It looks to me like almost everyone else in that clip is staring awkwardly at their feet.
Who knew that BatShitCrazyTV was a thing in Russia.
Not sure we should judge a country by its panel shows and vox pops, the mind boggles what people would make of us on that basis.
Any Russian or North Korean listening to our state broadcaster and its slobbering panegyric to William and Kate touching down in Jamaica would feel an ache of weary recognition.
Hope neither are tempted to do a dance with some locals - Harry maybe can get away with that , none of the other royals or indeed Theresa May
I regret to say that there has already been dancing, and there will no doubt be more dancing.
London Aquatics Centre gas release incident: first instinct says highly likely an accident involving water treatment chemicals.
Hope all OK.
The first bellwether for an incident's possible seriousness is where it places on the news and how it moves before anything is officially confirmed. 4th after Ukraine, Sunak and the Taliban on BBC and below the big 2 on Sky. The fact it's the Aquatics Centre rather than Hemel Hempstead municipal pool is a factor. So, that placing seems neutral and probably isn't indicative of anything worse than 'numerous people being treated for breathing difficulties' at the moment. Swimming pool evacuations do happen every so often, so fingers crossed it is just one such incident.
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
I think the real reason is she is very worried someone might throw her in a pond to see if she floats.
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….
Indeed. I'd like them to, we can say so, but the effort would need to be home grown.
It looks to me like almost everyone else in that clip is staring awkwardly at their feet.
Who knew that BatShitCrazyTV was a thing in Russia.
Not sure we should judge a country by its panel shows and vox pops, the mind boggles what people would make of us on that basis.
Any Russian or North Korean listening to our state broadcaster and its slobbering panegyric to William and Kate touching down in Jamaica would feel an ache of weary recognition.
Hope neither are tempted to do a dance with some locals - Harry maybe can get away with that , none of the other royals or indeed Theresa May
I regret to say that there has already been dancing, and there will no doubt be more dancing.
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
I was thinking more of political connections and alliances. Much stronger Aus-US (as reflected by the hysteria on PB over the tech transfer agreement Aukus). In way of life, yep, it's like California in some ways but with fish and chips. I've been there too.
The former is as least as important as the latter when it comes to going republican.
Sure, politically-militarily it is in the American sphere, but so is all of the West. That doesn’t say much
Culturally, Oz is way more British (tho it is of course more itself, and confidently so)
I believe Australia regularly tops the polls of places Brits would like to emigrate to; because we feel at home there. Pubs and pints. Masterchef and mates. Cricket and rugby
But with sun and (probably too much) space
i would say that maps quite often, but not always, onto a Brexiter/Remainer cultural divide. Several people I know feel much more at home in places like Scandinavia, France, Holland, or Italy, and indeed several of my former peer group have also moved to countries like these over the years.
There is no way we are culturally closer to France or Italy, than we are to Oz
And I love France and Italy (and all of mainland Europe). I am greatly looking forward to going there this summer
Europe is my civilisation. My home. I am European. We are an extended family
But Aussies are more like siblings who moved away.
Well, you may feel that, as I say, but in my experience quite a few people feel differently. The very mixed emigration figures would appear to back that up, too, I think.
1. Australia 1,300,000 2 Spain 761,000 3 United States 678,000 4 Canada 603,000 5 Ireland 291,000 6 India 250,000 7 New Zealand 215,000 8 South Africa 212,000 9 France 200,000 10 Germany 115,000
Australia is a trillion miles away, on the other side of the world. Yet five times as many Brits have moved there, than have hopped across the channel to france. And thus despite emigration to France being infinitely easier from 1975-2018
That's a list of the diaspora, not a timeframe of emigration. I suspect many of the figures for Spain, France, Germany and are more recent than for Australia, for instance. Also, even with possibly very out-of-date figures, the continental European total is pretty much similar to the Australian.
I would also class the US qute separately.
Emigration from UK => EU outstrips "UK => everywhere else in the word" by some considerable margin for the period 2018-2020. (Except Q4 2018 for some reason!)
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
I was thinking more of political connections and alliances. Much stronger Aus-US (as reflected by the hysteria on PB over the tech transfer agreement Aukus). In way of life, yep, it's like California in some ways but with fish and chips. I've been there too.
The former is as least as important as the latter when it comes to going republican.
Sure, politically-militarily it is in the American sphere, but so is all of the West. That doesn’t say much
Culturally, Oz is way more British (tho it is of course more itself, and confidently so)
I believe Australia regularly tops the polls of places Brits would like to emigrate to; because we feel at home there. Pubs and pints. Masterchef and mates. Cricket and rugby
But with sun and (probably too much) space
i would say that maps quite often, but not always, onto a Brexiter/Remainer cultural divide. Several people I know feel much more at home in places like Scandinavia, France, Holland, or Italy, and indeed several of my former peer group have also moved to countries like these over the years.
There is no way we are culturally closer to France or Italy, than we are to Oz
And I love France and Italy (and all of mainland Europe). I am greatly looking forward to going there this summer
Europe is my civilisation. My home. I am European. We are an extended family
But Aussies are more like siblings who moved away.
Well, you may feel that, as I say, but in my experience quite a few people feel differently. The very mixed emigration figures would appear to back that up, too, I think.
1. Australia 1,300,000 2 Spain 761,000 3 United States 678,000 4 Canada 603,000 5 Ireland 291,000 6 India 250,000 7 New Zealand 215,000 8 South Africa 212,000 9 France 200,000 10 Germany 115,000
Australia is a trillion miles away, on the other side of the world. Yet six times as many Brits have moved there, than have hopped across the channel to france. And this despite emigration to France being infinitely easier from 1975-2018
Ireland is the one that really sticks out. Less than one-twelfth the size of France. Arguably the only country in Europe with worse weather than the UK. And their housing crisis is even more acute, with house prices even more insane than here.
But because they speak English, and drink tea, that's where more people go.
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
I was thinking more of political connections and alliances. Much stronger Aus-US (as reflected by the hysteria on PB over the tech transfer agreement Aukus). In way of life, yep, it's like California in some ways but with fish and chips. I've been there too.
The former is as least as important as the latter when it comes to going republican.
Sure, politically-militarily it is in the American sphere, but so is all of the West. That doesn’t say much
Culturally, Oz is way more British (tho it is of course more itself, and confidently so)
I believe Australia regularly tops the polls of places Brits would like to emigrate to; because we feel at home there. Pubs and pints. Masterchef and mates. Cricket and rugby
But with sun and (probably too much) space
i would say that maps quite often, but not always, onto a Brexiter/Remainer cultural divide. Several people I know feel much more at home in places like Scandinavia, France, Holland, or Italy, and indeed several of my former peer group have also moved to countries like these over the years.
There is no way we are culturally closer to France or Italy, than we are to Oz
And I love France and Italy (and all of mainland Europe). I am greatly looking forward to going there this summer
Europe is my civilisation. My home. I am European. We are an extended family
But Aussies are more like siblings who moved away.
Well, you may feel that, as I say, but in my experience quite a few people feel differently. The very mixed emigration figures would appear to back that up, too, I think.
1. Australia 1,300,000 2 Spain 761,000 3 United States 678,000 4 Canada 603,000 5 Ireland 291,000 6 India 250,000 7 New Zealand 215,000 8 South Africa 212,000 9 France 200,000 10 Germany 115,000
Australia is a trillion miles away, on the other side of the world. Yet five times as many Brits have moved there, than have hopped across the channel to france. And thus despite emigration to France being infinitely easier from 1975-2018
That's a list of the diaspora, not a timeframe of emigration. I suspect many of the figures for Spain, France, Germany and are more recent than for Australia, for instance. Also, even with possibly very out-of-date figures, the continental European total is pretty much similar to the Australian.
I would also class the US qute separately.
Emigration from UK => EU outstrips "UK => everywhere else in the word" by some considerable margin for the period 2018-2020. (Except Q4 2018 for some reason!)
The girls, aged 15 to 18, were transferred to the UK’s biggest prison for boys following the enforced closure of a privately run centre for safety reasons last year, the Guardian has learned.
Thoroughly appalling.
Yuck. And, perhaps I'm being too innocent here, but what are these "pain-inducing restraint techniques" which were applied unusually frequently? Why do we need to inflict pain on prisoners to restrain them? Especially on teenage girls?
It looks to me like almost everyone else in that clip is staring awkwardly at their feet.
Who knew that BatShitCrazyTV was a thing in Russia.
Not sure we should judge a country by its panel shows and vox pops, the mind boggles what people would make of us on that basis.
Any Russian or North Korean listening to our state broadcaster and its slobbering panegyric to William and Kate touching down in Jamaica would feel an ache of weary recognition.
Hope neither are tempted to do a dance with some locals - Harry maybe can get away with that , none of the other royals or indeed Theresa May
I regret to say that there has already been dancing, and there will no doubt be more dancing.
Still, the fresh, sensitive approach of these ‘young’ royals is just the thing to revitalise the monarchy.
What the fuck made them think that was a good idea?
I disagree it wasnt a good idea, I think its comic gold.
Oh for them?
I think as an explanation for all Royal haters (I am ambivalent), it is one of those things that is honorific and therefore despite the unfortunate nature of the photo op, it would be difficult to refuse without causing offence
For rentals it is required to be E or better by law. See if your LL will do anything - if you have to leave it is expensive for the LL.
I was talking to one of my Ts in my grandma's solid-walled 2up2down detached cottage who is being told £260 a month (which I think is probably the Fixed Rate Rate unregulated trick I mention in my other post), which will be more like £180 a month.
She has 2 washers and about 8 dogs, and all rooms have 3 outside walls, so uses quite a lot of energy for the size.
When she moved in in 2010 the energy bills were £230 a month, which we reduced to under £100, without switching (which up until last year often gave -25% wrt market average), by investment (eg double glazing, insulation) and targeted reductions (eg she had a washer-dryer costing £15-18 a week to run).
But it's a tricky one this time round, since we've done the low hanging fruit.
Just checked my EPC, which seemed almost pointless. The inspector "assumed" the roof has no insulation, they didn't actually look.
