The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
Has @Scott_xP made any comment as I assume he will be embarrassed by this behaviour and call it out
The PB Remoaners are staying quiet. The only voices responding are those condemning this despicable act and the outright Putin apologists engaging in whataboutism.
I am sad to say this but by individually picking posters out like Roger and Scott as EU traitors is really rather unpleasant.
You are part of PB's pro- Johnson, anti EU majority which is fine, but cheerleading the troops to give the quislings a kicking is tantamount to bullying. You can include me in your traitors list.
Best I think, to come back when all the shrill jingoism calms down.
I thought better of you G.
This is not jingoism it is simply fairness
Both posters attack the UK and Boris 24/7 from an anti UK stance due to their loathing of Brexit but when the EU or in this case France behave in an unacceptable way they make no comment
Neither of them are anti-UK. Would you listen to yourself. You've morphed into one of those UKIP frothers who see treachery in criticism.
I must be doing something right when those vested in the EU come out to divert attention from the actions of France
Not really, you're just pushing people around and demanding they join you in condemning something that you think should be condemned. There's a faint air of Juror Number 10 about it.
The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
Has @Scott_xP made any comment as I assume he will be embarrassed by this behaviour and call it out
The PB Remoaners are staying quiet. The only voices responding are those condemning this despicable act and the outright Putin apologists engaging in whataboutism.
I am sad to say this but by individually picking posters out like Roger and Scott as EU traitors is really rather unpleasant.
You are part of PB's pro- Johnson, anti EU majority which is fine, but cheerleading the troops to give the quislings a kicking is tantamount to bullying. You can include me in your traitors list.
Best I think, to come back when all the shrill jingoism calms down.
I thought better of you G.
This is not jingoism it is simply fairness
Both posters attack the UK and Boris 24/7 from an anti UK stance due to their loathing of Brexit but when the EU or in this case France behave in an unacceptable way they make no comment
Neither of them are anti-UK. Would you listen to yourself. You've morphed into one of those UKIP frothers who see treachery in criticism.
I must be doing something right when those vested in the EU come out to divert attention from the actions of France
The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
"The French are scum."
Clearly, and by definition.
However the French are in fact wonderful, warm, and truly lovely people. I'll have to think about whether they're charming us for a while prior to revealing their true nature!
They also have the best national anthem. By miles.
Not really - The Welsh anthem is the best in the world
Well anything actually sung by the Welsh is the best in the world. Welshman singing the Marsiellais - that'd be a thing.
I really like 'Flower of Sctland' too - suits their peasant voice
I've always thought the Welsh National Anthem unsurpassable. The Marseillaise and the Stars and Stripes are pretty good too. I find it hard to think of another worthy of mention - maybe Flower of Scotland, or Australia Fair.
The Londonderry Air is a bit special but it's not an anthem of course. Somebody should nick it for their own.
I know the climate is wrong for making this admission and with all due apologies to people's sensibilities, but the old Soviet National Anthem is just a wonderful piece of music.
Yes, it's a truly rousing anthem. I wish ours was less boring, I think it's part of the reason we're shit at sport. Other teams have great national anthems to really get them going before a match, we have the world's dullest anthem.
The English/British anthem is utter shit. I can only think of two people on here who would possibly feel any pride when hearing it: @HYUFD and @malcolmg
I think it's fine. It's often played too slowly, but it is simple and straightforward to belt out, which is handy, even if it is certainly not as rousing or exciting as many others.
It will never happen, but "I vow to thee my country" by Gustav Holst would be a far better national anthem.
EDIT - I see some others have suggested the same.
I don't actually think it would be in the running as the CoE says it is heretical, placing the love of the nation above the love for God. Still a great song and before football matches it would get the team and crowd going.
The CofE can, quite frankly, fuck right off. None of their business. Anyway, I prefer Jerusalem. Though obviously that is English not British.
Putting God’s teaching and wisdom before nation is exactly their business.
CoE don’t like Jerusalem too, it’s banned from the hymnal’s 😝
The national anthem should be Rule Britannia. It is anti-French, pro-Navy and anti-slavery. What's not to like?
I'd say the songs in Church of England hymnbooks is precisely Church of England business.
And quite reasonable to note that the theology in Jerusalem is ... even being kind ... bollocks.
But does anyone have any evidence that it is banned?
It's very un-CofE to ban anything outright. Far more the sort of thing done in Scotland or by Atheists who both tend to be far more dogmatic about such things.
The last time I knew of it was Colin Slee, as the man with control of Worship at Southwark Cathedral.
Why is anyone in a flap?
The only major hymn book I can think of that it isn't in is Mission Praise. Which is American Evangelical although it is widely used in the Church of England (unfortunately).
Does it qualify as a hymn book? I thought it contained only "songs".
It has some hymns, but often in terrible arrangements. I can't actually play 'Be Thou My Vision' out of it because the 'harmony's' so bad it's literally painful to my ears.
Yes Jerusalem is frowned upon by CoE on basis it isn’t a hymn. and they a correct, there isn’t the clarity for a hymn.
You don’t project onto a hymn, the hymn projects onto you.
Look at blakes nonsense verses, complete mishmash of poetic ideas, the listener projects onto them, not projected onto. What is the virtue they are extolling? What specifically are they adoring?
Many get quite bothered by any historical and pragmatic reading of Blake’s poetic musings which do not fit their own fanciful interpretion of the song they love, particularly when read counter to their perceived ownership of historical Jesus, which Blake is directly challenging in these verses. Yet more projection onto the words, where hymn must go the other way. Yet they can’t explain the sexual imagery as Blake understood, or why it indiscriminately just erects itself without extolling anything in particular, nor be specific about poetry so duly enigmatic it may be nothing more than reference to a mill dark and satanic is poetic reference to an actual mill gutted by fire standing between a poet’s home and his bread shop – possibly gutted in industrial dispute over pay. Blake believed in hell, to him this ruin he often passed looked like hell had visited it. This is what poets do.
It’s not written as a hymn called Jerusalem, the reference to Jerusalem is Blake’s genuine belief Jesus and Joseph were building a bit of Jerusalem here.
Let's not beat about the bush: Blake was batshit crazy, and the imagery available to his batshit imagination was biblical imagery. That doesn't make him Christian, nor Jerusalem Christian. It isn't.
I would rather ask you if you know what combination of drugs Blake indulged in, than tell you are wrong. Or partly wrong. But here goes.
William Blake was very much a religious man, but little is strictly orthodox about his life, views or his art, outlandish and overtly sexual for the time. Although there are no historical documents describing Yeshua’s visits to Britain, this is quite proper if surviving documents are written by Christians who don’t want anyone to access what doesn’t fit with their Orthodoxy, which was essentially Catholic (and on wrong side of the council of Nicaea to be the Church Paul founded, let alone the initial followers of Yeshua before Paul’s letters from Greek islands) when many written histories we depend on today were produced; Blake nevertheless enthusiastically researched the oral history’s of Britain, Europe and the Mediterranean looking for and finding correlating evidence for Yeshua’s visit to Britain.
But whatever others want to believe, to project on his prose, or refuse to believe of the questions Blake raised in his preface to Milton, it’s probable Blake felt he had enough evidence to believe them himself, or else why has he done so much research and got so excited?
Remember Jerusalem was not written as either hymn or song, it was poetry, a preamble in verse, orchestrated long after it was written, this point is quite central to why there is contention over what it is saying to us. Simply put, hymns are written with sound messaging and absence of conjecture or projection, specifically written to achieve purpose, normally adoration of something. The question is, if you pick up any old nonsense lyric or abstruse poetry, can you fashion a fine hymn, that can enter a Church’s Hymnal? Technically no - as clearly proved by Parry’s orchestral setting of the preface to Blake’s lengthy narrative poem Milton,
And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon Englands mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On Englands pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold: Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land.
How much is clear? For example, whose sword will not sleep in hand? Perhaps the last two lines can be construed as building Christianity in England, even this is mistaken if Yeshua visited to build Hellenised Jewish Essenic settlement. Would building the Kingdom of Yeshua and Uncle Jo be a Catholic or Protestant Jerusalem? We know today, and as Blake would have himself, the answer to that is clearly no.
I done a project on Blake in school about twelve years ago. 😇
Well, Jerusalem clearly *wasn't* builded here (stanza 2) if it still needs doing in st 4.
I don't say that Blake did drugs (though he might well have done, no shortage of opium back then) but there's forms of madness which mimic drugs quite closely. Look at Louis Wain
As a lifelong severe depressive, I think Blake's greatest lines are these
Every Night and every Morn Some to Misery are born. Every Morn and every Night Some are born to Sweet Delight, Some are born to Endless Night.
I have a pet peeve when poetry has to resort to archaic or clumsy sounding word order to achieve the rhyme. "Some to Misery are born" has a dislocating cadence, there's something faintly foreign or stuffy church Latin about it, and it really ruins any enjoyment I could have otherwise taken from a poem. It's like a painting when you can still see the sketch lines. It reads like a work in progress with lines than will eventually be purged when the writer gets around to editing the damn thing.
Yeah, he was technically not great. It is difficult to read Jerusalem without mentally hearing the music but if you can manage it, it is susceptible to the same attack
The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
"The French are scum."
Clearly, and by definition.
However the French are in fact wonderful, warm, and truly lovely people. I'll have to think about whether they're charming us for a while prior to revealing their true nature!
They also have the best national anthem. By miles.
Not really - The Welsh anthem is the best in the world
Well anything actually sung by the Welsh is the best in the world. Welshman singing the Marsiellais - that'd be a thing.
I really like 'Flower of Sctland' too - suits their peasant voice
I've always thought the Welsh National Anthem unsurpassable. The Marseillaise and the Stars and Stripes are pretty good too. I find it hard to think of another worthy of mention - maybe Flower of Scotland, or Australia Fair.
The Londonderry Air is a bit special but it's not an anthem of course. Somebody should nick it for their own.
I know the climate is wrong for making this admission and with all due apologies to people's sensibilities, but the old Soviet National Anthem is just a wonderful piece of music.
Yes, it's a truly rousing anthem. I wish ours was less boring, I think it's part of the reason we're shit at sport. Other teams have great national anthems to really get them going before a match, we have the world's dullest anthem.
The English/British anthem is utter shit. I can only think of two people on here who would possibly feel any pride when hearing it: @HYUFD and @malcolmg
I think it's fine. It's often played too slowly, but it is simple and straightforward to belt out, which is handy, even if it is certainly not as rousing or exciting as many others.
It will never happen, but "I vow to thee my country" by Gustav Holst would be a far better national anthem.
EDIT - I see some others have suggested the same.
I don't actually think it would be in the running as the CoE says it is heretical, placing the love of the nation above the love for God. Still a great song and before football matches it would get the team and crowd going.
The CofE can, quite frankly, fuck right off. None of their business. Anyway, I prefer Jerusalem. Though obviously that is English not British.
Putting God’s teaching and wisdom before nation is exactly their business.
CoE don’t like Jerusalem too, it’s banned from the hymnal’s 😝
The national anthem should be Rule Britannia. It is anti-French, pro-Navy and anti-slavery. What's not to like?
I'd say the songs in Church of England hymnbooks is precisely Church of England business.
And quite reasonable to note that the theology in Jerusalem is ... even being kind ... bollocks.
But does anyone have any evidence that it is banned?
It's very un-CofE to ban anything outright. Far more the sort of thing done in Scotland or by Atheists who both tend to be far more dogmatic about such things.
The last time I knew of it was Colin Slee, as the man with control of Worship at Southwark Cathedral.
Why is anyone in a flap?
The only major hymn book I can think of that it isn't in is Mission Praise. Which is American Evangelical although it is widely used in the Church of England (unfortunately).
Does it qualify as a hymn book? I thought it contained only "songs".
It has some hymns, but often in terrible arrangements. I can't actually play 'Be Thou My Vision' out of it because the 'harmony's' so bad it's literally painful to my ears.
Yes Jerusalem is frowned upon by CoE on basis it isn’t a hymn. and they a correct, there isn’t the clarity for a hymn.
You don’t project onto a hymn, the hymn projects onto you.
Look at blakes nonsense verses, complete mishmash of poetic ideas, the listener projects onto them, not projected onto. What is the virtue they are extolling? What specifically are they adoring?
Many get quite bothered by any historical and pragmatic reading of Blake’s poetic musings which do not fit their own fanciful interpretion of the song they love, particularly when read counter to their perceived ownership of historical Jesus, which Blake is directly challenging in these verses. Yet more projection onto the words, where hymn must go the other way. Yet they can’t explain the sexual imagery as Blake understood, or why it indiscriminately just erects itself without extolling anything in particular, nor be specific about poetry so duly enigmatic it may be nothing more than reference to a mill dark and satanic is poetic reference to an actual mill gutted by fire standing between a poet’s home and his bread shop – possibly gutted in industrial dispute over pay. Blake believed in hell, to him this ruin he often passed looked like hell had visited it. This is what poets do.
It’s not written as a hymn called Jerusalem, the reference to Jerusalem is Blake’s genuine belief Jesus and Joseph were building a bit of Jerusalem here.
Let's not beat about the bush: Blake was batshit crazy, and the imagery available to his batshit imagination was biblical imagery. That doesn't make him Christian, nor Jerusalem Christian. It isn't.
I would rather ask you if you know what combination of drugs Blake indulged in, than tell you are wrong. Or partly wrong. But here goes.
William Blake was very much a religious man, but little is strictly orthodox about his life, views or his art, outlandish and overtly sexual for the time. Although there are no historical documents describing Yeshua’s visits to Britain, this is quite proper if surviving documents are written by Christians who don’t want anyone to access what doesn’t fit with their Orthodoxy, which was essentially Catholic (and on wrong side of the council of Nicaea to be the Church Paul founded, let alone the initial followers of Yeshua before Paul’s letters from Greek islands) when many written histories we depend on today were produced; Blake nevertheless enthusiastically researched the oral history’s of Britain, Europe and the Mediterranean looking for and finding correlating evidence for Yeshua’s visit to Britain.
But whatever others want to believe, to project on his prose, or refuse to believe of the questions Blake raised in his preface to Milton, it’s probable Blake felt he had enough evidence to believe them himself, or else why has he done so much research and got so excited?
Remember Jerusalem was not written as either hymn or song, it was poetry, a preamble in verse, orchestrated long after it was written, this point is quite central to why there is contention over what it is saying to us. Simply put, hymns are written with sound messaging and absence of conjecture or projection, specifically written to achieve purpose, normally adoration of something. The question is, if you pick up any old nonsense lyric or abstruse poetry, can you fashion a fine hymn, that can enter a Church’s Hymnal? Technically no - as clearly proved by Parry’s orchestral setting of the preface to Blake’s lengthy narrative poem Milton,
And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon Englands mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On Englands pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold: Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land.
How much is clear? For example, whose sword will not sleep in hand? Perhaps the last two lines can be construed as building Christianity in England, even this is mistaken if Yeshua visited to build Hellenised Jewish Essenic settlement. Would building the Kingdom of Yeshua and Uncle Jo be a Catholic or Protestant Jerusalem? We know today, and as Blake would have himself, the answer to that is clearly no.
I done a project on Blake in school about twelve years ago. 😇
Well, Jerusalem clearly *wasn't* builded here (stanza 2) if it still needs doing in st 4.
I don't say that Blake did drugs (though he might well have done, no shortage of opium back then) but there's forms of madness which mimic drugs quite closely. Look at Louis Wain
As a lifelong severe depressive, I think Blake's greatest lines are these
Every Night and every Morn Some to Misery are born. Every Morn and every Night Some are born to Sweet Delight, Some are born to Endless Night.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Blake. And to be fair people can project what they like onto poetry, as they can any song lyrics or piece of music (the rather bland Beethoven version of ode to joy comes to mind). But sometimes exploring what an artist is actually trying to say can reveal things just as magical and even more profound, yet when it comes to Parry’s setting of Jerusalem to music, they are actually stripping Blake’s own excitement and artistry out of it. 😕
Beethoven's 9th is a disgrace. You don't have choirs in symphonies, and its catchiness and anthemability just proves the point.
Brilliant piece by Danny Fink, sums up everything that's wrong with Rishi and the treasury orthodoxy, @Gardenwalker, well worth the few mins to read it.
The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
"The French are scum."
Clearly, and by definition.
However the French are in fact wonderful, warm, and truly lovely people. I'll have to think about whether they're charming us for a while prior to revealing their true nature!
They also have the best national anthem. By miles.
Not really - The Welsh anthem is the best in the world
Well anything actually sung by the Welsh is the best in the world. Welshman singing the Marsiellais - that'd be a thing.
