“We’re actually censoring the right and not the left.”
- Twitter employee to undercover #ProjectVeritas journalist
It pretty much backs up how I think Twitter has been operating so I am incline to believe.
BUT
This is one person talking, buy the context its a block talking to a girl in a bar or similar setting, he could well just be telling her whatever he thinks she what's to hear and/or impress her in order to impress her for, well, 'personal' reasons. it also is quite heavily edited, so maybe the if we had the whole video, it might be slightly more balanced.
I have to admit that even I would play at being a Tory to further a relationship, though that was a very,very long time ago.
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
The old adage about power bring an aphrodisiac really just means those in power abusing it to abuse others. Time that was ended once and for all. Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
Hey Woolie, sorry to hear of your travails. So glad you are getting some attention
If it helps, I was down there in the darkness, with the black dog howling, during the worst of Covid - just like you. I split with my wife partly for Covid reasons (a painful split as we were still very close), then I had to face lockdown 3 - the winter one - all alone in a one bed flat in Camden when every single thing that usually keeps me sane - from friends to pubs to sun to restaurants to travel to art galleries and sex - was taken away from me. I felt actually suicidal a few times, and - weirder and somehow worse - later I behaved suicidally - eg driving at 140mph at noon for no reason
Crazy shit
I am very glad I did not do myself in. I am now in a much much happier place - I still have my mood swings but they are normal. I will always have them. What happened during Covid was an order of magnitude worse than the average bipolar blues
Anyway. Stick in there. And stay on PB. I found it an invaluable source of company at my loneliest moments….
Thank you Leon. The small flat, alone; where once youth and beauty shone, I get 100% I'm something of a physical and mental wretch now. Disabled with horrors ravaging the insides. Has been quite the culture shock as i used to think myself indestructible, immortal, unstoppable. But I'm not. I'm a young old man who plays chess and remembers when life was bar lights and pretty girls who now have fled further even than the time that separates us. But I'm Woolie. And I always will be. I've been strangling black dogs since i was 10. Fuck em. I've seen enough to laugh at the pompous, the famous, the pretenders and the cruel. Just a lad from working class stock who got given a brain and a grin and has rinsed the shit out of both.
That’s the spirit! And remember, ‘twas ever thus. Sir Thomas Wyatt captured the mood perfectly. Way back in the early 16th century….
They flee from me that sometime did me seek With naked foot, stalking in my chamber. I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek, That now are wild and do not remember That sometime they put themself in danger To take bread at my hand; and now they range, Busily seeking with a continual change.
Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise Twenty times better; but once in special, In thin array after a pleasant guise, When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall, And she me caught in her arms long and small; Therewithall sweetly did me kiss And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”
It was no dream: I lay broad waking. But all is turned thorough my gentleness Into a strange fashion of forsaking; And I have leave to go of her goodness, And she also, to use newfangleness. But since that I so kindly am served I would fain know what she hath deserved.
A little Leigh Hunt Jenny kiss’d me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss’d me.
Or, on a wistful day, my favourite poem, The Lost Love by Wordsworth
She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove; A maid whom there were none to praise, And very few to love.
A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! —Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and O! The difference to me!
I know that first poem, of course. Brilliant. But I’ve never read that second one. It’s truly moving. Ta
I'm really struggling with @hyufd's logic here so I may need correcting but I think it is something like this:
If you lose an election or a referendum you have to suck it up. No compromise to the losing side no matter how close the result is. Implement to the extreme and any disobedience put down with the utmost force.
If you lose an election or referendum, but happen to be a Tory, Unionist, Right Wing or whatever then your views have to be taken into account even if that means forming an unviable enclave and you must give way to any threat of violence.
Northern Ireland was created by the threat of violence via the armed Ulster volunteers. Loyalist paramilitaries still exist.
I have yet to see see any significant terrorism from Scottish Nationalists over the 2014 referendum loss or Remainers over the 2016 referendum loss or indeed from unionists and Tories who were on the beaten side in the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum.
Northern Ireland has a history of recent internal violence the rest of the UK does not so must be handled with special care
OK, so lets play the two scenarios.
In NornIron you've said that the will of some of the residents of Lisburn - a minority - mean that the "boundaries can be redrawn" if need be, with the majority booted into the republic. If that means crazy enclaves then thats ok with you, because they are armed.
In Scotland the majority want a vote on their future. Not terrorism. Not even UDI, jut a vote. You are so against it you're practically volunteering to drive a tank in the special military operation to crush the Scotch.
You can't see the screaming absurdity and hypocrisy of your position?
No, Scotland does not have a history of terrorism unlike Northern Ireland so the situations are not comparable
It is beyond belief that you don't understand this. We all agree there is no history of terrorism in Scotland or by Remainers, but what you are saying is that if they did take up arms you would capitulate, but if they are peaceful they should be put down with utmost force and no quarter given, even to the extent of using tanks at demos.
And you don't see how dangerous that is and just encourages terrorism. What deranged person would not think, I have nothing to lose by taking up the armalite like the guys over in NI.
Northern Ireland was only created because of threat of violence in the remaining Protestant loyalist areas if forced into the Irish Free State against their will.
Scotland has no history of terrorism or militant violence like Northern Ireland so the brutal reality is the UK government can refuse an indyref2 without risk of terrorist retaliation from the SNP in the way they could not impose a hard border in Ireland without the risk of terrorist violence from the IRA, the ex military wing of SF.
The GFA only came about too because of the need to end terrorist violence in NI. You may not like it but that is the reality.
Now of course violence by Scottish Nationalists or Remainers would not guarantee this Tory government listened to them, the UK government defied the IRA for decades but it did ultimately lead to a settlement in NI
You just keep ignoring counter arguments and repeat the same nonsense which just encourages terrorism.
So you believe terrorism is valid to achieve your aims and people who don't resort to terrorism should be ignored.
It's also a complete rewriting of history that ignores the 30-year history of the civil rights movement and the attempts to make powersharing work.
I'm really struggling with @hyufd's logic here so I may need correcting but I think it is something like this:
If you lose an election or a referendum you have to suck it up. No compromise to the losing side no matter how close the result is. Implement to the extreme and any disobedience put down with the utmost force.
If you lose an election or referendum, but happen to be a Tory, Unionist, Right Wing or whatever then your views have to be taken into account even if that means forming an unviable enclave and you must give way to any threat of violence.
Northern Ireland was created by the threat of violence via the armed Ulster volunteers. Loyalist paramilitaries still exist.
I have yet to see see any significant terrorism from Scottish Nationalists over the 2014 referendum loss or Remainers over the 2016 referendum loss or indeed from unionists and Tories who were on the beaten side in the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum.
Northern Ireland has a history of recent internal violence the rest of the UK does not so must be handled with special care
OK, so lets play the two scenarios.
In NornIron you've said that the will of some of the residents of Lisburn - a minority - mean that the "boundaries can be redrawn" if need be, with the majority booted into the republic. If that means crazy enclaves then thats ok with you, because they are armed.
In Scotland the majority want a vote on their future. Not terrorism. Not even UDI, jut a vote. You are so against it you're practically volunteering to drive a tank in the special military operation to crush the Scotch.
You can't see the screaming absurdity and hypocrisy of your position?
No, Scotland does not have a history of terrorism unlike Northern Ireland so the situations are not comparable
It is beyond belief that you don't understand this. We all agree there is no history of terrorism in Scotland or by Remainers, but what you are saying is that if they did take up arms you would capitulate, but if they are peaceful they should be put down with utmost force and no quarter given, even to the extent of using tanks at demos.
And you don't see how dangerous that is and just encourages terrorism. What deranged person would not think, I have nothing to lose by taking up the armalite like the guys over in NI.
Northern Ireland was only created because of threat of violence in the remaining Protestant loyalist areas if forced into the Irish Free State against their will.
Scotland has no history of terrorism or militant violence like Northern Ireland so the brutal reality is the UK government can refuse an indyref2 without risk of terrorist retaliation from the SNP in the way they could not impose a hard border in Ireland without the risk of terrorist violence from the IRA, the ex military wing of SF.
The GFA only came about too because of the need to end terrorist violence in NI. You may not like it but that is the reality.
Now of course violence by Scottish Nationalists or Remainers would not guarantee this Tory government listened to them, the UK government defied the IRA for decades but it did ultimately lead to a settlement in NI
You just keep ignoring counter arguments and repeat the same nonsense which just encourages terrorism.
So you believe terrorism is valid to achieve your aims and people who don't resort to terrorism should be ignored.
It's also a complete rewriting of history that ignores the 30-year history of the civil rights movement and the attempts to make powersharing work.
The civil rights movement of course largely failed for that 30 year period as terrorism continued via the IRA from the early 1970s until the GFA and powersharing arrived in 1998 with the loyalist paramilitaries also acting in response
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
It doesn't cost them £9k a year. History students subsidise Engineering students (for example).
Regardless of one's view on tuition fees, this has always been the case to a large extent. Some subjects cost one hell of a lot more to teach, and that's either covered by general taxation (which History students go on to pay as much as anyone) or loan repayments (which History students go on to pay, albeit binmen don't).
I don't see your route around that, other than to make Engineering courses more expensive to cut fees for Historians. And that seems brave, minister.
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
It doesn't cost them £9k a year. History students subsidise Engineering students (for example).
Regardless of one's view on tuition fees, this has always been the case to a large extent. Some subjects cost one hell of a lot more to teach, and that's either covered by general taxation (which History students go on to pay as much as anyone) or loan repayments (which History students go on to pay, albeit binmen don't).
I don't see your route around that, other than to make Engineering courses more expensive to cut fees for Historians. And that seems brave, minister.
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
It doesn't cost them £9k a year. History students subsidise Engineering students (for example).
Regardless of one's view on tuition fees, this has always been the case to a large extent. Some subjects cost one hell of a lot more to teach, and that's either covered by general taxation (which History students go on to pay as much as anyone) or loan repayments (which History students go on to pay, albeit binmen don't).
I don't see your route around that, other than to make Engineering courses more expensive to cut fees for Historians. And that seems brave, minister.
I would suggest that the solution is quite obvious. If we want more engineers ( and oh lord we do) then those courses for useful things ( see also science, medicine and technology) should be subsidised by the taxpayer, not the poor history, English or social science students being doomed to lives of low earnings, debt and ( god help us) voting Liberal Democrat. They suffer enough.
Or just raise fees for high demand, high earning degree subjects like business and law to subsidise more engineers rather than raise taxes for non graduate working class taxpayers
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
The old adage about power bring an aphrodisiac really just means those in power abusing it to abuse others. Time that was ended once and for all. Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
Hey Woolie, sorry to hear of your travails. So glad you are getting some attention
If it helps, I was down there in the darkness, with the black dog howling, during the worst of Covid - just like you. I split with my wife partly for Covid reasons (a painful split as we were still very close), then I had to face lockdown 3 - the winter one - all alone in a one bed flat in Camden when every single thing that usually keeps me sane - from friends to pubs to sun to restaurants to travel to art galleries and sex - was taken away from me. I felt actually suicidal a few times, and - weirder and somehow worse - later I behaved suicidally - eg driving at 140mph at noon for no reason
Crazy shit
I am very glad I did not do myself in. I am now in a much much happier place - I still have my mood swings but they are normal. I will always have them. What happened during Covid was an order of magnitude worse than the average bipolar blues
Anyway. Stick in there. And stay on PB. I found it an invaluable source of company at my loneliest moments….
Thank you Leon. The small flat, alone; where once youth and beauty shone, I get 100% I'm something of a physical and mental wretch now. Disabled with horrors ravaging the insides. Has been quite the culture shock as i used to think myself indestructible, immortal, unstoppable. But I'm not. Now I'm a young old man who plays chess and remembers when life was bar lights and pretty girls who now have fled further even than the time that separates us. But I'm Woolie. And I always will be. I've been strangling black dogs since i was 10. Fuck em. I've seen enough to laugh at the pompous, the famous, the pretenders and the cruel. Just a lad from working class stock who got given a brain and a grin and has rinsed the shit out of both.
I can only hope you feel better soon.
When I was a kid, I felt low - I guess we all do. "The world doesn't understand me" Adrian Mole-style pretentious crap. Having talked to people since, I realised that although I felt low, the black dog never stalked me. I've always been someone who is more 'up' than 'down'. Even when I got told I would never walk properly again, when I had a first operation only to find a friend had died - even through the bad times, it never stalked me.
But I have seen enough people 'down' to realise the black dog is real, and that I've been blooming lucky.
Oddly, I've never seen myself as indestructible, immortal or unstoppable. Quite the opposite. Yet depression has never really been a problem. Odd, really.
The Black Dog is Very Real. Be thankful you have not encountered Old Shuck on a winter’s night, alone
Yep, I realise the black dog is real. I've just been fortunate enough never to personally encounter it - despite some firm groundings for it. I'm the sort of guy who walks across Bodmin Moor at night, without a map, and does not sink into the morass or encountering The Hound.
But I've known people who have encountered it. Two of whom took their own lives. I blame myself for not helping them more, but it's hard to help someone whom the black dog has in their sights. You cannot be with someone every hour of the day, or even every day of the week.
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
The old adage about power bring an aphrodisiac really just means those in power abusing it to abuse others. Time that was ended once and for all. Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
Hey Woolie, sorry to hear of your travails. So glad you are getting some attention
If it helps, I was down there in the darkness, with the black dog howling, during the worst of Covid - just like you. I split with my wife partly for Covid reasons (a painful split as we were still very close), then I had to face lockdown 3 - the winter one - all alone in a one bed flat in Camden when every single thing that usually keeps me sane - from friends to pubs to sun to restaurants to travel to art galleries and sex - was taken away from me. I felt actually suicidal a few times, and - weirder and somehow worse - later I behaved suicidally - eg driving at 140mph at noon for no reason
Crazy shit
I am very glad I did not do myself in. I am now in a much much happier place - I still have my mood swings but they are normal. I will always have them. What happened during Covid was an order of magnitude worse than the average bipolar blues
Anyway. Stick in there. And stay on PB. I found it an invaluable source of company at my loneliest moments….
Thank you Leon. The small flat, alone; where once youth and beauty shone, I get 100% I'm something of a physical and mental wretch now. Disabled with horrors ravaging the insides. Has been quite the culture shock as i used to think myself indestructible, immortal, unstoppable. But I'm not. I'm a young old man who plays chess and remembers when life was bar lights and pretty girls who now have fled further even than the time that separates us. But I'm Woolie. And I always will be. I've been strangling black dogs since i was 10. Fuck em. I've seen enough to laugh at the pompous, the famous, the pretenders and the cruel. Just a lad from working class stock who got given a brain and a grin and has rinsed the shit out of both.
That’s the spirit! And remember, ‘twas ever thus. Sir Thomas Wyatt captured the mood perfectly. Way back in the early 16th century….
They flee from me that sometime did me seek With naked foot, stalking in my chamber. I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek, That now are wild and do not remember That sometime they put themself in danger To take bread at my hand; and now they range, Busily seeking with a continual change.
Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise Twenty times better; but once in special, In thin array after a pleasant guise, When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall, And she me caught in her arms long and small; Therewithall sweetly did me kiss And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”
It was no dream: I lay broad waking. But all is turned thorough my gentleness Into a strange fashion of forsaking; And I have leave to go of her goodness, And she also, to use newfangleness. But since that I so kindly am served I would fain know what she hath deserved.
A little Leigh Hunt Jenny kiss’d me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss’d me.
Or, on a wistful day, my favourite poem, The Lost Love by Wordsworth
She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove; A maid whom there were none to praise, And very few to love.
A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! —Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and O! The difference to me!
Peter Wyngarde did a rendition of that first one on his album.
What's that? You didn't know Peter Wyngarde did an album? Hooooooo boy.
One thing is for sure. Something is dreadfully wrong in the culture at Westminster.
Not necessarily any more than the nation as a whole.
There are ~100k registered sex offenders in the UK. The number of people who have been investigated/arrested etc but never made it to the register (possibly because they're innocent) is an order of magnitude higher.
Therefore just from 650 random people in any single Parliament you'd expect one registered sex offender and an order of magnitude more who've been suspected of it etc.
The question every institution has to ask of itself is not whether bad apples are in its walls (the answer for almost any large organisations is yes) but what is done when allegations are brought up.
If they're taken seriously so the bad apples are identified and kicked out then that is a good culture.
If they're covered up with bad apples aided in being moved around and covering the tracks so they never see justice and can get away with it, that is terrible.
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
If History can be thought at university for less then £9K a year, why doesn't one of the few privet univsatys open a cause for £8k and make a big profit?
