Ah, we’ve moved on to the “trans women are sexual deviants who are coming for your children” part of the argument..
I think @Cyclefree and JK Rowling have a particular problem with the only requirement for biological men to access women only spaces being self identification.
Now, I don't think it's an outrageous to worry that some predatory men might... you know... lie to access female only spaces.
Does that sound like a ridiculous concern?
Yes.
Plenty of women have been assaulted in the Ladies Loo by men who were definitely not identifying as women. It has happened for years if not decades. Heck even Tom Cruise followed Kelly McGillis into the Ladies in Top Gun to pester her verbally.
Women have been beaten in toilets, assaulted in toilets, filming urinating in toilets (spycams) and none of it was done by "men identifiying as women".
In that case, why have women only spaces at all? If people with penises are allowed to enter them, why have them?
FFS!
They are not ALLOWED to enter them, but they do.
You are not ALLOWED to murder people, but it still happens.
Criminals do not obey the law, it is a career requirement for them...
Yes but those crimes are subject to legal sanction.
Your view seems to be that people can self certify to womanhood simply by declaration. A would be entrant to women's spaces would only have to say 'I am a woman' after which the person would be beyond the reach of any sanction.
Breakfasting in crowded Kotor. It is beautiful but my god the tourists. They surge with the Adriatic heat
Venice is the only place on earth that somehow rises above intense mass tourism, or shrugs it off, or even becomes more interesting thereby, because it was always a stage set: awaiting an audience
Where are most of the tourists from, or is it a mix?
A fair mix. Probably Americans are the most numerous, to my surprise, Why here and nowhere else?
A lot of Italians (they only have to cross the Adriatic, I guess), plenty of Russians, a few Brits, Germans and Spaniards
The Montenegrins feel very Serbian, when you point out that their language is close to Serbian they say Yes YES, It is Serbian!
Americans are numerous already in many of Europe's tourist hotspots - the Cinque Terre in Italy was awash with them. Because of the flight restrictions and the higher cost of being unable to return home if they got covid, hardly any Americans have been travelling these last few years, and those in steady jobs have money saved for a European trip. With the regulations recently lifted, there are tons of Americans making and wanting to plan European trips right now, as a dip into any of the principal travel forums will quickly demonstrate.
The difference with Americans - partly because a European trip for most of them is both more special and more rare - and partly because they follow commentators like Steves and all want to visit the most recommended spots on social media - is that those locations that have been recommended by Steves and others are flooded with Americans (so, in Italy, it's always Rome, Florence, Venice, the Amalfi Coast, the Cinque Terre, and the high Dolomites) and it is very rare to run into US tourists anywhere else.
If you have lots in Montenegro, I would put money on Rick Steves having done a video about it.
They follow a highly predictable circuit in the UK as well, typically, Stonehenge, Bath and London.
I tried telling a few in Bath that Stonehenge was shit and there were a million other better places to visit - but whilst they listened they still said they had to do it.
If you are going to do a stone circle - do Avebury at least getting a drink is easy...
Yeah, I recommended Avebury.
To be fair, I don't know how disappointing the Statue of Liberty is, for example, but I suspect I'd at least want to see it and make my mind up for myself if I were a tourist and had never seen it before.
It is underwhelming.
American tourists tend to be after things they can't get at home, like castles and palaces and more generally anything really old. You don't get much older than Stonehenge. I've never visited it myself but I have driven past it and it looks pretty cool.
If I were building a 1 week UK itinerary it would probably look something like this: Day 1: British Museum (early); Thames River cruise; West End show or Ronnie Scotts Day 2: Maritime Greenwich; picnic in a park in South London; night out in Peckham Day 3: day trip to Cambridge; punt to Grantchester; pub lunch; return to London to catch sleeper to Glasgow Day 4: day trip Loch Lomond Day 5: train to York via Settle and Carlisle. Visit York Minster; hire a car and drive to Yorkshire Dales and stay at a pub Day 6: walking in Yorkshire Dales; pub dinner Day 7: return car, train back to London and flight home. Could replace Glasgow/Loch Lomond with Edinburgh/East Neuk.
Or you could do amazing stuff and go home to USA and find no-one else has done it, or heard of most of it.
Walk the City of London for a couple of days, but miss St Paul's and Tower. Stamford Boston Lincoln Cathedral etc Stow Walpole St Peter Walk old Norwich for a day Edington Priory Bradford on Avon St Lawrence Selby Abbey Durham Stirling (be selective)
A bit ecclesiastical, but lots of pubs in between.
I once planned a tour of the Southern part of Britain for a Dutch friend, though didn't eventually get to do it. They already knew London so we were going to head straight off.
Winchester and South downs Poole Harbour, Sandbanks, Purbeck Dartmouth, Totnes, Dartmoor Glastonbury, Bath and Wells Wye valley, Monmouthshire, Herefordshire, Black mountains Cotswolds Oxford Back to London.
One of the problems with such itineraries is that they're whirlwind, and you miss so much. We recently spent three days in York, and we were mostly busy from nine to five each day. We did the Yorkshire Museum, Clifford's Tower, the excellent York Army Museum (*), the cathedral, the railway museum, the abbey ruins, DIG!, and I think I've forgotten one or two others. It was jam-packed to the extent we did not get the most out of some of it, and could easily have spent a week there. Spending a few hours in a place is not really 'visiting'.
Oh, and we walked the entire walls.
(*) This deserves a recommendation. I have been to a fair few regimental museums, and they are always dusty places. This one had three people acting out people who had served in the regiment, and kids were encouraged to go and talk to them about their lives. It really added another dimension to the place. One was Lawrence Oates, of 'I may be some time' fame.
Unless I missed it there's been no comment here on this from today's Guardian: "A woman accused of perverting the course of justice in a murder trial has been told she must represent herself in court because there is no available barrister, in what is thought to be a legal first."
The piece goes on: "due to industrial action, no other (she was, apparently, unhappy with her barrister and was told he would not be able to continue) barrister can accept the case. With no replacement found, the. Judge has told her that she must represent herself."
Can't see how that is not grounds for appeal
Was under the impression that legal representation was a basic right? Madness.
There is a criminal barristers and solicitors strike across England and Wales today demanding more pay for legal aid lawyers
A worthy cause and one which would actually help the government deliver justice, as stringency in that area is counter productive to providing efficient and effective (and cheaper) justice, even if the media and politicians will focus on some dodgy geezer using legal aid.
The article suggests the average plumber now earns £350 a day compared to £250 for 13 hours' work for the average legal aid lawyer
Those figures quoted are the day rate, not hourly rate as per the article.
Depending on preparation time this can be below the minimum wage for barristers.
It's not even a day rate - it's a set fee for completing that particular task.
Which means that you can often do a whole pile of work and then because of other changes fail to earn anything because someone else has to take over at the last minute.
The concept seems to favour barristers taking a half arsed (Looking at docs in the morning) approach in order to make the work viable.
Hmm, looking at flight tracker, there’s an emergency Thompson airlines Boeing 767 out of Manchester, currently holding in circles near Buxton. Hope it’s nothing too serious.
So there is. Burning fuel, waiting for an external inspection, or an incident on board?
The passengers must be getting dizzy.
Reminded me of this one from a few years ago: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9KhZwsYtNDE A Thompson 757 out of Manchester, with a bird strike into the engine on takeoff. An example of textbook use of the radio by the Captain, in training courses.
If today’s incident were a serious emergency, they’d have landed straight back overweight, so my guess is a minor emergency for this one - perhaps a hydraulic problem, or the gear/flaps didn’t go up properly.
Seems to have overflown the tower now. Checking gear down?
Unless I missed it there's been no comment here on this from today's Guardian: "A woman accused of perverting the course of justice in a murder trial has been told she must represent herself in court because there is no available barrister, in what is thought to be a legal first."
The piece goes on: "due to industrial action, no other (she was, apparently, unhappy with her barrister and was told he would not be able to continue) barrister can accept the case. With no replacement found, the. Judge has told her that she must represent herself."
Can't see how that is not grounds for appeal
Was under the impression that legal representation was a basic right? Madness.
There is a criminal barristers and solicitors strike across England and Wales today demanding more pay for legal aid lawyers
A worthy cause and one which would actually help the government deliver justice, as stringency in that area is counter productive to providing efficient and effective (and cheaper) justice, even if the media and politicians will focus on some dodgy geezer using legal aid.
The article suggests the average plumber now earns £350 a day compared to £250 for 13 hours' work for the average legal aid lawyer
Those figures quoted are the day rate, not hourly rate as per the article.
Depending on preparation time this can be below the minimum wage for barristers.
It's not even a day rate - it's a set fee for completing that particular task.
Which means that you can often do a whole pile of work and then because of other changes fail to earn anything because someone else has to take over at the last minute.
Presumably most people pay for their own barrister, at a substantial hourly rate, and the same barristers are doing both legal aid and private work, according to the ‘cab rank principle’?
So, while the legal aid work pays poorly, the private work combines to provide a good living for the men and women in gowns and wigs?
Ah, we’ve moved on to the “trans women are sexual deviants who are coming for your children” part of the argument..
I think @Cyclefree and JK Rowling have a particular problem with the only requirement for biological men to access women only spaces being self identification.
Now, I don't think it's an outrageous to worry that some predatory men might... you know... lie to access female only spaces.
Does that sound like a ridiculous concern?
Yes.
Plenty of women have been assaulted in the Ladies Loo by men who were definitely not identifying as women. It has happened for years if not decades. Heck even Tom Cruise followed Kelly McGillis into the Ladies in Top Gun to pester her verbally.
Women have been beaten in toilets, assaulted in toilets, filming urinating in toilets (spycams) and none of it was done by "men identifiying as women".
In that case, why have women only spaces at all? If people with penises are allowed to enter them, why have them?
FFS!
They are not ALLOWED to enter them, but they do.
You are not ALLOWED to murder people, but it still happens.
Criminals do not obey the law, it is a career requirement for them...
And if someone who isn't allowed in a protected space is there, then that sets off alarm bells that something is wrong and possibly help might be needed etc
If the space ceases to be protected, then it becomes harder to do that.
Trans people absolutely should have protections, but they shouldn't be violating women's protections in order to do so.
Ah, we’ve moved on to the “trans women are sexual deviants who are coming for your children” part of the argument..
I think @Cyclefree and JK Rowling have a particular problem with the only requirement for biological men to access women only spaces being self identification.
Now, I don't think it's an outrageous to worry that some predatory men might... you know... lie to access female only spaces.
Does that sound like a ridiculous concern?
Yes.
Plenty of women have been assaulted in the Ladies Loo by men who were definitely not identifying as women. It has happened for years if not decades. Heck even Tom Cruise followed Kelly McGillis into the Ladies in Top Gun to pester her verbally.
Women have been beaten in toilets, assaulted in toilets, filming urinating in toilets (spycams) and none of it was done by "men identifiying as women".
Exactly. This line of argument uses the (very real, sadly) fear of assault by men to tar trans women by association.
Men can already do all these awful things to women: not being able to identify as women isn’t exactly stopping them in their tracks is it?
As an aside, women’s refuge staff are already (sadly) very used to having to keep predatory individuals out of their refuges, from violent partners (usually male, sometimes female) to people trying to exploit the women they are trying to support. They can refuse entry to anyone on the grounds of the safety of their clients, regardless of gender or sex. Letting trans women self-identify is not going to change this.
(And look! Cyclefree has succeeded in changing the subject from the fact that the right is using anti-trans acitivism as a stalking horse for attacks on other LGBTQ people & other womens rights with her well crafted Gish Gallop. Well done her.)
Actually Cyclefree of all people probably knows you DO build law around rotten apples.
That's literally the point of most law and safeguarding, to protect people from the rotten apples.
Trans people need protections but NOT in a way that violates women's protections.
And that's the biggest problem with the Trans debate. The number of actual trans (men -> women) is sadly way less than the number of male sex abusers who can see an opportunity (open) to abuse...
The reality is that there is no decent answer here because both sides have such set views they are unable to see the valid points in the other side of the argument.
If I went into the Ladies and started behaving inappropriately, touching other women, photographing them, masturbating in their presence, would it all be OK because I am a woman?
Of course not! Anyone, male or female, behaving like that needs arresting. The sex or gender of the person is not really the issue.
But it is a great excuse to beat up trans people with....
Unless I missed it there's been no comment here on this from today's Guardian: "A woman accused of perverting the course of justice in a murder trial has been told she must represent herself in court because there is no available barrister, in what is thought to be a legal first."
The piece goes on: "due to industrial action, no other (she was, apparently, unhappy with her barrister and was told he would not be able to continue) barrister can accept the case. With no replacement found, the. Judge has told her that she must represent herself."
Can't see how that is not grounds for appeal
Was under the impression that legal representation was a basic right? Madness.
There is a criminal barristers and solicitors strike across England and Wales today demanding more pay for legal aid lawyers
A worthy cause and one which would actually help the government deliver justice, as stringency in that area is counter productive to providing efficient and effective (and cheaper) justice, even if the media and politicians will focus on some dodgy geezer using legal aid.
The article suggests the average plumber now earns £350 a day compared to £250 for 13 hours' work for the average legal aid lawyer
I know plumbers are supposed to be well paid and I haven't read the article but I assume this is the charge out rate and therefore gross pay so their net will be less (similarly legal aid workers. I assume their overheads are less, but will still have them).
Unless I missed it there's been no comment here on this from today's Guardian: "A woman accused of perverting the course of justice in a murder trial has been told she must represent herself in court because there is no available barrister, in what is thought to be a legal first."
The piece goes on: "due to industrial action, no other (she was, apparently, unhappy with her barrister and was told he would not be able to continue) barrister can accept the case. With no replacement found, the. Judge has told her that she must represent herself."
Can't see how that is not grounds for appeal
Was under the impression that legal representation was a basic right? Madness.
There is a criminal barristers and solicitors strike across England and Wales today demanding more pay for legal aid lawyers
A worthy cause and one which would actually help the government deliver justice, as stringency in that area is counter productive to providing efficient and effective (and cheaper) justice, even if the media and politicians will focus on some dodgy geezer using legal aid.
The article suggests the average plumber now earns £350 a day compared to £250 for 13 hours' work for the average legal aid lawyer
Those figures quoted are the day rate, not hourly rate as per the article.
Depending on preparation time this can be below the minimum wage for barristers.
It's not even a day rate - it's a set fee for completing that particular task.
Which means that you can often do a whole pile of work and then because of other changes fail to earn anything because someone else has to take over at the last minute.
Presumably most people pay for their own barrister, at a substantial hourly rate, and the same barristers are doing both legal aid and private work, according to the ‘cab rank principle’?
So, while the legal aid work pays poorly, the private work combines to provide a good living for the men and women in gowns and wigs?
Is that correct?
Once you have plenty of years experience the private work may come - but it simply doesn't exist for junior barristers.
My Mum could only remember one sentence in Russian despite many lessons. This was “Ленин любил кошек,” or “Lenin loved cats.” I agree with Lenin about cats, but he was a democidal dictator and I disagree with most of what he did. If one finds oneself agreeing with odious types, that doesn’t make your opinion wrong, but nor is there harm in reflecting on one’s own opinions and wondering why the odious types agree with you on the matter.
Unless I missed it there's been no comment here on this from today's Guardian: "A woman accused of perverting the course of justice in a murder trial has been told she must represent herself in court because there is no available barrister, in what is thought to be a legal first."
The piece goes on: "due to industrial action, no other (she was, apparently, unhappy with her barrister and was told he would not be able to continue) barrister can accept the case. With no replacement found, the. Judge has told her that she must represent herself."
Can't see how that is not grounds for appeal
Was under the impression that legal representation was a basic right? Madness.
There is a criminal barristers and solicitors strike across England and Wales today demanding more pay for legal aid lawyers
A worthy cause and one which would actually help the government deliver justice, as stringency in that area is counter productive to providing efficient and effective (and cheaper) justice, even if the media and politicians will focus on some dodgy geezer using legal aid.
The article suggests the average plumber now earns £350 a day compared to £250 for 13 hours' work for the average legal aid lawyer
Those figures quoted are the day rate, not hourly rate as per the article.
Depending on preparation time this can be below the minimum wage for barristers.
It's not even a day rate - it's a set fee for completing that particular task.
Which means that you can often do a whole pile of work and then because of other changes fail to earn anything because someone else has to take over at the last minute.
Presumably most people pay for their own barrister, at a substantial hourly rate, and the same barristers are doing both legal aid and private work, according to the ‘cab rank principle’?
So, while the legal aid work pays poorly, the private work combines to provide a good living for the men and women in gowns and wigs?
Is that correct?
Once you have plenty of years experience the private work may come - but it simply doesn't exist for junior barristers.
Yes, only a handful of very wealthy accused and celebrities can afford to pay privately for a criminal defence and they will seek a QC to defend them in court. The vast majority of those arrested and charged will use legal aid
Unless I missed it there's been no comment here on this from today's Guardian: "A woman accused of perverting the course of justice in a murder trial has been told she must represent herself in court because there is no available barrister, in what is thought to be a legal first."
