Am I trolling here? Perhaps just a little bit, so I apologise. But these crazy cats are trying to take this to court. I’m not sure whether I admire them or think they’re batshit crazy…
I know it probably won’t happen, but what if it did, what if they could get a court to declare that the referendum wasn’t a free and fair election cos of Russian interference? God that would unleash a shitstorm.
I mean, I’m as Remainy as they come but Jesus, I’m not sure I’d want to go through something like that…
Much too late, surely.
Yeah it is, we’re out, it’s done.
But it wouldn’t look good, to say the least. Especially if the government knew and simply ignored it for, well, politics. For their backbenchers. For whatever reason. Not now Russia’s the baddie, unequivocally.
I don’t think it’ll get that far. It’s just interesting to ponder the hypothetical fallout.
I'm not sure telling 17 million voters "you're so stupid you only voted that way because of Russian money" would be very successful, tbh.
Perhaps, but it isn't quite that simple. Most people are very susceptible to remarketing via social media. Anyone that thinks themselves immune is probably the most suggestible.
Given the amount of pro-Remain rigging that Cameron did, complaining about a bit of Russian money on the other side seems a little churlish.
Well done for winning this years Dumbest Comment on PB Award. You seriously think we should not be concerned about a hostile state trying to subvert our democratic system? FFS!
We were.
It's why we voted to Leave the EU.
It is not a state and it is not hostile. Do you use Facebook?
The EU isn't hostile? They've had a funny way of showing it in recent years.
Political disagreements do not amount to hostility. Idiots in the EU and the UK just have an interest escalating rhetoric and petty sniping.
They did try and steal our vaccines, which I tool to be somewhat hostile...
Politically unfriendly, but it was hardly firing artillery at East Anglia
I would say somewhere between "politically unfriendly" and "all out war" - so "hostile" would be an appropriate description in the circumstances.
Things do seem to have calmed down in the past few months though thankfully...
I think you may be indulging in nationalistic hyperbole.
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
I was in a debate the other night with some Americans about The Worst Place in America and they decided Terre Haute Indiana takes some beating (I've never been there, so I have no idea)
It does sound like Indiana is pretty grim
The thing about Cities of American Decline in the south is that they still have the nice climate. OK you're dirt poor, but you can sit on a pile of used tyres and take ket in your tee shirt
In the Rustbelt north, they have those long bitter winters and grey skies, which must make it way more depressing
Terre Haute is where Stephen King’s Trashcan Man comes from…
Should be the global HQ for the Flat Earth Society.
No doubt a tad run down & depressed, not just fly-over country for the jet set but drive-past territory for most Midwesterners. Still not to be trashed for the hell of it - least not by someone NOT a genius like SK.
Am I trolling here? Perhaps just a little bit, so I apologise. But these crazy cats are trying to take this to court. I’m not sure whether I admire them or think they’re batshit crazy…
I know it probably won’t happen, but what if it did, what if they could get a court to declare that the referendum wasn’t a free and fair election cos of Russian interference? God that would unleash a shitstorm.
I mean, I’m as Remainy as they come but Jesus, I’m not sure I’d want to go through something like that…
Remain would win.
You cannot remain when you have left
You can rejoin but as none of the major parties apart from the SNP are going to offer rejoin then as I have said many times before, these extreme leavers and remainers need to work with the majority of ordinary voters to promote much better UK-EU relationships on defence, security and trade
There would also be the issue that “rejoin” would be very unlikely to be accepted by the EU on the previous terms and would likely be a negative for rejoiners in a re-run.
We wouldn't know the terms until we submit a formal application to Rejoin, and obviously those would be subject to negotiation. Previous terms are unlikely, but neither Shengen nor the Euro are compulsory, the latter in practice certainly.
Keep on dreaming.
In the pandemic, and during this current Ukraine crisis, we have seen significant EU players go against common sense. I voted remain; but who wants to be in the same club where the leader of one country calls AZ 'quasi-ineffective' and another essentially backs Putin because of their own base desires for gas?
Why do you want to be a member of that club?
So you think we should withdraw from NATO, for that too is a club?
What's the relevance? Are you defending Macron's comments and Germany's position?
If NATO went for backing Russia in this conflict, then yes, I would question our membership. But they have not.
Am I trolling here? Perhaps just a little bit, so I apologise. But these crazy cats are trying to take this to court. I’m not sure whether I admire them or think they’re batshit crazy…
I know it probably won’t happen, but what if it did, what if they could get a court to declare that the referendum wasn’t a free and fair election cos of Russian interference? God that would unleash a shitstorm.
I mean, I’m as Remainy as they come but Jesus, I’m not sure I’d want to go through something like that…
Agreed, it would not be a good thing. That said, anyone who continues to believe that Russia did not attempt to influence the vote is a dumbass to put it mildly. The reality though, is that our democratic system was most likely subverted, but we have to live with the result and try and learn from it
I'm sure that Putin tried to influence the Brexit referendum result, but very sceptical that it made a ha'pennyworth of difference. Voters are quite capable of being stupid on their own account, without any external assistance. In any case it was much more likely to have been Corbyn and Seumas Milne who tipped the balance.
If you learned what I have learned over the last couple of years about social media marketing you would not be so convinced that there was no influence. I think the likelihood that it tipped the balance was more likely than unlikely. There was a very high turnout on an issue that failed to inspire interest in a large part of the population only a few years before. The opinion polls moved considerably and the authorities were completely pig ignorant about what was going on.
Here is a simple example of how it works: I, Vladimir, put out an advert that might appeal to folk who might be nationalistic but probably don't vote. It might be a man wearing a union flag waist coat. The caption reads: "it isn't racist to wear the Union Jack". The advertiser then chooses the demographic that might most be motivated by this. It gets lots of "likes" and comments on FB. This then pleases the algorithm that then pushes it out even more. The people that like or share it are remarketed over an over again with targeted messages that make them feel angrier and angrier about "the establishment" and the EU, and they share it and like it etc. etc. and a whole group of statistically significant voters are influenced to vote a particular way. Anyone who thinks Putin did not do this and did not influence the outcome is deluding themself.
It sounds like someone gave you a sales pitch on targeted advertising...
Based on all the evidence of Russian incompetence recently, do you really think it's plausible that they are better at running an election campaign with a Western electorate than Lynton Crosby and Peter Mandelson combined?
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
Not sure that's true
We write of Britain more ironically, grittily, and whimsically, and with less glamorisation, but we do write about it:
The Beatles: Penny Lane - Liverpool Pogues: Dirty Old Town - Salford David Gray: Babylon - London - actual proper romanticisation there Gerry Rafferty: Baker Street - possibly the best song ever written about a city? Proclaimers - multiple places in Scotland, especially Leith Fyfe: I Belong to Glasgow - Glasgow!
Waterloo Sunset, Streets of London, London Calling, Mull of Kintyre, Ferry Cross the Mersey, Up The Junction
There is a theme tho. The vast majority of the most famous songs are about London, Liverpool, and Scotland
Am I trolling here? Perhaps just a little bit, so I apologise. But these crazy cats are trying to take this to court. I’m not sure whether I admire them or think they’re batshit crazy…
I know it probably won’t happen, but what if it did, what if they could get a court to declare that the referendum wasn’t a free and fair election cos of Russian interference? God that would unleash a shitstorm.
I mean, I’m as Remainy as they come but Jesus, I’m not sure I’d want to go through something like that…
Agreed, it would not be a good thing. That said, anyone who continues to believe that Russia did not attempt to influence the vote is a dumbass to put it mildly. The reality though, is that our democratic system was most likely subverted, but we have to live with the result and try and learn from it
I'm sure that Putin tried to influence the Brexit referendum result, but very sceptical that it made a ha'pennyworth of difference. Voters are quite capable of being stupid on their own account, without any external assistance. In any case it was much more likely to have been Corbyn and Seumas Milne who tipped the balance.