Overall about 1/3 of the cost of teaching Undergraduates still comes form the taxpayer, this, about £5k per year per student on average is not evenly distributed, i.e. more to the STEM subjects that require laboratys and workshops not just lecture theatres and seminar rooms.
Maybe an instauration could run a history degree for less than £9k a year, in which case I would support it doing so. but unless we are going to embrace distance learning lectors on a video and so on, I don't think you will get it much lower. which is why I would support a bigger more to distance learning for degrees, expanding the open university for example.
There is definitely scope for an upstart to take a good look at how universities work, especially in terms of the standard product offering of a three-year in-person undergrad degree in most subjects.
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
The old adage about power bring an aphrodisiac really just means those in power abusing it to abuse others. Time that was ended once and for all. Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
Hey Woolie, sorry to hear of your travails. So glad you are getting some attention
If it helps, I was down there in the darkness, with the black dog howling, during the worst of Covid - just like you. I split with my wife partly for Covid reasons (a painful split as we were still very close), then I had to face lockdown 3 - the winter one - all alone in a one bed flat in Camden when every single thing that usually keeps me sane - from friends to pubs to sun to restaurants to travel to art galleries and sex - was taken away from me. I felt actually suicidal a few times, and - weirder and somehow worse - later I behaved suicidally - eg driving at 140mph at noon for no reason
Crazy shit
I am very glad I did not do myself in. I am now in a much much happier place - I still have my mood swings but they are normal. I will always have them. What happened during Covid was an order of magnitude worse than the average bipolar blues
Anyway. Stick in there. And stay on PB. I found it an invaluable source of company at my loneliest moments….
Thank you Leon. The small flat, alone; where once youth and beauty shone, I get 100% I'm something of a physical and mental wretch now. Disabled with horrors ravaging the insides. Has been quite the culture shock as i used to think myself indestructible, immortal, unstoppable. But I'm not. Now I'm a young old man who plays chess and remembers when life was bar lights and pretty girls who now have fled further even than the time that separates us. But I'm Woolie. And I always will be. I've been strangling black dogs since i was 10. Fuck em. I've seen enough to laugh at the pompous, the famous, the pretenders and the cruel. Just a lad from working class stock who got given a brain and a grin and has rinsed the shit out of both.
I can only hope you feel better soon.
When I was a kid, I felt low - I guess we all do. "The world doesn't understand me" Adrian Mole-style pretentious crap. Having talked to people since, I realised that although I felt low, the black dog never stalked me. I've always been someone who is more 'up' than 'down'. Even when I got told I would never walk properly again, when I had a first operation only to find a friend had died - even through the bad times, it never stalked me.
But I have seen enough people 'down' to realise the black dog is real, and that I've been blooming lucky.
Oddly, I've never seen myself as indestructible, immortal or unstoppable. Quite the opposite. Yet depression has never really been a problem. Odd, really.
I think the indestructible, immortal stuff was a consequnece of the black dog. I had to think that or I'd not have made the morning sometimes (and the first time I don't there's no do over) . With his maw round my neck and his breath suffocating me. The delusion came at a price. Too much, too often, too hard etc. But now I can't pretend I'm immortal I at least know I can, I have, and I will beat the dog. However long it takes or how often I have to.
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
The old adage about power bring an aphrodisiac really just means those in power abusing it to abuse others. Time that was ended once and for all. Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
Hey Woolie, sorry to hear of your travails. So glad you are getting some attention
If it helps, I was down there in the darkness, with the black dog howling, during the worst of Covid - just like you. I split with my wife partly for Covid reasons (a painful split as we were still very close), then I had to face lockdown 3 - the winter one - all alone in a one bed flat in Camden when every single thing that usually keeps me sane - from friends to pubs to sun to restaurants to travel to art galleries and sex - was taken away from me. I felt actually suicidal a few times, and - weirder and somehow worse - later I behaved suicidally - eg driving at 140mph at noon for no reason
Crazy shit
I am very glad I did not do myself in. I am now in a much much happier place - I still have my mood swings but they are normal. I will always have them. What happened during Covid was an order of magnitude worse than the average bipolar blues
Anyway. Stick in there. And stay on PB. I found it an invaluable source of company at my loneliest moments….
Thank you Leon. The small flat, alone; where once youth and beauty shone, I get 100% I'm something of a physical and mental wretch now. Disabled with horrors ravaging the insides. Has been quite the culture shock as i used to think myself indestructible, immortal, unstoppable. But I'm not. Now I'm a young old man who plays chess and remembers when life was bar lights and pretty girls who now have fled further even than the time that separates us. But I'm Woolie. And I always will be. I've been strangling black dogs since i was 10. Fuck em. I've seen enough to laugh at the pompous, the famous, the pretenders and the cruel. Just a lad from working class stock who got given a brain and a grin and has rinsed the shit out of both.
I can only hope you feel better soon.
When I was a kid, I felt low - I guess we all do. "The world doesn't understand me" Adrian Mole-style pretentious crap. Having talked to people since, I realised that although I felt low, the black dog never stalked me. I've always been someone who is more 'up' than 'down'. Even when I got told I would never walk properly again, when I had a first operation only to find a friend had died - even through the bad times, it never stalked me.
But I have seen enough people 'down' to realise the black dog is real, and that I've been blooming lucky.
Oddly, I've never seen myself as indestructible, immortal or unstoppable. Quite the opposite. Yet depression has never really been a problem. Odd, really.
Me too. I sometimes think that a lack of imagination or insight is actually a blessing.
I've got a fairly active imagination, so I doubt it's that - in my case at least. I think it's something more intrinsic.
The black dog turns it's head away from me and stalks another target. I feel low, but never too low. I can always find something to lift myself away from its grasp. A chat to a friend. A pretty flower. A walk.
I do not attract the black dog. In the same way I cannot burp. Yes, really.
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
It doesn't cost them £9k a year. History students subsidise Engineering students (for example).
Regardless of one's view on tuition fees, this has always been the case to a large extent. Some subjects cost one hell of a lot more to teach, and that's either covered by general taxation (which History students go on to pay as much as anyone) or loan repayments (which History students go on to pay, albeit binmen don't).
I don't see your route around that, other than to make Engineering courses more expensive to cut fees for Historians. And that seems brave, minister.
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
It doesn't cost them £9k a year. History students subsidise Engineering students (for example).
Regardless of one's view on tuition fees, this has always been the case to a large extent. Some subjects cost one hell of a lot more to teach, and that's either covered by general taxation (which History students go on to pay as much as anyone) or loan repayments (which History students go on to pay, albeit binmen don't).
I don't see your route around that, other than to make Engineering courses more expensive to cut fees for Historians. And that seems brave, minister.
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
It doesn't cost them £9k a year. History students subsidise Engineering students (for example).
Regardless of one's view on tuition fees, this has always been the case to a large extent. Some subjects cost one hell of a lot more to teach, and that's either covered by general taxation (which History students go on to pay as much as anyone) or loan repayments (which History students go on to pay, albeit binmen don't).
I don't see your route around that, other than to make Engineering courses more expensive to cut fees for Historians. And that seems brave, minister.
I would suggest that the solution is quite obvious. If we want more engineers ( and oh lord we do) then those courses for useful things ( see also science, medicine and technology) should be subsidised by the taxpayer, not the poor history, English or social science students being doomed to lives of low earnings, debt and ( god help us) voting Liberal Democrat. They suffer enough.
Or just raise fees for high demand, high earning degree subjects like business and law to subsidise more engineers rather than raise taxes for non graduate working class taxpayers
Why? Why on earth should cheap courses subsidise more expensive ones? A government can take a view across the field but why should a student who studies cheap as chips pay what is effectively a graduate tax for most of their sad and miserable careers to fund those who do something useful for society?
I mean, that is what happens now but it is just ridiculous and became so as soon as students started funding their own courses.
It's all very interesting - we have, by most historic definitions, full employment and over 1.3 million vacancies.
And yet?
"Full employment" isn't the panacea many believe - full employment means restaurants are full, not because there are huge numbers trying to book tables but because they lack the staff to feed them. Throughout "hospitality" in London, there are shortages and that has impacts - the illusion of a booming capital hides the reality of businesses struggling to keep going and retain staff.
In the late 80s, we ended up with wage-driven inflation as competition for staff forced up prices - this may not be the case if we see people cutting back on discretionary spending in the face of higher inflation and falling living standards. The Bank of England Governor didn't paint a particularly rosy picture yesterday in all honesty.
I also see the Prime Minister, now to be known as "Cheese & Houmous Man" is once again sounding off about working at home. It's clearly one of his pet peeves - perhaps, instead of listening to the wailing and gnashing of teeth of commercial property developers, he should just get on with governing for all of us (novel idea perhaps?).
Rail passenger numbers are 75-80% of pre-Covid while Tube numbers are still just below two thirds of pre Covid.
I can understand Johnson's frustration - the Government are continually having to bail out public transport providers whose operating models have been broken by the pandemic. It's yet another call on the public purse at a time of struggle.
One thing is for sure. Something is dreadfully wrong in the culture at Westminster.
Not necessarily any more than the nation as a whole.
There are ~100k registered sex offenders in the UK. The number of people who have been investigated/arrested etc but never made it to the register (possibly because they're innocent) is an order of magnitude higher.
Therefore just from 650 random people in any single Parliament you'd expect one registered sex offender and an order of magnitude more who've been suspected of it etc.
The question every institution has to ask of itself is not whether bad apples are in its walls (the answer for almost any large organisations is yes) but what is done when allegations are brought up.
If they're taken seriously so the bad apples are identified and kicked out then that is a good culture.
If they're covered up with bad apples aided in being moved around and covering the tracks so they never see justice and can get away with it, that is terrible.
Well firstly there is a difference between 1 and 50. Secondly, a political system that positively repulses normal, sane people in favour of ego maniacs, narcissists, and plain creeps must be sub optimal.
Unusual case - didn't realise the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council really did anything.
Nine of the UK's most senior judges have refused to ban the mandatory death penalty in Trinidad and Tobago...
[Lord Hodge said]The sentence is recognised internationally as cruel and unusual punishment. The state does not dispute that characterisation."
He said that despite those concerns, the judges in London could not legitimately interfere as there was no constitutional law question for them to settle.
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
The old adage about power bring an aphrodisiac really just means those in power abusing it to abuse others. Time that was ended once and for all. Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
Hey Woolie, sorry to hear of your travails. So glad you are getting some attention
If it helps, I was down there in the darkness, with the black dog howling, during the worst of Covid - just like you. I split with my wife partly for Covid reasons (a painful split as we were still very close), then I had to face lockdown 3 - the winter one - all alone in a one bed flat in Camden when every single thing that usually keeps me sane - from friends to pubs to sun to restaurants to travel to art galleries and sex - was taken away from me. I felt actually suicidal a few times, and - weirder and somehow worse - later I behaved suicidally - eg driving at 140mph at noon for no reason
Crazy shit
I am very glad I did not do myself in. I am now in a much much happier place - I still have my mood swings but they are normal. I will always have them. What happened during Covid was an order of magnitude worse than the average bipolar blues
Anyway. Stick in there. And stay on PB. I found it an invaluable source of company at my loneliest moments….
Thank you Leon. The small flat, alone; where once youth and beauty shone, I get 100% I'm something of a physical and mental wretch now. Disabled with horrors ravaging the insides. Has been quite the culture shock as i used to think myself indestructible, immortal, unstoppable. But I'm not. Now I'm a young old man who plays chess and remembers when life was bar lights and pretty girls who now have fled further even than the time that separates us. But I'm Woolie. And I always will be. I've been strangling black dogs since i was 10. Fuck em. I've seen enough to laugh at the pompous, the famous, the pretenders and the cruel. Just a lad from working class stock who got given a brain and a grin and has rinsed the shit out of both.
I can only hope you feel better soon.
When I was a kid, I felt low - I guess we all do. "The world doesn't understand me" Adrian Mole-style pretentious crap. Having talked to people since, I realised that although I felt low, the black dog never stalked me. I've always been someone who is more 'up' than 'down'. Even when I got told I would never walk properly again, when I had a first operation only to find a friend had died - even through the bad times, it never stalked me.
But I have seen enough people 'down' to realise the black dog is real, and that I've been blooming lucky.
Oddly, I've never seen myself as indestructible, immortal or unstoppable. Quite the opposite. Yet depression has never really been a problem. Odd, really.
The Black Dog is Very Real. Be thankful you have not encountered Old Shuck on a winter’s night, alone
Yep, I realise the black dog is real. I've just been fortunate enough never to personally encounter it - despite some firm groundings for it. I'm the sort of guy who walks across Bodmin Moor at night, without a map, and does not sink into the morass or encountering The Hound.
But I've known people who have encountered it. Two of whom took their own lives. I blame myself for not helping them more, but it's hard to help someone whom the black dog has in their sights. You cannot be with someone every hour of the day, or even every day of the week.
There are few things more terrifying or bleak than sitting in a chair, alone, staring into nothing, while thinking “So OK, if I kill myself, how do I do it?”
A part of you detaches and you look down at yourself, sort-of-screaming: No, you can’t be thinking like this, you mustn’t think like this. Nonetheless, you are thinking like this. That is you, down there in that chair, considering self-murder
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
The old adage about power bring an aphrodisiac really just means those in power abusing it to abuse others. Time that was ended once and for all. Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
Hey Woolie, sorry to hear of your travails. So glad you are getting some attention
If it helps, I was down there in the darkness, with the black dog howling, during the worst of Covid - just like you. I split with my wife partly for Covid reasons (a painful split as we were still very close), then I had to face lockdown 3 - the winter one - all alone in a one bed flat in Camden when every single thing that usually keeps me sane - from friends to pubs to sun to restaurants to travel to art galleries and sex - was taken away from me. I felt actually suicidal a few times, and - weirder and somehow worse - later I behaved suicidally - eg driving at 140mph at noon for no reason
Crazy shit
I am very glad I did not do myself in. I am now in a much much happier place - I still have my mood swings but they are normal. I will always have them. What happened during Covid was an order of magnitude worse than the average bipolar blues
Anyway. Stick in there. And stay on PB. I found it an invaluable source of company at my loneliest moments….
Thank you Leon. The small flat, alone; where once youth and beauty shone, I get 100% I'm something of a physical and mental wretch now. Disabled with horrors ravaging the insides. Has been quite the culture shock as i used to think myself indestructible, immortal, unstoppable. But I'm not. I'm a young old man who plays chess and remembers when life was bar lights and pretty girls who now have fled further even than the time that separates us. But I'm Woolie. And I always will be. I've been strangling black dogs since i was 10. Fuck em. I've seen enough to laugh at the pompous, the famous, the pretenders and the cruel. Just a lad from working class stock who got given a brain and a grin and has rinsed the shit out of both.
That’s the spirit! And remember, ‘twas ever thus. Sir Thomas Wyatt captured the mood perfectly. Way back in the early 16th century….
They flee from me that sometime did me seek With naked foot, stalking in my chamber. I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek, That now are wild and do not remember That sometime they put themself in danger To take bread at my hand; and now they range, Busily seeking with a continual change.
Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise Twenty times better; but once in special, In thin array after a pleasant guise, When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall, And she me caught in her arms long and small; Therewithall sweetly did me kiss And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”
It was no dream: I lay broad waking. But all is turned thorough my gentleness Into a strange fashion of forsaking; And I have leave to go of her goodness, And she also, to use newfangleness. But since that I so kindly am served I would fain know what she hath deserved.
A little Leigh Hunt Jenny kiss’d me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss’d me.
Or, on a wistful day, my favourite poem, The Lost Love by Wordsworth
She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove; A maid whom there were none to praise, And very few to love.
A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! —Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and O! The difference to me!
I know that first poem, of course. Brilliant. But I’ve never read that second one. It’s truly moving. Ta
Here's a more modern one by Vicki Feaver, Coat It's from the female perspective but does encapsulate, for me, much of what has gone wrong in my own relationships
Sometimes I have wanted to throw you off like a heavy coat.
Sometimes I have said you would not let me breathe or move.
But now that I am free to choose light clothes or none at all
I feel the cold and all the time I think how warm it used to be.