Any sense that they might have considered, or measured, the effectiveness of the double-glazing (which is old and seems a bit leaky around the edges), or details like the paper thin external walls for the bay windows, seems pretty unlikely when they didn't even poke their head into the loft to see what amount of insulation there was, or not.
Um. Three things.
1 - I would wonder why you didn't tell him what was there, then make him look, then query the result when it did not come out accurately.
They are instructed to make default assumptions where evidence is not available, as part of the methodology - to prevent false over-positives. That seems the reasonable green way to call it.
If you want it the other way, provide proof. If it was done before you moved in, then shell out £40-50 for a new one and provide the needed evidence.
2 - For @Horse, the point is that this is how his LL is regulated, so that is how to get things done. Personally, I take care to keep records of work done so I *can* provide proof.
3 - EPC is a basic system, and an EU standard. We have it because we did not choose to pay the money for something better to be done universally, so we get what we pay for. It was an Yvette Cooper thing in the noughties, under pressure from a lot of people wanting something as cheap as possible.
Anyone who wants something better can pay for a SAP analysis, rather than the normal RDSAP analysis (RD = "Reduced Data"). It will cost £300-400. If you build a house iirc you do an "As Designed" full SAP with your Detailed Planning Application submission, and an "As built" one afterwards, which includes things like a leakage test.
The EPC was done for the landlord before we moved in.
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
I was thinking more of political connections and alliances. Much stronger Aus-US (as reflected by the hysteria on PB over the tech transfer agreement Aukus). In way of life, yep, it's like California in some ways but with fish and chips. I've been there too.
The former is as least as important as the latter when it comes to going republican.
Sure, politically-militarily it is in the American sphere, but so is all of the West. That doesn’t say much
Culturally, Oz is way more British (tho it is of course more itself, and confidently so)
I believe Australia regularly tops the polls of places Brits would like to emigrate to; because we feel at home there. Pubs and pints. Masterchef and mates. Cricket and rugby
But with sun and (probably too much) space
i would say that maps quite often, but not always, onto a Brexiter/Remainer cultural divide. Several people I know feel much more at home in places like Scandinavia, France, Holland, or Italy, and indeed several of my former peer group have also moved to countries like these over the years.
There is no way we are culturally closer to France or Italy, than we are to Oz
And I love France and Italy (and all of mainland Europe). I am greatly looking forward to going there this summer
Europe is my civilisation. My home. I am European. We are an extended family
But Aussies are more like siblings who moved away.
Well, you may feel that, as I say, but in my experience quite a few people feel differently. The very mixed emigration figures would appear to back that up, too, I think.
1. Australia 1,300,000 2 Spain 761,000 3 United States 678,000 4 Canada 603,000 5 Ireland 291,000 6 India 250,000 7 New Zealand 215,000 8 South Africa 212,000 9 France 200,000 10 Germany 115,000
Australia is a trillion miles away, on the other side of the world. Yet five times as many Brits have moved there, than have hopped across the channel to france. And thus despite emigration to France being infinitely easier from 1975-2018
That's a list of the diaspora, not a timeframe of emigration. I suspect many of the figures for Spain, France, Germany and are more recent than for Australia, for instance. Also, even with possibly very out-of-date figures, the continental European total comes up quite similar to the Australian, as i would roughly expect.
I would also class the US qute separately.
Yet despite the disadvantage of distance; and the removal, until recently, of many of the bureaucratic hurdles to relocating to EU countries, it seems we are much, much comfortable with restarting our lives in English speaking countries. This shouldn't come as a surprise. But polyglots tend to underestimate the sheer inabaility of the monoglot majority to be comfortable in languages other than English. Free movement in Europe was never that attractive for any but a small minority. Free movement with Aus/NZ and/or Canada would be much more attractive. I'm not necessarily arguing for this - I'm sure there are numerous practical issues, not least would the other parties want it.
Unidentified nutter on Russian state TV yesterday saying Warsaw will be wiped out with nukes in 30 seconds in event of NATO peacekeeping force in Ukraine
Taking steps to ensure all mariners working in UK waters paid living wage
Which I was *repeatedly* told was impossible because Maritime Law, Flag State So There 2 nights ago
Yes, I might have got that wrong. Let's see the details before we break out the champers, though? What is the ?section 109? he mentioned, and what law changes is the government considering?
For rentals it is required to be E or better by law. See if your LL will do anything - if you have to leave it is expensive for the LL.
I was talking to one of my Ts in my grandma's solid-walled 2up2down detached cottage who is being told £260 a month (which I think is probably the Fixed Rate Rate unregulated trick I mention in my other post), which will be more like £180 a month.
She has 2 washers and about 8 dogs, and all rooms have 3 outside walls, so uses quite a lot of energy for the size.
When she moved in in 2010 the energy bills were £230 a month, which we reduced to under £100, without switching (which up until last year often gave -25% wrt market average), by investment (eg double glazing, insulation) and targeted reductions (eg she had a washer-dryer costing £15-18 a week to run).
But it's a tricky one this time round, since we've done the low hanging fruit.
Just checked my EPC, which seemed almost pointless. The inspector "assumed" the roof has no insulation, they didn't actually look.
Any sense that they might have considered, or measured, the effectiveness of the double-glazing (which is old and seems a bit leaky around the edges), or details like the paper thin external walls for the bay windows, seems pretty unlikely when they didn't even poke their head into the loft to see what amount of insulation there was, or not.
This inspired me to look mine up. A Victorian house, extended in the 80s. The assessment seems fair (it was a few years ago) and I get a D. Interestingly all but one of the other houses in my road are E or F. Some of the flat conversions are D, and two manage C.
To get to C I would need to make £17-34k of improvements to get roughly £488 benefit, so that's somewhere between 35-70 years to pay for itself (perhaps a bit better than that if current prices stay for a while). As it happens since it was done I have upgraded some of the double-glazing and built a further extension so overall the insulation will have improved, but there's nothing cost effective left to do that will make any difference. I can't see how I can add insulation to solid walls, for example.
Despite high house prices whats kept the young on side so far has been cheap foreign travel and cheap consumer goods. Take that away and things could get interesting
Things those massive fuel/power increases are going to kill are big tellies, latest phones, foreign holidays. Holidays are especially going to be missed after 2 years of Covid.
We are going to be given a shock lesson in the importance of saving for a rainy day, now an alien concept to many.
Having a shiny new motor every couple of years on the never never is the one that will really hit home. That is an outward sign of status.
Yeah, after the holiday, that’s probably going to be the second major sacrifice for most of the PAYE working population.
After that, it starts to really hit home.
Scary times ahead.
Talking of pricey holidays, I’ve been trying to arrange a trip to Eastern Turkey for a while. Every time I go back to Opodo or Kayak the air tickets have gone up 20%. Must be inflation in fuel prices?
Scary, indeed
Take the cookies off your computer...airlines raise prices if you repeatedly search the same trip
Unidentified nutter on Russian state TV yesterday saying Warsaw will be wiped out with nukes in 30 seconds in event of NATO peacekeeping force in Ukraine
Seems the Ukr Nazis are being created by American companies in the latest load of through the looking glass nonsense from Moscow:
Felix Light @felix_light · 1h “Kirill is here as a warrior of Christ ... He fought against evil, Satanic spirits: Ukrainian Nazis, created by American multinational corporations.”
@MoscowTimes attended the burial of a Russian soldier killed in Ukraine - here's what we saw and heard.
Jake Cordell @JakeCordell · 3h Lots of Telegram chatter today about the whereabouts of Russia's defence minister Sergei Shoigu. Not seen in public for 12 days, not seen with Putin since *that* meeting on 27 Feb where he was ordered to put the nukes on high alert.
Despite high house prices whats kept the young on side so far has been cheap foreign travel and cheap consumer goods. Take that away and things could get interesting
Things those massive fuel/power increases are going to kill are big tellies, latest phones, foreign holidays. Holidays are especially going to be missed after 2 years of Covid.
We are going to be given a shock lesson in the importance of saving for a rainy day, now an alien concept to many.
Having a shiny new motor every couple of years on the never never is the one that will really hit home. That is an outward sign of status.
Yeah, after the holiday, that’s probably going to be the second major sacrifice for most of the PAYE working population.
After that, it starts to really hit home.
Scary times ahead.
Talking of pricey holidays, I’ve been trying to arrange a trip to Eastern Turkey for a while. Every time I go back to Opodo or Kayak the air tickets have gone up 20%. Must be inflation in fuel prices?
Scary, indeed
Use in incognito mode / clear cookies and get yourself a VPN and try setting to other countries. I was looking at flights to the US yesterday and could get 10%+ off just by changing my supposed location when searching.
Travel industry is particularly bad for this practice of messing with pricing depending on search history and search location.
I think as rising energy bills and fuel costs bite people will sadly lose interest in the Ukraine war. Its already getting less attention in the news
I noticed that. Every time I put news on now it’s not war. It’s unions moaning about job losses or other domestic news. But the war is worse now and more war crimes to report on than weeks ago when it obliterated all news. It makes no sense.
Boris's lockdown rant is absurdly disconnected from Starmer's questions. What did CCHQ expect Starmer to ask?
Obviously expected a question about BA2 sub-variant and very high levels of Covid transmission. But thankfully Starmer asked 6 of the eleventy-billion more important questions.
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
I was thinking more of political connections and alliances. Much stronger Aus-US (as reflected by the hysteria on PB over the tech transfer agreement Aukus). In way of life, yep, it's like California in some ways but with fish and chips. I've been there too.
The former is as least as important as the latter when it comes to going republican.
Sure, politically-militarily it is in the American sphere, but so is all of the West. That doesn’t say much
Culturally, Oz is way more British (tho it is of course more itself, and confidently so)
I believe Australia regularly tops the polls of places Brits would like to emigrate to; because we feel at home there. Pubs and pints. Masterchef and mates. Cricket and rugby
But with sun and (probably too much) space
i would say that maps quite often, but not always, onto a Brexiter/Remainer cultural divide. Several people I know feel much more at home in places like Scandinavia, France, Holland, or Italy, and indeed several of my former peer group have also moved to countries like these over the years.
