Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Jamaica could be on the road to republicanism.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did. There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took
I always gave Heathener the benefit of the doubt but I suspect, given the continual deliberately contrary positions, others may be correct. Not that she’s a Russian mole, just a wind up.
Thank you for finally accepting that I am not a Russian mole or a troll. I happen to mask my IP for very good reasons. I just can't expose someone close in Westminster. They would be instantly identified. As a more general point ever since Cambridge Analytica I would never browse the internet without using a VPN. I always reject ALL cookies: a stupid euphemism if ever there was. Cookies are TRACKERS not some delicious biccies I've baked up on the Aga.
I can be a wind up, it's true. Not deliberately as such so I'd ask you and others to hear me out.
First, apart from the occasional seemingly off-beam pov like believing we should back Zelensky and stand up to this bastard Putin with a NFZ (it's a point of view, please everyone get over it), I'm pretty consistently left of centre. But not in a traditional Labour way. I'm anti-capitalist but not anti-semitic and I loathe oligarchies and abuses of power wherever they occur: some of the worst offenders in history have been from the Left. Actually there's probably no 'some' about it. If you really wanted to pigeon hold me then perhaps anarchist is the best adjective. And that's what makes me seem contrary. I am BITTERLY opposed to much of modern society. I hate most capitalist companies and I'm trying to live more and more off-grid in my attitudes and behaviour. And I'm a globalist not a nationalist. Religion and nationhood are responsible for most of the evils of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Second, even if you didn't wish to accept any of that, as a more general point this site would be much the poorer and part of a dystopian nightmare if contrary views were not given air. It's really, really, important that in an age of intolerance and binary thinking (Piers Morgan style) we listen to nuance and complexity.
I don't expect all of you to pay attention to this but I believe you should. And to those who do, thank you.
p.s. I am extremely heartened this morning by the many hoots of derision about the young royals in the Caribbean and the often disdainful views about the monarchy going forward.
It has become an object of ridicule and needs reform.
Except ordinary people in Jamaica seem to be supportive of the monarchy.
If 55% want to remove the monarchy then does that mean 55% of the country is an unaccountable, remote elite?
Most of the non white majority Commonwealth removed the British monarch as head of state decades ago, just the Caribbean finally catching up. No real surprise.
We should focus our efforts on keeping the white majority Commonwealth of mainly British origin as Commonwealth realms ie Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Australia for instance 55% voted to keep the monarchy in 1999
Why on earth should we "focus our efforts" on anything?
If Canada want to retain the Queen as titular head of state, that's fine. If they want to move to another approach, that's also fine - it's their country. It's got absolutely sod all to do with us, and there's no reason whatsoever for even the most ardent British monarchist to push it on other countries.
No monarchists like me have a duty to promote and support maintaining our monarchy in all its realms as far as we can
Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Jamaica could be on the road to republicanism.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did. There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took
I always gave Heathener the benefit of the doubt but I suspect, given the continual deliberately contrary positions, others may be correct. Not that she’s a Russian mole, just a wind up.
Thank you for finally accepting that I am not a Russian mole or a troll. I happen to mask my IP for very good reasons. I just can't expose someone close in Westminster. They would be instantly identified. As a more general point ever since Cambridge Analytica I would never browse the internet without using a VPN. I always reject ALL cookies: a stupid euphemism if ever there was. Cookies are TRACKERS not some delicious biccies I've baked up on the Aga.
I can be a wind up, it's true. Not deliberately as such so I'd ask you and others to hear me out.
First, apart from the occasional seemingly off-beam pov like believing we should back Zelensky and stand up to this bastard Putin with a NFZ (it's a point of view, please everyone get over it), I'm pretty consistently left of centre. But not in a traditional Labour way. I'm anti-capitalist but not anti-semitic and I loathe oligarchies and abuses of power wherever they occur: some of the worst offenders in history have been from the Left. Actually there's probably no 'some' about it. If you really wanted to pigeon hold me then perhaps anarchist is the best adjective. And that's what makes me seem contrary. I am BITTERLY opposed to much of modern society. I hate most capitalist companies and I'm trying to live more and more off-grid in my attitudes and behaviour. And I'm a globalist not a nationalist. Religion and nationhood are responsible for most of the evils of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Second, even if you didn't wish to accept any of that, as a more general point this site would be much the poorer and part of a dystopian nightmare if contrary views were not given air. It's really, really, important that in an age of intolerance and binary thinking (Piers Morgan style) we listen to nuance and complexity.
I don't expect all of you to pay attention to this but I believe you should. And to those who do, thank you.
p.s. I am extremely heartened this morning by the many hoots of derision about the young royals in the Caribbean and the often disdainful views about the monarchy going forward.
It has become an object of ridicule and needs reform.
Except ordinary people in Jamaica seem to be supportive of the monarchy.
If 55% want to remove the monarchy then does that mean 55% of the country is an unaccountable, remote elite?
Most of the non white majority Commonwealth removed the British monarch as head of state decades ago, just the Caribbean finally catching up. No real surprise.
We should focus our efforts on keeping the white majority Commonwealth of mainly British origin as Commonwealth realms ie Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Australia for instance 55% voted to keep the monarchy in 1999
We should do no such thing.
Who the people of Canada, Australia or New Zealand want as their head of state is entirely a matter for them……as Buckingham Palace says….
If we're to pardon witches from centuries past, does that mean we should be drawing up legal cases against those who committed (centuries ago) deeds that are currently crimes?
You don't have to do anything in your country afaik. The likelihood of the government of rsoles for whom so many PBers voted instigating such a thing is zero.
Au contraire - they are likely to do it because it is a public stunt with no blow-back. Their own supporters will grumble about the "woke brigade" but they will continue to vote blindly for their Party even if it cook babies and serves them for breakfast.
Are we being too generous calling this a "PR stunt"?
No. It was a major initiative - independent movement, not a SG thing. Have a look at their websites, very impressive research and presentation. It's made a lot of people here reassess their local history.
I think it is about time the Danes made some apologies for the atrocities under Danelaw. And those marauding Highlanders for what they did to peaceful farmers in the border regions, and what about the Romans and the Mongols. Blimey there are a lot of opportunities for non-apologies that modern politicians can make for things that had nothing to do with them. On the other hand, on the things that they do have direct responsibility for they are strangely tight lipped.
That's enough about pb.com. What did you think of the Russian TV shit?
LOL
The impression I get of Russia is of a great nation humiliating itself. It is an absolute tragedy. Makes me feel a bit better about our own country.
who could have imagined there was a worse country with a worse leader than the UK.
Not quite sure about worse country, Malc, but worse leader..... closer.
OKC, close call for sure
Okay Malc, I know I'm risking some turnip-juice inspired vitriol from you, but there is really zero comparison between Putin and Johnson. Johnson has many, many flaws, but he is near to an angel in comparison to Putin.
Look at the roads Putin has taken his country down. Look at his hamfisted reaction to the Covid crisis. Look at the Litvinenko or Salisbury. Look at the way he has stifled free press in his country; the way he has strangled democracy.
For all Johnson's faults, he is not a Putin. Neither do I think he wants to be.
But to compare characters, you have to have comparable circumstances.
The question is, how would Johnson behave were he a politician in a political and economic system as is Russia's? And, conversely, how would Putin behave were he a politician in a democracy like the UK?
Given Johnson's apparent character, instincts, immorality and evidenced behaviour, I'm not convinced that the Russians would be hugely better off. The big difference ISTM is that Johnson is lazy, doesn't really give a toss about anything other than himself, and wouldn't have such a grip on his subordinates, thus the 'Russian' budget would be wasted on futile vanity projects which Johnson would be filmed in front of. But, just maybe, he wouldn't be so obsessed with expanding his country. So the 'Ukranians' in the analogy might be better off. But lets not kid ourselves that Johnson has very much commitment to the values of our democracy, the rule of law, personal and financial integrity. In a totalitarian political system, Johnson would be milking its benefits for himself; I don't see any evidence that he'd be doing a Gorbachev and be trying to steer his country towards openness and democracy?
For an instance of how someone can start out appearing to be a democratic politician yet slowly turn his country in an authoritarian direction, look at Orban. He's managed it because the culture and institutions standing in his way are far less resilient than ours, given that Hungary has no democratic traditions at all.
Counterfactuals like this are always interesting though of course we'll never know. I suspect if I'd been Russian and still interested in politics I'd have ended up in much the same way - a local provincial official who wasn't corrupt and did his best for people, sufficiently off-message to look a bit unsound to the leadership but not worth cracking down on. It's not a very flattering self-image, but realism is healthy. What do others feel about themselves? Would they have been heroic national champions of resistance to autocracy?
Most people like to be the hero of their own story. They'd be the one running into the fire to rescue the child. They would be the one tackling the terrorist with a narwhal tusk. They'd be the one standing up to the bully.
Most of us are not the hero; we hesitate before going into the burning fire. We run away from the terrorist. We cower from the bully.
Except when we do not.
I have zero doubt that if I was put in a dramatic situation, I'd look after me and my family first. But occasionally, for whatever reason, I might do the opposite.
We also make excuses. Your last question is an interesting one: I'd like to think I'd stand up to autocracy. But then I think of how I have a wife and a young son. And I make excuses.
One of my favourite scenes in the sitcom Peep Show is when Jeremy criticises Mark for his honesty about whether or not he'd have joined the French resistance in the second world war. "It would have been a very difficult decision" says Mark. As viewers, we know what these two are really like. Perhaps Mark wouldn't have been in the resistance, but his honesty about the enormity of the decision is consistent with him being a good person. Jeremy, on the other hand, is a spineless coward who wouldn't have been anywhere near the resistance.
In 2021, we estimate that full-time employees could typically expect to spend around 9.1 times their workplace-based annual earnings on purchasing a home in England. This is a statistically significant increase compared with 2020, when it was 7.9 times their workplace-based annual earnings.
@NickPalmer told us yesterday that he agreed with Ange that Corbyn would have sent weapons to Ukraine, like Johnson did, before the invasion.
How can he possibly believe it?
habibi @habibi_uk From the "Stop the War" statement Corbyn signed in February:
"Instead, the British government has sent arms to Ukraine and deployed further troops to Eastern Europe, moves which serve no purpose other than inflaming tensions and indicating disdain for Russian concerns."
'Habibi' is a wonderful Arabic greeting that the trendies in Beirut and other fashionable Arab cities use to address each other and visitors like me. I think it's roughly used as an American would use 'Honey!'
(A little surprising to see it in such close proximity to 'Corbyn')
In which Roger humbly informs us that he was once a regular visitor to Beirut “and other fashionable Arab cities”
Beirut has not been a fashionable Arab city since my grandmother visited it in the 1970s. (Yes it was all her fault )
I spent a very uncomfortable night on the floor of Beirut airport while some faction or other were shelling the far end of the runway back in the late 80s.
Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Jamaica could be on the road to republicanism.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did. There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took
I always gave Heathener the benefit of the doubt but I suspect, given the continual deliberately contrary positions, others may be correct. Not that she’s a Russian mole, just a wind up.
Thank you for finally accepting that I am not a Russian mole or a troll. I happen to mask my IP for very good reasons. I just can't expose someone close in Westminster. They would be instantly identified. As a more general point ever since Cambridge Analytica I would never browse the internet without using a VPN. I always reject ALL cookies: a stupid euphemism if ever there was. Cookies are TRACKERS not some delicious biccies I've baked up on the Aga.
I can be a wind up, it's true. Not deliberately as such so I'd ask you and others to hear me out.
First, apart from the occasional seemingly off-beam pov like believing we should back Zelensky and stand up to this bastard Putin with a NFZ (it's a point of view, please everyone get over it), I'm pretty consistently left of centre. But not in a traditional Labour way. I'm anti-capitalist but not anti-semitic and I loathe oligarchies and abuses of power wherever they occur: some of the worst offenders in history have been from the Left. Actually there's probably no 'some' about it. If you really wanted to pigeon hold me then perhaps anarchist is the best adjective. And that's what makes me seem contrary. I am BITTERLY opposed to much of modern society. I hate most capitalist companies and I'm trying to live more and more off-grid in my attitudes and behaviour. And I'm a globalist not a nationalist. Religion and nationhood are responsible for most of the evils of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Second, even if you didn't wish to accept any of that, as a more general point this site would be much the poorer and part of a dystopian nightmare if contrary views were not given air. It's really, really, important that in an age of intolerance and binary thinking (Piers Morgan style) we listen to nuance and complexity.
I don't expect all of you to pay attention to this but I believe you should. And to those who do, thank you.
p.s. I am extremely heartened this morning by the many hoots of derision about the young royals in the Caribbean and the often disdainful views about the monarchy going forward.
It has become an object of ridicule and needs reform.
Except ordinary people in Jamaica seem to be supportive of the monarchy.
If 55% want to remove the monarchy then does that mean 55% of the country is an unaccountable, remote elite?
Most of the non white majority Commonwealth removed the British monarch as head of state decades ago, just the Caribbean finally catching up. No real surprise.
We should focus our efforts on keeping the white majority Commonwealth of mainly British origin as Commonwealth realms ie Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Australia for instance 55% voted to keep the monarchy in 1999
Why on earth should we "focus our efforts" on anything?
If Canada want to retain the Queen as titular head of state, that's fine. If they want to move to another approach, that's also fine - it's their country. It's got absolutely sod all to do with us, and there's no reason whatsoever for even the most ardent British monarchist to push it on other countries.
No monarchists like me have a duty to promote and support maintaining our monarchy in all its realms as far as we can
Some charities are too fucking stupid to be supported.
Save the Children has rejected a $1 million dollar donation for Ukraine from Neptune Oil because they are 'committed to working on climate change issues'.
Essex of course has form with witches. Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General, came from N. Essex.
Eh? Not trying to diss you, but I had a friend in Littleport near Ely who once told me of his surprise at finding that Hopkins was a native of that little town. Unless Ely was in Greater Essex?
Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Jamaica could be on the road to republicanism.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did. There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took
I always gave Heathener the benefit of the doubt but I suspect, given the continual deliberately contrary positions, others may be correct. Not that she’s a Russian mole, just a wind up.
Thank you for finally accepting that I am not a Russian mole or a troll. I happen to mask my IP for very good reasons. I just can't expose someone close in Westminster. They would be instantly identified. As a more general point ever since Cambridge Analytica I would never browse the internet without using a VPN. I always reject ALL cookies: a stupid euphemism if ever there was. Cookies are TRACKERS not some delicious biccies I've baked up on the Aga.
I can be a wind up, it's true. Not deliberately as such so I'd ask you and others to hear me out.
