 inventions - my Scots professional historian friends are most unimpressed with this theory that all tartan came into being thanks to Wattie Scott. It would certainly surprise anyone who was involve din the '15 and '45, for a start. But anyway. 'Clan Chieftain' is a usual term, at least in Scotland, or simply The MacWhosoever if naming only one; the Gaelic usage is more idiomatic, bit IANAE. Edit: but one does get clan 'Chiefs' too. No idea about the Welsh or Cornwelsh.
Wasting yet more time doing yet more fucking customs forms this time to export products which are zero tariff zero quota zero VAT from one place to another to declare that its the same fucking standards on one side of the border as it is on the other.
Seriously, this is why the Border Operating Model doesn't work and why we're completely gumming up our border so that everything takes an eternity to get through. Pointless red tape to declare that no tariff is payable, that no vat is payable, that no standards are different because our standards are their standards are our fucking standards. What is the point in all this?
Before some arse says "but you voted for this", no I didn't. "This" is the Boris Brexit deal. Where after decades of cutting red tape cost and petty bureaucracy the Tory party decided to fuck all that off and impose as much as possible. Not because we actually have diverged and there is anything to check. But because we might want to do so at some point in the future.
Madness. And still prannocks say "but this is much better for the country than we had before". Is it fuck.
This is what you voted for. They literally said we'd leave the Single Market and Customs Union during the campaign.
And there isn't a single non-EU EEA nation in the Customs Union anyway.
So if you wanted to leave the EU but still have all EU benefits then I'm sorry but that's your own mistake.
And we actually have diverged. UK customs rules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. UK tariff schedules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. So the divergence is very real which is what we voted for.
So fill in the forms and quit moaning.
There was no need to leave the Single Market when we left the EU. That is a specific decision taken by he post-referendum Government. The EEA always was and still is an option - indeed the best option. It is only he idiocy of the Governments since 2016 that has prevented it being seriously considered.
There was no legal need to do so, but there was no legal need to leave the EU post referendum either if you want to play that game.
During the referendum both parties (leavers and remainers) said that we'd leave the Single Market if we voted Leave. Boris literally said it in yes/no format during the referendum as did Gove as did Cummings' Vote Leave campaign.
So ethically we had to. Not legally. And we knew that pre referendum.
This was not my view, and while I am probably as biased as you (in opposite direction) I did follow it pretty closely. This issue was largely left ambiguous by Leave, and quite deliberately. If a hard Brexit had been offered it would have scared the horses. Many people thought we would end up with an EEA solution, and I suspect had the Leave campaign been more explicit they might have lost. . If Cameron hadn't been so arrogant, the sensible thing would have been to have given three options: Hard Brexit (like we ended up with) EEA or status quo/remain with a single transferable vote for those who wish to use it. There then should have been a confirmatory vote to confirm the final deal. It was absolutely dumb to have had a binary vote on something so complex and important. I suspect we would have ended up with EEA as a good compromise, which of course is not what the headbangers want, so they essentially conned the British electorate.
Too late now though, and in case you are wondering I am not in favour of rejoin.
I was not of a firm opinion and was genuinely undecided how to vote for in the campaign, only deciding in the final days to vote Leave. At the start of the campaign I was backing Remain.
I don't recall the term "hard Brexit" or "soft Brexit" being discussed during the referendum, quite the opposite.
The Leave campaign made a few promises which are still visible on the Vote Leave website: to leave the ECJ, regain control of laws and trade and migration, and to have a free trade agreement outside of the Single Market.
As far as I can tell every single one of those promises has been fulfilled, so I'm not seeing how anyone was hoodwinked.
PS the binary yes/no on leaving the Single Market was from memldy asked by Andrew Neil during his series of interviews. He also compiled those answers and used them on the Daily Politics afterwards.
Comments
As for lying to Parliament I don't think even the most strait-laced boring individual would consider a slice of cake in the office to be a "party" let alone someone as hedonistic as Boris.
The other stories are concerning but that's just dumb.
He put it to me that the EEA wouldn't have had us as we would have swamped the organisation; our economy was simply too big to be in such a set up, which apart from anything else was (EFTA court notwithstanding) virtually a rule-taker from the EU.
Would we have/could we have? Who knows I'm just passing on what he said.
And there isn't a single non-EU EEA nation in the Customs Union anyway.
So if you wanted to leave the EU but still have all EU benefits then I'm sorry but that's your own mistake.
And we actually have diverged. UK customs rules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. UK tariff schedules are not 100% the same as EU ones anymore. So the divergence is very real which is what we voted for.
So fill in the forms and quit moaning.