There is no way we are culturally closer to France or Italy, than we are to Oz
And I love France and Italy (and all of mainland Europe). I am greatly looking forward to going there this summer
Europe is my civilisation. My home. I am European. We are an extended family
But Aussies are more like siblings who moved away.
Well, you may feel that, as I say, but in my experience quite a few people feel differently. The very mixed emigration figures would appear to back that up, too, I think.
1. Australia 1,300,000 2 Spain 761,000 3 United States 678,000 4 Canada 603,000 5 Ireland 291,000 6 India 250,000 7 New Zealand 215,000 8 South Africa 212,000 9 France 200,000 10 Germany 115,000
Australia is a trillion miles away, on the other side of the world. Yet five times as many Brits have moved there, than have hopped across the channel to france. And thus despite emigration to France being infinitely easier from 1975-2018
That's a list of the diaspora, not a timeframe of emigration. I suspect many of the figures for Spain, France, Germany and are more recent than for Australia, for instance. Also, even with possibly very out-of-date figures, the continental European total comes up quite similar to the Australian, as i would roughly expect.
I would also class the US qute separately.
Yet despite the disadvantage of distance; and the removal, until recently, of many of the bureaucratic hurdles to relocating to EU countries, it seems we are much, much comfortable with restarting our lives in English speaking countries. This shouldn't come as a surprise. But polyglots tend to underestimate the sheer inabaility of the monoglot majority to be comfortable in languages other than English. Free movement in Europe was never that attractive for any but a small minority. Free movement with Aus/NZ and/or Canada would be much more attractive. I'm not necessarily arguing for this - I'm sure there are numerous practical issues, not least would the other parties want it.
And let's face it, the main reason British people move to France and Spain is to retire somewhere sunny and close to home so they can get back easily to see their kids. Nothing to do with the culture
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
I was thinking more of political connections and alliances. Much stronger Aus-US (as reflected by the hysteria on PB over the tech transfer agreement Aukus). In way of life, yep, it's like California in some ways but with fish and chips. I've been there too.
The former is as least as important as the latter when it comes to going republican.
Sure, politically-militarily it is in the American sphere, but so is all of the West. That doesn’t say much
Culturally, Oz is way more British (tho it is of course more itself, and confidently so)
I believe Australia regularly tops the polls of places Brits would like to emigrate to; because we feel at home there. Pubs and pints. Masterchef and mates. Cricket and rugby
But with sun and (probably too much) space
i would say that maps quite often, but not always, onto a Brexiter/Remainer cultural divide. Several people I know feel much more at home in places like Scandinavia, France, Holland, or Italy, and indeed several of my former peer group have also moved to countries like these over the years.
There is no way we are culturally closer to France or Italy, than we are to Oz
And I love France and Italy (and all of mainland Europe). I am greatly looking forward to going there this summer
Europe is my civilisation. My home. I am European. We are an extended family
But Aussies are more like siblings who moved away.
Think we are culturally closest to netherlands in europe
I never get the racist rant london taxi drivers are meant to be famous for from London taxi drivers, but I get it from Rotterdam cabbies.
For rentals it is required to be E or better by law. See if your LL will do anything - if you have to leave it is expensive for the LL.
I was talking to one of my Ts in my grandma's solid-walled 2up2down detached cottage who is being told £260 a month (which I think is probably the Fixed Rate Rate unregulated trick I mention in my other post), which will be more like £180 a month.
She has 2 washers and about 8 dogs, and all rooms have 3 outside walls, so uses quite a lot of energy for the size.
When she moved in in 2010 the energy bills were £230 a month, which we reduced to under £100, without switching (which up until last year often gave -25% wrt market average), by investment (eg double glazing, insulation) and targeted reductions (eg she had a washer-dryer costing £15-18 a week to run).
But it's a tricky one this time round, since we've done the low hanging fruit.
Just checked my EPC, which seemed almost pointless. The inspector "assumed" the roof has no insulation, they didn't actually look.
Any sense that they might have considered, or measured, the effectiveness of the double-glazing (which is old and seems a bit leaky around the edges), or details like the paper thin external walls for the bay windows, seems pretty unlikely when they didn't even poke their head into the loft to see what amount of insulation there was, or not.
This inspired me to look mine up. A Victorian house, extended in the 80s. The assessment seems fair (it was a few years ago) and I get a D. Interestingly all but one of the other houses in my road are E or F. Some of the flat conversions are D, and two manage C.
To get to C I would need to make £17-34k of improvements to get roughly £488 benefit, so that's somewhere between 35-70 years to pay for itself (perhaps a bit better than that if current prices stay for a while). As it happens since it was done I have upgraded some of the double-glazing and built a further extension so overall the insulation will have improved, but there's nothing cost effective left to do that will make any difference. I can't see how I can add insulation to solid walls, for example.
The way it would be done is by adding insulation to the outside of the exterior walls.
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.
That raises some interesting questions.
1. Suppose you have someone serving a custodial sentence for a crime which is subsequently abolished. Would you keep the person imprisoned for something that's no longer a crime, and where it's acknowledged it shouldn't previously have been a crime?
2. Or, a more extreme example of the same thing, do you support prosecution for something that was a crime at the time the defendant was alleged to have committed the offence, but is no longer?
Seems to me that the logic of your position would be to prosecute and continue imprisonment in those cases, but I think that would be morally repugnant.
There's an important legal principle against retrospectively criminalizing activities - because it makes it impossible for people to obey the law - but I don't think this needs to be symmetrical, that we cannot retrospectively decriminalize activities.
Some may wish to draw a parallel with partygate, but there's a difference in that officially it is still maintained that it was necessary for the law to have criminalized certain activities at that time, even if that is no longer the case now.
A good example of 2 would of course be fixed penalties for breaching Covid regulations. My first thought was such an incredible waste of police time. My second was, wait a minute, this is the Met and it is at least relatively harmless.
The difference is that you can make the case that the Covid regulations were necessary at the time, but you can't do that for an issue like witchcraft or homosexuality.
But that's a value judgement isn't it? Witchcraft and homosexuality were widely thought to be of the utmost importance then. Equally. Some didn't see the COVID stuff as vital at all.
Witchcraft is highly unusual inasmuch as it relates to a belief system - magic - which is not just out-of-date, but which we regard with derisive disbelief. This confuses our reaction
See @cookie’s bizarre remarks about ‘miscarriages of justice’ against all convicted 17th century Scottish witches
It’s very likely some of those convicted WERE witches, inasmuch as they cast spells to harm people. Did the spells work? Of course not. Was there evil intent? Malefice? Yes, probably
So pardoning them all is arguably daft, unless you are pardoning them because we now know their ‘magic’ was useless and they couldn’t have harmed anyone.
But THEY didn’t know that; they really thought they could summon the devil
In some cases. Mostly it was a way of settling petty grudges.
But not all. Yet all have been pardoned
It’s fucking ludicrous. Scotland is a ludicrous region
a) Did they really think they could liaise with the Devil? b) Could the 17th century Scottish legal system really prove this?
I know you and I have different belief systems. But, and I concede I don't know the details of any of the cases, I would doubt that any of the cases would stand up to scrutiny.
It really isn't something I feel strongly about, and I think we can probably agree that it's surprising that Scotland considers this a priority.
Actually, on reflection, maybe I do feel strongly about this. What does a man have if not his reputation? This is a slightly old fashioned view but if successive generations think anything at all about me I'd like it to be positive. I don't think I'm alone in this. This is basically what drives the army to stick together and kill people rather than run away: people would rather risk their lives than their reputation. And "bearing false witness" - while it tends to be seen as one of those archaic sins which we can have a bit of a chortle at the ancients about - I'd rate as high on the scale of importance as some of the more fashionable ones. (I find this watching fiction on telly or films; I'm much more uncomfortable with portrayals of people having their reputations unfairly traduced than I am with plain old violence or robbery.) So, yes, the Scottish state does have something to apologise for (along, of course, with every other state in the world). It's a gimmick. But reputations are important.
Despite high house prices whats kept the young on side so far has been cheap foreign travel and cheap consumer goods. Take that away and things could get interesting
Things those massive fuel/power increases are going to kill are big tellies, latest phones, foreign holidays. Holidays are especially going to be missed after 2 years of Covid.
We are going to be given a shock lesson in the importance of saving for a rainy day, now an alien concept to many.
Having a shiny new motor every couple of years on the never never is the one that will really hit home. That is an outward sign of status.
Yeah, after the holiday, that’s probably going to be the second major sacrifice for most of the PAYE working population.
After that, it starts to really hit home.
Scary times ahead.
Talking of pricey holidays, I’ve been trying to arrange a trip to Eastern Turkey for a while. Every time I go back to Opodo or Kayak the air tickets have gone up 20%. Must be inflation in fuel prices?
Scary, indeed
Take the cookies off your computer...airlines raise prices if you repeatedly search the same trip
Is that true? Can’t believe I’m learning this so late in life! Thanks
Weirdly I just found the flight I wanted via the actual airline website - and, yes, much cheaper
Despite high house prices whats kept the young on side so far has been cheap foreign travel and cheap consumer goods. Take that away and things could get interesting
Things those massive fuel/power increases are going to kill are big tellies, latest phones, foreign holidays. Holidays are especially going to be missed after 2 years of Covid.
We are going to be given a shock lesson in the importance of saving for a rainy day, now an alien concept to many.
Having a shiny new motor every couple of years on the never never is the one that will really hit home. That is an outward sign of status.
Yeah, after the holiday, that’s probably going to be the second major sacrifice for most of the PAYE working population.
After that, it starts to really hit home.
Scary times ahead.
Talking of pricey holidays, I’ve been trying to arrange a trip to Eastern Turkey for a while. Every time I go back to Opodo or Kayak the air tickets have gone up 20%. Must be inflation in fuel prices?
Scary, indeed
Take the cookies off your computer...airlines raise prices if you repeatedly search the same trip
Is that true? Can’t believe I’m learning this so late in life! Thanks
Weirdly I just found the flight I wanted via the actual airline website - and, yes, much cheaper
Send you might be right 👍👍🥂🥂
As a seasoned traveller for Flint knappers Monthly I am very surprised you didn't know these common underhand tactics employed in the travel industry in relation to "personalised pricing".