First, apart from the occasional seemingly off-beam pov like believing we should back Zelensky and stand up to this bastard Putin with a NFZ (it's a point of view, please everyone get over it), I'm pretty consistently left of centre. But not in a traditional Labour way. I'm anti-capitalist but not anti-semitic and I loathe oligarchies and abuses of power wherever they occur: some of the worst offenders in history have been from the Left. Actually there's probably no 'some' about it. If you really wanted to pigeon hold me then perhaps anarchist is the best adjective. And that's what makes me seem contrary. I am BITTERLY opposed to much of modern society. I hate most capitalist companies and I'm trying to live more and more off-grid in my attitudes and behaviour. And I'm a globalist not a nationalist. Religion and nationhood are responsible for most of the evils of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Second, even if you didn't wish to accept any of that, as a more general point this site would be much the poorer and part of a dystopian nightmare if contrary views were not given air. It's really, really, important that in an age of intolerance and binary thinking (Piers Morgan style) we listen to nuance and complexity.
I don't expect all of you to pay attention to this but I believe you should. And to those who do, thank you.
p.s. I am extremely heartened this morning by the many hoots of derision about the young royals in the Caribbean and the often disdainful views about the monarchy going forward.
It has become an object of ridicule and needs reform.
Except ordinary people in Jamaica seem to be supportive of the monarchy.
If 55% want to remove the monarchy then does that mean 55% of the country is an unaccountable, remote elite?
Most of the non white majority Commonwealth removed the British monarch as head of state decades ago, just the Caribbean finally catching up. No real surprise.
We should focus our efforts on keeping the white majority Commonwealth of mainly British origin as Commonwealth realms ie Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Australia for instance 55% voted to keep the monarchy in 1999
Why on earth should we "focus our efforts" on anything?
If Canada want to retain the Queen as titular head of state, that's fine. If they want to move to another approach, that's also fine - it's their country. It's got absolutely sod all to do with us, and there's no reason whatsoever for even the most ardent British monarchist to push it on other countries.
No monarchists like me have a duty to promote and support maintaining our monarchy in all its realms as far as we can
Essex of course was, in Cromwellian times, Parliamentarian.
Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Jamaica could be on the road to republicanism.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did. There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took
I always gave Heathener the benefit of the doubt but I suspect, given the continual deliberately contrary positions, others may be correct. Not that she’s a Russian mole, just a wind up.
Thank you for finally accepting that I am not a Russian mole or a troll. I happen to mask my IP for very good reasons. I just can't expose someone close in Westminster. They would be instantly identified. As a more general point ever since Cambridge Analytica I would never browse the internet without using a VPN. I always reject ALL cookies: a stupid euphemism if ever there was. Cookies are TRACKERS not some delicious biccies I've baked up on the Aga.
I can be a wind up, it's true. Not deliberately as such so I'd ask you and others to hear me out.
First, apart from the occasional seemingly off-beam pov like believing we should back Zelensky and stand up to this bastard Putin with a NFZ (it's a point of view, please everyone get over it), I'm pretty consistently left of centre. But not in a traditional Labour way. I'm anti-capitalist but not anti-semitic and I loathe oligarchies and abuses of power wherever they occur: some of the worst offenders in history have been from the Left. Actually there's probably no 'some' about it. If you really wanted to pigeon hold me then perhaps anarchist is the best adjective. And that's what makes me seem contrary. I am BITTERLY opposed to much of modern society. I hate most capitalist companies and I'm trying to live more and more off-grid in my attitudes and behaviour. And I'm a globalist not a nationalist. Religion and nationhood are responsible for most of the evils of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Second, even if you didn't wish to accept any of that, as a more general point this site would be much the poorer and part of a dystopian nightmare if contrary views were not given air. It's really, really, important that in an age of intolerance and binary thinking (Piers Morgan style) we listen to nuance and complexity.
I don't expect all of you to pay attention to this but I believe you should. And to those who do, thank you.
p.s. I am extremely heartened this morning by the many hoots of derision about the young royals in the Caribbean and the often disdainful views about the monarchy going forward.
It has become an object of ridicule and needs reform.
Except ordinary people in Jamaica seem to be supportive of the monarchy.
If 55% want to remove the monarchy then does that mean 55% of the country is an unaccountable, remote elite?
Most of the non white majority Commonwealth removed the British monarch as head of state decades ago, just the Caribbean finally catching up. No real surprise.
We should focus our efforts on keeping the white majority Commonwealth of mainly British origin as Commonwealth realms ie Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Australia for instance 55% voted to keep the monarchy in 1999
Why on earth should we "focus our efforts" on anything?
If Canada want to retain the Queen as titular head of state, that's fine. If they want to move to another approach, that's also fine - it's their country. It's got absolutely sod all to do with us, and there's no reason whatsoever for even the most ardent British monarchist to push it on other countries.
No monarchists like me have a duty to promote and support maintaining our monarchy in all its realms as far as we can
I go along with the consensus that we cannot risk implementing a no-fly zone. But I do sometimes wonder if we will look back and wonder why we didn't, given the atrocities taking place.
I go along with the consensus that we cannot risk implementing a no-fly zone. But I do sometimes wonder if we will look back and wonder why we didn't, given the atrocities taking place.
Where I wonder is that PB chorus of how great it is that wages are going up and prices are going up and wages are going up. I wonder if wage growth has hit 8.2%.
The chorus was that its great if wages are sustainably going up more than prices - and that if prices are going up because of and thus less than wages, then that's not a bad thing.
Prices aren't going up due to wage demands, they're going up due to energy costs. There's nothing good in that (except for the green zealots).
Prices have multiple components to their increase. If wages are going up but commodity costs are flat, then we have real wage growth and that is good. If wages aren't going up but commodity costs are rising steeply, then we have real wage decline and that is bad. Is that really hard for you to understand?
Even first year economists understand that wage rises in turn lead to price rises and vice versa. The fact that the UK suffered an exogenous energy price shock simply adds, ahem, fuel to the fire.
Yes but not by the same rate. 🤦♂️
If wages make up 1/3rd of your costs then a 3% increase in wages is ceteris paribus a 1% increase in costs. If commodities make up 1/5th of your costs then a 50% increase in commodity prices is ceteris paribus a 10% increase in your costs.
3% wage growth meaning 1% inflation is not a problem. Heck 2-3% inflation is not a problem. Real standards of living improving only happens by wages growing more than prices and that means wage growth outpacing the cost of other elements of prices - what's happening now is the polar opposite.
Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Jamaica could be on the road to republicanism.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did. There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took
I always gave Heathener the benefit of the doubt but I suspect, given the continual deliberately contrary positions, others may be correct. Not that she’s a Russian mole, just a wind up.
Thank you for finally accepting that I am not a Russian mole or a troll. I happen to mask my IP for very good reasons. I just can't expose someone close in Westminster. They would be instantly identified. As a more general point ever since Cambridge Analytica I would never browse the internet without using a VPN. I always reject ALL cookies: a stupid euphemism if ever there was. Cookies are TRACKERS not some delicious biccies I've baked up on the Aga.
I can be a wind up, it's true. Not deliberately as such so I'd ask you and others to hear me out.
First, apart from the occasional seemingly off-beam pov like believing we should back Zelensky and stand up to this bastard Putin with a NFZ (it's a point of view, please everyone get over it), I'm pretty consistently left of centre. But not in a traditional Labour way. I'm anti-capitalist but not anti-semitic and I loathe oligarchies and abuses of power wherever they occur: some of the worst offenders in history have been from the Left. Actually there's probably no 'some' about it. If you really wanted to pigeon hold me then perhaps anarchist is the best adjective. And that's what makes me seem contrary. I am BITTERLY opposed to much of modern society. I hate most capitalist companies and I'm trying to live more and more off-grid in my attitudes and behaviour. And I'm a globalist not a nationalist. Religion and nationhood are responsible for most of the evils of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Second, even if you didn't wish to accept any of that, as a more general point this site would be much the poorer and part of a dystopian nightmare if contrary views were not given air. It's really, really, important that in an age of intolerance and binary thinking (Piers Morgan style) we listen to nuance and complexity.
I don't expect all of you to pay attention to this but I believe you should. And to those who do, thank you.
p.s. I am extremely heartened this morning by the many hoots of derision about the young royals in the Caribbean and the often disdainful views about the monarchy going forward.
It has become an object of ridicule and needs reform.
Except ordinary people in Jamaica seem to be supportive of the monarchy.
If 55% want to remove the monarchy then does that mean 55% of the country is an unaccountable, remote elite?
Most of the non white majority Commonwealth removed the British monarch as head of state decades ago, just the Caribbean finally catching up. No real surprise.
We should focus our efforts on keeping the white majority Commonwealth of mainly British origin as Commonwealth realms ie Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Australia for instance 55% voted to keep the monarchy in 1999
Why on earth should we "focus our efforts" on anything?
If Canada want to retain the Queen as titular head of state, that's fine. If they want to move to another approach, that's also fine - it's their country. It's got absolutely sod all to do with us, and there's no reason whatsoever for even the most ardent British monarchist to push it on other countries.
No monarchists like me have a duty to promote and support maintaining our monarchy in all its realms as far as we can
Essex of course was, in Cromwellian times, Parliamentarian.
We split our time between royalist Oxford and parliamentarian Essex at present. Though even in the Civil War there were some royalists in Essex.
In 2021, we estimate that full-time employees could typically expect to spend around 9.1 times their workplace-based annual earnings on purchasing a home in England. This is a statistically significant increase compared with 2020, when it was 7.9 times their workplace-based annual earnings.
Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Jamaica could be on the road to republicanism.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did. There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took
I always gave Heathener the benefit of the doubt but I suspect, given the continual deliberately contrary positions, others may be correct. Not that she’s a Russian mole, just a wind up.
Thank you for finally accepting that I am not a Russian mole or a troll. I happen to mask my IP for very good reasons. I just can't expose someone close in Westminster. They would be instantly identified. As a more general point ever since Cambridge Analytica I would never browse the internet without using a VPN. I always reject ALL cookies: a stupid euphemism if ever there was. Cookies are TRACKERS not some delicious biccies I've baked up on the Aga.
I can be a wind up, it's true. Not deliberately as such so I'd ask you and others to hear me out.
First, apart from the occasional seemingly off-beam pov like believing we should back Zelensky and stand up to this bastard Putin with a NFZ (it's a point of view, please everyone get over it), I'm pretty consistently left of centre. But not in a traditional Labour way. I'm anti-capitalist but not anti-semitic and I loathe oligarchies and abuses of power wherever they occur: some of the worst offenders in history have been from the Left. Actually there's probably no 'some' about it. If you really wanted to pigeon hold me then perhaps anarchist is the best adjective. And that's what makes me seem contrary. I am BITTERLY opposed to much of modern society. I hate most capitalist companies and I'm trying to live more and more off-grid in my attitudes and behaviour. And I'm a globalist not a nationalist. Religion and nationhood are responsible for most of the evils of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Second, even if you didn't wish to accept any of that, as a more general point this site would be much the poorer and part of a dystopian nightmare if contrary views were not given air. It's really, really, important that in an age of intolerance and binary thinking (Piers Morgan style) we listen to nuance and complexity.
I don't expect all of you to pay attention to this but I believe you should. And to those who do, thank you.
p.s. I am extremely heartened this morning by the many hoots of derision about the young royals in the Caribbean and the often disdainful views about the monarchy going forward.
It has become an object of ridicule and needs reform.
I thought the particular form of the protests in Belize quite strange.
"Oppressed locals" complaining about a project of a local charity working with 80 local 'sustainable cocoa farms' designed to create sustainable local businesses whilst preserving the local forest, as I understand it.
On the 'BLM' ones in Jamaica, the logic is a bit strained, and BLM imo don't really deserve a hearing until they get a more rounded, comprehensive, analysis. As we saw previously in this country we had "BLMUK" with their strange ideology, and very questionable fundraising practices; for example, where £1m+ was raised without it being revealed who was getting the donations.
Perhaps a little more like "look - there's a convenient background to get some attention for us against", in both cases.
@NickPalmer told us yesterday that he agreed with Ange that Corbyn would have sent weapons to Ukraine, like Johnson did, before the invasion.
How can he possibly believe it?
habibi @habibi_uk From the "Stop the War" statement Corbyn signed in February:
"Instead, the British government has sent arms to Ukraine and deployed further troops to Eastern Europe, moves which serve no purpose other than inflaming tensions and indicating disdain for Russian concerns."
'Habibi' is a wonderful Arabic greeting that the trendies in Beirut and other fashionable Arab cities use to address each other and visitors like me. I think it's roughly used as an American would use 'Honey!'
(A little surprising to see it in such close proximity to 'Corbyn')
In which Roger humbly informs us that he was once a regular visitor to Beirut “and other fashionable Arab cities”
(I've worked there many times).
Nonetheless a strange post from you considering all PBers are treated to a complete itinerary of your every move. (I apologise if you think I'm trying to steal your thunder).
I go along with the consensus that we cannot risk implementing a no-fly zone. But I do sometimes wonder if we will look back and wonder why we didn't, given the atrocities taking place.
Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Jamaica could be on the road to republicanism.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did. There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took
I always gave Heathener the benefit of the doubt but I suspect, given the continual deliberately contrary positions, others may be correct. Not that she’s a Russian mole, just a wind up.
Thank you for finally accepting that I am not a Russian mole or a troll. I happen to mask my IP for very good reasons. I just can't expose someone close in Westminster. They would be instantly identified. As a more general point ever since Cambridge Analytica I would never browse the internet without using a VPN. I always reject ALL cookies: a stupid euphemism if ever there was. Cookies are TRACKERS not some delicious biccies I've baked up on the Aga.
I can be a wind up, it's true. Not deliberately as such so I'd ask you and others to hear me out.
First, apart from the occasional seemingly off-beam pov like believing we should back Zelensky and stand up to this bastard Putin with a NFZ (it's a point of view, please everyone get over it), I'm pretty consistently left of centre. But not in a traditional Labour way. I'm anti-capitalist but not anti-semitic and I loathe oligarchies and abuses of power wherever they occur: some of the worst offenders in history have been from the Left. Actually there's probably no 'some' about it. If you really wanted to pigeon hold me then perhaps anarchist is the best adjective. And that's what makes me seem contrary. I am BITTERLY opposed to much of modern society. I hate most capitalist companies and I'm trying to live more and more off-grid in my attitudes and behaviour. And I'm a globalist not a nationalist. Religion and nationhood are responsible for most of the evils of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Second, even if you didn't wish to accept any of that, as a more general point this site would be much the poorer and part of a dystopian nightmare if contrary views were not given air. It's really, really, important that in an age of intolerance and binary thinking (Piers Morgan style) we listen to nuance and complexity.
I don't expect all of you to pay attention to this but I believe you should. And to those who do, thank you.
p.s. I am extremely heartened this morning by the many hoots of derision about the young royals in the Caribbean and the often disdainful views about the monarchy going forward.