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
The old adage about power bring an aphrodisiac really just means those in power abusing it to abuse others. Time that was ended once and for all. Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
Hey Woolie, sorry to hear of your travails. So glad you are getting some attention
If it helps, I was down there in the darkness, with the black dog howling, during the worst of Covid - just like you. I split with my wife partly for Covid reasons (a painful split as we were still very close), then I had to face lockdown 3 - the winter one - all alone in a one bed flat in Camden when every single thing that usually keeps me sane - from friends to pubs to sun to restaurants to travel to art galleries and sex - was taken away from me. I felt actually suicidal a few times, and - weirder and somehow worse - later I behaved suicidally - eg driving at 140mph at noon for no reason
Crazy shit
I am very glad I did not do myself in. I am now in a much much happier place - I still have my mood swings but they are normal. I will always have them. What happened during Covid was an order of magnitude worse than the average bipolar blues
Anyway. Stick in there. And stay on PB. I found it an invaluable source of company at my loneliest moments….
Thank you Leon. The small flat, alone; where once youth and beauty shone, I get 100% I'm something of a physical and mental wretch now. Disabled with horrors ravaging the insides. Has been quite the culture shock as i used to think myself indestructible, immortal, unstoppable. But I'm not. Now I'm a young old man who plays chess and remembers when life was bar lights and pretty girls who now have fled further even than the time that separates us. But I'm Woolie. And I always will be. I've been strangling black dogs since i was 10. Fuck em. I've seen enough to laugh at the pompous, the famous, the pretenders and the cruel. Just a lad from working class stock who got given a brain and a grin and has rinsed the shit out of both.
I can only hope you feel better soon.
When I was a kid, I felt low - I guess we all do. "The world doesn't understand me" Adrian Mole-style pretentious crap. Having talked to people since, I realised that although I felt low, the black dog never stalked me. I've always been someone who is more 'up' than 'down'. Even when I got told I would never walk properly again, when I had a first operation only to find a friend had died - even through the bad times, it never stalked me.
But I have seen enough people 'down' to realise the black dog is real, and that I've been blooming lucky.
Oddly, I've never seen myself as indestructible, immortal or unstoppable. Quite the opposite. Yet depression has never really been a problem. Odd, really.
I think the indestructible, immortal stuff was a consequnece of the black dog. I had to think that or I'd not have made the morning sometimes (and the first time I don't there's no do over) . With his maw round my neck and his breath suffocating me. The delusion came at a price. Too much, too often, too hard etc. But now I can't pretend I'm immortal I at least know I can, I have, and I will beat the dog. However long it takes or how often I have to.
If it’s any help, I’m someone else who fights the black dog, I have always in the depths of an episode constantly told myself “it’s not real - it’s a chemical/biological process in the brain - a sort of “fake brain news” and by reminding myself constantly it keeps a sense of balance and proportion.
Funnily enough recently I was having a conversation with a great friend who is a very senior medic and we both are very open about our depression and we were able to sit laughing over beers about our preferred methods for ending it because we seem to have both got the defence mechanism in place that it’s “not real” and effectively try and treat it as some sort of dream or similar where you are horrified whilst in it but then you can wake up and it’s not real.
This might be of absolutely no use as everyone is different but I hope it does - the lock down alone was incredibly difficult but we survived it so just think how strong that makes you.
Also I recommend hours of hard gardening - even offer to help someone or something if you don’t have a garden of any sort! Best medicine I have ever found.
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
It doesn't cost them £9k a year. History students subsidise Engineering students (for example).
Regardless of one's view on tuition fees, this has always been the case to a large extent. Some subjects cost one hell of a lot more to teach, and that's either covered by general taxation (which History students go on to pay as much as anyone) or loan repayments (which History students go on to pay, albeit binmen don't).
I don't see your route around that, other than to make Engineering courses more expensive to cut fees for Historians. And that seems brave, minister.
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
It doesn't cost them £9k a year. History students subsidise Engineering students (for example).
Regardless of one's view on tuition fees, this has always been the case to a large extent. Some subjects cost one hell of a lot more to teach, and that's either covered by general taxation (which History students go on to pay as much as anyone) or loan repayments (which History students go on to pay, albeit binmen don't).
I don't see your route around that, other than to make Engineering courses more expensive to cut fees for Historians. And that seems brave, minister.
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
It doesn't cost them £9k a year. History students subsidise Engineering students (for example).
Regardless of one's view on tuition fees, this has always been the case to a large extent. Some subjects cost one hell of a lot more to teach, and that's either covered by general taxation (which History students go on to pay as much as anyone) or loan repayments (which History students go on to pay, albeit binmen don't).
I don't see your route around that, other than to make Engineering courses more expensive to cut fees for Historians. And that seems brave, minister.
I would suggest that the solution is quite obvious. If we want more engineers ( and oh lord we do) then those courses for useful things ( see also science, medicine and technology) should be subsidised by the taxpayer, not the poor history, English or social science students being doomed to lives of low earnings, debt and ( god help us) voting Liberal Democrat. They suffer enough.
Or just raise fees for high demand, high earning degree subjects like business and law to subsidise more engineers rather than raise taxes for non graduate working class taxpayers
Why? Why on earth should cheap courses subsidise more expensive ones? A government can take a view across the field but why should a student who studies cheap as chips pay what is effectively a graduate tax for most of their sad and miserable careers to fund those who do something useful for society?
I mean, that is what happens now but it is just ridiculous and became so as soon as students started funding their own courses.
As business and law for example are courses with high demand which students will pay for and which lead to high gradate earnings.
That is far better than subsiding them if necessary by increasing fees on working class taxpayers who will never benefit from a university degree at all
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
It doesn't cost them £9k a year. History students subsidise Engineering students (for example).
Regardless of one's view on tuition fees, this has always been the case to a large extent. Some subjects cost one hell of a lot more to teach, and that's either covered by general taxation (which History students go on to pay as much as anyone) or loan repayments (which History students go on to pay, albeit binmen don't).
I don't see your route around that, other than to make Engineering courses more expensive to cut fees for Historians. And that seems brave, minister.
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
It doesn't cost them £9k a year. History students subsidise Engineering students (for example).
Regardless of one's view on tuition fees, this has always been the case to a large extent. Some subjects cost one hell of a lot more to teach, and that's either covered by general taxation (which History students go on to pay as much as anyone) or loan repayments (which History students go on to pay, albeit binmen don't).
I don't see your route around that, other than to make Engineering courses more expensive to cut fees for Historians. And that seems brave, minister.
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
It doesn't cost them £9k a year. History students subsidise Engineering students (for example).
Regardless of one's view on tuition fees, this has always been the case to a large extent. Some subjects cost one hell of a lot more to teach, and that's either covered by general taxation (which History students go on to pay as much as anyone) or loan repayments (which History students go on to pay, albeit binmen don't).
I don't see your route around that, other than to make Engineering courses more expensive to cut fees for Historians. And that seems brave, minister.
I would suggest that the solution is quite obvious. If we want more engineers ( and oh lord we do) then those courses for useful things ( see also science, medicine and technology) should be subsidised by the taxpayer, not the poor history, English or social science students being doomed to lives of low earnings, debt and ( god help us) voting Liberal Democrat. They suffer enough.
Or just raise fees for high demand, high earning degree subjects like business and law to subsidise more engineers rather than raise taxes for non graduate working class taxpayers
Why? Why on earth should cheap courses subsidise more expensive ones? A government can take a view across the field but why should a student who studies cheap as chips pay what is effectively a graduate tax for most of their sad and miserable careers to fund those who do something useful for society?
I mean, that is what happens now but it is just ridiculous and became so as soon as students started funding their own courses.
As business and law for example are courses with high demand which students will pay for and which lead to high gradate earnings.
That is far better than subsiding them if necessary by increasing fees on working class taxpayers who will never benefit from a university degree at all
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
The old adage about power bring an aphrodisiac really just means those in power abusing it to abuse others. Time that was ended once and for all. Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
Hey Woolie, sorry to hear of your travails. So glad you are getting some attention
If it helps, I was down there in the darkness, with the black dog howling, during the worst of Covid - just like you. I split with my wife partly for Covid reasons (a painful split as we were still very close), then I had to face lockdown 3 - the winter one - all alone in a one bed flat in Camden when every single thing that usually keeps me sane - from friends to pubs to sun to restaurants to travel to art galleries and sex - was taken away from me. I felt actually suicidal a few times, and - weirder and somehow worse - later I behaved suicidally - eg driving at 140mph at noon for no reason
Crazy shit
I am very glad I did not do myself in. I am now in a much much happier place - I still have my mood swings but they are normal. I will always have them. What happened during Covid was an order of magnitude worse than the average bipolar blues
Anyway. Stick in there. And stay on PB. I found it an invaluable source of company at my loneliest moments….
Thank you Leon. The small flat, alone; where once youth and beauty shone, I get 100% I'm something of a physical and mental wretch now. Disabled with horrors ravaging the insides. Has been quite the culture shock as i used to think myself indestructible, immortal, unstoppable. But I'm not. Now I'm a young old man who plays chess and remembers when life was bar lights and pretty girls who now have fled further even than the time that separates us. But I'm Woolie. And I always will be. I've been strangling black dogs since i was 10. Fuck em. I've seen enough to laugh at the pompous, the famous, the pretenders and the cruel. Just a lad from working class stock who got given a brain and a grin and has rinsed the shit out of both.
I can only hope you feel better soon.
When I was a kid, I felt low - I guess we all do. "The world doesn't understand me" Adrian Mole-style pretentious crap. Having talked to people since, I realised that although I felt low, the black dog never stalked me. I've always been someone who is more 'up' than 'down'. Even when I got told I would never walk properly again, when I had a first operation only to find a friend had died - even through the bad times, it never stalked me.
But I have seen enough people 'down' to realise the black dog is real, and that I've been blooming lucky.
Oddly, I've never seen myself as indestructible, immortal or unstoppable. Quite the opposite. Yet depression has never really been a problem. Odd, really.
The Black Dog is Very Real. Be thankful you have not encountered Old Shuck on a winter’s night, alone
Yep, I realise the black dog is real. I've just been fortunate enough never to personally encounter it - despite some firm groundings for it. I'm the sort of guy who walks across Bodmin Moor at night, without a map, and does not sink into the morass or encountering The Hound.
But I've known people who have encountered it. Two of whom took their own lives. I blame myself for not helping them more, but it's hard to help someone whom the black dog has in their sights. You cannot be with someone every hour of the day, or even every day of the week.
There are few things more terrifying or bleak than sitting in a chair, alone, staring into nothing, while thinking “So OK, if I kill myself, how do I do it?”
A part of you detaches and you look down at yourself, sort-of-screaming: No, you can’t be thinking like this, you mustn’t think like this. Nonetheless, you are thinking like this. That is you, down there in that chair, considering self-murder
I've never found myself in that state, but when I'm low, I just think "I'll go for a walk."
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
The old adage about power bring an aphrodisiac really just means those in power abusing it to abuse others. Time that was ended once and for all. Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
Hey Woolie, sorry to hear of your travails. So glad you are getting some attention
If it helps, I was down there in the darkness, with the black dog howling, during the worst of Covid - just like you. I split with my wife partly for Covid reasons (a painful split as we were still very close), then I had to face lockdown 3 - the winter one - all alone in a one bed flat in Camden when every single thing that usually keeps me sane - from friends to pubs to sun to restaurants to travel to art galleries and sex - was taken away from me. I felt actually suicidal a few times, and - weirder and somehow worse - later I behaved suicidally - eg driving at 140mph at noon for no reason
Crazy shit
I am very glad I did not do myself in. I am now in a much much happier place - I still have my mood swings but they are normal. I will always have them. What happened during Covid was an order of magnitude worse than the average bipolar blues
Anyway. Stick in there. And stay on PB. I found it an invaluable source of company at my loneliest moments….
Thank you Leon. The small flat, alone; where once youth and beauty shone, I get 100% I'm something of a physical and mental wretch now. Disabled with horrors ravaging the insides. Has been quite the culture shock as i used to think myself indestructible, immortal, unstoppable. But I'm not. Now I'm a young old man who plays chess and remembers when life was bar lights and pretty girls who now have fled further even than the time that separates us. But I'm Woolie. And I always will be. I've been strangling black dogs since i was 10. Fuck em. I've seen enough to laugh at the pompous, the famous, the pretenders and the cruel. Just a lad from working class stock who got given a brain and a grin and has rinsed the shit out of both.
I can only hope you feel better soon.
When I was a kid, I felt low - I guess we all do. "The world doesn't understand me" Adrian Mole-style pretentious crap. Having talked to people since, I realised that although I felt low, the black dog never stalked me. I've always been someone who is more 'up' than 'down'. Even when I got told I would never walk properly again, when I had a first operation only to find a friend had died - even through the bad times, it never stalked me.
But I have seen enough people 'down' to realise the black dog is real, and that I've been blooming lucky.
Oddly, I've never seen myself as indestructible, immortal or unstoppable. Quite the opposite. Yet depression has never really been a problem. Odd, really.
I think the indestructible, immortal stuff was a consequnece of the black dog. I had to think that or I'd not have made the morning sometimes (and the first time I don't there's no do over) . With his maw round my neck and his breath suffocating me. The delusion came at a price. Too much, too often, too hard etc. But now I can't pretend I'm immortal I at least know I can, I have, and I will beat the dog. However long it takes or how often I have to.
If it’s any help, I’m someone else who fights the black dog, I have always in the depths of an episode constantly told myself “it’s not real - it’s a chemical/biological process in the brain - a sort of “fake brain news” and by reminding myself constantly it keeps a sense of balance and proportion.
Funnily enough recently I was having a conversation with a great friend who is a very senior medic and we both are very open about our depression and we were able to sit laughing over beers about our preferred methods for ending it because we seem to have both got the defence mechanism in place that it’s “not real” and effectively try and treat it as some sort of dream or similar where you are horrified whilst in it but then you can wake up and it’s not real.
This might be of absolutely no use as everyone is different but I hope it does - the lock down alone was incredibly difficult but we survived it so just think how strong that makes you.
Also I recommend hours of hard gardening - even offer to help someone or something if you don’t have a garden of any sort! Best medicine I have ever found.
Thank you. I'm looking at accessing gardening space as I'm trapped in a flat with no garden.. the waiting list for allotments is...... quite extensive
As slogans go, it does seem unfortunately ambiguous.
It was the late Simon Hoggart who wrote that "Thames Valley Police has identified its three priorities in its snappy new slogan: 'Reducing crime, disorder, and fear'."
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
It doesn't cost them £9k a year. History students subsidise Engineering students (for example).
Regardless of one's view on tuition fees, this has always been the case to a large extent. Some subjects cost one hell of a lot more to teach, and that's either covered by general taxation (which History students go on to pay as much as anyone) or loan repayments (which History students go on to pay, albeit binmen don't).
I don't see your route around that, other than to make Engineering courses more expensive to cut fees for Historians. And that seems brave, minister.
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
It doesn't cost them £9k a year. History students subsidise Engineering students (for example).
Regardless of one's view on tuition fees, this has always been the case to a large extent. Some subjects cost one hell of a lot more to teach, and that's either covered by general taxation (which History students go on to pay as much as anyone) or loan repayments (which History students go on to pay, albeit binmen don't).
I don't see your route around that, other than to make Engineering courses more expensive to cut fees for Historians. And that seems brave, minister.
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
It doesn't cost them £9k a year. History students subsidise Engineering students (for example).
Regardless of one's view on tuition fees, this has always been the case to a large extent. Some subjects cost one hell of a lot more to teach, and that's either covered by general taxation (which History students go on to pay as much as anyone) or loan repayments (which History students go on to pay, albeit binmen don't).
I don't see your route around that, other than to make Engineering courses more expensive to cut fees for Historians. And that seems brave, minister.
I would suggest that the solution is quite obvious. If we want more engineers ( and oh lord we do) then those courses for useful things ( see also science, medicine and technology) should be subsidised by the taxpayer, not the poor history, English or social science students being doomed to lives of low earnings, debt and ( god help us) voting Liberal Democrat. They suffer enough.
Or just raise fees for high demand, high earning degree subjects like business and law to subsidise more engineers rather than raise taxes for non graduate working class taxpayers
Why? Why on earth should cheap courses subsidise more expensive ones? A government can take a view across the field but why should a student who studies cheap as chips pay what is effectively a graduate tax for most of their sad and miserable careers to fund those who do something useful for society?
I mean, that is what happens now but it is just ridiculous and became so as soon as students started funding their own courses.
As business and law for example are courses with high demand which students will pay for and which lead to high gradate earnings.
That is far better than subsiding them if necessary by increasing fees on working class taxpayers who will never benefit from a university degree at all
Is that because of all the extra red tape for exporters, and the crime crime crime going on in Westminster?
It's all very interesting - we have, by most historic definitions, full employment and over 1.3 million vacancies.
And yet?
"Full employment" isn't the panacea many believe - full employment means restaurants are full, not because there are huge numbers trying to book tables but because they lack the staff to feed them. Throughout "hospitality" in London, there are shortages and that has impacts - the illusion of a booming capital hides the reality of businesses struggling to keep going and retain staff.