I really like 'Flower of Sctland' too - suits their peasant voice
I've always thought the Welsh National Anthem unsurpassable. The Marseillaise and the Stars and Stripes are pretty good too. I find it hard to think of another worthy of mention - maybe Flower of Scotland, or Australia Fair.
The Londonderry Air is a bit special but it's not an anthem of course. Somebody should nick it for their own.
I know the climate is wrong for making this admission and with all due apologies to people's sensibilities, but the old Soviet National Anthem is just a wonderful piece of music.
Yes, it's a truly rousing anthem. I wish ours was less boring, I think it's part of the reason we're shit at sport. Other teams have great national anthems to really get them going before a match, we have the world's dullest anthem.
The English/British anthem is utter shit. I can only think of two people on here who would possibly feel any pride when hearing it: @HYUFD and @malcolmg
I think it's fine. It's often played too slowly, but it is simple and straightforward to belt out, which is handy, even if it is certainly not as rousing or exciting as many others.
It will never happen, but "I vow to thee my country" by Gustav Holst would be a far better national anthem.
EDIT - I see some others have suggested the same.
I don't actually think it would be in the running as the CoE says it is heretical, placing the love of the nation above the love for God. Still a great song and before football matches it would get the team and crowd going.
The CofE can, quite frankly, fuck right off. None of their business. Anyway, I prefer Jerusalem. Though obviously that is English not British.
Putting God’s teaching and wisdom before nation is exactly their business.
CoE don’t like Jerusalem too, it’s banned from the hymnal’s 😝
The national anthem should be Rule Britannia. It is anti-French, pro-Navy and anti-slavery. What's not to like?
I'd say the songs in Church of England hymnbooks is precisely Church of England business.
And quite reasonable to note that the theology in Jerusalem is ... even being kind ... bollocks.
But does anyone have any evidence that it is banned?
It's very un-CofE to ban anything outright. Far more the sort of thing done in Scotland or by Atheists who both tend to be far more dogmatic about such things.
The last time I knew of it was Colin Slee, as the man with control of Worship at Southwark Cathedral.
Why is anyone in a flap?
The only major hymn book I can think of that it isn't in is Mission Praise. Which is American Evangelical although it is widely used in the Church of England (unfortunately).
Does it qualify as a hymn book? I thought it contained only "songs".
It has some hymns, but often in terrible arrangements. I can't actually play 'Be Thou My Vision' out of it because the 'harmony's' so bad it's literally painful to my ears.
Yes Jerusalem is frowned upon by CoE on basis it isn’t a hymn. and they a correct, there isn’t the clarity for a hymn.
You don’t project onto a hymn, the hymn projects onto you.
Look at blakes nonsense verses, complete mishmash of poetic ideas, the listener projects onto them, not projected onto. What is the virtue they are extolling? What specifically are they adoring?
Many get quite bothered by any historical and pragmatic reading of Blake’s poetic musings which do not fit their own fanciful interpretion of the song they love, particularly when read counter to their perceived ownership of historical Jesus, which Blake is directly challenging in these verses. Yet more projection onto the words, where hymn must go the other way. Yet they can’t explain the sexual imagery as Blake understood, or why it indiscriminately just erects itself without extolling anything in particular, nor be specific about poetry so duly enigmatic it may be nothing more than reference to a mill dark and satanic is poetic reference to an actual mill gutted by fire standing between a poet’s home and his bread shop – possibly gutted in industrial dispute over pay. Blake believed in hell, to him this ruin he often passed looked like hell had visited it. This is what poets do.
It’s not written as a hymn called Jerusalem, the reference to Jerusalem is Blake’s genuine belief Jesus and Joseph were building a bit of Jerusalem here.
Let's not beat about the bush: Blake was batshit crazy, and the imagery available to his batshit imagination was biblical imagery. That doesn't make him Christian, nor Jerusalem Christian. It isn't.
I would rather ask you if you know what combination of drugs Blake indulged in, than tell you are wrong. Or partly wrong. But here goes.
William Blake was very much a religious man, but little is strictly orthodox about his life, views or his art, outlandish and overtly sexual for the time. Although there are no historical documents describing Yeshua’s visits to Britain, this is quite proper if surviving documents are written by Christians who don’t want anyone to access what doesn’t fit with their Orthodoxy, which was essentially Catholic (and on wrong side of the council of Nicaea to be the Church Paul founded, let alone the initial followers of Yeshua before Paul’s letters from Greek islands) when many written histories we depend on today were produced; Blake nevertheless enthusiastically researched the oral history’s of Britain, Europe and the Mediterranean looking for and finding correlating evidence for Yeshua’s visit to Britain.
But whatever others want to believe, to project on his prose, or refuse to believe of the questions Blake raised in his preface to Milton, it’s probable Blake felt he had enough evidence to believe them himself, or else why has he done so much research and got so excited?
Remember Jerusalem was not written as either hymn or song, it was poetry, a preamble in verse, orchestrated long after it was written, this point is quite central to why there is contention over what it is saying to us. Simply put, hymns are written with sound messaging and absence of conjecture or projection, specifically written to achieve purpose, normally adoration of something. The question is, if you pick up any old nonsense lyric or abstruse poetry, can you fashion a fine hymn, that can enter a Church’s Hymnal? Technically no - as clearly proved by Parry’s orchestral setting of the preface to Blake’s lengthy narrative poem Milton,
And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon Englands mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On Englands pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold: Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land.
How much is clear? For example, whose sword will not sleep in hand? Perhaps the last two lines can be construed as building Christianity in England, even this is mistaken if Yeshua visited to build Hellenised Jewish Essenic settlement. Would building the Kingdom of Yeshua and Uncle Jo be a Catholic or Protestant Jerusalem? We know today, and as Blake would have himself, the answer to that is clearly no.
I done a project on Blake in school about twelve years ago. 😇
I’m not in the slightest bit religious but it’s a beautiful poem and song. I hear it as a poignant love letter to England. It is no dirge. It’s the quintessential anthem of this country.
He's not going to be PM with these political antennae.
I sort of trust him to have his reasons. The wrongiest thing is to have from a budget of short termism, political traps for opponents, and geared for next days headlines? The saddest thing right now I think is the bonfire of cop agreements in rush for fossil fuels, which the UN has called bonkers. The people who argued for this direction all along, quite possibly pirate capitalists and climate change deniers who stand to make oodles from this shameless u turn are having the best war of anyone. ☹️
The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
"The French are scum."
Clearly, and by definition.
However the French are in fact wonderful, warm, and truly lovely people. I'll have to think about whether they're charming us for a while prior to revealing their true nature!
They also have the best national anthem. By miles.
Not really - The Welsh anthem is the best in the world
Well anything actually sung by the Welsh is the best in the world. Welshman singing the Marsiellais - that'd be a thing.
I really like 'Flower of Sctland' too - suits their peasant voice
I've always thought the Welsh National Anthem unsurpassable. The Marseillaise and the Stars and Stripes are pretty good too. I find it hard to think of another worthy of mention - maybe Flower of Scotland, or Australia Fair.
The Londonderry Air is a bit special but it's not an anthem of course. Somebody should nick it for their own.
I know the climate is wrong for making this admission and with all due apologies to people's sensibilities, but the old Soviet National Anthem is just a wonderful piece of music.
Yes, it's a truly rousing anthem. I wish ours was less boring, I think it's part of the reason we're shit at sport. Other teams have great national anthems to really get them going before a match, we have the world's dullest anthem.
The English/British anthem is utter shit. I can only think of two people on here who would possibly feel any pride when hearing it: @HYUFD and @malcolmg
I think it's fine. It's often played too slowly, but it is simple and straightforward to belt out, which is handy, even if it is certainly not as rousing or exciting as many others.
It will never happen, but "I vow to thee my country" by Gustav Holst would be a far better national anthem.
EDIT - I see some others have suggested the same.
I don't actually think it would be in the running as the CoE says it is heretical, placing the love of the nation above the love for God. Still a great song and before football matches it would get the team and crowd going.
The CofE can, quite frankly, fuck right off. None of their business. Anyway, I prefer Jerusalem. Though obviously that is English not British.
Putting God’s teaching and wisdom before nation is exactly their business.
CoE don’t like Jerusalem too, it’s banned from the hymnal’s 😝
The national anthem should be Rule Britannia. It is anti-French, pro-Navy and anti-slavery. What's not to like?
I'd say the songs in Church of England hymnbooks is precisely Church of England business.
And quite reasonable to note that the theology in Jerusalem is ... even being kind ... bollocks.
But does anyone have any evidence that it is banned?
It's very un-CofE to ban anything outright. Far more the sort of thing done in Scotland or by Atheists who both tend to be far more dogmatic about such things.
The last time I knew of it was Colin Slee, as the man with control of Worship at Southwark Cathedral.
Why is anyone in a flap?
The only major hymn book I can think of that it isn't in is Mission Praise. Which is American Evangelical although it is widely used in the Church of England (unfortunately).
Does it qualify as a hymn book? I thought it contained only "songs".
It has some hymns, but often in terrible arrangements. I can't actually play 'Be Thou My Vision' out of it because the 'harmony's' so bad it's literally painful to my ears.
Yes Jerusalem is frowned upon by CoE on basis it isn’t a hymn. and they a correct, there isn’t the clarity for a hymn.
You don’t project onto a hymn, the hymn projects onto you.
Look at blakes nonsense verses, complete mishmash of poetic ideas, the listener projects onto them, not projected onto. What is the virtue they are extolling? What specifically are they adoring?
Many get quite bothered by any historical and pragmatic reading of Blake’s poetic musings which do not fit their own fanciful interpretion of the song they love, particularly when read counter to their perceived ownership of historical Jesus, which Blake is directly challenging in these verses. Yet more projection onto the words, where hymn must go the other way. Yet they can’t explain the sexual imagery as Blake understood, or why it indiscriminately just erects itself without extolling anything in particular, nor be specific about poetry so duly enigmatic it may be nothing more than reference to a mill dark and satanic is poetic reference to an actual mill gutted by fire standing between a poet’s home and his bread shop – possibly gutted in industrial dispute over pay. Blake believed in hell, to him this ruin he often passed looked like hell had visited it. This is what poets do.
It’s not written as a hymn called Jerusalem, the reference to Jerusalem is Blake’s genuine belief Jesus and Joseph were building a bit of Jerusalem here.
Let's not beat about the bush: Blake was batshit crazy, and the imagery available to his batshit imagination was biblical imagery. That doesn't make him Christian, nor Jerusalem Christian. It isn't.
I would rather ask you if you know what combination of drugs Blake indulged in, than tell you are wrong. Or partly wrong. But here goes.
William Blake was very much a religious man, but little is strictly orthodox about his life, views or his art, outlandish and overtly sexual for the time. Although there are no historical documents describing Yeshua’s visits to Britain, this is quite proper if surviving documents are written by Christians who don’t want anyone to access what doesn’t fit with their Orthodoxy, which was essentially Catholic (and on wrong side of the council of Nicaea to be the Church Paul founded, let alone the initial followers of Yeshua before Paul’s letters from Greek islands) when many written histories we depend on today were produced; Blake nevertheless enthusiastically researched the oral history’s of Britain, Europe and the Mediterranean looking for and finding correlating evidence for Yeshua’s visit to Britain.
But whatever others want to believe, to project on his prose, or refuse to believe of the questions Blake raised in his preface to Milton, it’s probable Blake felt he had enough evidence to believe them himself, or else why has he done so much research and got so excited?
Remember Jerusalem was not written as either hymn or song, it was poetry, a preamble in verse, orchestrated long after it was written, this point is quite central to why there is contention over what it is saying to us. Simply put, hymns are written with sound messaging and absence of conjecture or projection, specifically written to achieve purpose, normally adoration of something. The question is, if you pick up any old nonsense lyric or abstruse poetry, can you fashion a fine hymn, that can enter a Church’s Hymnal? Technically no - as clearly proved by Parry’s orchestral setting of the preface to Blake’s lengthy narrative poem Milton,
And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon Englands mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On Englands pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold: Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land.
How much is clear? For example, whose sword will not sleep in hand? Perhaps the last two lines can be construed as building Christianity in England, even this is mistaken if Yeshua visited to build Hellenised Jewish Essenic settlement. Would building the Kingdom of Yeshua and Uncle Jo be a Catholic or Protestant Jerusalem? We know today, and as Blake would have himself, the answer to that is clearly no.
I done a project on Blake in school about twelve years ago. 😇
You under 35? Ye Gods
That it is poetry is v important. And - tbh - in a church setting it may be better read as poetry to be considered by a talk.
And of course the first verse hints at either legends of visits here by Joseph of Arithimea etc, or visions around creating a new society or whatever, as it can be tied into the visions in Revelation.
I have not read the history, but I would expect the New Jerusalem to be a theme for the non-comformist tradition in socialism / trade unionism. Perhaps especially for Tony Benn or Donald Soper.
Unless anyone can find a source to say otherwise, the casualty number for the Mariupol Theatre strike currently stands at zero. 130 people are said to have emerged unharmed, and the 'thousands' sheltering in the basement appear not to have been there at all. That's 3 for the hospital atrocity and none for the theatre atrocity. This is what I mean when I say 'the truth lies somewhere in the middle'.
Truth is the first casualty of war. But there is a problem with your statement about the truth 'lying somewhere in the middle.' It's the kind of thinking that the Russians love to exploit.
Western official says something halfway sensible Russian official says something completely outrageous
The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
"The French are scum."
Clearly, and by definition.
However the French are in fact wonderful, warm, and truly lovely people. I'll have to think about whether they're charming us for a while prior to revealing their true nature!
They also have the best national anthem. By miles.
Not really - The Welsh anthem is the best in the world
Well anything actually sung by the Welsh is the best in the world. Welshman singing the Marsiellais - that'd be a thing.
I really like 'Flower of Sctland' too - suits their peasant voice
I've always thought the Welsh National Anthem unsurpassable. The Marseillaise and the Stars and Stripes are pretty good too. I find it hard to think of another worthy of mention - maybe Flower of Scotland, or Australia Fair.
The Londonderry Air is a bit special but it's not an anthem of course. Somebody should nick it for their own.
I know the climate is wrong for making this admission and with all due apologies to people's sensibilities, but the old Soviet National Anthem is just a wonderful piece of music.
Yes, it's a truly rousing anthem. I wish ours was less boring, I think it's part of the reason we're shit at sport. Other teams have great national anthems to really get them going before a match, we have the world's dullest anthem.
The English/British anthem is utter shit. I can only think of two people on here who would possibly feel any pride when hearing it: @HYUFD and @malcolmg
I think it's fine. It's often played too slowly, but it is simple and straightforward to belt out, which is handy, even if it is certainly not as rousing or exciting as many others.
It will never happen, but "I vow to thee my country" by Gustav Holst would be a far better national anthem.
EDIT - I see some others have suggested the same.
I don't actually think it would be in the running as the CoE says it is heretical, placing the love of the nation above the love for God. Still a great song and before football matches it would get the team and crowd going.
The CofE can, quite frankly, fuck right off. None of their business. Anyway, I prefer Jerusalem. Though obviously that is English not British.
Putting God’s teaching and wisdom before nation is exactly their business.
CoE don’t like Jerusalem too, it’s banned from the hymnal’s 😝
The national anthem should be Rule Britannia. It is anti-French, pro-Navy and anti-slavery. What's not to like?
I'd say the songs in Church of England hymnbooks is precisely Church of England business.
And quite reasonable to note that the theology in Jerusalem is ... even being kind ... bollocks.
But does anyone have any evidence that it is banned?
It's very un-CofE to ban anything outright. Far more the sort of thing done in Scotland or by Atheists who both tend to be far more dogmatic about such things.
The last time I knew of it was Colin Slee, as the man with control of Worship at Southwark Cathedral.
Why is anyone in a flap?
The only major hymn book I can think of that it isn't in is Mission Praise. Which is American Evangelical although it is widely used in the Church of England (unfortunately).
Does it qualify as a hymn book? I thought it contained only "songs".
It has some hymns, but often in terrible arrangements. I can't actually play 'Be Thou My Vision' out of it because the 'harmony's' so bad it's literally painful to my ears.
Yes Jerusalem is frowned upon by CoE on basis it isn’t a hymn. and they a correct, there isn’t the clarity for a hymn.
You don’t project onto a hymn, the hymn projects onto you.
Look at blakes nonsense verses, complete mishmash of poetic ideas, the listener projects onto them, not projected onto. What is the virtue they are extolling? What specifically are they adoring?