Perhaps there is a paid article in it for you.....
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.
That raises some interesting questions.
1. Suppose you have someone serving a custodial sentence for a crime which is subsequently abolished. Would you keep the person imprisoned for something that's no longer a crime, and where it's acknowledged it shouldn't previously have been a crime?
2. Or, a more extreme example of the same thing, do you support prosecution for something that was a crime at the time the defendant was alleged to have committed the offence, but is no longer?
Seems to me that the logic of your position would be to prosecute and continue imprisonment in those cases, but I think that would be morally repugnant.
There's an important legal principle against retrospectively criminalizing activities - because it makes it impossible for people to obey the law - but I don't think this needs to be symmetrical, that we cannot retrospectively decriminalize activities.
Some may wish to draw a parallel with partygate, but there's a difference in that officially it is still maintained that it was necessary for the law to have criminalized certain activities at that time, even if that is no longer the case now.
A good example of 2 would of course be fixed penalties for breaching Covid regulations. My first thought was such an incredible waste of police time. My second was, wait a minute, this is the Met and it is at least relatively harmless.
The difference is that you can make the case that the Covid regulations were necessary at the time, but you can't do that for an issue like witchcraft or homosexuality.
But that's a value judgement isn't it? Witchcraft and homosexuality were widely thought to be of the utmost importance then. Equally. Some didn't see the COVID stuff as vital at all.
Witchcraft is highly unusual inasmuch as it relates to a belief system - magic - which is not just out-of-date, but which we regard with derisive disbelief. This confuses our reaction
See @cookie’s bizarre remarks about ‘miscarriages of justice’ against all convicted 17th century Scottish witches
It’s very likely some of those convicted WERE witches, inasmuch as they cast spells to harm people. Did the spells work? Of course not. Was there evil intent? Malefice? Yes, probably
So pardoning them all is arguably daft, unless you are pardoning them because we now know their ‘magic’ was useless and they couldn’t have harmed anyone.
But THEY didn’t know that; they really thought they could summon the devil
In some cases. Mostly it was a way of settling petty grudges.
But not all. Yet all have been pardoned
It’s fucking ludicrous. Scotland is a ludicrous region
a) Did they really think they could liaise with the Devil? b) Could the 17th century Scottish legal system really prove this?
I know you and I have different belief systems. But, and I concede I don't know the details of any of the cases, I would doubt that any of the cases would stand up to scrutiny.
It really isn't something I feel strongly about, and I think we can probably agree that it's surprising that Scotland considers this a priority.
Actually, on reflection, maybe I do feel strongly about this. What does a man have if not his reputation? This is a slightly old fashioned view but if successive generations think anything at all about me I'd like it to be positive. I don't think I'm alone in this. This is basically what drives the army to stick together and kill people rather than run away: people would rather risk their lives than their reputation. And "bearing false witness" - while it tends to be seen as one of those archaic sins which we can have a bit of a chortle at the ancients about - I'd rate as high on the scale of importance as some of the more fashionable ones. (I find this watching fiction on telly or films; I'm much more uncomfortable with portrayals of people having their reputations unfairly traduced than I am with plain old violence or robbery.) So, yes, the Scottish state does have something to apologise for (along, of course, with every other state in the world). It's a gimmick. But reputations are important.
Going straight to burning and not try rehabilitate programme to save souls was unchristian!
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
I was thinking more of political connections and alliances. Much stronger Aus-US (as reflected by the hysteria on PB over the tech transfer agreement Aukus). In way of life, yep, it's like California in some ways but with fish and chips. I've been there too.
The former is as least as important as the latter when it comes to going republican.
Sure, politically-militarily it is in the American sphere, but so is all of the West. That doesn’t say much
Culturally, Oz is way more British (tho it is of course more itself, and confidently so)
I believe Australia regularly tops the polls of places Brits would like to emigrate to; because we feel at home there. Pubs and pints. Masterchef and mates. Cricket and rugby
But with sun and (probably too much) space
i would say that maps quite often, but not always, onto a Brexiter/Remainer cultural divide. Several people I know feel much more at home in places like Scandinavia, France, Holland, or Italy, and indeed several of my former peer group have also moved to countries like these over the years.
There is no way we are culturally closer to France or Italy, than we are to Oz
And I love France and Italy (and all of mainland Europe). I am greatly looking forward to going there this summer
Europe is my civilisation. My home. I am European. We are an extended family
But Aussies are more like siblings who moved away.
Think we are culturally closest to netherlands in europe
Jake Cordell @JakeCordell · 3h Lots of Telegram chatter today about the whereabouts of Russia's defence minister Sergei Shoigu. Not seen in public for 12 days, not seen with Putin since *that* meeting on 27 Feb where he was ordered to put the nukes on high alert.
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.
That raises some interesting questions.
1. Suppose you have someone serving a custodial sentence for a crime which is subsequently abolished. Would you keep the person imprisoned for something that's no longer a crime, and where it's acknowledged it shouldn't previously have been a crime?
2. Or, a more extreme example of the same thing, do you support prosecution for something that was a crime at the time the defendant was alleged to have committed the offence, but is no longer?
Seems to me that the logic of your position would be to prosecute and continue imprisonment in those cases, but I think that would be morally repugnant.
There's an important legal principle against retrospectively criminalizing activities - because it makes it impossible for people to obey the law - but I don't think this needs to be symmetrical, that we cannot retrospectively decriminalize activities.
Some may wish to draw a parallel with partygate, but there's a difference in that officially it is still maintained that it was necessary for the law to have criminalized certain activities at that time, even if that is no longer the case now.
A good example of 2 would of course be fixed penalties for breaching Covid regulations. My first thought was such an incredible waste of police time. My second was, wait a minute, this is the Met and it is at least relatively harmless.
The difference is that you can make the case that the Covid regulations were necessary at the time, but you can't do that for an issue like witchcraft or homosexuality.
But that's a value judgement isn't it? Witchcraft and homosexuality were widely thought to be of the utmost importance then. Equally. Some didn't see the COVID stuff as vital at all.
Witchcraft is highly unusual inasmuch as it relates to a belief system - magic - which is not just out-of-date, but which we regard with derisive disbelief. This confuses our reaction
See @cookie’s bizarre remarks about ‘miscarriages of justice’ against all convicted 17th century Scottish witches
It’s very likely some of those convicted WERE witches, inasmuch as they cast spells to harm people. Did the spells work? Of course not. Was there evil intent? Malefice? Yes, probably
So pardoning them all is arguably daft, unless you are pardoning them because we now know their ‘magic’ was useless and they couldn’t have harmed anyone.
But THEY didn’t know that; they really thought they could summon the devil
In some cases. Mostly it was a way of settling petty grudges.
But not all. Yet all have been pardoned
It’s fucking ludicrous. Scotland is a ludicrous region
a) Did they really think they could liaise with the Devil? b) Could the 17th century Scottish legal system really prove this?
I know you and I have different belief systems. But, and I concede I don't know the details of any of the cases, I would doubt that any of the cases would stand up to scrutiny.
It really isn't something I feel strongly about, and I think we can probably agree that it's surprising that Scotland considers this a priority.
Actually, on reflection, maybe I do feel strongly about this. What does a man have if not his reputation? This is a slightly old fashioned view but if successive generations think anything at all about me I'd like it to be positive. I don't think I'm alone in this. This is basically what drives the army to stick together and kill people rather than run away: people would rather risk their lives than their reputation. And "bearing false witness" - while it tends to be seen as one of those archaic sins which we can have a bit of a chortle at the ancients about - I'd rate as high on the scale of importance as some of the more fashionable ones. (I find this watching fiction on telly or films; I'm much more uncomfortable with portrayals of people having their reputations unfairly traduced than I am with plain old violence or robbery.) So, yes, the Scottish state does have something to apologise for (along, of course, with every other state in the world). It's a gimmick. But reputations are important.
The websites I posted earlier would have the info. But in any case, is 'bearing false witness' not what we call perjury, or for tjat matter lying to Parliament?
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
I was thinking more of political connections and alliances. Much stronger Aus-US (as reflected by the hysteria on PB over the tech transfer agreement Aukus). In way of life, yep, it's like California in some ways but with fish and chips. I've been there too.
The former is as least as important as the latter when it comes to going republican.
Sure, politically-militarily it is in the American sphere, but so is all of the West. That doesn’t say much
Culturally, Oz is way more British (tho it is of course more itself, and confidently so)
I believe Australia regularly tops the polls of places Brits would like to emigrate to; because we feel at home there. Pubs and pints. Masterchef and mates. Cricket and rugby
But with sun and (probably too much) space
i would say that maps quite often, but not always, onto a Brexiter/Remainer cultural divide. Several people I know feel much more at home in places like Scandinavia, France, Holland, or Italy, and indeed several of my former peer group have also moved to countries like these over the years.
There is no way we are culturally closer to France or Italy, than we are to Oz
And I love France and Italy (and all of mainland Europe). I am greatly looking forward to going there this summer
Europe is my civilisation. My home. I am European. We are an extended family
But Aussies are more like siblings who moved away.
Well, you may feel that, as I say, but in my experience quite a few people feel differently. The very mixed emigration figures would appear to back that up, too, I think.
1. Australia 1,300,000 2 Spain 761,000 3 United States 678,000 4 Canada 603,000 5 Ireland 291,000 6 India 250,000 7 New Zealand 215,000 8 South Africa 212,000 9 France 200,000 10 Germany 115,000
Australia is a trillion miles away, on the other side of the world. Yet five times as many Brits have moved there, than have hopped across the channel to france. And thus despite emigration to France being infinitely easier from 1975-2018
That's a list of the diaspora, not a timeframe of emigration. I suspect many of the figures for Spain, France, Germany and are more recent than for Australia, for instance. Also, even with possibly very out-of-date figures, the continental European total is pretty much similar to the Australian.
I would also class the US qute separately.
