It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Not quite. Biologically of course it's a complete mishmash, like the rest of us, and (sotto voce) in any line of descent the matrilineal line is pretty reliable while it is a wise child who knows who their father is, as any female mallard will testify.
But history being what it is some lines matter a little more than others. The fact that HM the Queen is a direct descendent of Alfred the Great (assuming the ducks and drakes of history are all telling the truth) matters more than that she is a collateral descendent of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, though much history turns on that remarkable relationship.
I remember Charles Moore alleging in the Spectator once that HM the Queen was a direct descendent of the Prophet through Pedro the Cruel. It would add to the lustre as far as I am concerned it that were the case.
A massive reward of honour awaits anyone who could prove reliably the descent of HM the Queen from antiquity (pre c500 AD). Astonishingly it can't be done for her, or anyone else in the west. if it could, it certainly would not be English/British.
I can “provably” trace my descent back to Maud Ingelric, the supposed concubine of William the Conqueror, who married a Normam Knight, Ranulph Peverel. it was the lordly Peverels who later went west into Cornwall, where they eventually became minor gentry, and in some cases really quite poor
Using online genealogies I traced Ingelric and Co back to Roman senators, and a Nordic god of ice and fire
Complete bollocks of course, but great fun. The trouble is the end of the Roman Empire in the west severed nearly all family trees between 400-600AD. I suppose the only way you could provably trace descent from antiquity would be if you descended from Byzantine aristos who might then, in turn, be traceable back to Roman times?
People with time on their hands have devoted themselves to this, but without much success. I recall Sir Ian Moncreiffe of that Ilk (d 1985) had a bit of a thing about it. The only time I ever met him he was fairly tired and emotional.
If a line could be traced from the Merovingian to Carolingian kings it would help, but I don't think it can be done. Once you get to Alfred the Great/Charlesmagne you are in modern times (for me) and it's relatively plain sailing. If you are HM the Queen.
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Not quite. Biologically of course it's a complete mishmash, like the rest of us, and (sotto voce) in any line of descent the matrilineal line is pretty reliable while it is a wise child who knows who their father is, as any female mallard will testify.
But history being what it is some lines matter a little more than others. The fact that HM the Queen is a direct descendent of Alfred the Great (assuming the ducks and drakes of history are all telling the truth) matters more than that she is a collateral descendent of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, though much history turns on that remarkable relationship.
I remember Charles Moore alleging in the Spectator once that HM the Queen was a direct descendent of the Prophet through Pedro the Cruel. It would add to the lustre as far as I am concerned it that were the case.
A massive reward of honour awaits anyone who could prove reliably the descent of HM the Queen from antiquity (pre c500 AD). Astonishingly it can't be done for her, or anyone else in the west. if it could, it certainly would not be English/British.
I can “provably” trace my descent back to Maud Ingelric, the supposed concubine of William the Conqueror, who married a Normam Knight, Ranulph Peverel. it was the lordly Peverels who later went west into Cornwall, where they eventually became minor gentry, and in some cases really quite poor
Using online genealogies I traced Ingelric and Co back to Roman senators, and a Nordic god of ice and fire
Complete bollocks of course, but great fun. The trouble is the end of the Roman Empire in the west severed nearly all family trees between 400-600AD. I suppose the only way you could provably trace descent from antiquity would be if you descended from Byzantine aristos who might then, in turn, be traceable back to Roman times?
Prolly 40 years since I saw a GB of Records but they used to have HMQ's family tree as the endpapers, as the longest proven genealogy in the world
(1/4) I saw the chat last night on the current covid state, so I, inevitably, have decided to put in my semi-informed two penn’orth. Which is: we’re in the third Omicron wave. Around one in thirty of us have covid right now (up from a low of one in seventy). For some, it’s a summer cold. For others, it’s a nasty flu. For a few, it’s severe enough for hospitalisation, even with the immunity levels we’ve got.
This is the end state as it stands. You will catch covid an average of 1-4 times per year. All of us will. Some will be lucky and miss a year or two; others will be unlucky and catch it at every wave. And reinfections aren't necessarily less nasty than the previous infection.
I’ve had real ‘flu maybe three or four times in my life (rather than a bad cold). That’s a bit under once per decade, and I think that’s pretty representative. You probably get just under one real case of flu per decade. You will catch covid 10-40 times over the next decade, unless something changes. So will each of your loved ones.
There is also the question of what proportion of hospitalisations are FOR rather than WITH covid. We don’t need to speculate, the figures are published. It’s about 36% right now (up from 30% at the low). But it’s still WAY below the 70-80% in the pre-Omicron and pre-vaccine days. Don’t get me wrong, those with incidental covid are not irrelevant. You still have to isolate them, it causes complexities in treatment, and worsens prognoses (there are no cases where “Oh, and you’ve got covid as well,” is a positive phrase to hear if you’re hospitalised and vulnerable due to something else). But it’s still qualitatively different from “You’ve caught covid so bad you’ve been rushed to hospital due to covid itself.”
And, yes, we still have a baseline of about 50 people per day dying FROM covid, who would have lived otherwise.
We will have between 1 million and 5 million people in the UK with covid; it’ll vary as the waves come and go. These are hitting fairly regularly – we had the original Omicron wave in December/January, the BA.2 wave in March/April, and now the BA.4/5 wave in June/July.
(Which implies that February and May were good months, and maybe August will be as well).
This makes me quite fearful. I have been told in no uncertain terms to avoid future lung infections. I also have a condition which makes me prone to blood clots, which I've had and which are also pretty unpleasant. So I try to do this. Even so I got a nasty bout of bronchitis earlier this year.
If this is going to be widespread, I am going to have to resign myself to living largely in the open air and staying away from crowded inside spaces. Fortunately, this is relatively easy to do in the Lakes. But still it's not ideal.
🚨 A source close to the Secret Service tells me both Bobby Engel, the lead agent, and the presidential limousine/SUV driver are prepared to testify under oath that neither man was assaulted and that Mr. Trump never lunged for the steering wheel.
So they are saying Hutchinson just lied on oath after clearly searching her soul?
Christ.
They better be bloody sure there isn't some CCTV footage we haven't seen or another witness because otherwise they are going down for a very long time and the there's not much room in a bunk in St Quentin.
Was Hutchinson in the car? If not, isn't this part of her testimony hearsay?
Sorry to hear about your husband and daughter coming down with Covid.
My very best wishes for a speedy recovery x
Thank you. It is hard not to be able to do anything for them.