If you learned what I have learned over the last couple of years about social media marketing you would not be so convinced that there was no influence. I think the likelihood that it tipped the balance was more likely than unlikely. There was a very high turnout on an issue that failed to inspire interest in a large part of the population only a few years before. The opinion polls moved considerably and the authorities were completely pig ignorant about what was going on.
Here is a simple example of how it works: I, Vladimir, put out an advert that might appeal to folk who might be nationalistic but probably don't vote. It might be a man wearing a union flag waist coat. The caption reads: "it isn't racist to wear the Union Jack". The advertiser then chooses the demographic that might most be motivated by this. It gets lots of "likes" and comments on FB. This then pleases the algorithm that then pushes it out even more. The people that like or share it are remarketed over an over again with targeted messages that make them feel angrier and angrier about "the establishment" and the EU, and they share it and like it etc. etc. and a whole group of statistically significant voters are influenced to vote a particular way. Anyone who thinks Putin did not do this and did not influence the outcome is deluding themself.
It sounds like someone gave you a sales pitch on targeted advertising...
Based on all the evidence of Russian incompetence recently, do you really think it's plausible that they are better at running an election campaign with a Western electorate than Lynton Crosby and Peter Mandelson combined?
Well, it certainly seemed to work on you St Paul? I guess you must use Facebook?
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
It’s not cultural confidence, per se.
England is an essentially suburban nation. It’s place-names mostly evoke a kind of pooterish quality, or at best a sense of pastoral tranquility.
America has the high romance of “the West”, frontier-land. Discovery. Danger. Danmnation.
In Britain such qualities can perhaps only be found, vanishingly, in the Celtic nations.
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
I have been to both Amarillo and Abiline, and would recommend neither.
If you are looking for the dark underbelly of America, quite a lot of East Tennessee fits. I remember Chatanooga being pretty grim, and Gatlinberg full of trashy tourist trap Americana, though like other bits of America nearby are some great National and State parks
I'm still wondering why MoS thought the Angela Rayner story was a good idea? Anyone?
I'm fairly sure it was planted to help her, and hinder Boris
It's a clever piece of spin, either by anti-Boris-ite Tories, or Rayner's team
No I'm sorry neither the MoS nor the anti-Boris faction are that wily.
This was the latest in a long list of dreadful and hateful tripe from the Mail stable. Once you realise what has come before, you realise that they really did mean it and have probably been surprised at the backlash.
Well done Boris and other Conservatives for condemning it. It demeans us and the whole of politics.
Absurdly naive
This story only helps Rayner, and only troubles Boris. And that is bloody obvious. So we can see its provenance quite clearly
BTW I don't blame Rayner's team for planting it, if it was them. Politics is a rough business and Boris presents an easy target in this context
Femme fatale cynically employs her physical assets to try and put the PM off his stride in the House of Commons and blunt his Oxford University debating skills. But he refuses to play her sordid little game. He ploughs on manfully with the serious business of running the country.
I don't quite see how this is supposed to help her and damage "Boris".
Look at how this story has unfolded, entirely predictably. Tories apologising everywhere, Boris looking like a salacious old git, Rayner's profile heightened, even as she gets the sympathy of the political world
You'd need an IQ of less than about 103 to be unable to foresee these consequences. This explains your muted reaction, you too are very slightly more intelligent than the average, but only VERY slightly. 103.
It's right on the edge of your abilities of comprehension, and you're not sure what to make of it. You stare at it quizzically, like a crow looking at a mirror
Oh dear not IQ again. But ok let's do some forensic. You say the story makes BoJo look like a salacious old git. Why does it? The story is that she TRIES to put him off not that he IS put off.
So where's 'salacious old git' coming from? Is it coming from putting yourself in his place? A bit of the old projection going on?
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
It’s not cultural confidence, per se.
England is an essentially suburban nation. It’s place-names mostly evoke a kind of pooterish quality, or at best a sense of pastoral tranquility.
America has the high romance of “the West”, frontier-land. Discovery. Danger. Danmnation.
In Britain such qualities can perhaps only be found, vanishingly, in the Celtic nations.
No. It can also be found in our big cities. See below
I'm still wondering why MoS thought the Angela Rayner story was a good idea? Anyone?
I'm fairly sure it was planted to help her, and hinder Boris
It's a clever piece of spin, either by anti-Boris-ite Tories, or Rayner's team
No I'm sorry neither the MoS nor the anti-Boris faction are that wily.
This was the latest in a long list of dreadful and hateful tripe from the Mail stable. Once you realise what has come before, you realise that they really did mean it and have probably been surprised at the backlash.
Well done Boris and other Conservatives for condemning it. It demeans us and the whole of politics.
Absurdly naive
This story only helps Rayner, and only troubles Boris. And that is bloody obvious. So we can see its provenance quite clearly
BTW I don't blame Rayner's team for planting it, if it was them. Politics is a rough business and Boris presents an easy target in this context
Femme fatale cynically employs her physical assets to try and put the PM off his stride in the House of Commons and blunt his Oxford University debating skills. But he refuses to play her sordid little game. He ploughs on manfully with the serious business of running the country.
I don't quite see how this is supposed to help her and damage "Boris".
Look at how this story has unfolded, entirely predictably. Tories apologising everywhere, Boris looking like a salacious old git, Rayner's profile heightened, even as she gets the sympathy of the political world
You'd need an IQ of less than about 103 to be unable to foresee these consequences. This explains your muted reaction, you too are very slightly more intelligent than the average, but only VERY slightly. 103.
It's right on the edge of your abilities of comprehension, and you're not sure what to make of it. You stare at it quizzically, like a crow looking at a mirror
Oh dear not IQ again. But ok let's do some forensic. You say the story makes BoJo look like a salacious old git. Why does it? The story is that she TRIES to put him off not that he IS put off.
So where's 'salacious old git' coming from? Is it coming from putting yourself in his place? A bit of the old projection going on?
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
Not sure that's true
We write of Britain more ironically, grittily, and whimsically, and with less glamorisation, but we do write about it:
The Beatles: Penny Lane - Liverpool Pogues: Dirty Old Town - Salford David Gray: Babylon - London - actual proper romanticisation there Gerry Rafferty: Baker Street - possibly the best song ever written about a city? Proclaimers - multiple places in Scotland, especially Leith Fyfe: I Belong to Glasgow - Glasgow!
Waterloo Sunset, Streets of London, London Calling, Mull of Kintyre, Ferry Cross the Mersey, Up The Junction
There is a theme tho. The vast majority of the most famous songs are about London, Liverpool, and Scotland
Don't know if people can help but I'm trying to think of examples of NOT poking the Russian bear. So far:
1)Urging Ukraine not to leave the Soviet Union (George HW Bush) 2)Allowing Russia to inherit the Soviet Union's permanent seat on the UN Security council 3)Providing aid to Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed 4)Persuading Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons 5)Allowing Russia to join the G7 6)Launching the International Space Station
Should all of this be discounted because of Nato expansion? The dictum of not poking the bear isn't much use if the bear is hungry. Unfortunately Yeltsin chose the wrong successor and all we could have done was a better policy of containment and deterrence.