Emigration from UK => EU outstrips "UK => everywhere else in the word" by some considerable margin for the period 2018-2020. (Except Q4 2018 for some reason!)
Yes, I think a lot of those Australian figures are much older.
Just to wrap up on that Australian point, it is important to note that I've got nothing against Australia at all - one of my closest friends is an Australian I've known since I was 17, in fact. It may be that i just feel personally more affinity, or direct famliarity, for cultures like the Kiwi one, outside Europe.
I suspect i'm not entirely alone in that, in that NZ is possibly more similar to the UK than Australia, and British emigrants to Australia may feel slightly more of a cultural leap, maybe more comparable to, but not as pronounced as, travelling to the US.
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
I was thinking more of political connections and alliances. Much stronger Aus-US (as reflected by the hysteria on PB over the tech transfer agreement Aukus). In way of life, yep, it's like California in some ways but with fish and chips. I've been there too.
The former is as least as important as the latter when it comes to going republican.
Sure, politically-militarily it is in the American sphere, but so is all of the West. That doesn’t say much
Culturally, Oz is way more British (tho it is of course more itself, and confidently so)
I believe Australia regularly tops the polls of places Brits would like to emigrate to; because we feel at home there. Pubs and pints. Masterchef and mates. Cricket and rugby
But with sun and (probably too much) space
i would say that maps quite often, but not always, onto a Brexiter/Remainer cultural divide. Several people I know feel much more at home in places like Scandinavia, France, Holland, or Italy, and indeed several of my former peer group have also moved to countries like these over the years.
There is no way we are culturally closer to France or Italy, than we are to Oz
And I love France and Italy (and all of mainland Europe). I am greatly looking forward to going there this summer
Europe is my civilisation. My home. I am European. We are an extended family
But Aussies are more like siblings who moved away.
Well, you may feel that, as I say, but in my experience quite a few people feel differently. The very mixed emigration figures would appear to back that up, too, I think.
1. Australia 1,300,000 2 Spain 761,000 3 United States 678,000 4 Canada 603,000 5 Ireland 291,000 6 India 250,000 7 New Zealand 215,000 8 South Africa 212,000 9 France 200,000 10 Germany 115,000
Australia is a trillion miles away, on the other side of the world. Yet five times as many Brits have moved there, than have hopped across the channel to france. And thus despite emigration to France being infinitely easier from 1975-2018
That's a list of the diaspora, not a timeframe of emigration. I suspect many of the figures for Spain, France, Germany and are more recent than for Australia, for instance. Also, even with possibly very out-of-date figures, the continental European total comes up quite similar to the Australian, as i would roughly expect.
I would also class the US qute separately.
Yet despite the disadvantage of distance; and the removal, until recently, of many of the bureaucratic hurdles to relocating to EU countries, it seems we are much, much comfortable with restarting our lives in English speaking countries. This shouldn't come as a surprise. But polyglots tend to underestimate the sheer inabaility of the monoglot majority to be comfortable in languages other than English. Free movement in Europe was never that attractive for any but a small minority. Free movement with Aus/NZ and/or Canada would be much more attractive. I'm not necessarily arguing for this - I'm sure there are numerous practical issues, not least would the other parties want it.
And let's face it, the main reason British people move to France and Spain is to retire somewhere sunny and close to home so they can get back easily to see their kids. Nothing to do with the culture
I am sure there is at least one narrow minded Sun reader with a knotted hanky on his head in Torremolinos who 100% agrees with you.
Despite high house prices whats kept the young on side so far has been cheap foreign travel and cheap consumer goods. Take that away and things could get interesting
Things those massive fuel/power increases are going to kill are big tellies, latest phones, foreign holidays. Holidays are especially going to be missed after 2 years of Covid.
We are going to be given a shock lesson in the importance of saving for a rainy day, now an alien concept to many.
Having a shiny new motor every couple of years on the never never is the one that will really hit home. That is an outward sign of status.
Yeah, after the holiday, that’s probably going to be the second major sacrifice for most of the PAYE working population.
After that, it starts to really hit home.
Scary times ahead.
Talking of pricey holidays, I’ve been trying to arrange a trip to Eastern Turkey for a while. Every time I go back to Opodo or Kayak the air tickets have gone up 20%. Must be inflation in fuel prices?
Scary, indeed
Take the cookies off your computer...airlines raise prices if you repeatedly search the same trip
Is that true? Can’t believe I’m learning this so late in life! Thanks
Weirdly I just found the flight I wanted via the actual airline website - and, yes, much cheaper
Send you might be right 👍👍🥂🥂
As a seasoned traveller for Flint knappers Monthly I am very surprised you didn't know these common underhand tactics employed in the travel industry in relation to "personalised pricing".
Eh? Put up NI to raise £12b for NHS and then cut 1p of income tax to lose say £3b of that straight away.
One is more regressive than the other.
Ignore the BBC, any chancellor would be instant laughing stock if tried that.
I don’t even have contacts of BBC but I can say now he will increase start threshold to take more out of tax to help poor families as better way to do it than 1p off all tax including Alex from daily telegraph.
Despite high house prices whats kept the young on side so far has been cheap foreign travel and cheap consumer goods. Take that away and things could get interesting
Things those massive fuel/power increases are going to kill are big tellies, latest phones, foreign holidays. Holidays are especially going to be missed after 2 years of Covid.
We are going to be given a shock lesson in the importance of saving for a rainy day, now an alien concept to many.
Having a shiny new motor every couple of years on the never never is the one that will really hit home. That is an outward sign of status.
Yeah, after the holiday, that’s probably going to be the second major sacrifice for most of the PAYE working population.
After that, it starts to really hit home.
Scary times ahead.
Talking of pricey holidays, I’ve been trying to arrange a trip to Eastern Turkey for a while. Every time I go back to Opodo or Kayak the air tickets have gone up 20%. Must be inflation in fuel prices?
Scary, indeed
Take the cookies off your computer...airlines raise prices if you repeatedly search the same trip
Is that true? Can’t believe I’m learning this so late in life! Thanks
Weirdly I just found the flight I wanted via the actual airline website - and, yes, much cheaper
Send you might be right 👍👍🥂🥂
As a seasoned traveller for Flint knappers Monthly I am very surprised you didn't know these common underhand tactics employed in the travel industry in relation to "personalised pricing".
Despite high house prices whats kept the young on side so far has been cheap foreign travel and cheap consumer goods. Take that away and things could get interesting
Things those massive fuel/power increases are going to kill are big tellies, latest phones, foreign holidays. Holidays are especially going to be missed after 2 years of Covid.
We are going to be given a shock lesson in the importance of saving for a rainy day, now an alien concept to many.
Having a shiny new motor every couple of years on the never never is the one that will really hit home. That is an outward sign of status.
Yeah, after the holiday, that’s probably going to be the second major sacrifice for most of the PAYE working population.
After that, it starts to really hit home.
Scary times ahead.
Talking of pricey holidays, I’ve been trying to arrange a trip to Eastern Turkey for a while. Every time I go back to Opodo or Kayak the air tickets have gone up 20%. Must be inflation in fuel prices?
Scary, indeed
Take the cookies off your computer...airlines raise prices if you repeatedly search the same trip
Is that true? Can’t believe I’m learning this so late in life! Thanks
Weirdly I just found the flight I wanted via the actual airline website - and, yes, much cheaper
Send you might be right 👍👍🥂🥂
As a seasoned traveller for Flint knappers Monthly I am very surprised you didn't know these common underhand tactics employed in the travel industry in relation to "personalised pricing".
Genuinely didn’t know this. I is idiot
You know all those Facebook posts you got early in 2016.........................
Despite high house prices whats kept the young on side so far has been cheap foreign travel and cheap consumer goods. Take that away and things could get interesting
Things those massive fuel/power increases are going to kill are big tellies, latest phones, foreign holidays. Holidays are especially going to be missed after 2 years of Covid.
We are going to be given a shock lesson in the importance of saving for a rainy day, now an alien concept to many.
Having a shiny new motor every couple of years on the never never is the one that will really hit home. That is an outward sign of status.
Yeah, after the holiday, that’s probably going to be the second major sacrifice for most of the PAYE working population.
After that, it starts to really hit home.
Scary times ahead.
Talking of pricey holidays, I’ve been trying to arrange a trip to Eastern Turkey for a while. Every time I go back to Opodo or Kayak the air tickets have gone up 20%. Must be inflation in fuel prices?
Scary, indeed
Take the cookies off your computer...airlines raise prices if you repeatedly search the same trip
Is that true? Can’t believe I’m learning this so late in life! Thanks
Weirdly I just found the flight I wanted via the actual airline website - and, yes, much cheaper
Send you might be right 👍👍🥂🥂
As a seasoned traveller for Flint knappers Monthly I am very surprised you didn't know these common underhand tactics employed in the travel industry in relation to "personalised pricing".
Perhaps there is a paid article in it for you.....
Despite high house prices whats kept the young on side so far has been cheap foreign travel and cheap consumer goods. Take that away and things could get interesting
Things those massive fuel/power increases are going to kill are big tellies, latest phones, foreign holidays. Holidays are especially going to be missed after 2 years of Covid.
We are going to be given a shock lesson in the importance of saving for a rainy day, now an alien concept to many.
Having a shiny new motor every couple of years on the never never is the one that will really hit home. That is an outward sign of status.
Yeah, after the holiday, that’s probably going to be the second major sacrifice for most of the PAYE working population.
After that, it starts to really hit home.
Scary times ahead.
Talking of pricey holidays, I’ve been trying to arrange a trip to Eastern Turkey for a while. Every time I go back to Opodo or Kayak the air tickets have gone up 20%. Must be inflation in fuel prices?
Scary, indeed
Take the cookies off your computer...airlines raise prices if you repeatedly search the same trip
Is that true? Can’t believe I’m learning this so late in life! Thanks
Weirdly I just found the flight I wanted via the actual airline website - and, yes, much cheaper
Send you might be right 👍👍🥂🥂
As a seasoned traveller for Flint knappers Monthly I am very surprised you didn't know these common underhand tactics employed in the travel industry in relation to "personalised pricing".