As usual, HYUFD is being hysterical and wrong. It is a fundameental right of any people to determine who they are ruled by - enshrined in international law. While Westminster can try to lay down the rules for conducting and respecting a referendum, it can not block a referendum altogether. If it insists on obstructing a referendum, then the SG can call an election - with Independence being categoricaly stated on parties manifestos. If SNP & SGreeen & Alba >50% in that contect then it is not neccesary to hold a separate Sindy referendum. This would be the peoples mandate.
It would be too funny if the Indy parties won over 50% of votes, but split it in such a way that they actually lost their majority in the Scottish parliament.
BTW, though I do think the above scenario would be amusing, I think Scotland should have another Indy Ref, even though I don't want one and I want Scotland to stay in the UK. If there was reason for them to have one in 2014, then the change in circumstances due to Brexit are profound enough to warrant another one now.
If we'd had the Brexit referendum first and Remain had very narrowly won, then Scotland had voted for Indy and left the UK, I know that I'd have argued that that was a big enough change to need a rerun of the Brexit referendum.
I'm not surprised that the Rowe vs Wade reversal is helping the Democrats. The only cohort it serves are religious Republicans. Many Republicans will be repulsed by this.
Don’t normally mention typos but this one is persistent and looks like an actual error (not a typo)
It’s Roe. Not “Rowe”
Is it really worth starting a row over the spelling?
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Not quite. Biologically of course it's a complete mishmash, like the rest of us, and (sotto voce) in any line of descent the matrilineal line is pretty reliable while it is a wise child who knows who their father is, as any female mallard will testify.
But history being what it is some lines matter a little more than others. The fact that HM the Queen is a direct descendent of Alfred the Great (assuming the ducks and drakes of history are all telling the truth) matters more than that she is a collateral descendent of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, though much history turns on that remarkable relationship.
I remember Charles Moore alleging in the Spectator once that HM the Queen was a direct descendent of the Prophet through Pedro the Cruel. It would add to the lustre as far as I am concerned it that were the case.
A massive reward of honour awaits anyone who could prove reliably the descent of HM the Queen from antiquity (pre c500 AD). Astonishingly it can't be done for her, or anyone else in the west. if it could, it certainly would not be English/British.
I can “provably” trace my descent back to Maud Ingelric, the supposed concubine of William the Conqueror, who married a Normam Knight, Ranulph Peverel. it was the lordly Peverels who later went west into Cornwall, where they eventually became minor gentry, and in some cases really quite poor
Using online genealogies I traced Ingelric and Co back to Roman senators, and a Nordic god of ice and fire
Complete bollocks of course, but great fun. The trouble is the end of the Roman Empire in the west severed nearly all family trees between 400-600AD. I suppose the only way you could provably trace descent from antiquity would be if you descended from Byzantine aristos who might then, in turn, be traceable back to Roman times?
People with time on their hands have devoted themselves to this, but without much success. I recall Sir Ian Moncreiffe of that Ilk (d 1985) had a bit of a thing about it. The only time I ever met him he was fairly tired and emotional.
I remember the much missed @Charles telling us that he had the full suite of famous ancestors, which anyone posh enough can assert
I’m guessing here but I recall they were William the Bastard, the Prophet M,… possibly King David…. And maybe Charlemagne? Or Alfred? Something like that
I strongly doubt anyone can reliably evidence “King David” as an ancestor
The Prophet M makes more sense, his line has been studied and inscribed very closely, for religious reasons, so if you are related to any of his proven descendants, bingo
It’s interesting to speculate who has the world’s oldest/tallest provable family tree. Perhaps the Japanese royal family?
That said, Wiki suggests they go back about as far as the Queen - ie 500AD or so
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Not quite. Biologically of course it's a complete mishmash, like the rest of us, and (sotto voce) in any line of descent the matrilineal line is pretty reliable while it is a wise child who knows who their father is, as any female mallard will testify.
But history being what it is some lines matter a little more than others. The fact that HM the Queen is a direct descendent of Alfred the Great (assuming the ducks and drakes of history are all telling the truth) matters more than that she is a collateral descendent of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, though much history turns on that remarkable relationship.
I remember Charles Moore alleging in the Spectator once that HM the Queen was a direct descendent of the Prophet through Pedro the Cruel. It would add to the lustre as far as I am concerned it that were the case.
A massive reward of honour awaits anyone who could prove reliably the descent of HM the Queen from antiquity (pre c500 AD). Astonishingly it can't be done for her, or anyone else in the west. if it could, it certainly would not be English/British.
I can “provably” trace my descent back to Maud Ingelric, the supposed concubine of William the Conqueror, who married a Normam Knight, Ranulph Peverel. it was the lordly Peverels who later went west into Cornwall, where they eventually became minor gentry, and in some cases really quite poor
Using online genealogies I traced Ingelric and Co back to Roman senators, and a Nordic god of ice and fire
Complete bollocks of course, but great fun. The trouble is the end of the Roman Empire in the west severed nearly all family trees between 400-600AD. I suppose the only way you could provably trace descent from antiquity would be if you descended from Byzantine aristos who might then, in turn, be traceable back to Roman times?
Prolly 40 years since I saw a GB of Records but they used to have HMQ's family tree as the endpapers, as the longest proven genealogy in the world
According to Wikipedia HMQ's genealogy isn't even at the races any more.
On the referendum the SC set out the position extremely clearly in a unanimous decision quite recently when the SG tried to incorporate a UN Convention on the rights of the Child which impinged on the rights reserved to the UK Parliament. This is the SC press release on the matter: https://www.supremecourt.uk/press-summary/uksc-2021-0079.html
It seemed to me that Lord Reed went well beyond what was necessary for the particular case to spell out the process in detail and the various safeguards built into the Scotland Act. Specifically in this case the first step is getting the Law Officers in Scotland to confirm that the bill is compatible; secondly the chair of the Parliament doing likewise (although failure to get this does not stop the bill outright) and thirdly the right to refer the Bill when passed to the SC for a ruling.
It remains to be seen if Sturgeon is able to short circuit this. It is entirely possible that the SC will decline to consider the bill until the other stages have been complied with. Even if they do they will follow the reasoning set out in the earlier case which makes it clear that Holyrood cannot pass legislation which impinges in any respect on reserved matters. This path is a dead end and Sturgeon must know it.
Her alternative of an election is much more complicated because in theory elections are about many things and are influenced by many factors. In a multiparty election nuances between parties can make the answer less than clear cut. Parties may want to take issue with the SNP's incompetence in building ferries, running schools and hospitals granting guarantees, and the disappointingly dry event that took place in the local brewery.