The piece goes on: "due to industrial action, no other (she was, apparently, unhappy with her barrister and was told he would not be able to continue) barrister can accept the case. With no replacement found, the. Judge has told her that she must represent herself."
Can't see how that is not grounds for appeal
Was under the impression that legal representation was a basic right? Madness.
There is a criminal barristers and solicitors strike across England and Wales today demanding more pay for legal aid lawyers
A worthy cause and one which would actually help the government deliver justice, as stringency in that area is counter productive to providing efficient and effective (and cheaper) justice, even if the media and politicians will focus on some dodgy geezer using legal aid.
The article suggests the average plumber now earns £350 a day compared to £250 for 13 hours' work for the average legal aid lawyer
I know plumbers are supposed to be well paid and I haven't read the article but I assume this is the charge out rate and therefore gross pay so their net will be less (similarly legal aid workers. I assume their overheads are less, but will still have them).
Criminal barristers though also have to pay chambers fees, transport costs etc.
I got charged over £100 by a plumber just for a 15 minute call out in which nothing ended up needing doing
Ah, we’ve moved on to the “trans women are sexual deviants who are coming for your children” part of the argument..
I think @Cyclefree and JK Rowling have a particular problem with the only requirement for biological men to access women only spaces being self identification.
Now, I don't think it's an outrageous to worry that some predatory men might... you know... lie to access female only spaces.
Does that sound like a ridiculous concern?
(peeks over parapet nervously)
I guess the thing here is some kind of balance. A male rapist shouldn't just be able to say, hey I'm trans, send me to a women's prison. However, neither would I be comfortable sending someone with evidence of living as a woman for ten years (but with male sex organs) to a male prison after being caught shoplifting (replace with more custodial-plausible non-sexual offence). That second person is likely to become a victim of abuse, physical, sexual or both if sent to a male prison. Male prison seems like a bad answer. Female prison? Maybe, but definitely with some extra safeguards.
I don't believe making sensible decisions here is beyond the wit of the appropriate authority (judiciary? prison services? home office? Welly, maybe in the second two cases at least it is, but it should not be).
We might need to invest to set up facilties that are safe for these people and safe for others, but we are talking a small part of the population here (wrt trans people in prisons) so it should be doable.
Other single-sex areas are more problematic. For me, gender neutral facilities make more sense, but there's a cost to those. The local commuity pool has mixed changing room which is all cubicles. That makes sense, but retrofitting every pool/gym etc with communal changing rooms would be expensive.
I do feel that both sides are focussing on the extreme (and rare) occurences instead of discussing a sensible middle ground and the idea that much of this might be case by case without blanket answers.
(I'm a man, which of course influences my views. If I was a woman, I may see things differently, but I've been considering what I'd be happy for my wife/daughter to be exposed to here)
On these issues, I suspect women look for the worst case scenario simply because they can think of so many examples where it has happened to them or someone they know - the perv who ogled them when they were in school, the guy who wouldn't take no for an answer in a bar etc. Men just don't have to deal with that issue.
PS I suspect because of that these new Ray-Ban x Meta glasses won't take off. I was in Cannes last week and two girls said to a guy wearing them "don't look at me with those on" as they feared he was taking videos and snaps. He obviously wasn't but it was clear the women were very uncomfortable
Ah, we’ve moved on to the “trans women are sexual deviants who are coming for your children” part of the argument..
I think @Cyclefree and JK Rowling have a particular problem with the only requirement for biological men to access women only spaces being self identification.
Now, I don't think it's an outrageous to worry that some predatory men might... you know... lie to access female only spaces.
Does that sound like a ridiculous concern?
Yes.
Plenty of women have been assaulted in the Ladies Loo by men who were definitely not identifying as women. It has happened for years if not decades. Heck even Tom Cruise followed Kelly McGillis into the Ladies in Top Gun to pester her verbally.
Women have been beaten in toilets, assaulted in toilets, filming urinating in toilets (spycams) and none of it was done by "men identifiying as women".
In that case, why have women only spaces at all? If people with penises are allowed to enter them, why have them?
FFS!
They are not ALLOWED to enter them, but they do.
You are not ALLOWED to murder people, but it still happens.
Criminals do not obey the law, it is a career requirement for them...
Yes but those crimes are subject to legal sanction.
Your view seems to be that people can self certify to womanhood simply by declaration. A would be entrant to women's spaces would only have to say 'I am a woman' after which the person would be beyond the reach of any sanction.
So now you are telling me what I am thinking?
A toilet is "protected" only be a door and by social convention, there is no "pass phrase" or code. Are you suggesting Door Monitors who check those going in? Perhaps a person to stand inside and watch? Or cameras?
And all to solve 0.0001% of a problem that has been occurring for as long as there been people.
Hmm, looking at flight tracker, there’s an emergency Thompson airlines Boeing 767 out of Manchester, currently holding in circles near Buxton. Hope it’s nothing too serious.
So there is. Burning fuel, waiting for an external inspection, or an incident on board?
The passengers must be getting dizzy.
Reminded me of this one from a few years ago: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9KhZwsYtNDE A Thompson 757 out of Manchester, with a bird strike into the engine on takeoff. An example of textbook use of the radio by the Captain, in training courses.
If today’s incident were a serious emergency, they’d have landed straight back overweight, so my guess is a minor emergency for this one - perhaps a hydraulic problem, or the gear/flaps didn’t go up properly.
Seems to have overflown the tower now. Checking gear down?
He went over the field at 7,000’ - that would need a decent pair of binoculars from the guy in the tower! Maybe someone looking at something though.
He’s making circles just North of Liverpool now. Still can’t can’t see any news on it though, surely there must be one planespotter with a radio nearby?
Just received my copy of the British General Election of 2005 (signed 'yours psephologically' by David Butler, which is a nice treat for a second hand book bought for peanuts), and I know it was not that exciting an election but it's like a third of the size of 2017. Most disappointing, I judge my books by the inch (not the mm)
Ah, we’ve moved on to the “trans women are sexual deviants who are coming for your children” part of the argument..
I think @Cyclefree and JK Rowling have a particular problem with the only requirement for biological men to access women only spaces being self identification.
Now, I don't think it's an outrageous to worry that some predatory men might... you know... lie to access female only spaces.
Does that sound like a ridiculous concern?
Yes.
Plenty of women have been assaulted in the Ladies Loo by men who were definitely not identifying as women. It has happened for years if not decades. Heck even Tom Cruise followed Kelly McGillis into the Ladies in Top Gun to pester her verbally.
Women have been beaten in toilets, assaulted in toilets, filming urinating in toilets (spycams) and none of it was done by "men identifiying as women".
In that case, why have women only spaces at all? If people with penises are allowed to enter them, why have them?
FFS!
They are not ALLOWED to enter them, but they do.
You are not ALLOWED to murder people, but it still happens.
Criminals do not obey the law, it is a career requirement for them...
This is flawed reasoning.
What a criminal will want to do is argue they have a credible explanation for the facts the prosecution (if it comes to that) can prove. So, if someone can validly argue they had a legitimate reason to be in the women's toilets, it puts them in a much better position to get away with whatever it is they are alleged to have done there.
To take your example of murder, you are in a much better position as a murderer if the fact you were in the room, carrying a concealed weapon, is all seen to be perfectly legitimate - your argument that it was self defence, or someone else snatched your weapon (or whatever) is then far more credible.
Indeed, very often convictions aren't entirely based on direct evidence of the crime itself being committed but associated acts. If you're found disposing of a dead body, for example, that's very strong evidence you created it, and that it wasn't an accident (as it's an incredibly odd reaction to an accident to grab a shovel rather than a phone to call an ambulance).
Breakfasting in crowded Kotor. It is beautiful but my god the tourists. They surge with the Adriatic heat
Venice is the only place on earth that somehow rises above intense mass tourism, or shrugs it off, or even becomes more interesting thereby, because it was always a stage set: awaiting an audience
Where are most of the tourists from, or is it a mix?
A fair mix. Probably Americans are the most numerous, to my surprise, Why here and nowhere else?
A lot of Italians (they only have to cross the Adriatic, I guess), plenty of Russians, a few Brits, Germans and Spaniards
The Montenegrins feel very Serbian, when you point out that their language is close to Serbian they say Yes YES, It is Serbian!
Americans are numerous already in many of Europe's tourist hotspots - the Cinque Terre in Italy was awash with them. Because of the flight restrictions and the higher cost of being unable to return home if they got covid, hardly any Americans have been travelling these last few years, and those in steady jobs have money saved for a European trip. With the regulations recently lifted, there are tons of Americans making and wanting to plan European trips right now, as a dip into any of the principal travel forums will quickly demonstrate.
The difference with Americans - partly because a European trip for most of them is both more special and more rare - and partly because they follow commentators like Steves and all want to visit the most recommended spots on social media - is that those locations that have been recommended by Steves and others are flooded with Americans (so, in Italy, it's always Rome, Florence, Venice, the Amalfi Coast, the Cinque Terre, and the high Dolomites) and it is very rare to run into US tourists anywhere else.
If you have lots in Montenegro, I would put money on Rick Steves having done a video about it.
They follow a highly predictable circuit in the UK as well, typically, Stonehenge, Bath and London.
I tried telling a few in Bath that Stonehenge was shit and there were a million other better places to visit - but whilst they listened they still said they had to do it.
If you are going to do a stone circle - do Avebury at least getting a drink is easy...
Yeah, I recommended Avebury.
To be fair, I don't know how disappointing the Statue of Liberty is, for example, but I suspect I'd at least want to see it and make my mind up for myself if I were a tourist and had never seen it before.
It is underwhelming.
American tourists tend to be after things they can't get at home, like castles and palaces and more generally anything really old. You don't get much older than Stonehenge. I've never visited it myself but I have driven past it and it looks pretty cool.
If I were building a 1 week UK itinerary it would probably look something like this: Day 1: British Museum (early); Thames River cruise; West End show or Ronnie Scotts Day 2: Maritime Greenwich; picnic in a park in South London; night out in Peckham Day 3: day trip to Cambridge; punt to Grantchester; pub lunch; return to London to catch sleeper to Glasgow Day 4: day trip Loch Lomond Day 5: train to York via Settle and Carlisle. Visit York Minster; hire a car and drive to Yorkshire Dales and stay at a pub Day 6: walking in Yorkshire Dales; pub dinner Day 7: return car, train back to London and flight home. Could replace Glasgow/Loch Lomond with Edinburgh/East Neuk.
7 days is a very short time for something like this. Night out in Peckham seems a bit err.. parochial..
If I was to change your schedule but keep the broad theme I'd go Buck Palace and Windsor castle for day 2
I was trying to give the tourists a taste of urban nightlife outside of Central London. There are loads of really fantastic restaurants in Peckham and some very buzzing bars including a couple of rooftop bars that offer unmatched views across London and are a lot of fun over the summer. Peckham has some of the best nightlife in London, it has taken Hackney's crown as the latter has become too gentrified. Similarly, some of the parks in South London are beautiful when the sun is out, great for experiencing a bit of normal life, people watching, nice views. It's good to see all the usual old stuff but there is more to Britain than the Royal family.
Hmm, looking at flight tracker, there’s an emergency Thompson airlines Boeing 767 out of Manchester, currently holding in circles near Buxton. Hope it’s nothing too serious.
Hmm, looking at flight tracker, there’s an emergency Thompson airlines Boeing 767 out of Manchester, currently holding in circles near Buxton. Hope it’s nothing too serious.
So there is. Burning fuel, waiting for an external inspection, or an incident on board?
The passengers must be getting dizzy.
Reminded me of this one from a few years ago: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9KhZwsYtNDE A Thompson 757 out of Manchester, with a bird strike into the engine on takeoff. An example of textbook use of the radio by the Captain, in training courses.
If today’s incident were a serious emergency, they’d have landed straight back overweight, so my guess is a minor emergency for this one - perhaps a hydraulic problem, or the gear/flaps didn’t go up properly.
Seems to have overflown the tower now. Checking gear down?
He went over the field at 7,000’ - that would need a decent pair of binoculars from the guy in the tower! Maybe someone looking at something though.
He’s making circles just North of Liverpool now. Still can’t can’t see any news on it though, surely there must be one planespotter with a radio nearby?
Appears to be descending to land. I'm sure we'll find out eventually...
Breakfasting in crowded Kotor. It is beautiful but my god the tourists. They surge with the Adriatic heat
Venice is the only place on earth that somehow rises above intense mass tourism, or shrugs it off, or even becomes more interesting thereby, because it was always a stage set: awaiting an audience
Where are most of the tourists from, or is it a mix?
A fair mix. Probably Americans are the most numerous, to my surprise, Why here and nowhere else?
A lot of Italians (they only have to cross the Adriatic, I guess), plenty of Russians, a few Brits, Germans and Spaniards
The Montenegrins feel very Serbian, when you point out that their language is close to Serbian they say Yes YES, It is Serbian!
Americans are numerous already in many of Europe's tourist hotspots - the Cinque Terre in Italy was awash with them. Because of the flight restrictions and the higher cost of being unable to return home if they got covid, hardly any Americans have been travelling these last few years, and those in steady jobs have money saved for a European trip. With the regulations recently lifted, there are tons of Americans making and wanting to plan European trips right now, as a dip into any of the principal travel forums will quickly demonstrate.
The difference with Americans - partly because a European trip for most of them is both more special and more rare - and partly because they follow commentators like Steves and all want to visit the most recommended spots on social media - is that those locations that have been recommended by Steves and others are flooded with Americans (so, in Italy, it's always Rome, Florence, Venice, the Amalfi Coast, the Cinque Terre, and the high Dolomites) and it is very rare to run into US tourists anywhere else.
If you have lots in Montenegro, I would put money on Rick Steves having done a video about it.
They follow a highly predictable circuit in the UK as well, typically, Stonehenge, Bath and London.
I tried telling a few in Bath that Stonehenge was shit and there were a million other better places to visit - but whilst they listened they still said they had to do it.
If you are going to do a stone circle - do Avebury at least getting a drink is easy...
Yeah, I recommended Avebury.
To be fair, I don't know how disappointing the Statue of Liberty is, for example, but I suspect I'd at least want to see it and make my mind up for myself if I were a tourist and had never seen it before.
I really don't think Stonehenge is shit. The new museum is great and the restored landscape is also good. Yes you can't directly approach the stones, but that's mainly because people are dicks and would vandalise. I'd advise visiting early.
I also like Avebury for a different experience.
But both are massive frauds - rebuilt in the 20th C after much neglect.
I took the little 'un to Stonehenge three years ago, before Covid. He had just turned five, and had been interested in Stonehenge for a couple of years, had made models of it, read books (with help) on it, talked incessantly about it, made Close Encounters of the Third Kind style food models of it.
And we got there with pre-booked tickets. Firstly, the queue for pre-booked tickets was long and outside the building in the drizzle. And the canopy didn't keep the drizzle off as the wind was blowing. Then they could not find my reservation, even with the printed-off tickets. When they eventually did, the museum itself was fascinating but tiny (the current British Museum exhibition is much, much better). Then there was a crummy bus ride, and a long queue of people walking about like a chain gang.
It was soulless. They have taken a place that should be spiritually uplifting and turned it into a theme park.
I can only faintly remember it but (just) belong to the generation where you could turn up at Stonehenge and wander round.
For something like it in atmosphere, though not amazingness, try Castlerigg Stone Circle, with a world class setting.
I'll have to go there, thanks. I love Avebury (which others have mentioned), and my favourite stone circle is the tiny but atmospheric Nine Ladies in the Peak District. But I'd also like to give an honourable mention to Kilmartin on the west coast of Scotland, which had loads of stones.
And I'd love to go to Callinish.
Callinish is what Stonehenge should be. Uncrowded, and you can walk amongst the stones. Do go when you can.
I quite like the Welsh dolmens. Pentre Ifan is the classic one, and you can spend a good while there with it all to yourself, but there are many others.
The stone circle on Mull is the opposite of Stonehenge. Wear wellies.
Actually Cyclefree of all people probably knows you DO build law around rotten apples.
That's literally the point of most law and safeguarding, to protect people from the rotten apples.
Trans people need protections but NOT in a way that violates women's protections.
And that's the biggest problem with the Trans debate. The number of actual trans (men -> women) is sadly way less than the number of male sex abusers who can see an opportunity (open) to abuse...
The reality is that there is no decent answer here because both sides have such set views they are unable to see the valid points in the other side of the argument.
It's not that intractable imo. Reform the transition process so it's quicker and less medicalized. Then have a default principle in practice of trans inclusion. But with the option of exclusion (ie stay sex-based) if there's a genuine good reason for it. So, keep asking the question: is there a solid, evidence-based reason for excluding trans people from X? Where X is a place or an activity. Eg (my opinion) a Yes for elite physical female sports (real issue) but a No for public toilets (confected issue). That's my view anyway. And Phil is right to point out there are some real nasties active in the anti-trans movement. People who see it as a route to attack other rights and a safe space to vent their bigotry and spleen. There's absolutely no question of that.