@TheSimonEvans
I am removing the word "writer" from my CV.
https://twitter.com/TheSimonEvans/status/1486646775108800514
However, I concluded that a Brexit made by those likely to be in power at the time would have virtually no chance of ending up there, so I ended up voting Remain as the only plausible option to stay in the EEA.
Strangely, for decades one of the standing jokes was how close to the end of life Barry was (and of course Humph).
It’s Holocaust Memorial Day. This year, I’m thinking of a woman called Sulamita Szapiro. Here she is as a student. We weren’t related and I don’t even know much about her, but I’m pretty sure that remembering her still falls to me. This is a thread about why. https://twitter.com/hugorifkind/status/1486733736083292163/photo/1
What we are missing is a trusted trader scheme or similar that allows all these lorries to sail through while spending times on others that may contain vatable produce or items that require actual checks.
And we won't have that until both us and the EU have grown ups in the room and stop the petty point scoring for political gain.
And I think you'll find plenty of normal law-abiding citizens around the country would have had a slice of cake on the birthday of someone they were working with and never for one second would have thought that's criminal behaviour.
- Cases. Looks like R is dropping back to 1. Cases are flat(ish). Falling in the older groups
- Admissions - Down. R is solidly below 1 for admissions
- MV beds - Down
- In hospital - Down
- Deaths - a slow fall is firming up in the data
As for the EFTA court we discussed this five years ago and I'm not about to do so again.
Will Leyton Orient ever be invited to Beijing?
I also thought though that if we remained then the out of the EU, in the EEA scenario would never happen - whereas if we left there was a chance of it happening further down the road.
Like 50 million people all playing 3D chess at once.
https://www.thenationalnews.com/uae/2022/01/25/las-vegas-hotel-operator-wynn-to-build-1000-room-resort-in-ras-al-khaimah/
Isn't cultural appropriation what we used to call multiculturalism or being a melting pot.
Learning and adopting and adapting elements from other cultures is a key strength and benefit of immigration and having an open and welcoming society so how can it be a bad thing?
A man and his wife are out walking one day when they spot a lone fellow on the other side of the road. "That looks like the Archbishop of Canterbury over there" says the woman. "
" Go and see if it is,” she adds.
The husband crosses the road and asks the man if he is indeed the Archbishop of Canterbury.
"Fuck off," says the man.
The husband crosses back to his wife who asks "What did he say? Is he the Archbishop of Canterbury?"
"He told me to fuck off," says the husand.
"Oh no," replies the wife, "Now we'll never know".
And then Barry cackled with delight because he’d told the gag to a real Bishop - who’d roared with laughter. And nothing made Barry happier than that.
https://twitter.com/rtbenpreston/status/1486646891043508226?s=21
Asylum seekers had all possessions seized, despite committing no crime, amid Home Office ‘misunderstanding’ over law
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/migrant-phones-channel-home-office-b2002036.html
A man and his wife are out walking one day when they spot a lone fellow on the other side of the road.
“That looks like the Archbishop of Canterbury over there,” says the woman. “Go and see if it is.”
The husband crosses the road and asks the man if he is indeed the Archbishop of Canterbury.
“F— off,” says the man.
The husband crosses back to his wife, who asks, “What did he say? Is he the Archbishop of Canterbury?”
“He told me to f— off,” says the husband.
“Oh no,” replies the wife, “Now we’ll never know.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/27/comedian-actor-barry-cryer-dies-aged-86/
You are one of the enlightened come all ye Brexiters. Plenty weren't and would have been apoplectic at the thought of a continuation of free movement. Where's @isam with that Brexit wordcloud again.
.
During the referendum both parties (leavers and remainers) said that we'd leave the Single Market if we voted Leave. Boris literally said it in yes/no format during the referendum as did Gove as did Cummings' Vote Leave campaign.
So ethically we had to. Not legally. And we knew that pre referendum.
None: 34%
Liberal Democrat: 28%
Green: 22%
Independent: 8%
Conservative: 6%
Don't know: 16%
A woman passing a pet shop notices a spectacular parrot in the window. Tempted, she goes inside and asks how much it is. £5 comes the reply.
“Why is it so cheap?” Asks the woman.
“Well, to be perfectly honest it has been in a brothel and it has a rather extensive vocabulary”
“I don’t care, I must have it!”
So she takes it home and when she removes the cover from the cage the parrot starts to speak.
“New digs. Very nice.”
The woman’s daughters walk in.
“New girls. Very nice.”
The woman’s husband walks in.
“Hello Norman”.
Chief of the Clan Mackay or something like that. How would the chap (or chapess) have been described in the 16th C?