The idea of 'election as referendum' is nonsense of course. That is privately agreed by all. The idea that the SC will jump in to give the SG powers they didn't know they had is pretty fanciful, even if Lady Hale were still around.
The idea that Scots will vote a majority for, in due course, a hard border at Berwick and Gretna, pretending to be anti-nuclear while remaining in NATO (Scots have pride), losing the pound and the BoE, and losing English cash is nearly as fanciful.
So although the debate and discussion will be great, not least for the excellent and regular posts from the charming and insightful supporters of the SNP/the nationalist project here, the entire trompe l'oeil is a valiant and successful attempt to keep the Scottish political process in the hands of the SNP and a multitude of jobs for the boys, and girls, in Edinburgh and Westminster.
I'm not so sure - Sturgeon wants the referendum now because Bozo is, for her and the SNP, the perfect candidate to lead the Stay campaign.
Someone who 80% of the scottish population hates...
That's another interesting point. Will Labour front for Better Together 2 this time round? Will there even be an alliance of the Unionists with Mr Johnson around?
Given SLab's current bleat is that all this indy nonsense is distracting from the main task of getting rid of Boris and Wee Doogie Ross apparently (it's only Wednesday so this may change by Friday) thinks he should go, perhaps they can join together and form a Bettertogether without BJ campaign.
Though they're not noted for learning lessons north of Gretna, I would imagine that after their last indy ref experience Lab will remain at arms lenght from the Cons, BJ in charge or not. SKS will quack on about constitutional conventions and a mummified Brown will be wheeled around the country and revivified to do his thing.
I'm not surprised that the Rowe vs Wade reversal is helping the Democrats. The only cohort it serves are religious Republicans. Many Republicans will be repulsed by this.
For pro lifers however it doesn't matter.
Having the first Supreme Court majority to reverse Roe v Wade and return abortion to the states is far more important for them than a GOP Congress. Indeed even if Congress and Biden passed a law making abortion on demand legal again nationwide, this SC would rule it unconstitutional. It would take a near impossible 2/3 majority of both Chambers of Congress and 3/4 of all States to pass a constitutional amendment for nationwide legal abortion.
Ironically Trump's greatest legacy will be for the pro life cause in America, even if he has now screwed the GOP in the midterms through his SC judge appointments
This is is pure John Rawls isn't it. Rawls argued that religion has no place in the public square whereas his detractors argue that religious individuals/groups are unfairly expected to, in effect, split their identities in public discourse.
Seems strange to us that checks and balances in the US are so strong that an incoming president would lack the ability to enact our equivalent of a manifesto promise.
That is the basis of the balance of powers in the US between President, Congress, the SC and the States.
In the UK however a PM with a majority in the Commons is an elected dictator and the Lords and Monarch and the courts ultimately have to agree to that PM's demands and the laws he proposes and passes through the Commons
The notion that the PM is an elected dictator is utter bullshit and always has been by people who are too thick to realise MPs of a certain party aren't identikit drones who don't have their own opinions.
It only takes ~40 Tory MPs to rebel to defeat legislation, but they don't even need to rebel to change it. Dozens of Tory MPs telling the whips that they're not happy with legislation can see it be amended or changed, or even withdrawn entirely, before it even gets to the vote.
That doesn't happen in dictatorships - elected or otherwise.
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Not quite. Biologically of course it's a complete mishmash, like the rest of us, and (sotto voce) in any line of descent the matrilineal line is pretty reliable while it is a wise child who knows who their father is, as any female mallard will testify.
But history being what it is some lines matter a little more than others. The fact that HM the Queen is a direct descendent of Alfred the Great (assuming the ducks and drakes of history are all telling the truth) matters more than that she is a collateral descendent of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, though much history turns on that remarkable relationship.
I remember Charles Moore alleging in the Spectator once that HM the Queen was a direct descendent of the Prophet through Pedro the Cruel. It would add to the lustre as far as I am concerned it that were the case.
A massive reward of honour awaits anyone who could prove reliably the descent of HM the Queen from antiquity (pre c500 AD). Astonishingly it can't be done for her, or anyone else in the west. if it could, it certainly would not be English/British.
I can “provably” trace my descent back to Maud Ingelric, the supposed concubine of William the Conqueror, who married a Normam Knight, Ranulph Peverel. it was the lordly Peverels who later went west into Cornwall, where they eventually became minor gentry, and in some cases really quite poor
Using online genealogies I traced Ingelric and Co back to Roman senators, and a Nordic god of ice and fire
Complete bollocks of course, but great fun. The trouble is the end of the Roman Empire in the west severed nearly all family trees between 400-600AD. I suppose the only way you could provably trace descent from antiquity would be if you descended from Byzantine aristos who might then, in turn, be traceable back to Roman times?
Today everybody of broadly British descent is descended from William the Conqueror.
Can't really see how you can argue there wasn't an attempted Coup? That it failed was incompetence and because a handful of key players resisted. Rafflensperger (sp.?), Pence, Cheney and Hutchinson. And doubtless a few others. But it was an attempted Coup. By a mafia Don. He was well named.
I said there wouldn’t be a coup.
There was no coup.
However one describes the disgraceful, shambolic scenes on 6 January, a coup it was not.
Well. It wasn't a successful Coup. I'll give you that.
It wasn't a successful riot. It wasn't even an attempted coup.
5 dead. What was the intention?
Of course it was a bloody coup (attempt). It’s just that Luckyboy is conditioned (as we all are) to think of them as things that happen in third world countries.
No, it was not. You can repeat it as often as you like; it isn't going to get any truer. There was no attempted coup, because there was no attempt, intention, or plan, to take over the Government of the United States. There wasn't a botched plan, or a fatally-flawed plan, or even an insanely stupid plan, there. wasn't. a. plan. Nobody invading the Capitol that day thought that they were taking over the Government of the US. I find it a bit sad that so many on a forum with a very high level of discussion are prepared to abandon basic fact 'because Trump'. It's disappointingly weak minded.
It appears that there was a plan to take over the Government of the United States, or at least to prevent the relinquishing of power.
The plan was multi-farious, but included the use of a violent mob to suborn, immobilise or perhaps murder the Vice President.