Grand Designs Bot @GrandDBot · 5m Kevin travels to Buckinghamshire where entitled tosspots Boris and Carrie are planning a £150,000 tree house for the spoilt toddler and his son Wilf. #GrandDesigns
Hmm, looking at flight tracker, there’s an emergency Thompson airlines Boeing 767 out of Manchester, currently holding in circles near Buxton. Hope it’s nothing too serious.
So there is. Burning fuel, waiting for an external inspection, or an incident on board?
The passengers must be getting dizzy.
Reminded me of this one from a few years ago: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9KhZwsYtNDE A Thompson 757 out of Manchester, with a bird strike into the engine on takeoff. An example of textbook use of the radio by the Captain, in training courses.
If today’s incident were a serious emergency, they’d have landed straight back overweight, so my guess is a minor emergency for this one - perhaps a hydraulic problem, or the gear/flaps didn’t go up properly.
Seems to have overflown the tower now. Checking gear down?
He went over the field at 7,000’ - that would need a decent pair of binoculars from the guy in the tower! Maybe someone looking at something though.
He’s making circles just North of Liverpool now. Still can’t can’t see any news on it though, surely there must be one planespotter with a radio nearby?
Appears to be descending to land. I'm sure we'll find out eventually...
Coming back to Manchester now. There’s a few ground vehicles out to meet him.
Breakfasting in crowded Kotor. It is beautiful but my god the tourists. They surge with the Adriatic heat
Venice is the only place on earth that somehow rises above intense mass tourism, or shrugs it off, or even becomes more interesting thereby, because it was always a stage set: awaiting an audience
Where are most of the tourists from, or is it a mix?
A fair mix. Probably Americans are the most numerous, to my surprise, Why here and nowhere else?
A lot of Italians (they only have to cross the Adriatic, I guess), plenty of Russians, a few Brits, Germans and Spaniards
The Montenegrins feel very Serbian, when you point out that their language is close to Serbian they say Yes YES, It is Serbian!
Americans are numerous already in many of Europe's tourist hotspots - the Cinque Terre in Italy was awash with them. Because of the flight restrictions and the higher cost of being unable to return home if they got covid, hardly any Americans have been travelling these last few years, and those in steady jobs have money saved for a European trip. With the regulations recently lifted, there are tons of Americans making and wanting to plan European trips right now, as a dip into any of the principal travel forums will quickly demonstrate.
The difference with Americans - partly because a European trip for most of them is both more special and more rare - and partly because they follow commentators like Steves and all want to visit the most recommended spots on social media - is that those locations that have been recommended by Steves and others are flooded with Americans (so, in Italy, it's always Rome, Florence, Venice, the Amalfi Coast, the Cinque Terre, and the high Dolomites) and it is very rare to run into US tourists anywhere else.
If you have lots in Montenegro, I would put money on Rick Steves having done a video about it.
They follow a highly predictable circuit in the UK as well, typically, Stonehenge, Bath and London.
I tried telling a few in Bath that Stonehenge was shit and there were a million other better places to visit - but whilst they listened they still said they had to do it.
If you are going to do a stone circle - do Avebury at least getting a drink is easy...
Yeah, I recommended Avebury.
To be fair, I don't know how disappointing the Statue of Liberty is, for example, but I suspect I'd at least want to see it and make my mind up for myself if I were a tourist and had never seen it before.
I really don't think Stonehenge is shit. The new museum is great and the restored landscape is also good. Yes you can't directly approach the stones, but that's mainly because people are dicks and would vandalise. I'd advise visiting early.
I also like Avebury for a different experience.
But both are massive frauds - rebuilt in the 20th C after much neglect.
I took the little 'un to Stonehenge three years ago, before Covid. He had just turned five, and had been interested in Stonehenge for a couple of years, had made models of it, read books (with help) on it, talked incessantly about it, made Close Encounters of the Third Kind style food models of it.
And we got there with pre-booked tickets. Firstly, the queue for pre-booked tickets was long and outside the building in the drizzle. And the canopy didn't keep the drizzle off as the wind was blowing. Then they could not find my reservation, even with the printed-off tickets. When they eventually did, the museum itself was fascinating but tiny (the current British Museum exhibition is much, much better). Then there was a crummy bus ride, and a long queue of people walking about like a chain gang.
It was soulless. They have taken a place that should be spiritually uplifting and turned it into a theme park.
I can only faintly remember it but (just) belong to the generation where you could turn up at Stonehenge and wander round.
For something like it in atmosphere, though not amazingness, try Castlerigg Stone Circle, with a world class setting.
I'll have to go there, thanks. I love Avebury (which others have mentioned), and my favourite stone circle is the tiny but atmospheric Nine Ladies in the Peak District. But I'd also like to give an honourable mention to Kilmartin on the west coast of Scotland, which had loads of stones.
On the subject of Americans and travel, I always feel sorry for them when I see them abroad, especially in Europe
They only get about 2 weeks holiday a year and most of them can only afford to go to Europe (the ultimate destination) once every few years, so they end up going to the obvious places which are full of other American tourists (like Kotor, Montenegro)
They must have a terrifically warped sense of what Europe is really like. *Everywhere is made of handsome stone but all the streets are full of souvenir shops so it resembles Disneyland*. And all menus feature pizza
Breakfasting in crowded Kotor. It is beautiful but my god the tourists. They surge with the Adriatic heat
Venice is the only place on earth that somehow rises above intense mass tourism, or shrugs it off, or even becomes more interesting thereby, because it was always a stage set: awaiting an audience
Where are most of the tourists from, or is it a mix?
A fair mix. Probably Americans are the most numerous, to my surprise, Why here and nowhere else?
A lot of Italians (they only have to cross the Adriatic, I guess), plenty of Russians, a few Brits, Germans and Spaniards
The Montenegrins feel very Serbian, when you point out that their language is close to Serbian they say Yes YES, It is Serbian!
Americans are numerous already in many of Europe's tourist hotspots - the Cinque Terre in Italy was awash with them. Because of the flight restrictions and the higher cost of being unable to return home if they got covid, hardly any Americans have been travelling these last few years, and those in steady jobs have money saved for a European trip. With the regulations recently lifted, there are tons of Americans making and wanting to plan European trips right now, as a dip into any of the principal travel forums will quickly demonstrate.
The difference with Americans - partly because a European trip for most of them is both more special and more rare - and partly because they follow commentators like Steves and all want to visit the most recommended spots on social media - is that those locations that have been recommended by Steves and others are flooded with Americans (so, in Italy, it's always Rome, Florence, Venice, the Amalfi Coast, the Cinque Terre, and the high Dolomites) and it is very rare to run into US tourists anywhere else.
If you have lots in Montenegro, I would put money on Rick Steves having done a video about it.
They follow a highly predictable circuit in the UK as well, typically, Stonehenge, Bath and London.
I tried telling a few in Bath that Stonehenge was shit and there were a million other better places to visit - but whilst they listened they still said they had to do it.
If you are going to do a stone circle - do Avebury at least getting a drink is easy...
Yeah, I recommended Avebury.
To be fair, I don't know how disappointing the Statue of Liberty is, for example, but I suspect I'd at least want to see it and make my mind up for myself if I were a tourist and had never seen it before.
It is underwhelming.
American tourists tend to be after things they can't get at home, like castles and palaces and more generally anything really old. You don't get much older than Stonehenge. I've never visited it myself but I have driven past it and it looks pretty cool.
If I were building a 1 week UK itinerary it would probably look something like this: Day 1: British Museum (early); Thames River cruise; West End show or Ronnie Scotts Day 2: Maritime Greenwich; picnic in a park in South London; night out in Peckham Day 3: day trip to Cambridge; punt to Grantchester; pub lunch; return to London to catch sleeper to Glasgow Day 4: day trip Loch Lomond Day 5: train to York via Settle and Carlisle. Visit York Minster; hire a car and drive to Yorkshire Dales and stay at a pub Day 6: walking in Yorkshire Dales; pub dinner Day 7: return car, train back to London and flight home. Could replace Glasgow/Loch Lomond with Edinburgh/East Neuk.
Or you could do amazing stuff and go home to USA and find no-one else has done it, or heard of most of it.
Walk the City of London for a couple of days, but miss St Paul's and Tower. Stamford Boston Lincoln Cathedral etc Stow Walpole St Peter Walk old Norwich for a day Edington Priory Bradford on Avon St Lawrence Selby Abbey Durham Stirling (be selective)
A bit ecclesiastical, but lots of pubs in between.
I once planned a tour of the Southern part of Britain for a Dutch friend, though didn't eventually get to do it. They already knew London so we were going to head straight off.
Winchester and South downs Poole Harbour, Sandbanks, Purbeck Dartmouth, Totnes, Dartmoor Glastonbury, Bath and Wells Wye valley, Monmouthshire, Herefordshire, Black mountains Cotswolds Oxford Back to London.
Great. If you have an extra day do the wall circuit (as much as possible) of Chichester and Fishbourne.
Ah, we’ve moved on to the “trans women are sexual deviants who are coming for your children” part of the argument..
I think @Cyclefree and JK Rowling have a particular problem with the only requirement for biological men to access women only spaces being self identification.
Now, I don't think it's an outrageous to worry that some predatory men might... you know... lie to access female only spaces.
Does that sound like a ridiculous concern?
Yes.
Plenty of women have been assaulted in the Ladies Loo by men who were definitely not identifying as women. It has happened for years if not decades. Heck even Tom Cruise followed Kelly McGillis into the Ladies in Top Gun to pester her verbally.
Women have been beaten in toilets, assaulted in toilets, filming urinating in toilets (spycams) and none of it was done by "men identifiying as women".
In that case, why have women only spaces at all? If people with penises are allowed to enter them, why have them?
FFS!
They are not ALLOWED to enter them, but they do.
You are not ALLOWED to murder people, but it still happens.
Criminals do not obey the law, it is a career requirement for them...
Yes but those crimes are subject to legal sanction.
Your view seems to be that people can self certify to womanhood simply by declaration. A would be entrant to women's spaces would only have to say 'I am a woman' after which the person would be beyond the reach of any sanction.
I think that isn't how "self declaration" works. It just means that someone can self declare to get a Gender Reassignment Certificate. Without a GRC their actions would not be appropriate.
If you think they’re not doing the same thing in the UK, you’re naïve.
The Tavistock case on Gillick competance & trans healthcare was led by a prominent anti-abortion lawyer - where did the funding for that case come from?
I have a bunch of screen capped quotes from GC types on Twitter that were rapidly deleted, so won’t share them - you can find them easily enough if you want to. Posy Parker seems pretty explicit about it on Facebook.
and so on...
But once again, doesn’t it worry you that you’re taking the same political side as these people? Does it give you no pause at all? You are the one who dragged trans rights into this discussion alongside the rights to aborton & all the others - have you not noticed that the “anti women” groups that want to put all the other rights on the chopping block are also going after trans rights? Does the reality that you’ve chosen their side on this issue not give you any pause at all?
Many moons I posted on here that a friend of mine, prominent in this issue, had told me that one of the reasons that it was important to uphold trans rights (and they readily accept that eg prisons and sport are likely carve outs) was to look at who's on the other side of the debate at which point as you note, it becomes obvious that if you are "anti-trans" (I'm not saying anyone on here is but as a general umbrella term) then you line up with some pretty odious people.
Hmm, looking at flight tracker, there’s an emergency Thompson airlines Boeing 767 out of Manchester, currently holding in circles near Buxton. Hope it’s nothing too serious.
So there is. Burning fuel, waiting for an external inspection, or an incident on board?
The passengers must be getting dizzy.
Reminded me of this one from a few years ago: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9KhZwsYtNDE A Thompson 757 out of Manchester, with a bird strike into the engine on takeoff. An example of textbook use of the radio by the Captain, in training courses.
If today’s incident were a serious emergency, they’d have landed straight back overweight, so my guess is a minor emergency for this one - perhaps a hydraulic problem, or the gear/flaps didn’t go up properly.
Seems to have overflown the tower now. Checking gear down?
He went over the field at 7,000’ - that would need a decent pair of binoculars from the guy in the tower! Maybe someone looking at something though.
He’s making circles just North of Liverpool now. Still can’t can’t see any news on it though, surely there must be one planespotter with a radio nearby?
Appears to be descending to land. I'm sure we'll find out eventually...
Coming back to Manchester now. There’s a few ground vehicles out to meet him.
flight radar has it off the end of the runway, must be a glitch in the software.
Breakfasting in crowded Kotor. It is beautiful but my god the tourists. They surge with the Adriatic heat
Venice is the only place on earth that somehow rises above intense mass tourism, or shrugs it off, or even becomes more interesting thereby, because it was always a stage set: awaiting an audience
Where are most of the tourists from, or is it a mix?
A fair mix. Probably Americans are the most numerous, to my surprise, Why here and nowhere else?
A lot of Italians (they only have to cross the Adriatic, I guess), plenty of Russians, a few Brits, Germans and Spaniards
The Montenegrins feel very Serbian, when you point out that their language is close to Serbian they say Yes YES, It is Serbian!
Americans are numerous already in many of Europe's tourist hotspots - the Cinque Terre in Italy was awash with them. Because of the flight restrictions and the higher cost of being unable to return home if they got covid, hardly any Americans have been travelling these last few years, and those in steady jobs have money saved for a European trip. With the regulations recently lifted, there are tons of Americans making and wanting to plan European trips right now, as a dip into any of the principal travel forums will quickly demonstrate.
The difference with Americans - partly because a European trip for most of them is both more special and more rare - and partly because they follow commentators like Steves and all want to visit the most recommended spots on social media - is that those locations that have been recommended by Steves and others are flooded with Americans (so, in Italy, it's always Rome, Florence, Venice, the Amalfi Coast, the Cinque Terre, and the high Dolomites) and it is very rare to run into US tourists anywhere else.
If you have lots in Montenegro, I would put money on Rick Steves having done a video about it.
They follow a highly predictable circuit in the UK as well, typically, Stonehenge, Bath and London.
I tried telling a few in Bath that Stonehenge was shit and there were a million other better places to visit - but whilst they listened they still said they had to do it.
If you are going to do a stone circle - do Avebury at least getting a drink is easy...
Yeah, I recommended Avebury.
To be fair, I don't know how disappointing the Statue of Liberty is, for example, but I suspect I'd at least want to see it and make my mind up for myself if I were a tourist and had never seen it before.
It is underwhelming.
American tourists tend to be after things they can't get at home, like castles and palaces and more generally anything really old. You don't get much older than Stonehenge. I've never visited it myself but I have driven past it and it looks pretty cool.
If I were building a 1 week UK itinerary it would probably look something like this: Day 1: British Museum (early); Thames River cruise; West End show or Ronnie Scotts Day 2: Maritime Greenwich; picnic in a park in South London; night out in Peckham Day 3: day trip to Cambridge; punt to Grantchester; pub lunch; return to London to catch sleeper to Glasgow Day 4: day trip Loch Lomond Day 5: train to York via Settle and Carlisle. Visit York Minster; hire a car and drive to Yorkshire Dales and stay at a pub Day 6: walking in Yorkshire Dales; pub dinner Day 7: return car, train back to London and flight home. Could replace Glasgow/Loch Lomond with Edinburgh/East Neuk.
7 days is a very short time for something like this. Night out in Peckham seems a bit err.. parochial..
If I was to change your schedule but keep the broad theme I'd go Buck Palace and Windsor castle for day 2
That seems a slightly odd itinerary; amend as follows:-
Day 1: add London Eye. Day 2: add HMS Belfast unless from a state with its own ww2 warship museum. Day 3: or Oxford. Day 4: Glasgow to Loch Lomond; why? The Edinburgh Festival & Fringe are more entertaining. Day 5: (York) railway museum and/or air museum Day 6: OP must be a northerner if he/she thinks walking is a leisure activity, and if it is, why hire a car? Day 7: don't they have airports up north?
Also, Stonehenge is best driven past because apart from looking at the stones (from the road) there is not much else. I'd imagine you could do the whole tour on Youtube.
If you think they’re not doing the same thing in the UK, you’re naïve.
The Tavistock case on Gillick competance & trans healthcare was led by a prominent anti-abortion lawyer - where did the funding for that case come from?
I have a bunch of screen capped quotes from GC types on Twitter that were rapidly deleted, so won’t share them - you can find them easily enough if you want to. Posy Parker seems pretty explicit about it on Facebook.
and so on...
But once again, doesn’t it worry you that you’re taking the same political side as these people? Does it give you no pause at all? You are the one who dragged trans rights into this discussion alongside the rights to aborton & all the others - have you not noticed that the “anti women” groups that want to put all the other rights on the chopping block are also going after trans rights? Does the reality that you’ve chosen their side on this issue not give you any pause at all?
Many moons I posted on here that a friend of mine, prominent in this issue, had told me that one of the reasons that it was important to uphold trans rights (and they readily accept that eg prisons and sport are likely carve outs) was to look at who's on the other side of the debate at which point as you note, it becomes obvious that if you are "anti-trans" (I'm not saying anyone on here is but as a general umbrella term) then you line up with some pretty odious people.