Genuinely didn’t know this. I is idiot
It wasn't meant as a slight. I just presumed you would have encountered this before or heard from other fellow globe trotters that they had seen this messing out with prices. Due to pandemic I obviously haven't been travelling as I usually would, but general advice I followed in the past :
Clear Cookies + VPN + Card that allows you to pay in foreign currencies at market rate with no exchange fees.
For rentals it is required to be E or better by law. See if your LL will do anything - if you have to leave it is expensive for the LL.
I was talking to one of my Ts in my grandma's solid-walled 2up2down detached cottage who is being told £260 a month (which I think is probably the Fixed Rate Rate unregulated trick I mention in my other post), which will be more like £180 a month.
She has 2 washers and about 8 dogs, and all rooms have 3 outside walls, so uses quite a lot of energy for the size.
When she moved in in 2010 the energy bills were £230 a month, which we reduced to under £100, without switching (which up until last year often gave -25% wrt market average), by investment (eg double glazing, insulation) and targeted reductions (eg she had a washer-dryer costing £15-18 a week to run).
But it's a tricky one this time round, since we've done the low hanging fruit.
Just checked my EPC, which seemed almost pointless. The inspector "assumed" the roof has no insulation, they didn't actually look.
Any sense that they might have considered, or measured, the effectiveness of the double-glazing (which is old and seems a bit leaky around the edges), or details like the paper thin external walls for the bay windows, seems pretty unlikely when they didn't even poke their head into the loft to see what amount of insulation there was, or not.
Um. Three things.
1 - I would wonder why you didn't tell him what was there, then make him look, then query the result when it did not come out accurately.
They are instructed to make default assumptions where evidence is not available, as part of the methodology - to prevent false over-positives. That seems the reasonable green way to call it.
If you want it the other way, provide proof. If it was done before you moved in, then shell out £40-50 for a new one and provide the needed evidence.
2 - For @Horse, the point is that this is how his LL is regulated, so that is how to get things done. Personally, I take care to keep records of work done so I *can* provide proof.
3 - EPC is a basic system, and an EU standard. We have it because we did not choose to pay the money for something better to be done universally, so we get what we pay for. It was an Yvette Cooper thing in the noughties, under pressure from a lot of people wanting something as cheap as possible.
Anyone who wants something better can pay for a SAP analysis, rather than the normal RDSAP analysis (RD = "Reduced Data"). It will cost £300-400. If you build a house iirc you do an "As Designed" full SAP with your Detailed Planning Application submission, and an "As built" one afterwards, which includes things like a leakage test.
The EPC was done for the landlord before we moved in.
LL being rather neglectful, then, IMO (writing as a LL).
It remains the legal basis on which LL will be regulated, in countries of the UK, by Councils in the UK.
Declassified emails from @DrGregorSmith have undermined @NicolaSturgeon’s claim that her government never pursued a policy of “herd immunity” that would allow coronavirus to spread throughout Scotland.
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
I was thinking more of political connections and alliances. Much stronger Aus-US (as reflected by the hysteria on PB over the tech transfer agreement Aukus). In way of life, yep, it's like California in some ways but with fish and chips. I've been there too.
The former is as least as important as the latter when it comes to going republican.
Sure, politically-militarily it is in the American sphere, but so is all of the West. That doesn’t say much
Culturally, Oz is way more British (tho it is of course more itself, and confidently so)
I believe Australia regularly tops the polls of places Brits would like to emigrate to; because we feel at home there. Pubs and pints. Masterchef and mates. Cricket and rugby
But with sun and (probably too much) space
i would say that maps quite often, but not always, onto a Brexiter/Remainer cultural divide. Several people I know feel much more at home in places like Scandinavia, France, Holland, or Italy, and indeed several of my former peer group have also moved to countries like these over the years.
There is no way we are culturally closer to France or Italy, than we are to Oz
And I love France and Italy (and all of mainland Europe). I am greatly looking forward to going there this summer
Europe is my civilisation. My home. I am European. We are an extended family
But Aussies are more like siblings who moved away.
Think we are culturally closest to netherlands in europe
Interesting the best "match" for UK I've found so far is... Ireland
In some respects the Irish are more English than the English.
They drink more tea. They play more sports most of the rest of the world doesn't bother with. They have weird religious anachronisms as part of daily and constitutional life. Their alcohol consumption is centred culturally around beer in pubs. The relationship with the US is a fundamental cornerstone of their foreign policy. On and on the similarities add up.
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.
That raises some interesting questions.
1. Suppose you have someone serving a custodial sentence for a crime which is subsequently abolished. Would you keep the person imprisoned for something that's no longer a crime, and where it's acknowledged it shouldn't previously have been a crime?
2. Or, a more extreme example of the same thing, do you support prosecution for something that was a crime at the time the defendant was alleged to have committed the offence, but is no longer?
Seems to me that the logic of your position would be to prosecute and continue imprisonment in those cases, but I think that would be morally repugnant.
There's an important legal principle against retrospectively criminalizing activities - because it makes it impossible for people to obey the law - but I don't think this needs to be symmetrical, that we cannot retrospectively decriminalize activities.
Some may wish to draw a parallel with partygate, but there's a difference in that officially it is still maintained that it was necessary for the law to have criminalized certain activities at that time, even if that is no longer the case now.
A good example of 2 would of course be fixed penalties for breaching Covid regulations. My first thought was such an incredible waste of police time. My second was, wait a minute, this is the Met and it is at least relatively harmless.
The difference is that you can make the case that the Covid regulations were necessary at the time, but you can't do that for an issue like witchcraft or homosexuality.
But that's a value judgement isn't it? Witchcraft and homosexuality were widely thought to be of the utmost importance then. Equally. Some didn't see the COVID stuff as vital at all.
Witchcraft is highly unusual inasmuch as it relates to a belief system - magic - which is not just out-of-date, but which we regard with derisive disbelief. This confuses our reaction
See @cookie’s bizarre remarks about ‘miscarriages of justice’ against all convicted 17th century Scottish witches
It’s very likely some of those convicted WERE witches, inasmuch as they cast spells to harm people. Did the spells work? Of course not. Was there evil intent? Malefice? Yes, probably
So pardoning them all is arguably daft, unless you are pardoning them because we now know their ‘magic’ was useless and they couldn’t have harmed anyone.
But THEY didn’t know that; they really thought they could summon the devil
In some cases. Mostly it was a way of settling petty grudges.
But not all. Yet all have been pardoned
It’s fucking ludicrous. Scotland is a ludicrous region
a) Did they really think they could liaise with the Devil? b) Could the 17th century Scottish legal system really prove this?
I know you and I have different belief systems. But, and I concede I don't know the details of any of the cases, I would doubt that any of the cases would stand up to scrutiny.
It really isn't something I feel strongly about, and I think we can probably agree that it's surprising that Scotland considers this a priority.
Actually, on reflection, maybe I do feel strongly about this. What does a man have if not his reputation? This is a slightly old fashioned view but if successive generations think anything at all about me I'd like it to be positive. I don't think I'm alone in this. This is basically what drives the army to stick together and kill people rather than run away: people would rather risk their lives than their reputation. And "bearing false witness" - while it tends to be seen as one of those archaic sins which we can have a bit of a chortle at the ancients about - I'd rate as high on the scale of importance as some of the more fashionable ones. (I find this watching fiction on telly or films; I'm much more uncomfortable with portrayals of people having their reputations unfairly traduced than I am with plain old violence or robbery.) So, yes, the Scottish state does have something to apologise for (along, of course, with every other state in the world). It's a gimmick. But reputations are important.
Yes, they really thought they could liaise with the devil. Yes there was sometimes hard evidence to prove this: poppets stuck with pins, spells made of human hair and blood, etc
Witchcraft was real in the minds of the people, as was the fear of it; some sought the power of it
I’ve no doubt many, probably the large majority, of men and women tortured and burned for witchcraft in Scotland were innocent. The idea they were ALL innocent seems far fetched to the point of absurdity. So these blanket pardons are morally wrong as well as being intellectually incoherent and ridic
I think as rising energy bills and fuel costs bite people will sadly lose interest in the Ukraine war. Its already getting less attention in the news
I noticed that. Every time I put news on now it’s not war. It’s unions moaning about job losses or other domestic news. But the war is worse now and more war crimes to report on than weeks ago when it obliterated all news. It makes no sense.
Yes russia are shipping people to concentration camps now...but I honestly think the war news is so horrible people are switching off from it
Eh? Put up NI to raise £12b for NHS and then cut 1p of income tax to lose say £3b of that straight away.
One is more regressive than the other.
And one is a direct tax on jobs....plus the way the new NI+ is being introduced, unnecessary added complexity.
Also a bit of a con claiming it’s ring fenced for NHS backlog and not straight into the big pot? For even if ringfenced the backlog tackle will need more as well from big pot in additional to new NI tax, so if less came from big pot it is a lie it is extra, isn’t it? This is how NHS was cut during austerity despite being ring fenced.
The new NI tax is a lie anyway for the claim it finally solves care crisis.
For rentals it is required to be E or better by law. See if your LL will do anything - if you have to leave it is expensive for the LL.
I was talking to one of my Ts in my grandma's solid-walled 2up2down detached cottage who is being told £260 a month (which I think is probably the Fixed Rate Rate unregulated trick I mention in my other post), which will be more like £180 a month.
She has 2 washers and about 8 dogs, and all rooms have 3 outside walls, so uses quite a lot of energy for the size.
When she moved in in 2010 the energy bills were £230 a month, which we reduced to under £100, without switching (which up until last year often gave -25% wrt market average), by investment (eg double glazing, insulation) and targeted reductions (eg she had a washer-dryer costing £15-18 a week to run).
But it's a tricky one this time round, since we've done the low hanging fruit.
Just checked my EPC, which seemed almost pointless. The inspector "assumed" the roof has no insulation, they didn't actually look.
Any sense that they might have considered, or measured, the effectiveness of the double-glazing (which is old and seems a bit leaky around the edges), or details like the paper thin external walls for the bay windows, seems pretty unlikely when they didn't even poke their head into the loft to see what amount of insulation there was, or not.