It has become an object of ridicule and needs reform.
Except ordinary people in Jamaica seem to be supportive of the monarchy.
If 55% want to remove the monarchy then does that mean 55% of the country is an unaccountable, remote elite?
Most of the non white majority Commonwealth removed the British monarch as head of state decades ago, just the Caribbean finally catching up. No real surprise.
We should focus our efforts on keeping the white majority Commonwealth of mainly British origin as Commonwealth realms ie Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Australia for instance 55% voted to keep the monarchy in 1999
Why on earth should we "focus our efforts" on anything?
If Canada want to retain the Queen as titular head of state, that's fine. If they want to move to another approach, that's also fine - it's their country. It's got absolutely sod all to do with us, and there's no reason whatsoever for even the most ardent British monarchist to push it on other countries.
No monarchists like me have a duty to promote and support maintaining our monarchy in all its realms as far as we can
You do realise this isn't 1638?
Only on our planet. On HYUFD's? Who knows.
I am always really interested in HYUFD's posts - even when they drive me mad. It's a great example of an obviously intelligent person who builds a mental model from a series of articles of faith, some of which are based in a reality others would recognize, and others that aren't.
It's why we see so much goalpost shifting (because unwelcome facts can't be allowed to shake the articles of faith, so the argument must be moved).
But it is also why we sometimes get a genuine insight - a view that we wouldn't have from our own baseline assumptions. These are often in the area of "why would someone behave like that" - and HUYFD provides the perspective from which that comes.
Some charities are too fucking stupid to be supported.
Save the Children has rejected a $1 million dollar donation for Ukraine from Neptune Oil because they are 'committed to working on climate change issues'.
Fucking idiots.
Surely re-distribution of oil profits is indirectly "working on climate change issues?"
Essex of course has form with witches. Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General, came from N. Essex.
Eh? Not trying to diss you, but I had a friend in Littleport near Ely who once told me of his surprise at finding that Hopkins was a native of that little town. Unless Ely was in Greater Essex?
Looked at Wikipedia...... I really, really should stop getting sidetracked from what I need to finish ....... and such records as there are suggest that he was born in Gt Wenham, Suffolk, the son of the vicar and moved to Manningtree in 1644 when he was in his early 20's.
Some charities are too fucking stupid to be supported.
Save the Children has rejected a $1 million dollar donation for Ukraine from Neptune Oil because they are 'committed to working on climate change issues'.
Fucking idiots.
I hope they will be avoiding evacuating any children by air as part of this commitment.
Essex of course has form with witches. Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General, came from N. Essex.
Eh? Not trying to diss you, but I had a friend in Littleport near Ely who once told me of his surprise at finding that Hopkins was a native of that little town. Unless Ely was in Greater Essex?
It's now in "Greater Cambridgeshire", which has absorbed three other former counties - Isle of Ely, Huntingdonshire, and the Soke of Peterborough.
And as your average Renault falls apart quicker than your average Russian truck, then maybe there's no harm done?
I'm sure the Russian built ones are garbage but normal Renaults are usually in the middle of any reliability survey. They learned a lot from the Nissan partnership. Not as good reliability as the perennial champions like Porsche or Lexus but way better than the absolute shite like Jeep and JLR.
In 2021, we estimate that full-time employees could typically expect to spend around 9.1 times their workplace-based annual earnings on purchasing a home in England. This is a statistically significant increase compared with 2020, when it was 7.9 times their workplace-based annual earnings.
Most households have 2 adults, a fact which is not often taken into account in multiples, and in e.g. my area reasonable traditional terraces - where many people start - are available at some way under 100k for one in good condition, and less for ones with an opportunity to add some sweat equity.
I don’t understand the total pardon of Scotch witches. Is Sturgeon seriously claiming they were ALL innocent and wrongly burned?
1. I’m pretty sure there were a few who actually did boil up frog’s blood and mutter incantations
2. The blanket pardon sends out a terrible signal, basically inviting toothless crones in Cumbernauld to get out the scrying glass and put hexes on the neighbour’s Xbox. Scotland will now see a resurgence of witchcraft that will spread across the UK. Yet another case of the Devolution Settlement not working as planned
That's enough about pb.com. What did you think of the Russian TV shit?
LOL
The impression I get of Russia is of a great nation humiliating itself. It is an absolute tragedy. Makes me feel a bit better about our own country.
who could have imagined there was a worse country with a worse leader than the UK.
Not quite sure about worse country, Malc, but worse leader..... closer.
OKC, close call for sure
Okay Malc, I know I'm risking some turnip-juice inspired vitriol from you, but there is really zero comparison between Putin and Johnson. Johnson has many, many flaws, but he is near to an angel in comparison to Putin.
Look at the roads Putin has taken his country down. Look at his hamfisted reaction to the Covid crisis. Look at the Litvinenko or Salisbury. Look at the way he has stifled free press in his country; the way he has strangled democracy.
For all Johnson's faults, he is not a Putin. Neither do I think he wants to be.
But to compare characters, you have to have comparable circumstances.
The question is, how would Johnson behave were he a politician in a political and economic system as is Russia's? And, conversely, how would Putin behave were he a politician in a democracy like the UK?
Given Johnson's apparent character, instincts, immorality and evidenced behaviour, I'm not convinced that the Russians would be hugely better off. The big difference ISTM is that Johnson is lazy, doesn't really give a toss about anything other than himself, and wouldn't have such a grip on his subordinates, thus the 'Russian' budget would be wasted on futile vanity projects which Johnson would be filmed in front of. But, just maybe, he wouldn't be so obsessed with expanding his country. So the 'Ukranians' in the analogy might be better off. But lets not kid ourselves that Johnson has very much commitment to the values of our democracy, the rule of law, personal and financial integrity. In a totalitarian political system, Johnson would be milking its benefits for himself; I don't see any evidence that he'd be doing a Gorbachev and be trying to steer his country towards openness and democracy?
For an instance of how someone can start out appearing to be a democratic politician yet slowly turn his country in an authoritarian direction, look at Orban. He's managed it because the culture and institutions standing in his way are far less resilient than ours, given that Hungary has no democratic traditions at all.
Counterfactuals like this are always interesting though of course we'll never know. I suspect if I'd been Russian and still interested in politics I'd have ended up in much the same way - a local provincial official who wasn't corrupt and did his best for people, sufficiently off-message to look a bit unsound to the leadership but not worth cracking down on. It's not a very flattering self-image, but realism is healthy. What do others feel about themselves? Would they have been heroic national champions of resistance to autocracy?
Most people like to be the hero of their own story. They'd be the one running into the fire to rescue the child. They would be the one tackling the terrorist with a narwhal tusk. They'd be the one standing up to the bully.
Most of us are not the hero; we hesitate before going into the burning fire. We run away from the terrorist. We cower from the bully.
Except when we do not.
I have zero doubt that if I was put in a dramatic situation, I'd look after me and my family first. But occasionally, for whatever reason, I might do the opposite.
We also make excuses. Your last question is an interesting one: I'd like to think I'd stand up to autocracy. But then I think of how I have a wife and a young son. And I make excuses.
One of my favourite scenes in the sitcom Peep Show is when Jeremy criticises Mark for his honesty about whether or not he'd have joined the French resistance in the second world war. "It would have been a very difficult decision" says Mark. As viewers, we know what these two are really like. Perhaps Mark wouldn't have been in the resistance, but his honesty about the enormity of the decision is consistent with him being a good person. Jeremy, on the other hand, is a spineless coward who wouldn't have been anywhere near the resistance.
Super Hans would have been a maquisard and Johnson would have been a collaborator.
I go along with the consensus that we cannot risk implementing a no-fly zone. But I do sometimes wonder if we will look back and wonder why we didn't, given the atrocities taking place.
Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Jamaica could be on the road to republicanism.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did. There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took
I always gave Heathener the benefit of the doubt but I suspect, given the continual deliberately contrary positions, others may be correct. Not that she’s a Russian mole, just a wind up.
Thank you for finally accepting that I am not a Russian mole or a troll. I happen to mask my IP for very good reasons. I just can't expose someone close in Westminster. They would be instantly identified. As a more general point ever since Cambridge Analytica I would never browse the internet without using a VPN. I always reject ALL cookies: a stupid euphemism if ever there was. Cookies are TRACKERS not some delicious biccies I've baked up on the Aga.
I can be a wind up, it's true. Not deliberately as such so I'd ask you and others to hear me out.
First, apart from the occasional seemingly off-beam pov like believing we should back Zelensky and stand up to this bastard Putin with a NFZ (it's a point of view, please everyone get over it), I'm pretty consistently left of centre. But not in a traditional Labour way. I'm anti-capitalist but not anti-semitic and I loathe oligarchies and abuses of power wherever they occur: some of the worst offenders in history have been from the Left. Actually there's probably no 'some' about it. If you really wanted to pigeon hold me then perhaps anarchist is the best adjective. And that's what makes me seem contrary. I am BITTERLY opposed to much of modern society. I hate most capitalist companies and I'm trying to live more and more off-grid in my attitudes and behaviour. And I'm a globalist not a nationalist. Religion and nationhood are responsible for most of the evils of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Second, even if you didn't wish to accept any of that, as a more general point this site would be much the poorer and part of a dystopian nightmare if contrary views were not given air. It's really, really, important that in an age of intolerance and binary thinking (Piers Morgan style) we listen to nuance and complexity.
I don't expect all of you to pay attention to this but I believe you should. And to those who do, thank you.
p.s. I am extremely heartened this morning by the many hoots of derision about the young royals in the Caribbean and the often disdainful views about the monarchy going forward.
It has become an object of ridicule and needs reform.
Except ordinary people in Jamaica seem to be supportive of the monarchy.
If 55% want to remove the monarchy then does that mean 55% of the country is an unaccountable, remote elite?
Most of the non white majority Commonwealth removed the British monarch as head of state decades ago, just the Caribbean finally catching up. No real surprise.
We should focus our efforts on keeping the white majority Commonwealth of mainly British origin as Commonwealth realms ie Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Australia for instance 55% voted to keep the monarchy in 1999
We should do no such thing.
Who the people of Canada, Australia or New Zealand want as their head of state is entirely a matter for them……as Buckingham Palace says….
Why have Wills and Kate been sent to Belize and Jamaica and are soon to be going to Australia again? As they are campaigning to sell the monarchy in those Commonwealth realms so they keep the Queen and in time Charles and indeed William as Head of State
I don’t understand the total pardon of Scotch witches. Is Sturgeon seriously claiming they were ALL innocent and wrongly burned?
1. I’m pretty sure there were a few who actually did boil up frog’s blood and mutter incantations
2. The blanket pardon sends out a terrible signal, basically inviting toothless crones in Cumbernauld to get out the scrying glass and put hexes on the neighbour’s Xbox. Scotland will now see a resurgence of witchcraft that will spread across the UK. Yet another case of the Devolution Settlement not working as planned
Poland's line is hardening all the time here. They, of course, are bearing the brunt of the refugees too. I think that they are looking at the Russian performance in Ukraine and thinking, we could take that lot. When you see videos like the one downthread the moral cowardice of simply standing by whilst this evil is perpetrated is hard to bear.
If Russia did not have nuclear weapons I suspect this war would already have spread and we might even be involved. But it does and we cower as a result whilst evil reigns. I cannot argue the sense of it but it feels so wrong.
I don’t understand the total pardon of Scotch witches. Is Sturgeon seriously claiming they were ALL innocent and wrongly burned?
1. I’m pretty sure there were a few who actually did boil up frog’s blood and mutter incantations
2. The blanket pardon sends out a terrible signal, basically inviting toothless crones in Cumbernauld to get out the scrying glass and put hexes on the neighbour’s Xbox. Scotland will now see a resurgence of witchcraft that will spread across the UK. Yet another case of the Devolution Settlement not working as planned
they were shamanistic mushroom eaters, mainly. We should honour their memory by legalising DMT.
Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Jamaica could be on the road to republicanism.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did. There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took
I always gave Heathener the benefit of the doubt but I suspect, given the continual deliberately contrary positions, others may be correct. Not that she’s a Russian mole, just a wind up.
Thank you for finally accepting that I am not a Russian mole or a troll. I happen to mask my IP for very good reasons. I just can't expose someone close in Westminster. They would be instantly identified. As a more general point ever since Cambridge Analytica I would never browse the internet without using a VPN. I always reject ALL cookies: a stupid euphemism if ever there was. Cookies are TRACKERS not some delicious biccies I've baked up on the Aga.
I can be a wind up, it's true. Not deliberately as such so I'd ask you and others to hear me out.
First, apart from the occasional seemingly off-beam pov like believing we should back Zelensky and stand up to this bastard Putin with a NFZ (it's a point of view, please everyone get over it), I'm pretty consistently left of centre. But not in a traditional Labour way. I'm anti-capitalist but not anti-semitic and I loathe oligarchies and abuses of power wherever they occur: some of the worst offenders in history have been from the Left. Actually there's probably no 'some' about it. If you really wanted to pigeon hold me then perhaps anarchist is the best adjective. And that's what makes me seem contrary. I am BITTERLY opposed to much of modern society. I hate most capitalist companies and I'm trying to live more and more off-grid in my attitudes and behaviour. And I'm a globalist not a nationalist. Religion and nationhood are responsible for most of the evils of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Second, even if you didn't wish to accept any of that, as a more general point this site would be much the poorer and part of a dystopian nightmare if contrary views were not given air. It's really, really, important that in an age of intolerance and binary thinking (Piers Morgan style) we listen to nuance and complexity.
I don't expect all of you to pay attention to this but I believe you should. And to those who do, thank you.
p.s. I am extremely heartened this morning by the many hoots of derision about the young royals in the Caribbean and the often disdainful views about the monarchy going forward.
It has become an object of ridicule and needs reform.
Except ordinary people in Jamaica seem to be supportive of the monarchy.
If 55% want to remove the monarchy then does that mean 55% of the country is an unaccountable, remote elite?
Most of the non white majority Commonwealth removed the British monarch as head of state decades ago, just the Caribbean finally catching up. No real surprise.
We should focus our efforts on keeping the white majority Commonwealth of mainly British origin as Commonwealth realms ie Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Australia for instance 55% voted to keep the monarchy in 1999
We should do no such thing.
Who the people of Canada, Australia or New Zealand want as their head of state is entirely a matter for them……as Buckingham Palace says….
Why have Wills and Kate been sent to Belize and Jamaica and are soon to be going to Australia again? As they are campaigning to sell the monarchy in those Commonwealth realms so they keep the Queen and in time Charles as Head of State
Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Jamaica could be on the road to republicanism.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did. There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took
I always gave Heathener the benefit of the doubt but I suspect, given the continual deliberately contrary positions, others may be correct. Not that she’s a Russian mole, just a wind up.
