She's just giving Prince Charles all the precedents he needs to interfere when he becomes King.
A Scottish government memo obtained by the Guardian reveals that “it is almost certain” draft laws have been secretly changed to secure the Queen’s approval.
Under an arcane mechanism known as Queen’s consent, the monarch is routinely given advance sight of proposed laws that could affect her personal property and public powers. Unlike the better-known procedure of royal assent, a formality that marks the moment when a bill becomes law, Queen’s consent must be sought before the relevant legislation can be approved by parliament.
A Guardian investigation last year revealed the Queen’s consent procedure had been used by the monarch in recent decades to privately lobby for changes to proposed UK legislation. In Scotland, where the procedure is known as crown consent, research by the Guardian identified at least 67 instances in which Scottish bills were vetted by the Queen.
It is perfectly correct that the monarch is informed of legislation affecting Crown property.
Calling the Queen an 'uneducated philistine' is also extremely disrespectful in her Jubilee year and Starkey was bad enough when he first used the phrase
What makes her so special?
She was a tax dodger for so many years, no representation without taxation.
She hasn't got representation even now she pays tax, the Queen can't vote
She can vote.
By convention the Queen never votes in any UK election, local or general
I would not exercise my right to vote in order to have a veto over any proposed legislation that could affect me. I suspect you would take that deal as well.
The Queen has not vetoed any legislation passed by Parliament in her reign.
She has also not vetoed any bill directly affecting the Crown unless advised to by ministers
They were actually going to remove PHILIP LARKIN from the English literature curriculum
I can guess the rough identity of who they had planned as a replacement
PB covered GCSE poems the other day. I wonder what EdSec's user name is on here.
Well, he was a big wheel in YouGov, wasn't he? So I'm sure he'd fit right in.
But given the other issues in schools right now (starting with "at this rate, soon there won't be enough people to teach any poems to GCSE classes"), this is a fairly bonkers priority. And there are two other exam boards. And the principle- that ministers don't just say "this must/mustn't be on the curriculum"- is an important one.
The important point - which hardly gets mentioned - about the changes in the works and authors studied for English Literature is that it's not, or shouldn't be, about the quality of individual works. Whether or not you can make an argument that Raymond Antrobus, for example, is a better poet than, say, Milton*, the fact still remains that Milton is part of the canon of English Literature, influential over centuries, whose works are imbued into the language. In other words, he is part of our culture, and Antrobus isn't. What, therefore, this is about is a conscious intention to destroy the culture. It should be seen as such.
* to my mind, almost any poet is a better poet than Milton, but that's besides the point
Uncharacterisic lapse. Read l'allegro and il penseroso if you don't get on with PL
From the man who is tone deaf. Hehe.
And, in the end, The love you take Is equal to the love you make.
Politicians shouldn't dictate the precise content of school curricula. What next? Zahawi tells Mr Smith to reinstate the question about Oxbow lakes in the year 8 end of term geography exam? Education Secretary directs maths teachers to prioritise pentagons over hexagons in geometry? I mean, I am all for Philip Larkin - anyone whose work allows pupils to say Fuck at school and not get done for it is worthy of study in my view - but this is just absurd.
The problem though appears to be that exam boards cannot be trusted to weigh these things up on literary merits rather than make it all about a particular political view and imposing non-literary judgments.
Larkin is easily the most important post-war poet. Only Ted Hughes comes close I would say.
Seamus Heaney? And about a half dozen Americans…
The movie 8 Mile is interesting in portraying something that could be called poetry in the modern context. Look at the way the hero writes, his scripts don't look so different from the manuscripts of any poet.
Most rap will disappear, but some of it will endure and pass into culture.
She's just giving Prince Charles all the precedents he needs to interfere when he becomes King.
A Scottish government memo obtained by the Guardian reveals that “it is almost certain” draft laws have been secretly changed to secure the Queen’s approval.
Under an arcane mechanism known as Queen’s consent, the monarch is routinely given advance sight of proposed laws that could affect her personal property and public powers. Unlike the better-known procedure of royal assent, a formality that marks the moment when a bill becomes law, Queen’s consent must be sought before the relevant legislation can be approved by parliament.
A Guardian investigation last year revealed the Queen’s consent procedure had been used by the monarch in recent decades to privately lobby for changes to proposed UK legislation. In Scotland, where the procedure is known as crown consent, research by the Guardian identified at least 67 instances in which Scottish bills were vetted by the Queen.
It is perfectly correct that the monarch is informed of legislation affecting Crown property.
Calling the Queen an 'uneducated philistine' is also extremely disrespectful in her Jubilee year and Starkey was bad enough when he first used the phrase
What makes her so special?
She was a tax dodger for so many years, no representation without taxation.
She hasn't got representation even now she pays tax, the Queen can't vote
She can vote.
By convention the Queen never votes in any UK election, local or general
I would not exercise my right to vote in order to have a veto over any proposed legislation that could affect me. I suspect you would take that deal as well.
The Queen has not vetoed any legislation passed by Parliament in her reign.
She has also not vetoed any bill directly affecting the Crown unless advised to by ministers
"When asked by the Guardian, the Queen’s representatives refused to say how many times she had requested alterations to legislation since she came to the throne in 1952." The Guardian 8th Feb 2021.
I'm interested to know how you claim to know more than the Queen's office is prepared to say.
A Russian missile just hit a crowded shopping centre in Kremenchuk.
Ukrainian sources on the ground fear there are many civilian dead and wounded.
That’s not good at all. A missile aimed at a supermarket in the middle of the day, hundreds of kilometers away from the fighting. Putin really is trying to provoke WWIII.
Putin is trying anything and everything to escalate matters.
Heading off to Paris this week. BA say use VeriFLY.
Downloaded the app and there is an *awful* lot of data importing and sharing requests from them. Anyone on here used/use them?
No, we're using My Health Checked from Lloyds pharmacy to get a certified test for our cruise on Sunday. Slightly dubious about how it's going to work since Mrs P and I still tracing very faintly positive from our recent covid bouts.
Finger-crossed.
Our friends tested positive the day they were due to fly out to Botswana for a safari a couple of weeks ago. Gutted doesn't begin to describe it.
I have previously (and successfully) used Confirm Testing - whereby they validate your test result. But BA suggested VeriFLY. Just that you need to agree with a lot of data sharing to proceed. I think I'll take my chances at check in.
What could go wrong?
Flew KLM to Amsterdam last week. No masks, no tests, no vax passports, nothing. Just like old times.
So did I. Long queues at Schiphol security though (just like old times too I suppose).
Fully expect him to be cancelled shortly, The Merchant of Venice is so antisemitic it could have been one of Corbyn's top supporters.
Up to a point:
I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
I agree that there is some effort there not to make Shylock a one-dimensional villain (and Shakespeare also tries to give his heroes flaws).
But Shylock is still very much a villain and the speech can come across as self-pitying and bogus.
It also has more than a hint of, "well, it isn't entirely the fault of Jews that they are all shysters..." Okay, that's all very tolerant, Bill, but your premise remains that they are all shysters...
I thought Antonio and Bassanio were the bad guys in that story.
Wilfred Larkin's poems have a haunting power to them that stays with you long afterwards.
Not to be confused with Philip Owen's trenches poetry?
I didn't know that the former leader of the SDP wrote poetry.
I personally liked Seigfried Sassoon. I read Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man for A level. Most remember him for his hairstyling these days.
Fabulous book no matter what you think of the subject matter. Don't see it making the syllabus these days
Sassoon died in 1967 I think and is buried at Mells in Somerset (easy to think he died in WW1)
SPLASHING along the boggy woods all day, And over brambled hedge and holding clay, I shall not think of him: But when the watery fields grow brown and dim, And hounds have lost their fox, and horses tire, 5 I know that he’ll be with me on my way Home through the darkness to the evening fire. He’s jumped each stile along the glistening lanes; His hand will be upon the mud-soaked reins; Hearing the saddle creak, 10 He’ll wonder if the frost will come next week. I shall forget him in the morning light; And while we gallop on he will not speak: But at the stable-door he’ll say good-night.
It’s a brilliant memoir
The juxtaposition of thoughtless fox hunting and merciless trench warfare is inspired
"the image of war without its guilt and only five-and-twenty percent of its danger."
Nice quite. Tho the discrepancy in danger is probably a bit wider than that
It would be interesting to know. Controlling for number of participants and/or time spent at the activity for example. No idea. Someone ( @IshmaelZ looking at you) can crunch the numbers.
Fuck knows, I know 4 people who have died of horses in the last 4 years (hunting, hunting, exercising hunt horse, unrelated) but I think that's an outlier.
The origin of the phrase is interesting. I think Xenophon did the first bit, because he was a rigid ol gent who had to justify the amount of hunting he did, which he did by saying Best training for a war horse, and Jorrocks added the 25%.
First innings Run Rate - 5.37 Second innings Run Rate - 5.44
It's going to blow up in their faces against India, isn't it?
My inner voice has been saying, "it won't work at the WACA", to which the reply is "Well, nothing else has".
If this is now England's standard approach, we're going to get days of stupidity as well as days of glory, but the game as a whole has moved on so much - how cricketers earn their money and, in turn, how they train, practice, develop technique, how the shorter game is played - that maybe it is time to up the aggression levels in Test cricket as well. Yes, there are differences in field placing rules and the like, but it is the same sport still.
Genuine question: over the last 5 years, have England actually scored better, in total, in test cricket or in 50 over cricket?
I will answer my own question here:
Since CWC 19, in 13 ODI innings(setting aside NED and IRE series), England have scored 3387 runs for the loss of 90 wickets.
Average ODI innings = 260.5/6.9
In 73 test innings over the same period, they have scored 19093 runs for the loss of 654 wickets
Average test innings = 261.5 / 8.9
So, England's ODI and test innings scores are essentially identical, except (a shade above) 2 more wickets have been lost in each test innings.
They were actually going to remove PHILIP LARKIN from the English literature curriculum
I can guess the rough identity of who they had planned as a replacement
PB covered GCSE poems the other day. I wonder what EdSec's user name is on here.
Well, he was a big wheel in YouGov, wasn't he? So I'm sure he'd fit right in.
But given the other issues in schools right now (starting with "at this rate, soon there won't be enough people to teach any poems to GCSE classes"), this is a fairly bonkers priority. And there are two other exam boards. And the principle- that ministers don't just say "this must/mustn't be on the curriculum"- is an important one.
Indeed, although I do think that in the humanities there can be a tendency to say that things that ought to be taught at university should also be taught to years 6 to 10, whether it be foreign literature, historiography or non-prescriptive grammar. You would not teach general relativity at GCSE even though Newton's laws are known to be incomplete. Sometimes broad strokes are appropriate.
The important point - which hardly gets mentioned - about the changes in the works and authors studied for English Literature is that it's not, or shouldn't be, about the quality of individual works. Whether or not you can make an argument that Raymond Antrobus, for example, is a better poet than, say, Milton*, the fact still remains that Milton is part of the canon of English Literature, influential over centuries, whose works are imbued into the language. In other words, he is part of our culture, and Antrobus isn't. What, therefore, this is about is a conscious intention to destroy the culture. It should be seen as such.
* to my mind, almost any poet is a better poet than Milton, but that's besides the point
Uncharacterisic lapse. Read l'allegro and il penseroso if you don't get on with PL
From the man who is tone deaf. Hehe.
And, in the end, The love you take Is equal to the love you make.
Yesterdayeeee all my troubles seemed so far awayeeeee
Politicians shouldn't dictate the precise content of school curricula. What next? Zahawi tells Mr Smith to reinstate the question about Oxbow lakes in the year 8 end of term geography exam? Education Secretary directs maths teachers to prioritise pentagons over hexagons in geometry? I mean, I am all for Philip Larkin - anyone whose work allows pupils to say Fuck at school and not get done for it is worthy of study in my view - but this is just absurd.
The problem though appears to be that exam boards cannot be trusted to weigh these things up on literary merits rather than make it all about a particular political view and imposing non-literary judgments.
Larkin is easily the most important post-war poet. Only Ted Hughes comes close I would say.
How do you know how they have come to that judgement? Or that it is not in fact Zahari who is imposing a political view? He is, after all, a politician, and as far as I know doesn't have a degree in English literature.
I like Larkin (as a poet) but clearly there isn't room on the curriculum for everything and it may be that it was right to rotate the authors covered to make space for someone equally deserving. I don't think that it is the job of politicians to decide which authors are included in GCSE English exams.
Larkin for me is right up at the top of the tree. Solid gold. That's not the same as sticking him on the curriculum. The really big thing about Larkin is that people read him because they really like his stuff. He speaks for them. But as he was one of those people who acted like he was 40 at primary school, and was the grumpy old man's grumpy old man by the time he was 30, I can't see the modern school kid getting him.