In the late 80s, we ended up with wage-driven inflation as competition for staff forced up prices - this may not be the case if we see people cutting back on discretionary spending in the face of higher inflation and falling living standards. The Bank of England Governor didn't paint a particularly rosy picture yesterday in all honesty.
I also see the Prime Minister, now to be known as "Cheese & Houmous Man" is once again sounding off about working at home. It's clearly one of his pet peeves - perhaps, instead of listening to the wailing and gnashing of teeth of commercial property developers, he should just get on with governing for all of us (novel idea perhaps?).
Rail passenger numbers are 75-80% of pre-Covid while Tube numbers are still just below two thirds of pre Covid.
I can understand Johnson's frustration - the Government are continually having to bail out public transport providers whose operating models have been broken by the pandemic. It's yet another call on the public purse at a time of struggle.
On North East local news Go, one of our local bus service providers, are talking about their proposals to cut services due to falling passenger numbers. About 80% of the pre Covid levels and being done just to break even.
The govt helped them out during covid but cannot continue to do so.
As slogans go, it does seem unfortunately ambiguous.
It was the late Simon Hoggart who wrote that "Thames Valley Police has identified its three priorities in its snappy new slogan: 'Reducing crime, disorder, and fear'."
1992 Tory election slogan: 10,000 more officers are helping police with their enquiries.
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
The old adage about power bring an aphrodisiac really just means those in power abusing it to abuse others. Time that was ended once and for all. Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
Hey Woolie, sorry to hear of your travails. So glad you are getting some attention
If it helps, I was down there in the darkness, with the black dog howling, during the worst of Covid - just like you. I split with my wife partly for Covid reasons (a painful split as we were still very close), then I had to face lockdown 3 - the winter one - all alone in a one bed flat in Camden when every single thing that usually keeps me sane - from friends to pubs to sun to restaurants to travel to art galleries and sex - was taken away from me. I felt actually suicidal a few times, and - weirder and somehow worse - later I behaved suicidally - eg driving at 140mph at noon for no reason
Crazy shit
I am very glad I did not do myself in. I am now in a much much happier place - I still have my mood swings but they are normal. I will always have them. What happened during Covid was an order of magnitude worse than the average bipolar blues
Anyway. Stick in there. And stay on PB. I found it an invaluable source of company at my loneliest moments….
Thank you Leon. The small flat, alone; where once youth and beauty shone, I get 100% I'm something of a physical and mental wretch now. Disabled with horrors ravaging the insides. Has been quite the culture shock as i used to think myself indestructible, immortal, unstoppable. But I'm not. Now I'm a young old man who plays chess and remembers when life was bar lights and pretty girls who now have fled further even than the time that separates us. But I'm Woolie. And I always will be. I've been strangling black dogs since i was 10. Fuck em. I've seen enough to laugh at the pompous, the famous, the pretenders and the cruel. Just a lad from working class stock who got given a brain and a grin and has rinsed the shit out of both.
I can only hope you feel better soon.
When I was a kid, I felt low - I guess we all do. "The world doesn't understand me" Adrian Mole-style pretentious crap. Having talked to people since, I realised that although I felt low, the black dog never stalked me. I've always been someone who is more 'up' than 'down'. Even when I got told I would never walk properly again, when I had a first operation only to find a friend had died - even through the bad times, it never stalked me.
But I have seen enough people 'down' to realise the black dog is real, and that I've been blooming lucky.
Oddly, I've never seen myself as indestructible, immortal or unstoppable. Quite the opposite. Yet depression has never really been a problem. Odd, really.
I think the indestructible, immortal stuff was a consequnece of the black dog. I had to think that or I'd not have made the morning sometimes (and the first time I don't there's no do over) . With his maw round my neck and his breath suffocating me. The delusion came at a price. Too much, too often, too hard etc. But now I can't pretend I'm immortal I at least know I can, I have, and I will beat the dog. However long it takes or how often I have to.
If it’s any help, I’m someone else who fights the black dog, I have always in the depths of an episode constantly told myself “it’s not real - it’s a chemical/biological process in the brain - a sort of “fake brain news” and by reminding myself constantly it keeps a sense of balance and proportion.
Funnily enough recently I was having a conversation with a great friend who is a very senior medic and we both are very open about our depression and we were able to sit laughing over beers about our preferred methods for ending it because we seem to have both got the defence mechanism in place that it’s “not real” and effectively try and treat it as some sort of dream or similar where you are horrified whilst in it but then you can wake up and it’s not real.
This might be of absolutely no use as everyone is different but I hope it does - the lock down alone was incredibly difficult but we survived it so just think how strong that makes you.
Also I recommend hours of hard gardening - even offer to help someone or something if you don’t have a garden of any sort! Best medicine I have ever found.
Yes, physical exertion works. As does dancing or singing or any social exercise, if you can force yourself to do it
But of course nearly all these options were taken away during lockdown, esp the winter lockdown
Never Again.
One other effective therapy is sharing. Tell people that you feel miserable and shit and don’t be embarrassed about it. Let it out. PB is good for that!
It's all very interesting - we have, by most historic definitions, full employment and over 1.3 million vacancies.
And yet?
"Full employment" isn't the panacea many believe - full employment means restaurants are full, not because there are huge numbers trying to book tables but because they lack the staff to feed them. Throughout "hospitality" in London, there are shortages and that has impacts - the illusion of a booming capital hides the reality of businesses struggling to keep going and retain staff.
In the late 80s, we ended up with wage-driven inflation as competition for staff forced up prices - this may not be the case if we see people cutting back on discretionary spending in the face of higher inflation and falling living standards. The Bank of England Governor didn't paint a particularly rosy picture yesterday in all honesty.
I also see the Prime Minister, now to be known as "Cheese & Houmous Man" is once again sounding off about working at home. It's clearly one of his pet peeves - perhaps, instead of listening to the wailing and gnashing of teeth of commercial property developers, he should just get on with governing for all of us (novel idea perhaps?).
Rail passenger numbers are 75-80% of pre-Covid while Tube numbers are still just below two thirds of pre Covid.
I can understand Johnson's frustration - the Government are continually having to bail out public transport providers whose operating models have been broken by the pandemic. It's yet another call on the public purse at a time of struggle.
The fact that everyone is choosing Tues/Weds/Thurs as their office days makes matters worse. (It's really noticeable on the not-quite-Lizzie Line that the trains are busy but not crushed midweek, comfortably empty Monday and Friday.) If the peak need is the same, there won't be many infrastructure savings to be had. And before anyone asks, the same would go for cars on roads.
I'm a bit surprised that firms trying to reduce their office spend aren't doing more to smooth demand across five days. Maybe they don't have much choice.
It's all very interesting - we have, by most historic definitions, full employment and over 1.3 million vacancies.
And yet?
"Full employment" isn't the panacea many believe - full employment means restaurants are full, not because there are huge numbers trying to book tables but because they lack the staff to feed them. Throughout "hospitality" in London, there are shortages and that has impacts - the illusion of a booming capital hides the reality of businesses struggling to keep going and retain staff.
In the late 80s, we ended up with wage-driven inflation as competition for staff forced up prices - this may not be the case if we see people cutting back on discretionary spending in the face of higher inflation and falling living standards. The Bank of England Governor didn't paint a particularly rosy picture yesterday in all honesty.
I also see the Prime Minister, now to be known as "Cheese & Houmous Man" is once again sounding off about working at home. It's clearly one of his pet peeves - perhaps, instead of listening to the wailing and gnashing of teeth of commercial property developers, he should just get on with governing for all of us (novel idea perhaps?).
Rail passenger numbers are 75-80% of pre-Covid while Tube numbers are still just below two thirds of pre Covid.
I can understand Johnson's frustration - the Government are continually having to bail out public transport providers whose operating models have been broken by the pandemic. It's yet another call on the public purse at a time of struggle.
On North East local news Go, one of our local bus service providers, are talking about their proposals to cut services due to falling passenger numbers. About 80% of the pre Covid levels and being done just to break even.
The govt helped them out during covid but cannot continue to do so.
The saviour of the economy - prime the pumps with an extensive programme of ultra modern public transport (light rail/tram systems) to revolutionize city centres and backfill the bus services in village and suburban routes into city edge terminuses. Run late night services, connect locally and county wide.
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
The old adage about power bring an aphrodisiac really just means those in power abusing it to abuse others. Time that was ended once and for all. Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
Hey Woolie, sorry to hear of your travails. So glad you are getting some attention
If it helps, I was down there in the darkness, with the black dog howling, during the worst of Covid - just like you. I split with my wife partly for Covid reasons (a painful split as we were still very close), then I had to face lockdown 3 - the winter one - all alone in a one bed flat in Camden when every single thing that usually keeps me sane - from friends to pubs to sun to restaurants to travel to art galleries and sex - was taken away from me. I felt actually suicidal a few times, and - weirder and somehow worse - later I behaved suicidally - eg driving at 140mph at noon for no reason
Crazy shit
I am very glad I did not do myself in. I am now in a much much happier place - I still have my mood swings but they are normal. I will always have them. What happened during Covid was an order of magnitude worse than the average bipolar blues
Anyway. Stick in there. And stay on PB. I found it an invaluable source of company at my loneliest moments….
Thank you Leon. The small flat, alone; where once youth and beauty shone, I get 100% I'm something of a physical and mental wretch now. Disabled with horrors ravaging the insides. Has been quite the culture shock as i used to think myself indestructible, immortal, unstoppable. But I'm not. Now I'm a young old man who plays chess and remembers when life was bar lights and pretty girls who now have fled further even than the time that separates us. But I'm Woolie. And I always will be. I've been strangling black dogs since i was 10. Fuck em. I've seen enough to laugh at the pompous, the famous, the pretenders and the cruel. Just a lad from working class stock who got given a brain and a grin and has rinsed the shit out of both.
I can only hope you feel better soon.
When I was a kid, I felt low - I guess we all do. "The world doesn't understand me" Adrian Mole-style pretentious crap. Having talked to people since, I realised that although I felt low, the black dog never stalked me. I've always been someone who is more 'up' than 'down'. Even when I got told I would never walk properly again, when I had a first operation only to find a friend had died - even through the bad times, it never stalked me.
But I have seen enough people 'down' to realise the black dog is real, and that I've been blooming lucky.
Oddly, I've never seen myself as indestructible, immortal or unstoppable. Quite the opposite. Yet depression has never really been a problem. Odd, really.
I think the indestructible, immortal stuff was a consequnece of the black dog. I had to think that or I'd not have made the morning sometimes (and the first time I don't there's no do over) . With his maw round my neck and his breath suffocating me. The delusion came at a price. Too much, too often, too hard etc. But now I can't pretend I'm immortal I at least know I can, I have, and I will beat the dog. However long it takes or how often I have to.
If it’s any help, I’m someone else who fights the black dog, I have always in the depths of an episode constantly told myself “it’s not real - it’s a chemical/biological process in the brain - a sort of “fake brain news” and by reminding myself constantly it keeps a sense of balance and proportion.
Funnily enough recently I was having a conversation with a great friend who is a very senior medic and we both are very open about our depression and we were able to sit laughing over beers about our preferred methods for ending it because we seem to have both got the defence mechanism in place that it’s “not real” and effectively try and treat it as some sort of dream or similar where you are horrified whilst in it but then you can wake up and it’s not real.
This might be of absolutely no use as everyone is different but I hope it does - the lock down alone was incredibly difficult but we survived it so just think how strong that makes you.
Also I recommend hours of hard gardening - even offer to help someone or something if you don’t have a garden of any sort! Best medicine I have ever found.
Thank you. I'm looking at accessing gardening space as I'm trapped in a flat with no garden.. the waiting list for allotments is...... quite extensive
No idea where you live etc but maybe even see if any charities or groups that offer gardening work for old people, communities etc - whilst it’s not quite as enjoyable as sitting drinking in the sun sitting in your garden it’s brilliant for my mind - I can switch off into the hard work or run things through my mind in a calm place whilst working.
As slogans go, it does seem unfortunately ambiguous.
It was the late Simon Hoggart who wrote that "Thames Valley Police has identified its three priorities in its snappy new slogan: 'Reducing crime, disorder, and fear'."
I remember seeing that moto on the side of Thames Valley police cars and thinking 'It's hardly "To Protect and Serve" is it?' That it wasn't raising expectations too high is the best you could say about it.
Looking back lockdowns do seem like the Work of Satan. Designed to send people mad and sad - and to ruin economies
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
The old adage about power bring an aphrodisiac really just means those in power abusing it to abuse others. Time that was ended once and for all. Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
Hey Woolie, sorry to hear of your travails. So glad you are getting some attention
If it helps, I was down there in the darkness, with the black dog howling, during the worst of Covid - just like you. I split with my wife partly for Covid reasons (a painful split as we were still very close), then I had to face lockdown 3 - the winter one - all alone in a one bed flat in Camden when every single thing that usually keeps me sane - from friends to pubs to sun to restaurants to travel to art galleries and sex - was taken away from me. I felt actually suicidal a few times, and - weirder and somehow worse - later I behaved suicidally - eg driving at 140mph at noon for no reason
Crazy shit
I am very glad I did not do myself in. I am now in a much much happier place - I still have my mood swings but they are normal. I will always have them. What happened during Covid was an order of magnitude worse than the average bipolar blues
Anyway. Stick in there. And stay on PB. I found it an invaluable source of company at my loneliest moments….
Thank you Leon. The small flat, alone; where once youth and beauty shone, I get 100% I'm something of a physical and mental wretch now. Disabled with horrors ravaging the insides. Has been quite the culture shock as i used to think myself indestructible, immortal, unstoppable. But I'm not. Now I'm a young old man who plays chess and remembers when life was bar lights and pretty girls who now have fled further even than the time that separates us. But I'm Woolie. And I always will be. I've been strangling black dogs since i was 10. Fuck em. I've seen enough to laugh at the pompous, the famous, the pretenders and the cruel. Just a lad from working class stock who got given a brain and a grin and has rinsed the shit out of both.
I can only hope you feel better soon.
When I was a kid, I felt low - I guess we all do. "The world doesn't understand me" Adrian Mole-style pretentious crap. Having talked to people since, I realised that although I felt low, the black dog never stalked me. I've always been someone who is more 'up' than 'down'. Even when I got told I would never walk properly again, when I had a first operation only to find a friend had died - even through the bad times, it never stalked me.
But I have seen enough people 'down' to realise the black dog is real, and that I've been blooming lucky.
Oddly, I've never seen myself as indestructible, immortal or unstoppable. Quite the opposite. Yet depression has never really been a problem. Odd, really.
I think the indestructible, immortal stuff was a consequnece of the black dog. I had to think that or I'd not have made the morning sometimes (and the first time I don't there's no do over) . With his maw round my neck and his breath suffocating me. The delusion came at a price. Too much, too often, too hard etc. But now I can't pretend I'm immortal I at least know I can, I have, and I will beat the dog. However long it takes or how often I have to.
If it’s any help, I’m someone else who fights the black dog, I have always in the depths of an episode constantly told myself “it’s not real - it’s a chemical/biological process in the brain - a sort of “fake brain news” and by reminding myself constantly it keeps a sense of balance and proportion.
Funnily enough recently I was having a conversation with a great friend who is a very senior medic and we both are very open about our depression and we were able to sit laughing over beers about our preferred methods for ending it because we seem to have both got the defence mechanism in place that it’s “not real” and effectively try and treat it as some sort of dream or similar where you are horrified whilst in it but then you can wake up and it’s not real.
This might be of absolutely no use as everyone is different but I hope it does - the lock down alone was incredibly difficult but we survived it so just think how strong that makes you.
Also I recommend hours of hard gardening - even offer to help someone or something if you don’t have a garden of any sort! Best medicine I have ever found.
Thank you. I'm looking at accessing gardening space as I'm trapped in a flat with no garden.. the waiting list for allotments is...... quite extensive
No idea where you live etc but maybe even see if any charities or groups that offer gardening work for old people, communities etc - whilst it’s not quite as enjoyable as sitting drinking in the sun sitting in your garden it’s brilliant for my mind - I can switch off into the hard work or run things through my mind in a calm place whilst working.
Actually discussed this very thing at my appointment today!
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
It doesn't cost them £9k a year. History students subsidise Engineering students (for example).
Regardless of one's view on tuition fees, this has always been the case to a large extent. Some subjects cost one hell of a lot more to teach, and that's either covered by general taxation (which History students go on to pay as much as anyone) or loan repayments (which History students go on to pay, albeit binmen don't).