It doesn't appear that there was anything of the sort. As you are perfectly well aware, everything that Trump did, said, or thought in the election aftermath (true or otherwise it would appear from posts upthread) is now being flung in the coup casserole in the hopes that it ammounts to something coup-like. Well quite clearly it doesn't. Even if there were a plan or intention to lynch the VP, it wouldn't have gained the rioters power, or affected the election outcome. Sorry to be dull, but definitions are quite important.
How is that pin head you are dancing on? Pretty empty I guess. Does it never cross your mind that if everyone else thinks it was a coup except you then you might be wrong (Trump followers excluded).
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
No. As the Tories would also lose in 2024 by a landslide having lost the UK, Labour is already ahead in England alone anyway and the next 10 to 20 years would be dominated by Scexit divisions and negotiations and infighting and economic chaos and plunging sterling and a hard border at Berwick which would make Brexit look like a storm in a teacup and which Russia and our enemies would also take full advantage of
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
The country is paralysed by disputes over trade borders, its economy damaged, politics entirely distorted by questions of nationality and urgent questions of governance and economic reform further neglected.
I'm not surprised that the Rowe vs Wade reversal is helping the Democrats. The only cohort it serves are religious Republicans. Many Republicans will be repulsed by this.
Neither science nor religion offers anything much of material use in the abortion debate except heat and dogma. Religious people have all manner of views on the matter. No amount of science or empirical observation could determine how and when particular judgements are rightly to be made in actual cases, and who by, or what laws should govern it.
I'm not surprised that the Rowe vs Wade reversal is helping the Democrats. The only cohort it serves are religious Republicans. Many Republicans will be repulsed by this.
For pro lifers however it doesn't matter.
Having the first Supreme Court majority to reverse Roe v Wade and return abortion to the states is far more important for them than a GOP Congress. Indeed even if Congress and Biden passed a law making abortion on demand legal again nationwide, this SC would rule it unconstitutional. It would take a near impossible 2/3 majority of both Chambers of Congress and 3/4 of all States to pass a constitutional amendment for nationwide legal abortion.
Ironically Trump's greatest legacy will be for the pro life cause in America, even if he has now screwed the GOP in the midterms through his SC judge appointments
This is is pure John Rawls isn't it. Rawls argued that religion has no place in the public square whereas his detractors argue that religious individuals/groups are unfairly expected to, in effect, split their identities in public discourse.
Seems strange to us that checks and balances in the US are so strong that an incoming president would lack the ability to enact our equivalent of a manifesto promise.
That is the basis of the balance of powers in the US between President, Congress, the SC and the States.
In the UK however a PM with a majority in the Commons is an elected dictator and the Lords and Monarch and the courts ultimately have to agree to that PM's demands and the laws he proposes and passes through the Commons
The notion that the PM is an elected dictator is utter bullshit and always has been by people who are too thick to realise MPs of a certain party aren't identikit drones who don't have their own opinions.
It only takes ~40 Tory MPs to rebel to defeat legislation, but they don't even need to rebel to change it. Dozens of Tory MPs telling the whips that they're not happy with legislation can see it be amended or changed, or even withdrawn entirely, before it even gets to the vote.
That doesn't happen in dictatorships - elected or otherwise.
You only have to start counting the number of U-turns that have been forced on this government to appreciate how wrong @HYUFD is on this point.
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
The country is paralysed by disputes over trade borders, its economy damaged, politics entirely distorted by questions of nationality and urgent questions of governance and economic reform further neglected.
It would be a monumental disaster.
Would Sindy weaken our military significantly too? Not ideal timing for that.
As usual, HYUFD is being hysterical and wrong. It is a fundameental right of any people to determine who they are ruled by - enshrined in international law. While Westminster can try to lay down the rules for conducting and respecting a referendum, it can not block a referendum altogether. If it insists on obstructing a referendum, then the SG can call an election - with Independence being categoricaly stated on parties manifestos. If SNP & SGreeen & Alba >50% in that contect then it is not neccesary to hold a separate Sindy referendum. This would be the peoples mandate.
Westminster surely can block another referendum. Whether it would be politically wise to do so is another matter.
International law has nothing to say on the point.
Except in the UN Charter and the ICCPR...
Neither of which will assist. If, for example, Spain chooses to prevent either the Basque country or Catalonia from seceding, or France prevents Corsica from doing so, there is no legal recourse available to those who wish to secede. It all comes down to realpolitik. Are the costs of preventing secession greater than the costs of allowing it?
And realpolitik has already told in some of our dealings with our former colonies.
For example, if China had been like Spain (a democracy of lesser power than our own) then Hong Kong would today probably have a status similar to Gibraltar.
As Steven Berkoff said:
Did we go in ’gainst bloody Ian Smith When he seized power in ’65? … No Task Force Then rushed in and said we’re here to defend Rhodesia’s black men And do not think for old Hong Kong We’ll go in there and fight, no fear, China’s a bit too big for us, my dear.
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
The country is paralysed by disputes over trade borders, its economy damaged, politics entirely distorted by questions of nationality and urgent questions of governance and economic reform further neglected.
It would be a monumental disaster.
You're glossing over that - it would be much worse than a monumental disaster.
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Not quite. Biologically of course it's a complete mishmash, like the rest of us, and (sotto voce) in any line of descent the matrilineal line is pretty reliable while it is a wise child who knows who their father is, as any female mallard will testify.
But history being what it is some lines matter a little more than others. The fact that HM the Queen is a direct descendent of Alfred the Great (assuming the ducks and drakes of history are all telling the truth) matters more than that she is a collateral descendent of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, though much history turns on that remarkable relationship.
I remember Charles Moore alleging in the Spectator once that HM the Queen was a direct descendent of the Prophet through Pedro the Cruel. It would add to the lustre as far as I am concerned it that were the case.
A massive reward of honour awaits anyone who could prove reliably the descent of HM the Queen from antiquity (pre c500 AD). Astonishingly it can't be done for her, or anyone else in the west. if it could, it certainly would not be English/British.
I can “provably” trace my descent back to Maud Ingelric, the supposed concubine of William the Conqueror, who married a Normam Knight, Ranulph Peverel. it was the lordly Peverels who later went west into Cornwall, where they eventually became minor gentry, and in some cases really quite poor
Using online genealogies I traced Ingelric and Co back to Roman senators, and a Nordic god of ice and fire
Complete bollocks of course, but great fun. The trouble is the end of the Roman Empire in the west severed nearly all family trees between 400-600AD. I suppose the only way you could provably trace descent from antiquity would be if you descended from Byzantine aristos who might then, in turn, be traceable back to Roman times?