Many get quite bothered by any historical and pragmatic reading of Blake’s poetic musings which do not fit their own fanciful interpretion of the song they love, particularly when read counter to their perceived ownership of historical Jesus, which Blake is directly challenging in these verses. Yet more projection onto the words, where hymn must go the other way. Yet they can’t explain the sexual imagery as Blake understood, or why it indiscriminately just erects itself without extolling anything in particular, nor be specific about poetry so duly enigmatic it may be nothing more than reference to a mill dark and satanic is poetic reference to an actual mill gutted by fire standing between a poet’s home and his bread shop – possibly gutted in industrial dispute over pay. Blake believed in hell, to him this ruin he often passed looked like hell had visited it. This is what poets do.
It’s not written as a hymn called Jerusalem, the reference to Jerusalem is Blake’s genuine belief Jesus and Joseph were building a bit of Jerusalem here.
Let's not beat about the bush: Blake was batshit crazy, and the imagery available to his batshit imagination was biblical imagery. That doesn't make him Christian, nor Jerusalem Christian. It isn't.
I would rather ask you if you know what combination of drugs Blake indulged in, than tell you are wrong. Or partly wrong. But here goes.
William Blake was very much a religious man, but little is strictly orthodox about his life, views or his art, outlandish and overtly sexual for the time. Although there are no historical documents describing Yeshua’s visits to Britain, this is quite proper if surviving documents are written by Christians who don’t want anyone to access what doesn’t fit with their Orthodoxy, which was essentially Catholic (and on wrong side of the council of Nicaea to be the Church Paul founded, let alone the initial followers of Yeshua before Paul’s letters from Greek islands) when many written histories we depend on today were produced; Blake nevertheless enthusiastically researched the oral history’s of Britain, Europe and the Mediterranean looking for and finding correlating evidence for Yeshua’s visit to Britain.
But whatever others want to believe, to project on his prose, or refuse to believe of the questions Blake raised in his preface to Milton, it’s probable Blake felt he had enough evidence to believe them himself, or else why has he done so much research and got so excited?
Remember Jerusalem was not written as either hymn or song, it was poetry, a preamble in verse, orchestrated long after it was written, this point is quite central to why there is contention over what it is saying to us. Simply put, hymns are written with sound messaging and absence of conjecture or projection, specifically written to achieve purpose, normally adoration of something. The question is, if you pick up any old nonsense lyric or abstruse poetry, can you fashion a fine hymn, that can enter a Church’s Hymnal? Technically no - as clearly proved by Parry’s orchestral setting of the preface to Blake’s lengthy narrative poem Milton,
And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon Englands mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On Englands pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold: Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land.
How much is clear? For example, whose sword will not sleep in hand? Perhaps the last two lines can be construed as building Christianity in England, even this is mistaken if Yeshua visited to build Hellenised Jewish Essenic settlement. Would building the Kingdom of Yeshua and Uncle Jo be a Catholic or Protestant Jerusalem? We know today, and as Blake would have himself, the answer to that is clearly no.
I done a project on Blake in school about twelve years ago. 😇
Well, Jerusalem clearly *wasn't* builded here (stanza 2) if it still needs doing in st 4.
I don't say that Blake did drugs (though he might well have done, no shortage of opium back then) but there's forms of madness which mimic drugs quite closely. Look at Louis Wain
As a lifelong severe depressive, I think Blake's greatest lines are these
Every Night and every Morn Some to Misery are born. Every Morn and every Night Some are born to Sweet Delight, Some are born to Endless Night.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Blake. And to be fair people can project what they like onto poetry, as they can any song lyrics or piece of music (the rather bland Beethoven version of ode to joy comes to mind). But sometimes exploring what an artist is actually trying to say can reveal things just as magical and even more profound, yet when it comes to Parry’s setting of Jerusalem to music, they are actually stripping Blake’s own excitement and artistry out of it. 😕
Beethoven's 9th is a disgrace. You don't have choirs in symphonies, and its catchiness and anthemability just proves the point.
The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
"The French are scum."
Clearly, and by definition.
However the French are in fact wonderful, warm, and truly lovely people. I'll have to think about whether they're charming us for a while prior to revealing their true nature!
They also have the best national anthem. By miles.
Not really - The Welsh anthem is the best in the world
Well anything actually sung by the Welsh is the best in the world. Welshman singing the Marsiellais - that'd be a thing.
I really like 'Flower of Sctland' too - suits their peasant voice
I've always thought the Welsh National Anthem unsurpassable. The Marseillaise and the Stars and Stripes are pretty good too. I find it hard to think of another worthy of mention - maybe Flower of Scotland, or Australia Fair.
The Londonderry Air is a bit special but it's not an anthem of course. Somebody should nick it for their own.
I know the climate is wrong for making this admission and with all due apologies to people's sensibilities, but the old Soviet National Anthem is just a wonderful piece of music.
Yes, it's a truly rousing anthem. I wish ours was less boring, I think it's part of the reason we're shit at sport. Other teams have great national anthems to really get them going before a match, we have the world's dullest anthem.
The English/British anthem is utter shit. I can only think of two people on here who would possibly feel any pride when hearing it: @HYUFD and @malcolmg
I think it's fine. It's often played too slowly, but it is simple and straightforward to belt out, which is handy, even if it is certainly not as rousing or exciting as many others.
It will never happen, but "I vow to thee my country" by Gustav Holst would be a far better national anthem.
EDIT - I see some others have suggested the same.
I don't actually think it would be in the running as the CoE says it is heretical, placing the love of the nation above the love for God. Still a great song and before football matches it would get the team and crowd going.
The CofE can, quite frankly, fuck right off. None of their business. Anyway, I prefer Jerusalem. Though obviously that is English not British.
Putting God’s teaching and wisdom before nation is exactly their business.
CoE don’t like Jerusalem too, it’s banned from the hymnal’s 😝
The national anthem should be Rule Britannia. It is anti-French, pro-Navy and anti-slavery. What's not to like?
The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
"The French are scum."
Clearly, and by definition.
However the French are in fact wonderful, warm, and truly lovely people. I'll have to think about whether they're charming us for a while prior to revealing their true nature!
They also have the best national anthem. By miles.
Not really - The Welsh anthem is the best in the world
Well anything actually sung by the Welsh is the best in the world. Welshman singing the Marsiellais - that'd be a thing.
I really like 'Flower of Sctland' too - suits their peasant voice
I've always thought the Welsh National Anthem unsurpassable. The Marseillaise and the Stars and Stripes are pretty good too. I find it hard to think of another worthy of mention - maybe Flower of Scotland, or Australia Fair.
The Londonderry Air is a bit special but it's not an anthem of course. Somebody should nick it for their own.
I know the climate is wrong for making this admission and with all due apologies to people's sensibilities, but the old Soviet National Anthem is just a wonderful piece of music.
Yes, it's a truly rousing anthem. I wish ours was less boring, I think it's part of the reason we're shit at sport. Other teams have great national anthems to really get them going before a match, we have the world's dullest anthem.
The English/British anthem is utter shit. I can only think of two people on here who would possibly feel any pride when hearing it: @HYUFD and @malcolmg
I think it's fine. It's often played too slowly, but it is simple and straightforward to belt out, which is handy, even if it is certainly not as rousing or exciting as many others.
It will never happen, but "I vow to thee my country" by Gustav Holst would be a far better national anthem.
EDIT - I see some others have suggested the same.
I don't actually think it would be in the running as the CoE says it is heretical, placing the love of the nation above the love for God. Still a great song and before football matches it would get the team and crowd going.
The CofE can, quite frankly, fuck right off. None of their business. Anyway, I prefer Jerusalem. Though obviously that is English not British.
Putting God’s teaching and wisdom before nation is exactly their business.
CoE don’t like Jerusalem too, it’s banned from the hymnal’s 😝
The national anthem should be Rule Britannia. It is anti-French, pro-Navy and anti-slavery. What's not to like?
I'd say the songs in Church of England hymnbooks is precisely Church of England business.
And quite reasonable to note that the theology in Jerusalem is ... even being kind ... bollocks.
But does anyone have any evidence that it is banned?
It's very un-CofE to ban anything outright. Far more the sort of thing done in Scotland or by Atheists who both tend to be far more dogmatic about such things.
The last time I knew of it was Colin Slee, as the man with control of Worship at Southwark Cathedral.
Why is anyone in a flap?
The only major hymn book I can think of that it isn't in is Mission Praise. Which is American Evangelical although it is widely used in the Church of England (unfortunately).
Does it qualify as a hymn book? I thought it contained only "songs".
It has some hymns, but often in terrible arrangements. I can't actually play 'Be Thou My Vision' out of it because the 'harmony's' so bad it's literally painful to my ears.
Yes Jerusalem is frowned upon by CoE on basis it isn’t a hymn. and they a correct, there isn’t the clarity for a hymn.
You don’t project onto a hymn, the hymn projects onto you.
Look at blakes nonsense verses, complete mishmash of poetic ideas, the listener projects onto them, not projected onto. What is the virtue they are extolling? What specifically are they adoring?
Many get quite bothered by any historical and pragmatic reading of Blake’s poetic musings which do not fit their own fanciful interpretion of the song they love, particularly when read counter to their perceived ownership of historical Jesus, which Blake is directly challenging in these verses. Yet more projection onto the words, where hymn must go the other way. Yet they can’t explain the sexual imagery as Blake understood, or why it indiscriminately just erects itself without extolling anything in particular, nor be specific about poetry so duly enigmatic it may be nothing more than reference to a mill dark and satanic is poetic reference to an actual mill gutted by fire standing between a poet’s home and his bread shop – possibly gutted in industrial dispute over pay. Blake believed in hell, to him this ruin he often passed looked like hell had visited it. This is what poets do.
It’s not written as a hymn called Jerusalem, the reference to Jerusalem is Blake’s genuine belief Jesus and Joseph were building a bit of Jerusalem here.
Let's not beat about the bush: Blake was batshit crazy, and the imagery available to his batshit imagination was biblical imagery. That doesn't make him Christian, nor Jerusalem Christian. It isn't.
I would rather ask you if you know what combination of drugs Blake indulged in, than tell you are wrong. Or partly wrong. But here goes.
William Blake was very much a religious man, but little is strictly orthodox about his life, views or his art, outlandish and overtly sexual for the time. Although there are no historical documents describing Yeshua’s visits to Britain, this is quite proper if surviving documents are written by Christians who don’t want anyone to access what doesn’t fit with their Orthodoxy, which was essentially Catholic (and on wrong side of the council of Nicaea to be the Church Paul founded, let alone the initial followers of Yeshua before Paul’s letters from Greek islands) when many written histories we depend on today were produced; Blake nevertheless enthusiastically researched the oral history’s of Britain, Europe and the Mediterranean looking for and finding correlating evidence for Yeshua’s visit to Britain.
But whatever others want to believe, to project on his prose, or refuse to believe of the questions Blake raised in his preface to Milton, it’s probable Blake felt he had enough evidence to believe them himself, or else why has he done so much research and got so excited?
Remember Jerusalem was not written as either hymn or song, it was poetry, a preamble in verse, orchestrated long after it was written, this point is quite central to why there is contention over what it is saying to us. Simply put, hymns are written with sound messaging and absence of conjecture or projection, specifically written to achieve purpose, normally adoration of something. The question is, if you pick up any old nonsense lyric or abstruse poetry, can you fashion a fine hymn, that can enter a Church’s Hymnal? Technically no - as clearly proved by Parry’s orchestral setting of the preface to Blake’s lengthy narrative poem Milton,
And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon Englands mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On Englands pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold: Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land.
How much is clear? For example, whose sword will not sleep in hand? Perhaps the last two lines can be construed as building Christianity in England, even this is mistaken if Yeshua visited to build Hellenised Jewish Essenic settlement. Would building the Kingdom of Yeshua and Uncle Jo be a Catholic or Protestant Jerusalem? We know today, and as Blake would have himself, the answer to that is clearly no.
I done a project on Blake in school about twelve years ago. 😇
Well, Jerusalem clearly *wasn't* builded here (stanza 2) if it still needs doing in st 4.
I don't say that Blake did drugs (though he might well have done, no shortage of opium back then) but there's forms of madness which mimic drugs quite closely. Look at Louis Wain
As a lifelong severe depressive, I think Blake's greatest lines are these
Every Night and every Morn Some to Misery are born. Every Morn and every Night Some are born to Sweet Delight, Some are born to Endless Night.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Blake. And to be fair people can project what they like onto poetry, as they can any song lyrics or piece of music (the rather bland Beethoven version of ode to joy comes to mind). But sometimes exploring what an artist is actually trying to say can reveal things just as magical and even more profound, yet when it comes to Parry’s setting of Jerusalem to music, they are actually stripping Blake’s own excitement and artistry out of it. 😕
Beethoven's 9th is a disgrace. You don't have choirs in symphonies, and its catchiness and anthemability just proves the point.
Beethoven's 7th movt. 2 on the other hand...
Movt 2?
The signal's weird. There must be some intereference or something. There's movement all over the place!
Phil Stewart @phildstewart · 19m (Reuters) - Russia's security policy dictates that the country would only use nuclear weapons if its very existence were threatened, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN.
The comment came amid Western concern that the conflict there could escalate into a nuclear war.
He's not going to be PM with these political antennae.
The bigger problem is that Rishi hasn't understood electoral timing very well at all, he seems to be waiting for "something" to turn up and help rather than making active moves to get the economy moving so that when 2024 rolls around we're in a jobs, wages and living standards boom and people have forgotten how expensive petrol was in summer 2022.
Pork barrel politics will only get the Tories so far, spreading economic gains across the country and ensuring millions across marginal benefit rather than a select few in a few constituencies is how to win elections. I fear that the Tories are in for a real drubbing in 2024. The reputation for economic competence will be lost and be very difficult to win back.
He's not going to be PM with these political antennae.
The bigger problem is that Rishi hasn't understood electoral timing very well at all, he seems to be waiting for "something" to turn up and help rather than making active moves to get the economy moving so that when 2024 rolls around we're in a jobs, wages and living standards boom and people have forgotten how expensive petrol was in summer 2022.
Pork barrel politics will only get the Tories so far, spreading economic gains across the country and ensuring millions across marginal benefit rather than a select few in a few constituencies is how to win elections. I fear that the Tories are in for a real drubbing in 2024. The reputation for economic competence will be lost and be very difficult to win back.
I wait to hear from Rishi tomorrow but I am beginning to have my doubts
The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
Has @Scott_xP made any comment as I assume he will be embarrassed by this behaviour and call it out
The PB Remoaners are staying quiet. The only voices responding are those condemning this despicable act and the outright Putin apologists engaging in whataboutism.
I am sad to say this but by individually picking posters out like Roger and Scott as EU traitors is really rather unpleasant.
You are part of PB's pro- Johnson, anti EU majority which is fine, but cheerleading the troops to give the quislings a kicking is tantamount to bullying. You can include me in your traitors list.
Best I think, to come back when all the shrill jingoism calms down.
I thought better of you G.
This is not jingoism it is simply fairness
Both posters attack the UK and Boris 24/7 from an anti UK stance due to their loathing of Brexit but when the EU or in this case France behave in an unacceptable way they make no comment
Neither of them are anti-UK. Would you listen to yourself. You've morphed into one of those UKIP frothers who see treachery in criticism.
I must be doing something right when those vested in the EU come out to divert attention from the actions of France
How about China and India?
I think we know about China.
The leader of India has not spent the last 2 years engaged, and particularly the last 3 weeks, in petty political sniping.
Incidentally, France24 have been talking about the Z speech tomorrow, and what he will mention.
They also noted that he may be unhappy about Renault, but that France had now frozen £850m in oligarch assets. Which make sme more annoyed with Macron, not less. And with our Government for not having a strong enough PR narrative to put Macron back in his toybox months ago.
Unless anyone can find a source to say otherwise, the casualty number for the Mariupol Theatre strike currently stands at zero. 130 people are said to have emerged unharmed, and the 'thousands' sheltering in the basement appear not to have been there at all. That's 3 for the hospital atrocity and none for the theatre atrocity. This is what I mean when I say 'the truth lies somewhere in the middle'.
Truth is the first casualty of war. But there is a problem with your statement about the truth 'lying somewhere in the middle.' It's the kind of thinking that the Russians love to exploit.
Western official says something halfway sensible Russian official says something completely outrageous
The truth lies somewhere in the middle? Hmmmm.
Putin's regime are liars and provocateurs. Everything they say is deceptive and cannot be trusted. They use our naive belief in the truth, to confuse and weaken us. It is a sad end to a once great civilisation. However bad things seem to have got in the west, it is not as bad as the misfortune that has befallen Russia.