I don't see your route around that, other than to make Engineering courses more expensive to cut fees for Historians. And that seems brave, minister.
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
It doesn't cost them £9k a year. History students subsidise Engineering students (for example).
Regardless of one's view on tuition fees, this has always been the case to a large extent. Some subjects cost one hell of a lot more to teach, and that's either covered by general taxation (which History students go on to pay as much as anyone) or loan repayments (which History students go on to pay, albeit binmen don't).
I don't see your route around that, other than to make Engineering courses more expensive to cut fees for Historians. And that seems brave, minister.
Incidentally people were talking earlier about the importance of history. Roehampton have told staff they are making swingeing cuts in their very highly regarded History department.
Well they charge history students £9,000 for the privilege if they are not attracting enough students for it another reason we should not have 1 size fits all tuition fees so they could cut the fees to attract more students
Absolutely. How the hell can it cost a University £9k a year to teach history to under graduates? It’s a disgraceful rip off.
It doesn't cost them £9k a year. History students subsidise Engineering students (for example).
Regardless of one's view on tuition fees, this has always been the case to a large extent. Some subjects cost one hell of a lot more to teach, and that's either covered by general taxation (which History students go on to pay as much as anyone) or loan repayments (which History students go on to pay, albeit binmen don't).
I don't see your route around that, other than to make Engineering courses more expensive to cut fees for Historians. And that seems brave, minister.
I would suggest that the solution is quite obvious. If we want more engineers ( and oh lord we do) then those courses for useful things ( see also science, medicine and technology) should be subsidised by the taxpayer, not the poor history, English or social science students being doomed to lives of low earnings, debt and ( god help us) voting Liberal Democrat. They suffer enough.
Or just raise fees for high demand, high earning degree subjects like business and law to subsidise more engineers rather than raise taxes for non graduate working class taxpayers
Why? Why on earth should cheap courses subsidise more expensive ones? A government can take a view across the field but why should a student who studies cheap as chips pay what is effectively a graduate tax for most of their sad and miserable careers to fund those who do something useful for society?
I mean, that is what happens now but it is just ridiculous and became so as soon as students started funding their own courses.
As business and law for example are courses with high demand which students will pay for and which lead to high gradate earnings.
That is far better than subsiding them if necessary by increasing fees on working class taxpayers who will never benefit from a university degree at all
Degrees in medicine wave hello.
We need more medical school graduates though, we already produce more than enough business studies and law graduates
Looking back lockdowns do seem like the Work of Satan. Designed to send people mad and sad - and to ruin economies
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
We got taken in by those ridiculous Chinese videos of people dropping in the street and the non covid body bag pics from Italy and the world panicked and went full lemming We should have been protecting the vulnerable, and everyone else following their own precautions suited to them and their family
Looking back lockdowns do seem like the Work of Satan. Designed to send people mad and sad - and to ruin economies
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
We got taken in by those ridiculous Chinese videos of people dropping in the street and the non covid body bag pics from Italy and the world panicked and went full lemming We should have been protecting the vulnerable, and everyone else following their own precautions suited to them and their family
On that subject, Shanghai has said it aims to reopen gradually from Sunday and fully reopen by 1st June.
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
The old adage about power bring an aphrodisiac really just means those in power abusing it to abuse others. Time that was ended once and for all. Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
Hey Woolie, sorry to hear of your travails. So glad you are getting some attention
If it helps, I was down there in the darkness, with the black dog howling, during the worst of Covid - just like you. I split with my wife partly for Covid reasons (a painful split as we were still very close), then I had to face lockdown 3 - the winter one - all alone in a one bed flat in Camden when every single thing that usually keeps me sane - from friends to pubs to sun to restaurants to travel to art galleries and sex - was taken away from me. I felt actually suicidal a few times, and - weirder and somehow worse - later I behaved suicidally - eg driving at 140mph at noon for no reason
Crazy shit
I am very glad I did not do myself in. I am now in a much much happier place - I still have my mood swings but they are normal. I will always have them. What happened during Covid was an order of magnitude worse than the average bipolar blues
Anyway. Stick in there. And stay on PB. I found it an invaluable source of company at my loneliest moments….
Thank you Leon. The small flat, alone; where once youth and beauty shone, I get 100% I'm something of a physical and mental wretch now. Disabled with horrors ravaging the insides. Has been quite the culture shock as i used to think myself indestructible, immortal, unstoppable. But I'm not. Now I'm a young old man who plays chess and remembers when life was bar lights and pretty girls who now have fled further even than the time that separates us. But I'm Woolie. And I always will be. I've been strangling black dogs since i was 10. Fuck em. I've seen enough to laugh at the pompous, the famous, the pretenders and the cruel. Just a lad from working class stock who got given a brain and a grin and has rinsed the shit out of both.
I can only hope you feel better soon.
When I was a kid, I felt low - I guess we all do. "The world doesn't understand me" Adrian Mole-style pretentious crap. Having talked to people since, I realised that although I felt low, the black dog never stalked me. I've always been someone who is more 'up' than 'down'. Even when I got told I would never walk properly again, when I had a first operation only to find a friend had died - even through the bad times, it never stalked me.
But I have seen enough people 'down' to realise the black dog is real, and that I've been blooming lucky.
Oddly, I've never seen myself as indestructible, immortal or unstoppable. Quite the opposite. Yet depression has never really been a problem. Odd, really.
I think the indestructible, immortal stuff was a consequnece of the black dog. I had to think that or I'd not have made the morning sometimes (and the first time I don't there's no do over) . With his maw round my neck and his breath suffocating me. The delusion came at a price. Too much, too often, too hard etc. But now I can't pretend I'm immortal I at least know I can, I have, and I will beat the dog. However long it takes or how often I have to.
If it’s any help, I’m someone else who fights the black dog, I have always in the depths of an episode constantly told myself “it’s not real - it’s a chemical/biological process in the brain - a sort of “fake brain news” and by reminding myself constantly it keeps a sense of balance and proportion.
Funnily enough recently I was having a conversation with a great friend who is a very senior medic and we both are very open about our depression and we were able to sit laughing over beers about our preferred methods for ending it because we seem to have both got the defence mechanism in place that it’s “not real” and effectively try and treat it as some sort of dream or similar where you are horrified whilst in it but then you can wake up and it’s not real.
This might be of absolutely no use as everyone is different but I hope it does - the lock down alone was incredibly difficult but we survived it so just think how strong that makes you.
Also I recommend hours of hard gardening - even offer to help someone or something if you don’t have a garden of any sort! Best medicine I have ever found.
Yes, physical exertion works. As does dancing or singing or any social exercise, if you can force yourself to do it
But of course nearly all these options were taken away during lockdown, esp the winter lockdown
Never Again.
One other effective therapy is sharing. Tell people that you feel miserable and shit and don’t be embarrassed about it. Let it out. PB is good for that!
You are angry about lockdowns but it's partly misplaced.
PB is not particularly good for that imho. It's a site populated by a lot of anonymous people, some of whom are extremely abusive. It's one of the last places I would come to lay bare my soul. Friends and family are much better, preferably face to face, and that's the thing which became so difficult during lockdowns.
You're wrong about physical exertion in lockdowns though. I did more than probably any time in my life. I decamped to a remote cliff top and hiked every day. It was astonishingly wonderful and, of course, there was no limit placed on people exercising if they had mental health issues.
The other great benefit of those hikes was proximity to nature: something which can lift the soul. As many of the great writers and poets have found, even in their darkest moments.
On that subject, reading great nature-based writers is recommended.
Looking back lockdowns do seem like the Work of Satan. Designed to send people mad and sad - and to ruin economies
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
The death rate in the UK briefly doubled in spring 2020. It's easy to look back on things you haven't experienced and wonder why people reacted in the way they did, but this was only two years ago and we were all there. It was a time of justifiable fear.
Looking back lockdowns do seem like the Work of Satan. Designed to send people mad and sad - and to ruin economies
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
We got taken in by those ridiculous Chinese videos of people dropping in the street and the non covid body bag pics from Italy and the world panicked and went full lemming We should have been protecting the vulnerable, and everyone else following their own precautions suited to them and their family
On reflection it maybe wasn’t China that sent us into panic, it was Italy. Lombardy in Lockdown
China is sufficiently distant and alien that you can say, and we did say, Well we are different and that won’t happen here. But then it happened in northern Italy and they are too close to us for “denial” to work
I suspect Lockdown 1 was unavoidable in some form. We did not know what we were facing so we had to be ultra cautious. After that they are increasingly hard to justify. 2 was absurd and 3 was downright evil.
And of course Labour led by the Integritron wanted Lockdowns 4 and 5 and it is Libertine Boris and JR Mogg that saved us
I'd hope no-one tries to make party-political issues out of this, considering no party is immune to such issues.
As Tom Watson wouldn't tell you.
Its the same as when John Major did Back To Basics. Is sexytime violations only something that affects that party? No. But when you open the door to the room of pain you invite all the party political prodding that goes with it.
This cluster fuck (the juxtaposition, not the alleged offence) demonstrates the Tory whips office aren't on their game. They are supposed to be on top of what bad shit is circulating in the background and brief the boss on them. Not let him say stupid just as 5-0 are feeling said naughty MP's collar.
So, I just tried listening to Radiohead for the first time...
Just don't speculate on whom the MP is and you'll be fine.
Radiohead? Simples - I like their early stuff. Really like. Then they went experimental and interesting with Kid Amnesiac. Then got all boring with wailey guff about pineapple on pizzas.
Looking back lockdowns do seem like the Work of Satan. Designed to send people mad and sad - and to ruin economies
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
We won't know for sure, because nobody dared to be a counterexample. Not even Sweden really (and their outcomes were worse than their Scandi peer group). Johnson always managed to blink at the last moment, just before it was too late.
Ultimately, germ theory works. Same as it did for John Snow and the cholera outbreak in London. If you want to slow the spread of a contagous disease, you need to reduce contacts between potential hosts. Had the UK tried to stick to plan A in March 2020, lots of people would have got sick, very many more would have died and the health system would have fallen over. One more doubling (3 days at the time) would probably have done it, two more (less than a week) certainly would. And all that expensively-won immunity would have given imperfect protection against variants...
Lockdowns suck. It's the worst thing to happen in my life, and I hope it's the worst thing that happens to my children. But there comes a point, which the UK reached in March 2020 and January 2021, where they're the least bad option. If you want to stop them, your best bet is to be more careful earlier down the line. A bit like how military deterrance is often the best way to stop a war.
Looking back lockdowns do seem like the Work of Satan. Designed to send people mad and sad - and to ruin economies
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
We got taken in by those ridiculous Chinese videos of people dropping in the street and the non covid body bag pics from Italy and the world panicked and went full lemming We should have been protecting the vulnerable, and everyone else following their own precautions suited to them and their family
On reflection it maybe wasn’t China that sent us into panic, it was Italy. Lombardy in Lockdown
China is sufficiently distant and alien that you can say, and we did say, Well we are different and that won’t happen here. But then it happened in northern Italy and they are too close to us for “denial” to work
I suspect Lockdown 1 was unavoidable in some form. We did not know what we were facing so we had to be ultra cautious. After that they are increasingly hard to justify. 2 was absurd and 3 was downright evil.
And of course Labour led by the Integritron wanted Lockdowns 4 and 5 and it is Libertine Boris and JR Mogg that saved us
We were not ultra cautious. You're right that it wasn't China that prompted us. If it had been, we'd have acted sooner. We should have acted sooner. Parts of China locked down in January. By mid-February the evidence was clear that lockdowns were working well to stem the spread. What did we do for the next month?
We should have done some sort of lockdown much faster (something I said at the time) and severely curtailed international travel (something I did not say at the time but others did)
Having seen Liverpool's line up tonight and the bench, laying Liverpool a lot tonight.
They are playing Southampton. The first eleven blokes to pass by Fazackerley Station would probably be sufficient. (Except 7 would be Evertonians). But the point stands. Saints have been dire.
In other news my new co-working space business planning has progressed to the point where I am faffing with fonts for the logo. Still have a stack of things to do before we can go public but the list is getting shorter and I needed a name and an image to start working with.
Removing the night safe was the final barrier. Just need to buy a load of desks and chairs, some other bits of furniture, some plants, print some of my photos up as wall art, sort out an electronic door lock, build a website, start marketing etc etc etc etc left to do.
So definitely the right stage to be faffing with fonts
Looking back lockdowns do seem like the Work of Satan. Designed to send people mad and sad - and to ruin economies
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
We got taken in by those ridiculous Chinese videos of people dropping in the street and the non covid body bag pics from Italy and the world panicked and went full lemming We should have been protecting the vulnerable, and everyone else following their own precautions suited to them and their family
On reflection it maybe wasn’t China that sent us into panic, it was Italy. Lombardy in Lockdown
China is sufficiently distant and alien that you can say, and we did say, Well we are different and that won’t happen here. But then it happened in northern Italy and they are too close to us for “denial” to work
I suspect Lockdown 1 was unavoidable in some form. We did not know what we were facing so we had to be ultra cautious. After that they are increasingly hard to justify. 2 was absurd and 3 was downright evil.
And of course Labour led by the Integritron wanted Lockdowns 4 and 5 and it is Libertine Boris and JR Mogg that saved us
Maybe. Maybe. The key was the vulnerable. And protecting them. All the nonsense over masking children, various lockdowns since, one way systems. All ridiculous, harmful garbage. In my opinion of course.
Looking back lockdowns do seem like the Work of Satan. Designed to send people mad and sad - and to ruin economies
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
We won't know for sure, because nobody dared to be a counterexample. Not even Sweden really (and their outcomes were worse than their Scandi peer group). Johnson always managed to blink at the last moment, just before it was too late.
Ultimately, germ theory works. Same as it did for John Snow and the cholera outbreak in London. If you want to slow the spread of a contagous disease, you need to reduce contacts between potential hosts. Had the UK tried to stick to plan A in March 2020, lots of people would have got sick, very many more would have died and the health system would have fallen over. One more doubling (3 days at the time) would probably have done it, two more (less than a week) certainly would. And all that expensively-won immunity would have given imperfect protection against variants...
Lockdowns suck. It's the worst thing to happen in my life, and I hope it's the worst thing that happens to my children. But there comes a point, which the UK reached in March 2020 and January 2021, where they're the least bad option. If you want to stop them, your best bet is to be more careful earlier down the line. A bit like how military deterrance is often the best way to stop a war.
Parts of he USA provide some counter-examples. In my recent travels across the South I was told they basically had one lockdown, in 2020, and after that they let it rip
And 1m Americans died….
Was it worth all these deaths? The equation is probably imponderably complex, and we will never know
In other news my new co-working space business planning has progressed to the point where I am faffing with fonts for the logo. Still have a stack of things to do before we can go public but the list is getting shorter and I needed a name and an image to start working with.
Removing the night safe was the final barrier. Just need to buy a load of desks and chairs, some other bits of furniture, some plants, print some of my photos up as wall art, sort out an electronic door lock, build a website, start marketing etc etc etc etc left to do.
So definitely the right stage to be faffing with fonts
My solicitor is in an old bank, and they have a meeting room in the old strong room.
It is *effing* cold.
And my coffee machine just arrived today - playing later.
It's all very interesting - we have, by most historic definitions, full employment and over 1.3 million vacancies.
And yet?
"Full employment" isn't the panacea many believe - full employment means restaurants are full, not because there are huge numbers trying to book tables but because they lack the staff to feed them. Throughout "hospitality" in London, there are shortages and that has impacts - the illusion of a booming capital hides the reality of businesses struggling to keep going and retain staff.
In the late 80s, we ended up with wage-driven inflation as competition for staff forced up prices - this may not be the case if we see people cutting back on discretionary spending in the face of higher inflation and falling living standards. The Bank of England Governor didn't paint a particularly rosy picture yesterday in all honesty.
I also see the Prime Minister, now to be known as "Cheese & Houmous Man" is once again sounding off about working at home. It's clearly one of his pet peeves - perhaps, instead of listening to the wailing and gnashing of teeth of commercial property developers, he should just get on with governing for all of us (novel idea perhaps?).
Rail passenger numbers are 75-80% of pre-Covid while Tube numbers are still just below two thirds of pre Covid.
I can understand Johnson's frustration - the Government are continually having to bail out public transport providers whose operating models have been broken by the pandemic. It's yet another call on the public purse at a time of struggle.
The fact that everyone is choosing Tues/Weds/Thurs as their office days makes matters worse. (It's really noticeable on the not-quite-Lizzie Line that the trains are busy but not crushed midweek, comfortably empty Monday and Friday.) If the peak need is the same, there won't be many infrastructure savings to be had. And before anyone asks, the same would go for cars on roads.