Hmm, looking at flight tracker, there’s an emergency Thompson airlines Boeing 767 out of Manchester, currently holding in circles near Buxton. Hope it’s nothing too serious.
So there is. Burning fuel, waiting for an external inspection, or an incident on board?
The passengers must be getting dizzy.
Reminded me of this one from a few years ago: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9KhZwsYtNDE A Thompson 757 out of Manchester, with a bird strike into the engine on takeoff. An example of textbook use of the radio by the Captain, in training courses.
If today’s incident were a serious emergency, they’d have landed straight back overweight, so my guess is a minor emergency for this one - perhaps a hydraulic problem, or the gear/flaps didn’t go up properly.
Seems to have overflown the tower now. Checking gear down?
He went over the field at 7,000’ - that would need a decent pair of binoculars from the guy in the tower! Maybe someone looking at something though.
He’s making circles just North of Liverpool now. Still can’t can’t see any news on it though, surely there must be one planespotter with a radio nearby?
Appears to be descending to land. I'm sure we'll find out eventually...
Coming back to Manchester now. There’s a few ground vehicles out to meet him.
flight radar has it off the end of the runway, must be a glitch in the software.
Breakfasting in crowded Kotor. It is beautiful but my god the tourists. They surge with the Adriatic heat
Venice is the only place on earth that somehow rises above intense mass tourism, or shrugs it off, or even becomes more interesting thereby, because it was always a stage set: awaiting an audience
Where are most of the tourists from, or is it a mix?
A fair mix. Probably Americans are the most numerous, to my surprise, Why here and nowhere else?
A lot of Italians (they only have to cross the Adriatic, I guess), plenty of Russians, a few Brits, Germans and Spaniards
The Montenegrins feel very Serbian, when you point out that their language is close to Serbian they say Yes YES, It is Serbian!
Americans are numerous already in many of Europe's tourist hotspots - the Cinque Terre in Italy was awash with them. Because of the flight restrictions and the higher cost of being unable to return home if they got covid, hardly any Americans have been travelling these last few years, and those in steady jobs have money saved for a European trip. With the regulations recently lifted, there are tons of Americans making and wanting to plan European trips right now, as a dip into any of the principal travel forums will quickly demonstrate.
The difference with Americans - partly because a European trip for most of them is both more special and more rare - and partly because they follow commentators like Steves and all want to visit the most recommended spots on social media - is that those locations that have been recommended by Steves and others are flooded with Americans (so, in Italy, it's always Rome, Florence, Venice, the Amalfi Coast, the Cinque Terre, and the high Dolomites) and it is very rare to run into US tourists anywhere else.
If you have lots in Montenegro, I would put money on Rick Steves having done a video about it.
They follow a highly predictable circuit in the UK as well, typically, Stonehenge, Bath and London.
I tried telling a few in Bath that Stonehenge was shit and there were a million other better places to visit - but whilst they listened they still said they had to do it.
If you are going to do a stone circle - do Avebury at least getting a drink is easy...
Yeah, I recommended Avebury.
To be fair, I don't know how disappointing the Statue of Liberty is, for example, but I suspect I'd at least want to see it and make my mind up for myself if I were a tourist and had never seen it before.
It is underwhelming.
American tourists tend to be after things they can't get at home, like castles and palaces and more generally anything really old. You don't get much older than Stonehenge. I've never visited it myself but I have driven past it and it looks pretty cool.
If I were building a 1 week UK itinerary it would probably look something like this: Day 1: British Museum (early); Thames River cruise; West End show or Ronnie Scotts Day 2: Maritime Greenwich; picnic in a park in South London; night out in Peckham Day 3: day trip to Cambridge; punt to Grantchester; pub lunch; return to London to catch sleeper to Glasgow Day 4: day trip Loch Lomond Day 5: train to York via Settle and Carlisle. Visit York Minster; hire a car and drive to Yorkshire Dales and stay at a pub Day 6: walking in Yorkshire Dales; pub dinner Day 7: return car, train back to London and flight home. Could replace Glasgow/Loch Lomond with Edinburgh/East Neuk.
Or you could do amazing stuff and go home to USA and find no-one else has done it, or heard of most of it.
Walk the City of London for a couple of days, but miss St Paul's and Tower. Stamford Boston Lincoln Cathedral etc Stow Walpole St Peter Walk old Norwich for a day Edington Priory Bradford on Avon St Lawrence Selby Abbey Durham Stirling (be selective)
A bit ecclesiastical, but lots of pubs in between.
I once planned a tour of the Southern part of Britain for a Dutch friend, though didn't eventually get to do it. They already knew London so we were going to head straight off.
Winchester and South downs Poole Harbour, Sandbanks, Purbeck Dartmouth, Totnes, Dartmoor Glastonbury, Bath and Wells Wye valley, Monmouthshire, Herefordshire, Black mountains Cotswolds Oxford Back to London.
Great. If you have an extra day do the wall circuit (as much as possible) of Chichester and Fishbourne.
You need at least one stately home/ancient house in a true tour of southern Britain
Petworth. Highclere. Knole. Perhaps Ightham Mote
And at least one great garden - probably England’s most unique contribution to the arts: the landscaped English garden
I’d go for Stourhead. Unutterably beautiful on a fine day
Breakfasting in crowded Kotor. It is beautiful but my god the tourists. They surge with the Adriatic heat
Venice is the only place on earth that somehow rises above intense mass tourism, or shrugs it off, or even becomes more interesting thereby, because it was always a stage set: awaiting an audience
Where are most of the tourists from, or is it a mix?
A fair mix. Probably Americans are the most numerous, to my surprise, Why here and nowhere else?
A lot of Italians (they only have to cross the Adriatic, I guess), plenty of Russians, a few Brits, Germans and Spaniards
The Montenegrins feel very Serbian, when you point out that their language is close to Serbian they say Yes YES, It is Serbian!
Americans are numerous already in many of Europe's tourist hotspots - the Cinque Terre in Italy was awash with them. Because of the flight restrictions and the higher cost of being unable to return home if they got covid, hardly any Americans have been travelling these last few years, and those in steady jobs have money saved for a European trip. With the regulations recently lifted, there are tons of Americans making and wanting to plan European trips right now, as a dip into any of the principal travel forums will quickly demonstrate.
The difference with Americans - partly because a European trip for most of them is both more special and more rare - and partly because they follow commentators like Steves and all want to visit the most recommended spots on social media - is that those locations that have been recommended by Steves and others are flooded with Americans (so, in Italy, it's always Rome, Florence, Venice, the Amalfi Coast, the Cinque Terre, and the high Dolomites) and it is very rare to run into US tourists anywhere else.
If you have lots in Montenegro, I would put money on Rick Steves having done a video about it.
They follow a highly predictable circuit in the UK as well, typically, Stonehenge, Bath and London.
I tried telling a few in Bath that Stonehenge was shit and there were a million other better places to visit - but whilst they listened they still said they had to do it.
If you are going to do a stone circle - do Avebury at least getting a drink is easy...
Yeah, I recommended Avebury.
To be fair, I don't know how disappointing the Statue of Liberty is, for example, but I suspect I'd at least want to see it and make my mind up for myself if I were a tourist and had never seen it before.
It is underwhelming.
American tourists tend to be after things they can't get at home, like castles and palaces and more generally anything really old. You don't get much older than Stonehenge. I've never visited it myself but I have driven past it and it looks pretty cool.
If I were building a 1 week UK itinerary it would probably look something like this: Day 1: British Museum (early); Thames River cruise; West End show or Ronnie Scotts Day 2: Maritime Greenwich; picnic in a park in South London; night out in Peckham Day 3: day trip to Cambridge; punt to Grantchester; pub lunch; return to London to catch sleeper to Glasgow Day 4: day trip Loch Lomond Day 5: train to York via Settle and Carlisle. Visit York Minster; hire a car and drive to Yorkshire Dales and stay at a pub Day 6: walking in Yorkshire Dales; pub dinner Day 7: return car, train back to London and flight home. Could replace Glasgow/Loch Lomond with Edinburgh/East Neuk.
7 days is a very short time for something like this. Night out in Peckham seems a bit err.. parochial..
If I was to change your schedule but keep the broad theme I'd go Buck Palace and Windsor castle for day 2
I was trying to give the tourists a taste of urban nightlife outside of Central London.
If you think they’re not doing the same thing in the UK, you’re naïve.
The Tavistock case on Gillick competance & trans healthcare was led by a prominent anti-abortion lawyer - where did the funding for that case come from?
I have a bunch of screen capped quotes from GC types on Twitter that were rapidly deleted, so won’t share them - you can find them easily enough if you want to. Posy Parker seems pretty explicit about it on Facebook.
and so on...
But once again, doesn’t it worry you that you’re taking the same political side as these people? Does it give you no pause at all? You are the one who dragged trans rights into this discussion alongside the rights to aborton & all the others - have you not noticed that the “anti women” groups that want to put all the other rights on the chopping block are also going after trans rights? Does the reality that you’ve chosen their side on this issue not give you any pause at all?
Many moons I posted on here that a friend of mine, prominent in this issue, had told me that one of the reasons that it was important to uphold trans rights (and they readily accept that eg prisons and sport are likely carve outs) was to look at who's on the other side of the debate at which point as you note, it becomes obvious that if you are "anti-trans" (I'm not saying anyone on here is but as a general umbrella term) then you line up with some pretty odious people.
Odious people like Nick Griffin, who wouldn’t shut up about girls in Rotherham being raped by Asians?
If you think they’re not doing the same thing in the UK, you’re naïve.
The Tavistock case on Gillick competance & trans healthcare was led by a prominent anti-abortion lawyer - where did the funding for that case come from?
I have a bunch of screen capped quotes from GC types on Twitter that were rapidly deleted, so won’t share them - you can find them easily enough if you want to. Posy Parker seems pretty explicit about it on Facebook.
and so on...
But once again, doesn’t it worry you that you’re taking the same political side as these people? Does it give you no pause at all? You are the one who dragged trans rights into this discussion alongside the rights to aborton & all the others - have you not noticed that the “anti women” groups that want to put all the other rights on the chopping block are also going after trans rights? Does the reality that you’ve chosen their side on this issue not give you any pause at all?
Many moons I posted on here that a friend of mine, prominent in this issue, had told me that one of the reasons that it was important to uphold trans rights (and they readily accept that eg prisons and sport are likely carve outs) was to look at who's on the other side of the debate at which point as you note, it becomes obvious that if you are "anti-trans" (I'm not saying anyone on here is but as a general umbrella term) then you line up with some pretty odious people.
But I don't think anyone is. I don't see how you could be. But if you just stipulate the three utterly obvious carveouts - sport, safe spaces from (mainly) heterosexual male predators, safeguards for children against being persuaded they are something they aren't - that's three utterly odious transphobic slurs. Apparently.
Ah, we’ve moved on to the “trans women are sexual deviants who are coming for your children” part of the argument..
I think @Cyclefree and JK Rowling have a particular problem with the only requirement for biological men to access women only spaces being self identification.
Now, I don't think it's an outrageous to worry that some predatory men might... you know... lie to access female only spaces.
Does that sound like a ridiculous concern?
Yes.
Plenty of women have been assaulted in the Ladies Loo by men who were definitely not identifying as women. It has happened for years if not decades. Heck even Tom Cruise followed Kelly McGillis into the Ladies in Top Gun to pester her verbally.
Women have been beaten in toilets, assaulted in toilets, filming urinating in toilets (spycams) and none of it was done by "men identifiying as women".
In that case, why have women only spaces at all? If people with penises are allowed to enter them, why have them?
FFS!
They are not ALLOWED to enter them, but they do.
You are not ALLOWED to murder people, but it still happens.
Criminals do not obey the law, it is a career requirement for them...
This is flawed reasoning.
What a criminal will want to do is argue they have a credible explanation for the facts the prosecution (if it comes to that) can prove. So, if someone can validly argue they had a legitimate reason to be in the women's toilets, it puts them in a much better position to get away with whatever it is they are alleged to have done there.
To take your example of murder, you are in a much better position as a murderer if the fact you were in the room, carrying a concealed weapon, is all seen to be perfectly legitimate - your argument that it was self defence, or someone else snatched your weapon (or whatever) is then far more credible.
Indeed, very often convictions aren't entirely based on direct evidence of the crime itself being committed but associated acts. If you're found disposing of a dead body, for example, that's very strong evidence you created it, and that it wasn't an accident (as it's an incredibly odd reaction to an accident to grab a shovel rather than a phone to call an ambulance).
A man being in a Ladies Loo is not a crime. However his behaviour may be criminal and THAT is the real issue here
Hmm, looking at flight tracker, there’s an emergency Thompson airlines Boeing 767 out of Manchester, currently holding in circles near Buxton. Hope it’s nothing too serious.
So there is. Burning fuel, waiting for an external inspection, or an incident on board?
The passengers must be getting dizzy.
Reminded me of this one from a few years ago: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9KhZwsYtNDE A Thompson 757 out of Manchester, with a bird strike into the engine on takeoff. An example of textbook use of the radio by the Captain, in training courses.
If today’s incident were a serious emergency, they’d have landed straight back overweight, so my guess is a minor emergency for this one - perhaps a hydraulic problem, or the gear/flaps didn’t go up properly.
Seems to have overflown the tower now. Checking gear down?
He went over the field at 7,000’ - that would need a decent pair of binoculars from the guy in the tower! Maybe someone looking at something though.
He’s making circles just North of Liverpool now. Still can’t can’t see any news on it though, surely there must be one planespotter with a radio nearby?
Appears to be descending to land. I'm sure we'll find out eventually...
Coming back to Manchester now. There’s a few ground vehicles out to meet him.
flight radar has it off the end of the runway, must be a glitch in the software.
Flight Radar extrapolates the path based on the last recorded heading and speed. Once the plane is low down the network that picks up the data struggles so there are usually glitches.
Actually Cyclefree of all people probably knows you DO build law around rotten apples.
That's literally the point of most law and safeguarding, to protect people from the rotten apples.
Trans people need protections but NOT in a way that violates women's protections.
And that's the biggest problem with the Trans debate. The number of actual trans (men -> women) is sadly way less than the number of male sex abusers who can see an opportunity (open) to abuse...
The reality is that there is no decent answer here because both sides have such set views they are unable to see the valid points in the other side of the argument.
It's not that intractable imo. Reform the transition process so it's quicker and less medicalized. Then have a default principle in practice of trans inclusion. But with the option of exclusion (ie stay sex-based) if there's a genuine good reason for it. So, keep asking the question: is there a solid, evidence-based reason for excluding trans people from X? Where X is a place or an activity. Eg (my opinion) a Yes for elite physical female sports (real issue) but a No for public toilets (confected issue). That's my view anyway. And Phil is right to point out there are some real nasties active in the anti-trans movement. People who see it as a route to attack other rights and a safe space to vent their bigotry and spleen. There's absolutely no question of that.
I don’t like damning people by association. I wouldn’t want my trans friends to be judged by the actions and words of Jennifer Yaniv any more than I’d want my GC feminist friends tarred with the actions of the nastier obsessives. They tend to have different motivations.
That said, I think the difficulty comes from the conflation of a biological characteristic and a set of societal expectations that makes disentangling the two very hard. This is why I tend to get run down in the middle of the road between said groups of friends. I don’t think you can ignore sex, but society doesn’t have a right to impose gendered expectations on people just because of tradition, and we should support people who suffer because of it.
Grand Designs Bot @GrandDBot · 5m Kevin travels to Buckinghamshire where entitled tosspots Boris and Carrie are planning a £150,000 tree house for the spoilt toddler and his son Wilf. #GrandDesigns
If you're Prime Minister it's hard to speak sincerely about the cost-of-living crisis if your toddler son gets on the property ladder before a nurse working 60 hours a week. https://twitter.com/drmeenalviz/status/1540606554617118720
🔥A Tory rebel MP says: "Boris treats the party likes he treats his women. He'll never leave us. But he'll lie to us and cheat on us until we eventually have to boot him out". https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1541385561075847170
If you think they’re not doing the same thing in the UK, you’re naïve.
The Tavistock case on Gillick competance & trans healthcare was led by a prominent anti-abortion lawyer - where did the funding for that case come from?
I have a bunch of screen capped quotes from GC types on Twitter that were rapidly deleted, so won’t share them - you can find them easily enough if you want to. Posy Parker seems pretty explicit about it on Facebook.
and so on...
But once again, doesn’t it worry you that you’re taking the same political side as these people? Does it give you no pause at all? You are the one who dragged trans rights into this discussion alongside the rights to aborton & all the others - have you not noticed that the “anti women” groups that want to put all the other rights on the chopping block are also going after trans rights? Does the reality that you’ve chosen their side on this issue not give you any pause at all?
Many moons I posted on here that a friend of mine, prominent in this issue, had told me that one of the reasons that it was important to uphold trans rights (and they readily accept that eg prisons and sport are likely carve outs) was to look at who's on the other side of the debate at which point as you note, it becomes obvious that if you are "anti-trans" (I'm not saying anyone on here is but as a general umbrella term) then you line up with some pretty odious people.