The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
"The French are scum."
Clearly, and by definition.
However the French are in fact wonderful, warm, and truly lovely people. I'll have to think about whether they're charming us for a while prior to revealing their true nature!
They also have the best national anthem. By miles.
Not really - The Welsh anthem is the best in the world
Well anything actually sung by the Welsh is the best in the world. Welshman singing the Marsiellais - that'd be a thing.
I really like 'Flower of Sctland' too - suits their peasant voice
I've always thought the Welsh National Anthem unsurpassable. The Marseillaise and the Stars and Stripes are pretty good too. I find it hard to think of another worthy of mention - maybe Flower of Scotland, or Australia Fair.
The Londonderry Air is a bit special but it's not an anthem of course. Somebody should nick it for their own.
I know the climate is wrong for making this admission and with all due apologies to people's sensibilities, but the old Soviet National Anthem is just a wonderful piece of music.
Yes, it's a truly rousing anthem. I wish ours was less boring, I think it's part of the reason we're shit at sport. Other teams have great national anthems to really get them going before a match, we have the world's dullest anthem.
The English/British anthem is utter shit. I can only think of two people on here who would possibly feel any pride when hearing it: @HYUFD and @malcolmg
I think it's fine. It's often played too slowly, but it is simple and straightforward to belt out, which is handy, even if it is certainly not as rousing or exciting as many others.
It will never happen, but "I vow to thee my country" by Gustav Holst would be a far better national anthem.
EDIT - I see some others have suggested the same.
I don't actually think it would be in the running as the CoE says it is heretical, placing the love of the nation above the love for God. Still a great song and before football matches it would get the team and crowd going.
The CofE can, quite frankly, fuck right off. None of their business. Anyway, I prefer Jerusalem. Though obviously that is English not British.
Putting God’s teaching and wisdom before nation is exactly their business.
CoE don’t like Jerusalem too, it’s banned from the hymnal’s 😝
The national anthem should be Rule Britannia. It is anti-French, pro-Navy and anti-slavery. What's not to like?
I'd say the songs in Church of England hymnbooks is precisely Church of England business.
And quite reasonable to note that the theology in Jerusalem is ... even being kind ... bollocks.
But does anyone have any evidence that it is banned?
It's very un-CofE to ban anything outright. Far more the sort of thing done in Scotland or by Atheists who both tend to be far more dogmatic about such things.
The last time I knew of it was Colin Slee, as the man with control of Worship at Southwark Cathedral.
Why is anyone in a flap?
The only major hymn book I can think of that it isn't in is Mission Praise. Which is American Evangelical although it is widely used in the Church of England (unfortunately).
Does it qualify as a hymn book? I thought it contained only "songs".
It has some hymns, but often in terrible arrangements. I can't actually play 'Be Thou My Vision' out of it because the 'harmony's' so bad it's literally painful to my ears.
Yes Jerusalem is frowned upon by CoE on basis it isn’t a hymn. and they a correct, there isn’t the clarity for a hymn.
You don’t project onto a hymn, the hymn projects onto you.
Look at blakes nonsense verses, complete mishmash of poetic ideas, the listener projects onto them, not projected onto. What is the virtue they are extolling? What specifically are they adoring?
Many get quite bothered by any historical and pragmatic reading of Blake’s poetic musings which do not fit their own fanciful interpretion of the song they love, particularly when read counter to their perceived ownership of historical Jesus, which Blake is directly challenging in these verses. Yet more projection onto the words, where hymn must go the other way. Yet they can’t explain the sexual imagery as Blake understood, or why it indiscriminately just erects itself without extolling anything in particular, nor be specific about poetry so duly enigmatic it may be nothing more than reference to a mill dark and satanic is poetic reference to an actual mill gutted by fire standing between a poet’s home and his bread shop – possibly gutted in industrial dispute over pay. Blake believed in hell, to him this ruin he often passed looked like hell had visited it. This is what poets do.
It’s not written as a hymn called Jerusalem, the reference to Jerusalem is Blake’s genuine belief Jesus and Joseph were building a bit of Jerusalem here.
Let's not beat about the bush: Blake was batshit crazy, and the imagery available to his batshit imagination was biblical imagery. That doesn't make him Christian, nor Jerusalem Christian. It isn't.
I would rather ask you if you know what combination of drugs Blake indulged in, than tell you are wrong. Or partly wrong. But here goes.
William Blake was very much a religious man, but little is strictly orthodox about his life, views or his art, outlandish and overtly sexual for the time. Although there are no historical documents describing Yeshua’s visits to Britain, this is quite proper if surviving documents are written by Christians who don’t want anyone to access what doesn’t fit with their Orthodoxy, which was essentially Catholic (and on wrong side of the council of Nicaea to be the Church Paul founded, let alone the initial followers of Yeshua before Paul’s letters from Greek islands) when many written histories we depend on today were produced; Blake nevertheless enthusiastically researched the oral history’s of Britain, Europe and the Mediterranean looking for and finding correlating evidence for Yeshua’s visit to Britain.
But whatever others want to believe, to project on his prose, or refuse to believe of the questions Blake raised in his preface to Milton, it’s probable Blake felt he had enough evidence to believe them himself, or else why has he done so much research and got so excited?
Remember Jerusalem was not written as either hymn or song, it was poetry, a preamble in verse, orchestrated long after it was written, this point is quite central to why there is contention over what it is saying to us. Simply put, hymns are written with sound messaging and absence of conjecture or projection, specifically written to achieve purpose, normally adoration of something. The question is, if you pick up any old nonsense lyric or abstruse poetry, can you fashion a fine hymn, that can enter a Church’s Hymnal? Technically no - as clearly proved by Parry’s orchestral setting of the preface to Blake’s lengthy narrative poem Milton,
And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon Englands mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On Englands pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold: Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land.
How much is clear? For example, whose sword will not sleep in hand? Perhaps the last two lines can be construed as building Christianity in England, even this is mistaken if Yeshua visited to build Hellenised Jewish Essenic settlement. Would building the Kingdom of Yeshua and Uncle Jo be a Catholic or Protestant Jerusalem? We know today, and as Blake would have himself, the answer to that is clearly no.
I done a project on Blake in school about twelve years ago. 😇
You under 35? Ye Gods
That it is poetry is v important. And - tbh - in a church setting it may be better read as poetry to be considered by a talk.
And of course the first verse hints at either legends of visits here by Joseph of Arithimea etc, or visions around creating a new society or whatever, as it can be tied into the visions in Revelation.
I have not read the history, but I would expect the New Jerusalem to be a theme for the non-comformist tradition in socialism / trade unionism. Perhaps especially for Tony Benn or Donald Soper.
I loved the first part of your post. But then you move into the projection thing.
The history on Blake’s Jerusalem is difficult for us because the historical facts are sketchy. What to do in science when you have gaps that don’t join up, and I regard history as a science, is to make the best educated guess to join up the gaps and view a bigger picture.
To me, the best guesses have Joseph in England (that is a fact) perhaps Jesus before his ministry, and his Mother after His death, also here because it was too dangerous back there. We tend to overlook the sectarian conflict. And how Jesus was born into it.
As an historical person Jesus is certainly not wholly owned by Christianity. Not that his own religion cares to make much fuss of him. He was a Jew, called Yeshua, likely born into an extended family with Hellenised (Greek influenced) views, Why is Christianity so Greek? It was a language most widely used, so Romans utilised Greek to promote their empire, that was essentially a commercial project. The language of the Roman Empire was Greek. The first Christian documents, those of Paul, were written in Greek whilst in Greece. In the sectarian make up of Judea at the time of Yeshua’s birth there is likely to have been contention between Hellenised Jews, looking to adopt Greek Platonic philosophy along with the Torah, versus Orthodox Jews, such as the Pharisee, opposing this approach.
Before the time of his ministry that is recounted thoroughly in Christian documents like The Bible, there is something like a “gap year” of about a decade and a half, where we have little evidence what young Yeshua was up to, other than he was associate of Joseph of Arimathea - this is someone who may have been Yeshua’s relative such as his Mother’s Uncle, in any case for the considerate in loco parentis he showed Yoshua throughout remainder of his life and death I think we can call him Uncle. Uncle Joseph was a wealthy Rabbi, with trading links all around the Mediterranean, Western Europe including Britain, also worked on building projects in pursuit of “the kingdom”. He may have been an Essenes - the sect who wrote the Dead Sea scrolls. It’s widely documented Uncle Joseph swapped the sunny skies of Judea for our clouded hills and pastures green at least once, because he died at Glastonbury. And not simply in exile or in missionary position, its quite possible for someone with his wealth and business links he owned the settlement and the surrounding lands.
If Joseph was a leading Essene, and on the top council representing those views, perhaps Jesus born not just into a family of wealth, religious and political leadership, but born moreover into sectarian disagreement. There are references to his extended family being princesses.
I think this is the Jesus Blake is researching and writing about. And it’s much more exciting also interesting than a lot of peoples projections on it?
Putin's played a blinder today. He's managed to get almost all the PB cognoscenti to transfer their wrath and fury from him and his army to Macron and the French. Clever.
In the immortal words of Kenny Everett, "let's bomb Paris". Or something like that.
Are you suggesting Macron is in cahoots with Putin?
No.
I've always found the anti-French rhetoric on PB quite unpleasant, and it's really the only thing that turns me off this forum. I know some of it is in jest, but sadly some of it isn't, and quite a few posters seem to have a vitriolic and irrational dislike of everything and everybody French.
On the specific issue, it sounds like the French deserve criticism. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if, in due course, we discover that several international and multinational companies are still trading or doing some sort of dealings with Russia, including some in the UK. I'll bet there's still UK money washing around in Moscow (as well as Russian money washing around in London), but we may never know as it wouldn't be high profile like Renault.
Aren't the UK getting Russian oil till the end of the year? That's nine months!
3% - how much is France and Germany getting and for how many years, not months
To be honest that is an argument for stopping it now. If you are getting 50% or more of your oil and gas from Russia then weaning yourself off it without leaving your pensioners in the dark and cold is a harder thing to do. If it is only 3% then to be honest I see no excuse for not biting the bullet and stopping it straight away.
I would agree but Germany in particular has put herself into the dire position because protecting their population in energy at the same time fuels Putin war machine and the slaughter of so many innocents
But there is a large dollop of both hindsight and schadenfreude being displayed here. Yes Germany was daft to get themselves into that position but, given they are not fortunate enough to have access to their own hydrocarbons it was probably not something they had that much choice about at the time. Deciding to cripple yourself when faced with outright aggression is one thing. Deciding to do it when there is still a hope - however ill founded - that the aggression may never come to pass is perhaps naive but understandable.
If Germany alone were the only country in Europe that had done this then it might be a valid criticism. But practically every central and Eastern European country is in the same boat. There is a whole raft of them who get not 50% but 100% of their energy from Russia.
Sitting relatively pretty on our island and throwing rocks at our less fortunate neighbours (as far as energy goes) is a pretty childish thing to do.
The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
"The French are scum."
Clearly, and by definition.
However the French are in fact wonderful, warm, and truly lovely people. I'll have to think about whether they're charming us for a while prior to revealing their true nature!
They also have the best national anthem. By miles.
Not really - The Welsh anthem is the best in the world
Well anything actually sung by the Welsh is the best in the world. Welshman singing the Marsiellais - that'd be a thing.
I really like 'Flower of Sctland' too - suits their peasant voice
I've always thought the Welsh National Anthem unsurpassable. The Marseillaise and the Stars and Stripes are pretty good too. I find it hard to think of another worthy of mention - maybe Flower of Scotland, or Australia Fair.
The Londonderry Air is a bit special but it's not an anthem of course. Somebody should nick it for their own.
I know the climate is wrong for making this admission and with all due apologies to people's sensibilities, but the old Soviet National Anthem is just a wonderful piece of music.
Yes, it's a truly rousing anthem. I wish ours was less boring, I think it's part of the reason we're shit at sport. Other teams have great national anthems to really get them going before a match, we have the world's dullest anthem.
The English/British anthem is utter shit. I can only think of two people on here who would possibly feel any pride when hearing it: @HYUFD and @malcolmg
I think it's fine. It's often played too slowly, but it is simple and straightforward to belt out, which is handy, even if it is certainly not as rousing or exciting as many others.
It will never happen, but "I vow to thee my country" by Gustav Holst would be a far better national anthem.
EDIT - I see some others have suggested the same.
I don't actually think it would be in the running as the CoE says it is heretical, placing the love of the nation above the love for God. Still a great song and before football matches it would get the team and crowd going.
The CofE can, quite frankly, fuck right off. None of their business. Anyway, I prefer Jerusalem. Though obviously that is English not British.
Putting God’s teaching and wisdom before nation is exactly their business.
CoE don’t like Jerusalem too, it’s banned from the hymnal’s 😝
The national anthem should be Rule Britannia. It is anti-French, pro-Navy and anti-slavery. What's not to like?
I'd say the songs in Church of England hymnbooks is precisely Church of England business.
And quite reasonable to note that the theology in Jerusalem is ... even being kind ... bollocks.
But does anyone have any evidence that it is banned?
It's very un-CofE to ban anything outright. Far more the sort of thing done in Scotland or by Atheists who both tend to be far more dogmatic about such things.
The last time I knew of it was Colin Slee, as the man with control of Worship at Southwark Cathedral.
Why is anyone in a flap?
The only major hymn book I can think of that it isn't in is Mission Praise. Which is American Evangelical although it is widely used in the Church of England (unfortunately).
Does it qualify as a hymn book? I thought it contained only "songs".
It has some hymns, but often in terrible arrangements. I can't actually play 'Be Thou My Vision' out of it because the 'harmony's' so bad it's literally painful to my ears.
Yes Jerusalem is frowned upon by CoE on basis it isn’t a hymn. and they a correct, there isn’t the clarity for a hymn.
You don’t project onto a hymn, the hymn projects onto you.
Look at blakes nonsense verses, complete mishmash of poetic ideas, the listener projects onto them, not projected onto. What is the virtue they are extolling? What specifically are they adoring?
Many get quite bothered by any historical and pragmatic reading of Blake’s poetic musings which do not fit their own fanciful interpretion of the song they love, particularly when read counter to their perceived ownership of historical Jesus, which Blake is directly challenging in these verses. Yet more projection onto the words, where hymn must go the other way. Yet they can’t explain the sexual imagery as Blake understood, or why it indiscriminately just erects itself without extolling anything in particular, nor be specific about poetry so duly enigmatic it may be nothing more than reference to a mill dark and satanic is poetic reference to an actual mill gutted by fire standing between a poet’s home and his bread shop – possibly gutted in industrial dispute over pay. Blake believed in hell, to him this ruin he often passed looked like hell had visited it. This is what poets do.
It’s not written as a hymn called Jerusalem, the reference to Jerusalem is Blake’s genuine belief Jesus and Joseph were building a bit of Jerusalem here.
Let's not beat about the bush: Blake was batshit crazy, and the imagery available to his batshit imagination was biblical imagery. That doesn't make him Christian, nor Jerusalem Christian. It isn't.
I would rather ask you if you know what combination of drugs Blake indulged in, than tell you are wrong. Or partly wrong. But here goes.
William Blake was very much a religious man, but little is strictly orthodox about his life, views or his art, outlandish and overtly sexual for the time. Although there are no historical documents describing Yeshua’s visits to Britain, this is quite proper if surviving documents are written by Christians who don’t want anyone to access what doesn’t fit with their Orthodoxy, which was essentially Catholic (and on wrong side of the council of Nicaea to be the Church Paul founded, let alone the initial followers of Yeshua before Paul’s letters from Greek islands) when many written histories we depend on today were produced; Blake nevertheless enthusiastically researched the oral history’s of Britain, Europe and the Mediterranean looking for and finding correlating evidence for Yeshua’s visit to Britain.
But whatever others want to believe, to project on his prose, or refuse to believe of the questions Blake raised in his preface to Milton, it’s probable Blake felt he had enough evidence to believe them himself, or else why has he done so much research and got so excited?
Remember Jerusalem was not written as either hymn or song, it was poetry, a preamble in verse, orchestrated long after it was written, this point is quite central to why there is contention over what it is saying to us. Simply put, hymns are written with sound messaging and absence of conjecture or projection, specifically written to achieve purpose, normally adoration of something. The question is, if you pick up any old nonsense lyric or abstruse poetry, can you fashion a fine hymn, that can enter a Church’s Hymnal? Technically no - as clearly proved by Parry’s orchestral setting of the preface to Blake’s lengthy narrative poem Milton,
And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon Englands mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On Englands pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold: Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land.