Would restoring Nato to its cold war boundaries be a victory for Russia? Well it would cause great unease in eastern Europe so long as Russia persists with its 'sphere of influence' mentality but you could easily envisage some kind of military alliance between Poland, Ukraine, the Baltics, Czechs, Slovaks and possibly Romania. Given what has happened in Ukraine they would probably look to go nuclear as well. How would Russia like that? Is this the sort of conversation our diplomats have with their Kremlin counterparts or do they just nod along respectfully whilst the Siloviki spout their awful lies?
The supposed plot against Russian TV host Vladimir Soloviev is another display of Russian incompetence. In the planted 'evidence', instead of including SIM cards, they put copies of the video game Sims, and when asked to sign something with an illegible signature they literally wrote "signature illegible" in very clear handwriting.
Am I trolling here? Perhaps just a little bit, so I apologise. But these crazy cats are trying to take this to court. I’m not sure whether I admire them or think they’re batshit crazy…
I know it probably won’t happen, but what if it did, what if they could get a court to declare that the referendum wasn’t a free and fair election cos of Russian interference? God that would unleash a shitstorm.
I mean, I’m as Remainy as they come but Jesus, I’m not sure I’d want to go through something like that…
Remain would win.
You cannot remain when you have left
You can rejoin but as none of the major parties apart from the SNP are going to offer rejoin then as I have said many times before, these extreme leavers and remainers need to work with the majority of ordinary voters to promote much better UK-EU relationships on defence, security and trade
There would also be the issue that “rejoin” would be very unlikely to be accepted by the EU on the previous terms and would likely be a negative for rejoiners in a re-run.
We wouldn't know the terms until we submit a formal application to Rejoin, and obviously those would be subject to negotiation. Previous terms are unlikely, but neither Shengen nor the Euro are compulsory, the latter in practice certainly.
Keep on dreaming.
In the pandemic, and during this current Ukraine crisis, we have seen significant EU players go against common sense. I voted remain; but who wants to be in the same club where the leader of one country calls AZ 'quasi-ineffective' and another essentially backs Putin because of their own base desires for gas?
Why do you want to be a member of that club?
So you think we should withdraw from NATO, for that too is a club?
What's the relevance? Are you defending Macron's comments and Germany's position?
If NATO went for backing Russia in this conflict, then yes, I would question our membership. But they have not.
Germany and France are members of that club too, if their actions are so vile then we should not be a member of that either surely?
Indeed Russia remains in the G20 club that we are in for that matter. Thats before we get to the small matter of the UN and UNSC...
Or we could grow up, and recognise that different countries have sovereignty and differing ideas, and that diplomacy is the way forward to build friendship, peace and prosperity. After all Winston Churchill did say that Jaw-Jaw is better than War-War.
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
Not sure that's true
We write of Britain more ironically, grittily, and whimsically, and with less glamorisation, but we do write about it:
The Beatles: Penny Lane - Liverpool Pogues: Dirty Old Town - Salford David Gray: Babylon - London - actual proper romanticisation there Gerry Rafferty: Baker Street - possibly the best song ever written about a city? Proclaimers - multiple places in Scotland, especially Leith Fyfe: I Belong to Glasgow - Glasgow!
Waterloo Sunset, Streets of London, London Calling, Mull of Kintyre, Ferry Cross the Mersey, Up The Junction
There is a theme tho. The vast majority of the most famous songs are about London, Liverpool, and Scotland
London Calling
Er, I mention London Calling in my comment. But ta
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
Not sure that's true
We write of Britain more ironically, grittily, and whimsically, and with less glamorisation, but we do write about it:
The Beatles: Penny Lane - Liverpool Pogues: Dirty Old Town - Salford David Gray: Babylon - London - actual proper romanticisation there Gerry Rafferty: Baker Street - possibly the best song ever written about a city? Proclaimers - multiple places in Scotland, especially Leith Fyfe: I Belong to Glasgow - Glasgow!
Waterloo Sunset, Streets of London, London Calling, Mull of Kintyre, Ferry Cross the Mersey, Up The Junction
There is a theme tho. The vast majority of the most famous songs are about London, Liverpool, and Scotland
Bill Drummond / the JAMMS: the Porpoise Song: North Sea trawlers.
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
Not sure that's true
We write of Britain more ironically, grittily, and whimsically, and with less glamorisation, but we do write about it:
The Beatles: Penny Lane - Liverpool Pogues: Dirty Old Town - Salford David Gray: Babylon - London - actual proper romanticisation there Gerry Rafferty: Baker Street - possibly the best song ever written about a city? Proclaimers - multiple places in Scotland, especially Leith Fyfe: I Belong to Glasgow - Glasgow!
Waterloo Sunset, Streets of London, London Calling, Mull of Kintyre, Ferry Cross the Mersey, Up The Junction
There is a theme tho. The vast majority of the most famous songs are about London, Liverpool, and Scotland
London Calling
Er, I mention London Calling in my comment. But ta
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
It’s not cultural confidence, per se.
England is an essentially suburban nation. It’s place-names mostly evoke a kind of pooterish quality, or at best a sense of pastoral tranquility.
America has the high romance of “the West”, frontier-land. Discovery. Danger. Danmnation.
In Britain such qualities can perhaps only be found, vanishingly, in the Celtic nations.
No. It can also be found in our big cities. See below
“Krakatoa, East of Penge”, as Monty Python once joked. I accept your qualifier about the gritty romance of certain “dirty old towns”, but Britain excels in a geographical bathos which is entirely alien to US culture.
Don't know if people can help but I'm trying to think of examples of NOT poking the Russian bear. So far:
1)Urging Ukraine not to leave the Soviet Union (George HW Bush) 2)Allowing Russia to inherit the Soviet Union's permanent seat on the UN Security council 3)Providing aid to Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed 4)Persuading Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons 5)Allowing Russia to join the G7 6)Launching the International Space Station
Should all of this be discounted because of Nato expansion? The dictum of not poking the bear isn't much use if the bear is hungry. Unfortunately Yeltsin chose the wrong successor and all we could have done was a better policy of containment and deterrence.
Would restoring Nato to its cold war boundaries be a victory for Russia? Well it would cause great unease in eastern Europe so long as Russia persists with its 'sphere of influence' mentality but you could easily envisage some kind of military alliance between Poland, Ukraine, the Baltics, Czechs, Slovaks and possibly Romania. Given what has happened in Ukraine they would probably look to go nuclear as well. How would Russia like that? Is this the sort of conversation our diplomats have with their Kremlin counterparts or do they just nod along respectfully whilst the Siloviki spout their awful lies?
Inviting Russia to join the 'NATO-Partnership for Peace' in 1994 should also be on that list I think.
I'm still wondering why MoS thought the Angela Rayner story was a good idea? Anyone?
I'm fairly sure it was planted to help her, and hinder Boris
It's a clever piece of spin, either by anti-Boris-ite Tories, or Rayner's team
No I'm sorry neither the MoS nor the anti-Boris faction are that wily.
This was the latest in a long list of dreadful and hateful tripe from the Mail stable. Once you realise what has come before, you realise that they really did mean it and have probably been surprised at the backlash.
Well done Boris and other Conservatives for condemning it. It demeans us and the whole of politics.
Absurdly naive
This story only helps Rayner, and only troubles Boris. And that is bloody obvious. So we can see its provenance quite clearly
BTW I don't blame Rayner's team for planting it, if it was them. Politics is a rough business and Boris presents an easy target in this context
Unless the Mail on Sunday fabricated its "Tory MP" sources knowing it was really a story from Labour, it was definitely planted by the Conservatives. I suppose it was a "seemed like a good idea at the time" mistake.
Bit more than just a mistake. IANAL but I wonder whether it is criminal sexual harassment to accuse a woman of committing sexual harassment in the workplace just because she dresses normally and smartly.