Thank you for finally accepting that I am not a Russian mole or a troll. I happen to mask my IP for very good reasons. I just can't expose someone close in Westminster. They would be instantly identified. As a more general point ever since Cambridge Analytica I would never browse the internet without using a VPN. I always reject ALL cookies: a stupid euphemism if ever there was. Cookies are TRACKERS not some delicious biccies I've baked up on the Aga.
I can be a wind up, it's true. Not deliberately as such so I'd ask you and others to hear me out.
First, apart from the occasional seemingly off-beam pov like believing we should back Zelensky and stand up to this bastard Putin with a NFZ (it's a point of view, please everyone get over it), I'm pretty consistently left of centre. But not in a traditional Labour way. I'm anti-capitalist but not anti-semitic and I loathe oligarchies and abuses of power wherever they occur: some of the worst offenders in history have been from the Left. Actually there's probably no 'some' about it. If you really wanted to pigeon hold me then perhaps anarchist is the best adjective. And that's what makes me seem contrary. I am BITTERLY opposed to much of modern society. I hate most capitalist companies and I'm trying to live more and more off-grid in my attitudes and behaviour. And I'm a globalist not a nationalist. Religion and nationhood are responsible for most of the evils of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Second, even if you didn't wish to accept any of that, as a more general point this site would be much the poorer and part of a dystopian nightmare if contrary views were not given air. It's really, really, important that in an age of intolerance and binary thinking (Piers Morgan style) we listen to nuance and complexity.
I don't expect all of you to pay attention to this but I believe you should. And to those who do, thank you.
p.s. I am extremely heartened this morning by the many hoots of derision about the young royals in the Caribbean and the often disdainful views about the monarchy going forward.
It has become an object of ridicule and needs reform.
Except ordinary people in Jamaica seem to be supportive of the monarchy.
If 55% want to remove the monarchy then does that mean 55% of the country is an unaccountable, remote elite?
Most of the non white majority Commonwealth removed the British monarch as head of state decades ago, just the Caribbean finally catching up. No real surprise.
We should focus our efforts on keeping the white majority Commonwealth of mainly British origin as Commonwealth realms ie Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Australia for instance 55% voted to keep the monarchy in 1999
We should do no such thing.
Who the people of Canada, Australia or New Zealand want as their head of state is entirely a matter for them……as Buckingham Palace says….
Why have Wills and Kate been sent to Belize and Jamaica and are soon to be going to Australia again? As they are campaigning to sell the monarchy in those Commonwealth realms so they keep the Queen and in time Charles as Head of State
It's the Jubilee tour isn't it? The one HMQ can't go on.
Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Jamaica could be on the road to republicanism.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did. There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took
I always gave Heathener the benefit of the doubt but I suspect, given the continual deliberately contrary positions, others may be correct. Not that she’s a Russian mole, just a wind up.
Thank you for finally accepting that I am not a Russian mole or a troll. I happen to mask my IP for very good reasons. I just can't expose someone close in Westminster. They would be instantly identified. As a more general point ever since Cambridge Analytica I would never browse the internet without using a VPN. I always reject ALL cookies: a stupid euphemism if ever there was. Cookies are TRACKERS not some delicious biccies I've baked up on the Aga.
I can be a wind up, it's true. Not deliberately as such so I'd ask you and others to hear me out.
First, apart from the occasional seemingly off-beam pov like believing we should back Zelensky and stand up to this bastard Putin with a NFZ (it's a point of view, please everyone get over it), I'm pretty consistently left of centre. But not in a traditional Labour way. I'm anti-capitalist but not anti-semitic and I loathe oligarchies and abuses of power wherever they occur: some of the worst offenders in history have been from the Left. Actually there's probably no 'some' about it. If you really wanted to pigeon hold me then perhaps anarchist is the best adjective. And that's what makes me seem contrary. I am BITTERLY opposed to much of modern society. I hate most capitalist companies and I'm trying to live more and more off-grid in my attitudes and behaviour. And I'm a globalist not a nationalist. Religion and nationhood are responsible for most of the evils of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Second, even if you didn't wish to accept any of that, as a more general point this site would be much the poorer and part of a dystopian nightmare if contrary views were not given air. It's really, really, important that in an age of intolerance and binary thinking (Piers Morgan style) we listen to nuance and complexity.
I don't expect all of you to pay attention to this but I believe you should. And to those who do, thank you.
p.s. I am extremely heartened this morning by the many hoots of derision about the young royals in the Caribbean and the often disdainful views about the monarchy going forward.
It has become an object of ridicule and needs reform.
Except ordinary people in Jamaica seem to be supportive of the monarchy.
If 55% want to remove the monarchy then does that mean 55% of the country is an unaccountable, remote elite?
Most of the non white majority Commonwealth removed the British monarch as head of state decades ago, just the Caribbean finally catching up. No real surprise.
We should focus our efforts on keeping the white majority Commonwealth of mainly British origin as Commonwealth realms ie Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Australia for instance 55% voted to keep the monarchy in 1999
Why on earth should we "focus our efforts" on anything?
If Canada want to retain the Queen as titular head of state, that's fine. If they want to move to another approach, that's also fine - it's their country. It's got absolutely sod all to do with us, and there's no reason whatsoever for even the most ardent British monarchist to push it on other countries.
No monarchists like me have a duty to promote and support maintaining our monarchy in all its realms as far as we can
The move to republics throughout the commonwealth will rapidly increase post HMQ no matter how much you want to live in the past
@NickPalmer told us yesterday that he agreed with Ange that Corbyn would have sent weapons to Ukraine, like Johnson did, before the invasion.
How can he possibly believe it?
habibi @habibi_uk From the "Stop the War" statement Corbyn signed in February:
"Instead, the British government has sent arms to Ukraine and deployed further troops to Eastern Europe, moves which serve no purpose other than inflaming tensions and indicating disdain for Russian concerns."
'Habibi' is a wonderful Arabic greeting that the trendies in Beirut and other fashionable Arab cities use to address each other and visitors like me. I think it's roughly used as an American would use 'Honey!'
(A little surprising to see it in such close proximity to 'Corbyn')
In which Roger humbly informs us that he was once a regular visitor to Beirut “and other fashionable Arab cities”
Some charities are too fucking stupid to be supported.
Save the Children has rejected a $1 million dollar donation for Ukraine from Neptune Oil because they are 'committed to working on climate change issues'.
That's enough about pb.com. What did you think of the Russian TV shit?
LOL
The impression I get of Russia is of a great nation humiliating itself. It is an absolute tragedy. Makes me feel a bit better about our own country.
who could have imagined there was a worse country with a worse leader than the UK.
Not quite sure about worse country, Malc, but worse leader..... closer.
OKC, close call for sure
Okay Malc, I know I'm risking some turnip-juice inspired vitriol from you, but there is really zero comparison between Putin and Johnson. Johnson has many, many flaws, but he is near to an angel in comparison to Putin.
Look at the roads Putin has taken his country down. Look at his hamfisted reaction to the Covid crisis. Look at the Litvinenko or Salisbury. Look at the way he has stifled free press in his country; the way he has strangled democracy.
For all Johnson's faults, he is not a Putin. Neither do I think he wants to be.
But to compare characters, you have to have comparable circumstances.
The question is, how would Johnson behave were he a politician in a political and economic system as is Russia's? And, conversely, how would Putin behave were he a politician in a democracy like the UK?
Given Johnson's apparent character, instincts, immorality and evidenced behaviour, I'm not convinced that the Russians would be hugely better off. The big difference ISTM is that Johnson is lazy, doesn't really give a toss about anything other than himself, and wouldn't have such a grip on his subordinates, thus the 'Russian' budget would be wasted on futile vanity projects which Johnson would be filmed in front of. But, just maybe, he wouldn't be so obsessed with expanding his country. So the 'Ukranians' in the analogy might be better off. But lets not kid ourselves that Johnson has very much commitment to the values of our democracy, the rule of law, personal and financial integrity. In a totalitarian political system, Johnson would be milking its benefits for himself; I don't see any evidence that he'd be doing a Gorbachev and be trying to steer his country towards openness and democracy?
For an instance of how someone can start out appearing to be a democratic politician yet slowly turn his country in an authoritarian direction, look at Orban. He's managed it because the culture and institutions standing in his way are far less resilient than ours, given that Hungary has no democratic traditions at all.
Counterfactuals like this are always interesting though of course we'll never know. I suspect if I'd been Russian and still interested in politics I'd have ended up in much the same way - a local provincial official who wasn't corrupt and did his best for people, sufficiently off-message to look a bit unsound to the leadership but not worth cracking down on. It's not a very flattering self-image, but realism is healthy. What do others feel about themselves? Would they have been heroic national champions of resistance to autocracy?
Most people like to be the hero of their own story. They'd be the one running into the fire to rescue the child. They would be the one tackling the terrorist with a narwhal tusk. They'd be the one standing up to the bully.
Most of us are not the hero; we hesitate before going into the burning fire. We run away from the terrorist. We cower from the bully.
Except when we do not.
I have zero doubt that if I was put in a dramatic situation, I'd look after me and my family first. But occasionally, for whatever reason, I might do the opposite.
We also make excuses. Your last question is an interesting one: I'd like to think I'd stand up to autocracy. But then I think of how I have a wife and a young son. And I make excuses.
One of my favourite scenes in the sitcom Peep Show is when Jeremy criticises Mark for his honesty about whether or not he'd have joined the French resistance in the second world war. "It would have been a very difficult decision" says Mark. As viewers, we know what these two are really like. Perhaps Mark wouldn't have been in the resistance, but his honesty about the enormity of the decision is consistent with him being a good person. Jeremy, on the other hand, is a spineless coward who wouldn't have been anywhere near the resistance.
Super Hans would have been a maquisard and Johnson would have been a collaborator.
Peep Show is the best TV comedy of the 21st century. (I am treating Succession as a drama for the purposes of this statement, although it is also very funny).
@NickPalmer told us yesterday that he agreed with Ange that Corbyn would have sent weapons to Ukraine, like Johnson did, before the invasion.
How can he possibly believe it?
habibi @habibi_uk From the "Stop the War" statement Corbyn signed in February:
"Instead, the British government has sent arms to Ukraine and deployed further troops to Eastern Europe, moves which serve no purpose other than inflaming tensions and indicating disdain for Russian concerns."
'Habibi' is a wonderful Arabic greeting that the trendies in Beirut and other fashionable Arab cities use to address each other and visitors like me. I think it's roughly used as an American would use 'Honey!'
'Habib' is the adjective form of the verb حب (love). Suffixing ي ('habibi') makes it genitive construction so the literal translation is 'my beloved'. Although there is no intimation of intimacy or emotional attachment as would be associated with that phrase in English.
Best used sparingly.
Similar to 'me duck', then ? Or 'my dear old thing'.
I don’t understand the total pardon of Scotch witches. Is Sturgeon seriously claiming they were ALL innocent and wrongly burned?
1. I’m pretty sure there were a few who actually did boil up frog’s blood and mutter incantations
2. The blanket pardon sends out a terrible signal, basically inviting toothless crones in Cumbernauld to get out the scrying glass and put hexes on the neighbour’s Xbox. Scotland will now see a resurgence of witchcraft that will spread across the UK. Yet another case of the Devolution Settlement not working as planned
If we're to pardon witches from centuries past, does that mean we should be drawing up legal cases against those who committed (centuries ago) deeds that are currently crimes?
You don't have to do anything in your country afaik. The likelihood of the government of rsoles for whom so many PBers voted instigating such a thing is zero.
Au contraire - they are likely to do it because it is a public stunt with no blow-back. Their own supporters will grumble about the "woke brigade" but they will continue to vote blindly for their Party even if it cook babies and serves them for breakfast.
Are we being too generous calling this a "PR stunt"?
No. It was a major initiative - independent movement, not a SG thing. Have a look at their websites, very impressive research and presentation. It's made a lot of people here reassess their local history.
I think it is about time the Danes made some apologies for the atrocities under Danelaw. And those marauding Highlanders for what they did to peaceful farmers in the border regions, and what about the Romans and the Mongols. Blimey there are a lot of opportunities for non-apologies that modern politicians can make for things that had nothing to do with them. On the other hand, on the things that they do have direct responsibility for they are strangely tight lipped.
As usual your Scottish history is a bit dodgy.
Derby demand compensation from everyone descended from the Young Pretender.
I don’t understand the total pardon of Scotch witches. Is Sturgeon seriously claiming they were ALL innocent and wrongly burned?
1. I’m pretty sure there were a few who actually did boil up frog’s blood and mutter incantations
2. The blanket pardon sends out a terrible signal, basically inviting toothless crones in Cumbernauld to get out the scrying glass and put hexes on the neighbour’s Xbox. Scotland will now see a resurgence of witchcraft that will spread across the UK. Yet another case of the Devolution Settlement not working as planned
they were shamanistic mushroom eaters, mainly. We should honour their memory by legalising DMT.
Leon shows a remarkable ignorance of what has been very publicly happening on Arthur's Seat and Calton Hill on Beltane for the last 20 years or so. There was a pair still sleeping it off on the much less famous hill behind my house the following morning this year ...
I don’t understand the total pardon of Scotch witches. Is Sturgeon seriously claiming they were ALL innocent and wrongly burned?
1. I’m pretty sure there were a few who actually did boil up frog’s blood and mutter incantations
2. The blanket pardon sends out a terrible signal, basically inviting toothless crones in Cumbernauld to get out the scrying glass and put hexes on the neighbour’s Xbox. Scotland will now see a resurgence of witchcraft that will spread across the UK. Yet another case of the Devolution Settlement not working as planned
Some of them were not very nice, apparently:
Round about the cauldron go; In the poison’d entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter’d venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.
ALL Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Second Witch Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse, Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips, Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-deliver’d by a drab, Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron, For the ingredients of our cauldron.
ALL Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
I wonder where this leaves Johnson's pre-election promise to maintain defence spending increases at 0.5% above inflation.
He couldn't have been... lying... could he?
Ah..welll...bluster...hmmmm....ahhhh.....[aide whispers in his ear] we meant 0.5% above the rate of inflation *at the time we were speaking* [huge fuck you smirk, sweep of the tousled locks]
No... "The government is spending record amounts on x, y, z etc, and I will take no lessons from the right honourable gentleman opposite, who..." etc
@NickPalmer told us yesterday that he agreed with Ange that Corbyn would have sent weapons to Ukraine, like Johnson did, before the invasion.
How can he possibly believe it?
habibi @habibi_uk From the "Stop the War" statement Corbyn signed in February:
"Instead, the British government has sent arms to Ukraine and deployed further troops to Eastern Europe, moves which serve no purpose other than inflaming tensions and indicating disdain for Russian concerns."
'Habibi' is a wonderful Arabic greeting that the trendies in Beirut and other fashionable Arab cities use to address each other and visitors like me. I think it's roughly used as an American would use 'Honey!'