This thinking is why Oldham happened.
Oldham happened because of a failure of policing. Of which there were many contributing factors. I have not read the transcripts but ISTM that a large element of it was that the girls were deemed to have been "asking for it".
Hmm, looking at flight tracker, there’s an emergency Thompson airlines Boeing 767 out of Manchester, currently holding in circles near Buxton. Hope it’s nothing too serious.
So there is. Burning fuel, waiting for an external inspection, or an incident on board?
The passengers must be getting dizzy.
Reminded me of this one from a few years ago: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9KhZwsYtNDE A Thompson 757 out of Manchester, with a bird strike into the engine on takeoff. An example of textbook use of the radio by the Captain, in training courses.
If today’s incident were a serious emergency, they’d have landed straight back overweight, so my guess is a minor emergency for this one - perhaps a hydraulic problem, or the gear/flaps didn’t go up properly.
Seems to have overflown the tower now. Checking gear down?
He went over the field at 7,000’ - that would need a decent pair of binoculars from the guy in the tower! Maybe someone looking at something though.
He’s making circles just North of Liverpool now. Still can’t can’t see any news on it though, surely there must be one planespotter with a radio nearby?
Appears to be descending to land. I'm sure we'll find out eventually...
Coming back to Manchester now. There’s a few ground vehicles out to meet him.
flight radar has it off the end of the runway, must be a glitch in the software.
Flight Radar extrapolates the path based on the last recorded heading and speed. Once the plane is low down the network that picks up the data struggles so there are usually glitches.
Hmm, looking at flight tracker, there’s an emergency Thompson airlines Boeing 767 out of Manchester, currently holding in circles near Buxton. Hope it’s nothing too serious.
So there is. Burning fuel, waiting for an external inspection, or an incident on board?
The passengers must be getting dizzy.
Reminded me of this one from a few years ago: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9KhZwsYtNDE A Thompson 757 out of Manchester, with a bird strike into the engine on takeoff. An example of textbook use of the radio by the Captain, in training courses.
If today’s incident were a serious emergency, they’d have landed straight back overweight, so my guess is a minor emergency for this one - perhaps a hydraulic problem, or the gear/flaps didn’t go up properly.
Seems to have overflown the tower now. Checking gear down?
He went over the field at 7,000’ - that would need a decent pair of binoculars from the guy in the tower! Maybe someone looking at something though.
He’s making circles just North of Liverpool now. Still can’t can’t see any news on it though, surely there must be one planespotter with a radio nearby?
Appears to be descending to land. I'm sure we'll find out eventually...
Coming back to Manchester now. There’s a few ground vehicles out to meet him.
flight radar has it off the end of the runway, must be a glitch in the software.
Flight Radar extrapolates the path based on the last recorded heading and speed. Once the plane is low down the network that picks up the data struggles so there are usually glitches.
Next plane to take off is rolling down the runway now, so it’s safe to assume he landed and taxied off.
Breakfasting in crowded Kotor. It is beautiful but my god the tourists. They surge with the Adriatic heat
Venice is the only place on earth that somehow rises above intense mass tourism, or shrugs it off, or even becomes more interesting thereby, because it was always a stage set: awaiting an audience
Where are most of the tourists from, or is it a mix?
A fair mix. Probably Americans are the most numerous, to my surprise, Why here and nowhere else?
A lot of Italians (they only have to cross the Adriatic, I guess), plenty of Russians, a few Brits, Germans and Spaniards
The Montenegrins feel very Serbian, when you point out that their language is close to Serbian they say Yes YES, It is Serbian!
Americans are numerous already in many of Europe's tourist hotspots - the Cinque Terre in Italy was awash with them. Because of the flight restrictions and the higher cost of being unable to return home if they got covid, hardly any Americans have been travelling these last few years, and those in steady jobs have money saved for a European trip. With the regulations recently lifted, there are tons of Americans making and wanting to plan European trips right now, as a dip into any of the principal travel forums will quickly demonstrate.
The difference with Americans - partly because a European trip for most of them is both more special and more rare - and partly because they follow commentators like Steves and all want to visit the most recommended spots on social media - is that those locations that have been recommended by Steves and others are flooded with Americans (so, in Italy, it's always Rome, Florence, Venice, the Amalfi Coast, the Cinque Terre, and the high Dolomites) and it is very rare to run into US tourists anywhere else.
If you have lots in Montenegro, I would put money on Rick Steves having done a video about it.
They follow a highly predictable circuit in the UK as well, typically, Stonehenge, Bath and London.
I tried telling a few in Bath that Stonehenge was shit and there were a million other better places to visit - but whilst they listened they still said they had to do it.
If you are going to do a stone circle - do Avebury at least getting a drink is easy...
Yeah, I recommended Avebury.
To be fair, I don't know how disappointing the Statue of Liberty is, for example, but I suspect I'd at least want to see it and make my mind up for myself if I were a tourist and had never seen it before.
It is underwhelming.
American tourists tend to be after things they can't get at home, like castles and palaces and more generally anything really old. You don't get much older than Stonehenge. I've never visited it myself but I have driven past it and it looks pretty cool.
If I were building a 1 week UK itinerary it would probably look something like this: Day 1: British Museum (early); Thames River cruise; West End show or Ronnie Scotts Day 2: Maritime Greenwich; picnic in a park in South London; night out in Peckham Day 3: day trip to Cambridge; punt to Grantchester; pub lunch; return to London to catch sleeper to Glasgow Day 4: day trip Loch Lomond Day 5: train to York via Settle and Carlisle. Visit York Minster; hire a car and drive to Yorkshire Dales and stay at a pub Day 6: walking in Yorkshire Dales; pub dinner Day 7: return car, train back to London and flight home. Could replace Glasgow/Loch Lomond with Edinburgh/East Neuk.
Or you could do amazing stuff and go home to USA and find no-one else has done it, or heard of most of it.
Walk the City of London for a couple of days, but miss St Paul's and Tower. Stamford Boston Lincoln Cathedral etc Stow Walpole St Peter Walk old Norwich for a day Edington Priory Bradford on Avon St Lawrence Selby Abbey Durham Stirling (be selective)
A bit ecclesiastical, but lots of pubs in between.
I once planned a tour of the Southern part of Britain for a Dutch friend, though didn't eventually get to do it. They already knew London so we were going to head straight off.
Winchester and South downs Poole Harbour, Sandbanks, Purbeck Dartmouth, Totnes, Dartmoor Glastonbury, Bath and Wells Wye valley, Monmouthshire, Herefordshire, Black mountains Cotswolds Oxford Back to London.
Great. If you have an extra day do the wall circuit (as much as possible) of Chichester and Fishbourne.
You need at least one stately home/ancient house in a true tour of southern Britain
Petworth. Highclere. Knole. Perhaps Ightham Mote
And at least one great garden - probably England’s most unique contribution to the arts: the landscaped English garden
I’d go for Stourhead. Unutterably beautiful on a fine day
Or take in Oxburgh and the magnificently distinctive East Ruston Old Vicarage garden when walking old Norwich.
Grand Designs Bot @GrandDBot · 5m Kevin travels to Buckinghamshire where entitled tosspots Boris and Carrie are planning a £150,000 tree house for the spoilt toddler and his son Wilf. #GrandDesigns
I'd watch it just to find out how Boris's treehouse racked up a bill of £150,000. Designer wallpaper? This treehouse firm reckons £50,000 is expensive. https://mrtreehouse.co.uk/
If you think they’re not doing the same thing in the UK, you’re naïve.
The Tavistock case on Gillick competance & trans healthcare was led by a prominent anti-abortion lawyer - where did the funding for that case come from?
I have a bunch of screen capped quotes from GC types on Twitter that were rapidly deleted, so won’t share them - you can find them easily enough if you want to. Posy Parker seems pretty explicit about it on Facebook.
and so on...
But once again, doesn’t it worry you that you’re taking the same political side as these people? Does it give you no pause at all? You are the one who dragged trans rights into this discussion alongside the rights to aborton & all the others - have you not noticed that the “anti women” groups that want to put all the other rights on the chopping block are also going after trans rights? Does the reality that you’ve chosen their side on this issue not give you any pause at all?
Many moons I posted on here that a friend of mine, prominent in this issue, had told me that one of the reasons that it was important to uphold trans rights (and they readily accept that eg prisons and sport are likely carve outs) was to look at who's on the other side of the debate at which point as you note, it becomes obvious that if you are "anti-trans" (I'm not saying anyone on here is but as a general umbrella term) then you line up with some pretty odious people.
Odious people like Nick Griffin, who wouldn’t shut up about girls in Rotherham being raped by Asians?
Being raped is against the law. Using a loo isn't.
Edit: I see @Beibheirli_C also pointed out the obvious fallacy of the "but Rotherham" line of discussion.
Grand Designs Bot @GrandDBot · 5m Kevin travels to Buckinghamshire where entitled tosspots Boris and Carrie are planning a £150,000 tree house for the spoilt toddler and his son Wilf. #GrandDesigns
I'd watch it just to find out how Boris's treehouse racked up a bill of £150,000. Designer wallpaper? This treehouse firm reckons £50,000 is expensive. https://mrtreehouse.co.uk/
Thirty percent admin fee in a brown envelope knowing this lot.
Breakfasting in crowded Kotor. It is beautiful but my god the tourists. They surge with the Adriatic heat
Venice is the only place on earth that somehow rises above intense mass tourism, or shrugs it off, or even becomes more interesting thereby, because it was always a stage set: awaiting an audience
Where are most of the tourists from, or is it a mix?
A fair mix. Probably Americans are the most numerous, to my surprise, Why here and nowhere else?
A lot of Italians (they only have to cross the Adriatic, I guess), plenty of Russians, a few Brits, Germans and Spaniards
The Montenegrins feel very Serbian, when you point out that their language is close to Serbian they say Yes YES, It is Serbian!
Americans are numerous already in many of Europe's tourist hotspots - the Cinque Terre in Italy was awash with them. Because of the flight restrictions and the higher cost of being unable to return home if they got covid, hardly any Americans have been travelling these last few years, and those in steady jobs have money saved for a European trip. With the regulations recently lifted, there are tons of Americans making and wanting to plan European trips right now, as a dip into any of the principal travel forums will quickly demonstrate.
The difference with Americans - partly because a European trip for most of them is both more special and more rare - and partly because they follow commentators like Steves and all want to visit the most recommended spots on social media - is that those locations that have been recommended by Steves and others are flooded with Americans (so, in Italy, it's always Rome, Florence, Venice, the Amalfi Coast, the Cinque Terre, and the high Dolomites) and it is very rare to run into US tourists anywhere else.
If you have lots in Montenegro, I would put money on Rick Steves having done a video about it.
They follow a highly predictable circuit in the UK as well, typically, Stonehenge, Bath and London.
I tried telling a few in Bath that Stonehenge was shit and there were a million other better places to visit - but whilst they listened they still said they had to do it.
If you are going to do a stone circle - do Avebury at least getting a drink is easy...
Yeah, I recommended Avebury.
To be fair, I don't know how disappointing the Statue of Liberty is, for example, but I suspect I'd at least want to see it and make my mind up for myself if I were a tourist and had never seen it before.
It is underwhelming.
American tourists tend to be after things they can't get at home, like castles and palaces and more generally anything really old. You don't get much older than Stonehenge. I've never visited it myself but I have driven past it and it looks pretty cool.
If I were building a 1 week UK itinerary it would probably look something like this: Day 1: British Museum (early); Thames River cruise; West End show or Ronnie Scotts Day 2: Maritime Greenwich; picnic in a park in South London; night out in Peckham Day 3: day trip to Cambridge; punt to Grantchester; pub lunch; return to London to catch sleeper to Glasgow Day 4: day trip Loch Lomond Day 5: train to York via Settle and Carlisle. Visit York Minster; hire a car and drive to Yorkshire Dales and stay at a pub Day 6: walking in Yorkshire Dales; pub dinner Day 7: return car, train back to London and flight home. Could replace Glasgow/Loch Lomond with Edinburgh/East Neuk.
Or you could do amazing stuff and go home to USA and find no-one else has done it, or heard of most of it.
Walk the City of London for a couple of days, but miss St Paul's and Tower. Stamford Boston Lincoln Cathedral etc Stow Walpole St Peter Walk old Norwich for a day Edington Priory Bradford on Avon St Lawrence Selby Abbey Durham Stirling (be selective)
A bit ecclesiastical, but lots of pubs in between.
I once planned a tour of the Southern part of Britain for a Dutch friend, though didn't eventually get to do it. They already knew London so we were going to head straight off.
Winchester and South downs Poole Harbour, Sandbanks, Purbeck Dartmouth, Totnes, Dartmoor Glastonbury, Bath and Wells Wye valley, Monmouthshire, Herefordshire, Black mountains Cotswolds Oxford Back to London.
One of the problems with such itineraries is that they're whirlwind, and you miss so much. We recently spent three days in York, and we were mostly busy from nine to five each day. We did the Yorkshire Museum, Clifford's Tower, the excellent York Army Museum (*), the cathedral, the railway museum, the abbey ruins, DIG!, and I think I've forgotten one or two others. It was jam-packed to the extent we did not get the most out of some of it, and could easily have spent a week there. Spending a few hours in a place is not really 'visiting'.
Oh, and we walked the entire walls.
(*) This deserves a recommendation. I have been to a fair few regimental museums, and they are always dusty places. This one had three people acting out people who had served in the regiment, and kids were encouraged to go and talk to them about their lives. It really added another dimension to the place. One was Lawrence Oates, of 'I may be some time' fame.
Sometimes I think when you're going somewhere "exotic" and for one time only, a whirlwind is good. If I had a week in, say, Japan and knew I was unlikely to visit again, I would prefer to take in as much and as varied a set of locations as possible even if it meant long tiring days.
Often guidebooks will say 1 day isn't enough for city x, you ideally need to spend a week there etc. That's fine if you're visiting regularly or live there, but if you spend a week in city x you miss small town y or mountain range z.
Horses for courses I think. This summer holiday we're driving South and spending 2 days in Ghent, 2 days in the Black Forest, 2 days in Como, a week in Corsica, 2 days in Nice. Other holidays I have spent 3 weeks in our holiday home in Burgundy not venturing very far at all, and that's nice too.
If you think they’re not doing the same thing in the UK, you’re naïve.
The Tavistock case on Gillick competance & trans healthcare was led by a prominent anti-abortion lawyer - where did the funding for that case come from?
I have a bunch of screen capped quotes from GC types on Twitter that were rapidly deleted, so won’t share them - you can find them easily enough if you want to. Posy Parker seems pretty explicit about it on Facebook.
and so on...
But once again, doesn’t it worry you that you’re taking the same political side as these people? Does it give you no pause at all? You are the one who dragged trans rights into this discussion alongside the rights to aborton & all the others - have you not noticed that the “anti women” groups that want to put all the other rights on the chopping block are also going after trans rights? Does the reality that you’ve chosen their side on this issue not give you any pause at all?
Many moons I posted on here that a friend of mine, prominent in this issue, had told me that one of the reasons that it was important to uphold trans rights (and they readily accept that eg prisons and sport are likely carve outs) was to look at who's on the other side of the debate at which point as you note, it becomes obvious that if you are "anti-trans" (I'm not saying anyone on here is but as a general umbrella term) then you line up with some pretty odious people.
This thinking is why Oldham happened.
I tend to determine my views on the merits of the argument not based on what those I dislike think about it.
I have an image of aristocratic Romans arguing passionately about the gender rights of Illyrian eunuchs, in about 423AD, even as the Ostrogoths were battering down the gates, right outside
So.. I'm pretty sure that my interview went really well. It was a preliminary interview with a lady from the recruitment agency that the company are using. She told me that I had the right skill set for the job, and that she had found me enthusiastic, engaging and a little entertaining (I made a couple of jokes at my own expense). She said that she'd definitely be recommending me for a second interview with the lady I'd be working under at the company.
Thanks to everyone that gave me tips for the video interview. I think I got it set up pretty well and was thinking about that advice while I did so.
I decided that it all warranted a celebratory trip to Waitrose where I rather spoiled myself. I'm halfway through my first bottle of a four pack of Leffes, and I've got a fillet steak for tonight (which cost me what I usually spend on three dinners!).
On my way back from Waitrose I made a detour to my folks' place as they're away on holiday for a week and I've been tasked with keeping my Mum's garden alive (she has a little back yard full of flowers in terracotta pots and hanging baskets). My Dad had very generously left me a couple of bottles of wine, one of which is a red that I think will go very nicely with my steak!
Hmm, looking at flight tracker, there’s an emergency Thompson airlines Boeing 767 out of Manchester, currently holding in circles near Buxton. Hope it’s nothing too serious.
So there is. Burning fuel, waiting for an external inspection, or an incident on board?
The passengers must be getting dizzy.
Reminded me of this one from a few years ago: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9KhZwsYtNDE A Thompson 757 out of Manchester, with a bird strike into the engine on takeoff. An example of textbook use of the radio by the Captain, in training courses.