Political spin operations sometimes offer stories to journalists to substitute for other more damaging stories that they are about to publish. Maybe that happened here, who knows? The coordinated identical messages of condemnation from Johnson and cabinet ministers following publication suggest to me the official Conservative spin operation was (a) responsible for the original story and (b) was in damage limitation mode afterwards - ie whatever original purpose they had for the story was seen as a mistake.
Am I trolling here? Perhaps just a little bit, so I apologise. But these crazy cats are trying to take this to court. I’m not sure whether I admire them or think they’re batshit crazy…
I know it probably won’t happen, but what if it did, what if they could get a court to declare that the referendum wasn’t a free and fair election cos of Russian interference? God that would unleash a shitstorm.
I mean, I’m as Remainy as they come but Jesus, I’m not sure I’d want to go through something like that…
Remain would win.
You cannot remain when you have left
You can rejoin but as none of the major parties apart from the SNP are going to offer rejoin then as I have said many times before, these extreme leavers and remainers need to work with the majority of ordinary voters to promote much better UK-EU relationships on defence, security and trade
There would also be the issue that “rejoin” would be very unlikely to be accepted by the EU on the previous terms and would likely be a negative for rejoiners in a re-run.
We wouldn't know the terms until we submit a formal application to Rejoin, and obviously those would be subject to negotiation. Previous terms are unlikely, but neither Shengen nor the Euro are compulsory, the latter in practice certainly.
Keep on dreaming.
In the pandemic, and during this current Ukraine crisis, we have seen significant EU players go against common sense. I voted remain; but who wants to be in the same club where the leader of one country calls AZ 'quasi-ineffective' and another essentially backs Putin because of their own base desires for gas?
Why do you want to be a member of that club?
So you think we should withdraw from NATO, for that too is a club?
What's the relevance? Are you defending Macron's comments and Germany's position?
If NATO went for backing Russia in this conflict, then yes, I would question our membership. But they have not.
Germany and France are members of that club too, if their actions are so vile then we should not be a member of that either surely?
Indeed Russia remains in the G20 club that we are in for that matter. Thats before we get to the small matter of the UN and UNSC...
Or we could grow up, and recognise that different countries have sovereignty and differing ideas, and that diplomacy is the way forward to build friendship, peace and prosperity. After all Winston Churchill did say that Jaw-Jaw is better than War-War.
Yes, but (whispers quietly): France and Germany are the biggest members of the EU. They are not the biggest members of NATO.
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
It’s not cultural confidence, per se.
England is an essentially suburban nation. It’s place-names mostly evoke a kind of pooterish quality, or at best a sense of pastoral tranquility.
America has the high romance of “the West”, frontier-land. Discovery. Danger. Danmnation.
In Britain such qualities can perhaps only be found, vanishingly, in the Celtic nations.
'Gaily into Ruislip Gardens Runs the red electric train....'
Britain, at least England, does it differently. Like one of Betjeman's other gems is a great poem, about faith, with an underlying theme of trolleybuses.
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
It’s not cultural confidence, per se.
England is an essentially suburban nation. It’s place-names mostly evoke a kind of pooterish quality, or at best a sense of pastoral tranquility.
America has the high romance of “the West”, frontier-land. Discovery. Danger. Danmnation.
In Britain such qualities can perhaps only be found, vanishingly, in the Celtic nations.
'Gaily into Ruislip Gardens Runs the red electric train....'
Britain, at least England, does it differently. Like one of Betjeman's other gems is a great poem, about faith, with an underlying theme of trolleybuses.
‘You must take the "A" train To go to Sugar Hill, way up in Harlem If you miss the "A" train You'll find you missed the quickest way to Harlem.’
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
Not sure that's true
We write of Britain more ironically, grittily, and whimsically, and with less glamorisation, but we do write about it:
The Beatles: Penny Lane - Liverpool Pogues: Dirty Old Town - Salford David Gray: Babylon - London - actual proper romanticisation there Gerry Rafferty: Baker Street - possibly the best song ever written about a city? Proclaimers - multiple places in Scotland, especially Leith Fyfe: I Belong to Glasgow - Glasgow!
Waterloo Sunset, Streets of London, London Calling, Mull of Kintyre, Ferry Cross the Mersey, Up The Junction
There is a theme tho. The vast majority of the most famous songs are about London, Liverpool, and Scotland
*Was* a theme. Disturbingly London Calling is 40+ years old.
Ewan MacColl wrote Dirty Old Town, not the Pogues. Quite a remarkably productive and influential career, not least producing Kirsty, though the Ballad of Stalin maybe not a high point.
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
It’s not cultural confidence, per se.
England is an essentially suburban nation. It’s place-names mostly evoke a kind of pooterish quality, or at best a sense of pastoral tranquility.
America has the high romance of “the West”, frontier-land. Discovery. Danger. Danmnation.
In Britain such qualities can perhaps only be found, vanishingly, in the Celtic nations.
No. It can also be found in our big cities. See below
“Krakatoa, East of Penge”, as Monty Python once joked. I accept your qualifier about the gritty romance of certain “dirty old towns”, but Britain excels in a geographical bathos which is entirely alien to US culture.
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
It’s not cultural confidence, per se.
England is an essentially suburban nation. It’s place-names mostly evoke a kind of pooterish quality, or at best a sense of pastoral tranquility.
America has the high romance of “the West”, frontier-land. Discovery. Danger. Danmnation.
In Britain such qualities can perhaps only be found, vanishingly, in the Celtic nations.
No. It can also be found in our big cities. See below
“Krakatoa, East of Penge”, as Monty Python once joked. I accept your qualifier about the gritty romance of certain “dirty old towns”, but Britain excels in a geographical bathos which is entirely alien to US culture.
Westward Ho!
Ha. Yes, I guess exception must be made for certain West Country romances. Daphne du Maurier etc etc etc. Good shout.
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
It’s not cultural confidence, per se.
England is an essentially suburban nation. It’s place-names mostly evoke a kind of pooterish quality, or at best a sense of pastoral tranquility.
America has the high romance of “the West”, frontier-land. Discovery. Danger. Danmnation.
In Britain such qualities can perhaps only be found, vanishingly, in the Celtic nations.
No. It can also be found in our big cities. See below
“Krakatoa, East of Penge”, as Monty Python once joked. I accept your qualifier about the gritty romance of certain “dirty old towns”, but Britain excels in a geographical bathos which is entirely alien to US culture.
I'm not sure that's true either. You can find this everywhere: familiarity breeds contempt
America is the exception not the rule. Because America WAS new and therefore entirely exciting. For 100 years any song about anywhere in America sounded fun. Oooh. Chattanooga! Last Train to Clarksville. Route 66. New York, New York. Crossroads...
That period is coming to a close, in fact it's probably over, and has been over for some time
Songs than romanticise American places now sound kinda dumb, because everyone knows America has terrific social problems, it is no longer the new frontier, and a lot of its towns and cities have been in visible decline for a while, and the world has noticed
It's still a marvellous country, of course. But it is not selling itself, or able to sell itself, as it once did, and this includes musically
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
It’s not cultural confidence, per se.
England is an essentially suburban nation. It’s place-names mostly evoke a kind of pooterish quality, or at best a sense of pastoral tranquility.
America has the high romance of “the West”, frontier-land. Discovery. Danger. Danmnation.
In Britain such qualities can perhaps only be found, vanishingly, in the Celtic nations.
No. It can also be found in our big cities. See below
“Krakatoa, East of Penge”, as Monty Python once joked. I accept your qualifier about the gritty romance of certain “dirty old towns”, but Britain excels in a geographical bathos which is entirely alien to US culture.