(A little surprising to see it in such close proximity to 'Corbyn')
In which Roger humbly informs us that he was once a regular visitor to Beirut “and other fashionable Arab cities”
(I've worked there many times).
Nonetheless a strange post from you considering all PBers are treated to a complete itinerary of your every move. (I apologise if you think I'm trying to steal your thunder).
I was drawn to your exquisitely ludicrous phrase “fashionable Arab cities”. I didn’t realise Arab cities had degrees of fashionability in the eyes of pink faced euro-gammons such as yourself.
This also suggests there are UNfashionable Arab cities. In which you are forced to work, enabling you to make your comparison. I picture you in disguise, perhaps even a wig, hoping you won’t be spotted by your trendier friends, as you film the horribly unfashionable backstreets of, say, Tunis
If we're to pardon witches from centuries past, does that mean we should be drawing up legal cases against those who committed (centuries ago) deeds that are currently crimes?
You don't have to do anything in your country afaik. The likelihood of the government of rsoles for whom so many PBers voted instigating such a thing is zero.
Au contraire - they are likely to do it because it is a public stunt with no blow-back. Their own supporters will grumble about the "woke brigade" but they will continue to vote blindly for their Party even if it cook babies and serves them for breakfast.
Are we being too generous calling this a "PR stunt"?
No. It was a major initiative - independent movement, not a SG thing. Have a look at their websites, very impressive research and presentation. It's made a lot of people here reassess their local history.
I think it is about time the Danes made some apologies for the atrocities under Danelaw. And those marauding Highlanders for what they did to peaceful farmers in the border regions, and what about the Romans and the Mongols. Blimey there are a lot of opportunities for non-apologies that modern politicians can make for things that had nothing to do with them. On the other hand, on the things that they do have direct responsibility for they are strangely tight lipped.
As usual your Scottish history is a bit dodgy.
Derby demand compensation from everyone descended from the Young Pretender.
Would they have enough, then, to save the soccer team from insolvency ?
Essex of course has form with witches. Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General, came from N. Essex.
Eh? Not trying to diss you, but I had a friend in Littleport near Ely who once told me of his surprise at finding that Hopkins was a native of that little town. Unless Ely was in Greater Essex?
Looked at Wikipedia...... I really, really should stop getting sidetracked from what I need to finish ....... and such records as there are suggest that he was born in Gt Wenham, Suffolk, the son of the vicar and moved to Manningtree in 1644 when he was in his early 20's.
Ah, looks as if you are right. The Littlepudlians, or at least the ones in the history society rather than the pub,. agree with you - but there is a family link.
One point we should be making to the fence sitters in the Gulf.
Egypt is very reliant on food imports from Russia and Ukraine and could well be facing big food price rises. That could mean major instability there. And possibly wider instability in the Arab world.
I don’t understand the total pardon of Scotch witches. Is Sturgeon seriously claiming they were ALL innocent and wrongly burned?
1. I’m pretty sure there were a few who actually did boil up frog’s blood and mutter incantations
2. The blanket pardon sends out a terrible signal, basically inviting toothless crones in Cumbernauld to get out the scrying glass and put hexes on the neighbour’s Xbox. Scotland will now see a resurgence of witchcraft that will spread across the UK. Yet another case of the Devolution Settlement not working as planned
Some of them were not very nice, apparently:
Round about the cauldron go; In the poison’d entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter’d venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.
ALL Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Second Witch Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse, Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips, Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-deliver’d by a drab, Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron, For the ingredients of our cauldron.
ALL Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Definitely not a Delia recipe!
Dunno about that; funny things go on in Norfolk. On the other hand, looking at Norwich City's results this year....
55% Republic, 30% Queen to remain HoS, 15% don't know/care.
Poll from 2 years ago. Given it is non white, non British origin majority unlike say Australia or Canada or New Zealand hardly that surprising and realistically those are the only nations we can keep as Commonwealth realms going forward even if they stay in the Commonwealth.
Though 55% is hardly a landslide
What's the point of a White-only Commonwealth? Aussies and NZers and Canadians have their own independent views, and losing the other Commonwealth members is a disastrous blow to what some like to call soft power.
The vast majority of Commonwealth nations are already Republics or have their own heads of state. I was talking Commonwealth realms.
We will not be losing them from the Commonwealth, Barbados is staying in the Commonwealth too. Jamaica is tiny and will have zero impact on our soft power whether a Commonwealth realm or not. The vast majority of the population of the remaining Commonwealth realms live in white majority nations of mainly British origin ie Australia, Canada and New Zealand and will likely continue to do so.
Australia itself voted 55% to keep the monarchy in 1999, in Canada both Trudeau and the Conservatives are monarchists
"British". You're forgetting the Irish in Australia. And 2022 is not 1999, sill less so when HMtQ moves on.
In any case, the Commonwealth is nothing to do with royalty.
Some of them Northern Irish. The majority of Australians have British or Northern Irish ancestry still.
It does not matter if it is 2032, or 2092, culturally, Canada, Australia and New Zealand will still be culturally closer to the UK than any other nations on earth.
The Commonwealth realms are still to do with royalty
Ever been to Canada or Australia?
77% of Canadians and 86% of Australians are still white and most of them still of British or Northern Irish ancestry
But mentally they are very American. The Aussies had a very bad fright during WW2 when Churchill let them down (again) and have never been that British since.
Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Jamaica could be on the road to republicanism.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did. There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took
I always gave Heathener the benefit of the doubt but I suspect, given the continual deliberately contrary positions, others may be correct. Not that she’s a Russian mole, just a wind up.
Thank you for finally accepting that I am not a Russian mole or a troll. I happen to mask my IP for very good reasons. I just can't expose someone close in Westminster. They would be instantly identified. As a more general point ever since Cambridge Analytica I would never browse the internet without using a VPN. I always reject ALL cookies: a stupid euphemism if ever there was. Cookies are TRACKERS not some delicious biccies I've baked up on the Aga.
I can be a wind up, it's true. Not deliberately as such so I'd ask you and others to hear me out.
First, apart from the occasional seemingly off-beam pov like believing we should back Zelensky and stand up to this bastard Putin with a NFZ (it's a point of view, please everyone get over it), I'm pretty consistently left of centre. But not in a traditional Labour way. I'm anti-capitalist but not anti-semitic and I loathe oligarchies and abuses of power wherever they occur: some of the worst offenders in history have been from the Left. Actually there's probably no 'some' about it. If you really wanted to pigeon hold me then perhaps anarchist is the best adjective. And that's what makes me seem contrary. I am BITTERLY opposed to much of modern society. I hate most capitalist companies and I'm trying to live more and more off-grid in my attitudes and behaviour. And I'm a globalist not a nationalist. Religion and nationhood are responsible for most of the evils of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Second, even if you didn't wish to accept any of that, as a more general point this site would be much the poorer and part of a dystopian nightmare if contrary views were not given air. It's really, really, important that in an age of intolerance and binary thinking (Piers Morgan style) we listen to nuance and complexity.
I don't expect all of you to pay attention to this but I believe you should. And to those who do, thank you.
p.s. I am extremely heartened this morning by the many hoots of derision about the young royals in the Caribbean and the often disdainful views about the monarchy going forward.
It has become an object of ridicule and needs reform.
Except ordinary people in Jamaica seem to be supportive of the monarchy.
If 55% want to remove the monarchy then does that mean 55% of the country is an unaccountable, remote elite?
Most of the non white majority Commonwealth removed the British monarch as head of state decades ago, just the Caribbean finally catching up. No real surprise.
We should focus our efforts on keeping the white majority Commonwealth of mainly British origin as Commonwealth realms ie Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Australia for instance 55% voted to keep the monarchy in 1999
Why on earth should we "focus our efforts" on anything?
If Canada want to retain the Queen as titular head of state, that's fine. If they want to move to another approach, that's also fine - it's their country. It's got absolutely sod all to do with us, and there's no reason whatsoever for even the most ardent British monarchist to push it on other countries.
No monarchists like me have a duty to promote and support maintaining our monarchy in all its realms as far as we can
The move to republics throughout the commonwealth will rapidly increase post HMQ no matter how much you want to live in the past
Nobody can lose as many Commonwealth realms as the Queen has, not even Charles.
Only 15 out of 54 Commonwealth nations still have the British monarch as Head of State as we near the end of her reign. Barbados just the latest to go in her reign.
As I said realistically the white British origin majority ones are the most likely to stay
Poland's line is hardening all the time here. They, of course, are bearing the brunt of the refugees too. I think that they are looking at the Russian performance in Ukraine and thinking, we could take that lot. When you see videos like the one downthread the moral cowardice of simply standing by whilst this evil is perpetrated is hard to bear.
If Russia did not have nuclear weapons I suspect this war would already have spread and we might even be involved. But it does and we cower as a result whilst evil reigns. I cannot argue the sense of it but it feels so wrong.
I get the feeling that if Russia did not have Nuclear weapons and NATO had become involved, NATO troops would be in Moscow already. There's simply no comparison, on a conventional basis, between the kit of NATO/US versus what Russia seem to wheel-out. We need to reassess our assumption Russia is the USSR with their huge Red Army. They're nothing more than a middle-ranking (at best) conventional military power. All this toss about Russian hypersonic this and that sounds like Hitler with his "Superweapons" at the fag-end of WW2. Sure he may have one or two, with some nice prototypes or things on the drawing board. But really? The F35 alone has cost the best part of half-a-trillion dollars to develop. So much that even the US has to bring in partners to make it viable. Russia cannot afford large-scale deployment of advanced weaponry, considering what it takes to even get this stuff off the drawing board.
The ONLY thing they have is their nukes. Which obviously goes a long way. (Added to which their Nukes are probably being maintained using glue and sticky tape. I'd be surprised if even half their deployed Nukes would even work).
55% Republic, 30% Queen to remain HoS, 15% don't know/care.
Poll from 2 years ago. Given it is non white, non British origin majority unlike say Australia or Canada or New Zealand hardly that surprising and realistically those are the only nations we can keep as Commonwealth realms going forward even if they stay in the Commonwealth.
Though 55% is hardly a landslide
What's the point of a White-only Commonwealth? Aussies and NZers and Canadians have their own independent views, and losing the other Commonwealth members is a disastrous blow to what some like to call soft power.
The vast majority of Commonwealth nations are already Republics or have their own heads of state. I was talking Commonwealth realms.
We will not be losing them from the Commonwealth, Barbados is staying in the Commonwealth too. Jamaica is tiny and will have zero impact on our soft power whether a Commonwealth realm or not. The vast majority of the population of the remaining Commonwealth realms live in white majority nations of mainly British origin ie Australia, Canada and New Zealand and will likely continue to do so.
Australia itself voted 55% to keep the monarchy in 1999, in Canada both Trudeau and the Conservatives are monarchists
"British". You're forgetting the Irish in Australia. And 2022 is not 1999, sill less so when HMtQ moves on.
In any case, the Commonwealth is nothing to do with royalty.
Some of them Northern Irish. The majority of Australians have British or Northern Irish ancestry still.
It does not matter if it is 2032, or 2092, culturally, Canada, Australia and New Zealand will still be culturally closer to the UK than any other nations on earth.
The Commonwealth realms are still to do with royalty
Ever been to Canada or Australia?
77% of Canadians and 86% of Australians are still white and most of them still of British or Northern Irish ancestry
But mentally they are very American. The Aussies had a very bad fright during WW2 when Churchill let them down (again) and have never been that British since.
No they aren't and Canadians and New Zealanders certainly aren't. Plus Australians voted 55% to keep the monarchy in 1999
The Kremlin says a NATO peacekeeping mission to Ukraine, which Poland plans to propose on Thursday, “would be a very reckless and extremely dangerous decision.” Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, warned in comments to reporters on Wednesday that “any possible contact between our military and the NATO military can lead to quite understandable, hard-to-repair consequences.”
When Nicola officially launched one of the vessels (in 2017) they painted on the windows to improve the photo...It's 2022 and the half-built ferries are still rusting away in the state-owned shipyard.
One point we should be making to the fence sitters in the Gulf.
Egypt is very reliant on food imports from Russia and Ukraine and could well be facing big food price rises. That could mean major instability there. And possibly wider instability in the Arab world.
That's actually irrelevant because the Ukrainian wheat exports are going to be minimal this year. Crops need to be planted now and it just isn't happening.
Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Jamaica could be on the road to republicanism.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did. There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took
I always gave Heathener the benefit of the doubt but I suspect, given the continual deliberately contrary positions, others may be correct. Not that she’s a Russian mole, just a wind up.
Thank you for finally accepting that I am not a Russian mole or a troll. I happen to mask my IP for very good reasons. I just can't expose someone close in Westminster. They would be instantly identified. As a more general point ever since Cambridge Analytica I would never browse the internet without using a VPN. I always reject ALL cookies: a stupid euphemism if ever there was. Cookies are TRACKERS not some delicious biccies I've baked up on the Aga.
I can be a wind up, it's true. Not deliberately as such so I'd ask you and others to hear me out.
First, apart from the occasional seemingly off-beam pov like believing we should back Zelensky and stand up to this bastard Putin with a NFZ (it's a point of view, please everyone get over it), I'm pretty consistently left of centre. But not in a traditional Labour way. I'm anti-capitalist but not anti-semitic and I loathe oligarchies and abuses of power wherever they occur: some of the worst offenders in history have been from the Left. Actually there's probably no 'some' about it. If you really wanted to pigeon hold me then perhaps anarchist is the best adjective. And that's what makes me seem contrary. I am BITTERLY opposed to much of modern society. I hate most capitalist companies and I'm trying to live more and more off-grid in my attitudes and behaviour. And I'm a globalist not a nationalist. Religion and nationhood are responsible for most of the evils of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Second, even if you didn't wish to accept any of that, as a more general point this site would be much the poorer and part of a dystopian nightmare if contrary views were not given air. It's really, really, important that in an age of intolerance and binary thinking (Piers Morgan style) we listen to nuance and complexity.
I don't expect all of you to pay attention to this but I believe you should. And to those who do, thank you.
p.s. I am extremely heartened this morning by the many hoots of derision about the young royals in the Caribbean and the often disdainful views about the monarchy going forward.
It has become an object of ridicule and needs reform.
Except ordinary people in Jamaica seem to be supportive of the monarchy.
If 55% want to remove the monarchy then does that mean 55% of the country is an unaccountable, remote elite?
Most of the non white majority Commonwealth removed the British monarch as head of state decades ago, just the Caribbean finally catching up. No real surprise.
We should focus our efforts on keeping the white majority Commonwealth of mainly British origin as Commonwealth realms ie Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Australia for instance 55% voted to keep the monarchy in 1999
Why on earth should we "focus our efforts" on anything?