A bit like late Hardy. What on earth could 'At Castle Boterel' or 'Thoughts of Phena' mean to a kid at school? It would be sacrilege to force someone young to read them. Whereas once you are a grumpy old man......
Interesting header, though I suspect the figures might be different in 2022. Do we have the reverse figures for Lab transfers?
My impression from the last (2019) multi-candidate ward election where I was a candidate was that 2/3 of the Lab vote also went to the LD candidate in our 2-member ward, while half the LD vote also went to me (there was no explicit endorsement either way, but just the two of us for 2 Tory seats). Most of the balance in both parties abstained on their second vote - just a small sprinkling went Conservative.
My guess is that it will go up to 75% and 66% when we're up again next year - familiarity and observation that we are working well together.
Fully expect him to be cancelled shortly, The Merchant of Venice is so antisemitic it could have been one of Corbyn's top supporters.
Up to a point:
I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
I agree that there is some effort there not to make Shylock a one-dimensional villain (and Shakespeare also tries to give his heroes flaws).
But Shylock is still very much a villain and the speech can come across as self-pitying and bogus.
It also has more than a hint of, "well, it isn't entirely the fault of Jews that they are all shysters..." Okay, that's all very tolerant, Bill, but your premise remains that they are all shysters...
I thought Antonio and Bassanio were the bad guys in that story.
Who's the bad guy in Taming of the Shrew?
I have seen one production where it was undoubtedly Petruchio, turning Katherine into a brainwashed husk...
Politicians shouldn't dictate the precise content of school curricula. What next? Zahawi tells Mr Smith to reinstate the question about Oxbow lakes in the year 8 end of term geography exam? Education Secretary directs maths teachers to prioritise pentagons over hexagons in geometry? I mean, I am all for Philip Larkin - anyone whose work allows pupils to say Fuck at school and not get done for it is worthy of study in my view - but this is just absurd.
The problem though appears to be that exam boards cannot be trusted to weigh these things up on literary merits rather than make it all about a particular political view and imposing non-literary judgments.
Larkin is easily the most important post-war poet. Only Ted Hughes comes close I would say.
Seamus Heaney? And about a half dozen Americans…
The movie 8 Mile is interesting in portraying something that could be called poetry in the modern context. Look at the way the hero writes, his scripts don't look so different from the manuscripts of any poet.
Most rap will disappear, but some of it will endure and pass into culture.
Yes I agree, although I listened to “Licensed to Ill” the other day and…it’s kind of not that great.
Politicians shouldn't dictate the precise content of school curricula. What next? Zahawi tells Mr Smith to reinstate the question about Oxbow lakes in the year 8 end of term geography exam? Education Secretary directs maths teachers to prioritise pentagons over hexagons in geometry? I mean, I am all for Philip Larkin - anyone whose work allows pupils to say Fuck at school and not get done for it is worthy of study in my view - but this is just absurd.
The problem though appears to be that exam boards cannot be trusted to weigh these things up on literary merits rather than make it all about a particular political view and imposing non-literary judgments.
Larkin is easily the most important post-war poet. Only Ted Hughes comes close I would say.
Seamus Heaney? And about a half dozen Americans…
Yes, Heaney. Of course. I meant UK poets - so no americans.
Larkin is vastly better than Heaney
Can anyone quote a single line of Heaney?
No. He’s melodious and mellifluous but totally unmemorable
Whereas Larkin belts out the zingers
Almost every line in This Be The Verse is solid gold
Then:
What will survive of us is love
The trees are coming into leaf; like something almost being said
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh
A serious house on serious earth it is
I worK all day and get half drunk at night
Indeed, I’d say Aubade is one of the finest poems ever written by anyone in any language. The greatest poetical examination of death, in existence. Chilling, but incredible
AUBADE
BY PHILIP LARKIN I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse —The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
A Russian missile just hit a crowded shopping centre in Kremenchuk.
Ukrainian sources on the ground fear there are many civilian dead and wounded.
That’s not good at all. A missile aimed at a supermarket in the middle of the day, hundreds of kilometers away from the fighting. Putin really is trying to provoke WWIII.
He is certainly burnishing his credentials of being a complete c***.
As well as hardening the hearts of the Ukrainians to fight to the death.
I do wonder what the Russian speakers in the Donbas think of "victory" - seeing their land razed, 80%+ of their homes uninhabitable, the industry that gave them jobs flattened, never to be rebuilt. Some victory that.
First innings Run Rate - 5.37 Second innings Run Rate - 5.44
It's going to blow up in their faces against India, isn't it?
My inner voice has been saying, "it won't work at the WACA", to which the reply is "Well, nothing else has".
If this is now England's standard approach, we're going to get days of stupidity as well as days of glory, but the game as a whole has moved on so much - how cricketers earn their money and, in turn, how they train, practice, develop technique, how the shorter game is played - that maybe it is time to up the aggression levels in Test cricket as well. Yes, there are differences in field placing rules and the like, but it is the same sport still.
Genuine question: over the last 5 years, have England actually scored better, in total, in test cricket or in 50 over cricket?
I will answer my own question here:
Since CWC 19, in 13 ODI innings(setting aside NED and IRE series), England have scored 3387 runs for the loss of 90 wickets.
Average ODI innings = 260.5/6.9
In 73 test innings over the same period, they have scored 19093 runs for the loss of 654 wickets
Average test innings = 261.5 / 8.9
So, England's ODI and test innings scores are essentially identical, except (a shade above) 2 more wickets have been lost in each test innings.
That will include a number of short fourth innings chases which drag the Test average down.
She's just giving Prince Charles all the precedents he needs to interfere when he becomes King.
A Scottish government memo obtained by the Guardian reveals that “it is almost certain” draft laws have been secretly changed to secure the Queen’s approval.
Under an arcane mechanism known as Queen’s consent, the monarch is routinely given advance sight of proposed laws that could affect her personal property and public powers. Unlike the better-known procedure of royal assent, a formality that marks the moment when a bill becomes law, Queen’s consent must be sought before the relevant legislation can be approved by parliament.
A Guardian investigation last year revealed the Queen’s consent procedure had been used by the monarch in recent decades to privately lobby for changes to proposed UK legislation. In Scotland, where the procedure is known as crown consent, research by the Guardian identified at least 67 instances in which Scottish bills were vetted by the Queen.
It is perfectly correct that the monarch is informed of legislation affecting Crown property.
Calling the Queen an 'uneducated philistine' is also extremely disrespectful in her Jubilee year and Starkey was bad enough when he first used the phrase
What makes her so special?
She was a tax dodger for so many years, no representation without taxation.
She hasn't got representation even now she pays tax, the Queen can't vote
She can vote.
By convention the Queen never votes in any UK election, local or general
I would not exercise my right to vote in order to have a veto over any proposed legislation that could affect me. I suspect you would take that deal as well.
The Queen has not vetoed any legislation passed by Parliament in her reign.
She has also not vetoed any bill directly affecting the Crown unless advised to by ministers
"When asked by the Guardian, the Queen’s representatives refused to say how many times she had requested alterations to legislation since she came to the throne in 1952." The Guardian 8th Feb 2021.
I'm interested to know how you claim to know more than the Queen's office is prepared to say.
So as I said she has not vetoed any legislation passed by Parliament since she came to the throne. Whether Parliament accepted any suggested amendments to legislation before passing that legislation was up to Parliament
Interesting header, though I suspect the figures might be different in 2022. Do we have the reverse figures for Lab transfers?
My impression from the last (2019) multi-candidate ward election where I was a candidate was that 2/3 of the Lab vote also went to the LD candidate in our 2-member ward, while half the LD vote also went to me (there was no explicit endorsement either way, but just the two of us for 2 Tory seats). Most of the balance in both parties abstained on their second vote - just a small sprinkling went Conservative.
My guess is that it will go up to 75% and 66% when we're up again next year - familiarity and observation that we are working well together.
Labour needs to sort out its position on a fairer voting system pronto - and then do a better job of honouring its commitments than it did during your time in parliament. Just imagine how our recent political history would be different had not Labour under Blair done the dirty on the promises it had made.
Politicians shouldn't dictate the precise content of school curricula. What next? Zahawi tells Mr Smith to reinstate the question about Oxbow lakes in the year 8 end of term geography exam? Education Secretary directs maths teachers to prioritise pentagons over hexagons in geometry? I mean, I am all for Philip Larkin - anyone whose work allows pupils to say Fuck at school and not get done for it is worthy of study in my view - but this is just absurd.
The problem though appears to be that exam boards cannot be trusted to weigh these things up on literary merits rather than make it all about a particular political view and imposing non-literary judgments.
Larkin is easily the most important post-war poet. Only Ted Hughes comes close I would say.
How do you know how they have come to that judgement? Or that it is not in fact Zahari who is imposing a political view? He is, after all, a politician, and as far as I know doesn't have a degree in English literature.
I like Larkin (as a poet) but clearly there isn't room on the curriculum for everything and it may be that it was right to rotate the authors covered to make space for someone equally deserving. I don't think that it is the job of politicians to decide which authors are included in GCSE English exams.
Larkin for me is right up at the top of the tree. Solid gold. That's not the same as sticking him on the curriculum. The really big thing about Larkin is that people read him because they really like his stuff. He speaks for them. But as he was one of those people who acted like he was 40 at primary school, and was the grumpy old man's grumpy old man by the time he was 30, I can't see the modern school kid getting him.
A bit like late Hardy. What on earth could 'At Castle Boterel' or 'Thoughts of Phena' mean to a kid at school? It would be sacrilege to force someone young to read them. Whereas once you are a grumpy old man......
Grumpy late Hardy at his best
Close up the casement, draw the blind, Shut out that stealing moon, She wears too much the guise she wore Before our lutes were strewn With years-deep dust, and names we read On a white stone were hewn.
Step not out on the dew-dashed lawn To view the Lady's Chair, Immense Orion's glittering form, The Less and Greater Bear: Stay in; to such sights we were drawn When faded ones were fair.
Brush not the bough for midnight scents That come forth lingeringly, And wake the same sweet sentiments They breathed to you and me When living seemed a laugh, and love All it was said to be.
Within the common lamp-lit room Prison my eyes and thought; Let dingy details crudely loom, Mechanic speech be wrought: Too fragrant was Life's early bloom, Too tart the fruit it brought!
She's just giving Prince Charles all the precedents he needs to interfere when he becomes King.
A Scottish government memo obtained by the Guardian reveals that “it is almost certain” draft laws have been secretly changed to secure the Queen’s approval.
Under an arcane mechanism known as Queen’s consent, the monarch is routinely given advance sight of proposed laws that could affect her personal property and public powers. Unlike the better-known procedure of royal assent, a formality that marks the moment when a bill becomes law, Queen’s consent must be sought before the relevant legislation can be approved by parliament.
A Guardian investigation last year revealed the Queen’s consent procedure had been used by the monarch in recent decades to privately lobby for changes to proposed UK legislation. In Scotland, where the procedure is known as crown consent, research by the Guardian identified at least 67 instances in which Scottish bills were vetted by the Queen.
It is perfectly correct that the monarch is informed of legislation affecting Crown property.
Calling the Queen an 'uneducated philistine' is also extremely disrespectful in her Jubilee year and Starkey was bad enough when he first used the phrase
She's not particularly well educated. There was that governess that they fucked over, then she drove Austin 2 ton trucks round in circles for a bit in WW11 before a lifelong career of being driven to the races in a Rolls-Royce.
Weekly politics tutorials from what is it 13 PMs now?
Politicians shouldn't dictate the precise content of school curricula. What next? Zahawi tells Mr Smith to reinstate the question about Oxbow lakes in the year 8 end of term geography exam? Education Secretary directs maths teachers to prioritise pentagons over hexagons in geometry? I mean, I am all for Philip Larkin - anyone whose work allows pupils to say Fuck at school and not get done for it is worthy of study in my view - but this is just absurd.
The problem though appears to be that exam boards cannot be trusted to weigh these things up on literary merits rather than make it all about a particular political view and imposing non-literary judgments.
Larkin is easily the most important post-war poet. Only Ted Hughes comes close I would say.
Seamus Heaney? And about a half dozen Americans…
Yes, Heaney. Of course. I meant UK poets - so no americans.
Larkin is vastly better than Heaney
Can anyone quote a single line of Heaney?
No. He’s melodious and mellifluous but totally unmemorable
Whereas Larkin belts out the zingers
Almost every line in This Be The Verse is solid gold
Then:
What will survive of us is love
The trees are coming into leaf; like something almost being said
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh
A serious house on serious earth it is
I worK all day and get half drunk at night
Indeed, I’d say Aubade is one of the finest poems ever written by anyone in any language. The greatest poetical examination of death, in existence. Chilling, but incredible
AUBADE
BY PHILIP LARKIN I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse —The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
'Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth'
She's just giving Prince Charles all the precedents he needs to interfere when he becomes King.