One of my earliest geographical discoveries, was looking at a map and realizing that Krakatoa is WEST of Java.
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
I once took the last train to Clarkston.
(well actually it was the last train from Clarkston, but I am using poetic licence)
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
I once took the last train to Clarkston.
(well actually it was the last train from Clarkston, but I am using poetic licence)
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
I was in a debate the other night with some Americans about The Worst Place in America and they decided Terre Haute Indiana takes some beating (I've never been there, so I have no idea)
It does sound like Indiana is pretty grim
The thing about Cities of American Decline in the south is that they still have the nice climate. OK you're dirt poor, but you can sit on a pile of used tyres and take ket in your tee shirt
In the Rustbelt north, they have those long bitter winters and grey skies, which must make it way more depressing
Terre Haute is where Stephen King’s Trashcan Man comes from…
It’s where the Federal Government executes people.
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
Not sure that's true
We write of Britain more ironically, grittily, and whimsically, and with less glamorisation, but we do write about it:
The Beatles: Penny Lane - Liverpool Pogues: Dirty Old Town - Salford David Gray: Babylon - London - actual proper romanticisation there Gerry Rafferty: Baker Street - possibly the best song ever written about a city? Proclaimers - multiple places in Scotland, especially Leith Fyfe: I Belong to Glasgow - Glasgow!
Waterloo Sunset, Streets of London, London Calling, Mull of Kintyre, Ferry Cross the Mersey, Up The Junction
There is a theme tho. The vast majority of the most famous songs are about London, Liverpool, and Scotland
*Was* a theme. Disturbingly London Calling is 40+ years old.
Ewan MacColl wrote Dirty Old Town, not the Pogues. Quite a remarkably productive and influential career, not least producing Kirsty, though the Ballad of Stalin maybe not a high point.
Kirsty MacCall also used British place names in her songs:
Where are all the human beings? Have they been sent to Milton Keynes? They used to live round here but now they're gone For some of us still life moves on
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
It’s not cultural confidence, per se.
England is an essentially suburban nation. It’s place-names mostly evoke a kind of pooterish quality, or at best a sense of pastoral tranquility.
America has the high romance of “the West”, frontier-land. Discovery. Danger. Danmnation.
In Britain such qualities can perhaps only be found, vanishingly, in the Celtic nations.
No. It can also be found in our big cities. See below
“Krakatoa, East of Penge”, as Monty Python once joked. I accept your qualifier about the gritty romance of certain “dirty old towns”, but Britain excels in a geographical bathos which is entirely alien to US culture.
One of my earliest geographical discoveries, was looking at a map and realizing that Krakatoa is WEST of Java.
Yes. That was the original title. Studio changed it as it sounded more exotic. And you have to agree it does.
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
I left the north again I travelled south again I got confused I killed a horse I can’t help the way I feel I lost my bag in Newport Pagnell.
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
I left the north again I travelled south again I got confused I killed a horse I can’t help the way I feel I lost my bag in Newport Parnell.
Panic on the streets of London Panic on the streets of Birmingham I wonder to myself Could life ever be sane again? The Leeds side-streets that you slip down I wonder to myself Hopes may rise on the Grasmere But honey pie, you're not safe here So you run down to the safety of the town But there's panic on the streets of Carlisle Dublin, Dundee, Humberside I wonder to myself
If you ever have to go to Shoeburyness Take the A road, the okay road that's the best Go motorin' on the A13 Well, if you're looking for a thrill that's new Take in Fords, Dartford Tunnel and the river too Go motorin' on the A13 It starts down in Wapping There ain't no stopping By-pass Barking and straight through Dagenham Down to Grays Thurrock And rather near Basildon Pitsea, Thundersley, Hadleigh, Leigh-On-Sea Chalkwell, Prittlewell Southend's the end If you ever have to go to Shoeburyness Take the A road, the okay road that's the best Go motorin' on the A13 It starts down in Wapping There ain't no stopping By-pass Barking and straight through Dagenham Down to Grays Thurrock And rather near Basildon Pitsea, Thundersley, Hadleigh, Leigh-On-Sea Chalkwell, Prittlewell Southend's the end
Am I trolling here? Perhaps just a little bit, so I apologise. But these crazy cats are trying to take this to court. I’m not sure whether I admire them or think they’re batshit crazy…
I know it probably won’t happen, but what if it did, what if they could get a court to declare that the referendum wasn’t a free and fair election cos of Russian interference? God that would unleash a shitstorm.
I mean, I’m as Remainy as they come but Jesus, I’m not sure I’d want to go through something like that…
Much too late, surely.
Yeah it is, we’re out, it’s done.
But it wouldn’t look good, to say the least. Especially if the government knew and simply ignored it for, well, politics. For their backbenchers. For whatever reason. Not now Russia’s the baddie, unequivocally.
I don’t think it’ll get that far. It’s just interesting to ponder the hypothetical fallout.
I'm not sure telling 17 million voters "you're so stupid you only voted that way because of Russian money" would be very successful, tbh.
Perhaps, but it isn't quite that simple. Most people are very susceptible to remarketing via social media. Anyone that thinks themselves immune is probably the most suggestible.
Given the amount of pro-Remain rigging that Cameron did, complaining about a bit of Russian money on the other side seems a little churlish.
Well done for winning this years Dumbest Comment on PB Award. You seriously think we should not be concerned about a hostile state trying to subvert our democratic system? FFS!
We were.
It's why we voted to Leave the EU.
It is not a state and it is not hostile. Do you use Facebook?
The EU isn't hostile? They've had a funny way of showing it in recent years.
Political disagreements do not amount to hostility. Idiots in the EU and the UK just have an interest escalating rhetoric and petty sniping.
I guess the depressing thing is that if anyone in this country can believe that the EU is either a state or hostile then there is an even higher level of stupidity in this country than many of us feared. Such people ought to do a quick trip to Ukraine to see what hostile looks like.
In todays yougov 5% of Britons (9% of Leavers, 8% of Conservatives) think France is generally a hostile threat to Britain.
They definitely ought to be given a one way ticket to Mariupol. Thick twats.
C bomb defined as a bannable word earlier, is this any different?
For fourteen days and fourteen nights we’d trawl those northern seas, Six of us and a [galley pot and night in front of us], I was just nineteen, a boy aboard, Jack London was my stuff, The rest of the crew were all bucky men but the skipper was named MacDuff,
In the cold and wet, the dark and rough, the work was never done, For every four hours the chain bell rang with another catch to run, Then knee deep in fish that were gasping their last and us with our blades in hand, We’d slit their throats and clean their guts and laugh at those on land,
One night alone and up on deck beyond Bill Bailey’s Bank, Just me, my soul and the roar of the [scuds] and the swirling black below, Wet with spray and numb with cold and fresh bile in my throat, I was counting the hours back to Peterhead and the youth years lost afloat,
The draw of the deep has a mighty strong arm and me, I was playing to win, As we wrestled there on the starboard [side my soul was relieved from sin], And through the chunder of diesel power and crumbling cliffs of [search], I heard a cry and a sweet lament, a clarion call so strange,
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
I left the north again I travelled south again I got confused I killed a horse I can’t help the way I feel I lost my bag in Newport Parnell.
Panic on the streets of London Panic on the streets of Birmingham I wonder to myself Could life ever be sane again? The Leeds side-streets that you slip down I wonder to myself Hopes may rise on the Grasmere But honey pie, you're not safe here So you run down to the safety of the town But there's panic on the streets of Carlisle Dublin, Dundee, Humberside I wonder to myself
On which note. Saw Johnny Marr last Wednesday. A blistering version of this fourth song. Just when we were wondering if we'd get any.