How much is clear? For example, whose sword will not sleep in hand? Perhaps the last two lines can be construed as building Christianity in England, even this is mistaken if Yeshua visited to build Hellenised Jewish Essenic settlement. Would building the Kingdom of Yeshua and Uncle Jo be a Catholic or Protestant Jerusalem? We know today, and as Blake would have himself, the answer to that is clearly no.
I done a project on Blake in school about twelve years ago. 😇
You under 35? Ye Gods
That it is poetry is v important. And - tbh - in a church setting it may be better read as poetry to be considered by a talk.
And of course the first verse hints at either legends of visits here by Joseph of Arithimea etc, or visions around creating a new society or whatever, as it can be tied into the visions in Revelation.
I have not read the history, but I would expect the New Jerusalem to be a theme for the non-comformist tradition in socialism / trade unionism. Perhaps especially for Tony Benn or Donald Soper.
I loved the first part of your post. But then you move into the projection thing.
The history on Blake’s Jerusalem is difficult for us because the historical facts are sketchy. What to do in science when you have gaps that don’t join up, and I regard history as a science, is to make the best educated guess to join up the gaps and view a bigger picture.
To me, the best guesses have Joseph in England (that is a fact) perhaps Jesus before his ministry, and his Mother after His death, also here because it was too dangerous back there. We tend to overlook the sectarian conflict. And how Jesus was born into it.
As an historical person Jesus is certainly not wholly owned by Christianity. Not that his own religion cares to make much fuss of him. He was a Jew, called Yeshua, likely born into an extended family with Hellenised (Greek influenced) views, Why is Christianity so Greek? It was a language most widely used, so Romans utilised Greek to promote their empire, that was essentially a commercial project. The language of the Roman Empire was Greek. The first Christian documents, those of Paul, were written in Greek whilst in Greece. In the sectarian make up of Judea at the time of Yeshua’s birth there is likely to have been contention between Hellenised Jews, looking to adopt Greek Platonic philosophy along with the Torah, versus Orthodox Jews, such as the Pharisee, opposing this approach.
Before the time of his ministry that is recounted thoroughly in Christian documents like The Bible, there is something like a “gap year” of about a decade and a half, where we have little evidence what young Yeshua was up to, other than he was associate of Joseph of Arimathea - this is someone who may have been Yeshua’s relative such as his Mother’s Uncle, in any case for the considerate in loco parentis he showed Yoshua throughout remainder of his life and death I think we can call him Uncle. Uncle Joseph was a wealthy Rabbi, with trading links all around the Mediterranean, Western Europe including Britain, also worked on building projects in pursuit of “the kingdom”. He may have been an Essenes - the sect who wrote the Dead Sea scrolls. It’s widely documented Uncle Joseph swapped the sunny skies of Judea for our clouded hills and pastures green at least once, because he died at Glastonbury. And not simply in exile or in missionary position, its quite possible for someone with his wealth and business links he owned the settlement and the surrounding lands.
If Joseph was a leading Essene, and on the top council representing those views, perhaps Jesus born not just into a family of wealth, religious and political leadership, but born moreover into sectarian disagreement. There are references to his extended family being princesses.
I think this is the Jesus Blake is researching and writing about. And it’s much more exciting also interesting than a lot of peoples projections on it?
"The language of the Roman Empire was Greek" That statement needs a bit of modification for it not to be misleading
Putin's played a blinder today. He's managed to get almost all the PB cognoscenti to transfer their wrath and fury from him and his army to Macron and the French. Clever.
In the immortal words of Kenny Everett, "let's bomb Paris". Or something like that.
Are you suggesting Macron is in cahoots with Putin?
No.
I've always found the anti-French rhetoric on PB quite unpleasant, and it's really the only thing that turns me off this forum. I know some of it is in jest, but sadly some of it isn't, and quite a few posters seem to have a vitriolic and irrational dislike of everything and everybody French.
On the specific issue, it sounds like the French deserve criticism. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if, in due course, we discover that several international and multinational companies are still trading or doing some sort of dealings with Russia, including some in the UK. I'll bet there's still UK money washing around in Moscow (as well as Russian money washing around in London), but we may never know as it wouldn't be high profile like Renault.
Aren't the UK getting Russian oil till the end of the year? That's nine months!
3% - how much is France and Germany getting and for how many years, not months
To be honest that is an argument for stopping it now. If you are getting 50% or more of your oil and gas from Russia then weaning yourself off it without leaving your pensioners in the dark and cold is a harder thing to do. If it is only 3% then to be honest I see no excuse for not biting the bullet and stopping it straight away.
I would agree but Germany in particular has put herself into the dire position because protecting their population in energy at the same time fuels Putin war machine and the slaughter of so many innocents
But there is a large dollop of both hindsight and schadenfreude being displayed here. Yes Germany was daft to get themselves into that position but, given they are not fortunate enough to have access to their own hydrocarbons it was probably not something they had that much choice about at the time. Deciding to cripple yourself when faced with outright aggression is one thing. Deciding to do it when there is still a hope - however ill founded - that the aggression may never come to pass is perhaps naive but understandable.
If Germany alone were the only country in Europe that had done this then it might be a valid criticism. But practically every central and Eastern European country is in the same boat. There is a whole raft of them who get not 50% but 100% of their energy from Russia.
Sitting relatively pretty on our island and throwing rocks at our less fortunate neighbours (as far as energy goes) is a pretty childish thing to do.
Merkel's policy on nuclear power stations post Fukushima was a huge error
The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
"The French are scum."
Clearly, and by definition.
However the French are in fact wonderful, warm, and truly lovely people. I'll have to think about whether they're charming us for a while prior to revealing their true nature!
They also have the best national anthem. By miles.
Not really - The Welsh anthem is the best in the world
Well anything actually sung by the Welsh is the best in the world. Welshman singing the Marsiellais - that'd be a thing.
I really like 'Flower of Sctland' too - suits their peasant voice
I've always thought the Welsh National Anthem unsurpassable. The Marseillaise and the Stars and Stripes are pretty good too. I find it hard to think of another worthy of mention - maybe Flower of Scotland, or Australia Fair.
The Londonderry Air is a bit special but it's not an anthem of course. Somebody should nick it for their own.
I know the climate is wrong for making this admission and with all due apologies to people's sensibilities, but the old Soviet National Anthem is just a wonderful piece of music.
Yes, it's a truly rousing anthem. I wish ours was less boring, I think it's part of the reason we're shit at sport. Other teams have great national anthems to really get them going before a match, we have the world's dullest anthem.
The English/British anthem is utter shit. I can only think of two people on here who would possibly feel any pride when hearing it: @HYUFD and @malcolmg
I think it's fine. It's often played too slowly, but it is simple and straightforward to belt out, which is handy, even if it is certainly not as rousing or exciting as many others.
It will never happen, but "I vow to thee my country" by Gustav Holst would be a far better national anthem.
EDIT - I see some others have suggested the same.
I don't actually think it would be in the running as the CoE says it is heretical, placing the love of the nation above the love for God. Still a great song and before football matches it would get the team and crowd going.
The CofE can, quite frankly, fuck right off. None of their business. Anyway, I prefer Jerusalem. Though obviously that is English not British.
Putting God’s teaching and wisdom before nation is exactly their business.
CoE don’t like Jerusalem too, it’s banned from the hymnal’s 😝
The national anthem should be Rule Britannia. It is anti-French, pro-Navy and anti-slavery. What's not to like?
I'd say the songs in Church of England hymnbooks is precisely Church of England business.
And quite reasonable to note that the theology in Jerusalem is ... even being kind ... bollocks.
But does anyone have any evidence that it is banned?
It's very un-CofE to ban anything outright. Far more the sort of thing done in Scotland or by Atheists who both tend to be far more dogmatic about such things.
The last time I knew of it was Colin Slee, as the man with control of Worship at Southwark Cathedral.
Why is anyone in a flap?
The only major hymn book I can think of that it isn't in is Mission Praise. Which is American Evangelical although it is widely used in the Church of England (unfortunately).
Does it qualify as a hymn book? I thought it contained only "songs".
It has some hymns, but often in terrible arrangements. I can't actually play 'Be Thou My Vision' out of it because the 'harmony's' so bad it's literally painful to my ears.
Yes Jerusalem is frowned upon by CoE on basis it isn’t a hymn. and they a correct, there isn’t the clarity for a hymn.
You don’t project onto a hymn, the hymn projects onto you.
Look at blakes nonsense verses, complete mishmash of poetic ideas, the listener projects onto them, not projected onto. What is the virtue they are extolling? What specifically are they adoring?
Many get quite bothered by any historical and pragmatic reading of Blake’s poetic musings which do not fit their own fanciful interpretion of the song they love, particularly when read counter to their perceived ownership of historical Jesus, which Blake is directly challenging in these verses. Yet more projection onto the words, where hymn must go the other way. Yet they can’t explain the sexual imagery as Blake understood, or why it indiscriminately just erects itself without extolling anything in particular, nor be specific about poetry so duly enigmatic it may be nothing more than reference to a mill dark and satanic is poetic reference to an actual mill gutted by fire standing between a poet’s home and his bread shop – possibly gutted in industrial dispute over pay. Blake believed in hell, to him this ruin he often passed looked like hell had visited it. This is what poets do.
It’s not written as a hymn called Jerusalem, the reference to Jerusalem is Blake’s genuine belief Jesus and Joseph were building a bit of Jerusalem here.
Let's not beat about the bush: Blake was batshit crazy, and the imagery available to his batshit imagination was biblical imagery. That doesn't make him Christian, nor Jerusalem Christian. It isn't.
I would rather ask you if you know what combination of drugs Blake indulged in, than tell you are wrong. Or partly wrong. But here goes.
William Blake was very much a religious man, but little is strictly orthodox about his life, views or his art, outlandish and overtly sexual for the time. Although there are no historical documents describing Yeshua’s visits to Britain, this is quite proper if surviving documents are written by Christians who don’t want anyone to access what doesn’t fit with their Orthodoxy, which was essentially Catholic (and on wrong side of the council of Nicaea to be the Church Paul founded, let alone the initial followers of Yeshua before Paul’s letters from Greek islands) when many written histories we depend on today were produced; Blake nevertheless enthusiastically researched the oral history’s of Britain, Europe and the Mediterranean looking for and finding correlating evidence for Yeshua’s visit to Britain.
But whatever others want to believe, to project on his prose, or refuse to believe of the questions Blake raised in his preface to Milton, it’s probable Blake felt he had enough evidence to believe them himself, or else why has he done so much research and got so excited?
Remember Jerusalem was not written as either hymn or song, it was poetry, a preamble in verse, orchestrated long after it was written, this point is quite central to why there is contention over what it is saying to us. Simply put, hymns are written with sound messaging and absence of conjecture or projection, specifically written to achieve purpose, normally adoration of something. The question is, if you pick up any old nonsense lyric or abstruse poetry, can you fashion a fine hymn, that can enter a Church’s Hymnal? Technically no - as clearly proved by Parry’s orchestral setting of the preface to Blake’s lengthy narrative poem Milton,
And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon Englands mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On Englands pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold: Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land.
How much is clear? For example, whose sword will not sleep in hand? Perhaps the last two lines can be construed as building Christianity in England, even this is mistaken if Yeshua visited to build Hellenised Jewish Essenic settlement. Would building the Kingdom of Yeshua and Uncle Jo be a Catholic or Protestant Jerusalem? We know today, and as Blake would have himself, the answer to that is clearly no.
I done a project on Blake in school about twelve years ago. 😇
Well, Jerusalem clearly *wasn't* builded here (stanza 2) if it still needs doing in st 4.
I don't say that Blake did drugs (though he might well have done, no shortage of opium back then) but there's forms of madness which mimic drugs quite closely. Look at Louis Wain
As a lifelong severe depressive, I think Blake's greatest lines are these
Every Night and every Morn Some to Misery are born. Every Morn and every Night Some are born to Sweet Delight, Some are born to Endless Night.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Blake. And to be fair people can project what they like onto poetry, as they can any song lyrics or piece of music (the rather bland Beethoven version of ode to joy comes to mind). But sometimes exploring what an artist is actually trying to say can reveal things just as magical and even more profound, yet when it comes to Parry’s setting of Jerusalem to music, they are actually stripping Blake’s own excitement and artistry out of it. 😕
Beethoven's 9th is a disgrace. You don't have choirs in symphonies, and its catchiness and anthemability just proves the point.
Beethoven's 7th movt. 2 on the other hand...
Movt 2?
The signal's weird. There must be some intereference or something. There's movement all over the place!
Putin's played a blinder today. He's managed to get almost all the PB cognoscenti to transfer their wrath and fury from him and his army to Macron and the French. Clever.
In the immortal words of Kenny Everett, "let's bomb Paris". Or something like that.
Are you suggesting Macron is in cahoots with Putin?
No.
I've always found the anti-French rhetoric on PB quite unpleasant, and it's really the only thing that turns me off this forum. I know some of it is in jest, but sadly some of it isn't, and quite a few posters seem to have a vitriolic and irrational dislike of everything and everybody French.
On the specific issue, it sounds like the French deserve criticism. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if, in due course, we discover that several international and multinational companies are still trading or doing some sort of dealings with Russia, including some in the UK. I'll bet there's still UK money washing around in Moscow (as well as Russian money washing around in London), but we may never know as it wouldn't be high profile like Renault.
Aren't the UK getting Russian oil till the end of the year? That's nine months!
3% - how much is France and Germany getting and for how many years, not months
To be honest that is an argument for stopping it now. If you are getting 50% or more of your oil and gas from Russia then weaning yourself off it without leaving your pensioners in the dark and cold is a harder thing to do. If it is only 3% then to be honest I see no excuse for not biting the bullet and stopping it straight away.
I would agree but Germany in particular has put herself into the dire position because protecting their population in energy at the same time fuels Putin war machine and the slaughter of so many innocents
But there is a large dollop of both hindsight and schadenfreude being displayed here. Yes Germany was daft to get themselves into that position but, given they are not fortunate enough to have access to their own hydrocarbons it was probably not something they had that much choice about at the time. Deciding to cripple yourself when faced with outright aggression is one thing. Deciding to do it when there is still a hope - however ill founded - that the aggression may never come to pass is perhaps naive but understandable.
If Germany alone were the only country in Europe that had done this then it might be a valid criticism. But practically every central and Eastern European country is in the same boat. There is a whole raft of them who get not 50% but 100% of their energy from Russia.
Sitting relatively pretty on our island and throwing rocks at our less fortunate neighbours (as far as energy goes) is a pretty childish thing to do.
Merkel's policy on nuclear power stations post Fukushima was a huge error
The road to Nord Stream 2 was decades long. Dropping nuclear power was the last in a series of bad decisions.
Putin's played a blinder today. He's managed to get almost all the PB cognoscenti to transfer their wrath and fury from him and his army to Macron and the French. Clever.
In the immortal words of Kenny Everett, "let's bomb Paris". Or something like that.
Are you suggesting Macron is in cahoots with Putin?
No.
I've always found the anti-French rhetoric on PB quite unpleasant, and it's really the only thing that turns me off this forum. I know some of it is in jest, but sadly some of it isn't, and quite a few posters seem to have a vitriolic and irrational dislike of everything and everybody French.
On the specific issue, it sounds like the French deserve criticism. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if, in due course, we discover that several international and multinational companies are still trading or doing some sort of dealings with Russia, including some in the UK. I'll bet there's still UK money washing around in Moscow (as well as Russian money washing around in London), but we may never know as it wouldn't be high profile like Renault.
Aren't the UK getting Russian oil till the end of the year? That's nine months!
3% - how much is France and Germany getting and for how many years, not months
To be honest that is an argument for stopping it now. If you are getting 50% or more of your oil and gas from Russia then weaning yourself off it without leaving your pensioners in the dark and cold is a harder thing to do. If it is only 3% then to be honest I see no excuse for not biting the bullet and stopping it straight away.
I would agree but Germany in particular has put herself into the dire position because protecting their population in energy at the same time fuels Putin war machine and the slaughter of so many innocents
But there is a large dollop of both hindsight and schadenfreude being displayed here. Yes Germany was daft to get themselves into that position but, given they are not fortunate enough to have access to their own hydrocarbons it was probably not something they had that much choice about at the time. Deciding to cripple yourself when faced with outright aggression is one thing. Deciding to do it when there is still a hope - however ill founded - that the aggression may never come to pass is perhaps naive but understandable.