If today’s incident were a serious emergency, they’d have landed straight back overweight, so my guess is a minor emergency for this one - perhaps a hydraulic problem, or the gear/flaps didn’t go up properly.
Seems to have overflown the tower now. Checking gear down?
He went over the field at 7,000’ - that would need a decent pair of binoculars from the guy in the tower! Maybe someone looking at something though.
He’s making circles just North of Liverpool now. Still can’t can’t see any news on it though, surely there must be one planespotter with a radio nearby?
Appears to be descending to land. I'm sure we'll find out eventually...
Coming back to Manchester now. There’s a few ground vehicles out to meet him.
flight radar has it off the end of the runway, must be a glitch in the software.
Flight Radar extrapolates the path based on the last recorded heading and speed. Once the plane is low down the network that picks up the data struggles so there are usually glitches.
Next plane to take off is rolling down the runway now, so it’s safe to assume he landed and taxied off.
Hmm, looking at flight tracker, there’s an emergency Thompson airlines Boeing 767 out of Manchester, currently holding in circles near Buxton. Hope it’s nothing too serious.
So there is. Burning fuel, waiting for an external inspection, or an incident on board?
The passengers must be getting dizzy.
Reminded me of this one from a few years ago: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9KhZwsYtNDE A Thompson 757 out of Manchester, with a bird strike into the engine on takeoff. An example of textbook use of the radio by the Captain, in training courses.
If today’s incident were a serious emergency, they’d have landed straight back overweight, so my guess is a minor emergency for this one - perhaps a hydraulic problem, or the gear/flaps didn’t go up properly.
Seems to have overflown the tower now. Checking gear down?
He went over the field at 7,000’ - that would need a decent pair of binoculars from the guy in the tower! Maybe someone looking at something though.
He’s making circles just North of Liverpool now. Still can’t can’t see any news on it though, surely there must be one planespotter with a radio nearby?
Appears to be descending to land. I'm sure we'll find out eventually...
Coming back to Manchester now. There’s a few ground vehicles out to meet him.
flight radar has it off the end of the runway, must be a glitch in the software.
Flight Radar extrapolates the path based on the last recorded heading and speed. Once the plane is low down the network that picks up the data struggles so there are usually glitches.
Next plane to take off is rolling down the runway now, so it’s safe to assume he landed and taxied off.
So.. I'm pretty sure that my interview went really well. It was a preliminary interview with a lady from the recruitment agency that the company are using. She told me that I had the right skill set for the job, and that she had found me enthusiastic, engaging and a little entertaining (I made a couple of jokes at my own expense). She said that she'd definitely be recommending me for a second interview with the lady I'd be working under at the company.
Thanks to everyone that gave me tips for the video interview. I think I got it set up pretty well and was thinking about that advice while I did so.
I decided that it all warranted a celebratory trip to Waitrose where I rather spoiled myself. I'm halfway through my first bottle of a four pack of Leffes, and I've got a fillet steak for tonight (which cost me what I usually spend on three dinners!).
On my way back from Waitrose I made a detour to my folks' place as they're away on holiday for a week and I've been tasked with keeping my Mum's garden alive (she has a little back yard full of flowers in terracotta pots and hanging baskets). My Dad had very generously left me a couple of bottles of wine, one of which is a red that I think will go very nicely with my steak!
Breakfasting in crowded Kotor. It is beautiful but my god the tourists. They surge with the Adriatic heat
Venice is the only place on earth that somehow rises above intense mass tourism, or shrugs it off, or even becomes more interesting thereby, because it was always a stage set: awaiting an audience
Where are most of the tourists from, or is it a mix?
A fair mix. Probably Americans are the most numerous, to my surprise, Why here and nowhere else?
A lot of Italians (they only have to cross the Adriatic, I guess), plenty of Russians, a few Brits, Germans and Spaniards
The Montenegrins feel very Serbian, when you point out that their language is close to Serbian they say Yes YES, It is Serbian!
Americans are numerous already in many of Europe's tourist hotspots - the Cinque Terre in Italy was awash with them. Because of the flight restrictions and the higher cost of being unable to return home if they got covid, hardly any Americans have been travelling these last few years, and those in steady jobs have money saved for a European trip. With the regulations recently lifted, there are tons of Americans making and wanting to plan European trips right now, as a dip into any of the principal travel forums will quickly demonstrate.
The difference with Americans - partly because a European trip for most of them is both more special and more rare - and partly because they follow commentators like Steves and all want to visit the most recommended spots on social media - is that those locations that have been recommended by Steves and others are flooded with Americans (so, in Italy, it's always Rome, Florence, Venice, the Amalfi Coast, the Cinque Terre, and the high Dolomites) and it is very rare to run into US tourists anywhere else.
If you have lots in Montenegro, I would put money on Rick Steves having done a video about it.
They follow a highly predictable circuit in the UK as well, typically, Stonehenge, Bath and London.
I tried telling a few in Bath that Stonehenge was shit and there were a million other better places to visit - but whilst they listened they still said they had to do it.
If you are going to do a stone circle - do Avebury at least getting a drink is easy...
Yeah, I recommended Avebury.
To be fair, I don't know how disappointing the Statue of Liberty is, for example, but I suspect I'd at least want to see it and make my mind up for myself if I were a tourist and had never seen it before.
It is underwhelming.
American tourists tend to be after things they can't get at home, like castles and palaces and more generally anything really old. You don't get much older than Stonehenge. I've never visited it myself but I have driven past it and it looks pretty cool.
If I were building a 1 week UK itinerary it would probably look something like this: Day 1: British Museum (early); Thames River cruise; West End show or Ronnie Scotts Day 2: Maritime Greenwich; picnic in a park in South London; night out in Peckham Day 3: day trip to Cambridge; punt to Grantchester; pub lunch; return to London to catch sleeper to Glasgow Day 4: day trip Loch Lomond Day 5: train to York via Settle and Carlisle. Visit York Minster; hire a car and drive to Yorkshire Dales and stay at a pub Day 6: walking in Yorkshire Dales; pub dinner Day 7: return car, train back to London and flight home. Could replace Glasgow/Loch Lomond with Edinburgh/East Neuk.
Or you could do amazing stuff and go home to USA and find no-one else has done it, or heard of most of it.
Walk the City of London for a couple of days, but miss St Paul's and Tower. Stamford Boston Lincoln Cathedral etc Stow Walpole St Peter Walk old Norwich for a day Edington Priory Bradford on Avon St Lawrence Selby Abbey Durham Stirling (be selective)
A bit ecclesiastical, but lots of pubs in between.
I once planned a tour of the Southern part of Britain for a Dutch friend, though didn't eventually get to do it. They already knew London so we were going to head straight off.
Winchester and South downs Poole Harbour, Sandbanks, Purbeck Dartmouth, Totnes, Dartmoor Glastonbury, Bath and Wells Wye valley, Monmouthshire, Herefordshire, Black mountains Cotswolds Oxford Back to London.
One of the problems with such itineraries is that they're whirlwind, and you miss so much. We recently spent three days in York, and we were mostly busy from nine to five each day. We did the Yorkshire Museum, Clifford's Tower, the excellent York Army Museum (*), the cathedral, the railway museum, the abbey ruins, DIG!, and I think I've forgotten one or two others. It was jam-packed to the extent we did not get the most out of some of it, and could easily have spent a week there. Spending a few hours in a place is not really 'visiting'.
Oh, and we walked the entire walls.
(*) This deserves a recommendation. I have been to a fair few regimental museums, and they are always dusty places. This one had three people acting out people who had served in the regiment, and kids were encouraged to go and talk to them about their lives. It really added another dimension to the place. One was Lawrence Oates, of 'I may be some time' fame.
Sometimes I think when you're going somewhere "exotic" and for one time only, a whirlwind is good. If I had a week in, say, Japan and knew I was unlikely to visit again, I would prefer to take in as much and as varied a set of locations as possible even if it meant long tiring days.
Often guidebooks will say 1 day isn't enough for city x, you ideally need to spend a week there etc. That's fine if you're visiting regularly or live there, but if you spend a week in city x you miss small town y or mountain range z.
Horses for courses I think. This summer holiday we're driving South and spending 2 days in Ghent, 2 days in the Black Forest, 2 days in Como, a week in Corsica, 2 days in Nice. Other holidays I have spent 3 weeks in our holiday home in Burgundy not venturing very far at all, and that's nice too.
That’s a pretty hideous itinerary, to my mind. No offence. Who on earth would you try and take in Belgium, the Black Forest, the Italian Lakes, Corsica and the riviera in a single two week vacation? or is it some kind of prank or experiment to see how exhausted you might be?
Corsica alone is beautiful but stressful to get around - especially in high season - so just the south of Corsica needs ten days at least
If you think they’re not doing the same thing in the UK, you’re naïve.
The Tavistock case on Gillick competance & trans healthcare was led by a prominent anti-abortion lawyer - where did the funding for that case come from?
I have a bunch of screen capped quotes from GC types on Twitter that were rapidly deleted, so won’t share them - you can find them easily enough if you want to. Posy Parker seems pretty explicit about it on Facebook.
and so on...
But once again, doesn’t it worry you that you’re taking the same political side as these people? Does it give you no pause at all? You are the one who dragged trans rights into this discussion alongside the rights to aborton & all the others - have you not noticed that the “anti women” groups that want to put all the other rights on the chopping block are also going after trans rights? Does the reality that you’ve chosen their side on this issue not give you any pause at all?
Many moons I posted on here that a friend of mine, prominent in this issue, had told me that one of the reasons that it was important to uphold trans rights (and they readily accept that eg prisons and sport are likely carve outs) was to look at who's on the other side of the debate at which point as you note, it becomes obvious that if you are "anti-trans" (I'm not saying anyone on here is but as a general umbrella term) then you line up with some pretty odious people.
But I don't think anyone is. I don't see how you could be. But if you just stipulate the three utterly obvious carveouts - sport, safe spaces from (mainly) heterosexual male predators, safeguards for children against being persuaded they are something they aren't - that's three utterly odious transphobic slurs. Apparently.
Like abortion we all have our intuitive views on where the line should be drawn. My view (my meta view because I'm not going to opine on an actual solution) is that our social mores are changing, as they always have changed. Our definitions are likewise changing and who's to say that in XX years time what we think of as a woman won't be different to what we think of now.
As society changes there will be false starts, overshoots, people feeling their way. Eventually a new normal will come into being and we will move on to the next thing.
I believe much of the "anti-trans" (as you say how could you be) lobby at least here on PB is just fearful of change and hence looks to easy stereotypes and slurs (eg "bloke in a dress", etc).
That is not to say that as you note, those three carve outs aren't vitally important because they are and sensible "pro-trans" people understand that.
Actually, whilst I am sure that many of the gents here are acting from the best of motives, why do any of you think that who goes in or out of the Ladies Loo is any of your business? Are women incapable of deciding? Do we need male guardians Taliban style?
And on that note, I will bid you all Good Afternoon.
Actually, whilst I am sure that many of the gents here are acting from the best of motives, why do any of you think that who goes in or out of the Ladies Loo is any of your business? Are women incapable of deciding? Do we need male guardians Taliban style?
And on that note, I will bid you all Good Afternoon.
Because we have wives, sisters, girlfriends and daughters you insufferable twit
Breakfasting in crowded Kotor. It is beautiful but my god the tourists. They surge with the Adriatic heat
Venice is the only place on earth that somehow rises above intense mass tourism, or shrugs it off, or even becomes more interesting thereby, because it was always a stage set: awaiting an audience
Where are most of the tourists from, or is it a mix?
A fair mix. Probably Americans are the most numerous, to my surprise, Why here and nowhere else?
A lot of Italians (they only have to cross the Adriatic, I guess), plenty of Russians, a few Brits, Germans and Spaniards
The Montenegrins feel very Serbian, when you point out that their language is close to Serbian they say Yes YES, It is Serbian!
Americans are numerous already in many of Europe's tourist hotspots - the Cinque Terre in Italy was awash with them. Because of the flight restrictions and the higher cost of being unable to return home if they got covid, hardly any Americans have been travelling these last few years, and those in steady jobs have money saved for a European trip. With the regulations recently lifted, there are tons of Americans making and wanting to plan European trips right now, as a dip into any of the principal travel forums will quickly demonstrate.
The difference with Americans - partly because a European trip for most of them is both more special and more rare - and partly because they follow commentators like Steves and all want to visit the most recommended spots on social media - is that those locations that have been recommended by Steves and others are flooded with Americans (so, in Italy, it's always Rome, Florence, Venice, the Amalfi Coast, the Cinque Terre, and the high Dolomites) and it is very rare to run into US tourists anywhere else.
If you have lots in Montenegro, I would put money on Rick Steves having done a video about it.
They follow a highly predictable circuit in the UK as well, typically, Stonehenge, Bath and London.
I tried telling a few in Bath that Stonehenge was shit and there were a million other better places to visit - but whilst they listened they still said they had to do it.
If you are going to do a stone circle - do Avebury at least getting a drink is easy...
Yeah, I recommended Avebury.
To be fair, I don't know how disappointing the Statue of Liberty is, for example, but I suspect I'd at least want to see it and make my mind up for myself if I were a tourist and had never seen it before.
It is underwhelming.
American tourists tend to be after things they can't get at home, like castles and palaces and more generally anything really old. You don't get much older than Stonehenge. I've never visited it myself but I have driven past it and it looks pretty cool.
If I were building a 1 week UK itinerary it would probably look something like this: Day 1: British Museum (early); Thames River cruise; West End show or Ronnie Scotts Day 2: Maritime Greenwich; picnic in a park in South London; night out in Peckham Day 3: day trip to Cambridge; punt to Grantchester; pub lunch; return to London to catch sleeper to Glasgow Day 4: day trip Loch Lomond Day 5: train to York via Settle and Carlisle. Visit York Minster; hire a car and drive to Yorkshire Dales and stay at a pub Day 6: walking in Yorkshire Dales; pub dinner Day 7: return car, train back to London and flight home. Could replace Glasgow/Loch Lomond with Edinburgh/East Neuk.
Or you could do amazing stuff and go home to USA and find no-one else has done it, or heard of most of it.
Walk the City of London for a couple of days, but miss St Paul's and Tower. Stamford Boston Lincoln Cathedral etc Stow Walpole St Peter Walk old Norwich for a day Edington Priory Bradford on Avon St Lawrence Selby Abbey Durham Stirling (be selective)
A bit ecclesiastical, but lots of pubs in between.
I once planned a tour of the Southern part of Britain for a Dutch friend, though didn't eventually get to do it. They already knew London so we were going to head straight off.
Winchester and South downs Poole Harbour, Sandbanks, Purbeck Dartmouth, Totnes, Dartmoor Glastonbury, Bath and Wells Wye valley, Monmouthshire, Herefordshire, Black mountains Cotswolds Oxford Back to London.
One of the problems with such itineraries is that they're whirlwind, and you miss so much. We recently spent three days in York, and we were mostly busy from nine to five each day. We did the Yorkshire Museum, Clifford's Tower, the excellent York Army Museum (*), the cathedral, the railway museum, the abbey ruins, DIG!, and I think I've forgotten one or two others. It was jam-packed to the extent we did not get the most out of some of it, and could easily have spent a week there. Spending a few hours in a place is not really 'visiting'.
Oh, and we walked the entire walls.
(*) This deserves a recommendation. I have been to a fair few regimental museums, and they are always dusty places. This one had three people acting out people who had served in the regiment, and kids were encouraged to go and talk to them about their lives. It really added another dimension to the place. One was Lawrence Oates, of 'I may be some time' fame.
Sometimes I think when you're going somewhere "exotic" and for one time only, a whirlwind is good. If I had a week in, say, Japan and knew I was unlikely to visit again, I would prefer to take in as much and as varied a set of locations as possible even if it meant long tiring days.
Often guidebooks will say 1 day isn't enough for city x, you ideally need to spend a week there etc. That's fine if you're visiting regularly or live there, but if you spend a week in city x you miss small town y or mountain range z.
Horses for courses I think. This summer holiday we're driving South and spending 2 days in Ghent, 2 days in the Black Forest, 2 days in Como, a week in Corsica, 2 days in Nice. Other holidays I have spent 3 weeks in our holiday home in Burgundy not venturing very far at all, and that's nice too.
That’s a pretty hideous itinerary, to my mind. No offence. Who on earth would you try and take in Belgium, the Black Forest, the Italian Lakes, Corsica and the riviera in a single two week vacation? or is it some kind of prank or experiment to see how exhausted you might be?
Corsica alone is beautiful but stressful to get around - especially in high season - so just the south of Corsica needs ten days at least
Given we are driving, the alternative is drive straight there stopping in one or two chain hotels en route, and arriving knackered.
The journey is the holiday. I've done driving trips in the US where we're on the road of 6 or 7 hours a day and a new place each night.
Oh and I forgot to add we are then spending a week in Burgundy before going home, so it's a 3 week holiday.
Actually, whilst I am sure that many of the gents here are acting from the best of motives, why do any of you think that who goes in or out of the Ladies Loo is any of your business? Are women incapable of deciding? Do we need male guardians Taliban style?