A Scottish government memo obtained by the Guardian reveals that “it is almost certain” draft laws have been secretly changed to secure the Queen’s approval.
Under an arcane mechanism known as Queen’s consent, the monarch is routinely given advance sight of proposed laws that could affect her personal property and public powers. Unlike the better-known procedure of royal assent, a formality that marks the moment when a bill becomes law, Queen’s consent must be sought before the relevant legislation can be approved by parliament.
A Guardian investigation last year revealed the Queen’s consent procedure had been used by the monarch in recent decades to privately lobby for changes to proposed UK legislation. In Scotland, where the procedure is known as crown consent, research by the Guardian identified at least 67 instances in which Scottish bills were vetted by the Queen.
It is perfectly correct that the monarch is informed of legislation affecting Crown property.
Calling the Queen an 'uneducated philistine' is also extremely disrespectful in her Jubilee year and Starkey was bad enough when he first used the phrase
She's not particularly well educated. There was that governess that they fucked over, then she drove Austin 2 ton trucks round in circles for a bit in WW11 before a lifelong career of being driven to the races in a Rolls-Royce.
Weekly politics tutorials from what is it 13 PMs now?
Last 3 years haven't probably added much.
Your Majesty, I have nothing more to teach you. I can only learn from you.
My son managed to get through 5 years of English at a private High School and never studied Shakespeare. They did some fairly crappy Scottish poets though.
That post shows why Scotland isn't ready to be independent.
No Shakespeare? Not even Mac The Scottish Play?
I love Shakespeare, so timeless.
Fully expect him to be cancelled shortly, The Merchant of Venice is so antisemitic it could have been one of Corbyn's top supporters.
I’ve managed to (almost accidentally) abort my celebratory beers with another job opportunity. Early on Friday (about 7am), when I was preparing for my London trip, I got a call from the owner of a local cleaning company. He wanted me to help him as he’d been let down last minute with an end of tenancy clean that day. He also mentioned that he’d been surprised by my CV; compared to others that he gets it had an unusual amount of IT and admin stuff, and he thought I might be able to help him with those as well as earning some extra cash cleaning.
I decided to call him halfway through my third Leffe. We had a really good chat, and he suggested that I could start tomorrow! I’m now somewhat sobered up and on the bus to his head office in the next town. I could be scrubbing in the morning!
A Russian missile just hit a crowded shopping centre in Kremenchuk.
Ukrainian sources on the ground fear there are many civilian dead and wounded.
That’s not good at all. A missile aimed at a supermarket in the middle of the day, hundreds of kilometers away from the fighting. Putin really is trying to provoke WWIII.
Putin is trying anything and everything to escalate matters.
There is no compromising with him. Simply making sure the invasion is defeated.
Any justice will have to wait until Russia tires of him.
On topic, I'd say the voting weightings across the UK are weighted on average 45:55 centre-right to centre-left with a +/-5% variable around that, and those former votes can be found in Conservative, UKIP/BXP/Reform/Reclaim, ED, SDP (new version), UUP/DUP, Lib Dem and even some Celtic fringe (MK/PC/SNP) votes.
When it's at the high end Tories are in government and when it's at the low end (40% or less) then Labour are.
Politicians shouldn't dictate the precise content of school curricula. What next? Zahawi tells Mr Smith to reinstate the question about Oxbow lakes in the year 8 end of term geography exam? Education Secretary directs maths teachers to prioritise pentagons over hexagons in geometry? I mean, I am all for Philip Larkin - anyone whose work allows pupils to say Fuck at school and not get done for it is worthy of study in my view - but this is just absurd.
The problem though appears to be that exam boards cannot be trusted to weigh these things up on literary merits rather than make it all about a particular political view and imposing non-literary judgments.
Larkin is easily the most important post-war poet. Only Ted Hughes comes close I would say.
How do you know how they have come to that judgement? Or that it is not in fact Zahari who is imposing a political view? He is, after all, a politician, and as far as I know doesn't have a degree in English literature.
I like Larkin (as a poet) but clearly there isn't room on the curriculum for everything and it may be that it was right to rotate the authors covered to make space for someone equally deserving. I don't think that it is the job of politicians to decide which authors are included in GCSE English exams.
Larkin for me is right up at the top of the tree. Solid gold. That's not the same as sticking him on the curriculum. The really big thing about Larkin is that people read him because they really like his stuff. He speaks for them. But as he was one of those people who acted like he was 40 at primary school, and was the grumpy old man's grumpy old man by the time he was 30, I can't see the modern school kid getting him.
A bit like late Hardy. What on earth could 'At Castle Boterel' or 'Thoughts of Phena' mean to a kid at school? It would be sacrilege to force someone young to read them. Whereas once you are a grumpy old man......
More broadly mid 20th C poetry is difficult I think for youngsters to get. Because it's "modern" but not their version of modern.
The older classics are approachable because they are chosen for their universal appeal. My son recently did Rime of the Ancient Mariner and loved it. The WW1 poets are fairly easy to place too, or writers very clearly of their time (and a time that students study in History) like Kipling. But once you're into 1930s-90s poetry, your Larkins and Audens and Ted Hugheses, you're in an era of much more topical content but anachronistically topical.
Politicians shouldn't dictate the precise content of school curricula. What next? Zahawi tells Mr Smith to reinstate the question about Oxbow lakes in the year 8 end of term geography exam? Education Secretary directs maths teachers to prioritise pentagons over hexagons in geometry? I mean, I am all for Philip Larkin - anyone whose work allows pupils to say Fuck at school and not get done for it is worthy of study in my view - but this is just absurd.
The problem though appears to be that exam boards cannot be trusted to weigh these things up on literary merits rather than make it all about a particular political view and imposing non-literary judgments.
Larkin is easily the most important post-war poet. Only Ted Hughes comes close I would say.
Seamus Heaney? And about a half dozen Americans…
Yes, Heaney. Of course. I meant UK poets - so no americans.
Larkin is vastly better than Heaney
Can anyone quote a single line of Heaney?
No. He’s melodious and mellifluous but totally unmemorable
Whereas Larkin belts out the zingers
Almost every line in This Be The Verse is solid gold
Then:
What will survive of us is love
The trees are coming into leaf; like something almost being said
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh
A serious house on serious earth it is
I worK all day and get half drunk at night
Indeed, I’d say Aubade is one of the finest poems ever written by anyone in any language. The greatest poetical examination of death, in existence. Chilling, but incredible
AUBADE
BY PHILIP LARKIN I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse —The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
Agreed Aubade is stellar.
And then there's
"No, give me my in-tray, My loaf-haired secretary, My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir: What else can I answer,
When the lights come on at four At the end of another year? Give me your arm, old toad; Help me down Cemetery Road."
Profoundly important materialist poet. This should be one of the reasons he is taught.
She's just giving Prince Charles all the precedents he needs to interfere when he becomes King.
A Scottish government memo obtained by the Guardian reveals that “it is almost certain” draft laws have been secretly changed to secure the Queen’s approval.
Under an arcane mechanism known as Queen’s consent, the monarch is routinely given advance sight of proposed laws that could affect her personal property and public powers. Unlike the better-known procedure of royal assent, a formality that marks the moment when a bill becomes law, Queen’s consent must be sought before the relevant legislation can be approved by parliament.
A Guardian investigation last year revealed the Queen’s consent procedure had been used by the monarch in recent decades to privately lobby for changes to proposed UK legislation. In Scotland, where the procedure is known as crown consent, research by the Guardian identified at least 67 instances in which Scottish bills were vetted by the Queen.
It is perfectly correct that the monarch is informed of legislation affecting Crown property.
Calling the Queen an 'uneducated philistine' is also extremely disrespectful in her Jubilee year and Starkey was bad enough when he first used the phrase
What makes her so special?
She was a tax dodger for so many years, no representation without taxation.
She hasn't got representation even now she pays tax, the Queen can't vote
She can vote.
By convention the Queen never votes in any UK election, local or general
I would not exercise my right to vote in order to have a veto over any proposed legislation that could affect me. I suspect you would take that deal as well.
The Queen has not vetoed any legislation passed by Parliament in her reign.
She has also not vetoed any bill directly affecting the Crown unless advised to by ministers
"When asked by the Guardian, the Queen’s representatives refused to say how many times she had requested alterations to legislation since she came to the throne in 1952." The Guardian 8th Feb 2021.
I'm interested to know how you claim to know more than the Queen's office is prepared to say.
So as I said she has not vetoed any legislation passed by Parliament since she came to the throne. Whether Parliament accepted any suggested amendments to legislation before passing that legislation was up to Parliament
Thanks for the confirmation I was correct
Demanding a change IS a veto of legislation: just not of a discrete bill.
First innings Run Rate - 5.37 Second innings Run Rate - 5.44
It's going to blow up in their faces against India, isn't it?
My inner voice has been saying, "it won't work at the WACA", to which the reply is "Well, nothing else has".
If this is now England's standard approach, we're going to get days of stupidity as well as days of glory, but the game as a whole has moved on so much - how cricketers earn their money and, in turn, how they train, practice, develop technique, how the shorter game is played - that maybe it is time to up the aggression levels in Test cricket as well. Yes, there are differences in field placing rules and the like, but it is the same sport still.
Genuine question: over the last 5 years, have England actually scored better, in total, in test cricket or in 50 over cricket?
I will answer my own question here:
Since CWC 19, in 13 ODI innings(setting aside NED and IRE series), England have scored 3387 runs for the loss of 90 wickets.
Average ODI innings = 260.5/6.9
In 73 test innings over the same period, they have scored 19093 runs for the loss of 654 wickets
Average test innings = 261.5 / 8.9
So, England's ODI and test innings scores are essentially identical, except (a shade above) 2 more wickets have been lost in each test innings.
That will include a number of short fourth innings chases which drag the Test average down.
And a couple of short ODI chases. I've not separated declareds and run chases, but doesn't look to be a massive effect.
She's just giving Prince Charles all the precedents he needs to interfere when he becomes King.
A Scottish government memo obtained by the Guardian reveals that “it is almost certain” draft laws have been secretly changed to secure the Queen’s approval.
Under an arcane mechanism known as Queen’s consent, the monarch is routinely given advance sight of proposed laws that could affect her personal property and public powers. Unlike the better-known procedure of royal assent, a formality that marks the moment when a bill becomes law, Queen’s consent must be sought before the relevant legislation can be approved by parliament.
A Guardian investigation last year revealed the Queen’s consent procedure had been used by the monarch in recent decades to privately lobby for changes to proposed UK legislation. In Scotland, where the procedure is known as crown consent, research by the Guardian identified at least 67 instances in which Scottish bills were vetted by the Queen.
It is perfectly correct that the monarch is informed of legislation affecting Crown property.
Calling the Queen an 'uneducated philistine' is also extremely disrespectful in her Jubilee year and Starkey was bad enough when he first used the phrase
What makes her so special?
She was a tax dodger for so many years, no representation without taxation.
She hasn't got representation even now she pays tax, the Queen can't vote
She can vote.
By convention the Queen never votes in any UK election, local or general
I would not exercise my right to vote in order to have a veto over any proposed legislation that could affect me. I suspect you would take that deal as well.
The Queen has not vetoed any legislation passed by Parliament in her reign.
She has also not vetoed any bill directly affecting the Crown unless advised to by ministers
"When asked by the Guardian, the Queen’s representatives refused to say how many times she had requested alterations to legislation since she came to the throne in 1952." The Guardian 8th Feb 2021.
I'm interested to know how you claim to know more than the Queen's office is prepared to say.
I'm a republican, but kind of with the Palace on this.
Firstly, it's an incredibly poorly defined question. Is it about unsolicited, specific requests? Or does it extend to a PM asking for and getting advice on anything even vaguely touching on legislative matters in the confidential regular meetings? Or somewhere in between - in which case where?
Secondly, as I understand it, the meetings are off the record. So by definition the records don't exist.
Thirdly, ultimately whatever the Queen says to the PM and he to her, the legislation itself and any amendments go through Parliament in open session to discuss their merits or otherwise.
I think the whole system is silly, but stonewalling that particular question isn't.
Interesting header, though I suspect the figures might be different in 2022. Do we have the reverse figures for Lab transfers?
My impression from the last (2019) multi-candidate ward election where I was a candidate was that 2/3 of the Lab vote also went to the LD candidate in our 2-member ward, while half the LD vote also went to me (there was no explicit endorsement either way, but just the two of us for 2 Tory seats). Most of the balance in both parties abstained on their second vote - just a small sprinkling went Conservative.