This inspired me to look mine up. A Victorian house, extended in the 80s. The assessment seems fair (it was a few years ago) and I get a D. Interestingly all but one of the other houses in my road are E or F. Some of the flat conversions are D, and two manage C.
To get to C I would need to make £17-34k of improvements to get roughly £488 benefit, so that's somewhere between 35-70 years to pay for itself (perhaps a bit better than that if current prices stay for a while). As it happens since it was done I have upgraded some of the double-glazing and built a further extension so overall the insulation will have improved, but there's nothing cost effective left to do that will make any difference. I can't see how I can add insulation to solid walls, for example.
I usually find that external wall insulation tends to be ineffective in cost-returns, after the basics have been done - such as IWI before decorative renovation or new kicthens/bathrooms.
But much of the economics may change from April 1st.
TBF we have done much of this on PB previously.
And EPC estimates are *estimates* based on *estimated* costs, based on an *estimated* methodology at the date of the EPC. You can get a trial copy of the EPC software, or your own spreadsheet model.
Despite high house prices whats kept the young on side so far has been cheap foreign travel and cheap consumer goods. Take that away and things could get interesting
Things those massive fuel/power increases are going to kill are big tellies, latest phones, foreign holidays. Holidays are especially going to be missed after 2 years of Covid.
We are going to be given a shock lesson in the importance of saving for a rainy day, now an alien concept to many.
Having a shiny new motor every couple of years on the never never is the one that will really hit home. That is an outward sign of status.
Yeah, after the holiday, that’s probably going to be the second major sacrifice for most of the PAYE working population.
After that, it starts to really hit home.
Scary times ahead.
Talking of pricey holidays, I’ve been trying to arrange a trip to Eastern Turkey for a while. Every time I go back to Opodo or Kayak the air tickets have gone up 20%. Must be inflation in fuel prices?
Scary, indeed
Take the cookies off your computer...airlines raise prices if you repeatedly search the same trip
Is that true? Can’t believe I’m learning this so late in life! Thanks
Weirdly I just found the flight I wanted via the actual airline website - and, yes, much cheaper
Send you might be right 👍👍🥂🥂
As a seasoned traveller for Flint knappers Monthly I am very surprised you didn't know these common underhand tactics employed in the travel industry in relation to "personalised pricing".
Genuinely didn’t know this. I is idiot
Does it matter if the Knappers monthly is paying?
That’s probably why I never deduced this. Generally I’ve had tickets arranged for me and paid by others
Eh? Put up NI to raise £12b for NHS and then cut 1p of income tax to lose say £3b of that straight away.
One is more regressive than the other.
And one is a direct tax on jobs....plus the way the new NI+ is being introduced, unnecessary added complexity.
Also a bit of a con claiming it’s ring fenced for NHS backlog and not straight into the big pot? For even if ringfenced the backlog tackle will need more as well from big pot in additional to new NI tax, so if less came from big pot it is a lie it is extra, isn’t it? This is how NHS was cut during austerity despite being ring fenced.
The new NI tax is a lie anyway for the claim it finally solves care crisis.
It also opens the opportunity for new NI+ to be increased again in the future. More added complexity allows for slight of hand by government with jiggering about with thresholds (or not i.e. fiscal drag) and rates.
I think as rising energy bills and fuel costs bite people will sadly lose interest in the Ukraine war. Its already getting less attention in the news
I noticed that. Every time I put news on now it’s not war. It’s unions moaning about job losses or other domestic news. But the war is worse now and more war crimes to report on than weeks ago when it obliterated all news. It makes no sense.
Yes russia are shipping people to concentration camps now...but I honestly think the war news is so horrible people are switching off from it
It has become static, so less to report.
I don’t think it has Peter. As the elephant has said, shipping to concentration camps as well as levelling cities and shooting peaceful crowds of resisters is more newsworthy now than the endless talking junk they’ve given us for weeks anyway.
It looks to me like almost everyone else in that clip is staring awkwardly at their feet.
Who knew that BatShitCrazyTV was a thing in Russia.
Not sure we should judge a country by its panel shows and vox pops, the mind boggles what people would make of us on that basis.
Any Russian or North Korean listening to our state broadcaster and its slobbering panegyric to William and Kate touching down in Jamaica would feel an ache of weary recognition.
Hope neither are tempted to do a dance with some locals - Harry maybe can get away with that , none of the other royals or indeed Theresa May
I regret to say that there has already been dancing, and there will no doubt be more dancing.
Still, the fresh, sensitive approach of these ‘young’ royals is just the thing to revitalise the monarchy.
What the fuck made them think that was a good idea?
The being carried aloft image is old isn't it? And I suspect what made them think it was a good idea was not wanting to insult their hosts by telling them 'thanks, but fuck off if you think I'm getting on there, some knob on Twitter might be offended.'.
Declassified emails from @DrGregorSmith have undermined @NicolaSturgeon’s claim that her government never pursued a policy of “herd immunity” that would allow coronavirus to spread throughout Scotland.
Well of course it was. Whitty told anyone that was willing to listen that that was the plan, and indeed the only plan, before vaccines came riding over the hill. My criticism of Sturgeon was that she kept trying to pretend that a bit longer lockdown here, and a few restrictions there, were somehow, magically, going to make the difference. They simply weren't. The NHS in Scotland (thankfully, and to her credit) never got near breaking point and that is what it was all really about. The economic damage of her additional restrictions (some still in force) was unnecessary and unhelpful but also, it has to be acknowledged, at the margins of the consequences of the pandemic.
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
I don't think we should be obsessing too much about whether those countries choose to become republics. Leave it up to them to decide. Any attempt to interfere might backfire and it's a nice contrast to Mr Putin - we don't try to push around our former colonial territories.
Agreed. Jamaica isn't a colony is it? It makes little difference to Britain whether the Queen is Queen of it or not.
Declassified emails from @DrGregorSmith have undermined @NicolaSturgeon’s claim that her government never pursued a policy of “herd immunity” that would allow coronavirus to spread throughout Scotland.
Taking steps to ensure all mariners working in UK waters paid living wage
Which I was *repeatedly* told was impossible because Maritime Law, Flag State So There 2 nights ago
Yes, I might have got that wrong. Let's see the details before we break out the champers, though? What is the ?section 109? he mentioned, and what law changes is the government considering?
I would be interested to see how this works - UK flagged, easy. In fact. probably subject to minimum wage already.
Foreign flagged, inside the territorial limits - hmmm, I can see that. Like the tax on booze.
Foreign flagged, outside the limits - what is the criteria? You can't park up at a British port, carry out trade unless you pay minimum wage? UK minimum wage? How to prove or monitor that? Or is it about "home ports"?
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
I was thinking more of political connections and alliances. Much stronger Aus-US (as reflected by the hysteria on PB over the tech transfer agreement Aukus). In way of life, yep, it's like California in some ways but with fish and chips. I've been there too.
The former is as least as important as the latter when it comes to going republican.
Sure, politically-militarily it is in the American sphere, but so is all of the West. That doesn’t say much
Culturally, Oz is way more British (tho it is of course more itself, and confidently so)
I believe Australia regularly tops the polls of places Brits would like to emigrate to; because we feel at home there. Pubs and pints. Masterchef and mates. Cricket and rugby
But with sun and (probably too much) space
i would say that maps quite often, but not always, onto a Brexiter/Remainer cultural divide. Several people I know feel much more at home in places like Scandinavia, France, Holland, or Italy, and indeed several of my former peer group have also moved to countries like these over the years.
There is no way we are culturally closer to France or Italy, than we are to Oz
And I love France and Italy (and all of mainland Europe). I am greatly looking forward to going there this summer
Europe is my civilisation. My home. I am European. We are an extended family
But Aussies are more like siblings who moved away.
Well, you may feel that, as I say, but in my experience quite a few people feel differently. The very mixed emigration figures would appear to back that up, too, I think.
1. Australia 1,300,000 2 Spain 761,000 3 United States 678,000 4 Canada 603,000 5 Ireland 291,000 6 India 250,000 7 New Zealand 215,000 8 South Africa 212,000 9 France 200,000 10 Germany 115,000
Australia is a trillion miles away, on the other side of the world. Yet five times as many Brits have moved there, than have hopped across the channel to france. And thus despite emigration to France being infinitely easier from 1975-2018
That's a list of the diaspora, not a timeframe of emigration. I suspect many of the figures for Spain, France, Germany and are more recent than for Australia, for instance. Also, even with possibly very out-of-date figures, the continental European total comes up quite similar to the Australian, as i would roughly expect.
I would also class the US qute separately.
Yet despite the disadvantage of distance; and the removal, until recently, of many of the bureaucratic hurdles to relocating to EU countries, it seems we are much, much comfortable with restarting our lives in English speaking countries. This shouldn't come as a surprise. But polyglots tend to underestimate the sheer inabaility of the monoglot majority to be comfortable in languages other than English. Free movement in Europe was never that attractive for any but a small minority. Free movement with Aus/NZ and/or Canada would be much more attractive. I'm not necessarily arguing for this - I'm sure there are numerous practical issues, not least would the other parties want it.
I have always been astonished by the way that business, internally to companies, is conducted in English in so much of Europe. Go and work in a German company - it is assumed if there are English-only speakers in the room, everyone speaks in English. This seems very, very widespread.
It looks to me like almost everyone else in that clip is staring awkwardly at their feet.
Who knew that BatShitCrazyTV was a thing in Russia.
Not sure we should judge a country by its panel shows and vox pops, the mind boggles what people would make of us on that basis.
Any Russian or North Korean listening to our state broadcaster and its slobbering panegyric to William and Kate touching down in Jamaica would feel an ache of weary recognition.
Hope neither are tempted to do a dance with some locals - Harry maybe can get away with that , none of the other royals or indeed Theresa May
I regret to say that there has already been dancing, and there will no doubt be more dancing.
Still, the fresh, sensitive approach of these ‘young’ royals is just the thing to revitalise the monarchy.
What the fuck made them think that was a good idea?
I disagree it wasnt a good idea, I think its comic gold.
Oh for them?
Good idea according to whom?