I'm a bit surprised that firms trying to reduce their office spend aren't doing more to smooth demand across five days. Maybe they don't have much choice.
I'm perverse so WFH Wednesday and Thursday most weeks. It's crazy how much busier the cycle to work is on Tuesday compared to Monday and Friday.
It's all very interesting - we have, by most historic definitions, full employment and over 1.3 million vacancies.
And yet?
"Full employment" isn't the panacea many believe - full employment means restaurants are full, not because there are huge numbers trying to book tables but because they lack the staff to feed them. Throughout "hospitality" in London, there are shortages and that has impacts - the illusion of a booming capital hides the reality of businesses struggling to keep going and retain staff.
In the late 80s, we ended up with wage-driven inflation as competition for staff forced up prices - this may not be the case if we see people cutting back on discretionary spending in the face of higher inflation and falling living standards. The Bank of England Governor didn't paint a particularly rosy picture yesterday in all honesty.
I also see the Prime Minister, now to be known as "Cheese & Houmous Man" is once again sounding off about working at home. It's clearly one of his pet peeves - perhaps, instead of listening to the wailing and gnashing of teeth of commercial property developers, he should just get on with governing for all of us (novel idea perhaps?).
Rail passenger numbers are 75-80% of pre-Covid while Tube numbers are still just below two thirds of pre Covid.
I can understand Johnson's frustration - the Government are continually having to bail out public transport providers whose operating models have been broken by the pandemic. It's yet another call on the public purse at a time of struggle.
On North East local news Go, one of our local bus service providers, are talking about their proposals to cut services due to falling passenger numbers. About 80% of the pre Covid levels and being done just to break even.
The govt helped them out during covid but cannot continue to do so.
However. In the week Crossrail opens, it doesn't look good, does it? Front page of the Chronicle and Journal too. Sundays, early mornings and evenings. When folk go to work or to socialise. Levelling up my arse.
It's all very interesting - we have, by most historic definitions, full employment and over 1.3 million vacancies.
And yet?
"Full employment" isn't the panacea many believe - full employment means restaurants are full, not because there are huge numbers trying to book tables but because they lack the staff to feed them. Throughout "hospitality" in London, there are shortages and that has impacts - the illusion of a booming capital hides the reality of businesses struggling to keep going and retain staff.
In the late 80s, we ended up with wage-driven inflation as competition for staff forced up prices - this may not be the case if we see people cutting back on discretionary spending in the face of higher inflation and falling living standards. The Bank of England Governor didn't paint a particularly rosy picture yesterday in all honesty.
I also see the Prime Minister, now to be known as "Cheese & Houmous Man" is once again sounding off about working at home. It's clearly one of his pet peeves - perhaps, instead of listening to the wailing and gnashing of teeth of commercial property developers, he should just get on with governing for all of us (novel idea perhaps?).
Rail passenger numbers are 75-80% of pre-Covid while Tube numbers are still just below two thirds of pre Covid.
I can understand Johnson's frustration - the Government are continually having to bail out public transport providers whose operating models have been broken by the pandemic. It's yet another call on the public purse at a time of struggle.
The fact that everyone is choosing Tues/Weds/Thurs as their office days makes matters worse. (It's really noticeable on the not-quite-Lizzie Line that the trains are busy but not crushed midweek, comfortably empty Monday and Friday.) If the peak need is the same, there won't be many infrastructure savings to be had. And before anyone asks, the same would go for cars on roads.
I'm a bit surprised that firms trying to reduce their office spend aren't doing more to smooth demand across five days. Maybe they don't have much choice.
I'm perverse so WFH Wednesday and Thursday most weeks. It's crazy how much busier the cycle to work is on Tuesday compared to Monday and Friday.
Mogg proved right. It’s not hybrid working, it’s weekend extending.
Looking back lockdowns do seem like the Work of Satan. Designed to send people mad and sad - and to ruin economies
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
We won't know for sure, because nobody dared to be a counterexample. Not even Sweden really (and their outcomes were worse than their Scandi peer group). Johnson always managed to blink at the last moment, just before it was too late.
Ultimately, germ theory works. Same as it did for John Snow and the cholera outbreak in London. If you want to slow the spread of a contagous disease, you need to reduce contacts between potential hosts. Had the UK tried to stick to plan A in March 2020, lots of people would have got sick, very many more would have died and the health system would have fallen over. One more doubling (3 days at the time) would probably have done it, two more (less than a week) certainly would. And all that expensively-won immunity would have given imperfect protection against variants...
Lockdowns suck. It's the worst thing to happen in my life, and I hope it's the worst thing that happens to my children. But there comes a point, which the UK reached in March 2020 and January 2021, where they're the least bad option. If you want to stop them, your best bet is to be more careful earlier down the line. A bit like how military deterrance is often the best way to stop a war.
Parts of he USA provide some counter-examples. In my recent travels across the South I was told they basically had one lockdown, in 2020, and after that they let it rip
And 1m Americans died….
Was it worth all these deaths? The equation is probably imponderably complex, and we will never know
America hasn't really seen a divergence between the extremes though - freedom loving Floridians no worse off than insane communists in New York.
Looking back lockdowns do seem like the Work of Satan. Designed to send people mad and sad - and to ruin economies
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
We got taken in by those ridiculous Chinese videos of people dropping in the street and the non covid body bag pics from Italy and the world panicked and went full lemming We should have been protecting the vulnerable, and everyone else following their own precautions suited to them and their family
On reflection it maybe wasn’t China that sent us into panic, it was Italy. Lombardy in Lockdown
China is sufficiently distant and alien that you can say, and we did say, Well we are different and that won’t happen here. But then it happened in northern Italy and they are too close to us for “denial” to work
I suspect Lockdown 1 was unavoidable in some form. We did not know what we were facing so we had to be ultra cautious. After that they are increasingly hard to justify. 2 was absurd and 3 was downright evil.
And of course Labour led by the Integritron wanted Lockdowns 4 and 5 and it is Libertine Boris and JR Mogg that saved us
We were not ultra cautious. You're right that it wasn't China that prompted us. If it had been, we'd have acted sooner. We should have acted sooner. Parts of China locked down in January. By mid-February the evidence was clear that lockdowns were working well to stem the spread. What did we do for the next month?
We should have done some sort of lockdown much faster (something I said at the time) and severely curtailed international travel (something I did not say at the time but others did)
Yes we WERE ultra cautious. The fact you can get this wrong shows how the Overton Window of Psychosocial Sanity has been shifted by the Lockdowns towards the acceptance of lunacy
FFS at no other point in history have entire economies basically shuttered. The last time they closed all the pubs in England was when Cromwell did it, and he didn’t do it as thoroughly as Boris, Sturgeon and Drakeford. We were locked in our homes. Insane
If closing EVERYTHING and telling EVERYONE to stay home is not “ultra cautious” then God help us if you get into power and decide to err on the side of epidemiological pessimism
It's all very interesting - we have, by most historic definitions, full employment and over 1.3 million vacancies.
And yet?
"Full employment" isn't the panacea many believe - full employment means restaurants are full, not because there are huge numbers trying to book tables but because they lack the staff to feed them. Throughout "hospitality" in London, there are shortages and that has impacts - the illusion of a booming capital hides the reality of businesses struggling to keep going and retain staff.
In the late 80s, we ended up with wage-driven inflation as competition for staff forced up prices - this may not be the case if we see people cutting back on discretionary spending in the face of higher inflation and falling living standards. The Bank of England Governor didn't paint a particularly rosy picture yesterday in all honesty.
I also see the Prime Minister, now to be known as "Cheese & Houmous Man" is once again sounding off about working at home. It's clearly one of his pet peeves - perhaps, instead of listening to the wailing and gnashing of teeth of commercial property developers, he should just get on with governing for all of us (novel idea perhaps?).
Rail passenger numbers are 75-80% of pre-Covid while Tube numbers are still just below two thirds of pre Covid.
I can understand Johnson's frustration - the Government are continually having to bail out public transport providers whose operating models have been broken by the pandemic. It's yet another call on the public purse at a time of struggle.
The fact that everyone is choosing Tues/Weds/Thurs as their office days makes matters worse. (It's really noticeable on the not-quite-Lizzie Line that the trains are busy but not crushed midweek, comfortably empty Monday and Friday.) If the peak need is the same, there won't be many infrastructure savings to be had. And before anyone asks, the same would go for cars on roads.
I'm a bit surprised that firms trying to reduce their office spend aren't doing more to smooth demand across five days. Maybe they don't have much choice.
I'm perverse so WFH Wednesday and Thursday most weeks. It's crazy how much busier the cycle to work is on Tuesday compared to Monday and Friday.
I used to have a job with compulsory Saturdays and a weekday off. I always chose Wednesdays, nobody else did. Couldn't understand why. Never worked more than three days in a row.
It's becoming even worse than John Major's 1992-7 period.
Sky say 50 mps are under investigation of allegations of sexual assault and misdemeanours
The political class are out of control
I think the rules have changed, thankfully, so the kind of thing that was ‘acceptable’ 30 years ago, is now not. (It shouldn’t of been anyway, but times change, usually for the better). An awful lot of mps have really not got the message. Bunch of dinosaurs. I would also say though, that some will be innocent. Accusations are not always in good faith.
It's becoming even worse than John Major's 1992-7 period.
Sky say 50 mps are under investigation of allegations of sexual assault and misdemeanours
The political class are out of control
But if alleged crimes date back, it just look like out of control now. It might be different, it might be female MPs more organised and braver to call their male colleagues out, in this parliament. Tory Red Wall intake may be making a difference in this. What some call this Tory Party or Parliament sleaziest yet may actually be good culture change getting to grips with things, retrospectively
Looking back lockdowns do seem like the Work of Satan. Designed to send people mad and sad - and to ruin economies
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
We won't know for sure, because nobody dared to be a counterexample. Not even Sweden really (and their outcomes were worse than their Scandi peer group). Johnson always managed to blink at the last moment, just before it was too late.
Ultimately, germ theory works. Same as it did for John Snow and the cholera outbreak in London. If you want to slow the spread of a contagous disease, you need to reduce contacts between potential hosts. Had the UK tried to stick to plan A in March 2020, lots of people would have got sick, very many more would have died and the health system would have fallen over. One more doubling (3 days at the time) would probably have done it, two more (less than a week) certainly would. And all that expensively-won immunity would have given imperfect protection against variants...
Lockdowns suck. It's the worst thing to happen in my life, and I hope it's the worst thing that happens to my children. But there comes a point, which the UK reached in March 2020 and January 2021, where they're the least bad option. If you want to stop them, your best bet is to be more careful earlier down the line. A bit like how military deterrance is often the best way to stop a war.
Parts of he USA provide some counter-examples. In my recent travels across the South I was told they basically had one lockdown, in 2020, and after that they let it rip
And 1m Americans died….
Was it worth all these deaths? The equation is probably imponderably complex, and we will never know
America hasn't really seen a divergence between the extremes though - freedom loving Floridians no worse off than insane communists in New York.
The majority of New York deaths happened in the initial wave in Spring 2020 with insane death rates in New York City, the majority of Florida deaths happened in 2021 after the vaccine was available
Looking back lockdowns do seem like the Work of Satan. Designed to send people mad and sad - and to ruin economies
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
We got taken in by those ridiculous Chinese videos of people dropping in the street and the non covid body bag pics from Italy and the world panicked and went full lemming We should have been protecting the vulnerable, and everyone else following their own precautions suited to them and their family
On reflection it maybe wasn’t China that sent us into panic, it was Italy. Lombardy in Lockdown
China is sufficiently distant and alien that you can say, and we did say, Well we are different and that won’t happen here. But then it happened in northern Italy and they are too close to us for “denial” to work
I suspect Lockdown 1 was unavoidable in some form. We did not know what we were facing so we had to be ultra cautious. After that they are increasingly hard to justify. 2 was absurd and 3 was downright evil.
And of course Labour led by the Integritron wanted Lockdowns 4 and 5 and it is Libertine Boris and JR Mogg that saved us
We were not ultra cautious. You're right that it wasn't China that prompted us. If it had been, we'd have acted sooner. We should have acted sooner. Parts of China locked down in January. By mid-February the evidence was clear that lockdowns were working well to stem the spread. What did we do for the next month?
We should have done some sort of lockdown much faster (something I said at the time) and severely curtailed international travel (something I did not say at the time but others did)
Yes we WERE ultra cautious. The fact you can get this wrong shows how the Overton Window of Psychosocial Sanity has been shifted by the Lockdowns towards the acceptance of lunacy
FFS at no other point in history have entire economies basically shuttered. The last time they closed all the pubs in England was when Cromwell did it, and he didn’t do it as thoroughly as Boris, Sturgeon and Drakeford. We were locked in our homes. Insane
If closing EVERYTHING and telling EVERYONE to stay home is not “ultra cautious” then God help us if you get into power and decide to err on the side of epidemiological pessimism
Plus China were welding people into buildings and lying about their figures About as a reliable a source for action as North Korea is for golf tips
It's becoming even worse than John Major's 1992-7 period.
Sky say 50 mps are under investigation of allegations of sexual assault and misdemeanours
The political class are out of control
But if alleged crimes date back, it just look like out of control now. It might be different, it might be female MPs more organised and braver to call their male colleagues out, in this parliament. Tory Red Wall intake may be making a difference in this. What some call this Tory Party or Parliament sleaziest yet may actually be good culture change getting to grips with things, retrospectively
Given previous parliaments in the 1970s or 1980s contained the likes of Cyril Smith, Clement Freud, Jeremy Thorpe and Peter Morrison and unproven allegations against others I don't think this parliament is any worse just as you say the issues are getting called out more.
Though does mean the Netflix drama Anatomy of a Scandal came out at a time eerily close to real life events
It's becoming even worse than John Major's 1992-7 period.
Sky say 50 mps are under investigation of allegations of sexual assault and misdemeanours
The political class are out of control
But if alleged crimes date back, it just look like out of control now. It might be different, it might be female MPs more organised and braver to call their male colleagues out, in this parliament. Tory Red Wall intake may be making a difference in this. What some call this Tory Party or Parliament sleaziest yet may actually be good culture change getting to grips with things, retrospectively
Given previous parliaments in the 1970s or 1980s contained the likes of Cyril Smith, Jeremy Thorpe and Peter Morrison and unproven allegations against others I don't think this parliament is any worse just as you say the issues are getting called out more.
Though does mean the Netflix drama Anatomy of a Scandal came out at a time eerily close to real life events
Some of those you just mentioned got covered up for years good and proper!
There was a young man called Leon Who shone on PB as bright as neon His travelogues impressed us And sometimes depressed us But will surely entertain us for aeons
Whether the arrest leads to charges leads to convictions, who knows? And a person is innocent until proven otherwise.
Still, it goes with the territory. There are really nasty pieces of work on both main party extremes. We saw vile behaviour under Corbyn's Labour leadership and I'm afraid that Brexit has also brought out some really vile types.
Looking back lockdowns do seem like the Work of Satan. Designed to send people mad and sad - and to ruin economies
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
We got taken in by those ridiculous Chinese videos of people dropping in the street and the non covid body bag pics from Italy and the world panicked and went full lemming We should have been protecting the vulnerable, and everyone else following their own precautions suited to them and their family
On reflection it maybe wasn’t China that sent us into panic, it was Italy. Lombardy in Lockdown
China is sufficiently distant and alien that you can say, and we did say, Well we are different and that won’t happen here. But then it happened in northern Italy and they are too close to us for “denial” to work
I suspect Lockdown 1 was unavoidable in some form. We did not know what we were facing so we had to be ultra cautious. After that they are increasingly hard to justify. 2 was absurd and 3 was downright evil.
And of course Labour led by the Integritron wanted Lockdowns 4 and 5 and it is Libertine Boris and JR Mogg that saved us
Maybe. Maybe. The key was the vulnerable. And protecting them. All the nonsense over masking children, various lockdowns since, one way systems. All ridiculous, harmful garbage. In my opinion of course.
There will be much debate over this. The first shots for the inquiries have been fired with the paper ‘proving’ that shielding the vulnerable would have failed. I have not read it, but strongly suspect the outcome was what the modellers wanted, as one of the authors is still masking Bath Uni and iSAGE zealot Kit Yates. However it’s not impossible that they are right, and shielding the vulnerable while allowing the rest of us to get Covid may not have worked. I also suggest a lot of people would not have been seen as vulnerable but would have been at huge risk (larger, older chaps). I don’t think we’ll ever really know.