My guess is that it will go up to 75% and 66% when we're up again next year - familiarity and observation that we are working well together.
What you don't say in the above is equally important.
If next year Labour decided to run 2 candidates or the Lib Dems decided to run 2 candidates it's very likely that by splitting the vote you could end up in a position where both of you miss out.
The most complex thing in the NI elections seems to be working out how many candidates should we run in this 5 seat constituency because the fewer candidates you run the more likely they are to be elected.
Sinn Fein of course messed this up in the last Irish elections by nominating too few candidates...
She's just giving Prince Charles all the precedents he needs to interfere when he becomes King.
A Scottish government memo obtained by the Guardian reveals that “it is almost certain” draft laws have been secretly changed to secure the Queen’s approval.
Under an arcane mechanism known as Queen’s consent, the monarch is routinely given advance sight of proposed laws that could affect her personal property and public powers. Unlike the better-known procedure of royal assent, a formality that marks the moment when a bill becomes law, Queen’s consent must be sought before the relevant legislation can be approved by parliament.
A Guardian investigation last year revealed the Queen’s consent procedure had been used by the monarch in recent decades to privately lobby for changes to proposed UK legislation. In Scotland, where the procedure is known as crown consent, research by the Guardian identified at least 67 instances in which Scottish bills were vetted by the Queen.
On topic, I'd say the voting weightings across the UK are weighted on average 45:55 centre-right to centre-left with a +/-5% variable around that, and those former votes can be found in Conservative, UKIP/BXP/Reform/Reclaim, ED, SDP (new version), UUP/DUP, Lib Dem and even some Celtic fringe (MK/PC/SNP) votes.
When it's at the high end Tories are in government and when it's at the low end (40% or less) then Labour are.
Most Lib Dems of my acquaintance would see themselves as in the 55%, certainly since the realignment that happened after the Brexit vote.
Labour, Lib Dems and Green together are on roughly 55-57% currently, Tory and RefUK are 48-50%, and the nationalists take the rest. That feels like the most meaningful split currently.
Politicians shouldn't dictate the precise content of school curricula. What next? Zahawi tells Mr Smith to reinstate the question about Oxbow lakes in the year 8 end of term geography exam? Education Secretary directs maths teachers to prioritise pentagons over hexagons in geometry? I mean, I am all for Philip Larkin - anyone whose work allows pupils to say Fuck at school and not get done for it is worthy of study in my view - but this is just absurd.
The problem though appears to be that exam boards cannot be trusted to weigh these things up on literary merits rather than make it all about a particular political view and imposing non-literary judgments.
Larkin is easily the most important post-war poet. Only Ted Hughes comes close I would say.
Seamus Heaney? And about a half dozen Americans…
Yes, Heaney. Of course. I meant UK poets - so no americans.
Larkin is vastly better than Heaney
Can anyone quote a single line of Heaney?
No. He’s melodious and mellifluous but totally unmemorable
Whereas Larkin belts out the zingers
Almost every line in This Be The Verse is solid gold
Then:
What will survive of us is love
The trees are coming into leaf; like something almost being said
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh
A serious house on serious earth it is
I worK all day and get half drunk at night
Indeed, I’d say Aubade is one of the finest poems ever written by anyone in any language. The greatest poetical examination of death, in existence. Chilling, but incredible
AUBADE
BY PHILIP LARKIN I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse —The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
Agreed Aubade is stellar.
And then there's
"No, give me my in-tray, My loaf-haired secretary, My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir: What else can I answer,
When the lights come on at four At the end of another year? Give me your arm, old toad; Help me down Cemetery Road."
Profoundly important materialist poet. This should be one of the reasons he is taught.
This one gnaws away at me from time to time
Home is so sad
Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, Shaped to the comfort of the last to go As if to win them back. Instead, bereft Of anyone to please, it withers so, Having no heart to put aside the theft
And turn again to what it started as, A joyous shot at how things ought to be, Long fallen wide. You can see how it was: Look at the pictures and the cutlery. The music in the piano stool. That vase.
Politicians shouldn't dictate the precise content of school curricula. What next? Zahawi tells Mr Smith to reinstate the question about Oxbow lakes in the year 8 end of term geography exam? Education Secretary directs maths teachers to prioritise pentagons over hexagons in geometry? I mean, I am all for Philip Larkin - anyone whose work allows pupils to say Fuck at school and not get done for it is worthy of study in my view - but this is just absurd.
The problem though appears to be that exam boards cannot be trusted to weigh these things up on literary merits rather than make it all about a particular political view and imposing non-literary judgments.
Larkin is easily the most important post-war poet. Only Ted Hughes comes close I would say.
Seamus Heaney? And about a half dozen Americans…
Yes, Heaney. Of course. I meant UK poets - so no americans.
Larkin is vastly better than Heaney
Can anyone quote a single line of Heaney?
No. He’s melodious and mellifluous but totally unmemorable
Whereas Larkin belts out the zingers
Almost every line in This Be The Verse is solid gold
Then:
What will survive of us is love
The trees are coming into leaf; like something almost being said
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh
A serious house on serious earth it is
I worK all day and get half drunk at night
Indeed, I’d say Aubade is one of the finest poems ever written by anyone in any language. The greatest poetical examination of death, in existence. Chilling, but incredible
AUBADE
BY PHILIP LARKIN I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse —The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
Agreed Aubade is stellar.
And then there's
"No, give me my in-tray, My loaf-haired secretary, My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir: What else can I answer,
When the lights come on at four At the end of another year? Give me your arm, old toad; Help me down Cemetery Road."
Profoundly important materialist poet. This should be one of the reasons he is taught.
Yes. Another reason he should be taught is that he is easily understood and pleasurable to hear. His poems rhyme, they are musical, he speaks in quite plain English, the best lines can be memorised. Almost anyone can read Aubade and understand instantly what Larkin means. Like Robert Frost (another great who should be taught)
If you give kids Larkin they might then go on to explore more poetry, he’s the gateway drug of poetry
I’ve managed to (almost accidentally) abort my celebratory beers with another job opportunity. Early on Friday (about 7am), when I was preparing for my London trip, I got a call from the owner of a local cleaning company. He wanted me to help him as he’d been let down last minute with an end of tenancy clean that day. He also mentioned that he’d been surprised by my CV; compared to others that he gets it had an unusual amount of IT and admin stuff, and he thought I might be able to help him with those as well as earning some extra cash cleaning.
I decided to call him halfway through my third Leffe. We had a really good chat, and he suggested that I could start tomorrow! I’m now somewhat sobered up and on the bus to his head office in the next town. I could be scrubbing in the morning!
When all the others were away at Mass I was all hers as we peeled potatoes. They broke the silence, let fall one by one Like solder weeping off the soldering iron: Cold comforts set between us, things to share Gleaming in a bucket of clean water. And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes From each other's work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying And some were responding and some crying I remembered her head bent towards my head, Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives— Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
In the last minutes he said more to her Almost than in all their life together. You'll be in New Row on Monday night And I'll come up for you and you'll be glad When I walk in the door . . . Isn't that right?' His head was bent down to her propped-up head.
She could not hear but we were overjoyed. He called her good and girl. Then she was dead, The searching for a pulsebeat was abandoned And we all knew one thing by being there. The space we stood around had been emptied Into us to keep, it penetrated Clearances that suddenly stood open. High cries were felled and a pure change happened.
She's just giving Prince Charles all the precedents he needs to interfere when he becomes King.
A Scottish government memo obtained by the Guardian reveals that “it is almost certain” draft laws have been secretly changed to secure the Queen’s approval.
Under an arcane mechanism known as Queen’s consent, the monarch is routinely given advance sight of proposed laws that could affect her personal property and public powers. Unlike the better-known procedure of royal assent, a formality that marks the moment when a bill becomes law, Queen’s consent must be sought before the relevant legislation can be approved by parliament.
A Guardian investigation last year revealed the Queen’s consent procedure had been used by the monarch in recent decades to privately lobby for changes to proposed UK legislation. In Scotland, where the procedure is known as crown consent, research by the Guardian identified at least 67 instances in which Scottish bills were vetted by the Queen.
It is perfectly correct that the monarch is informed of legislation affecting Crown property.
Calling the Queen an 'uneducated philistine' is also extremely disrespectful in her Jubilee year and Starkey was bad enough when he first used the phrase
What makes her so special?
She was a tax dodger for so many years, no representation without taxation.
She hasn't got representation even now she pays tax, the Queen can't vote
She can vote.
By convention the Queen never votes in any UK election, local or general
I would not exercise my right to vote in order to have a veto over any proposed legislation that could affect me. I suspect you would take that deal as well.
The Queen has not vetoed any legislation passed by Parliament in her reign.
She has also not vetoed any bill directly affecting the Crown unless advised to by ministers
"When asked by the Guardian, the Queen’s representatives refused to say how many times she had requested alterations to legislation since she came to the throne in 1952." The Guardian 8th Feb 2021.
I'm interested to know how you claim to know more than the Queen's office is prepared to say.
I'm a republican, but kind of with the Palace on this.
Firstly, it's an incredibly poorly defined question. Is it about unsolicited, specific requests? Or does it extend to a PM asking for and getting advice on anything even vaguely touching on legislative matters in the confidential regular meetings? Or somewhere in between - in which case where?
Secondly, as I understand it, the meetings are off the record. So by definition the records don't exist.
Thirdly, ultimately whatever the Queen says to the PM and he to her, the legislation itself and any amendments go through Parliament in open session to discuss their merits or otherwise.
I think the whole system is silly, but stonewalling that particular question isn't.
Yep, I'm in agreement with you I think on the main point, my beef was more with HYFUD claiming that the Queen had never interfered in legislation when he cannot possibly know that to be the case.
Politicians shouldn't dictate the precise content of school curricula. What next? Zahawi tells Mr Smith to reinstate the question about Oxbow lakes in the year 8 end of term geography exam? Education Secretary directs maths teachers to prioritise pentagons over hexagons in geometry? I mean, I am all for Philip Larkin - anyone whose work allows pupils to say Fuck at school and not get done for it is worthy of study in my view - but this is just absurd.
The problem though appears to be that exam boards cannot be trusted to weigh these things up on literary merits rather than make it all about a particular political view and imposing non-literary judgments.
Larkin is easily the most important post-war poet. Only Ted Hughes comes close I would say.
Seamus Heaney? And about a half dozen Americans…
Yes, Heaney. Of course. I meant UK poets - so no americans.
Larkin is vastly better than Heaney
Can anyone quote a single line of Heaney?
No. He’s melodious and mellifluous but totally unmemorable
Whereas Larkin belts out the zingers
Almost every line in This Be The Verse is solid gold
Then:
What will survive of us is love
The trees are coming into leaf; like something almost being said
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh
A serious house on serious earth it is
I worK all day and get half drunk at night
Indeed, I’d say Aubade is one of the finest poems ever written by anyone in any language. The greatest poetical examination of death, in existence. Chilling, but incredible
AUBADE
BY PHILIP LARKIN I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse —The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
Agreed Aubade is stellar.
And then there's
"No, give me my in-tray, My loaf-haired secretary, My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir: What else can I answer,
When the lights come on at four At the end of another year? Give me your arm, old toad; Help me down Cemetery Road."
Profoundly important materialist poet. This should be one of the reasons he is taught.
This one gnaws away at me from time to time
Home is so sad
Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, Shaped to the comfort of the last to go As if to win them back. Instead, bereft Of anyone to please, it withers so, Having no heart to put aside the theft
And turn again to what it started as, A joyous shot at how things ought to be, Long fallen wide. You can see how it was: Look at the pictures and the cutlery. The music in the piano stool. That vase.
That’s such a great poem. So true. Ten lines of intensely observed pessimism
The important point - which hardly gets mentioned - about the changes in the works and authors studied for English Literature is that it's not, or shouldn't be, about the quality of individual works. Whether or not you can make an argument that Raymond Antrobus, for example, is a better poet than, say, Milton*, the fact still remains that Milton is part of the canon of English Literature, influential over centuries, whose works are imbued into the language. In other words, he is part of our culture, and Antrobus isn't. What, therefore, this is about is a conscious intention to destroy the culture. It should be seen as such.
* to my mind, almost any poet is a better poet than Milton, but that's besides the point
Paradise Lost, that’s another one I am keeping for retirement.
Inexplicably omitted from the curriculum of the bog-standard, working class suburban high school I attended in the early 90s.
I guess they thought we’d have no need of “Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven” down the panel beater’s.
You should be slightly wary of the 'keeping for retirement' idea. When it comes you can end up feeling overwhelmed by what's now a gigantic to-do list. I thought I'd read tons of 'biggies' in later life but somehow I haven't. I read more when I had to squeeze it in. I think maybe it's a variant of that 'work expands to fill the time available' saying.