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
I left the north again I travelled south again I got confused I killed a horse I can’t help the way I feel I lost my bag in Newport Parnell.
Panic on the streets of London Panic on the streets of Birmingham I wonder to myself Could life ever be sane again? The Leeds side-streets that you slip down I wonder to myself Hopes may rise on the Grasmere But honey pie, you're not safe here So you run down to the safety of the town But there's panic on the streets of Carlisle Dublin, Dundee, Humberside I wonder to myself
Blood in the streets In the town of New Haven Blood stains the roofs And the palm trees of Venice Blood in my love In the terrible summer Bloody red sun of Fantastic L.A.
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
Not sure that's true
We write of Britain more ironically, grittily, and whimsically, and with less glamorisation, but we do write about it:
The Beatles: Penny Lane - Liverpool Pogues: Dirty Old Town - Salford David Gray: Babylon - London - actual proper romanticisation there Gerry Rafferty: Baker Street - possibly the best song ever written about a city? Proclaimers - multiple places in Scotland, especially Leith Fyfe: I Belong to Glasgow - Glasgow!
Waterloo Sunset, Streets of London, London Calling, Mull of Kintyre, Ferry Cross the Mersey, Up The Junction
There is a theme tho. The vast majority of the most famous songs are about London, Liverpool, and Scotland
London Calling
Pulp's Magnum Opus: Sheffield Sex City. Its opening incantation is just a breathy list of Sheffield suburbs (as well as, for what I can only assume to be poetic reasons, the small town of Wombwell). Much of the best of Pulp up to about 1993 is also very clearly set in Sheffield (such as Sheffield Sex City's prequel 'My Legendary Girlfriend'.)
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
I left the north again I travelled south again I got confused I killed a horse I can’t help the way I feel I lost my bag in Newport Parnell.
Panic on the streets of London Panic on the streets of Birmingham I wonder to myself Could life ever be sane again? The Leeds side-streets that you slip down I wonder to myself Hopes may rise on the Grasmere But honey pie, you're not safe here So you run down to the safety of the town But there's panic on the streets of Carlisle Dublin, Dundee, Humberside I wonder to myself
Brilliant. I don’t know if it is the case but a mate of mine insisted ‘hang the DJ’ was dedicated to Steve Wright.
Charles, don't you ever crave To appear on the front of the Daily Mail Dressed in your Mother's bridal veil?
For fourteen days and fourteen nights we’d trawl those northern seas, Six of us and a [galley pot and night in front of us], I was just nineteen, a boy aboard, Jack London was my stuff, The rest of the crew were all bucky men but the skipper was named MacDuff,
In the cold and wet, the dark and rough, the work was never done, For every four hours the chain bell rang with another catch to run, Then knee deep in fish that were gasping their last and us with our blades in hand, We’d slit their throats and clean their guts and laugh at those on land,
One night alone and up on deck beyond Bill Bailey’s Bank, Just me, my soul and the roar of the [scuds] and the swirling black below, Wet with spray and numb with cold and fresh bile in my throat, I was counting the hours back to Peterhead and the youth years lost afloat,
The draw of the deep has a mighty strong arm and me, I was playing to win, As we wrestled there on the starboard [side my soul was relieved from sin], And through the chunder of diesel power and crumbling cliffs of [search], I heard a cry and a sweet lament, a clarion call so strange,
My late brother in law would be familiar with that as he was a Peterhead skipper
Unknown assailants just fired off 2-3 rocket-propelled grenade shots at the Ministry of State Security in the Moldovan “breakaway republic” Transnistria.
Supreme Council Deputy (Transnistria's legislature) Andrey Safonov confirms the attack.
Unknown assailants just fired off 2-3 rocket-propelled grenade shots at the Ministry of State Security in the Moldovan “breakaway republic” Transnistria.
Supreme Council Deputy (Transnistria's legislature) Andrey Safonov confirms the attack.
Ghost Town by The Specials is a masterpiece about an English city. But is it London or Coventry? I always thought the latter, but have heard it might be the former.
I'm still wondering why MoS thought the Angela Rayner story was a good idea? Anyone?
I'm fairly sure it was planted to help her, and hinder Boris
It's a clever piece of spin, either by anti-Boris-ite Tories, or Rayner's team
No I'm sorry neither the MoS nor the anti-Boris faction are that wily.
This was the latest in a long list of dreadful and hateful tripe from the Mail stable. Once you realise what has come before, you realise that they really did mean it and have probably been surprised at the backlash.
Well done Boris and other Conservatives for condemning it. It demeans us and the whole of politics.
Absurdly naive
This story only helps Rayner, and only troubles Boris. And that is bloody obvious. So we can see its provenance quite clearly
BTW I don't blame Rayner's team for planting it, if it was them. Politics is a rough business and Boris presents an easy target in this context
Femme fatale cynically employs her physical assets to try and put the PM off his stride in the House of Commons and blunt his Oxford University debating skills. But he refuses to play her sordid little game. He ploughs on manfully with the serious business of running the country.
I don't quite see how this is supposed to help her and damage "Boris".
Look at how this story has unfolded, entirely predictably. Tories apologising everywhere, Boris looking like a salacious old git, Rayner's profile heightened, even as she gets the sympathy of the political world
You'd need an IQ of less than about 103 to be unable to foresee these consequences. This explains your muted reaction, you too are very slightly more intelligent than the average, but only VERY slightly. 103.
It's right on the edge of your abilities of comprehension, and you're not sure what to make of it. You stare at it quizzically, like a crow looking at a mirror
Oh dear not IQ again. But ok let's do some forensic. You say the story makes BoJo look like a salacious old git. Why does it? The story is that she TRIES to put him off not that he IS put off.
So where's 'salacious old git' coming from? Is it coming from putting yourself in his place? A bit of the old projection going on?
The mirror twinkles. The crow tilts its head
This is not an explanation for why you read this story as "Poor old Boris can't do his duties for slobbering at Angela's flaunted legs".
Don't answer if it's uncomfortable - it's not that important - but I am curious.
Sky has got an audio delay function in the settings, you might need to delay the audio a bit, due to a poor HDMI chipset in the talk talk box as it may not process the sound fast enough to keep up
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
Not sure that's true
We write of Britain more ironically, grittily, and whimsically, and with less glamorisation, but we do write about it:
The Beatles: Penny Lane - Liverpool Pogues: Dirty Old Town - Salford David Gray: Babylon - London - actual proper romanticisation there Gerry Rafferty: Baker Street - possibly the best song ever written about a city? Proclaimers - multiple places in Scotland, especially Leith Fyfe: I Belong to Glasgow - Glasgow!
Waterloo Sunset, Streets of London, London Calling, Mull of Kintyre, Ferry Cross the Mersey, Up The Junction
There is a theme tho. The vast majority of the most famous songs are about London, Liverpool, and Scotland
Baker Street is a terrific song, I agree. Remember it well since it was a hit in the year I left my small northern town as a callow youth and, knowing no-one, came to Central London for uni.
It's theme - loneliness in the big city - could therefore have been poignantly relevant, except it wasn't since I was an immediate big hit with everyone and made loads of friends very quickly and took to South Ken like I'd been born there.
But my mum didn't know that and - I'm told - she used to cry when it came on the radio.
Do we have any Alabama experts on the board today?