And on that note, I will bid you all Good Afternoon.
Because we have wives, sisters, girlfriends and daughters you insufferable twit
And it's important that you lay down some ground rules for them just so that we can all be clear on what's best for them.
Grand Designs Bot @GrandDBot · 5m Kevin travels to Buckinghamshire where entitled tosspots Boris and Carrie are planning a £150,000 tree house for the spoilt toddler and his son Wilf. #GrandDesigns
I'd watch it just to find out how Boris's treehouse racked up a bill of £150,000. Designer wallpaper? This treehouse firm reckons £50,000 is expensive. https://mrtreehouse.co.uk/
I think the £150,000 is mates rates when someone else (who neither of you really like) is paying the final bill.
If you think they’re not doing the same thing in the UK, you’re naïve.
The Tavistock case on Gillick competance & trans healthcare was led by a prominent anti-abortion lawyer - where did the funding for that case come from?
I have a bunch of screen capped quotes from GC types on Twitter that were rapidly deleted, so won’t share them - you can find them easily enough if you want to. Posy Parker seems pretty explicit about it on Facebook.
and so on...
But once again, doesn’t it worry you that you’re taking the same political side as these people? Does it give you no pause at all? You are the one who dragged trans rights into this discussion alongside the rights to aborton & all the others - have you not noticed that the “anti women” groups that want to put all the other rights on the chopping block are also going after trans rights? Does the reality that you’ve chosen their side on this issue not give you any pause at all?
Many moons I posted on here that a friend of mine, prominent in this issue, had told me that one of the reasons that it was important to uphold trans rights (and they readily accept that eg prisons and sport are likely carve outs) was to look at who's on the other side of the debate at which point as you note, it becomes obvious that if you are "anti-trans" (I'm not saying anyone on here is but as a general umbrella term) then you line up with some pretty odious people.
This thinking is why Oldham happened.
I tend to determine my views on the merits of the argument not based on what those I dislike think about it.
Not least because there are usually odious characters on both sides of the argument.
Unless I missed it there's been no comment here on this from today's Guardian: "A woman accused of perverting the course of justice in a murder trial has been told she must represent herself in court because there is no available barrister, in what is thought to be a legal first."
The piece goes on: "due to industrial action, no other (she was, apparently, unhappy with her barrister and was told he would not be able to continue) barrister can accept the case. With no replacement found, the. Judge has told her that she must represent herself."
Can't see how that is not grounds for appeal
Was under the impression that legal representation was a basic right? Madness.
There is a criminal barristers and solicitors strike across England and Wales today demanding more pay for legal aid lawyers
A worthy cause and one which would actually help the government deliver justice, as stringency in that area is counter productive to providing efficient and effective (and cheaper) justice, even if the media and politicians will focus on some dodgy geezer using legal aid.
The article suggests the average plumber now earns £350 a day compared to £250 for 13 hours' work for the average legal aid lawyer
Those figures quoted are the day rate, not hourly rate as per the article.
Depending on preparation time this can be below the minimum wage for barristers.
It's not even a day rate - it's a set fee for completing that particular task.
Which means that you can often do a whole pile of work and then because of other changes fail to earn anything because someone else has to take over at the last minute.
Presumably most people pay for their own barrister, at a substantial hourly rate, and the same barristers are doing both legal aid and private work, according to the ‘cab rank principle’?
So, while the legal aid work pays poorly, the private work combines to provide a good living for the men and women in gowns and wigs?
Is that correct?
Once you have plenty of years experience the private work may come - but it simply doesn't exist for junior barristers.
Yes, only a handful of very wealthy accused and celebrities can afford to pay privately for a criminal defence and they will seek a QC to defend them in court. The vast majority of those arrested and charged will use legal aid
The independent report on criminal legal aid that the government delayed for years? When it was published last year, it recommended an immediate uplift of 15% to legal aid fees as the “minimum necessary” that should be brought in “as soon as practicable” with “no scope for further delay“. This was in light of the data that showed – even pre-pandemic – that criminal barristers were being driven out of the profession by pay and conditions. This 15% was supposed to be brought in last year, and was the sticking plaster while the government addressed the many other recommendations in the independent report, aimed at ensuring that barristers are actually paid for the work they do (instead of, as we currently do, fix the holes created by government cuts by working for free). When you consider that criminal legal aid fees have been cut by over a quarter in real terms since 2006, you can see how small this sticking plaster was. The report made clear to the government that “further sums may be necessary“.
So this is absolutely not the case that criminal barristers have decided that they fancy a nice juicy pay rise and are greedily rejecting a whopping 15%. No, what we have is an independent report warning that immediate action has to be taken to undo the damage caused by years of cuts which have forced hundreds out of the profession, and urging the government to begin by, as a minimum, increasing the budget by 15%.
But Dominic Raab will not even give us that. He has responded by claiming to have offered a “15% pay rise.” But he hasn’t. It’s a scam. It is actually closer to 6 per cent, and he is refusing to apply it to ongoing cases, insisting that it will only attach to cases that begin in October 2022. Barristers only get paid when a case concludes, which means that, given the delays in the system, we will not actually see this “increase” until 2024. ...
150 grand for a treehouse. Is it possible to read that story and not think 'what an utter twat'?
People spend their money as they want. Plenty of people spend hundreds of thousands on sports cars, and do not get overly criticised for it - even when they buy ones with massive depreciation.
If they get joy out of spending less money on a treehouse and seeing their kids have fun, fair enough. True, they won't get some of their money back when they sell (as they do a car), but at least they won't look like a tosser, as they invariably do in the cars.
150 grand for a treehouse. Is it possible to read that story and not think 'what an utter twat'?
The problem is not that Boris is "an utter twat" but that he wanted a Tory donor to pay for it. It is the potential for corruption that is dangerous; don't be distracted by Boris's builders overcharging.
Actually Cyclefree of all people probably knows you DO build law around rotten apples.
That's literally the point of most law and safeguarding, to protect people from the rotten apples.
Trans people need protections but NOT in a way that violates women's protections.
And that's the biggest problem with the Trans debate. The number of actual trans (men -> women) is sadly way less than the number of male sex abusers who can see an opportunity (open) to abuse...
The reality is that there is no decent answer here because both sides have such set views they are unable to see the valid points in the other side of the argument.
It's not that intractable imo. Reform the transition process so it's quicker and less medicalized. Then have a default principle in practice of trans inclusion. But with the option of exclusion (ie stay sex-based) if there's a genuine good reason for it. So, keep asking the question: is there a solid, evidence-based reason for excluding trans people from X? Where X is a place or an activity. Eg (my opinion) a Yes for elite physical female sports (real issue) but a No for public toilets (confected issue). That's my view anyway. And Phil is right to point out there are some real nasties active in the anti-trans movement. People who see it as a route to attack other rights and a safe space to vent their bigotry and spleen. There's absolutely no question of that.
I don’t like damning people by association. I wouldn’t want my trans friends to be judged by the actions and words of Jennifer Yaniv any more than I’d want my GC feminist friends tarred with the actions of the nastier obsessives. They tend to have different motivations.
That said, I think the difficulty comes from the conflation of a biological characteristic and a set of societal expectations that makes disentangling the two very hard. This is why I tend to get run down in the middle of the road between said groups of friends. I don’t think you can ignore sex, but society doesn’t have a right to impose gendered expectations on people just because of tradition, and we should support people who suffer because of it.
Damning by association is not good, no. But neither is it totally irrelevant who you are aligned with in having an opinion on something. If you find (eg) 90% of the world's softhead bigots agree with you on X then it makes sense to at least pay attention to that and ask yourself if it changes anything. Have you missed something about X? Why are all these ghastly people agreeing with you? If having done that you're still solid with it, fine. More than fine, you're in much better shape now. Not to do it at all is narrow minded and a failure of due diligence on yourself. It's not some admirable "I believe what I believe, end of, cos I'm an independent fearless free thinker" type thing.
Totally agree with your 2nd para. As I say, I don't think it's an intractable issue, but it is difficult, and for those reasons you say.
If you think they’re not doing the same thing in the UK, you’re naïve.
The Tavistock case on Gillick competance & trans healthcare was led by a prominent anti-abortion lawyer - where did the funding for that case come from?
I have a bunch of screen capped quotes from GC types on Twitter that were rapidly deleted, so won’t share them - you can find them easily enough if you want to. Posy Parker seems pretty explicit about it on Facebook.
and so on...
But once again, doesn’t it worry you that you’re taking the same political side as these people? Does it give you no pause at all? You are the one who dragged trans rights into this discussion alongside the rights to aborton & all the others - have you not noticed that the “anti women” groups that want to put all the other rights on the chopping block are also going after trans rights? Does the reality that you’ve chosen their side on this issue not give you any pause at all?
Many moons I posted on here that a friend of mine, prominent in this issue, had told me that one of the reasons that it was important to uphold trans rights (and they readily accept that eg prisons and sport are likely carve outs) was to look at who's on the other side of the debate at which point as you note, it becomes obvious that if you are "anti-trans" (I'm not saying anyone on here is but as a general umbrella term) then you line up with some pretty odious people.
But I don't think anyone is. I don't see how you could be. But if you just stipulate the three utterly obvious carveouts - sport, safe spaces from (mainly) heterosexual male predators, safeguards for children against being persuaded they are something they aren't - that's three utterly odious transphobic slurs. Apparently.
Like abortion we all have our intuitive views on where the line should be drawn. My view (my meta view because I'm not going to opine on an actual solution) is that our social mores are changing, as they always have changed. Our definitions are likewise changing and who's to say that in XX years time what we think of as a woman won't be different to what we think of now.
As society changes there will be false starts, overshoots, people feeling their way. Eventually a new normal will come into being and we will move on to the next thing.
I believe much of the "anti-trans" (as you say how could you be) lobby at least here on PB is just fearful of change and hence looks to easy stereotypes and slurs (eg "bloke in a dress", etc).
That is not to say that as you note, those three carve outs aren't vitally important because they are and sensible "pro-trans" people understand that.
Nope most of us see an issue that isn't frequent but where the number of people likely to abuse the issue is higher than the number of number of people the solution will help.
Personally if we are talking about toilets the solution is very simple, unisex single person loos. But that doesn't really work for the sex offender part of women's prisons which is where the story started off.
So.. I'm pretty sure that my interview went really well. It was a preliminary interview with a lady from the recruitment agency that the company are using. She told me that I had the right skill set for the job, and that she had found me enthusiastic, engaging and a little entertaining (I made a couple of jokes at my own expense). She said that she'd definitely be recommending me for a second interview with the lady I'd be working under at the company.
Thanks to everyone that gave me tips for the video interview. I think I got it set up pretty well and was thinking about that advice while I did so.
I decided that it all warranted a celebratory trip to Waitrose where I rather spoiled myself. I'm halfway through my first bottle of a four pack of Leffes, and I've got a fillet steak for tonight (which cost me what I usually spend on three dinners!).
On my way back from Waitrose I made a detour to my folks' place as they're away on holiday for a week and I've been tasked with keeping my Mum's garden alive (she has a little back yard full of flowers in terracotta pots and hanging baskets). My Dad had very generously left me a couple of bottles of wine, one of which is a red that I think will go very nicely with my steak!
Actually, whilst I am sure that many of the gents here are acting from the best of motives, why do any of you think that who goes in or out of the Ladies Loo is any of your business? Are women incapable of deciding? Do we need male guardians Taliban style?
And on that note, I will bid you all Good Afternoon.
Because we have wives, sisters, girlfriends and daughters you insufferable twit
And it's important that you lay down some ground rules for them just so that we can all be clear on what's best for them.
Actually, whilst I am sure that many of the gents here are acting from the best of motives, why do any of you think that who goes in or out of the Ladies Loo is any of your business? Are women incapable of deciding? Do we need male guardians Taliban style?
And on that note, I will bid you all Good Afternoon.
Because we have wives, sisters, girlfriends and daughters you insufferable twit
And it's important that you lay down some ground rules for them just so that we can all be clear on what's best for them.
I have close friends with teen kids and those kids are mentally fucked up by this trans madness - so yes it is important to fathers as much as mothers. One friend’s kid has actually transitioned - in a traumatic way which destroyed the marriage and set the generations at war
You either don’t have kids or they were lucky enough to miss this insanity because they are too old
Actually, whilst I am sure that many of the gents here are acting from the best of motives, why do any of you think that who goes in or out of the Ladies Loo is any of your business? Are women incapable of deciding? Do we need male guardians Taliban style?
And on that note, I will bid you all Good Afternoon.
I look forward to the first sitting of the English Woman's Votes for English Womens Laws sub committee in parliament. The Cornish mens committee for Male only interests in the Padstow region have the room booked afterwards
If you think they’re not doing the same thing in the UK, you’re naïve.
The Tavistock case on Gillick competance & trans healthcare was led by a prominent anti-abortion lawyer - where did the funding for that case come from?
I have a bunch of screen capped quotes from GC types on Twitter that were rapidly deleted, so won’t share them - you can find them easily enough if you want to. Posy Parker seems pretty explicit about it on Facebook.
and so on...
But once again, doesn’t it worry you that you’re taking the same political side as these people? Does it give you no pause at all? You are the one who dragged trans rights into this discussion alongside the rights to aborton & all the others - have you not noticed that the “anti women” groups that want to put all the other rights on the chopping block are also going after trans rights? Does the reality that you’ve chosen their side on this issue not give you any pause at all?
Many moons I posted on here that a friend of mine, prominent in this issue, had told me that one of the reasons that it was important to uphold trans rights (and they readily accept that eg prisons and sport are likely carve outs) was to look at who's on the other side of the debate at which point as you note, it becomes obvious that if you are "anti-trans" (I'm not saying anyone on here is but as a general umbrella term) then you line up with some pretty odious people.
But I don't think anyone is. I don't see how you could be. But if you just stipulate the three utterly obvious carveouts - sport, safe spaces from (mainly) heterosexual male predators, safeguards for children against being persuaded they are something they aren't - that's three utterly odious transphobic slurs. Apparently.
Grand Designs Bot @GrandDBot · 5m Kevin travels to Buckinghamshire where entitled tosspots Boris and Carrie are planning a £150,000 tree house for the spoilt toddler and his son Wilf. #GrandDesigns
If you're Prime Minister it's hard to speak sincerely about the cost-of-living crisis if your toddler son gets on the property ladder before a nurse working 60 hours a week. https://twitter.com/drmeenalviz/status/1540606554617118720
It is also totally unnecessary. There is a great tree here for kids to climb at the top of the nearby Beacon Hill (within 800m of Chequers). Mine have enjoyed time climbing there whilst I've enjoyed the stunning views of the surrounding countryside.
It is also a slightly unusual spot as next to the tree there is a lamppost with a security camera on the top. For obvious reasons!
Breakfasting in crowded Kotor. It is beautiful but my god the tourists. They surge with the Adriatic heat
Venice is the only place on earth that somehow rises above intense mass tourism, or shrugs it off, or even becomes more interesting thereby, because it was always a stage set: awaiting an audience
Where are most of the tourists from, or is it a mix?
A fair mix. Probably Americans are the most numerous, to my surprise, Why here and nowhere else?
A lot of Italians (they only have to cross the Adriatic, I guess), plenty of Russians, a few Brits, Germans and Spaniards
The Montenegrins feel very Serbian, when you point out that their language is close to Serbian they say Yes YES, It is Serbian!
Americans are numerous already in many of Europe's tourist hotspots - the Cinque Terre in Italy was awash with them. Because of the flight restrictions and the higher cost of being unable to return home if they got covid, hardly any Americans have been travelling these last few years, and those in steady jobs have money saved for a European trip. With the regulations recently lifted, there are tons of Americans making and wanting to plan European trips right now, as a dip into any of the principal travel forums will quickly demonstrate.
The difference with Americans - partly because a European trip for most of them is both more special and more rare - and partly because they follow commentators like Steves and all want to visit the most recommended spots on social media - is that those locations that have been recommended by Steves and others are flooded with Americans (so, in Italy, it's always Rome, Florence, Venice, the Amalfi Coast, the Cinque Terre, and the high Dolomites) and it is very rare to run into US tourists anywhere else.
If you have lots in Montenegro, I would put money on Rick Steves having done a video about it.
They follow a highly predictable circuit in the UK as well, typically, Stonehenge, Bath and London.
I tried telling a few in Bath that Stonehenge was shit and there were a million other better places to visit - but whilst they listened they still said they had to do it.
If you are going to do a stone circle - do Avebury at least getting a drink is easy...
Yeah, I recommended Avebury.
To be fair, I don't know how disappointing the Statue of Liberty is, for example, but I suspect I'd at least want to see it and make my mind up for myself if I were a tourist and had never seen it before.
It is underwhelming.
American tourists tend to be after things they can't get at home, like castles and palaces and more generally anything really old. You don't get much older than Stonehenge. I've never visited it myself but I have driven past it and it looks pretty cool.