Today everybody of broadly British descent is descended from William the Conqueror.
I'm not surprised that the Rowe vs Wade reversal is helping the Democrats. The only cohort it serves are religious Republicans. Many Republicans will be repulsed by this.
For pro lifers however it doesn't matter.
Having the first Supreme Court majority to reverse Roe v Wade and return abortion to the states is far more important for them than a GOP Congress. Indeed even if Congress and Biden passed a law making abortion on demand legal again nationwide, this SC would rule it unconstitutional. It would take a near impossible 2/3 majority of both Chambers of Congress and 3/4 of all States to pass a constitutional amendment for nationwide legal abortion.
Ironically Trump's greatest legacy will be for the pro life cause in America, even if he has now screwed the GOP in the midterms through his SC judge appointments
This is is pure John Rawls isn't it. Rawls argued that religion has no place in the public square whereas his detractors argue that religious individuals/groups are unfairly expected to, in effect, split their identities in public discourse.
Seems strange to us that checks and balances in the US are so strong that an incoming president would lack the ability to enact our equivalent of a manifesto promise.
That is the basis of the balance of powers in the US between President, Congress, the SC and the States.
In the UK however a PM with a majority in the Commons is an elected dictator and the Lords and Monarch and the courts ultimately have to agree to that PM's demands and the laws he proposes and passes through the Commons
The notion that the PM is an elected dictator is utter bullshit and always has been by people who are too thick to realise MPs of a certain party aren't identikit drones who don't have their own opinions.
It only takes ~40 Tory MPs to rebel to defeat legislation, but they don't even need to rebel to change it. Dozens of Tory MPs telling the whips that they're not happy with legislation can see it be amended or changed, or even withdrawn entirely, before it even gets to the vote.
That doesn't happen in dictatorships - elected or otherwise.
How often does the Commons vote against a PM with a majority? About 1% of the time at best and as 2019 showed MPs who consistently rebel can be deselected at the next general election by party HQ to keep them in line
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
No. As the Tories would also lose in 2024 by a landslide having lost the UK, Labour is already ahead in England alone anyway and the next 10 to 20 years would be dominated by Scexit divisions and negotiations and infighting and economic chaos and plunging sterling and a hard border at Berwick which would make Brexit look like a storm in a teacup and which Russia and our enemies would also take full advantage of
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
The country is paralysed by disputes over trade borders, its economy damaged, politics entirely distorted by questions of nationality and urgent questions of governance and economic reform further neglected.
It would be a monumental disaster.
Shouldn't you insert an 'already' between 'is' and 'paralysed'??
My main interest in Scottish independence is what whisky and other smuggling opportunities there may be, living as I do close to the border and the coast with lots of coves for fishing boats. I rather fancy a Whisky Galore-style retirement.
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
The country is paralysed by disputes over trade borders, its economy damaged, politics entirely distorted by questions of nationality and urgent questions of governance and economic reform further neglected.
It would be a monumental disaster.
Would Sindy weaken our military significantly too? Not ideal timing for that.
Apart from anything else it would tie the military up in a series of institutional reorganisations that had nothing to do with modernisation or creating new capabilities, and everything to do with political wrangling.
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
No. As the Tories would also lose in 2024 by a landslide having lost the UK, Labour is already ahead in England alone anyway and the next 10 to 20 years would be dominated by Scexit divisions and negotiations and infighting and economic chaos and plunging sterling and a hard border at Berwick which would make Brexit look like a storm in a teacup and which Russia and our enemies would also take full advantage of
Either @BartholomewRoberts doesn’t understand economics, or he chooses to ignore it. Scottish indy would be an economic disaster for Scotland and a horrible knock back for rUK, and the ensuing recession/depression would last years, maybe many years, as everyone painfully adjusted
I have no doubt iScotland would EVENTUALLY prosper. Likewise rUK, but the idea both sides would shrug it off and move on is infantile. It would be an economic calamity of the first water
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Not quite. Biologically of course it's a complete mishmash, like the rest of us, and (sotto voce) in any line of descent the matrilineal line is pretty reliable while it is a wise child who knows who their father is, as any female mallard will testify.
But history being what it is some lines matter a little more than others. The fact that HM the Queen is a direct descendent of Alfred the Great (assuming the ducks and drakes of history are all telling the truth) matters more than that she is a collateral descendent of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, though much history turns on that remarkable relationship.
I remember Charles Moore alleging in the Spectator once that HM the Queen was a direct descendent of the Prophet through Pedro the Cruel. It would add to the lustre as far as I am concerned it that were the case.
A massive reward of honour awaits anyone who could prove reliably the descent of HM the Queen from antiquity (pre c500 AD). Astonishingly it can't be done for her, or anyone else in the west. if it could, it certainly would not be English/British.
I can “provably” trace my descent back to Maud Ingelric, the supposed concubine of William the Conqueror, who married a Normam Knight, Ranulph Peverel. it was the lordly Peverels who later went west into Cornwall, where they eventually became minor gentry, and in some cases really quite poor
Using online genealogies I traced Ingelric and Co back to Roman senators, and a Nordic god of ice and fire
Complete bollocks of course, but great fun. The trouble is the end of the Roman Empire in the west severed nearly all family trees between 400-600AD. I suppose the only way you could provably trace descent from antiquity would be if you descended from Byzantine aristos who might then, in turn, be traceable back to Roman times?
YAWWWN!
If you go back far enough, we can prove we are all descended from immigrants from Africa c.200,000 BP.
I'm not surprised that the Rowe vs Wade reversal is helping the Democrats. The only cohort it serves are religious Republicans. Many Republicans will be repulsed by this.
For pro lifers however it doesn't matter.
Having the first Supreme Court majority to reverse Roe v Wade and return abortion to the states is far more important for them than a GOP Congress. Indeed even if Congress and Biden passed a law making abortion on demand legal again nationwide, this SC would rule it unconstitutional. It would take a near impossible 2/3 majority of both Chambers of Congress and 3/4 of all States to pass a constitutional amendment for nationwide legal abortion.
Ironically Trump's greatest legacy will be for the pro life cause in America, even if he has now screwed the GOP in the midterms through his SC judge appointments
This is is pure John Rawls isn't it. Rawls argued that religion has no place in the public square whereas his detractors argue that religious individuals/groups are unfairly expected to, in effect, split their identities in public discourse.
Seems strange to us that checks and balances in the US are so strong that an incoming president would lack the ability to enact our equivalent of a manifesto promise.