I have an ex of many moons gone by, and we had a Wendy Cope as our poem. Or rather her poem for me as it encapsulates my charming uselessness apparently.
Some men never thought of flowers. You did. You'd come along and say You almost brought me flowers, But something had gone wrong. The shop was closed, or youd had doubts The sort minds like ours dream up incessantly. You thought i might not like your flowers. It made me hug you then, and smile. Now i can only smile. But look! The flowers that you almost brought Have lasted all this while.
We split nearly 30 years ago and now she is a wife and mother but we remain in touch and, for being one of a tiny cadre that ever understood I shall remain immensely fond of her until the day I die.
When all the others were away at Mass I was all hers as we peeled potatoes. They broke the silence, let fall one by one Like solder weeping off the soldering iron: Cold comforts set between us, things to share Gleaming in a bucket of clean water. And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes From each other's work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying And some were responding and some crying I remembered her head bent towards my head, Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives— Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
In the last minutes he said more to her Almost than in all their life together. You'll be in New Row on Monday night And I'll come up for you and you'll be glad When I walk in the door . . . Isn't that right?' His head was bent down to her propped-up head.
She could not hear but we were overjoyed. He called her good and girl. Then she was dead, The searching for a pulsebeat was abandoned And we all knew one thing by being there. The space we stood around had been emptied Into us to keep, it penetrated Clearances that suddenly stood open. High cries were felled and a pure change happened.
My wife's favourite poem, read at her funeral.
I’m glad it brought you solace, and likewise your lost spouse. RIP
But to me that reads like really feeble Larkin. Larkin on Xanax
Also “bucket”. There’s always a bloody bucket in a Heaney poem
Politicians shouldn't dictate the precise content of school curricula. What next? Zahawi tells Mr Smith to reinstate the question about Oxbow lakes in the year 8 end of term geography exam? Education Secretary directs maths teachers to prioritise pentagons over hexagons in geometry? I mean, I am all for Philip Larkin - anyone whose work allows pupils to say Fuck at school and not get done for it is worthy of study in my view - but this is just absurd.
The problem though appears to be that exam boards cannot be trusted to weigh these things up on literary merits rather than make it all about a particular political view and imposing non-literary judgments.
Larkin is easily the most important post-war poet. Only Ted Hughes comes close I would say.
Seamus Heaney? And about a half dozen Americans…
Yes, Heaney. Of course. I meant UK poets - so no americans.
Larkin is vastly better than Heaney
Can anyone quote a single line of Heaney?
No. He’s melodious and mellifluous but totally unmemorable
Whereas Larkin belts out the zingers
Almost every line in This Be The Verse is solid gold
Then:
What will survive of us is love
The trees are coming into leaf; like something almost being said
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh
A serious house on serious earth it is
I worK all day and get half drunk at night
Indeed, I’d say Aubade is one of the finest poems ever written by anyone in any language. The greatest poetical examination of death, in existence. Chilling, but incredible
AUBADE
BY PHILIP LARKIN I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse —The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
Agreed Aubade is stellar.
And then there's
"No, give me my in-tray, My loaf-haired secretary, My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir: What else can I answer,
When the lights come on at four At the end of another year? Give me your arm, old toad; Help me down Cemetery Road."
Profoundly important materialist poet. This should be one of the reasons he is taught.
Yes. Another reason he should be taught is that he is easily understood and pleasurable to hear. His poems rhyme, they are musical, he speaks in quite plain English, the best lines can be memorised. Almost anyone can read Aubade and understand instantly what Larkin means. Like Robert Frost (another great who should be taught)
If you give kids Larkin they might then go on to explore more poetry, he’s the gateway drug of poetry
Milton is more like LSD
Speaking of Robert Frost, there’s a poem of his which describes the feeling one gets contemplating a yet unspent day, likening it to a dragon’s jealousy over her hoard.
I think there is anyway.
I read it once and it’s been nagging me for years, and I can’t find it in any google searches.
I have an ex of many moons gone by, and we had a Wendy Cope as our poem. Or rather her poem for me as it encapsulates my charming uselessness apparently.
Some men never thought of flowers. You did. You'd come along and say You almost brought me flowers, But something had gone wrong. The shop was closed, or youd had doubts The sort minds like ours dream up incessantly. You thought i might not like your flowers. It made me hug you then, and smile. Now i can only smile. But look! The flowers that you almost brought Have lasted all this while.
We split nearly 30 years ago and now she is a wife and mother but we remain in touch and, for being one of a tiny cadre that ever understood I shall remain ever fond of her until the day I die.
Cope is really good. Properly amusing comic poetry, not easy to do at all. And often poignant - as she is there
They were actually going to remove PHILIP LARKIN from the English literature curriculum
I can guess the rough identity of who they had planned as a replacement
PB covered GCSE poems the other day. I wonder what EdSec's user name is on here.
Well, he was a big wheel in YouGov, wasn't he? So I'm sure he'd fit right in.
But given the other issues in schools right now (starting with "at this rate, soon there won't be enough people to teach any poems to GCSE classes"), this is a fairly bonkers priority. And there are two other exam boards. And the principle- that ministers don't just say "this must/mustn't be on the curriculum"- is an important one.
Indeed, although I do think that in the humanities there can be a tendency to say that things that ought to be taught at university should also be taught to years 6 to 10, whether it be foreign literature, historiography or non-prescriptive grammar. You would not teach general relativity at GCSE even though Newton's laws are known to be incomplete. Sometimes broad strokes are appropriate.
Came across this today. Noether's theorem should be taught earlier in physics (maybe even at the high school level). The idea that energy is just the conserved quantity of a time invariant system for example is a simple definition of the otherwise mysterious term "energy" https://twitter.com/rbhar90/status/1541315296283176960
Politicians shouldn't dictate the precise content of school curricula. What next? Zahawi tells Mr Smith to reinstate the question about Oxbow lakes in the year 8 end of term geography exam? Education Secretary directs maths teachers to prioritise pentagons over hexagons in geometry? I mean, I am all for Philip Larkin - anyone whose work allows pupils to say Fuck at school and not get done for it is worthy of study in my view - but this is just absurd.
The problem though appears to be that exam boards cannot be trusted to weigh these things up on literary merits rather than make it all about a particular political view and imposing non-literary judgments.
Larkin is easily the most important post-war poet. Only Ted Hughes comes close I would say.
Seamus Heaney? And about a half dozen Americans…
Yes, Heaney. Of course. I meant UK poets - so no americans.
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh
Larkin actually wrote 'bloody awful tripe' on manuscript.
My son managed to get through 5 years of English at a private High School and never studied Shakespeare. They did some fairly crappy Scottish poets though.
That post shows why Scotland isn't ready to be independent.
No Shakespeare? Not even Mac The Scottish Play?
I love Shakespeare, so timeless.
Fully expect him to be cancelled shortly, The Merchant of Venice is so antisemitic it could have been one of Corbyn's top supporters.
There's his attitude towards France, though.
Here is Eliot
Of the Holocaust he suavely observed: ‘To suggest that the Jewish problem may be simplified because so many will have been killed off is trifling: a few generations of security, and they will be as numerous as ever.’
The mind is so far beyond boggling that I don't think I can read anything by him any more. Bit of a cop out given how deeply ingrained so much is anyway.
Politicians shouldn't dictate the precise content of school curricula. What next? Zahawi tells Mr Smith to reinstate the question about Oxbow lakes in the year 8 end of term geography exam? Education Secretary directs maths teachers to prioritise pentagons over hexagons in geometry? I mean, I am all for Philip Larkin - anyone whose work allows pupils to say Fuck at school and not get done for it is worthy of study in my view - but this is just absurd.
The problem though appears to be that exam boards cannot be trusted to weigh these things up on literary merits rather than make it all about a particular political view and imposing non-literary judgments.
Larkin is easily the most important post-war poet. Only Ted Hughes comes close I would say.
How do you know how they have come to that judgement? Or that it is not in fact Zahari who is imposing a political view? He is, after all, a politician, and as far as I know doesn't have a degree in English literature.
I like Larkin (as a poet) but clearly there isn't room on the curriculum for everything and it may be that it was right to rotate the authors covered to make space for someone equally deserving. I don't think that it is the job of politicians to decide which authors are included in GCSE English exams.
Larkin for me is right up at the top of the tree. Solid gold. That's not the same as sticking him on the curriculum. The really big thing about Larkin is that people read him because they really like his stuff. He speaks for them. But as he was one of those people who acted like he was 40 at primary school, and was the grumpy old man's grumpy old man by the time he was 30, I can't see the modern school kid getting him.
A bit like late Hardy. What on earth could 'At Castle Boterel' or 'Thoughts of Phena' mean to a kid at school? It would be sacrilege to force someone young to read them. Whereas once you are a grumpy old man......
More broadly mid 20th C poetry is difficult I think for youngsters to get. Because it's "modern" but not their version of modern.
The older classics are approachable because they are chosen for their universal appeal. My son recently did Rime of the Ancient Mariner and loved it. The WW1 poets are fairly easy to place too, or writers very clearly of their time (and a time that students study in History) like Kipling. But once you're into 1930s-90s poetry, your Larkins and Audens and Ted Hugheses, you're in an era of much more topical content but anachronistically topical.
Did Rime of the Ancient Mariner for A level. Super stuff. Often wondered why a movie was never made of it? It couldn't be more modern in its themes. Although deliberately archaic in language.
I have an ex of many moons gone by, and we had a Wendy Cope as our poem. Or rather her poem for me as it encapsulates my charming uselessness apparently.
Some men never thought of flowers. You did. You'd come along and say You almost brought me flowers, But something had gone wrong. The shop was closed, or youd had doubts The sort minds like ours dream up incessantly. You thought i might not like your flowers. It made me hug you then, and smile. Now i can only smile. But look! The flowers that you almost brought Have lasted all this while.
We split nearly 30 years ago and now she is a wife and mother but we remain in touch and, for being one of a tiny cadre that ever understood I shall remain ever fond of her until the day I die.
Cope is really good. Properly amusing comic poetry, not easy to do at all. And often poignant - as she is there
On Waterloo Bridge where we said our goodbyes, The weather conditions bring tears to my eyes. I wipe them away with a black cotton glove And try not to notice i've fallen in love.
On Waterloo Bridge with the wind in my hair Im tempted to skip. You're a fool! I don't care! The head does its best but the heart is the boss I admit it before i get halfway across.
And while we are in London
When i'm sad and lonely, When the working day is done. When i walk along High Holborn I think of you, with nothing on.
When all the others were away at Mass I was all hers as we peeled potatoes. They broke the silence, let fall one by one Like solder weeping off the soldering iron: Cold comforts set between us, things to share Gleaming in a bucket of clean water. And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes From each other's work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying And some were responding and some crying I remembered her head bent towards my head, Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives— Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
In the last minutes he said more to her Almost than in all their life together. You'll be in New Row on Monday night And I'll come up for you and you'll be glad When I walk in the door . . . Isn't that right?' His head was bent down to her propped-up head.
She could not hear but we were overjoyed. He called her good and girl. Then she was dead, The searching for a pulsebeat was abandoned And we all knew one thing by being there. The space we stood around had been emptied Into us to keep, it penetrated Clearances that suddenly stood open. High cries were felled and a pure change happened.
My wife's favourite poem, read at her funeral.
You and @wooliedyed - genuine lump in the throat stuff today.
Jesus Christ, This was OCR’s box-ticking justification for taking out Larkin
“The exam board described the new poems as “exciting and diverse”, adding: “Our anthology for GCSE English literature students will feature many poets that have never been on a GCSE syllabus before and represent diverse voices, from living poets of British-Somali, British-Guyanese and Ukrainian heritage to one of the first black women in 19th century America to publish a novel. Of the 15 poets whose work has been added, 14 are poets of colour. Six are black women, one is of South Asian heritage. Our new poets also include disabled and LGBTQ+ voices.””
Is there a single poet there who is under 4 foot three? Where are quadriplegic Druze voices? I can’t see a single poet who is actually AI, nor anyone who is Chinese-Mexican sapiosexual kinkster genderfluid in a coma
Interesting we're talking about Larkin when if there's one poet who has seeped into the culture its Dylan Thomas especially, 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night' but also Under Milk Wood.
Yes, Aubade by Larkin is a killer killer poem. To say it 'speaks to me' would be totally wrong because what it does is the dead opposite, it goes into my head, cuts through all the noise in there and describes the essence of what lies beneath all that noise to absolute perfection. It made me feel sick as a parrot and high as a kite at the same time when I first read it. That's how good it is.
The next parliamentary by-election is under STV as it is for a double vacancy as elected Conservative hereditary peers folliwing the retirement of Lord Brabazon of Tara and the death of Lord Swinfen.