If I were building a 1 week UK itinerary it would probably look something like this: Day 1: British Museum (early); Thames River cruise; West End show or Ronnie Scotts Day 2: Maritime Greenwich; picnic in a park in South London; night out in Peckham Day 3: day trip to Cambridge; punt to Grantchester; pub lunch; return to London to catch sleeper to Glasgow Day 4: day trip Loch Lomond Day 5: train to York via Settle and Carlisle. Visit York Minster; hire a car and drive to Yorkshire Dales and stay at a pub Day 6: walking in Yorkshire Dales; pub dinner Day 7: return car, train back to London and flight home. Could replace Glasgow/Loch Lomond with Edinburgh/East Neuk.
7 days is a very short time for something like this. Night out in Peckham seems a bit err.. parochial..
If I was to change your schedule but keep the broad theme I'd go Buck Palace and Windsor castle for day 2
I was trying to give the tourists a taste of urban nightlife outside of Central London.
Er, why?
Er, why not? Isn't a night out one of life's great joys?
This kind of emotional blackmail helps explain how things have become so toxic. What do you mean by 'eliminate'?
Would this qualify?
Chimene Suleyman@chimenesuleyman 3 Jun “[Trans people] are a huge problem to a sane world… Every one of them is a difficulty… they’re going to need things the rest of us don’t need… so the fewer of those people there are the better.” Helen Joyce literally advocating eugenics. Dear god.
Ah, the old quoting what people say isn't fair thing. At the risk of encouraging (even more) men to explain what women really mean, what do you think was intended by 'that means reducing or keeping down the number of people transitioning' or '(trans people) are a huge problem to a sane world' or 'so the fewer of those people there are the better'.
As to your second point, afaik no one is saying there are no harmed people in all areas of the trans process, certainly not me, but there appear to be some like the opinonating Ms Joyce saying that all trans people are damaged.
So.. I'm pretty sure that my interview went really well. It was a preliminary interview with a lady from the recruitment agency that the company are using. She told me that I had the right skill set for the job, and that she had found me enthusiastic, engaging and a little entertaining (I made a couple of jokes at my own expense). She said that she'd definitely be recommending me for a second interview with the lady I'd be working under at the company.
Thanks to everyone that gave me tips for the video interview. I think I got it set up pretty well and was thinking about that advice while I did so.
I decided that it all warranted a celebratory trip to Waitrose where I rather spoiled myself. I'm halfway through my first bottle of a four pack of Leffes, and I've got a fillet steak for tonight (which cost me what I usually spend on three dinners!).
On my way back from Waitrose I made a detour to my folks' place as they're away on holiday for a week and I've been tasked with keeping my Mum's garden alive (she has a little back yard full of flowers in terracotta pots and hanging baskets). My Dad had very generously left me a couple of bottles of wine, one of which is a red that I think will go very nicely with my steak!
Oh, and she seemed very impressed with my spreadsheet (probably not an Excel nerd!) and the fact that I'd followed up the application by sending it to them. She said that she'd definitely be sending it to the company with my interview notes, and that I was clearly the nerdiest, Excel-wise, of all the candidates.
For those wondering, I don't live too far from Headingley (not super close, mind) and overcast/rainy skies have given way to sunshine here. Just been out for a walk and it went from clear fleece weather to a bit warm for that.
Actually, whilst I am sure that many of the gents here are acting from the best of motives, why do any of you think that who goes in or out of the Ladies Loo is any of your business? Are women incapable of deciding? Do we need male guardians Taliban style?
And on that note, I will bid you all Good Afternoon.
Because we have wives, sisters, girlfriends and daughters you insufferable twit
And it's important that you lay down some ground rules for them just so that we can all be clear on what's best for them.
Actually, whilst I am sure that many of the gents here are acting from the best of motives, why do any of you think that who goes in or out of the Ladies Loo is any of your business? Are women incapable of deciding? Do we need male guardians Taliban style?
And on that note, I will bid you all Good Afternoon.
Because we have wives, sisters, girlfriends and daughters you insufferable twit
And it's important that you lay down some ground rules for them just so that we can all be clear on what's best for them.
I have close friends with teen kids and those kids are mentally fucked up by this trans madness - so yes it is important to fathers as much as mothers. One friend’s kid has actually transitioned - in a traumatic way which destroyed the marriage and set the generations at war
You either don’t have kids or they were lucky enough to miss this insanity because they are too old
They are minors. So of course they need guidance. What about the "wives, sisters, girlfriends". Need your expert guidance do they?
Grand Designs Bot @GrandDBot · 5m Kevin travels to Buckinghamshire where entitled tosspots Boris and Carrie are planning a £150,000 tree house for the spoilt toddler and his son Wilf. #GrandDesigns
If you're Prime Minister it's hard to speak sincerely about the cost-of-living crisis if your toddler son gets on the property ladder before a nurse working 60 hours a week. https://twitter.com/drmeenalviz/status/1540606554617118720
It is also totally unnecessary. There is a great tree here for kids to climb at the top of the nearby Beacon Hill (within 800m of Chequers). Mine have enjoyed time climbing there whilst I've enjoyed the stunning views of the surrounding countryside.
It is also a slightly unusual spot as next to the tree there is a lamppost with a security camera on the top. For obvious reasons!
150 grand for a treehouse. Is it possible to read that story and not think 'what an utter twat'?
People spend their money as they want. Plenty of people spend hundreds of thousands on sports cars, and do not get overly criticised for it - even when they buy ones with massive depreciation.
If they get joy out of spending less money on a treehouse and seeing their kids have fun, fair enough. True, they won't get some of their money back when they sell (as they do a car), but at least they won't look like a tosser, as they invariably do in the cars.
Not their money. Lord Brownlows money in return for?. To build a treehouse for a kid in the grounds of a publically owned official residence. Absolute twattery.
So.. I'm pretty sure that my interview went really well. It was a preliminary interview with a lady from the recruitment agency that the company are using. She told me that I had the right skill set for the job, and that she had found me enthusiastic, engaging and a little entertaining (I made a couple of jokes at my own expense). She said that she'd definitely be recommending me for a second interview with the lady I'd be working under at the company.
Thanks to everyone that gave me tips for the video interview. I think I got it set up pretty well and was thinking about that advice while I did so.
I decided that it all warranted a celebratory trip to Waitrose where I rather spoiled myself. I'm halfway through my first bottle of a four pack of Leffes, and I've got a fillet steak for tonight (which cost me what I usually spend on three dinners!).
On my way back from Waitrose I made a detour to my folks' place as they're away on holiday for a week and I've been tasked with keeping my Mum's garden alive (she has a little back yard full of flowers in terracotta pots and hanging baskets). My Dad had very generously left me a couple of bottles of wine, one of which is a red that I think will go very nicely with my steak!
Oh, and she seemed very impressed with my spreadsheet (probably not an Excel nerd!) and the fact that I'd followed up the application by sending it to them. She said that she'd definitely be sending it to the company with my interview notes, and that I was clearly the nerdiest, Excel-wise, of all the candidates.
Comments
Your view seems to be that people can self certify to womanhood simply by declaration. A would be entrant to women's spaces would only have to say 'I am a woman' after which the person would be beyond the reach of any sanction.
Oh, and we walked the entire walls.
(*) This deserves a recommendation. I have been to a fair few regimental museums, and they are always dusty places. This one had three people acting out people who had served in the regiment, and kids were encouraged to go and talk to them about their lives. It really added another dimension to the place. One was Lawrence Oates, of 'I may be some time' fame.
So, while the legal aid work pays poorly, the private work combines to provide a good living for the men and women in gowns and wigs?
Is that correct?
If the space ceases to be protected, then it becomes harder to do that.
Trans people absolutely should have protections, but they shouldn't be violating women's protections in order to do so.
Men can already do all these awful things to women: not being able to identify as women isn’t exactly stopping them in their tracks is it?
As an aside, women’s refuge staff are already (sadly) very used to having to keep predatory individuals out of their refuges, from violent partners (usually male, sometimes female) to people trying to exploit the women they are trying to support. They can refuse entry to anyone on the grounds of the safety of their clients, regardless of gender or sex. Letting trans women self-identify is not going to change this.
(And look! Cyclefree has succeeded in changing the subject from the fact that the right is using anti-trans acitivism as a stalking horse for attacks on other LGBTQ people & other womens rights with her well crafted Gish Gallop. Well done her.)
Of course not! Anyone, male or female, behaving like that needs arresting. The sex or gender of the person is not really the issue.
But it is a great excuse to beat up trans people with....
I got charged over £100 by a plumber just for a 15 minute call out in which nothing ended up needing doing
PS I suspect because of that these new Ray-Ban x Meta glasses won't take off. I was in Cannes last week and two girls said to a guy wearing them "don't look at me with those on" as they feared he was taking videos and snaps. He obviously wasn't but it was clear the women were very uncomfortable
A toilet is "protected" only be a door and by social convention, there is no "pass phrase" or code. Are you suggesting Door Monitors who check those going in? Perhaps a person to stand inside and watch? Or cameras?
And all to solve 0.0001% of a problem that has been occurring for as long as there been people.
He’s making circles just North of Liverpool now. Still can’t can’t see any news on it though, surely there must be one planespotter with a radio nearby?
What a criminal will want to do is argue they have a credible explanation for the facts the prosecution (if it comes to that) can prove. So, if someone can validly argue they had a legitimate reason to be in the women's toilets, it puts them in a much better position to get away with whatever it is they are alleged to have done there.
To take your example of murder, you are in a much better position as a murderer if the fact you were in the room, carrying a concealed weapon, is all seen to be perfectly legitimate - your argument that it was self defence, or someone else snatched your weapon (or whatever) is then far more credible.
Indeed, very often convictions aren't entirely based on direct evidence of the crime itself being committed but associated acts. If you're found disposing of a dead body, for example, that's very strong evidence you created it, and that it wasn't an accident (as it's an incredibly odd reaction to an accident to grab a shovel rather than a phone to call an ambulance).
I
https://flickeringlamps.com/2015/10/03/the-mysterious-and-majestic-stone-circle-at-lochbuie/
Grand Designs Bot
@GrandDBot
·
5m
Kevin travels to Buckinghamshire where entitled tosspots Boris and Carrie are planning a £150,000 tree house for the spoilt toddler and his son Wilf. #GrandDesigns
https://twitter.com/GrandDBot/status/1541391723124908032
They only get about 2 weeks holiday a year and most of them can only afford to go to Europe (the ultimate destination) once every few years, so they end up going to the obvious places which are full of other American tourists (like Kotor, Montenegro)
They must have a terrifically warped sense of what Europe is really like. *Everywhere is made of handsome stone but all the streets are full of souvenir shops so it resembles Disneyland*. And all menus feature pizza
Day 1: add London Eye.
Day 2: add HMS Belfast unless from a state with its own ww2 warship museum.
Day 3: or Oxford.
Day 4: Glasgow to Loch Lomond; why? The Edinburgh Festival & Fringe are more entertaining.
Day 5: (York) railway museum and/or air museum
Day 6: OP must be a northerner if he/she thinks walking is a leisure activity, and if it is, why hire a car?
Day 7: don't they have airports up north?
Also, Stonehenge is best driven past because apart from looking at the stones (from the road) there is not much else. I'd imagine you could do the whole tour on Youtube.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(22)00320-6/fulltext
Petworth. Highclere. Knole. Perhaps Ightham Mote
And at least one great garden - probably England’s most unique contribution to the arts: the landscaped English garden
I’d go for Stourhead. Unutterably beautiful on a fine day
That said, I think the difficulty comes from the conflation of a biological characteristic and a set of societal expectations that makes disentangling the two very hard. This is why I tend to get run down in the middle of the road between said groups of friends. I don’t think you can ignore sex, but society doesn’t have a right to impose gendered expectations on people just because of tradition, and we should support people who suffer because of it.
https://twitter.com/drmeenalviz/status/1540606554617118720
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1541385561075847170
https://mrtreehouse.co.uk/
Edit: I see @Beibheirli_C also pointed out the obvious fallacy of the "but Rotherham" line of discussion.
Often guidebooks will say 1 day isn't enough for city x, you ideally need to spend a week there etc. That's fine if you're visiting regularly or live there, but if you spend a week in city x you miss small town y or mountain range z.
Horses for courses I think. This summer holiday we're driving South and spending 2 days in Ghent, 2 days in the Black Forest, 2 days in Como, a week in Corsica, 2 days in Nice. Other holidays I have spent 3 weeks in our holiday home in Burgundy not venturing very far at all, and that's nice too.
Thanks to everyone that gave me tips for the video interview. I think I got it set up pretty well and was thinking about that advice while I did so.
I decided that it all warranted a celebratory trip to Waitrose where I rather spoiled myself. I'm halfway through my first bottle of a four pack of Leffes, and I've got a fillet steak for tonight (which cost me what I usually spend on three dinners!).
On my way back from Waitrose I made a detour to my folks' place as they're away on holiday for a week and I've been tasked with keeping my Mum's garden alive (she has a little back yard full of flowers in terracotta pots and hanging baskets). My Dad had very generously left me a couple of bottles of wine, one of which is a red that I think will go very nicely with my steak!
https://twitter.com/MirrorSport/status/1541387268631453701/photo/1
Corsica alone is beautiful but stressful to get around - especially in high season - so just the south of Corsica needs ten days at least
As society changes there will be false starts, overshoots, people feeling their way. Eventually a new normal will come into being and we will move on to the next thing.
I believe much of the "anti-trans" (as you say how could you be) lobby at least here on PB is just fearful of change and hence looks to easy stereotypes and slurs (eg "bloke in a dress", etc).
That is not to say that as you note, those three carve outs aren't vitally important because they are and sensible "pro-trans" people understand that.
For example - https://www.nickherbert.com/news/2022/4/9/royal-commission
And on that note, I will bid you all Good Afternoon.
The journey is the holiday. I've done driving trips in the US where we're on the road of 6 or 7 hours a day and a new place each night.
Oh and I forgot to add we are then spending a week in Burgundy before going home, so it's a 3 week holiday.
(He's not very happy with Raab.)
The Criminal Bar on strike – 9 things you need to know
thesecretbarrister, June 27, 2022
https://thesecretbarrister.com/2022/06/27/the-criminal-bar-on-strike-9-things-you-need-to-know/
....But this figure of 15% that you’ll hear bandied about by the government is important.
The independent report on criminal legal aid that the government delayed for years? When it was published last year, it recommended an immediate uplift of 15% to legal aid fees as the “minimum necessary” that should be brought in “as soon as practicable” with “no scope for further delay“. This was in light of the data that showed – even pre-pandemic – that criminal barristers were being driven out of the profession by pay and conditions. This 15% was supposed to be brought in last year, and was the sticking plaster while the government addressed the many other recommendations in the independent report, aimed at ensuring that barristers are actually paid for the work they do (instead of, as we currently do, fix the holes created by government cuts by working for free). When you consider that criminal legal aid fees have been cut by over a quarter in real terms since 2006, you can see how small this sticking plaster was. The report made clear to the government that “further sums may be necessary“.
So this is absolutely not the case that criminal barristers have decided that they fancy a nice juicy pay rise and are greedily rejecting a whopping 15%. No, what we have is an independent report warning that immediate action has to be taken to undo the damage caused by years of cuts which have forced hundreds out of the profession, and urging the government to begin by, as a minimum, increasing the budget by 15%.
But Dominic Raab will not even give us that. He has responded by claiming to have offered a “15% pay rise.” But he hasn’t. It’s a scam. It is actually closer to 6 per cent, and he is refusing to apply it to ongoing cases, insisting that it will only attach to cases that begin in October 2022. Barristers only get paid when a case concludes, which means that, given the delays in the system, we will not actually see this “increase” until 2024. ...
If they get joy out of spending less money on a treehouse and seeing their kids have fun, fair enough. True, they won't get some of their money back when they sell (as they do a car), but at least they won't look like a tosser, as they invariably do in the cars.
Totally agree with your 2nd para. As I say, I don't think it's an intractable issue, but it is difficult, and for those reasons you say.
Personally if we are talking about toilets the solution is very simple, unisex single person loos. But that doesn't really work for the sex offender part of women's prisons which is where the story started off.
You either don’t have kids or they were lucky enough to miss this insanity because they are too old
It is also a slightly unusual spot as next to the tree there is a lamppost with a security camera on the top. For obvious reasons!
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/51°44'49.3"N+0°47'26.2"W/@51.747039,-0.7927977,975m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x0:0xe9d5dcf768e4efe6!7e2!8m2!3d51.7470387!4d-0.7906087
At the risk of encouraging (even more) men to explain what women really mean, what do you think was intended by 'that means reducing or keeping down the number of people transitioning' or '(trans people) are a huge problem to a sane world' or 'so the fewer of those people there are the better'.
As to your second point, afaik no one is saying there are no harmed people in all areas of the trans process, certainly not me, but there appear to be some like the opinonating Ms Joyce saying that all trans people are damaged.
Net well/badly score
🇬🇧 UK: +24
🇺🇸 US: +22
🇫🇷 France: +21
🇨🇦 Canada: +19
🇩🇪 Germany: +15
🇮🇹 Italy: +12
🇯🇵 Japan: +5
https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1541357824500027392