I have one day here in the far north west bit. Tuscumbia/Muscle Shoals. By the mighty Tennessee River
I was gonna hike the river or some canyons.... but it's decided to rain. Heavily (the first day of bad weather after a week of pure sun - which returns tomorrow, huzzah)
Things To Do In Alabama When It Rains. Are there any? I thought of driving to Alabama's Most Depressing Town, say Selma, or Bessemer, to indulge in a day of Full on Feasting on American Declinism, but are they that bad? I want BAD. I want Mississippi BAD. Detroit BAD. Shuttered streets, empty factories, fentanyl addicts, desolate malls, maybe a rich Woke student shouting at poor white people about their privilege - in the rain.
Where can I get that?
Quick YouTube (there are channels dedicated to driving the "hood" of these kind of places), Bessemer looks pretty bad. Worst of those kind of places I have been, Gary, Indiana.
Gary, Indiana at one point was the murder capital of the US. You are right, FU, it is a horrible little town on the Southwest corner of Lake Michigan. So depressing. Stopped once on the way from Chicago to Warsaw, Indiana and my hosts were amazed I'd gotten out alive!!!
I know Indiana quite well from the David Soul song Silver Lady. The wind and rain cuts through you, there, and leaves you chilled to the bone. Bleak, as you say. Best to play the song rather than visit. This applies to quite a few places in America, come to think of it. Galverston is another good example. Just play the song and leave it at that.
Sorry, K, but you do not know shit about Indiana, which is a VERY diverse state plenty of great places & people from Lake Michigan dunes to the banks of the Ohio River. Or Galveston for that matter.
Ignorance does NOT become you.
Yes, I'm sure. Only kidding. Or only not kidding in the sense there often IS a mismatch between how a song makes a place sound and the more prosiac reality of that place - and since songs usually talk about American places it's American places that are romanticized (in this way) the most. Pity but that's how it is.
By the time I got to Romford. I wish they all could be Liverpudlian girls. It took me 4 days to hitchhike from Doncaster And now he's leaving ... on the midnight train to Chester.
We lack the cultural confidence to write this sort of stuff.
I left the north again I travelled south again I got confused I killed a horse I can’t help the way I feel I lost my bag in Newport Parnell.
Panic on the streets of London Panic on the streets of Birmingham I wonder to myself Could life ever be sane again? The Leeds side-streets that you slip down I wonder to myself Hopes may rise on the Grasmere But honey pie, you're not safe here So you run down to the safety of the town But there's panic on the streets of Carlisle Dublin, Dundee, Humberside I wonder to myself
Brilliant. I don’t know if it is the case but a mate of mine insisted ‘hang the DJ’ was dedicated to Steve Wright.
Charles, don't you ever crave To appear on the front of the Daily Mail Dressed in your Mother's bridal veil?
It was Steve Wright. Moz took exception to him following up a news report about the explosion at chernobyl - about which his inclination was to panic - by playing a song by Wham! - which he felt was treating the situation with insufficient gravity.
Sticking with my theme, surely the KLF's 'It's grim up north' covers a multitude of places?
Bolton, Barnsley, Nelson, Colne, Burnley Bradford, Buxton, Crewe, Warrington, Widnes, Wigan, Leeds, Northwich, Nantwich, Knutsford, Hull, Sale, Salford, Southport, Leigh, Derby, Kearsley Keighley Maghull, Harrogate, Huddersfield, Oldham, Lancs, Grimsby, Glossop, Hebden Bridge, Brighouse, Bootle, Featherstone, Speke, Runcorn, Rotherham, Rochdale, Barrow, Morecambe, Macclesfield, Lytham St. Annes Clitheroe, Cleethorpes, The M62, Pendlebury, Prestwich, Preston, York, Skipton, Scunthorpe, Scarborough-on-Sea, Chester, Chorley, Cheedle Hulme, Ormskirk, Accrington Stanley, And Leigh, Ossett, Otley, Ikley Moor, Sheffield, Manchester, Castleford, Skem, Doncaster, Dewsbury, Hali-fax, Bingley, Bramall, Are all in the North.
(I occasionally consider doing a walk between all these places, but it would become the 'travelling salesman' problem to work out the best route...
I grew up in Cheadle Hulme. But I was always disproportionately worried that the lyric was 'Cheadle. Hulme.' Rather than 'Cheadle Hulme.' When you're from Cheadle Hulme, that's about the scale of your worries.
West End Girls by the Pet Shop Boys. One of the very best London songs - up there with Waterloo Sunset and London Calling. Also Rainy Night in Soho and Transmetropolitan by The Pogues. London gets some terrific tunes.
Down the Parkway follow your nose to a place where nobody wants to go It's a fare and a half; they're having a larf Everybody's broken or they're a dwarf
Pierrot mirror on the wall who is the ace-est of them all? The Catcliffe girl who gets out before her 18th birthday
Comments
No doubt a tad run down & depressed, not just fly-over country for the jet set but drive-past territory for most Midwesterners. Still not to be trashed for the hell of it - least not by someone NOT a genius like SK.
If NATO went for backing Russia in this conflict, then yes, I would question our membership. But they have not.
Based on all the evidence of Russian incompetence recently, do you really think it's plausible that they are better at running an election campaign with a Western electorate than Lynton Crosby and Peter Mandelson combined?
We write of Britain more ironically, grittily, and whimsically, and with less glamorisation, but we do write about it:
The Beatles: Penny Lane - Liverpool
Pogues: Dirty Old Town - Salford
David Gray: Babylon - London - actual proper romanticisation there
Gerry Rafferty: Baker Street - possibly the best song ever written about a city?
Proclaimers - multiple places in Scotland, especially Leith
Fyfe: I Belong to Glasgow - Glasgow!
Waterloo Sunset, Streets of London, London Calling, Mull of Kintyre, Ferry Cross the Mersey, Up The Junction
There is a theme tho. The vast majority of the most famous songs are about London, Liverpool, and Scotland
England is an essentially suburban nation.
It’s place-names mostly evoke a kind of pooterish quality, or at best a sense of pastoral tranquility.
America has the high romance of “the West”, frontier-land. Discovery. Danger. Danmnation.
In Britain such qualities can perhaps only be found, vanishingly, in the Celtic nations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oqzy8HU6dQ
If you are looking for the dark underbelly of America, quite a lot of East Tennessee fits. I remember Chatanooga being pretty grim, and Gatlinberg full of trashy tourist trap Americana, though like other bits of America nearby are some great National and State parks
So where's 'salacious old git' coming from? Is it coming from putting yourself in his place? A bit of the old projection going on?
1)Urging Ukraine not to leave the Soviet Union (George HW Bush)
2)Allowing Russia to inherit the Soviet Union's permanent seat on the UN Security council
3)Providing aid to Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed
4)Persuading Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons
5)Allowing Russia to join the G7
6)Launching the International Space Station
Should all of this be discounted because of Nato expansion? The dictum of not poking the bear isn't much use if the bear is hungry. Unfortunately Yeltsin chose the wrong successor and all we could have done was a better policy of containment and deterrence.
Would restoring Nato to its cold war boundaries be a victory for Russia? Well it would cause great unease in eastern Europe so long as Russia persists with its 'sphere of influence' mentality but you could easily envisage some kind of military alliance between Poland, Ukraine, the Baltics, Czechs, Slovaks and possibly Romania. Given what has happened in Ukraine they would probably look to go nuclear as well. How would Russia like that? Is this the sort of conversation our diplomats have with their Kremlin counterparts or do they just nod along respectfully whilst the Siloviki spout their awful lies?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20oqyMVbss0
https://twitter.com/francska1/status/1518596830661066752
Indeed Russia remains in the G20 club that we are in for that matter. Thats before we get to the small matter of the UN and UNSC...
Or we could grow up, and recognise that different countries have sovereignty and differing ideas, and that diplomacy is the way forward to build friendship, peace and prosperity. After all Winston Churchill did say that Jaw-Jaw is better than War-War.