That is the basis of the balance of powers in the US between President, Congress, the SC and the States.
In the UK however a PM with a majority in the Commons is an elected dictator and the Lords and Monarch and the courts ultimately have to agree to that PM's demands and the laws he proposes and passes through the Commons
The notion that the PM is an elected dictator is utter bullshit and always has been by people who are too thick to realise MPs of a certain party aren't identikit drones who don't have their own opinions.
It only takes ~40 Tory MPs to rebel to defeat legislation, but they don't even need to rebel to change it. Dozens of Tory MPs telling the whips that they're not happy with legislation can see it be amended or changed, or even withdrawn entirely, before it even gets to the vote.
That doesn't happen in dictatorships - elected or otherwise.
How often does the Commons vote against a PM with a majority? About 1% of the time at best and as 2019 showed MPs who consistently rebel can be deselected at the next general election by party HQ to keep them in line
You're a fool, the Commons doesn't typically vote against a PM with a majority because the whips do their jobs and let the government know when they've not got the votes so the issue isn't put to a vote in the first place. The government actually losing a vote is extraordinarily rare because its either a monumental failure of intelligence by the whips office, or is being driven to a losing vote to make a point to the public.
Far more than 1% of issues this government have dealt with have had u-turns forced upon them. Not because they lost votes, but they didn't lose votes because they u-turned and despite Thatcher's infamous quote all PMs u-turn when required rather than losing votes normally.
Yes, as well as the additional capacity that "living with covid" mandates for all parts of the healthcare system, from pharmacy, to GPs, to Emergency Depts, to hospital beds and to ventilation, we have to factor in a higher staff absence rate due to sickness. Most healthcare is a team effort, and if one member of the team goes ill, the whole team goes down. No anaesthetist and the whole rest of the team is idle.
I think "living with covid" requires a cross the board increase in health care capacity of the order of 10%, as well as the need for passive NPI such as improvements to ventilation and filtering.
Masks for all staff in all areas of my hospital were made compulsory again yesterday at 1700 due to the scale of staff and ward outbreaks.
I've been wondering about the effects of endemic-omicron across the economy as a whole. Say for arguments sake the average person had three days off a year with 'the cold' and that now goes up to six days. That seems to be quite a big hit in the short to medium term.
Also even things like HR departments who have various rules about how many days off someone has sick before they have a little word - that may all have to get N% added onto it to allow for the 'new normal'.
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
The country is paralysed by disputes over trade borders, its economy damaged, politics entirely distorted by questions of nationality and urgent questions of governance and economic reform further neglected.
It would be a monumental disaster.
Did you mean to insert an 'already' between 'is' and 'paralysed'??
"further" would work best, as I used towards the end of the sentence. It would be like the toxic effect Brexit is having, but at least an order of magnitude worse.
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Not quite. Biologically of course it's a complete mishmash, like the rest of us, and (sotto voce) in any line of descent the matrilineal line is pretty reliable while it is a wise child who knows who their father is, as any female mallard will testify.
But history being what it is some lines matter a little more than others. The fact that HM the Queen is a direct descendent of Alfred the Great (assuming the ducks and drakes of history are all telling the truth) matters more than that she is a collateral descendent of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, though much history turns on that remarkable relationship.
I remember Charles Moore alleging in the Spectator once that HM the Queen was a direct descendent of the Prophet through Pedro the Cruel. It would add to the lustre as far as I am concerned it that were the case.
A massive reward of honour awaits anyone who could prove reliably the descent of HM the Queen from antiquity (pre c500 AD). Astonishingly it can't be done for her, or anyone else in the west. if it could, it certainly would not be English/British.
I can “provably” trace my descent back to Maud Ingelric, the supposed concubine of William the Conqueror, who married a Normam Knight, Ranulph Peverel. it was the lordly Peverels who later went west into Cornwall, where they eventually became minor gentry, and in some cases really quite poor
Using online genealogies I traced Ingelric and Co back to Roman senators, and a Nordic god of ice and fire
Complete bollocks of course, but great fun. The trouble is the end of the Roman Empire in the west severed nearly all family trees between 400-600AD. I suppose the only way you could provably trace descent from antiquity would be if you descended from Byzantine aristos who might then, in turn, be traceable back to Roman times?
YAWWWN!
If you go back far enough, we can prove we are all descended from immigrants from Africa c.200,000 BP.
I'm not surprised that the Rowe vs Wade reversal is helping the Democrats. The only cohort it serves are religious Republicans. Many Republicans will be repulsed by this.
Don’t normally mention typos but this one is persistent and looks like an actual error (not a typo)
It’s Roe. Not “Rowe”
Is it really worth starting a row over the spelling?
I'm not surprised that the Rowe vs Wade reversal is helping the Democrats. The only cohort it serves are religious Republicans. Many Republicans will be repulsed by this.
For pro lifers however it doesn't matter.
Having the first Supreme Court majority to reverse Roe v Wade and return abortion to the states is far more important for them than a GOP Congress. Indeed even if Congress and Biden passed a law making abortion on demand legal again nationwide, this SC would rule it unconstitutional. It would take a near impossible 2/3 majority of both Chambers of Congress and 3/4 of all States to pass a constitutional amendment for nationwide legal abortion.
Ironically Trump's greatest legacy will be for the pro life cause in America, even if he has now screwed the GOP in the midterms through his SC judge appointments
This is is pure John Rawls isn't it. Rawls argued that religion has no place in the public square whereas his detractors argue that religious individuals/groups are unfairly expected to, in effect, split their identities in public discourse.
Seems strange to us that checks and balances in the US are so strong that an incoming president would lack the ability to enact our equivalent of a manifesto promise.
That is the basis of the balance of powers in the US between President, Congress, the SC and the States.
In the UK however a PM with a majority in the Commons is an elected dictator and the Lords and Monarch and the courts ultimately have to agree to that PM's demands and the laws he proposes and passes through the Commons
The notion that the PM is an elected dictator is utter bullshit and always has been by people who are too thick to realise MPs of a certain party aren't identikit drones who don't have their own opinions.
It only takes ~40 Tory MPs to rebel to defeat legislation, but they don't even need to rebel to change it. Dozens of Tory MPs telling the whips that they're not happy with legislation can see it be amended or changed, or even withdrawn entirely, before it even gets to the vote.
That doesn't happen in dictatorships - elected or otherwise.