If Canada want to retain the Queen as titular head of state, that's fine. If they want to move to another approach, that's also fine - it's their country. It's got absolutely sod all to do with us, and there's no reason whatsoever for even the most ardent British monarchist to push it on other countries.
No monarchists like me have a duty to promote and support maintaining our monarchy in all its realms as far as we can
The move to republics throughout the commonwealth will rapidly increase post HMQ no matter how much you want to live in the past
Nobody can lose as many Commonwealth realms as the Queen has, not even Charles.
Only 16 out of 52 Commonwealth nations still have the British monarch as Head of State as we near the end of her reign. Barbados just the latest to go in her reign.
As I said realistically the white British origin majority ones are the most likely to stay
Falkland Islands? Not going to become Las Malvinas?
I don’t understand the total pardon of Scotch witches. Is Sturgeon seriously claiming they were ALL innocent and wrongly burned?
1. I’m pretty sure there were a few who actually did boil up frog’s blood and mutter incantations
2. The blanket pardon sends out a terrible signal, basically inviting toothless crones in Cumbernauld to get out the scrying glass and put hexes on the neighbour’s Xbox. Scotland will now see a resurgence of witchcraft that will spread across the UK. Yet another case of the Devolution Settlement not working as planned
Some of them were not very nice, apparently:
Round about the cauldron go; In the poison’d entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter’d venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.
ALL Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Second Witch Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse, Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips, Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-deliver’d by a drab, Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron, For the ingredients of our cauldron.
ALL Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Definitely not a Delia recipe!
Shakespeare is to historical fact what Jimmy Carr is to subtlety. Besides, Leon is in pay of the site to generate hits and posts because he doesn’t really want real witches burned at the stake. Does he?
We should concentrate on the financial statement and PMQs. This could be a key day for political betting, as Mike suggests in header.
I think the opposite from Mike is saying, the papers have been very negative towards this Tory budget for a few days, I sense they are under pressure to deliver what they can’t actually deliver. Rabbit won’t be in the hat because you might need to eat her when really hungry in a years time.
The statement is not just measures he will announce, but statements on direction, that if proved to be wrong/lie shreds credibility. Growth. Borrowing. Inflation with interest rates attached like elastic. Etc. positive news on import exports post Brexit will also be important to hear
55% Republic, 30% Queen to remain HoS, 15% don't know/care.
Poll from 2 years ago. Given it is non white, non British origin majority unlike say Australia or Canada or New Zealand hardly that surprising and realistically those are the only nations we can keep as Commonwealth realms going forward even if they stay in the Commonwealth.
Though 55% is hardly a landslide
What's the point of a White-only Commonwealth? Aussies and NZers and Canadians have their own independent views, and losing the other Commonwealth members is a disastrous blow to what some like to call soft power.
The vast majority of Commonwealth nations are already Republics or have their own heads of state. I was talking Commonwealth realms.
We will not be losing them from the Commonwealth, Barbados is staying in the Commonwealth too. Jamaica is tiny and will have zero impact on our soft power whether a Commonwealth realm or not. The vast majority of the population of the remaining Commonwealth realms live in white majority nations of mainly British origin ie Australia, Canada and New Zealand and will likely continue to do so.
Australia itself voted 55% to keep the monarchy in 1999, in Canada both Trudeau and the Conservatives are monarchists
"British". You're forgetting the Irish in Australia. And 2022 is not 1999, sill less so when HMtQ moves on.
In any case, the Commonwealth is nothing to do with royalty.
Some of them Northern Irish. The majority of Australians have British or Northern Irish ancestry still.
It does not matter if it is 2032, or 2092, culturally, Canada, Australia and New Zealand will still be culturally closer to the UK than any other nations on earth.
The Commonwealth realms are still to do with royalty
Ever been to Canada or Australia?
77% of Canadians and 86% of Australians are still white and most of them still of British or Northern Irish ancestry
But mentally they are very American. The Aussies had a very bad fright during WW2 when Churchill let them down (again) and have never been that British since.
No they aren't and Canadians and New Zealanders certainly aren't. Plus Australians voted 55% to keep the monarchy in 1999
1999? That's almost as far back as 1638 in modern politics.
The Aussies and Canucks don't cringe and grovel to royalty.
Which government would be better at managing the economy?
Con gov led by Johnson: 31% (+4) Lab gov led by Starmer: 22% (-2) Neither: 26% (-1)
(Changes from 17 Feb)
YouGov
Which government would be better at improving living standards?
Lab gov led by Keir Starmer: 31% (+1) Con gov led by Boris Johnson: 22% (+3) Neither: 29% (-2)
(Changes from 17 Feb)
Strange, but not surprising. "The economy" is treated as something ethereal and theoretical. What exactly is "managing the economy" other than "improving living standards"?
I don’t understand the total pardon of Scotch witches. Is Sturgeon seriously claiming they were ALL innocent and wrongly burned?
1. I’m pretty sure there were a few who actually did boil up frog’s blood and mutter incantations
2. The blanket pardon sends out a terrible signal, basically inviting toothless crones in Cumbernauld to get out the scrying glass and put hexes on the neighbour’s Xbox. Scotland will now see a resurgence of witchcraft that will spread across the UK. Yet another case of the Devolution Settlement not working as planned
Some of them were not very nice, apparently:
Round about the cauldron go; In the poison’d entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter’d venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.
ALL Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Second Witch Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse, Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips, Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-deliver’d by a drab, Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron, For the ingredients of our cauldron.
ALL Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Definitely not a Delia recipe!
Normally this sort of thing irritates me - but I'm relaxed about the pardon of witches, though of the list of things the Scottish government might want to apologise about I don't think it ranks particularly highly.
The reason this doesn't irritate me is that - based on my understanding of the world - I think it highly likely that none of the individuals found guilty of witchcraft were guilty. They were genuine miscarriages of justice. Whereas the likes of Alan Turing: much as we may not like it, he was, it was likely, guilty of breaking the law of the land at the time. We might well find cause to regret that the law was in place, but it makes no sense to pardon him.
@NickPalmer told us yesterday that he agreed with Ange that Corbyn would have sent weapons to Ukraine, like Johnson did, before the invasion.
How can he possibly believe it?
habibi @habibi_uk From the "Stop the War" statement Corbyn signed in February:
"Instead, the British government has sent arms to Ukraine and deployed further troops to Eastern Europe, moves which serve no purpose other than inflaming tensions and indicating disdain for Russian concerns."
'Habibi' is a wonderful Arabic greeting that the trendies in Beirut and other fashionable Arab cities use to address each other and visitors like me. I think it's roughly used as an American would use 'Honey!'
(A little surprising to see it in such close proximity to 'Corbyn')
In which Roger humbly informs us that he was once a regular visitor to Beirut “and other fashionable Arab cities”
(I've worked there many times).
Nonetheless a strange post from you considering all PBers are treated to a complete itinerary of your every move. (I apologise if you think I'm trying to steal your thunder).
I was drawn to your exquisitely ludicrous phrase “fashionable Arab cities”. I didn’t realise Arab cities had degrees of fashionability in the eyes of pink faced euro-gammons such as yourself.
This also suggests there are UNfashionable Arab cities. In which you are forced to work, enabling you to make your comparison. I picture you in disguise, perhaps even a wig, hoping you won’t be spotted by your trendier friends, as you film the horribly unfashionable backstreets of, say, Tunis
I have in fact shot in Tunis. I did the last (I think) commercial for the Tunisian tourist board. Beirut is a magnificent city. If you haven't been you should go. Bullet riddled buildings surrounded bya thriving night life a tri lingual population and history everywhere.
Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Jamaica could be on the road to republicanism.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did. There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took
I always gave Heathener the benefit of the doubt but I suspect, given the continual deliberately contrary positions, others may be correct. Not that she’s a Russian mole, just a wind up.
Thank you for finally accepting that I am not a Russian mole or a troll. I happen to mask my IP for very good reasons. I just can't expose someone close in Westminster. They would be instantly identified. As a more general point ever since Cambridge Analytica I would never browse the internet without using a VPN. I always reject ALL cookies: a stupid euphemism if ever there was. Cookies are TRACKERS not some delicious biccies I've baked up on the Aga.
I can be a wind up, it's true. Not deliberately as such so I'd ask you and others to hear me out.
First, apart from the occasional seemingly off-beam pov like believing we should back Zelensky and stand up to this bastard Putin with a NFZ (it's a point of view, please everyone get over it), I'm pretty consistently left of centre. But not in a traditional Labour way. I'm anti-capitalist but not anti-semitic and I loathe oligarchies and abuses of power wherever they occur: some of the worst offenders in history have been from the Left. Actually there's probably no 'some' about it. If you really wanted to pigeon hold me then perhaps anarchist is the best adjective. And that's what makes me seem contrary. I am BITTERLY opposed to much of modern society. I hate most capitalist companies and I'm trying to live more and more off-grid in my attitudes and behaviour. And I'm a globalist not a nationalist. Religion and nationhood are responsible for most of the evils of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Second, even if you didn't wish to accept any of that, as a more general point this site would be much the poorer and part of a dystopian nightmare if contrary views were not given air. It's really, really, important that in an age of intolerance and binary thinking (Piers Morgan style) we listen to nuance and complexity.
I don't expect all of you to pay attention to this but I believe you should. And to those who do, thank you.
p.s. I am extremely heartened this morning by the many hoots of derision about the young royals in the Caribbean and the often disdainful views about the monarchy going forward.
It has become an object of ridicule and needs reform.
Except ordinary people in Jamaica seem to be supportive of the monarchy.
If 55% want to remove the monarchy then does that mean 55% of the country is an unaccountable, remote elite?
Most of the non white majority Commonwealth removed the British monarch as head of state decades ago, just the Caribbean finally catching up. No real surprise.
We should focus our efforts on keeping the white majority Commonwealth of mainly British origin as Commonwealth realms ie Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Australia for instance 55% voted to keep the monarchy in 1999
Why on earth should we "focus our efforts" on anything?
If Canada want to retain the Queen as titular head of state, that's fine. If they want to move to another approach, that's also fine - it's their country. It's got absolutely sod all to do with us, and there's no reason whatsoever for even the most ardent British monarchist to push it on other countries.
No monarchists like me have a duty to promote and support maintaining our monarchy in all its realms as far as we can
The move to republics throughout the commonwealth will rapidly increase post HMQ no matter how much you want to live in the past
Nobody can lose as many Commonwealth realms as the Queen has, not even Charles.
Only 16 out of 52 Commonwealth nations still have the British monarch as Head of State as we near the end of her reign. Barbados just the latest to go in her reign.
As I said realistically the white British origin majority ones are the most likely to stay
I expect Australia and New Zealand to leave within a short time, post HMQ
If you have ever travelled there you would see just how archaic a British Monarch is
@NickPalmer told us yesterday that he agreed with Ange that Corbyn would have sent weapons to Ukraine, like Johnson did, before the invasion.
How can he possibly believe it?
habibi @habibi_uk From the "Stop the War" statement Corbyn signed in February:
"Instead, the British government has sent arms to Ukraine and deployed further troops to Eastern Europe, moves which serve no purpose other than inflaming tensions and indicating disdain for Russian concerns."
'Habibi' is a wonderful Arabic greeting that the trendies in Beirut and other fashionable Arab cities use to address each other and visitors like me. I think it's roughly used as an American would use 'Honey!'
(A little surprising to see it in such close proximity to 'Corbyn')
In which Roger humbly informs us that he was once a regular visitor to Beirut “and other fashionable Arab cities”
(I've worked there many times).
Nonetheless a strange post from you considering all PBers are treated to a complete itinerary of your every move. (I apologise if you think I'm trying to steal your thunder).
I was drawn to your exquisitely ludicrous phrase “fashionable Arab cities”. I didn’t realise Arab cities had degrees of fashionability in the eyes of pink faced euro-gammons such as yourself.
This also suggests there are UNfashionable Arab cities. In which you are forced to work, enabling you to make your comparison. I picture you in disguise, perhaps even a wig, hoping you won’t be spotted by your trendier friends, as you film the horribly unfashionable backstreets of, say, Tunis
I have in fact shot in Tunis. I did the last (I think) commercial for the Tunisian tourist board. Beirut is a magnificent city. If you haven't been you should go. Bullet riddled buildings surrounded bya thriving night life a tri lingual population and history everywhere.
The old town of Tunis is very pleasant in a low-key way. So is Carthage.
Poland's line is hardening all the time here. They, of course, are bearing the brunt of the refugees too. I think that they are looking at the Russian performance in Ukraine and thinking, we could take that lot. When you see videos like the one downthread the moral cowardice of simply standing by whilst this evil is perpetrated is hard to bear.
If Russia did not have nuclear weapons I suspect this war would already have spread and we might even be involved. But it does and we cower as a result whilst evil reigns. I cannot argue the sense of it but it feels so wrong.
I get the feeling that if Russia did not have Nuclear weapons and NATO had become involved, NATO troops would be in Moscow already. There's simply no comparison, on a conventional basis, between the kit of NATO/US versus what Russia seem to wheel-out. We need to reassess our assumption Russia is the USSR with their huge Red Army. They're nothing more than a middle-ranking (at best) conventional military power. All this toss about Russian hypersonic this and that sounds like Hitler with his "Superweapons" at the fag-end of WW2. Sure he may have one or two, with some nice prototypes or things on the drawing board. But really? The F35 alone has cost the best part of half-a-trillion dollars to develop. So much that even the US has to bring in partners to make it viable. Russia cannot afford large-scale deployment of advanced weaponry, considering what it takes to even get this stuff off the drawing board.
The ONLY thing they have is their nukes. Which obviously goes a long way. (Added to which their Nukes are probably being maintained using glue and sticky tape. I'd be surprised if even half their deployed Nukes would even work).
Poland's line is hardening all the time here. They, of course, are bearing the brunt of the refugees too. I think that they are looking at the Russian performance in Ukraine and thinking, we could take that lot. When you see videos like the one downthread the moral cowardice of simply standing by whilst this evil is perpetrated is hard to bear.
If Russia did not have nuclear weapons I suspect this war would already have spread and we might even be involved. But it does and we cower as a result whilst evil reigns. I cannot argue the sense of it but it feels so wrong.
I get the feeling that if Russia did not have Nuclear weapons and NATO had become involved, NATO troops would be in Moscow already. There's simply no comparison, on a conventional basis, between the kit of NATO/US versus what Russia seem to wheel-out. We need to reassess our assumption Russia is the USSR with their huge Red Army. They're nothing more than a middle-ranking (at best) conventional military power. All this toss about Russian hypersonic this and that sounds like Hitler with his "Superweapons" at the fag-end of WW2. Sure he may have one or two, with some nice prototypes or things on the drawing board. But really? The F35 alone has cost the best part of half-a-trillion dollars to develop. So much that even the US has to bring in partners to make it viable. Russia cannot afford large-scale deployment of advanced weaponry, considering what it takes to even get this stuff off the drawing board.