I assume this is legitimate but has anyone come across this company yet ?
And on that Bleeding Obvious note, I must depart, as the rain has stopped, and I want to go look at a water pump*
*Helen Keller's water pump
https://www.nationalworld.com/business/hermes-changed-name-evri-parcel-delivery-company-rebrand-explained-widespread-criticism-3611936
Aside from that, well done!
Runs the red electric train....'
Britain, at least England, does it differently. Like one of Betjeman's other gems is a great poem, about faith, with an underlying theme of trolleybuses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48eW3VL-95g
To go to Sugar Hill, way up in Harlem
If you miss the "A" train
You'll find you missed the quickest way to Harlem.’
Ewan MacColl wrote Dirty Old Town, not the Pogues. Quite a remarkably productive and influential career, not least producing Kirsty, though the Ballad of Stalin maybe not a high point.
I assume the question is has Hermes been taken over ?
(I don't know if Chrome et al's engines have fixed various issues, but IMO it's good advice.)
America is the exception not the rule. Because America WAS new and therefore entirely exciting. For 100 years any song about anywhere in America sounded fun. Oooh. Chattanooga! Last Train to Clarksville. Route 66. New York, New York. Crossroads...
That period is coming to a close, in fact it's probably over, and has been over for some time
Songs than romanticise American places now sound kinda dumb, because everyone knows America has terrific social problems, it is no longer the new frontier, and a lot of its towns and cities have been in visible decline for a while, and the world has noticed
It's still a marvellous country, of course. But it is not selling itself, or able to sell itself, as it once did, and this includes musically
OK, to the water pump!
(well actually it was the last train from Clarkston, but I am using poetic licence)
"Thanks Gin!" - Local Resident Gives Credit Where Credit is Due
You missed Big River by Jimmy Nail
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy7JYOC7TSc
Where are all the human beings?
Have they been sent to Milton Keynes?
They used to live round here but now they're gone
For some of us still life moves on
The Highwaymen - Big River
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4Omtt1xC-o
Dublin, Dundee, Humberside.
I bet Arran looks bonnie tonight
And you have to agree it does.
I travelled south again
I got confused
I killed a horse
I can’t help the way I feel
I lost my bag in Newport Pagnell.
Underworld / Dirty Epic
Panic on the streets of Birmingham
I wonder to myself
Could life ever be sane again?
The Leeds side-streets that you slip down
I wonder to myself
Hopes may rise on the Grasmere
But honey pie, you're not safe here
So you run down to the safety of the town
But there's panic on the streets of Carlisle
Dublin, Dundee, Humberside
I wonder to myself
Take the A road, the okay road that's the best
Go motorin' on the A13
Well, if you're looking for a thrill that's new
Take in Fords, Dartford Tunnel and the river too
Go motorin' on the A13
It starts down in Wapping
There ain't no stopping
By-pass Barking and straight through Dagenham
Down to Grays Thurrock
And rather near Basildon
Pitsea, Thundersley, Hadleigh, Leigh-On-Sea
Chalkwell, Prittlewell
Southend's the end
If you ever have to go to Shoeburyness
Take the A road, the okay road that's the best
Go motorin' on the A13
It starts down in Wapping
There ain't no stopping
By-pass Barking and straight through Dagenham
Down to Grays Thurrock
And rather near Basildon
Pitsea, Thundersley, Hadleigh, Leigh-On-Sea
Chalkwell, Prittlewell
Southend's the end
Six of us and a [galley pot and night in front of us],
I was just nineteen, a boy aboard, Jack London was my stuff,
The rest of the crew were all bucky men but the skipper was named MacDuff,
In the cold and wet, the dark and rough, the work was never done,
For every four hours the chain bell rang with another catch to run,
Then knee deep in fish that were gasping their last and us with our blades in hand,
We’d slit their throats and clean their guts and laugh at those on land,
One night alone and up on deck beyond Bill Bailey’s Bank,
Just me, my soul and the roar of the [scuds] and the swirling black below,
Wet with spray and numb with cold and fresh bile in my throat,
I was counting the hours back to Peterhead and the youth years lost afloat,
The draw of the deep has a mighty strong arm and me, I was playing to win,
As we wrestled there on the starboard [side my soul was relieved from sin],
And through the chunder of diesel power and crumbling cliffs of [search],
I heard a cry and a sweet lament, a clarion call so strange,
A blistering version of this fourth song. Just when we were wondering if we'd get any.
In the town of New Haven
Blood stains the roofs
And the palm trees of Venice
Blood in my love
In the terrible summer
Bloody red sun of
Fantastic L.A.
Brilliant. I don’t know if it is the case but a mate of mine insisted ‘hang the DJ’ was dedicated to Steve Wright.
Charles, don't you ever crave
To appear on the front of the Daily Mail
Dressed in your Mother's bridal veil?
@visegrad24
·
1h
BREAKING:
Unknown assailants just fired off 2-3 rocket-propelled grenade shots at the Ministry of State Security in the Moldovan “breakaway republic” Transnistria.
Supreme Council Deputy (Transnistria's legislature) Andrey Safonov confirms the attack.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24
====
"Unknown assailants" being FSB presumably. Trying to stir up trouble.
The fog on the Tyne is all mine mine mine, the fog on the Tyne is all mine
Don't answer if it's uncomfortable - it's not that important - but I am curious.
Bolton,
Barnsley,
Nelson,
Colne,
Burnley
Bradford,
Buxton,
Crewe,
Warrington,
Widnes,
Wigan,
Leeds,
Northwich,
Nantwich,
Knutsford,
Hull,
Sale,
Salford,
Southport,
Leigh,
Derby,
Kearsley
Keighley
Maghull,
Harrogate,
Huddersfield,
Oldham, Lancs,
Grimsby,
Glossop,
Hebden Bridge,
Brighouse,
Bootle,
Featherstone,
Speke,
Runcorn,
Rotherham,
Rochdale,
Barrow,
Morecambe,
Macclesfield,
Lytham St. Annes
Clitheroe,
Cleethorpes,
The M62,
Pendlebury,
Prestwich,
Preston,
York,
Skipton,
Scunthorpe,
Scarborough-on-Sea,
Chester,
Chorley,
Cheedle Hulme,
Ormskirk,
Accrington Stanley,
And Leigh,
Ossett,
Otley,
Ikley Moor,
Sheffield,
Manchester,
Castleford,
Skem,
Doncaster,
Dewsbury,
Hali-fax,
Bingley,
Bramall,
Are all in the North.
(I occasionally consider doing a walk between all these places, but it would become the 'travelling salesman' problem to work out the best route...
Although that was the criminally underrated Alan Hull.
Who my mother-in-law dated, disturbingly enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_519h95XFs
Oh, here in London
Home of the brash, outrageous and free
You are repressed
But you're remarkably dressed
Is it real?
It's theme - loneliness in the big city - could therefore have been poignantly relevant, except it wasn't since I was an immediate big hit with everyone and made loads of friends very quickly and took to South Ken like I'd been born there.
But my mum didn't know that and - I'm told - she used to cry when it came on the radio.
The last night of the fair
By the big wheel generator
A boy is stabbed
His money is grabbed
And the air hangs heavy like a dulling wine
When you're from Cheadle Hulme, that's about the scale of your worries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOyqQuaF5f4
A hymn of pure hatred to a real place
Down the Parkway follow your nose to a place where nobody wants to go
It's a fare and a half; they're having a larf
Everybody's broken or they're a dwarf
Pierrot mirror on the wall who is the ace-est of them all?
The Catcliffe girl who gets out before her 18th birthday