(Borrows hat from Malc)
The locals with their local traditions and customs?
Or various members of Republic or splinter-parties wanking off their personal outrage in their bedrooms in Neasdon or Cumbernauld or whereever, for their personal kicks?
He's a much better PM than the current PM. Listened to PMQs on the way back. Big Dog was almost in hysterics, and kept coming back to a point which shockingly enough turned out to both be factually wrong and show off his lack of grasp of detail.
Thread on findings of watchdog report into SNP ferry fiasco
Scathing is the word, and as others have said, a full independent public inquiry is now an inevitability (1/9
As the late Lord Peter Fraser said of the inquiry into the Holyrood parliament building: “The ancient walls of the Canongate have echoed to the cry of “It wis’nae me””.
We’re likely going to get a repeat of that from Nicola Sturgeons government. (9/9
For rentals it is required to be E or better by law. See if your LL will do anything - if you have to leave it is expensive for the LL.
I was talking to one of my Ts in my grandma's solid-walled 2up2down detached cottage who is being told £260 a month (which I think is probably the Fixed Rate Rate unregulated trick I mention in my other post), which will be more like £180 a month.
She has 2 washers and about 8 dogs, and all rooms have 3 outside walls, so uses quite a lot of energy for the size.
When she moved in in 2010 the energy bills were £230 a month, which we reduced to under £100, without switching (which up until last year often gave -25% wrt market average), by investment (eg double glazing, insulation) and targeted reductions (eg she had a washer-dryer costing £15-18 a week to run).
But it's a tricky one this time round, since we've done the low hanging fruit.
Just checked my EPC, which seemed almost pointless. The inspector "assumed" the roof has no insulation, they didn't actually look.
Any sense that they might have considered, or measured, the effectiveness of the double-glazing (which is old and seems a bit leaky around the edges), or details like the paper thin external walls for the bay windows, seems pretty unlikely when they didn't even poke their head into the loft to see what amount of insulation there was, or not.
This inspired me to look mine up. A Victorian house, extended in the 80s. The assessment seems fair (it was a few years ago) and I get a D. Interestingly all but one of the other houses in my road are E or F. Some of the flat conversions are D, and two manage C.
To get to C I would need to make £17-34k of improvements to get roughly £488 benefit, so that's somewhere between 35-70 years to pay for itself (perhaps a bit better than that if current prices stay for a while). As it happens since it was done I have upgraded some of the double-glazing and built a further extension so overall the insulation will have improved, but there's nothing cost effective left to do that will make any difference. I can't see how I can add insulation to solid walls, for example.
The way it would be done is by adding insulation to the outside of the exterior walls.
On a Victorian house, that might ruin the facade though.
I have a stone-built Victorian property and I discovered (as you may do) that there is a gap of about 5cm between stone and inner walls. I have cut the plasterboard, inserted sheep's wool insulation from a company called Thermafleece, and it's noticeably warmer. If the wall is absolutely solid, you could add an internal stud wall and put insulation in (but it means losing internal volume and possibly moving radiators and plug sockets), or slightly less effective but possibly easier, erect foam backed plasterboard. You still lose a bit of volume but less.
Comments
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/22/iowa-democrats-nomination-calendar/
Oh for them?
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/yearendingdecember2020#emigration-from-the-uk-in-2020
But because they speak English, and drink tea, that's where more people go.
Taking steps to ensure all mariners working in UK waters paid living wage
Which I was *repeatedly* told was impossible because Maritime Law, Flag State So There 2 nights ago
Lester Aldridge think Johnson is wrong on the broken the law point, only had to inform flag state not UK govt
This shouldn't come as a surprise. But polyglots tend to underestimate the sheer inabaility of the monoglot majority to be comfortable in languages other than English.
Free movement in Europe was never that attractive for any but a small minority. Free movement with Aus/NZ and/or Canada would be much more attractive.
I'm not necessarily arguing for this - I'm sure there are numerous practical issues, not least would the other parties want it.
Totally useless. Labour banging on about fire and rehire which is what they are doing to their own staff.
https://twitter.com/Agitate4Change/status/1506330718443552772
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/voters-still-think-boris-johnson-should-quit-if-fined-by-police-over-partygate-poll/ar-AAVpb0R?ocid=entnewsntp
To get to C I would need to make £17-34k of improvements to get roughly £488 benefit, so that's somewhere between 35-70 years to pay for itself (perhaps a bit better than that if current prices stay for a while). As it happens since it was done I have upgraded some of the double-glazing and built a further extension so overall the insulation will have improved, but there's nothing cost effective left to do that will make any difference. I can't see how I can add insulation to solid walls, for example.
Thank you for that tip
Felix Light
@felix_light
·
1h
“Kirill is here as a warrior of Christ ... He fought against evil, Satanic spirits: Ukrainian Nazis, created by American multinational corporations.”
@MoscowTimes
attended the burial of a Russian soldier killed in Ukraine - here's what we saw and heard.
https://twitter.com/felix_light/status/1506589188107481090
@JakeCordell
·
3h
Lots of Telegram chatter today about the whereabouts of Russia's defence minister Sergei Shoigu. Not seen in public for 12 days, not seen with Putin since *that* meeting on 27 Feb where he was ordered to put the nukes on high alert.
https://twitter.com/JakeCordell/status/1506560008561045512
Travel industry is particularly bad for this practice of messing with pricing depending on search history and search location.
One is more regressive than the other.
b) Could the 17th century Scottish legal system really prove this?
I know you and I have different belief systems. But, and I concede I don't know the details of any of the cases, I would doubt that any of the cases would stand up to scrutiny.
It really isn't something I feel strongly about, and I think we can probably agree that it's surprising that Scotland considers this a priority.
Actually, on reflection, maybe I do feel strongly about this. What does a man have if not his reputation? This is a slightly old fashioned view but if successive generations think anything at all about me I'd like it to be positive. I don't think I'm alone in this. This is basically what drives the army to stick together and kill people rather than run away: people would rather risk their lives than their reputation. And "bearing false witness" - while it tends to be seen as one of those archaic sins which we can have a bit of a chortle at the ancients about - I'd rate as high on the scale of importance as some of the more fashionable ones. (I find this watching fiction on telly or films; I'm much more uncomfortable with portrayals of people having their reputations unfairly traduced than I am with plain old violence or robbery.) So, yes, the Scottish state does have something to apologise for (along, of course, with every other state in the world).
It's a gimmick. But reputations are important.
Weirdly I just found the flight I wanted via the actual airline website - and, yes, much cheaper
Send you might be right 👍👍🥂🥂
https://twitter.com/PARLYapp/status/1506605470311759883?
Perhaps there is a paid article in it for you.....
The political logic is inexorable.
https://www.hofstede-insights.com/product/compare-countries/
Interesting the best "match" for UK I've found so far is... Ireland
I suspect i'm not entirely alone in that, in that NZ is possibly more similar to the UK than Australia, and British emigrants to Australia may feel slightly more of a cultural leap, maybe more comparable to, but not as pronounced as, travelling to the US.
I don’t even have contacts of BBC but I can say now he will increase start threshold to take more out of tax to help poor families as better way to do it than 1p off all tax including Alex from daily telegraph.
So £12BNn equals £8bn less the £3bn tax reduction equals £5bn
Clear Cookies + VPN + Card that allows you to pay in foreign currencies at market rate with no exchange fees.
It remains the legal basis on which LL will be regulated, in countries of the UK, by Councils in the UK.
Revealed:
Declassified emails from @DrGregorSmith have undermined @NicolaSturgeon’s claim that her government never pursued a policy of “herd immunity” that would allow coronavirus to spread throughout Scotland.
https://twitter.com/mark_mclaughlin/status/1506554015643049988
They drink more tea. They play more sports most of the rest of the world doesn't bother with. They have weird religious anachronisms as part of daily and constitutional life. Their alcohol consumption is centred culturally around beer in pubs. The relationship with the US is a fundamental cornerstone of their foreign policy. On and on the similarities add up.
But you can't mention it.
Witchcraft was real in the minds of the people, as was the fear of it; some sought the power of it
I’ve no doubt many, probably the large majority, of men and women tortured and burned for witchcraft in Scotland were innocent. The idea they were ALL innocent seems far fetched to the point of absurdity. So these blanket pardons are morally wrong as well as being intellectually incoherent and ridic
The new NI tax is a lie anyway for the claim it finally solves care crisis.
But much of the economics may change from April 1st.
TBF we have done much of this on PB previously.
And EPC estimates are *estimates* based on *estimated* costs, based on an *estimated* methodology at the date of the EPC. You can get a trial copy of the EPC software, or your own spreadsheet model.
He’s using the limelight well. He wants the top job.
Foreign flagged, inside the territorial limits - hmmm, I can see that. Like the tax on booze.
Foreign flagged, outside the limits - what is the criteria? You can't park up at a British port, carry out trade unless you pay minimum wage? UK minimum wage? How to prove or monitor that? Or is it about "home ports"?
(Borrows hat from Malc)
The locals with their local traditions and customs?
Or various members of Republic or splinter-parties wanking off their personal outrage in their bedrooms in Neasdon or Cumbernauld or whereever, for their personal kicks?
(Returns hat to Malc)
Now things to do.
Scathing is the word, and as others have said, a full independent public inquiry is now an inevitability
(1/9
As the late Lord Peter Fraser said of the inquiry into the Holyrood parliament building: “The ancient walls of the Canongate have echoed to the cry of “It wis’nae me””.
We’re likely going to get a repeat of that from Nicola Sturgeons government.
(9/9
https://twitter.com/DeanMThomson/status/1506593597558341635?s=20&t=XTKmenW4_eb5XncmKC2GOQ
I have a stone-built Victorian property and I discovered (as you may do) that there is a gap of about 5cm between stone and inner walls. I have cut the plasterboard, inserted sheep's wool insulation from a company called Thermafleece, and it's noticeably warmer. If the wall is absolutely solid, you could add an internal stud wall and put insulation in (but it means losing internal volume and possibly moving radiators and plug sockets), or slightly less effective but possibly easier, erect foam backed plasterboard. You still lose a bit of volume but less.