The ONLY thing they have is their nukes. Which obviously goes a long way. (Added to which their Nukes are probably being maintained using glue and sticky tape. I'd be surprised if even half their deployed Nukes would even work).
The key difference is that in the US the magnificent dachas belong to those who run or own the defence industry but in Russia they belong to the politicians and the generals.
55% Republic, 30% Queen to remain HoS, 15% don't know/care.
Poll from 2 years ago. Given it is non white, non British origin majority unlike say Australia or Canada or New Zealand hardly that surprising and realistically those are the only nations we can keep as Commonwealth realms going forward even if they stay in the Commonwealth.
Though 55% is hardly a landslide
What's the point of a White-only Commonwealth? Aussies and NZers and Canadians have their own independent views, and losing the other Commonwealth members is a disastrous blow to what some like to call soft power.
The vast majority of Commonwealth nations are already Republics or have their own heads of state. I was talking Commonwealth realms.
We will not be losing them from the Commonwealth, Barbados is staying in the Commonwealth too. Jamaica is tiny and will have zero impact on our soft power whether a Commonwealth realm or not. The vast majority of the population of the remaining Commonwealth realms live in white majority nations of mainly British origin ie Australia, Canada and New Zealand and will likely continue to do so.
Australia itself voted 55% to keep the monarchy in 1999, in Canada both Trudeau and the Conservatives are monarchists
"British". You're forgetting the Irish in Australia. And 2022 is not 1999, sill less so when HMtQ moves on.
In any case, the Commonwealth is nothing to do with royalty.
Some of them Northern Irish. The majority of Australians have British or Northern Irish ancestry still.
It does not matter if it is 2032, or 2092, culturally, Canada, Australia and New Zealand will still be culturally closer to the UK than any other nations on earth.
The Commonwealth realms are still to do with royalty
Ever been to Canada or Australia?
77% of Canadians and 86% of Australians are still white and most of them still of British or Northern Irish ancestry
But mentally they are very American. The Aussies had a very bad fright during WW2 when Churchill let them down (again) and have never been that British since.
No they aren't and Canadians and New Zealanders certainly aren't. Plus Australians voted 55% to keep the monarchy in 1999
1999? That's almost as far back as 1638 in modern politics.
The Aussies and Canucks don't cringe and grovel to royalty.
Which government would be better at managing the economy?
Con gov led by Johnson: 31% (+4) Lab gov led by Starmer: 22% (-2) Neither: 26% (-1)
(Changes from 17 Feb)
YouGov
Which government would be better at improving living standards?
Lab gov led by Keir Starmer: 31% (+1) Con gov led by Boris Johnson: 22% (+3) Neither: 29% (-2)
(Changes from 17 Feb)
Interesting indication of how the phrasing of the question matters. As an economist I see these two questions as ultimately the same, yet they yield different responses from the public.
55% Republic, 30% Queen to remain HoS, 15% don't know/care.
Poll from 2 years ago. Given it is non white, non British origin majority unlike say Australia or Canada or New Zealand hardly that surprising and realistically those are the only nations we can keep as Commonwealth realms going forward even if they stay in the Commonwealth.
Though 55% is hardly a landslide
What's the point of a White-only Commonwealth? Aussies and NZers and Canadians have their own independent views, and losing the other Commonwealth members is a disastrous blow to what some like to call soft power.
The vast majority of Commonwealth nations are already Republics or have their own heads of state. I was talking Commonwealth realms.
We will not be losing them from the Commonwealth, Barbados is staying in the Commonwealth too. Jamaica is tiny and will have zero impact on our soft power whether a Commonwealth realm or not. The vast majority of the population of the remaining Commonwealth realms live in white majority nations of mainly British origin ie Australia, Canada and New Zealand and will likely continue to do so.
Australia itself voted 55% to keep the monarchy in 1999, in Canada both Trudeau and the Conservatives are monarchists
"British". You're forgetting the Irish in Australia. And 2022 is not 1999, sill less so when HMtQ moves on.
In any case, the Commonwealth is nothing to do with royalty.
Some of them Northern Irish. The majority of Australians have British or Northern Irish ancestry still.
It does not matter if it is 2032, or 2092, culturally, Canada, Australia and New Zealand will still be culturally closer to the UK than any other nations on earth.
The Commonwealth realms are still to do with royalty
Ever been to Canada or Australia?
77% of Canadians and 86% of Australians are still white and most of them still of British or Northern Irish ancestry
But mentally they are very American. The Aussies had a very bad fright during WW2 when Churchill let them down (again) and have never been that British since.
Good grief. That's controversial. I would say they are culturally much more American than they mentally like to think they are. Although that differs Province to Province.
55% Republic, 30% Queen to remain HoS, 15% don't know/care.
Poll from 2 years ago. Given it is non white, non British origin majority unlike say Australia or Canada or New Zealand hardly that surprising and realistically those are the only nations we can keep as Commonwealth realms going forward even if they stay in the Commonwealth.
Though 55% is hardly a landslide
What's the point of a White-only Commonwealth? Aussies and NZers and Canadians have their own independent views, and losing the other Commonwealth members is a disastrous blow to what some like to call soft power.
The vast majority of Commonwealth nations are already Republics or have their own heads of state. I was talking Commonwealth realms.
We will not be losing them from the Commonwealth, Barbados is staying in the Commonwealth too. Jamaica is tiny and will have zero impact on our soft power whether a Commonwealth realm or not. The vast majority of the population of the remaining Commonwealth realms live in white majority nations of mainly British origin ie Australia, Canada and New Zealand and will likely continue to do so.
Australia itself voted 55% to keep the monarchy in 1999, in Canada both Trudeau and the Conservatives are monarchists
"British". You're forgetting the Irish in Australia. And 2022 is not 1999, sill less so when HMtQ moves on.
In any case, the Commonwealth is nothing to do with royalty.
Some of them Northern Irish. The majority of Australians have British or Northern Irish ancestry still.
It does not matter if it is 2032, or 2092, culturally, Canada, Australia and New Zealand will still be culturally closer to the UK than any other nations on earth.
The Commonwealth realms are still to do with royalty
Ever been to Canada or Australia?
77% of Canadians and 86% of Australians are still white and most of them still of British or Northern Irish ancestry
But mentally they are very American. The Aussies had a very bad fright during WW2 when Churchill let them down (again) and have never been that British since.
They really aren’t “very American”. Have you even been there?
My younger daughter is Australian, I have Australian uncles, aunts, cousins. I know Australia extremely well, probably better than any country after Britain
Australians are Australian. But the culture is closer to the UK than the USA
Australia is also the only foreign country where I’ve felt, immediately, on my first visit, entirely at home
I certainly never felt or feel that in the USA, nor Canada. I’ve not been to NZ
Which government would be better at managing the economy?
Con gov led by Johnson: 31% (+4) Lab gov led by Starmer: 22% (-2) Neither: 26% (-1)
(Changes from 17 Feb)
YouGov
Which government would be better at improving living standards?
Lab gov led by Keir Starmer: 31% (+1) Con gov led by Boris Johnson: 22% (+3) Neither: 29% (-2)
(Changes from 17 Feb)
Interesting indication of how the phrasing of the question matters. As an economist I see these two questions as ultimately the same, yet they yield different responses from the public.
Point also made by DixieDean above. My take is that on average people see Con as good for the size of the cake and Lab as good for dividing it up.
Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Jamaica could be on the road to republicanism.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did. There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took
I always gave Heathener the benefit of the doubt but I suspect, given the continual deliberately contrary positions, others may be correct. Not that she’s a Russian mole, just a wind up.
Thank you for finally accepting that I am not a Russian mole or a troll. I happen to mask my IP for very good reasons. I just can't expose someone close in Westminster. They would be instantly identified. As a more general point ever since Cambridge Analytica I would never browse the internet without using a VPN. I always reject ALL cookies: a stupid euphemism if ever there was. Cookies are TRACKERS not some delicious biccies I've baked up on the Aga.
I can be a wind up, it's true. Not deliberately as such so I'd ask you and others to hear me out.
First, apart from the occasional seemingly off-beam pov like believing we should back Zelensky and stand up to this bastard Putin with a NFZ (it's a point of view, please everyone get over it), I'm pretty consistently left of centre. But not in a traditional Labour way. I'm anti-capitalist but not anti-semitic and I loathe oligarchies and abuses of power wherever they occur: some of the worst offenders in history have been from the Left. Actually there's probably no 'some' about it. If you really wanted to pigeon hold me then perhaps anarchist is the best adjective. And that's what makes me seem contrary. I am BITTERLY opposed to much of modern society. I hate most capitalist companies and I'm trying to live more and more off-grid in my attitudes and behaviour. And I'm a globalist not a nationalist. Religion and nationhood are responsible for most of the evils of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Second, even if you didn't wish to accept any of that, as a more general point this site would be much the poorer and part of a dystopian nightmare if contrary views were not given air. It's really, really, important that in an age of intolerance and binary thinking (Piers Morgan style) we listen to nuance and complexity.
I don't expect all of you to pay attention to this but I believe you should. And to those who do, thank you.
p.s. I am extremely heartened this morning by the many hoots of derision about the young royals in the Caribbean and the often disdainful views about the monarchy going forward.
It has become an object of ridicule and needs reform.
Except ordinary people in Jamaica seem to be supportive of the monarchy.
If 55% want to remove the monarchy then does that mean 55% of the country is an unaccountable, remote elite?
Most of the non white majority Commonwealth removed the British monarch as head of state decades ago, just the Caribbean finally catching up. No real surprise.
We should focus our efforts on keeping the white majority Commonwealth of mainly British origin as Commonwealth realms ie Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Australia for instance 55% voted to keep the monarchy in 1999
Why on earth should we "focus our efforts" on anything?
If Canada want to retain the Queen as titular head of state, that's fine. If they want to move to another approach, that's also fine - it's their country. It's got absolutely sod all to do with us, and there's no reason whatsoever for even the most ardent British monarchist to push it on other countries.
No monarchists like me have a duty to promote and support maintaining our monarchy in all its realms as far as we can
The move to republics throughout the commonwealth will rapidly increase post HMQ no matter how much you want to live in the past
I know that the psychology of one individual is not more important than the constitutions of several countries, but imagine what it must do to a person to spend your whole life waiting to do a job - more than seven decades - knowing you can only do the job once your mother drops dead, and then when you get the job to face the prospect of such a public and personal rejection of several countries deciding they don't want you to do the job anyway.
I don’t understand the total pardon of Scotch witches. Is Sturgeon seriously claiming they were ALL innocent and wrongly burned?
1. I’m pretty sure there were a few who actually did boil up frog’s blood and mutter incantations
2. The blanket pardon sends out a terrible signal, basically inviting toothless crones in Cumbernauld to get out the scrying glass and put hexes on the neighbour’s Xbox. Scotland will now see a resurgence of witchcraft that will spread across the UK. Yet another case of the Devolution Settlement not working as planned
Some of them were not very nice, apparently:
Round about the cauldron go; In the poison’d entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter’d venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.
ALL Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Second Witch Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse, Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips, Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-deliver’d by a drab, Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron, For the ingredients of our cauldron.
ALL Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Jamaica could be on the road to republicanism.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did. There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took
I always gave Heathener the benefit of the doubt but I suspect, given the continual deliberately contrary positions, others may be correct. Not that she’s a Russian mole, just a wind up.
Thank you for finally accepting that I am not a Russian mole or a troll. I happen to mask my IP for very good reasons. I just can't expose someone close in Westminster. They would be instantly identified. As a more general point ever since Cambridge Analytica I would never browse the internet without using a VPN. I always reject ALL cookies: a stupid euphemism if ever there was. Cookies are TRACKERS not some delicious biccies I've baked up on the Aga.
I can be a wind up, it's true. Not deliberately as such so I'd ask you and others to hear me out.
First, apart from the occasional seemingly off-beam pov like believing we should back Zelensky and stand up to this bastard Putin with a NFZ (it's a point of view, please everyone get over it), I'm pretty consistently left of centre. But not in a traditional Labour way. I'm anti-capitalist but not anti-semitic and I loathe oligarchies and abuses of power wherever they occur: some of the worst offenders in history have been from the Left. Actually there's probably no 'some' about it. If you really wanted to pigeon hold me then perhaps anarchist is the best adjective. And that's what makes me seem contrary. I am BITTERLY opposed to much of modern society. I hate most capitalist companies and I'm trying to live more and more off-grid in my attitudes and behaviour. And I'm a globalist not a nationalist. Religion and nationhood are responsible for most of the evils of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Second, even if you didn't wish to accept any of that, as a more general point this site would be much the poorer and part of a dystopian nightmare if contrary views were not given air. It's really, really, important that in an age of intolerance and binary thinking (Piers Morgan style) we listen to nuance and complexity.
I don't expect all of you to pay attention to this but I believe you should. And to those who do, thank you.
p.s. I am extremely heartened this morning by the many hoots of derision about the young royals in the Caribbean and the often disdainful views about the monarchy going forward.
It has become an object of ridicule and needs reform.
Except ordinary people in Jamaica seem to be supportive of the monarchy.
If 55% want to remove the monarchy then does that mean 55% of the country is an unaccountable, remote elite?
Most of the non white majority Commonwealth removed the British monarch as head of state decades ago, just the Caribbean finally catching up. No real surprise.
We should focus our efforts on keeping the white majority Commonwealth of mainly British origin as Commonwealth realms ie Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Australia for instance 55% voted to keep the monarchy in 1999
Why on earth should we "focus our efforts" on anything?
If Canada want to retain the Queen as titular head of state, that's fine. If they want to move to another approach, that's also fine - it's their country. It's got absolutely sod all to do with us, and there's no reason whatsoever for even the most ardent British monarchist to push it on other countries.
No monarchists like me have a duty to promote and support maintaining our monarchy in all its realms as far as we can
The move to republics throughout the commonwealth will rapidly increase post HMQ no matter how much you want to live in the past
I know that the psychology of one individual is not more important than the constitutions of several countries, but imagine what it must do to a person to spend your whole life waiting to do a job - more than seven decades - knowing you can only do the job once your mother drops dead, and then when you get the job to face the prospect of such a public and personal rejection of several countries deciding they don't want you to do the job anyway.
55% Republic, 30% Queen to remain HoS, 15% don't know/care.
Poll from 2 years ago. Given it is non white, non British origin majority unlike say Australia or Canada or New Zealand hardly that surprising and realistically those are the only nations we can keep as Commonwealth realms going forward even if they stay in the Commonwealth.