If Germany alone were the only country in Europe that had done this then it might be a valid criticism. But practically every central and Eastern European country is in the same boat. There is a whole raft of them who get not 50% but 100% of their energy from Russia.
Sitting relatively pretty on our island and throwing rocks at our less fortunate neighbours (as far as energy goes) is a pretty childish thing to do.
Merkel's policy on nuclear power stations post Fukushima was a huge error
Yes, being spooked by a tsunami was not her finest hour (especially when I would be amazed if that risk hadn't at least been considered and dismissed/provided for in the initial planning stage of such nuclear power stations).
The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
"The French are scum."
Clearly, and by definition.
However the French are in fact wonderful, warm, and truly lovely people. I'll have to think about whether they're charming us for a while prior to revealing their true nature!
They also have the best national anthem. By miles.
Not really - The Welsh anthem is the best in the world
Well anything actually sung by the Welsh is the best in the world. Welshman singing the Marsiellais - that'd be a thing.
I really like 'Flower of Sctland' too - suits their peasant voice
I've always thought the Welsh National Anthem unsurpassable. The Marseillaise and the Stars and Stripes are pretty good too. I find it hard to think of another worthy of mention - maybe Flower of Scotland, or Australia Fair.
The Londonderry Air is a bit special but it's not an anthem of course. Somebody should nick it for their own.
I know the climate is wrong for making this admission and with all due apologies to people's sensibilities, but the old Soviet National Anthem is just a wonderful piece of music.
Yes, it's a truly rousing anthem. I wish ours was less boring, I think it's part of the reason we're shit at sport. Other teams have great national anthems to really get them going before a match, we have the world's dullest anthem.
The English/British anthem is utter shit. I can only think of two people on here who would possibly feel any pride when hearing it: @HYUFD and @malcolmg
I think it's fine. It's often played too slowly, but it is simple and straightforward to belt out, which is handy, even if it is certainly not as rousing or exciting as many others.
It will never happen, but "I vow to thee my country" by Gustav Holst would be a far better national anthem.
EDIT - I see some others have suggested the same.
I don't actually think it would be in the running as the CoE says it is heretical, placing the love of the nation above the love for God. Still a great song and before football matches it would get the team and crowd going.
The CofE can, quite frankly, fuck right off. None of their business. Anyway, I prefer Jerusalem. Though obviously that is English not British.
Putting God’s teaching and wisdom before nation is exactly their business.
CoE don’t like Jerusalem too, it’s banned from the hymnal’s 😝
The national anthem should be Rule Britannia. It is anti-French, pro-Navy and anti-slavery. What's not to like?
I'd say the songs in Church of England hymnbooks is precisely Church of England business.
And quite reasonable to note that the theology in Jerusalem is ... even being kind ... bollocks.
But does anyone have any evidence that it is banned?
It's very un-CofE to ban anything outright. Far more the sort of thing done in Scotland or by Atheists who both tend to be far more dogmatic about such things.
The last time I knew of it was Colin Slee, as the man with control of Worship at Southwark Cathedral.
Why is anyone in a flap?
The only major hymn book I can think of that it isn't in is Mission Praise. Which is American Evangelical although it is widely used in the Church of England (unfortunately).
Does it qualify as a hymn book? I thought it contained only "songs".
It has some hymns, but often in terrible arrangements. I can't actually play 'Be Thou My Vision' out of it because the 'harmony's' so bad it's literally painful to my ears.
Yes Jerusalem is frowned upon by CoE on basis it isn’t a hymn. and they a correct, there isn’t the clarity for a hymn.
You don’t project onto a hymn, the hymn projects onto you.
Look at blakes nonsense verses, complete mishmash of poetic ideas, the listener projects onto them, not projected onto. What is the virtue they are extolling? What specifically are they adoring?
Many get quite bothered by any historical and pragmatic reading of Blake’s poetic musings which do not fit their own fanciful interpretion of the song they love, particularly when read counter to their perceived ownership of historical Jesus, which Blake is directly challenging in these verses. Yet more projection onto the words, where hymn must go the other way. Yet they can’t explain the sexual imagery as Blake understood, or why it indiscriminately just erects itself without extolling anything in particular, nor be specific about poetry so duly enigmatic it may be nothing more than reference to a mill dark and satanic is poetic reference to an actual mill gutted by fire standing between a poet’s home and his bread shop – possibly gutted in industrial dispute over pay. Blake believed in hell, to him this ruin he often passed looked like hell had visited it. This is what poets do.
It’s not written as a hymn called Jerusalem, the reference to Jerusalem is Blake’s genuine belief Jesus and Joseph were building a bit of Jerusalem here.
Let's not beat about the bush: Blake was batshit crazy, and the imagery available to his batshit imagination was biblical imagery. That doesn't make him Christian, nor Jerusalem Christian. It isn't.
I would rather ask you if you know what combination of drugs Blake indulged in, than tell you are wrong. Or partly wrong. But here goes.
William Blake was very much a religious man, but little is strictly orthodox about his life, views or his art, outlandish and overtly sexual for the time. Although there are no historical documents describing Yeshua’s visits to Britain, this is quite proper if surviving documents are written by Christians who don’t want anyone to access what doesn’t fit with their Orthodoxy, which was essentially Catholic (and on wrong side of the council of Nicaea to be the Church Paul founded, let alone the initial followers of Yeshua before Paul’s letters from Greek islands) when many written histories we depend on today were produced; Blake nevertheless enthusiastically researched the oral history’s of Britain, Europe and the Mediterranean looking for and finding correlating evidence for Yeshua’s visit to Britain.
But whatever others want to believe, to project on his prose, or refuse to believe of the questions Blake raised in his preface to Milton, it’s probable Blake felt he had enough evidence to believe them himself, or else why has he done so much research and got so excited?
Remember Jerusalem was not written as either hymn or song, it was poetry, a preamble in verse, orchestrated long after it was written, this point is quite central to why there is contention over what it is saying to us. Simply put, hymns are written with sound messaging and absence of conjecture or projection, specifically written to achieve purpose, normally adoration of something. The question is, if you pick up any old nonsense lyric or abstruse poetry, can you fashion a fine hymn, that can enter a Church’s Hymnal? Technically no - as clearly proved by Parry’s orchestral setting of the preface to Blake’s lengthy narrative poem Milton,
And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon Englands mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On Englands pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold: Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land.
How much is clear? For example, whose sword will not sleep in hand? Perhaps the last two lines can be construed as building Christianity in England, even this is mistaken if Yeshua visited to build Hellenised Jewish Essenic settlement. Would building the Kingdom of Yeshua and Uncle Jo be a Catholic or Protestant Jerusalem? We know today, and as Blake would have himself, the answer to that is clearly no.
I done a project on Blake in school about twelve years ago. 😇
Well, Jerusalem clearly *wasn't* builded here (stanza 2) if it still needs doing in st 4.
I don't say that Blake did drugs (though he might well have done, no shortage of opium back then) but there's forms of madness which mimic drugs quite closely. Look at Louis Wain
As a lifelong severe depressive, I think Blake's greatest lines are these
Every Night and every Morn Some to Misery are born. Every Morn and every Night Some are born to Sweet Delight, Some are born to Endless Night.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Blake. And to be fair people can project what they like onto poetry, as they can any song lyrics or piece of music (the rather bland Beethoven version of ode to joy comes to mind). But sometimes exploring what an artist is actually trying to say can reveal things just as magical and even more profound, yet when it comes to Parry’s setting of Jerusalem to music, they are actually stripping Blake’s own excitement and artistry out of it. 😕
Beethoven's 9th is a disgrace. You don't have choirs in symphonies, and its catchiness and anthemability just proves the point.
Beethoven's 7th movt. 2 on the other hand...
Movt 2?
The signal's weird. There must be some intereference or something. There's movement all over the place!
Boy's definitely got a corncob up his ass!
Sunil, I don't have bad dreams about you because I'm just a piece of plastic.
Putin's played a blinder today. He's managed to get almost all the PB cognoscenti to transfer their wrath and fury from him and his army to Macron and the French. Clever.
In the immortal words of Kenny Everett, "let's bomb Paris". Or something like that.
Are you suggesting Macron is in cahoots with Putin?
No.
I've always found the anti-French rhetoric on PB quite unpleasant, and it's really the only thing that turns me off this forum. I know some of it is in jest, but sadly some of it isn't, and quite a few posters seem to have a vitriolic and irrational dislike of everything and everybody French.
On the specific issue, it sounds like the French deserve criticism. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if, in due course, we discover that several international and multinational companies are still trading or doing some sort of dealings with Russia, including some in the UK. I'll bet there's still UK money washing around in Moscow (as well as Russian money washing around in London), but we may never know as it wouldn't be high profile like Renault.
Aren't the UK getting Russian oil till the end of the year? That's nine months!
3% - how much is France and Germany getting and for how many years, not months
To be honest that is an argument for stopping it now. If you are getting 50% or more of your oil and gas from Russia then weaning yourself off it without leaving your pensioners in the dark and cold is a harder thing to do. If it is only 3% then to be honest I see no excuse for not biting the bullet and stopping it straight away.
I would agree but Germany in particular has put herself into the dire position because protecting their population in energy at the same time fuels Putin war machine and the slaughter of so many innocents
But there is a large dollop of both hindsight and schadenfreude being displayed here. Yes Germany was daft to get themselves into that position but, given they are not fortunate enough to have access to their own hydrocarbons it was probably not something they had that much choice about at the time. Deciding to cripple yourself when faced with outright aggression is one thing. Deciding to do it when there is still a hope - however ill founded - that the aggression may never come to pass is perhaps naive but understandable.
If Germany alone were the only country in Europe that had done this then it might be a valid criticism. But practically every central and Eastern European country is in the same boat. There is a whole raft of them who get not 50% but 100% of their energy from Russia.
Sitting relatively pretty on our island and throwing rocks at our less fortunate neighbours (as far as energy goes) is a pretty childish thing to do.
It's also completely counter-productive. The important thing is to source as much in the way of alternative supplies as quickly as possible. Doing the first 50% as soon as possible will have half the total impact of doing the whole thing, but will be by far the easiest half, and so I would have thought that trying to help that happen would be of much more importance than trying to get countries completely reliant on Russian energy supplies to switch with no idea where they will find alternative sources of supply.
And then once the first half is done - do the second half.
He's not going to be PM with these political antennae.
I sort of trust him to have his reasons. The wrongiest thing is to have from a budget of short termism, political traps for opponents, and geared for next days headlines? The saddest thing right now I think is the bonfire of cop agreements in rush for fossil fuels, which the UN has called bonkers. The people who argued for this direction all along, quite possibly pirate capitalists and climate change deniers who stand to make oodles from this shameless u turn are having the best war of anyone. ☹️
That’s my position and I will stand by it.
If he goes off on a Pasty Tax like TSE's hero, we really will be in trouble....
Unless anyone can find a source to say otherwise, the casualty number for the Mariupol Theatre strike currently stands at zero. 130 people are said to have emerged unharmed, and the 'thousands' sheltering in the basement appear not to have been there at all. That's 3 for the hospital atrocity and none for the theatre atrocity. This is what I mean when I say 'the truth lies somewhere in the middle'.
Truth is the first casualty of war. But there is a problem with your statement about the truth 'lying somewhere in the middle.' It's the kind of thinking that the Russians love to exploit.
Western official says something halfway sensible Russian official says something completely outrageous
The truth lies somewhere in the middle? Hmmmm.
I didn't say it lies equidistant, just that it lies between the two versions. In this case, it actually lies extremely far from the official Ukrainian one. No people dying; hardly any civilians being present, is not the same as thousands of huddled innocents being obliterated by Russian bombs we've just been presented with. That really is how wars get started. I don't blame Ukraine - it's seen as a matter of survival for many there to provoke the West into war with Russia. But I do blame our media, and us, for being carried along with it, just as we profess astonishment about the Russians believing their own media's tall tales.
The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
Has @Scott_xP made any comment as I assume he will be embarrassed by this behaviour and call it out
The PB Remoaners are staying quiet. The only voices responding are those condemning this despicable act and the outright Putin apologists engaging in whataboutism.
I am sad to say this but by individually picking posters out like Roger and Scott as EU traitors is really rather unpleasant.
You are part of PB's pro- Johnson, anti EU majority which is fine, but cheerleading the troops to give the quislings a kicking is tantamount to bullying. You can include me in your traitors list.
Best I think, to come back when all the shrill jingoism calms down.
I thought better of you G.
This is not jingoism it is simply fairness
Both posters attack the UK and Boris 24/7 from an anti UK stance due to their loathing of Brexit but when the EU or in this case France behave in an unacceptable way they make no comment
No, loathing the UK and loathing "Boris" are not the same thing
A hatred of greed, dishonesty, corruption and self-cenredness is, as hatreds go, not the worst kind. You seem to have a kind of innate need to worship "Boris" which blinds you to principal actual qualities.
Nonsense re Boris
I have been clear for months he needs to go and indeed have said so on many occasions
If Johnson is still leader of the Tories at the next GE I can almost guarantee that you will vote Tory and come up with some lame excuse for doing so along the lines of " our local Tory MP is such a good egg I am voting for him but my vote must categorically not be interpreted as a vote for Boris".
He's not going to be PM with these political antennae.
The bigger problem is that Rishi hasn't understood electoral timing very well at all, he seems to be waiting for "something" to turn up and help rather than making active moves to get the economy moving so that when 2024 rolls around we're in a jobs, wages and living standards boom and people have forgotten how expensive petrol was in summer 2022.
Pork barrel politics will only get the Tories so far, spreading economic gains across the country and ensuring millions across marginal benefit rather than a select few in a few constituencies is how to win elections. I fear that the Tories are in for a real drubbing in 2024. The reputation for economic competence will be lost and be very difficult to win back.
Saving tax cuts for when they have an electoral payoff, and doing the unpleasant but necessary stuff early-to-midterm isn't stupid in itself. Thatcher did it very effectively.
The trouble with Rishi is twofold, I reckon. For a start, he gives the impression of having read the Thatcher books but not understood that Maggie was a much subtler operator than even she admitted. Rolling back the State, sure, but not in the mindless way that the Altanticist right would.
Second, there's not much evidence of him changing tack in response to new data. Events if you like. There's a bit too much of the football manager with one system they play.
Putin's played a blinder today. He's managed to get almost all the PB cognoscenti to transfer their wrath and fury from him and his army to Macron and the French. Clever.
In the immortal words of Kenny Everett, "let's bomb Paris". Or something like that.
Are you suggesting Macron is in cahoots with Putin?
No.
I've always found the anti-French rhetoric on PB quite unpleasant, and it's really the only thing that turns me off this forum. I know some of it is in jest, but sadly some of it isn't, and quite a few posters seem to have a vitriolic and irrational dislike of everything and everybody French.
On the specific issue, it sounds like the French deserve criticism. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if, in due course, we discover that several international and multinational companies are still trading or doing some sort of dealings with Russia, including some in the UK. I'll bet there's still UK money washing around in Moscow (as well as Russian money washing around in London), but we may never know as it wouldn't be high profile like Renault.
Aren't the UK getting Russian oil till the end of the year? That's nine months!
3% - how much is France and Germany getting and for how many years, not months
To be honest that is an argument for stopping it now. If you are getting 50% or more of your oil and gas from Russia then weaning yourself off it without leaving your pensioners in the dark and cold is a harder thing to do. If it is only 3% then to be honest I see no excuse for not biting the bullet and stopping it straight away.
I would agree but Germany in particular has put herself into the dire position because protecting their population in energy at the same time fuels Putin war machine and the slaughter of so many innocents
But there is a large dollop of both hindsight and schadenfreude being displayed here. Yes Germany was daft to get themselves into that position but, given they are not fortunate enough to have access to their own hydrocarbons it was probably not something they had that much choice about at the time. Deciding to cripple yourself when faced with outright aggression is one thing. Deciding to do it when there is still a hope - however ill founded - that the aggression may never come to pass is perhaps naive but understandable.
If Germany alone were the only country in Europe that had done this then it might be a valid criticism. But practically every central and Eastern European country is in the same boat. There is a whole raft of them who get not 50% but 100% of their energy from Russia.
Sitting relatively pretty on our island and throwing rocks at our less fortunate neighbours (as far as energy goes) is a pretty childish thing to do.
I seem to remember the issue of over-dependence on Russian supplies being raised many times by critics over a long period of time - including when decision to close nuclear was taken. The German delegation laughed openly at bloody Trump warning them at the UN in 2018!
He's not going to be PM with these political antennae.