45 electors with 12 candidates. Voting on Tuesday 5th July, results announced the next day.
Candidates statements:
Ashbourne, L. Experienced financial professional (specialising in mining) from Naval family with a good record of attendance. Extensive media experience (used to host a show on LBC). Resident in the division bell area and a party member for three decades, but familiar with life’s tribulations through a severely mentally handicapped brother and a father with multiple sclerosis. Educated at Christ’s Hospital and read chemistry at Pembroke College, Oxford. Represented Ireland target shooting. Enthusiastic Cresta rider.
Ashcombe, L. Aged 58, I am a consistent Conservative voter, member of the party and a regular attender of the ACP. With a civil engineering degree from Imperial College, I have pursued a career in insurance, primarily at Marsh, specialising in the energy sector. If elected, I would hope to apply my experience, skills and knowledge to the benefit of this House. Living in London and Hampshire I would have the time required to attend and vote.
Baillieu, L. London based. Member of the Conservative Party. I have gained a large amount of experience having worked in banking and finance in Australia, Hong Kong, and particularly in Russia. This Russian experience could well support a diplomatic solution to the current Ukraine situation, which is now developing into a food and energy crisis. I wish to become an active, working member of the House of Lords.
Balfour, E. Until now I have been working full-time in international financial services and markets for 50 years which is why I have not put myself forward before. I believe my extensive experience and knowledge would be useful in the Chamber. Government policy is obviously crucial in my field and consequently I have always taken a keen interest in all aspects of that both at home and abroad.
Biddulph, L. In the light of recent political events, it is important that the House of Lords retains its dignity and integrity. I would wish to be part of and would uphold those values.
Dormer, L. I bring to the House, forty years’ senior management experience in British engineering, and manufacturing businesses, supporting British, and International, defence programmes.I have represented the interests of British SMEs on trade association committees, and I champion the modern engineering apprenticeship, and STEM programmes.I have a degree in Naval Architecture, a Cranfield MBA, and an ILM diploma in leadership & management. I live in Berkshire with my wife. I am a Conservative Party member.
Dudley, E. youtube.com/user/technodemic/videos 13 new videos, since submitted for last by-election.
The 2nd preferences of LD voters shown in the thread don't in my view amount to very much. They are representative of a specific situation of a year ago where:
1. The Conservatives were significantly more popular than Labour in national polling (i.e. close to 10% ahead in May 2021), in contrast to the situation now where they are behind. When the Conservatives are generally unpopular, far fewer LDs would choose the Conservatives over Labour in a forced choice.
2. There was no agreement or even tacit understanding whatsoever in place between Labour and the LDs. Things have though moved on and the two recent by-elections were very different, the cooperation being apparent if unspoken in the proiritisation by each party. If supporters of one party feels that they are getting a subtle nod in return for the expectation of cooperation elsewhere, then voters will be more open to acting in a particular way.
Elibank, L. In my career I have worked in a variety of industries including technology and energy and I am currently working for Reading University as a fundraiser. The latter two have given me considerable insight into the challenges of a low carbon future. I am a lifelong Conservative supporter and a member of the party and I would hope to be a diligent, effective and collegiate member of the House.
Limerick, E. (L. Foxford) Age 59. London and Sussex based. Patron of Mid Sussex Conservatives. Useful and varied career experience: • FCO with postings in Paris (ENA, first British diplomat in Quai d’Orsay), Senegal and Jordan. Fluent French, Russian. Some Spanish, Arabic and Wolof. • Lawyer and banker in London, Moscow and Dubai financing SMEs and infrastructure. • Former school governor and active charity trustee. • Running diversified farm including renewables, wilding, weddings, camping, MicroBrewery. Key interests: Foreign Policy, Trade, Environment, Education, Planning
Remnant, L. Live in London and Hampshire, and am a lifelong Conservative. Worked within Government as Chairman of Shareholder Executive, director of UKFI (responsible for Government’s shareholdings in the banks) and director of Northern Rock. Currently, a non-executive director of Prudential and Severn Trent, and was recently Deputy Chair of The Takeover Panel. With reducing business interests, would commit enthusiastically to the Lords. Other interests: countryside matters.
Windlesham, L. Despite Covid, the war in Ukraine and the cost of living crisis the Government remains committed to achieving net zero by 2050. While the UK is a global leader in areas such as renewables there is still a long way to go and much investment is needed. I head up sustainable strategy for a leading consultancy business which advises providers and users of asset finance how best to prepare for a greener, more sustainable future.
Wrottesley, L. I took my seat 25 years ago, but relative youth meant not offering myself for election. An Olympian, Chaired British Bobsleigh and Skeleton, now Chairing Ice Hockey UK, sit on the Finance Committee of the International Ice Hockey Federation, and the board of GB's best ever performing Winter Sport, British Skeleton. A stint in Finance in the noughties, closet tree hugger, as reflected in my business interests. More broadly interested in the environment, defence, housing.
My son managed to get through 5 years of English at a private High School and never studied Shakespeare. They did some fairly crappy Scottish poets though.
That post shows why Scotland isn't ready to be independent.
No Shakespeare? Not even Mac The Scottish Play?
I love Shakespeare, so timeless.
Fully expect him to be cancelled shortly, The Merchant of Venice is so antisemitic it could have been one of Corbyn's top supporters.
There's his attitude towards France, though.
Here is Eliot
Of the Holocaust he suavely observed: ‘To suggest that the Jewish problem may be simplified because so many will have been killed off is trifling: a few generations of security, and they will be as numerous as ever.’
The mind is so far beyond boggling that I don't think I can read anything by him any more. Bit of a cop out given how deeply ingrained so much is anyway.
Yes. I don't think Shakespeare's prejudices about the French - his most genuinely felt, I think ? - ever blinded him to their humanity.
When all the others were away at Mass I was all hers as we peeled potatoes. They broke the silence, let fall one by one Like solder weeping off the soldering iron: Cold comforts set between us, things to share Gleaming in a bucket of clean water. And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes From each other's work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying And some were responding and some crying I remembered her head bent towards my head, Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives— Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
In the last minutes he said more to her Almost than in all their life together. You'll be in New Row on Monday night And I'll come up for you and you'll be glad When I walk in the door . . . Isn't that right?' His head was bent down to her propped-up head.
She could not hear but we were overjoyed. He called her good and girl. Then she was dead, The searching for a pulsebeat was abandoned And we all knew one thing by being there. The space we stood around had been emptied Into us to keep, it penetrated Clearances that suddenly stood open. High cries were felled and a pure change happened.
My wife's favourite poem, read at her funeral.
You and @wooliedyed - genuine lump in the throat stuff today.
If its any consolation a wee tear or two has fallen for the lad from long ago not knowing the long road ahead he ploughed alone.
Yes, Aubade by Larkin is a killer killer poem. To say it 'speaks to me' would be totally wrong because what it does is the dead opposite, it goes into my head, cuts through all the noise in there and describes the essence of what lies beneath all that noise to absolute perfection. It made me feel sick as a parrot and high as a kite at the same time when I first read it. That's how good it is.
Aubade is also a chain of bathroom and sanitary ware stores in France, which has always given them an unintended morbid quality.
Yes, Aubade by Larkin is a killer killer poem. To say it 'speaks to me' would be totally wrong because what it does is the dead opposite, it goes into my head, cuts through all the noise in there and describes the essence of what lies beneath all that noise to absolute perfection. It made me feel sick as a parrot and high as a kite at the same time when I first read it. That's how good it is.
Aubade is also a chain of bathroom and sanitary ware stores in France, which has always given them an unintended morbid quality.
The poem was originally called Armitage Shanks, but he changed it to sound more sophisticated.
My son managed to get through 5 years of English at a private High School and never studied Shakespeare. They did some fairly crappy Scottish poets though.
That post shows why Scotland isn't ready to be independent.
No Shakespeare? Not even Mac The Scottish Play?
I love Shakespeare, so timeless.
Fully expect him to be cancelled shortly, The Merchant of Venice is so antisemitic it could have been one of Corbyn's top supporters.
There's his attitude towards France, though.
Here is Eliot
Of the Holocaust he suavely observed: ‘To suggest that the Jewish problem may be simplified because so many will have been killed off is trifling: a few generations of security, and they will be as numerous as ever.’
The mind is so far beyond boggling that I don't think I can read anything by him any more. Bit of a cop out given how deeply ingrained so much is anyway.
Yes. I don't think Shakespeare's prejudices about the French - his most genuinely felt, I think ? - ever blinded him to their humanity.
Shakespeare was a Brexiter.
All that “coasts of Bohemia” bollocks. Fake bloody news.
Yes, Aubade by Larkin is a killer killer poem. To say it 'speaks to me' would be totally wrong because what it does is the dead opposite, it goes into my head, cuts through all the noise in there and describes the essence of what lies beneath all that noise to absolute perfection. It made me feel sick as a parrot and high as a kite at the same time when I first read it. That's how good it is.
Aubade is also a chain of bathroom and sanitary ware stores in France, which has always given them an unintended morbid quality.
The poem was originally called Armitage Shanks, but he changed it to sound more sophisticated.
I had an ex racehorse called Autumn Fantasy which I always thought was the colour of a down market bathroom suite. For those who didn't fancy the Avocado.
My son managed to get through 5 years of English at a private High School and never studied Shakespeare. They did some fairly crappy Scottish poets though.
That post shows why Scotland isn't ready to be independent.
No Shakespeare? Not even Mac The Scottish Play?
I love Shakespeare, so timeless.
Fully expect him to be cancelled shortly, The Merchant of Venice is so antisemitic it could have been one of Corbyn's top supporters.
There's his attitude towards France, though.
Here is Eliot
Of the Holocaust he suavely observed: ‘To suggest that the Jewish problem may be simplified because so many will have been killed off is trifling: a few generations of security, and they will be as numerous as ever.’
The mind is so far beyond boggling that I don't think I can read anything by him any more. Bit of a cop out given how deeply ingrained so much is anyway.
Yes. I don't think Shakespeare's prejudices about the French - his most genuinely felt, I think ? - ever blinded him to their humanity.
No such problems about Italy, where a number of the plays are set. There's speculation he must have visited, but no evidence, I don't think.
… Is eerily like the 6 Bairstow hit at the end of the England innings today, clinching the Test series clean sweep
He didn’t have to do it. The task was accomplished, a brilliant poem written, an excellent test match won, but both of them thought: fuck it, why not conclude with a gratuitous but marvellous flourish? That is genius
Yes, Aubade by Larkin is a killer killer poem. To say it 'speaks to me' would be totally wrong because what it does is the dead opposite, it goes into my head, cuts through all the noise in there and describes the essence of what lies beneath all that noise to absolute perfection. It made me feel sick as a parrot and high as a kite at the same time when I first read it. That's how good it is.
Aubade is also a chain of bathroom and sanitary ware stores in France, which has always given them an unintended morbid quality.
"It’s been six years since the UK voted to leave the European Union and more than one since it established a new relationship with its main trading partner. From a 16% devaluation of the pound to an eye-watering slide in trade and investment, Brexit’s impact is plain to see. The data have only reinforced our view that life outside of the EU would leave the UK worse off."
Jesus Christ, This was OCR’s box-ticking justification for taking out Larkin
“The exam board described the new poems as “exciting and diverse”, adding: “Our anthology for GCSE English literature students will feature many poets that have never been on a GCSE syllabus before and represent diverse voices, from living poets of British-Somali, British-Guyanese and Ukrainian heritage to one of the first black women in 19th century America to publish a novel. Of the 15 poets whose work has been added, 14 are poets of colour. Six are black women, one is of South Asian heritage. Our new poets also include disabled and LGBTQ+ voices.””
Is there a single poet there who is under 4 foot three? Where are quadriplegic Druze voices? I can’t see a single poet who is actually AI, nor anyone who is Chinese-Mexican sapiosexual kinkster genderfluid in a coma
I can't get very excited about this. If you get kids enthused about poetry then they'll consider other poets and likely look at the famous ones. If you only give them a list of poets from a particular time and group and tell them that is all of poetry then you'll lose some forever. I had little time for poetry before we covered Owen at school; that got me into the war poets and then on to some of the other well known ones from 20th century and earlier. Most of my favourite poems now are not ones I ever read at school - there wasn't really the time in school to cover many. My English teacher was a big Heaney fan so we did a lot of his, but he's not someone whose poems I can recite now.
Assuming that some of the classics are still included, I'm not bothered if some of the greats are removed from an anthology to include more voices that may speak to more people. We're not talking about banning access to Larkin, Owen and the like.