How often does the Commons vote against a PM with a majority? About 1% of the time at best and as 2019 showed MPs who consistently rebel can be deselected at the next general election by party HQ to keep them in line
You're a fool, the Commons doesn't typically vote against a PM with a majority because the whips do their jobs and let the government know when they've not got the votes so the issue isn't put to a vote in the first place. The government actually losing a vote is extraordinarily rare because its either a monumental failure of intelligence by the whips office, or is being driven to a losing vote to make a point to the public.
Far more than 1% of issues this government have dealt with have had u-turns forced upon them. Not because they lost votes, but they didn't lose votes because they u-turned and despite Thatcher's infamous quote all PMs u-turn when required rather than losing votes normally.
As the hung parliament of 2017 to 2019 showed it is not the whips that ensure the government gets its way as much as the government having a majority in Parliament so the whips can then being their own MPs into line on key votes
Yes, as well as the additional capacity that "living with covid" mandates for all parts of the healthcare system, from pharmacy, to GPs, to Emergency Depts, to hospital beds and to ventilation, we have to factor in a higher staff absence rate due to sickness. Most healthcare is a team effort, and if one member of the team goes ill, the whole team goes down. No anaesthetist and the whole rest of the team is idle.
I think "living with covid" requires a cross the board increase in health care capacity of the order of 10%, as well as the need for passive NPI such as improvements to ventilation and filtering.
Masks for all staff in all areas of my hospital were made compulsory again yesterday at 1700 due to the scale of staff and ward outbreaks.
I've been wondering about the effects of endemic-omicron across the economy as a whole. Say for arguments sake the average person had three days off a year with 'the cold' and that now goes up to six days. That seems to be quite a big hit in the short to medium term.
Also even things like HR departments who have various rules about how many days off someone has sick before they have a little word - that may all have to get N% added onto it to allow for the 'new normal'.
What are HR departments doing at the moment, if it can take more than a week to get a GP appointment in some areas?
I am currently watching Nashville (2013-2018) for (very) light relief. In it there is a storyline wherein one of the characters (they are all C&W music stars based in....) is quoted out of context saying "there is no god".
It is then taken as understood that if such words were spoken it would be the end of her career and features people burning her albums, demonstrating against her, and assaulting her. The story nowhere (yet) includes some eg east coast liberal, or "enlightened" local saying how bonkers it is; the show is just portraying as a given what the reaction is or would be.
Then as now it illustrates how America is, at heart, a religious fundamentalist state.
Can't really see how you can argue there wasn't an attempted Coup? That it failed was incompetence and because a handful of key players resisted. Rafflensperger (sp.?), Pence, Cheney and Hutchinson. And doubtless a few others. But it was an attempted Coup. By a mafia Don. He was well named.
I said there wouldn’t be a coup.
There was no coup.
However one describes the disgraceful, shambolic scenes on 6 January, a coup it was not.
Well. It wasn't a successful Coup. I'll give you that.
It wasn't a successful riot. It wasn't even an attempted coup.
5 dead. What was the intention?
Of course it was a bloody coup (attempt). It’s just that Luckyboy is conditioned (as we all are) to think of them as things that happen in third world countries.
No, it was not. You can repeat it as often as you like; it isn't going to get any truer. There was no attempted coup, because there was no attempt, intention, or plan, to take over the Government of the United States. There wasn't a botched plan, or a fatally-flawed plan, or even an insanely stupid plan, there. wasn't. a. plan. Nobody invading the Capitol that day thought that they were taking over the Government of the US. I find it a bit sad that so many on a forum with a very high level of discussion are prepared to abandon basic fact 'because Trump'. It's disappointingly weak minded.
It appears that there was a plan to take over the Government of the United States, or at least to prevent the relinquishing of power.
The plan was multi-farious, but included the use of a violent mob to suborn, immobilise or perhaps murder the Vice President.
It doesn't appear that there was anything of the sort. As you are perfectly well aware, everything that Trump did, said, or thought in the election aftermath (true or otherwise it would appear from posts upthread) is now being flung in the coup casserole in the hopes that it ammounts to something coup-like. Well quite clearly it doesn't. Even if there were a plan or intention to lynch the VP, it wouldn't have gained the rioters power, or affected the election outcome. Sorry to be dull, but definitions are quite important.
How is that pin head you are dancing on? Pretty empty I guess. Does it never cross your mind that if everyone else thinks it was a coup except you then you might be wrong (Trump followers excluded).
Shall we exclude Biden followers as well, if he want to be fair?
The violence was awful but it was not a coup nor a coup attempt. It was a violent mob that thought it would be a great idea to storm a political institution because they didn't like the outcome. Was the attempted storming by a pro-abortion crowd of the Arizona Senate an attempted coup against the Arizona state government?
—On the other we have “sources close to” info about what people are “prepared to testify.” Which is placing the two on comparable footing they don’t *yet* deserve
When people testify, OK
Also... To spell out the obvious (which may be necessary):
- The “steering wheel” is not the story.
- Knowingly encouraging an armed mob toward the Capitol, and fiddling while they attacked and chanted “Hang Mike Pence," is the story.
Two types of stories we can do without for a while:
—What GOP officials or former Trumpists think “privately."
—What people are “prepared to testify” about, without appearing under oath.
If you want to put something on the record, go on the record.
Yes, as well as the additional capacity that "living with covid" mandates for all parts of the healthcare system, from pharmacy, to GPs, to Emergency Depts, to hospital beds and to ventilation, we have to factor in a higher staff absence rate due to sickness. Most healthcare is a team effort, and if one member of the team goes ill, the whole team goes down. No anaesthetist and the whole rest of the team is idle.
I think "living with covid" requires a cross the board increase in health care capacity of the order of 10%, as well as the need for passive NPI such as improvements to ventilation and filtering.
Masks for all staff in all areas of my hospital were made compulsory again yesterday at 1700 due to the scale of staff and ward outbreaks.
I've been wondering about the effects of endemic-omicron across the economy as a whole. Say for arguments sake the average person had three days off a year with 'the cold' and that now goes up to six days. That seems to be quite a big hit in the short to medium term.
Also even things like HR departments who have various rules about how many days off someone has sick before they have a little word - that may all have to get N% added onto it to allow for the 'new normal'.
What are HR departments doing at the moment, if it can take more than a week to get a GP appointment in some areas?
My own one is still in 'covid emergency mode' so I don't think it's really been an issue for them to think about so far.
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Not quite. Biologically of course it's a complete mishmash, like the rest of us, and (sotto voce) in any line of descent the matrilineal line is pretty reliable while it is a wise child who knows who their father is, as any female mallard will testify.