The bigger problem is that Rishi hasn't understood electoral timing very well at all, he seems to be waiting for "something" to turn up and help rather than making active moves to get the economy moving so that when 2024 rolls around we're in a jobs, wages and living standards boom and people have forgotten how expensive petrol was in summer 2022.
Pork barrel politics will only get the Tories so far, spreading economic gains across the country and ensuring millions across marginal benefit rather than a select few in a few constituencies is how to win elections. I fear that the Tories are in for a real drubbing in 2024. The reputation for economic competence will be lost and be very difficult to win back.
Saving tax cuts for when they have an electoral payoff, and doing the unpleasant but necessary stuff early-to-midterm isn't stupid in itself. Thatcher did it very effectively.
The trouble with Rishi is twofold, I reckon. For a start, he gives the impression of having read the Thatcher books but not understood that Maggie was a much subtler operator than even she admitted. Rolling back the State, sure, but not in the mindless way that the Altanticist right would.
Second, there's not much evidence of him changing tack in response to new data. Events if you like. There's a bit too much of the football manager with one system they play.
It's been steady as she goes since Feb 2020, hasn't it?
The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
Has @Scott_xP made any comment as I assume he will be embarrassed by this behaviour and call it out
The PB Remoaners are staying quiet. The only voices responding are those condemning this despicable act and the outright Putin apologists engaging in whataboutism.
I am sad to say this but by individually picking posters out like Roger and Scott as EU traitors is really rather unpleasant.
You are part of PB's pro- Johnson, anti EU majority which is fine, but cheerleading the troops to give the quislings a kicking is tantamount to bullying. You can include me in your traitors list.
Best I think, to come back when all the shrill jingoism calms down.
I thought better of you G.
This is not jingoism it is simply fairness
Both posters attack the UK and Boris 24/7 from an anti UK stance due to their loathing of Brexit but when the EU or in this case France behave in an unacceptable way they make no comment
No, loathing the UK and loathing "Boris" are not the same thing
A hatred of greed, dishonesty, corruption and self-cenredness is, as hatreds go, not the worst kind. You seem to have a kind of innate need to worship "Boris" which blinds you to principal actual qualities.
Nonsense re Boris
I have been clear for months he needs to go and indeed have said so on many occasions
If Johnson is still leader of the Tories at the next GE I can almost guarantee that you will vote Tory and come up with some lame excuse for doing so along the lines of " our local Tory MP is such a good egg I am voting for him but my vote must categorically not be interpreted as a vote for Boris".
If he is leader he is there because his mps have kept him there
My vote in 2024 will depend entirely on the offers from the parties as I have said many times
Unless anyone can find a source to say otherwise, the casualty number for the Mariupol Theatre strike currently stands at zero. 130 people are said to have emerged unharmed, and the 'thousands' sheltering in the basement appear not to have been there at all. That's 3 for the hospital atrocity and none for the theatre atrocity. This is what I mean when I say 'the truth lies somewhere in the middle'.
Truth is the first casualty of war. But there is a problem with your statement about the truth 'lying somewhere in the middle.' It's the kind of thinking that the Russians love to exploit.
Western official says something halfway sensible Russian official says something completely outrageous
The truth lies somewhere in the middle? Hmmmm.
I didn't say it lies equidistant, just that it lies between the two versions. In this case, it actually lies extremely far from the official Ukrainian one. No people dying; hardly any civilians being present, is not the same as thousands of huddled innocents being obliterated by Russian bombs we've just been presented with. That really is how wars get started. I don't blame Ukraine - it's seen as a matter of survival for many there to provoke the West into war with Russia. But I do blame our media, and us, for being carried along with it, just as we profess astonishment about the Russians believing their own media's tall tales.
The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
"The French are scum."
Clearly, and by definition.
However the French are in fact wonderful, warm, and truly lovely people. I'll have to think about whether they're charming us for a while prior to revealing their true nature!
They also have the best national anthem. By miles.
Not really - The Welsh anthem is the best in the world
Well anything actually sung by the Welsh is the best in the world. Welshman singing the Marsiellais - that'd be a thing.
I really like 'Flower of Sctland' too - suits their peasant voice
I've always thought the Welsh National Anthem unsurpassable. The Marseillaise and the Stars and Stripes are pretty good too. I find it hard to think of another worthy of mention - maybe Flower of Scotland, or Australia Fair.
The Londonderry Air is a bit special but it's not an anthem of course. Somebody should nick it for their own.
I know the climate is wrong for making this admission and with all due apologies to people's sensibilities, but the old Soviet National Anthem is just a wonderful piece of music.
Yes, it's a truly rousing anthem. I wish ours was less boring, I think it's part of the reason we're shit at sport. Other teams have great national anthems to really get them going before a match, we have the world's dullest anthem.
The English/British anthem is utter shit. I can only think of two people on here who would possibly feel any pride when hearing it: @HYUFD and @malcolmg
I think it's fine. It's often played too slowly, but it is simple and straightforward to belt out, which is handy, even if it is certainly not as rousing or exciting as many others.
It will never happen, but "I vow to thee my country" by Gustav Holst would be a far better national anthem.
EDIT - I see some others have suggested the same.
I don't actually think it would be in the running as the CoE says it is heretical, placing the love of the nation above the love for God. Still a great song and before football matches it would get the team and crowd going.
The CofE can, quite frankly, fuck right off. None of their business. Anyway, I prefer Jerusalem. Though obviously that is English not British.
Putting God’s teaching and wisdom before nation is exactly their business.
CoE don’t like Jerusalem too, it’s banned from the hymnal’s 😝
The national anthem should be Rule Britannia. It is anti-French, pro-Navy and anti-slavery. What's not to like?
I'd say the songs in Church of England hymnbooks is precisely Church of England business.
And quite reasonable to note that the theology in Jerusalem is ... even being kind ... bollocks.
But does anyone have any evidence that it is banned?
It's very un-CofE to ban anything outright. Far more the sort of thing done in Scotland or by Atheists who both tend to be far more dogmatic about such things.
The last time I knew of it was Colin Slee, as the man with control of Worship at Southwark Cathedral.
Why is anyone in a flap?
The only major hymn book I can think of that it isn't in is Mission Praise. Which is American Evangelical although it is widely used in the Church of England (unfortunately).
Does it qualify as a hymn book? I thought it contained only "songs".
It has some hymns, but often in terrible arrangements. I can't actually play 'Be Thou My Vision' out of it because the 'harmony's' so bad it's literally painful to my ears.
Yes Jerusalem is frowned upon by CoE on basis it isn’t a hymn. and they a correct, there isn’t the clarity for a hymn.
You don’t project onto a hymn, the hymn projects onto you.
Look at blakes nonsense verses, complete mishmash of poetic ideas, the listener projects onto them, not projected onto. What is the virtue they are extolling? What specifically are they adoring?
Many get quite bothered by any historical and pragmatic reading of Blake’s poetic musings which do not fit their own fanciful interpretion of the song they love, particularly when read counter to their perceived ownership of historical Jesus, which Blake is directly challenging in these verses. Yet more projection onto the words, where hymn must go the other way. Yet they can’t explain the sexual imagery as Blake understood, or why it indiscriminately just erects itself without extolling anything in particular, nor be specific about poetry so duly enigmatic it may be nothing more than reference to a mill dark and satanic is poetic reference to an actual mill gutted by fire standing between a poet’s home and his bread shop – possibly gutted in industrial dispute over pay. Blake believed in hell, to him this ruin he often passed looked like hell had visited it. This is what poets do.
It’s not written as a hymn called Jerusalem, the reference to Jerusalem is Blake’s genuine belief Jesus and Joseph were building a bit of Jerusalem here.
Let's not beat about the bush: Blake was batshit crazy, and the imagery available to his batshit imagination was biblical imagery. That doesn't make him Christian, nor Jerusalem Christian. It isn't.
I would rather ask you if you know what combination of drugs Blake indulged in, than tell you are wrong. Or partly wrong. But here goes.
William Blake was very much a religious man, but little is strictly orthodox about his life, views or his art, outlandish and overtly sexual for the time. Although there are no historical documents describing Yeshua’s visits to Britain, this is quite proper if surviving documents are written by Christians who don’t want anyone to access what doesn’t fit with their Orthodoxy, which was essentially Catholic (and on wrong side of the council of Nicaea to be the Church Paul founded, let alone the initial followers of Yeshua before Paul’s letters from Greek islands) when many written histories we depend on today were produced; Blake nevertheless enthusiastically researched the oral history’s of Britain, Europe and the Mediterranean looking for and finding correlating evidence for Yeshua’s visit to Britain.
But whatever others want to believe, to project on his prose, or refuse to believe of the questions Blake raised in his preface to Milton, it’s probable Blake felt he had enough evidence to believe them himself, or else why has he done so much research and got so excited?
Remember Jerusalem was not written as either hymn or song, it was poetry, a preamble in verse, orchestrated long after it was written, this point is quite central to why there is contention over what it is saying to us. Simply put, hymns are written with sound messaging and absence of conjecture or projection, specifically written to achieve purpose, normally adoration of something. The question is, if you pick up any old nonsense lyric or abstruse poetry, can you fashion a fine hymn, that can enter a Church’s Hymnal? Technically no - as clearly proved by Parry’s orchestral setting of the preface to Blake’s lengthy narrative poem Milton,
And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon Englands mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On Englands pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold: Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land.
How much is clear? For example, whose sword will not sleep in hand? Perhaps the last two lines can be construed as building Christianity in England, even this is mistaken if Yeshua visited to build Hellenised Jewish Essenic settlement. Would building the Kingdom of Yeshua and Uncle Jo be a Catholic or Protestant Jerusalem? We know today, and as Blake would have himself, the answer to that is clearly no.
I done a project on Blake in school about twelve years ago. 😇
You under 35? Ye Gods
That it is poetry is v important. And - tbh - in a church setting it may be better read as poetry to be considered by a talk.
And of course the first verse hints at either legends of visits here by Joseph of Arithimea etc, or visions around creating a new society or whatever, as it can be tied into the visions in Revelation.
I have not read the history, but I would expect the New Jerusalem to be a theme for the non-comformist tradition in socialism / trade unionism. Perhaps especially for Tony Benn or Donald Soper.
I loved the first part of your post. But then you move into the projection thing.
The history on Blake’s Jerusalem is difficult for us because the historical facts are sketchy. What to do in science when you have gaps that don’t join up, and I regard history as a science, is to make the best educated guess to join up the gaps and view a bigger picture.
To me, the best guesses have Joseph in England (that is a fact) perhaps Jesus before his ministry, and his Mother after His death, also here because it was too dangerous back there. We tend to overlook the sectarian conflict. And how Jesus was born into it.
As an historical person Jesus is certainly not wholly owned by Christianity. Not that his own religion cares to make much fuss of him. He was a Jew, called Yeshua, likely born into an extended family with Hellenised (Greek influenced) views, Why is Christianity so Greek? It was a language most widely used, so Romans utilised Greek to promote their empire, that was essentially a commercial project. The language of the Roman Empire was Greek. The first Christian documents, those of Paul, were written in Greek whilst in Greece. In the sectarian make up of Judea at the time of Yeshua’s birth there is likely to have been contention between Hellenised Jews, looking to adopt Greek Platonic philosophy along with the Torah, versus Orthodox Jews, such as the Pharisee, opposing this approach.
Before the time of his ministry that is recounted thoroughly in Christian documents like The Bible, there is something like a “gap year” of about a decade and a half, where we have little evidence what young Yeshua was up to, other than he was associate of Joseph of Arimathea - this is someone who may have been Yeshua’s relative such as his Mother’s Uncle, in any case for the considerate in loco parentis he showed Yoshua throughout remainder of his life and death I think we can call him Uncle. Uncle Joseph was a wealthy Rabbi, with trading links all around the Mediterranean, Western Europe including Britain, also worked on building projects in pursuit of “the kingdom”. He may have been an Essenes - the sect who wrote the Dead Sea scrolls. It’s widely documented Uncle Joseph swapped the sunny skies of Judea for our clouded hills and pastures green at least once, because he died at Glastonbury. And not simply in exile or in missionary position, its quite possible for someone with his wealth and business links he owned the settlement and the surrounding lands.
If Joseph was a leading Essene, and on the top council representing those views, perhaps Jesus born not just into a family of wealth, religious and political leadership, but born moreover into sectarian disagreement. There are references to his extended family being princesses.
I think this is the Jesus Blake is researching and writing about. And it’s much more exciting also interesting than a lot of peoples projections on it?
"The language of the Roman Empire was Greek" That statement needs a bit of modification for it not to be misleading
What was it then if not Greek? 🙂
We never agree Farooq!
The Roman Empire was a commercial empire, and the most common shared tongue around the med was Greek, Roman Business was conducted in Greek. The language of the Roman Empire was Greek,
If I didn’t have a history lesson at school, I didn’t go to school that day. If I had a science lesson or maths lesson or geography lesson next to history lesson I would go to library and read a history book instead.
A lot of people don’t know science though, I never went to a science lesson but I still managed to explain to my girlfriend how dinosaurs turned to oil.
I liked playing rugby as well and getting covered in mud.
The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
"The French are scum."
Clearly, and by definition.
However the French are in fact wonderful, warm, and truly lovely people. I'll have to think about whether they're charming us for a while prior to revealing their true nature!
They also have the best national anthem. By miles.
Not really - The Welsh anthem is the best in the world
Well anything actually sung by the Welsh is the best in the world. Welshman singing the Marsiellais - that'd be a thing.
I really like 'Flower of Sctland' too - suits their peasant voice
I've always thought the Welsh National Anthem unsurpassable. The Marseillaise and the Stars and Stripes are pretty good too. I find it hard to think of another worthy of mention - maybe Flower of Scotland, or Australia Fair.
The Londonderry Air is a bit special but it's not an anthem of course. Somebody should nick it for their own.
I know the climate is wrong for making this admission and with all due apologies to people's sensibilities, but the old Soviet National Anthem is just a wonderful piece of music.
Yes, it's a truly rousing anthem. I wish ours was less boring, I think it's part of the reason we're shit at sport. Other teams have great national anthems to really get them going before a match, we have the world's dullest anthem.
The English/British anthem is utter shit. I can only think of two people on here who would possibly feel any pride when hearing it: @HYUFD and @malcolmg
I think it's fine. It's often played too slowly, but it is simple and straightforward to belt out, which is handy, even if it is certainly not as rousing or exciting as many others.
It will never happen, but "I vow to thee my country" by Gustav Holst would be a far better national anthem.
EDIT - I see some others have suggested the same.
I don't actually think it would be in the running as the CoE says it is heretical, placing the love of the nation above the love for God. Still a great song and before football matches it would get the team and crowd going.
The CofE can, quite frankly, fuck right off. None of their business. Anyway, I prefer Jerusalem. Though obviously that is English not British.
Putting God’s teaching and wisdom before nation is exactly their business.
CoE don’t like Jerusalem too, it’s banned from the hymnal’s 😝
The national anthem should be Rule Britannia. It is anti-French, pro-Navy and anti-slavery. What's not to like?
I'd say the songs in Church of England hymnbooks is precisely Church of England business.
And quite reasonable to note that the theology in Jerusalem is ... even being kind ... bollocks.
But does anyone have any evidence that it is banned?
It's very un-CofE to ban anything outright. Far more the sort of thing done in Scotland or by Atheists who both tend to be far more dogmatic about such things.
The last time I knew of it was Colin Slee, as the man with control of Worship at Southwark Cathedral.
Why is anyone in a flap?
The only major hymn book I can think of that it isn't in is Mission Praise. Which is American Evangelical although it is widely used in the Church of England (unfortunately).
Does it qualify as a hymn book? I thought it contained only "songs".
It has some hymns, but often in terrible arrangements. I can't actually play 'Be Thou My Vision' out of it because the 'harmony's' so bad it's literally painful to my ears.
Yes Jerusalem is frowned upon by CoE on basis it isn’t a hymn. and they a correct, there isn’t the clarity for a hymn.
You don’t project onto a hymn, the hymn projects onto you.
Look at blakes nonsense verses, complete mishmash of poetic ideas, the listener projects onto them, not projected onto. What is the virtue they are extolling? What specifically are they adoring?
Many get quite bothered by any historical and pragmatic reading of Blake’s poetic musings which do not fit their own fanciful interpretion of the song they love, particularly when read counter to their perceived ownership of historical Jesus, which Blake is directly challenging in these verses. Yet more projection onto the words, where hymn must go the other way. Yet they can’t explain the sexual imagery as Blake understood, or why it indiscriminately just erects itself without extolling anything in particular, nor be specific about poetry so duly enigmatic it may be nothing more than reference to a mill dark and satanic is poetic reference to an actual mill gutted by fire standing between a poet’s home and his bread shop – possibly gutted in industrial dispute over pay. Blake believed in hell, to him this ruin he often passed looked like hell had visited it. This is what poets do.