For all the talk of "the US Constitution is shit" we've had over the last day or so, it embodies an idea of individual rights essential to the self conception of the United States. The Dobbs opinion, and its dismissal of unenumerated rights, puts quite a lot of that at risk.
If the Supreme Court sets its sights on Griswold v. Connecticut, they won't just target pills or rubbers. They'd destroy a fundamental constitutional right under the Ninth Amendment. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a40432279/supreme-court-griswold-v-connecticut-contraception-privacy/ ...All that being said, can folks please stop referring to the decision in Griswold v. Connecticut as having been "about contraception"? Griswold confirmed the existence of a right to privacy within the Constitution. That's everything. It's about marriage. It's about sex. It's about what we read. It's about how we communicate with each other. It's about the limits to search and seizure. It's about medical records and genetic information. It's about libraries and the internet. It’s about what we learn and how we learn it. It’s all tied in together in a fervent prayer to keep us all safe from, as Thomas Jefferson put it, “every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” As Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg put it in his Griswold concurrence:
"...as the Ninth Amendment expressly recognizes, there are fundamental personal rights such as this one, which are protected from abridgment by the Government though not specifically mentioned in the Constitution.”...
My son managed to get through 5 years of English at a private High School and never studied Shakespeare. They did some fairly crappy Scottish poets though.
That post shows why Scotland isn't ready to be independent.
No Shakespeare? Not even Mac The Scottish Play?
I love Shakespeare, so timeless.
Fully expect him to be cancelled shortly, The Merchant of Venice is so antisemitic it could have been one of Corbyn's top supporters.
There's his attitude towards France, though.
Here is Eliot
Of the Holocaust he suavely observed: ‘To suggest that the Jewish problem may be simplified because so many will have been killed off is trifling: a few generations of security, and they will be as numerous as ever.’
The mind is so far beyond boggling that I don't think I can read anything by him any more. Bit of a cop out given how deeply ingrained so much is anyway.
Bigotry is somehow even more repugnant when delivered in that smoothie pants way.
I had little time for poetry before we covered Owen at school; that got me into the war poets and then on to some of the other well known ones from 20th century and earlier.
Owen and others convalesced in Edinburgh for a while.
There is a plaque on a housing development built on the site of a golf course clubhouse that says 3 of them met there once. It doesn't say why...
"It’s been six years since the UK voted to leave the European Union and more than one since it established a new relationship with its main trading partner. From a 16% devaluation of the pound to an eye-watering slide in trade and investment, Brexit’s impact is plain to see. The data have only reinforced our view that life outside of the EU would leave the UK worse off."
Really surprising that “Ana Andrade” should be Brexi-skeptical, when you look at her CV
Bluebook Trainee, DG ECFIN, Lending and Borrowing Unit European Commission Mar 2014 - Jul 20145 months Luxembourg Worked on the market operations side of the European financial assistance programs.
Brexit is the Reformation. You are asking Catholics to judge it
Somehow I doubt that an appreciation of poetry was a significant dividing line between Leavers and Remainers - and if it was, I doubt that it was Leavers who tended towards a higher appreciation of this particular literary artform. My mother, who is a poet, voted Remain.
Jesus Christ, This was OCR’s box-ticking justification for taking out Larkin
“The exam board described the new poems as “exciting and diverse”, adding: “Our anthology for GCSE English literature students will feature many poets that have never been on a GCSE syllabus before and represent diverse voices, from living poets of British-Somali, British-Guyanese and Ukrainian heritage to one of the first black women in 19th century America to publish a novel. Of the 15 poets whose work has been added, 14 are poets of colour. Six are black women, one is of South Asian heritage. Our new poets also include disabled and LGBTQ+ voices.””
Is there a single poet there who is under 4 foot three? Where are quadriplegic Druze voices? I can’t see a single poet who is actually AI, nor anyone who is Chinese-Mexican sapiosexual kinkster genderfluid in a coma
That's exactly where we're at right now, and how people are incentivised to act and think.
Somehow I doubt that an appreciation of poetry was a significant dividing line between Leavers and Remainers - and if it was, I doubt that it was Leavers who tended towards a higher appreciation of this particular literary artform. My mother, who is a poet, voted Remain.
Poets tend to be right wing, sometimes far right. So they will be Leavers
Playwrights are more likely to be Left: Remainers, I bet @Beibheirli_C, like most of you Remainers, loves The Mousetrap and Les Mis
Yes, Aubade by Larkin is a killer killer poem. To say it 'speaks to me' would be totally wrong because what it does is the dead opposite, it goes into my head, cuts through all the noise in there and describes the essence of what lies beneath all that noise to absolute perfection. It made me feel sick as a parrot and high as a kite at the same time when I first read it. That's how good it is.
Aubade is also a chain of bathroom and sanitary ware stores in France, which has always given them an unintended morbid quality.
The poem was originally called Armitage Shanks, but he changed it to sound more sophisticated.
I had an ex racehorse called Autumn Fantasy which I always thought was the colour of a down market bathroom suite. For those who didn't fancy the Avocado.
Autumn Fantasy sounds like a young, err, actress, in some of Mr Eagles’ favourite internet searches.
Jesus Christ, This was OCR’s box-ticking justification for taking out Larkin
“The exam board described the new poems as “exciting and diverse”, adding: “Our anthology for GCSE English literature students will feature many poets that have never been on a GCSE syllabus before and represent diverse voices, from living poets of British-Somali, British-Guyanese and Ukrainian heritage to one of the first black women in 19th century America to publish a novel. Of the 15 poets whose work has been added, 14 are poets of colour. Six are black women, one is of South Asian heritage. Our new poets also include disabled and LGBTQ+ voices.””
Is there a single poet there who is under 4 foot three? Where are quadriplegic Druze voices? I can’t see a single poet who is actually AI, nor anyone who is Chinese-Mexican sapiosexual kinkster genderfluid in a coma
That's exactly where we're at right now, and how people are incentivised to act and think.
Is it any surprise?
I’m not surprised at all. Poetry is now rancidly Woke. I have poet friends - well-known left wing poet friends - who despair of it. Diversity is all, quality is entirely secondary. And I mean that literally
Zahawi has maybe only just encountered it, so he IS surprised
Yes, Aubade by Larkin is a killer killer poem. To say it 'speaks to me' would be totally wrong because what it does is the dead opposite, it goes into my head, cuts through all the noise in there and describes the essence of what lies beneath all that noise to absolute perfection. It made me feel sick as a parrot and high as a kite at the same time when I first read it. That's how good it is.
Aubade is also a chain of bathroom and sanitary ware stores in France, which has always given them an unintended morbid quality.
Which is what you want in a bathroom and sanitary ware store. Or maybe that's just me.
"It’s been six years since the UK voted to leave the European Union and more than one since it established a new relationship with its main trading partner. From a 16% devaluation of the pound to an eye-watering slide in trade and investment, Brexit’s impact is plain to see. The data have only reinforced our view that life outside of the EU would leave the UK worse off."
Really surprising that “Ana Andrade” should be Brexi-skeptical, when you look at her CV
Bluebook Trainee, DG ECFIN, Lending and Borrowing Unit European Commission Mar 2014 - Jul 20145 months Luxembourg Worked on the market operations side of the European financial assistance programs.
Brexit is the Reformation. You are asking Catholics to judge it
And you’re a Puritan. So find an agnostic for the truth. If you can.
Somehow I doubt that an appreciation of poetry was a significant dividing line between Leavers and Remainers - and if it was, I doubt that it was Leavers who tended towards a higher appreciation of this particular literary artform. My mother, who is a poet, voted Remain.
Poets tend to be right wing, sometimes far right. So they will be Leavers
Playwrights are more likely to be Left: Remainers, I bet @Beibheirli_C, like most of you Remainers, loves The Mousetrap and Les Mis
Novelists can’t decide; they merely observe
I’m assuming you are counting yourself in the last category? Get over yourself. That’s like Ricky Ponting putting himself forward as a neutral watching the Ashes.
Damn and blast! Daughter and Husband have both caught Covid. His second bout and her first. Just as she is about to start a new job too. Damn damn damn.
I am confined to London, being at high risk.
I hope they will be ok. Not that there is anything I can do for them.
Comments
She has also not vetoed any bill directly affecting the Crown unless advised to by ministers
Well, he was a big wheel in YouGov, wasn't he? So I'm sure he'd fit right in.
But given the other issues in schools right now (starting with "at this rate, soon there won't be enough people to teach any poems to GCSE classes"), this is a fairly bonkers priority. And there are two other exam boards. And the principle- that ministers don't just say "this must/mustn't be on the curriculum"- is an important one.
Hehe.
And, in the end,
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make.
Most rap will disappear, but some of it will endure and pass into culture.
I'm interested to know how you claim to know more than the Queen's office is prepared to say.
The origin of the phrase is interesting. I think Xenophon did the first bit, because he was a rigid ol gent who had to justify the amount of hunting he did, which he did by saying Best training for a war horse, and Jorrocks added the 25%.
Since CWC 19, in 13 ODI innings(setting aside NED and IRE series), England have scored 3387 runs for the loss of 90 wickets.
Average ODI innings = 260.5/6.9
In 73 test innings over the same period, they have scored 19093 runs for the loss of 654 wickets
Average test innings = 261.5 / 8.9
So, England's ODI and test innings scores are essentially identical, except (a shade above) 2 more wickets have been lost in each test innings.
all my troubles seemed so far awayeeeee
Glorious
A bit like late Hardy. What on earth could 'At Castle Boterel' or 'Thoughts of Phena' mean to a kid at school? It would be sacrilege to force someone young to read them. Whereas once you are a grumpy old man......
My impression from the last (2019) multi-candidate ward election where I was a candidate was that 2/3 of the Lab vote also went to the LD candidate in our 2-member ward, while half the LD vote also went to me (there was no explicit endorsement either way, but just the two of us for 2 Tory seats). Most of the balance in both parties abstained on their second vote - just a small sprinkling went Conservative.
My guess is that it will go up to 75% and 66% when we're up again next year - familiarity and observation that we are working well together.
I have seen one production where it was undoubtedly Petruchio, turning Katherine into a brainwashed husk...
Can anyone quote a single line of Heaney?
No. He’s melodious and mellifluous but totally unmemorable
Whereas Larkin belts out the zingers
Almost every line in This Be The Verse is solid gold
Then:
What will survive of us is love
The trees are coming into leaf; like something almost being said
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh
A serious house on serious earth it is
I worK all day and get half drunk at night
Indeed, I’d say Aubade is one of the finest poems ever written by anyone in any language. The greatest poetical examination of death, in existence. Chilling, but incredible
AUBADE
BY PHILIP LARKIN
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
As well as hardening the hearts of the Ukrainians to fight to the death.
I do wonder what the Russian speakers in the Donbas think of "victory" - seeing their land razed, 80%+ of their homes uninhabitable, the industry that gave them jobs flattened, never to be rebuilt. Some victory that.
Thanks for the confirmation I was correct
Close up the casement, draw the blind,
Shut out that stealing moon,
She wears too much the guise she wore
Before our lutes were strewn
With years-deep dust, and names we read
On a white stone were hewn.
Step not out on the dew-dashed lawn
To view the Lady's Chair,
Immense Orion's glittering form,
The Less and Greater Bear:
Stay in; to such sights we were drawn
When faded ones were fair.
Brush not the bough for midnight scents
That come forth lingeringly,
And wake the same sweet sentiments
They breathed to you and me
When living seemed a laugh, and love
All it was said to be.
Within the common lamp-lit room
Prison my eyes and thought;
Let dingy details crudely loom,
Mechanic speech be wrought:
Too fragrant was Life's early bloom,
Too tart the fruit it brought!
Awesome
I decided to call him halfway through my third Leffe. We had a really good chat, and he suggested that I could start tomorrow! I’m now somewhat sobered up and on the bus to his head office in the next town. I could be scrubbing in the morning!
Rejects the majority of you,
Debating ends forthwith
And we divide
Larkin could save pb a lot of time
Simply making sure the invasion is defeated.
Any justice will have to wait until Russia tires of him.
When it's at the high end Tories are in government and when it's at the low end (40% or less) then Labour are.
The older classics are approachable because they are chosen for their universal appeal. My son recently did Rime of the Ancient Mariner and loved it. The WW1 poets are fairly easy to place too, or writers very clearly of their time (and a time that students study in History) like Kipling. But once you're into 1930s-90s poetry, your Larkins and Audens and Ted Hugheses, you're in an era of much more topical content but anachronistically topical.
And then there's
"No, give me my in-tray,
My loaf-haired secretary,
My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir:
What else can I answer,
When the lights come on at four
At the end of another year?
Give me your arm, old toad;
Help me down Cemetery Road."
Profoundly important materialist poet. This should be one of the reasons he is taught.