Looking back lockdowns do seem like the Work of Satan. Designed to send people mad and sad - and to ruin economies
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
We got taken in by those ridiculous Chinese videos of people dropping in the street and the non covid body bag pics from Italy and the world panicked and went full lemming We should have been protecting the vulnerable, and everyone else following their own precautions suited to them and their family
On reflection it maybe wasn’t China that sent us into panic, it was Italy. Lombardy in Lockdown
China is sufficiently distant and alien that you can say, and we did say, Well we are different and that won’t happen here. But then it happened in northern Italy and they are too close to us for “denial” to work
I suspect Lockdown 1 was unavoidable in some form. We did not know what we were facing so we had to be ultra cautious. After that they are increasingly hard to justify. 2 was absurd and 3 was downright evil.
And of course Labour led by the Integritron wanted Lockdowns 4 and 5 and it is Libertine Boris and JR Mogg that saved us
We were not ultra cautious. You're right that it wasn't China that prompted us. If it had been, we'd have acted sooner. We should have acted sooner. Parts of China locked down in January. By mid-February the evidence was clear that lockdowns were working well to stem the spread. What did we do for the next month?
We should have done some sort of lockdown much faster (something I said at the time) and severely curtailed international travel (something I did not say at the time but others did)
When Leon is off on one of his drunken rants there's no telling him.
Part of what he says is right, but it's drowned out by the faux frothing.
Looking back lockdowns do seem like the Work of Satan. Designed to send people mad and sad - and to ruin economies
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
We won't know for sure, because nobody dared to be a counterexample. Not even Sweden really (and their outcomes were worse than their Scandi peer group). Johnson always managed to blink at the last moment, just before it was too late.
Ultimately, germ theory works. Same as it did for John Snow and the cholera outbreak in London. If you want to slow the spread of a contagous disease, you need to reduce contacts between potential hosts. Had the UK tried to stick to plan A in March 2020, lots of people would have got sick, very many more would have died and the health system would have fallen over. One more doubling (3 days at the time) would probably have done it, two more (less than a week) certainly would. And all that expensively-won immunity would have given imperfect protection against variants...
Lockdowns suck. It's the worst thing to happen in my life, and I hope it's the worst thing that happens to my children. But there comes a point, which the UK reached in March 2020 and January 2021, where they're the least bad option. If you want to stop them, your best bet is to be more careful earlier down the line. A bit like how military deterrance is often the best way to stop a war.
Parts of he USA provide some counter-examples. In my recent travels across the South I was told they basically had one lockdown, in 2020, and after that they let it rip
And 1m Americans died….
Was it worth all these deaths? The equation is probably imponderably complex, and we will never know
America hasn't really seen a divergence between the extremes though - freedom loving Floridians no worse off than insane communists in New York.
The majority of New York deaths happened in the initial wave in Spring 2020 with insane death rates in New York City, the majority of Florida deaths happened in 2021 after the vaccine was available
Over the pandemic there is no particularly stark divergence between the freer and more locked down states in overall deaths not that could constitute a definitive guide to best practice.
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
The old adage about power bring an aphrodisiac really just means those in power abusing it to abuse others. Time that was ended once and for all. Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
Hey Woolie, sorry to hear of your travails. So glad you are getting some attention
If it helps, I was down there in the darkness, with the black dog howling, during the worst of Covid - just like you. I split with my wife partly for Covid reasons (a painful split as we were still very close), then I had to face lockdown 3 - the winter one - all alone in a one bed flat in Camden when every single thing that usually keeps me sane - from friends to pubs to sun to restaurants to travel to art galleries and sex - was taken away from me. I felt actually suicidal a few times, and - weirder and somehow worse - later I behaved suicidally - eg driving at 140mph at noon for no reason
Crazy shit
I am very glad I did not do myself in. I am now in a much much happier place - I still have my mood swings but they are normal. I will always have them. What happened during Covid was an order of magnitude worse than the average bipolar blues
Anyway. Stick in there. And stay on PB. I found it an invaluable source of company at my loneliest moments….
Thank you Leon. The small flat, alone; where once youth and beauty shone, I get 100% I'm something of a physical and mental wretch now. Disabled with horrors ravaging the insides. Has been quite the culture shock as i used to think myself indestructible, immortal, unstoppable. But I'm not. Now I'm a young old man who plays chess and remembers when life was bar lights and pretty girls who now have fled further even than the time that separates us. But I'm Woolie. And I always will be. I've been strangling black dogs since i was 10. Fuck em. I've seen enough to laugh at the pompous, the famous, the pretenders and the cruel. Just a lad from working class stock who got given a brain and a grin and has rinsed the shit out of both.
I can only hope you feel better soon.
When I was a kid, I felt low - I guess we all do. "The world doesn't understand me" Adrian Mole-style pretentious crap. Having talked to people since, I realised that although I felt low, the black dog never stalked me. I've always been someone who is more 'up' than 'down'. Even when I got told I would never walk properly again, when I had a first operation only to find a friend had died - even through the bad times, it never stalked me.
But I have seen enough people 'down' to realise the black dog is real, and that I've been blooming lucky.
Oddly, I've never seen myself as indestructible, immortal or unstoppable. Quite the opposite. Yet depression has never really been a problem. Odd, really.
I think the indestructible, immortal stuff was a consequnece of the black dog. I had to think that or I'd not have made the morning sometimes (and the first time I don't there's no do over) . With his maw round my neck and his breath suffocating me. The delusion came at a price. Too much, too often, too hard etc. But now I can't pretend I'm immortal I at least know I can, I have, and I will beat the dog. However long it takes or how often I have to.
If it’s any help, I’m someone else who fights the black dog, I have always in the depths of an episode constantly told myself “it’s not real - it’s a chemical/biological process in the brain - a sort of “fake brain news” and by reminding myself constantly it keeps a sense of balance and proportion.
Funnily enough recently I was having a conversation with a great friend who is a very senior medic and we both are very open about our depression and we were able to sit laughing over beers about our preferred methods for ending it because we seem to have both got the defence mechanism in place that it’s “not real” and effectively try and treat it as some sort of dream or similar where you are horrified whilst in it but then you can wake up and it’s not real.
This might be of absolutely no use as everyone is different but I hope it does - the lock down alone was incredibly difficult but we survived it so just think how strong that makes you.
Also I recommend hours of hard gardening - even offer to help someone or something if you don’t have a garden of any sort! Best medicine I have ever found.
Yes, physical exertion works. As does dancing or singing or any social exercise, if you can force yourself to do it
But of course nearly all these options were taken away during lockdown, esp the winter lockdown
Never Again.
One other effective therapy is sharing. Tell people that you feel miserable and shit and don’t be embarrassed about it. Let it out. PB is good for that!
You are angry about lockdowns but it's partly misplaced.
PB is not particularly good for that imho. It's a site populated by a lot of anonymous people, some of whom are extremely abusive. It's one of the last places I would come to lay bare my soul. Friends and family are much better, preferably face to face, and that's the thing which became so difficult during lockdowns.
You're wrong about physical exertion in lockdowns though. I did more than probably any time in my life. I decamped to a remote cliff top and hiked every day. It was astonishingly wonderful and, of course, there was no limit placed on people exercising if they had mental health issues.
The other great benefit of those hikes was proximity to nature: something which can lift the soul. As many of the great writers and poets have found, even in their darkest moments.
On that subject, reading great nature-based writers is recommended.
Well, yes, there was a limit placed on that sort of thing: during lockdown 1 the only places you were allowed to exercise were those you could reach from your front door. And the police came to issue you you with a ticket if you looked like you weren't exercising with sufficient grim-faced single-mindedness. I actually saw it happen. I saw people nervously doing star jumps when the police approached.
Having seen Liverpool's line up tonight and the bench, laying Liverpool a lot tonight.
They are playing Southampton. The first eleven blokes to pass by Fazackerley Station would probably be sufficient. (Except 7 would be Evertonians). But the point stands. Saints have been dire.
Looking back lockdowns do seem like the Work of Satan. Designed to send people mad and sad - and to ruin economies
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
We won't know for sure, because nobody dared to be a counterexample. Not even Sweden really (and their outcomes were worse than their Scandi peer group). Johnson always managed to blink at the last moment, just before it was too late.
Ultimately, germ theory works. Same as it did for John Snow and the cholera outbreak in London. If you want to slow the spread of a contagous disease, you need to reduce contacts between potential hosts. Had the UK tried to stick to plan A in March 2020, lots of people would have got sick, very many more would have died and the health system would have fallen over. One more doubling (3 days at the time) would probably have done it, two more (less than a week) certainly would. And all that expensively-won immunity would have given imperfect protection against variants...
Lockdowns suck. It's the worst thing to happen in my life, and I hope it's the worst thing that happens to my children. But there comes a point, which the UK reached in March 2020 and January 2021, where they're the least bad option. If you want to stop them, your best bet is to be more careful earlier down the line. A bit like how military deterrance is often the best way to stop a war.
Parts of he USA provide some counter-examples. In my recent travels across the South I was told they basically had one lockdown, in 2020, and after that they let it rip
And 1m Americans died….
Was it worth all these deaths? The equation is probably imponderably complex, and we will never know
America hasn't really seen a divergence between the extremes though - freedom loving Floridians no worse off than insane communists in New York.
The majority of New York deaths happened in the initial wave in Spring 2020 with insane death rates in New York City, the majority of Florida deaths happened in 2021 after the vaccine was available
Over the pandemic there is no particularly stark divergence between the freer and more locked down states in overall deaths not that could constitute a definitive guide to best practice.
There should never have been a lockdown.
We threw the baby out with the bathwater allowing COVID to become the be all and end all that crowded out everything else.
Looking back lockdowns do seem like the Work of Satan. Designed to send people mad and sad - and to ruin economies
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
We got taken in by those ridiculous Chinese videos of people dropping in the street and the non covid body bag pics from Italy and the world panicked and went full lemming We should have been protecting the vulnerable, and everyone else following their own precautions suited to them and their family
On reflection it maybe wasn’t China that sent us into panic, it was Italy. Lombardy in Lockdown
China is sufficiently distant and alien that you can say, and we did say, Well we are different and that won’t happen here. But then it happened in northern Italy and they are too close to us for “denial” to work
I suspect Lockdown 1 was unavoidable in some form. We did not know what we were facing so we had to be ultra cautious. After that they are increasingly hard to justify. 2 was absurd and 3 was downright evil.
And of course Labour led by the Integritron wanted Lockdowns 4 and 5 and it is Libertine Boris and JR Mogg that saved us
Maybe. Maybe. The key was the vulnerable. And protecting them. All the nonsense over masking children, various lockdowns since, one way systems. All ridiculous, harmful garbage. In my opinion of course.
There will be much debate over this. The first shots for the inquiries have been fired with the paper ‘proving’ that shielding the vulnerable would have failed. I have not read it, but strongly suspect the outcome was what the modellers wanted, as one of the authors is still masking Bath Uni and iSAGE zealot Kit Yates. However it’s not impossible that they are right, and shielding the vulnerable while allowing the rest of us to get Covid may not have worked. I also suggest a lot of people would not have been seen as vulnerable but would have been at huge risk (larger, older chaps). I don’t think we’ll ever really know.
Probably not, no. We do know however that lockdown has fucked the world economy. And that will kill, impoverish or further impoverish tens of millions
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
The old adage about power bring an aphrodisiac really just means those in power abusing it to abuse others. Time that was ended once and for all. Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
Hey Woolie, sorry to hear of your travails. So glad you are getting some attention
If it helps, I was down there in the darkness, with the black dog howling, during the worst of Covid - just like you. I split with my wife partly for Covid reasons (a painful split as we were still very close), then I had to face lockdown 3 - the winter one - all alone in a one bed flat in Camden when every single thing that usually keeps me sane - from friends to pubs to sun to restaurants to travel to art galleries and sex - was taken away from me. I felt actually suicidal a few times, and - weirder and somehow worse - later I behaved suicidally - eg driving at 140mph at noon for no reason
Crazy shit
I am very glad I did not do myself in. I am now in a much much happier place - I still have my mood swings but they are normal. I will always have them. What happened during Covid was an order of magnitude worse than the average bipolar blues
Anyway. Stick in there. And stay on PB. I found it an invaluable source of company at my loneliest moments….
Thank you Leon. The small flat, alone; where once youth and beauty shone, I get 100% I'm something of a physical and mental wretch now. Disabled with horrors ravaging the insides. Has been quite the culture shock as i used to think myself indestructible, immortal, unstoppable. But I'm not. Now I'm a young old man who plays chess and remembers when life was bar lights and pretty girls who now have fled further even than the time that separates us. But I'm Woolie. And I always will be. I've been strangling black dogs since i was 10. Fuck em. I've seen enough to laugh at the pompous, the famous, the pretenders and the cruel. Just a lad from working class stock who got given a brain and a grin and has rinsed the shit out of both.
I can only hope you feel better soon.
When I was a kid, I felt low - I guess we all do. "The world doesn't understand me" Adrian Mole-style pretentious crap. Having talked to people since, I realised that although I felt low, the black dog never stalked me. I've always been someone who is more 'up' than 'down'. Even when I got told I would never walk properly again, when I had a first operation only to find a friend had died - even through the bad times, it never stalked me.
But I have seen enough people 'down' to realise the black dog is real, and that I've been blooming lucky.
Oddly, I've never seen myself as indestructible, immortal or unstoppable. Quite the opposite. Yet depression has never really been a problem. Odd, really.
I think the indestructible, immortal stuff was a consequnece of the black dog. I had to think that or I'd not have made the morning sometimes (and the first time I don't there's no do over) . With his maw round my neck and his breath suffocating me. The delusion came at a price. Too much, too often, too hard etc. But now I can't pretend I'm immortal I at least know I can, I have, and I will beat the dog. However long it takes or how often I have to.
If it’s any help, I’m someone else who fights the black dog, I have always in the depths of an episode constantly told myself “it’s not real - it’s a chemical/biological process in the brain - a sort of “fake brain news” and by reminding myself constantly it keeps a sense of balance and proportion.
Funnily enough recently I was having a conversation with a great friend who is a very senior medic and we both are very open about our depression and we were able to sit laughing over beers about our preferred methods for ending it because we seem to have both got the defence mechanism in place that it’s “not real” and effectively try and treat it as some sort of dream or similar where you are horrified whilst in it but then you can wake up and it’s not real.
This might be of absolutely no use as everyone is different but I hope it does - the lock down alone was incredibly difficult but we survived it so just think how strong that makes you.
Also I recommend hours of hard gardening - even offer to help someone or something if you don’t have a garden of any sort! Best medicine I have ever found.
Yes, physical exertion works. As does dancing or singing or any social exercise, if you can force yourself to do it
But of course nearly all these options were taken away during lockdown, esp the winter lockdown
Never Again.
One other effective therapy is sharing. Tell people that you feel miserable and shit and don’t be embarrassed about it. Let it out. PB is good for that!
You are angry about lockdowns but it's partly misplaced.
PB is not particularly good for that imho. It's a site populated by a lot of anonymous people, some of whom are extremely abusive. It's one of the last places I would come to lay bare my soul. Friends and family are much better, preferably face to face, and that's the thing which became so difficult during lockdowns.
You're wrong about physical exertion in lockdowns though. I did more than probably any time in my life. I decamped to a remote cliff top and hiked every day. It was astonishingly wonderful and, of course, there was no limit placed on people exercising if they had mental health issues.
The other great benefit of those hikes was proximity to nature: something which can lift the soul. As many of the great writers and poets have found, even in their darkest moments.
On that subject, reading great nature-based writers is recommended.
Well, yes, there was a limit placed on that sort of thing: during lockdown 1 the only places you were allowed to exercise were those you could reach from your front door. And the police came to issue you you with a ticket if you looked like you weren't exercising with sufficient grim-faced single-mindedness. I actually saw it happen. I saw people nervously doing star jumps when the police approached.
Sounds like Derbyshire plod. And once again we meet laws vs guidance. You will be very hard pressed to find mentions of distance from home, or type of exercise, or duration, or frequency in the laws. And yet people will bang on about 1 hour a day etc. Walking IS exercise. No need for star jumps.
It's becoming even worse than John Major's 1992-7 period.
Sky say 50 mps are under investigation of allegations of sexual assault and misdemeanours
The political class are out of control
But if alleged crimes date back, it just look like out of control now. It might be different, it might be female MPs more organised and braver to call their male colleagues out, in this parliament. Tory Red Wall intake may be making a difference in this. What some call this Tory Party or Parliament sleaziest yet may actually be good culture change getting to grips with things, retrospectively
Why just female MPs? Might easily be female staff on the Parliamentary estate, or SPADs, or party workers.