It’s not written as a hymn called Jerusalem, the reference to Jerusalem is Blake’s genuine belief Jesus and Joseph were building a bit of Jerusalem here.
Let's not beat about the bush: Blake was batshit crazy, and the imagery available to his batshit imagination was biblical imagery. That doesn't make him Christian, nor Jerusalem Christian. It isn't.
I would rather ask you if you know what combination of drugs Blake indulged in, than tell you are wrong. Or partly wrong. But here goes.
William Blake was very much a religious man, but little is strictly orthodox about his life, views or his art, outlandish and overtly sexual for the time. Although there are no historical documents describing Yeshua’s visits to Britain, this is quite proper if surviving documents are written by Christians who don’t want anyone to access what doesn’t fit with their Orthodoxy, which was essentially Catholic (and on wrong side of the council of Nicaea to be the Church Paul founded, let alone the initial followers of Yeshua before Paul’s letters from Greek islands) when many written histories we depend on today were produced; Blake nevertheless enthusiastically researched the oral history’s of Britain, Europe and the Mediterranean looking for and finding correlating evidence for Yeshua’s visit to Britain.
But whatever others want to believe, to project on his prose, or refuse to believe of the questions Blake raised in his preface to Milton, it’s probable Blake felt he had enough evidence to believe them himself, or else why has he done so much research and got so excited?
Remember Jerusalem was not written as either hymn or song, it was poetry, a preamble in verse, orchestrated long after it was written, this point is quite central to why there is contention over what it is saying to us. Simply put, hymns are written with sound messaging and absence of conjecture or projection, specifically written to achieve purpose, normally adoration of something. The question is, if you pick up any old nonsense lyric or abstruse poetry, can you fashion a fine hymn, that can enter a Church’s Hymnal? Technically no - as clearly proved by Parry’s orchestral setting of the preface to Blake’s lengthy narrative poem Milton,
And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon Englands mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On Englands pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold: Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land.
How much is clear? For example, whose sword will not sleep in hand? Perhaps the last two lines can be construed as building Christianity in England, even this is mistaken if Yeshua visited to build Hellenised Jewish Essenic settlement. Would building the Kingdom of Yeshua and Uncle Jo be a Catholic or Protestant Jerusalem? We know today, and as Blake would have himself, the answer to that is clearly no.
I done a project on Blake in school about twelve years ago. 😇
I’m not in the slightest bit religious but it’s a beautiful poem and song. I hear it as a poignant love letter to England. It is no dirge. It’s the quintessential anthem of this country.
The artist didn’t write it as a song, or even a poem. It was used as a preamble to a longer work of prose and not even illustrative of the work which followed. It fits to music not just because of the scanning but the rhythm within it.
To understand what it is saying, imagine Blake sat stark naked in his garden, engaging us in conversation, and hitting us with all those question marks in the first two verses. Genuine questions from someone currently researching, chiefly through oral histories not just in Britain but Europe, old handed down stories of Jesus in England.
And in the second two verses I asked whose sword will not sleep in hand? We can place the hand of Joseph or Jesus around the sword, in answer to the question marks in the first two verses, for Blake’s Jesus was a tale of courage and bravery for being marked for early death at birth by being born into the heart of sectarian conflict.
The French are scum. And yet the usual Europhiles on PB give more shit to Boris for an inelegant comparison than bankrolling war criminals.
"The French are scum."
Clearly, and by definition.
However the French are in fact wonderful, warm, and truly lovely people. I'll have to think about whether they're charming us for a while prior to revealing their true nature!
They also have the best national anthem. By miles.
Not really - The Welsh anthem is the best in the world
Well anything actually sung by the Welsh is the best in the world. Welshman singing the Marsiellais - that'd be a thing.
I really like 'Flower of Sctland' too - suits their peasant voice
I've always thought the Welsh National Anthem unsurpassable. The Marseillaise and the Stars and Stripes are pretty good too. I find it hard to think of another worthy of mention - maybe Flower of Scotland, or Australia Fair.
The Londonderry Air is a bit special but it's not an anthem of course. Somebody should nick it for their own.
I know the climate is wrong for making this admission and with all due apologies to people's sensibilities, but the old Soviet National Anthem is just a wonderful piece of music.
Yes, it's a truly rousing anthem. I wish ours was less boring, I think it's part of the reason we're shit at sport. Other teams have great national anthems to really get them going before a match, we have the world's dullest anthem.
The English/British anthem is utter shit. I can only think of two people on here who would possibly feel any pride when hearing it: @HYUFD and @malcolmg
I think it's fine. It's often played too slowly, but it is simple and straightforward to belt out, which is handy, even if it is certainly not as rousing or exciting as many others.
It will never happen, but "I vow to thee my country" by Gustav Holst would be a far better national anthem.
EDIT - I see some others have suggested the same.
I don't actually think it would be in the running as the CoE says it is heretical, placing the love of the nation above the love for God. Still a great song and before football matches it would get the team and crowd going.
The CofE can, quite frankly, fuck right off. None of their business. Anyway, I prefer Jerusalem. Though obviously that is English not British.
Putting God’s teaching and wisdom before nation is exactly their business.
CoE don’t like Jerusalem too, it’s banned from the hymnal’s 😝
The national anthem should be Rule Britannia. It is anti-French, pro-Navy and anti-slavery. What's not to like?
I'd say the songs in Church of England hymnbooks is precisely Church of England business.
And quite reasonable to note that the theology in Jerusalem is ... even being kind ... bollocks.
But does anyone have any evidence that it is banned?
It's very un-CofE to ban anything outright. Far more the sort of thing done in Scotland or by Atheists who both tend to be far more dogmatic about such things.
The last time I knew of it was Colin Slee, as the man with control of Worship at Southwark Cathedral.
Why is anyone in a flap?
The only major hymn book I can think of that it isn't in is Mission Praise. Which is American Evangelical although it is widely used in the Church of England (unfortunately).
Does it qualify as a hymn book? I thought it contained only "songs".
It has some hymns, but often in terrible arrangements. I can't actually play 'Be Thou My Vision' out of it because the 'harmony's' so bad it's literally painful to my ears.
Yes Jerusalem is frowned upon by CoE on basis it isn’t a hymn. and they a correct, there isn’t the clarity for a hymn.
You don’t project onto a hymn, the hymn projects onto you.
Look at blakes nonsense verses, complete mishmash of poetic ideas, the listener projects onto them, not projected onto. What is the virtue they are extolling? What specifically are they adoring?
Many get quite bothered by any historical and pragmatic reading of Blake’s poetic musings which do not fit their own fanciful interpretion of the song they love, particularly when read counter to their perceived ownership of historical Jesus, which Blake is directly challenging in these verses. Yet more projection onto the words, where hymn must go the other way. Yet they can’t explain the sexual imagery as Blake understood, or why it indiscriminately just erects itself without extolling anything in particular, nor be specific about poetry so duly enigmatic it may be nothing more than reference to a mill dark and satanic is poetic reference to an actual mill gutted by fire standing between a poet’s home and his bread shop – possibly gutted in industrial dispute over pay. Blake believed in hell, to him this ruin he often passed looked like hell had visited it. This is what poets do.
It’s not written as a hymn called Jerusalem, the reference to Jerusalem is Blake’s genuine belief Jesus and Joseph were building a bit of Jerusalem here.
Let's not beat about the bush: Blake was batshit crazy, and the imagery available to his batshit imagination was biblical imagery. That doesn't make him Christian, nor Jerusalem Christian. It isn't.
I would rather ask you if you know what combination of drugs Blake indulged in, than tell you are wrong. Or partly wrong. But here goes.
William Blake was very much a religious man, but little is strictly orthodox about his life, views or his art, outlandish and overtly sexual for the time. Although there are no historical documents describing Yeshua’s visits to Britain, this is quite proper if surviving documents are written by Christians who don’t want anyone to access what doesn’t fit with their Orthodoxy, which was essentially Catholic (and on wrong side of the council of Nicaea to be the Church Paul founded, let alone the initial followers of Yeshua before Paul’s letters from Greek islands) when many written histories we depend on today were produced; Blake nevertheless enthusiastically researched the oral history’s of Britain, Europe and the Mediterranean looking for and finding correlating evidence for Yeshua’s visit to Britain.
But whatever others want to believe, to project on his prose, or refuse to believe of the questions Blake raised in his preface to Milton, it’s probable Blake felt he had enough evidence to believe them himself, or else why has he done so much research and got so excited?
Remember Jerusalem was not written as either hymn or song, it was poetry, a preamble in verse, orchestrated long after it was written, this point is quite central to why there is contention over what it is saying to us. Simply put, hymns are written with sound messaging and absence of conjecture or projection, specifically written to achieve purpose, normally adoration of something. The question is, if you pick up any old nonsense lyric or abstruse poetry, can you fashion a fine hymn, that can enter a Church’s Hymnal? Technically no - as clearly proved by Parry’s orchestral setting of the preface to Blake’s lengthy narrative poem Milton,
And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon Englands mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On Englands pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold: Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land.
How much is clear? For example, whose sword will not sleep in hand? Perhaps the last two lines can be construed as building Christianity in England, even this is mistaken if Yeshua visited to build Hellenised Jewish Essenic settlement. Would building the Kingdom of Yeshua and Uncle Jo be a Catholic or Protestant Jerusalem? We know today, and as Blake would have himself, the answer to that is clearly no.
I done a project on Blake in school about twelve years ago. 😇
It's a Masonic song?
Yes and perceptive of you Sunil. There are Masonic themes in Blake’s work.
Comments
Brilliant piece by Danny Fink, sums up everything that's wrong with Rishi and the treasury orthodoxy, @Gardenwalker, well worth the few mins to read it.
Do you condemn France action over Renault ?
Simple question - no bullying or coward involved
That’s my position and I will stand by it.
That it is poetry is v important. And - tbh - in a church setting it may be better read as poetry to be considered by a talk.
And of course the first verse hints at either legends of visits here by Joseph of Arithimea etc, or visions around creating a new society or whatever, as it can be tied into the visions in Revelation.
I have not read the history, but I would expect the New Jerusalem to be a theme for the non-comformist tradition in socialism / trade unionism. Perhaps especially for Tony Benn or Donald Soper.
Western official says something halfway sensible
Russian official says something completely outrageous
The truth lies somewhere in the middle? Hmmmm.
Now I really am off. I'm gone, I'm dust!
PB would not exist if that was case
The signal's weird. There must be some intereference or something. There's movement all over the place!
Phil Stewart
@phildstewart
·
19m
(Reuters) - Russia's security policy dictates that the country would only use nuclear weapons if its very existence were threatened, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN.
The comment came amid Western concern that the conflict there could escalate into a nuclear war.
https://twitter.com/phildstewart
Pork barrel politics will only get the Tories so far, spreading economic gains across the country and ensuring millions across marginal benefit rather than a select few in a few constituencies is how to win elections. I fear that the Tories are in for a real drubbing in 2024. The reputation for economic competence will be lost and be very difficult to win back.
And the first and worst bully I met on my first day at prep school kicked off with asking whether I ever let a little bit of wee out in bed?
So your question, ironically, establishes exactly what it seeks to disprove.
do you feel a bit of a tit now? (See what I did there?)
The leader of India has not spent the last 2 years engaged, and particularly the last 3 weeks, in petty political sniping.
Incidentally, France24 have been talking about the Z speech tomorrow, and what he will mention.
They also noted that he may be unhappy about Renault, but that France had now frozen £850m in oligarch assets. Which make sme more annoyed with Macron, not less. And with our Government for not having a strong enough PR narrative to put Macron back in his toybox months ago.
Everything they say is deceptive and cannot be trusted.
They use our naive belief in the truth, to confuse and weaken us.
It is a sad end to a once great civilisation.
However bad things seem to have got in the west, it is not as bad as the misfortune that has befallen Russia.
The history on Blake’s Jerusalem is difficult for us because the historical facts are sketchy. What to do in science when you have gaps that don’t join up, and I regard history as a science, is to make the best educated guess to join up the gaps and view a bigger picture.
To me, the best guesses have Joseph in England (that is a fact) perhaps Jesus before his ministry, and his Mother after His death, also here because it was too dangerous back there. We tend to overlook the sectarian conflict. And how Jesus was born into it.
As an historical person Jesus is certainly not wholly owned by Christianity. Not that his own religion cares to make much fuss of him. He was a Jew, called Yeshua, likely born into an extended family with Hellenised (Greek influenced) views, Why is Christianity so Greek? It was a language most widely used, so Romans utilised Greek to promote their empire, that was essentially a commercial project. The language of the Roman Empire was Greek. The first Christian documents, those of Paul, were written in Greek whilst in Greece. In the sectarian make up of Judea at the time of Yeshua’s birth there is likely to have been contention between Hellenised Jews, looking to adopt Greek Platonic philosophy along with the Torah, versus Orthodox Jews, such as the Pharisee, opposing this approach.
Before the time of his ministry that is recounted thoroughly in Christian documents like The Bible, there is something like a “gap year” of about a decade and a half, where we have little evidence what young Yeshua was up to, other than he was associate of Joseph of Arimathea - this is someone who may have been Yeshua’s relative such as his Mother’s Uncle, in any case for the considerate in loco parentis he showed Yoshua throughout remainder of his life and death I think we can call him Uncle. Uncle Joseph was a wealthy Rabbi, with trading links all around the Mediterranean, Western Europe including Britain, also worked on building projects in pursuit of “the kingdom”. He may have been an Essenes - the sect who wrote the Dead Sea scrolls. It’s widely documented Uncle Joseph swapped the sunny skies of Judea for our clouded hills and pastures green at least once, because he died at Glastonbury. And not simply in exile or in missionary position, its quite possible for someone with his wealth and business links he owned the settlement and the surrounding lands.
If Joseph was a leading Essene, and on the top council representing those views, perhaps Jesus born not just into a family of wealth, religious and political leadership, but born moreover into sectarian disagreement. There are references to his extended family being princesses.
I think this is the Jesus Blake is researching and writing about. And it’s much more exciting also interesting than a lot of peoples projections on it?
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/pressure-on-india-as-russia-west-seek-un-vote-on-ukraine/articleshow/90383696.cms
If Germany alone were the only country in Europe that had done this then it might be a valid criticism. But practically every central and Eastern European country is in the same boat. There is a whole raft of them who get not 50% but 100% of their energy from Russia.
Sitting relatively pretty on our island and throwing rocks at our less fortunate neighbours (as far as energy goes) is a pretty childish thing to do.
That statement needs a bit of modification for it not to be misleading
Christo Grozev
@christogrozev
·
1h
Is it just me or did Peskov appear on the verge of saying "f*** this, can't do this anymore".
https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1506365361385578507
===
Definitely has the air of 'this is all bollx and I know it and I am tired.'
And then once the first half is done - do the second half.
The trouble with Rishi is twofold, I reckon. For a start, he gives the impression of having read the Thatcher books but not understood that Maggie was a much subtler operator than even she admitted. Rolling back the State, sure, but not in the mindless way that the Altanticist right would.
Second, there's not much evidence of him changing tack in response to new data. Events if you like. There's a bit too much of the football manager with one system they play.
My vote in 2024 will depend entirely on the offers from the parties as I have said many times
We never agree Farooq!
The Roman Empire was a commercial empire, and the most common shared tongue around the med was Greek, Roman Business was conducted in Greek. The language of the Roman Empire was Greek,
If I didn’t have a history lesson at school, I didn’t go to school that day. If I had a science lesson or maths lesson or geography lesson next to history lesson I would go to library and read a history book instead.
A lot of people don’t know science though, I never went to a science lesson but I still managed to explain to my girlfriend how dinosaurs turned to oil.
I liked playing rugby as well and getting covered in mud.
To understand what it is saying, imagine Blake sat stark naked in his garden, engaging us in conversation, and hitting us with all those question marks in the first two verses. Genuine questions from someone currently researching, chiefly through oral histories not just in Britain but Europe, old handed down stories of Jesus in England.
And in the second two verses I asked whose sword will not sleep in hand? We can place the hand of Joseph or Jesus around the sword, in answer to the question marks in the first two verses, for Blake’s Jesus was a tale of courage and bravery for being marked for early death at birth by being born into the heart of sectarian conflict.