Firstly, it's an incredibly poorly defined question. Is it about unsolicited, specific requests? Or does it extend to a PM asking for and getting advice on anything even vaguely touching on legislative matters in the confidential regular meetings? Or somewhere in between - in which case where?
Secondly, as I understand it, the meetings are off the record. So by definition the records don't exist.
Thirdly, ultimately whatever the Queen says to the PM and he to her, the legislation itself and any amendments go through Parliament in open session to discuss their merits or otherwise.
I think the whole system is silly, but stonewalling that particular question isn't.
If next year Labour decided to run 2 candidates or the Lib Dems decided to run 2 candidates it's very likely that by splitting the vote you could end up in a position where both of you miss out.
The most complex thing in the NI elections seems to be working out how many candidates should we run in this 5 seat constituency because the fewer candidates you run the more likely they are to be elected.
Sinn Fein of course messed this up in the last Irish elections by nominating too few candidates...
Labour, Lib Dems and Green together are on roughly 55-57% currently, Tory and RefUK are 48-50%, and the nationalists take the rest. That feels like the most meaningful split currently.
This one gnaws away at me from time to time
Home is so sad
Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft
And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.
If you give kids Larkin they might then go on to explore more poetry, he’s the gateway drug of poetry
Milton is more like LSD
Good luck @BlancheLivermore
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other's work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives—
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
In the last minutes he said more to her
Almost than in all their life together.
You'll be in New Row on Monday night
And I'll come up for you and you'll be glad
When I walk in the door . . . Isn't that right?'
His head was bent down to her propped-up head.
She could not hear but we were overjoyed.
He called her good and girl. Then she was dead,
The searching for a pulsebeat was abandoned
And we all knew one thing by being there.
The space we stood around had been emptied
Into us to keep, it penetrated
Clearances that suddenly stood open.
High cries were felled and a pure change happened.
My wife's favourite poem, read at her funeral.
Some men never thought of flowers.
You did. You'd come along and say
You almost brought me flowers,
But something had gone wrong.
The shop was closed, or youd had doubts
The sort minds like ours dream up incessantly.
You thought i might not like your flowers.
It made me hug you then, and smile.
Now i can only smile. But look!
The flowers that you almost brought
Have lasted all this while.
We split nearly 30 years ago and now she is a wife and mother but we remain in touch and, for being one of a tiny cadre that ever understood I shall remain immensely fond of her until the day I die.
I’m glad it brought you solace, and likewise your lost spouse. RIP
But to me that reads like really feeble Larkin. Larkin on Xanax
Also “bucket”. There’s always a bloody bucket in a Heaney poem
I think there is anyway.
I read it once and it’s been nagging me for years, and I can’t find it in any google searches.
Any Frost fans please pm me, hah.
Noether's theorem should be taught earlier in physics (maybe even at the high school level). The idea that energy is just the conserved quantity of a time invariant system for example is a simple definition of the otherwise mysterious term "energy"
https://twitter.com/rbhar90/status/1541315296283176960
Of the Holocaust he suavely observed: ‘To suggest that the Jewish problem may be simplified because so many will have been killed off is trifling: a few generations of security, and they will be as numerous as ever.’
The mind is so far beyond boggling that I don't think I can read anything by him any more. Bit of a cop out given how deeply ingrained so much is anyway.
Super stuff.
Often wondered why a movie was never made of it? It couldn't be more modern in its themes. Although deliberately archaic in language.
The weather conditions bring tears to my eyes.
I wipe them away with a black cotton glove
And try not to notice i've fallen in love.
On Waterloo Bridge with the wind in my hair
Im tempted to skip. You're a fool! I don't care!
The head does its best but the heart is the boss
I admit it before i get halfway across.
And while we are in London
When i'm sad and lonely,
When the working day is done.
When i walk along High Holborn
I think of you, with nothing on.
“The exam board described the new poems as “exciting and diverse”, adding: “Our anthology for GCSE English literature students will feature many poets that have never been on a GCSE syllabus before and represent diverse voices, from living poets of British-Somali, British-Guyanese and Ukrainian heritage to one of the first black women in 19th century America to publish a novel. Of the 15 poets whose work has been added, 14 are poets of colour. Six are black women, one is of South Asian heritage. Our new poets also include disabled and LGBTQ+ voices.””
Is there a single poet there who is under 4 foot three? Where are quadriplegic Druze voices? I can’t see a single poet who is actually AI, nor anyone who is Chinese-Mexican sapiosexual kinkster genderfluid in a coma
'Starless and Bible Black' (King Crimson LP).
45 electors with 12 candidates. Voting on Tuesday 5th July, results announced the next day.
Candidates statements:
Ashbourne, L.
Experienced financial professional (specialising in mining) from Naval family with a good record of attendance. Extensive media experience (used to host a show on LBC). Resident in the division bell area and a party member for three decades, but familiar with life’s tribulations through a severely mentally handicapped brother and a father with multiple sclerosis. Educated at Christ’s Hospital and read chemistry at Pembroke College, Oxford. Represented Ireland target shooting. Enthusiastic Cresta rider.
Ashcombe, L.
Aged 58, I am a consistent Conservative voter, member of the party and a regular attender of the ACP. With a civil engineering degree from Imperial College, I have pursued a career in insurance, primarily at Marsh, specialising in the energy sector. If elected, I would hope to apply my experience, skills and knowledge to the benefit of this House. Living in London and Hampshire I would have the time required to attend and vote.
Baillieu, L.
London based. Member of the Conservative Party. I have gained a large amount of
experience having worked in banking and finance in Australia, Hong Kong, and particularly in Russia. This Russian experience could well support a diplomatic solution to the current Ukraine situation, which is now developing into a food and energy crisis. I wish to become an active, working member of the House of Lords.
Balfour, E.
Until now I have been working full-time in international financial services and markets for 50 years which is why I have not put myself forward before. I believe my extensive experience and knowledge would be useful in the Chamber. Government policy is obviously crucial in my field and consequently I have always taken a keen interest in all aspects of that both at
home and abroad.
Biddulph, L.
In the light of recent political events, it is important that the House of Lords retains its
dignity and integrity. I would wish to be part of and would uphold those values.
Dormer, L.
I bring to the House, forty years’ senior management experience in British engineering, and manufacturing businesses, supporting British, and International, defence programmes.I have represented the interests of British SMEs on trade association committees, and I champion the modern engineering apprenticeship, and STEM programmes.I have a degree in Naval Architecture, a Cranfield MBA, and an ILM diploma in leadership & management.
I live in Berkshire with my wife. I am a Conservative Party member.
Dudley, E.
youtube.com/user/technodemic/videos
13 new videos, since submitted for last by-election.
The 2nd preferences of LD voters shown in the thread don't in my view amount to very much. They are representative of a specific situation of a year ago where:
1. The Conservatives were significantly more popular than Labour in national polling (i.e. close to 10% ahead in May 2021), in contrast to the situation now where they are behind. When the Conservatives are generally unpopular, far fewer LDs would choose the Conservatives over Labour in a forced choice.
2. There was no agreement or even tacit understanding whatsoever in place between Labour and the LDs. Things have though moved on and the two recent by-elections were very different, the cooperation being apparent if unspoken in the proiritisation by each party. If supporters of one party feels that they are getting a subtle nod in return for the expectation of cooperation elsewhere, then voters will be more open to acting in a particular way.
Elibank, L.
In my career I have worked in a variety of industries including technology and energy and I am currently working for Reading University as a fundraiser. The latter two have given me considerable insight into the challenges of a low carbon future.
I am a lifelong Conservative supporter and a member of the party and I would hope to be a diligent, effective and collegiate member of the House.
Limerick, E. (L. Foxford)
Age 59. London and Sussex based. Patron of Mid Sussex Conservatives. Useful and varied
career experience:
• FCO with postings in Paris (ENA, first British diplomat in Quai d’Orsay), Senegal and Jordan. Fluent French, Russian. Some Spanish, Arabic and Wolof.
• Lawyer and banker in London, Moscow and Dubai financing SMEs and infrastructure.
• Former school governor and active charity trustee.
• Running diversified farm including renewables, wilding, weddings, camping,
MicroBrewery.
Key interests: Foreign Policy, Trade, Environment, Education, Planning
Remnant, L.
Live in London and Hampshire, and am a lifelong Conservative. Worked within Government as Chairman of Shareholder Executive, director of UKFI (responsible for Government’s shareholdings in the banks) and director of Northern Rock.
Currently, a non-executive director of Prudential and Severn Trent, and was recently Deputy Chair of The Takeover Panel. With reducing business interests, would commit enthusiastically to the Lords.
Other interests: countryside matters.
Windlesham, L.
Despite Covid, the war in Ukraine and the cost of living crisis the Government remains
committed to achieving net zero by 2050. While the UK is a global leader in areas such as renewables there is still a long way to go and much investment is needed.
I head up sustainable strategy for a leading consultancy business which advises providers and users of asset finance how best to prepare for a greener, more sustainable future.
Wrottesley, L.
I took my seat 25 years ago, but relative youth meant not offering myself for election.
An Olympian, Chaired British Bobsleigh and Skeleton, now Chairing Ice Hockey UK, sit on
the Finance Committee of the International Ice Hockey Federation, and the board of GB's
best ever performing Winter Sport, British Skeleton.
A stint in Finance in the noughties, closet tree hugger, as reflected in my business interests.
More broadly interested in the environment, defence, housing.
I don't think Shakespeare's prejudices about the French - his most genuinely felt, I think ? - ever blinded him to their humanity.
I would go for the one who represented Ireland in bobsled, or whatever it was.
All that “coasts of Bohemia” bollocks.
Fake bloody news.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house
… Is eerily like the 6 Bairstow hit at the end of the England innings today, clinching the Test series clean sweep
He didn’t have to do it. The task was accomplished, a brilliant poem written, an excellent test match won, but both of them thought: fuck it, why not conclude with a gratuitous but marvellous flourish? That is genius
"The bill brazenly breaks an international treaty…" and "threatens a trade war".
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1541444907612753921
The Philistine Remoaner Left
"It’s been six years since the UK voted to leave the European Union and more than one since it established a new relationship with its main trading partner. From a 16% devaluation of the pound to an eye-watering slide in trade and investment, Brexit’s impact is plain to see. The data have only reinforced our view that life outside of the EU would leave the UK worse off."
--Ana Luis Andrade, Bloomberg Economics.
https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-27/britain-s-battered-economy-is-sliding-toward-a-breaking-point
Assuming that some of the classics are still included, I'm not bothered if some of the greats are removed from an anthology to include more voices that may speak to more people. We're not talking about banning access to Larkin, Owen and the like.
The Dobbs opinion, and its dismissal of unenumerated rights, puts quite a lot of that at risk.
If the Supreme Court sets its sights on Griswold v. Connecticut, they won't just target pills or rubbers. They'd destroy a fundamental constitutional right under the Ninth Amendment.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a40432279/supreme-court-griswold-v-connecticut-contraception-privacy/
...All that being said, can folks please stop referring to the decision in Griswold v. Connecticut as having been "about contraception"? Griswold confirmed the existence of a right to privacy within the Constitution. That's everything. It's about marriage. It's about sex. It's about what we read. It's about how we communicate with each other. It's about the limits to search and seizure. It's about medical records and genetic information. It's about libraries and the internet. It’s about what we learn and how we learn it. It’s all tied in together in a fervent prayer to keep us all safe from, as Thomas Jefferson put it, “every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” As Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg put it in his Griswold concurrence:
"...as the Ninth Amendment expressly recognizes, there are fundamental personal rights such as this one, which are protected from abridgment by the Government though not specifically mentioned in the Constitution.”...
The philistine remoaner left
unreconciled and left, bereft...
There is a plaque on a housing development built on the site of a golf course clubhouse that says 3 of them met there once. It doesn't say why...
Bluebook Trainee, DG ECFIN, Lending and Borrowing Unit
European Commission
Mar 2014 - Jul 20145 months
Luxembourg
Worked on the market operations side of the European financial assistance programs.
Brexit is the Reformation. You are asking Catholics to judge it
Where fools, not angels, tread was durst.
Is it any surprise?
Playwrights are more likely to be Left: Remainers, I bet @Beibheirli_C, like most of you Remainers, loves The Mousetrap and Les Mis
Novelists can’t decide; they merely observe
Who said Europe made him a peon
So he voted for Brexit
Then ran for the exit
And whined about woke for an aeon.
Zahawi has maybe only just encountered it, so he IS surprised
Except for the clumsy second line
'We've left!' They crowed
'Now deal with it!'
This fakest freedom sated them,
Not Brexity, a counterfeit.
I am confined to London, being at high risk.
I hope they will be ok. Not that there is anything I can do for them.
Bloody Covid!!