Doesn't even have to be female for the matter of that.
There was a young man called Leon Who shone on PB as bright as neon His travelogues impressed us And sometimes depressed us But will surely entertain us for aeons
There once was a man named Sean who time after time was reborn he got out of hand and often was banned but always returned before dawn
BREAKING: Tory whips confirm they've asked an MP to stay away from Parliament after he was arrested for alleged sexual assault, indecent assault & rape.
“The Chief Whip has asked that the MP concerned does not attend the Parliamentary Estate while an investigation is ongoing."
Sky reporting upto 50 mps are currently under investigation for sex and sexual assault allegations
It just makes you despair at the lack of integrity and decency by the political classes
The old adage about power bring an aphrodisiac really just means those in power abusing it to abuse others. Time that was ended once and for all. Be kind. Be good. And if you can't be kind and good, fuck off.
Hey Woolie, sorry to hear of your travails. So glad you are getting some attention
If it helps, I was down there in the darkness, with the black dog howling, during the worst of Covid - just like you. I split with my wife partly for Covid reasons (a painful split as we were still very close), then I had to face lockdown 3 - the winter one - all alone in a one bed flat in Camden when every single thing that usually keeps me sane - from friends to pubs to sun to restaurants to travel to art galleries and sex - was taken away from me. I felt actually suicidal a few times, and - weirder and somehow worse - later I behaved suicidally - eg driving at 140mph at noon for no reason
Crazy shit
I am very glad I did not do myself in. I am now in a much much happier place - I still have my mood swings but they are normal. I will always have them. What happened during Covid was an order of magnitude worse than the average bipolar blues
Anyway. Stick in there. And stay on PB. I found it an invaluable source of company at my loneliest moments….
Thank you Leon. The small flat, alone; where once youth and beauty shone, I get 100% I'm something of a physical and mental wretch now. Disabled with horrors ravaging the insides. Has been quite the culture shock as i used to think myself indestructible, immortal, unstoppable. But I'm not. Now I'm a young old man who plays chess and remembers when life was bar lights and pretty girls who now have fled further even than the time that separates us. But I'm Woolie. And I always will be. I've been strangling black dogs since i was 10. Fuck em. I've seen enough to laugh at the pompous, the famous, the pretenders and the cruel. Just a lad from working class stock who got given a brain and a grin and has rinsed the shit out of both.
I can only hope you feel better soon.
When I was a kid, I felt low - I guess we all do. "The world doesn't understand me" Adrian Mole-style pretentious crap. Having talked to people since, I realised that although I felt low, the black dog never stalked me. I've always been someone who is more 'up' than 'down'. Even when I got told I would never walk properly again, when I had a first operation only to find a friend had died - even through the bad times, it never stalked me.
But I have seen enough people 'down' to realise the black dog is real, and that I've been blooming lucky.
Oddly, I've never seen myself as indestructible, immortal or unstoppable. Quite the opposite. Yet depression has never really been a problem. Odd, really.
I think the indestructible, immortal stuff was a consequnece of the black dog. I had to think that or I'd not have made the morning sometimes (and the first time I don't there's no do over) . With his maw round my neck and his breath suffocating me. The delusion came at a price. Too much, too often, too hard etc. But now I can't pretend I'm immortal I at least know I can, I have, and I will beat the dog. However long it takes or how often I have to.
If it’s any help, I’m someone else who fights the black dog, I have always in the depths of an episode constantly told myself “it’s not real - it’s a chemical/biological process in the brain - a sort of “fake brain news” and by reminding myself constantly it keeps a sense of balance and proportion.
Funnily enough recently I was having a conversation with a great friend who is a very senior medic and we both are very open about our depression and we were able to sit laughing over beers about our preferred methods for ending it because we seem to have both got the defence mechanism in place that it’s “not real” and effectively try and treat it as some sort of dream or similar where you are horrified whilst in it but then you can wake up and it’s not real.
This might be of absolutely no use as everyone is different but I hope it does - the lock down alone was incredibly difficult but we survived it so just think how strong that makes you.
Also I recommend hours of hard gardening - even offer to help someone or something if you don’t have a garden of any sort! Best medicine I have ever found.
Yes, physical exertion works. As does dancing or singing or any social exercise, if you can force yourself to do it
But of course nearly all these options were taken away during lockdown, esp the winter lockdown
Never Again.
One other effective therapy is sharing. Tell people that you feel miserable and shit and don’t be embarrassed about it. Let it out. PB is good for that!
You are angry about lockdowns but it's partly misplaced.
PB is not particularly good for that imho. It's a site populated by a lot of anonymous people, some of whom are extremely abusive. It's one of the last places I would come to lay bare my soul. Friends and family are much better, preferably face to face, and that's the thing which became so difficult during lockdowns.
You're wrong about physical exertion in lockdowns though. I did more than probably any time in my life. I decamped to a remote cliff top and hiked every day. It was astonishingly wonderful and, of course, there was no limit placed on people exercising if they had mental health issues.
The other great benefit of those hikes was proximity to nature: something which can lift the soul. As many of the great writers and poets have found, even in their darkest moments.
On that subject, reading great nature-based writers is recommended.
Well, yes, there was a limit placed on that sort of thing: during lockdown 1 the only places you were allowed to exercise were those you could reach from your front door. And the police came to issue you you with a ticket if you looked like you weren't exercising with sufficient grim-faced single-mindedness. I actually saw it happen. I saw people nervously doing star jumps when the police approached.
Yet some people had parties and wine time Fridays...
Comments
Can't be bothered now...
But I've known people who have encountered it. Two of whom took their own lives. I blame myself for not helping them more, but it's hard to help someone whom the black dog has in their sights. You cannot be with someone every hour of the day, or even every day of the week.
What's that? You didn't know Peter Wyngarde did an album? Hooooooo boy.
There are ~100k registered sex offenders in the UK. The number of people who have been investigated/arrested etc but never made it to the register (possibly because they're innocent) is an order of magnitude higher.
Therefore just from 650 random people in any single Parliament you'd expect one registered sex offender and an order of magnitude more who've been suspected of it etc.
The question every institution has to ask of itself is not whether bad apples are in its walls (the answer for almost any large organisations is yes) but what is done when allegations are brought up.
If they're taken seriously so the bad apples are identified and kicked out then that is a good culture.
If they're covered up with bad apples aided in being moved around and covering the tracks so they never see justice and can get away with it, that is terrible.
The delusion came at a price. Too much, too often, too hard etc. But now I can't pretend I'm immortal I at least know I can, I have, and I will beat the dog. However long it takes or how often I have to.
The black dog turns it's head away from me and stalks another target. I feel low, but never too low. I can always find something to lift myself away from its grasp. A chat to a friend. A pretty flower. A walk.
I do not attract the black dog. In the same way I cannot burp. Yes, really.
I mean, that is what happens now but it is just ridiculous and became so as soon as students started funding their own courses.
It's all very interesting - we have, by most historic definitions, full employment and over 1.3 million vacancies.
And yet?
"Full employment" isn't the panacea many believe - full employment means restaurants are full, not because there are huge numbers trying to book tables but because they lack the staff to feed them. Throughout "hospitality" in London, there are shortages and that has impacts - the illusion of a booming capital hides the reality of businesses struggling to keep going and retain staff.
In the late 80s, we ended up with wage-driven inflation as competition for staff forced up prices - this may not be the case if we see people cutting back on discretionary spending in the face of higher inflation and falling living standards. The Bank of England Governor didn't paint a particularly rosy picture yesterday in all honesty.
I also see the Prime Minister, now to be known as "Cheese & Houmous Man" is once again sounding off about working at home. It's clearly one of his pet peeves - perhaps, instead of listening to the wailing and gnashing of teeth of commercial property developers, he should just get on with governing for all of us (novel idea perhaps?).
Rail passenger numbers are 75-80% of pre-Covid while Tube numbers are still just below two thirds of pre Covid.
I can understand Johnson's frustration - the Government are continually having to bail out public transport providers whose operating models have been broken by the pandemic. It's yet another call on the public purse at a time of struggle.
Rape Rape Rape
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/17/tory-mp-arrested-on-suspicion-of-and-banned-from-commons-reports
Edit: I see I am rather later to the, er, party on this one.
Two vehicles (Named as tanks) are struck in very rapid succession- it is said this is deep behind the front lines.
https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1526582495076024321
Nine of the UK's most senior judges have refused to ban the mandatory death penalty in Trinidad and Tobago...
[Lord Hodge said]The sentence is recognised internationally as cruel and unusual punishment. The state does not dispute that characterisation."
He said that despite those concerns, the judges in London could not legitimately interfere as there was no constitutional law question for them to settle.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-61468346
A part of you detaches and you look down at yourself, sort-of-screaming: No, you can’t be thinking like this, you mustn’t think like this. Nonetheless, you are thinking like this. That is you, down there in that chair, considering self-murder
It's from the female perspective but does encapsulate, for me, much of what has gone wrong in my own relationships
Sometimes I have wanted
to throw you off
like a heavy coat.
Sometimes I have said
you would not let me
breathe or move.
But now that I am free
to choose light clothes
or none at all
I feel the cold
and all the time I think
how warm it used to be.
Poems are great. I write reams of dreadful ones
If it’s any help, I’m someone else who fights the black dog, I have always in the depths of an episode constantly told myself “it’s not real - it’s a chemical/biological process in the brain - a sort of “fake brain news” and by reminding myself constantly it keeps a sense of balance and proportion.
Funnily enough recently I was having a conversation with a great friend who is a very senior medic and we both are very open about our depression and we were able to sit laughing over beers about our preferred methods for ending it because we seem to have both got the defence mechanism in place that it’s “not real” and effectively try and treat it as some sort of dream or similar where you are horrified whilst in it but then you can wake up and it’s not real.
This might be of absolutely no use as everyone is different but I hope it does - the lock down alone was incredibly difficult but we survived it so just think how strong that makes you.
Also I recommend hours of hard gardening - even offer to help someone or something if you don’t have a garden of any sort! Best medicine I have ever found.
When Blair said "education education education", it was clear that he was for it.
That is far better than subsiding them if necessary by increasing fees on working class taxpayers who will never benefit from a university degree at all
Or: "I'll have a wank."
Hopefully I don't feel low whilst in public ...
I'm looking at accessing gardening space as I'm trapped in a flat with no garden.. the waiting list for allotments is...... quite extensive
As Tom Watson wouldn't tell you.
The govt helped them out during covid but cannot continue to do so.
But of course nearly all these options were taken away during lockdown, esp the winter lockdown
Never Again.
One other effective therapy is sharing. Tell people that you feel miserable and shit and don’t be embarrassed about it. Let it out. PB is good for that!
I'm a bit surprised that firms trying to reduce their office spend aren't doing more to smooth demand across five days. Maybe they don't have much choice.
No idea where you live etc but maybe even see if any charities or groups that offer gardening work for old people, communities etc - whilst it’s not quite as enjoyable as sitting drinking in the sun sitting in your garden it’s brilliant for my mind - I can switch off into the hard work or run things through my mind in a calm place whilst working.
Were any of them necessary? Did we just copy China in a blind, crazy panic? i wonder if future generations will regard our behaviour with total bewilderment
Scotland's largest local authority will be run by two pro-independence parties in a similar way to Holyrood.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/glasgow-city-council-snp-greens-26987275.amp
So, I just tried listening to Radiohead for the first time...
It's becoming even worse than John Major's 1992-7 period.
We should have been protecting the vulnerable, and everyone else following their own precautions suited to them and their family
PB is not particularly good for that imho. It's a site populated by a lot of anonymous people, some of whom are extremely abusive. It's one of the last places I would come to lay bare my soul. Friends and family are much better, preferably face to face, and that's the thing which became so difficult during lockdowns.
You're wrong about physical exertion in lockdowns though. I did more than probably any time in my life. I decamped to a remote cliff top and hiked every day. It was astonishingly wonderful and, of course, there was no limit placed on people exercising if they had mental health issues.
The other great benefit of those hikes was proximity to nature: something which can lift the soul. As many of the great writers and poets have found, even in their darkest moments.
On that subject, reading great nature-based writers is recommended.
It's easy to look back on things you haven't experienced and wonder why people reacted in the way they did, but this was only two years ago and we were all there. It was a time of justifiable fear.
China is sufficiently distant and alien that you can say, and we did say, Well we are different and that won’t happen here. But then it happened in northern Italy and they are too close to us for “denial” to work
I suspect Lockdown 1 was unavoidable in some form. We did not know what we were facing so we had to be ultra cautious. After that they are increasingly hard to justify. 2 was absurd and 3 was downright evil.
And of course Labour led by the Integritron wanted Lockdowns 4 and 5 and it is Libertine Boris and JR Mogg that saved us
Welcome to London.
And I'm not even central.
This cluster fuck (the juxtaposition, not the alleged offence) demonstrates the Tory whips office aren't on their game. They are supposed to be on top of what bad shit is circulating in the background and brief the boss on them. Not let him say stupid just as 5-0 are feeling said naughty MP's collar.
The political class are out of control
Radiohead? Simples - I like their early stuff. Really like. Then they went experimental and interesting with Kid Amnesiac. Then got all boring with wailey guff about pineapple on pizzas.
Ultimately, germ theory works. Same as it did for John Snow and the cholera outbreak in London. If you want to slow the spread of a contagous disease, you need to reduce contacts between potential hosts. Had the UK tried to stick to plan A in March 2020, lots of people would have got sick, very many more would have died and the health system would have fallen over. One more doubling (3 days at the time) would probably have done it, two more (less than a week) certainly would. And all that expensively-won immunity would have given imperfect protection against variants...
Lockdowns suck. It's the worst thing to happen in my life, and I hope it's the worst thing that happens to my children. But there comes a point, which the UK reached in March 2020 and January 2021, where they're the least bad option. If you want to stop them, your best bet is to be more careful earlier down the line. A bit like how military deterrance is often the best way to stop a war.
We should have done some sort of lockdown much faster (something I said at the time) and severely curtailed international travel (something I did not say at the time but others did)
The first eleven blokes to pass by Fazackerley Station would probably be sufficient.
(Except 7 would be Evertonians).
But the point stands. Saints have been dire.
Removing the night safe was the final barrier. Just need to buy a load of desks and chairs, some other bits of furniture, some plants, print some of my photos up as wall art, sort out an electronic door lock, build a website, start marketing etc etc etc etc left to do.
So definitely the right stage to be faffing with fonts
The key was the vulnerable. And protecting them.
All the nonsense over masking children, various lockdowns since, one way systems. All ridiculous, harmful garbage. In my opinion of course.
And 1m Americans died….
Was it worth all these deaths? The equation is probably imponderably complex, and we will never know
It is *effing* cold.
And my coffee machine just arrived today - playing later.
In the week Crossrail opens, it doesn't look good, does it? Front page of the Chronicle and Journal too. Sundays, early mornings and evenings. When folk go to work or to socialise.
Levelling up my arse.
FFS at no other point in history have entire economies basically shuttered. The last time they closed all the pubs in England was when Cromwell did it, and he didn’t do it as thoroughly as Boris, Sturgeon and Drakeford. We were locked in our homes. Insane
If closing EVERYTHING and telling EVERYONE to stay home is not “ultra cautious” then God help us if you get into power and decide to err on the side of epidemiological pessimism
I would also say though, that some will be innocent. Accusations are not always in good faith.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIjlfMa_Tm0
About as a reliable a source for action as North Korea is for golf tips
Though does mean the Netflix drama Anatomy of a Scandal came out at a time eerily close to real life events
Who shone on PB as bright as neon
His travelogues impressed us
And sometimes depressed us
But will surely entertain us for aeons
Whether the arrest leads to charges leads to convictions, who knows? And a person is innocent until proven otherwise.
Still, it goes with the territory. There are really nasty pieces of work on both main party extremes. We saw vile behaviour under Corbyn's Labour leadership and I'm afraid that Brexit has also brought out some really vile types.
I don’t think we’ll ever really know.
Part of what he says is right, but it's drowned out by the faux frothing.
We threw the baby out with the bathwater allowing COVID to become the be all and end all that crowded out everything else.
and weeps.
And once again we meet laws vs guidance. You will be very hard pressed to find mentions of distance from home, or type of exercise, or duration, or frequency in the laws.
And yet people will bang on about 1 hour a day etc.
Walking IS exercise. No need for star jumps.
Doesn't even have to be female for the matter of that.
who time after time was reborn
he got out of hand
and often was banned
but always returned before dawn