And I agree with Mr Go Away; my ancestors, like others in these islands appear to be a mixture of Celt and Saxon, and three of my grandchildren have mixed British Isles/Thai and possibly Cambodian heritage.
Too late now though, and in case you are wondering I am not in favour of rejoin.
https://www.cracked.com/article_15646_the-worlds-most-ridiculous-sports-team-names.html
Still, the sport with the best names in the world - ancient and modern, here and abroad - is, I have to admit, football.
Consider England: Sheffield Wednesday. That would baffle the Americans. Is Wednesday the fiercest day of the week? possibly not. Kudos to Sheffield Wednesday for sticking with it into the modern age.
Consider Scotland: Inverness Caledonian Thistle. Really, really Scottish. More Scottish than Partick Thistle. Consider also the bafflingly poetic Heart of Midlothian and Queen of the South. Again, would baffle the Americans.
Consider the wonderful semi-final of the (I think) 1904 FA Cup, between Thornaby Utopians and Middlesbrough Ironopolis.
Consider Bolivia, where, historically, the two most successful teams are called "The Strongest" and "Always Ready". The Strongest normally win - apart from, presumably, when they are not ready.
Consider Europe: Go-Ahead Eagles, Young Boys of Berne. Helpfully, these advertise their silliness by naming themselves in English: I'm sure there are names just as baffling if you are able to delve into other languages.
It’s all nonsense. As we discussed the other day, global cuisine would be infinitely poorer if Asia had not “appropriated” the chili pepper, and tomatoes, and much else
And as for music, the glorious golden age of pop and rock - 1955-2005 - was all about black and white cultures borrowing from each other, and making it better. Should white people not play the Blues, or jazz? Should black people be barred from playing Mozart, or borrowing Rodrigo’s Guitar Concerto to make Sketches of Spain?
“Cultural Appropriation” is one of the most sterile, desolating concepts humans have ever created. Stay in your lane. Get in your silo. Shut your eyes and ears. Do not borrow anything, get offended by everything. UGH
And I can't believe you missed out Grasshoppers Zurich!
Now we will need to change course, find a softer deal and and re-engage with a great deal of the EU processes, because UK PLC can not take much more damage from the Hard Brexit policies that the Tories are inflicting.
Meanwhiule, to be honest "Partygate" IS trivial, and yet that is still causing serious damage to the Conservatives, as and when it becomes clear that their flagship policy is also more or less an unmitigated disaster, then the outlook for the Tories could very well become terminal.
However the Russian choice for war now seems very close, and so we will need to brace ourselves for a crisis that could even lead to the use of nuclear weapons, so we may need to rally round Ben Wallace, who has at least been on top of his brief in the last few weeks and simply ignore the mess in Number 10 for a while.
The mood music from the tyrant in the Kremlin has not changed today, even though the West is trying to offer an off ramp to smooth Russian amour propre. Reinforcements within NATO, while welcome, are as yet insufficient to deter a Russian attack, and that is about as serious as it gets. If Russia goes into Ukraine, very bad things will happen.
I think Boris is going to survive this. He's going to have to do something Houdini-like to get the Tories back on track though.
Still, it was academic. Theresa May was absolutely right: there was no way that the bulk of Leavers (Richard Tyndall and a few others notwithstanding) would have accepted an option which left freedom of movement unchanged, and still left us subject to the vast majority of EU rules. The cries of 'Betrayal!' would have been deafening. It was a non-starter.
Try using IMO, or even the more ironic IMHO occasionally and it might give you more cred.
https://twitter.com/robfordmancs/status/1486750137686937602
“Jamie Oliver says he's hired cultural appropriation specialists to advise on cookbooks
Jeevan Ravindran, CNN • Published 24th January 2022”
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/jamie-oliver-cultural-appropriation-scli-intl-gbr/index.html
No, Leave only got 52% in part because the Leave campaign promised to end EU free movement and replace it with a points system, thus getting redwall voters out to vote Leave.
If Leave had just campaigned on EEA I suspect Remain would have won as redwallers would not have bothered to vote.
I don't recall the term "hard Brexit" or "soft Brexit" being discussed during the referendum, quite the opposite.
The Leave campaign made a few promises which are still visible on the Vote Leave website: to leave the ECJ, regain control of laws and trade and migration, and to have a free trade agreement outside of the Single Market.
As far as I can tell every single one of those promises has been fulfilled, so I'm not seeing how anyone was hoodwinked.
PS the binary yes/no on leaving the Single Market was from memldy asked by Andrew Neil during his series of interviews. He also compiled those answers and used them on the Daily Politics afterwards.