Though 55% is hardly a landslide
What's the point of a White-only Commonwealth? Aussies and NZers and Canadians have their own independent views, and losing the other Commonwealth members is a disastrous blow to what some like to call soft power.
The vast majority of Commonwealth nations are already Republics or have their own heads of state. I was talking Commonwealth realms.
We will not be losing them from the Commonwealth, Barbados is staying in the Commonwealth too. Jamaica is tiny and will have zero impact on our soft power whether a Commonwealth realm or not. The vast majority of the population of the remaining Commonwealth realms live in white majority nations of mainly British origin ie Australia, Canada and New Zealand and will likely continue to do so.
Australia itself voted 55% to keep the monarchy in 1999, in Canada both Trudeau and the Conservatives are monarchists
"British". You're forgetting the Irish in Australia. And 2022 is not 1999, sill less so when HMtQ moves on.
In any case, the Commonwealth is nothing to do with royalty.
Some of them Northern Irish. The majority of Australians have British or Northern Irish ancestry still.
It does not matter if it is 2032, or 2092, culturally, Canada, Australia and New Zealand will still be culturally closer to the UK than any other nations on earth.
The Commonwealth realms are still to do with royalty
Ever been to Canada or Australia?
77% of Canadians and 86% of Australians are still white and most of them still of British or Northern Irish ancestry
But mentally they are very American. The Aussies had a very bad fright during WW2 when Churchill let them down (again) and have never been that British since.
No they aren't and Canadians and New Zealanders certainly aren't. Plus Australians voted 55% to keep the monarchy in 1999
1999? That's almost as far back as 1638 in modern politics.
The Aussies and Canucks don't cringe and grovel to royalty.
In Canada Trudeau is a monarchist as are the Conservative opposition, it separates them from the Republic of the USA
I think that's the key point. The retention of the monarchy is a key differential from the mighty neighbour to the South. Most Canadians want to retain a sense of national identity and, curiously, the link to the royals helps them to achieve that. Different in that respect to the Antipodeans.
(Having said that - I kinda wonder if Oz goes Republic whether the NZers will retain the crown just to be different? I was very struck how they rejected the proposal to change the flag, so quite capable of being sticks-in-the-mud.)
Meanwhile I'm delighted to see that Jamaica could be on the road to republicanism.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did. There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took
I always gave Heathener the benefit of the doubt but I suspect, given the continual deliberately contrary positions, others may be correct. Not that she’s a Russian mole, just a wind up.
Thank you for finally accepting that I am not a Russian mole or a troll. I happen to mask my IP for very good reasons. I just can't expose someone close in Westminster. They would be instantly identified. As a more general point ever since Cambridge Analytica I would never browse the internet without using a VPN. I always reject ALL cookies: a stupid euphemism if ever there was. Cookies are TRACKERS not some delicious biccies I've baked up on the Aga.
I can be a wind up, it's true. Not deliberately as such so I'd ask you and others to hear me out.
First, apart from the occasional seemingly off-beam pov like believing we should back Zelensky and stand up to this bastard Putin with a NFZ (it's a point of view, please everyone get over it), I'm pretty consistently left of centre. But not in a traditional Labour way. I'm anti-capitalist but not anti-semitic and I loathe oligarchies and abuses of power wherever they occur: some of the worst offenders in history have been from the Left. Actually there's probably no 'some' about it. If you really wanted to pigeon hold me then perhaps anarchist is the best adjective. And that's what makes me seem contrary. I am BITTERLY opposed to much of modern society. I hate most capitalist companies and I'm trying to live more and more off-grid in my attitudes and behaviour. And I'm a globalist not a nationalist. Religion and nationhood are responsible for most of the evils of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Second, even if you didn't wish to accept any of that, as a more general point this site would be much the poorer and part of a dystopian nightmare if contrary views were not given air. It's really, really, important that in an age of intolerance and binary thinking (Piers Morgan style) we listen to nuance and complexity.
I don't expect all of you to pay attention to this but I believe you should. And to those who do, thank you.
A little hint: whenever an anonymous person on the Internet says something like: " I just can't expose someone close in Westminster," then I tend to think of them as either a walt or a bullshitter.
Not to mention that a poster's IP address is unlikely to expose a third party's identity. I suppose there are a couple of ways it could work indirectly, for instance if said poster were using a static IP address owned by JRMFunnyMoney.com, but it smacks of superstition.
Quite, I don't get the fetishisation of IP addresses. If you are using mobile data you could be anyone, and you can change your broadband IP by disconnecting for half an hour unless you are static
A lot of internet data mining is done by UserAgent Tracking as your browser discloses a lot of info about your computer's configuration which may be enough yo uniquely identify it.
You can test your machine's uniqueness fingerprint at the EFF
But in the real world of ordinary users, or even Robert as admin out in California, how does that matter?
I just ran the routine from your link, and it reveals what version of windows and what browsers I have installed, the details of a few add-ons like pdf viewers that I have, my timezone, my screen size, what fonts I have, that I am using British English, my computer's memory details, plus some more obscure technical aspects of my configuration. Even if it's unique, this data on its own is of no use to anyone (other than perhaps the security services if they were able to come looking for a similarly configured user).
It means that you are uniquely trackable across the web even if you are in "stealth mode".
Once you've been identified by one site you are completely trackable across the entire web.
Actually, in "Stealth mode" you may be more trackable, not less. All "stealth mode" does is keep the browsing history and cookies clear on your own computer, it does nothing for your security on the web.
Running in "stealth mode" often results in AdBlockers and DoNotTrack either switching off completely or partially.
@NickPalmer told us yesterday that he agreed with Ange that Corbyn would have sent weapons to Ukraine, like Johnson did, before the invasion.
How can he possibly believe it?
habibi @habibi_uk From the "Stop the War" statement Corbyn signed in February:
"Instead, the British government has sent arms to Ukraine and deployed further troops to Eastern Europe, moves which serve no purpose other than inflaming tensions and indicating disdain for Russian concerns."
'Habibi' is a wonderful Arabic greeting that the trendies in Beirut and other fashionable Arab cities use to address each other and visitors like me. I think it's roughly used as an American would use 'Honey!'
(A little surprising to see it in such close proximity to 'Corbyn')
In which Roger humbly informs us that he was once a regular visitor to Beirut “and other fashionable Arab cities”
Beirut has not been a fashionable Arab city since my grandmother visited it in the 1970s. (Yes it was all her fault )
I spent a very uncomfortable night on the floor of Beirut airport while some faction or other were shelling the far end of the runway back in the late 80s.
About '95? The airport is in a crazy place. You have t travel across several green lines to get into the city. It's why they took so many hostages. The taxi drivers would tell you where each was taken and by which faction.. They all controlled a part of the road from the airport.
Comments
Who the people of Canada, Australia or New Zealand want as their head of state is entirely a matter for them……as Buckingham Palace says….
Also far less north of Watford
I spent a very uncomfortable night on the floor of Beirut airport while some faction or other were shelling the far end of the runway back in the late 80s.
Some charities are too fucking stupid to be supported.
Save the Children has rejected a $1 million dollar donation for Ukraine from Neptune Oil because they are 'committed to working on climate change issues'.
Fucking idiots.
This two minute video is absolutely devastating.
https://twitter.com/IsraelBritain/status/1506247900308856844
Mangled punchline: but I've done some research and it turns out he really was gay.
40 Russian diplomats will be kicked out of Poland for espionage.
The Russian ambassador was summoned to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs this morning.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1506555586145619975
If wages make up 1/3rd of your costs then a 3% increase in wages is ceteris paribus a 1% increase in costs.
If commodities make up 1/5th of your costs then a 50% increase in commodity prices is ceteris paribus a 10% increase in your costs.
3% wage growth meaning 1% inflation is not a problem. Heck 2-3% inflation is not a problem. Real standards of living improving only happens by wages growing more than prices and that means wage growth outpacing the cost of other elements of prices - what's happening now is the polar opposite.
If anything there are now more royalists in Essex than Oxford anyway. Epping Forest is 59% royalist now but Oxford East only 42% royalist and even Oxford West and Abingdon only 56% royalist
https://election.unherd.com/constituencies/oxford-west-and-abingdon/
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/bulletins/housingaffordabilityinenglandandwales/2021
"Oppressed locals" complaining about a project of a local charity working with 80 local 'sustainable cocoa farms' designed to create sustainable local businesses whilst preserving the local forest, as I understand it.
On the 'BLM' ones in Jamaica, the logic is a bit strained, and BLM imo don't really deserve a hearing until they get a more rounded, comprehensive, analysis. As we saw previously in this country we had "BLMUK" with their strange ideology, and very questionable fundraising practices; for example, where £1m+ was raised without it being revealed who was getting the donations.
Perhaps a little more like "look - there's a convenient background to get some attention for us against", in both cases.
Nonetheless a strange post from you considering all PBers are treated to a complete itinerary of your every move. (I apologise if you think I'm trying to steal your thunder).
It's why we see so much goalpost shifting (because unwelcome facts can't be allowed to shake the articles of faith, so the argument must be moved).
But it is also why we sometimes get a genuine insight - a view that we wouldn't have from our own baseline assumptions. These are often in the area of "why would someone behave like that" - and HUYFD provides the perspective from which that comes.
Imperialist lot, the Cantabrigians.
1. I’m pretty sure there were a few who actually did boil up frog’s blood and mutter incantations
2. The blanket pardon sends out a terrible signal, basically inviting toothless crones in Cumbernauld to get out the scrying glass and put hexes on the neighbour’s Xbox. Scotland will now see a resurgence of witchcraft that will spread across the UK. Yet another case of the Devolution Settlement not working as planned
https://youtu.be/Z3RzNEzJyzo
https://www.nowtolove.com.au/royals/british-royal-family/prince-william-kate-middleton-australia-tour-70957
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/scottish-news/8420080/nicola-sturgeon-sister-online-psychic-medium-readings/
If Russia did not have nuclear weapons I suspect this war would already have spread and we might even be involved. But it does and we cower as a result whilst evil reigns. I cannot argue the sense of it but it feels so wrong.
Labour MP Charlotte Nichols slammed criticism of trans swimmer Lia Thomas as "lazy transphobia".
Labour MP James Murray: "I believe trans women are women"
Julia: "Do you not think it's strange you as a man are telling me, a woman, what a woman is?"
@JuliaHB1 | @jamesmurray_ldn
https://twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1506566926276907014
Is it a Caribbean tradition?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL6AVWLPJD0
Or 'my dear old thing'.
Did no one involved in organising that think that might be a really bad look?
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.
ALL
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Second Witch
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.
ALL
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Definitely not a Delia recipe!
"The government is spending record amounts on x, y, z etc, and I will take no lessons from the right honourable gentleman opposite, who..." etc
This also suggests there are UNfashionable Arab cities. In which you are forced to work, enabling you to make your comparison. I picture you in disguise, perhaps even a wig, hoping you won’t be spotted by your trendier friends, as you film the horribly unfashionable backstreets of, say, Tunis
This calculator shows the effect of inflation on the real value of your savings and the growth rate you would have needed to keep pace with inflation.
https://www.littleportsociety.org.uk/index.php/local-history/historical-articles
Egypt is very reliant on food imports from Russia and Ukraine and could well be facing big food price rises. That could mean major instability there. And possibly wider instability in the Arab world.
Only 15 out of 54 Commonwealth nations still have the British monarch as Head of State as we near the end of her reign. Barbados just the latest to go in her reign.
As I said realistically the white British origin majority ones are the most likely to stay
The ONLY thing they have is their nukes. Which obviously goes a long way. (Added to which their Nukes are probably being maintained using glue and sticky tape. I'd be surprised if even half their deployed Nukes would even work).
Which government would be better at managing the economy?
Con gov led by Johnson: 31% (+4)
Lab gov led by Starmer: 22% (-2)
Neither: 26% (-1)
(Changes from 17 Feb)
YouGov
Which government would be better at improving living standards?
Lab gov led by Keir Starmer: 31% (+1)
Con gov led by Boris Johnson: 22% (+3)
Neither: 29% (-2)
(Changes from 17 Feb)
The charred remains of burned Scottish witches will now be laughing in their unmarked graves and saying “och, I got away with it”
Is that really the message we want to send to younger folk?
NY Times blog
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-60837254
When Nicola officially launched one of the vessels (in 2017) they painted on the windows to improve the photo...It's 2022 and the half-built ferries are still rusting away in the state-owned shipyard.
It's the 1970's redux. A vision of IndyScotland.
We should concentrate on the financial statement and PMQs. This could be a key day for political betting, as Mike suggests in header.
I think the opposite from Mike is saying, the papers have been very negative towards this Tory budget for a few days, I sense they are under pressure to deliver what they can’t actually deliver. Rabbit won’t be in the hat because you might need to eat her when really hungry in a years time.
The statement is not just measures he will announce, but statements on direction, that if proved to be wrong/lie shreds credibility. Growth. Borrowing. Inflation with interest rates attached like elastic. Etc. positive news on import exports post Brexit will also be important to hear
The Aussies and Canucks don't cringe and grovel to royalty.
What exactly is "managing the economy" other than "improving living standards"?
The reason this doesn't irritate me is that - based on my understanding of the world - I think it highly likely that none of the individuals found guilty of witchcraft were guilty. They were genuine miscarriages of justice.
Whereas the likes of Alan Turing: much as we may not like it, he was, it was likely, guilty of breaking the law of the land at the time. We might well find cause to regret that the law was in place, but it makes no sense to pardon him.
If you have ever travelled there you would see just how archaic a British Monarch is
I like the wikipedia article on it - it even has the "Plasma stealth" bullshit.
It's not an especially new idea - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAM-87_Skybolt
In Canada Trudeau is a monarchist as are the Conservative opposition, it separates them from the Republic of the USA
You can't rewrite legislative/criminal history by imposing the moral and legal norms of the modern era upon the past. It's demented.
I would say they are culturally much more American than they mentally like to think they are.
Although that differs Province to Province.
My younger daughter is Australian, I have Australian uncles, aunts, cousins. I know Australia extremely well, probably better than any country after Britain
Australians are Australian. But the culture is closer to the UK than the USA
Australia is also the only foreign country where I’ve felt, immediately, on my first visit, entirely at home
I certainly never felt or feel that in the USA, nor Canada. I’ve not been to NZ
So £1 then is currently worth about 95p of today's money.
Their calculator [direct link: https://www.hl.co.uk/tools/calculators/inflation-calculator] rounds to nearest pound, so you need to pick a larger amount, and then invert it and divide through!
Simply devastating.
(Having said that - I kinda wonder if Oz goes Republic whether the NZers will retain the crown just to be different? I was very struck how they rejected the proposal to change the flag, so quite capable of being sticks-in-the-mud.)
Read between the lines people.
Running in "stealth mode" often results in AdBlockers and DoNotTrack either switching off completely or partially.