But history being what it is some lines matter a little more than others. The fact that HM the Queen is a direct descendent of Alfred the Great (assuming the ducks and drakes of history are all telling the truth) matters more than that she is a collateral descendent of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, though much history turns on that remarkable relationship.
I remember Charles Moore alleging in the Spectator once that HM the Queen was a direct descendent of the Prophet through Pedro the Cruel. It would add to the lustre as far as I am concerned it that were the case.
A massive reward of honour awaits anyone who could prove reliably the descent of HM the Queen from antiquity (pre c500 AD). Astonishingly it can't be done for her, or anyone else in the west. if it could, it certainly would not be English/British.
I can “provably” trace my descent back to Maud Ingelric, the supposed concubine of William the Conqueror, who married a Normam Knight, Ranulph Peverel. it was the lordly Peverels who later went west into Cornwall, where they eventually became minor gentry, and in some cases really quite poor
Using online genealogies I traced Ingelric and Co back to Roman senators, and a Nordic god of ice and fire
Complete bollocks of course, but great fun. The trouble is the end of the Roman Empire in the west severed nearly all family trees between 400-600AD. I suppose the only way you could provably trace descent from antiquity would be if you descended from Byzantine aristos who might then, in turn, be traceable back to Roman times?
Today everybody of broadly British descent is descended from William the Conqueror.
" You have two parents, and they had two parents and so on, two by two, so the number of ancestors doubles each generation working up your family tree, meaning that by 1600, one person should have 32,768 ancestors. This assumes full outbreeding, which is very unlikely – we’re all inbred over a long enough period – but for our purposes makes little difference.
Therefore, each one of your 32,768 ancestors in the year 1600 has a 0.5 per cent chance of being direct descendants of Edward III. If you reverse the question, and ask ‘what are the chances that none of your 32,768 ancestors in 1600 are in that 0.5 per cent’, the calculation becomes
0.995 x 10^32,768 = 4.64^-72
Which is an absurdly small number."
"Full outbreeding" is an absurd assumption - if it were right the world pop in 1600 would be in at least the trillions - and it makes all the difference
To expose the fallacy: Let's take the remotest inhabited island in the South Pacific and assume it had a population of 30 in 1600. If you add those to the mix the chances that none of them were not direct descendants of E III don't materially change, but we can look at *geography* and say the result is absurd. So, were there factors in UK society which isolated populations as effectively as the ocean? Bloody right there were. Geographically, everywhere in rural England was so isolated that the invention of the bicycle seriously stirred the gene pool because people started screwing people in the next door village not their own. Secondly social class: I am sure it didn't never happen that a gay young aristocratic blade swived a comely wench as he happened to be passing, but see 1. above: the average comely wench probably lived out a life without actually encountering a gay young blade, or anyone other than a peasant who was also multiple times over her cousin.
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
No. As the Tories would also lose in 2024 by a landslide having lost the UK, Labour is already ahead in England alone anyway and the next 10 to 20 years would be dominated by Scexit divisions and negotiations and infighting and economic chaos and plunging sterling and a hard border at Berwick which would make Brexit look like a storm in a teacup and which Russia and our enemies would also take full advantage of
Either @BartholomewRoberts doesn’t understand economics, or he chooses to ignore it. Scottish indy would be an economic disaster for Scotland and a horrible knock back for rUK, and the ensuing recession/depression would last years, maybe many years, as everyone painfully adjusted
I have no doubt iScotland would EVENTUALLY prosper. Likewise rUK, but the idea both sides would shrug it off and move on is infantile. It would be an economic calamity of the first water
I do understand economics, but I also respect democracy. The voters of Scotland have voted to have another referendum, whether we like it or not (as it happens I do).
Personally I think Scotland going independent is a good thing for the long term. It will eventually prosper, I completely agree. Its not going to eventually prosper if it remains in the UK like a petulant teenager always moaning but never taking responsibility for itself.
Just as Brexit was like having a baby, Scexit is metaphorically like a teenager moving out of their family home and getting a job and home of their own. Yes it will be tough, it will be difficult and it will be expensive - just as having a baby is. But its also the right thing to do and the harsh reality of running your own home will force more grown up and mature politics upon Edinburgh than its ever going to have while they can just be Kevin saying "its so unfair, I hate you".
I'm not surprised that the Rowe vs Wade reversal is helping the Democrats. The only cohort it serves are religious Republicans. Many Republicans will be repulsed by this.
Good start. The reversal of RvW simply places the USA in the same position as us. Voters and legislators decide tricky issues, not courts. Courts interpret ambiguity, decide the right answers in actual particular situations etc. They are not law makers. They protect the framework and judge between causes in dispute.
Maybe by the next election Trump will be in prison and voters will have realised that it is they only who take charge of their destiny.
One thing to look out for is that courts are blocking state legislation looking to ban abortions.
In some ways, that may suit the GOP, at least until the midterms as it may take some of the heat out of the issue. Post-November, of course, some legislatures may decide to go full-pelt.
My main interest in Scottish independence is what whisky and other smuggling opportunities there may be, living as I do close to the border and the coast with lots of coves for fishing boats. I rather fancy a Whisky Galore-style retirement.
Having revealed that desire - HMRC will be adding you to their watchlists..
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
The country is paralysed by disputes over trade borders, its economy damaged, politics entirely distorted by questions of nationality and urgent questions of governance and economic reform further neglected.
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Not quite. Biologically of course it's a complete mishmash, like the rest of us, and (sotto voce) in any line of descent the matrilineal line is pretty reliable while it is a wise child who knows who their father is, as any female mallard will testify.
But history being what it is some lines matter a little more than others. The fact that HM the Queen is a direct descendent of Alfred the Great (assuming the ducks and drakes of history are all telling the truth) matters more than that she is a collateral descendent of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, though much history turns on that remarkable relationship.
I remember Charles Moore alleging in the Spectator once that HM the Queen was a direct descendent of the Prophet through Pedro the Cruel. It would add to the lustre as far as I am concerned it that were the case.
A massive reward of honour awaits anyone who could prove reliably the descent of HM the Queen from antiquity (pre c500 AD). Astonishingly it can't be done for her, or anyone else in the west. if it could, it certainly would not be English/British.
I can “provably” trace my descent back to Maud Ingelric, the supposed concubine of William the Conqueror, who married a Normam Knight, Ranulph Peverel. it was the lordly Peverels who later went west into Cornwall, where they eventually became minor gentry, and in some cases really quite poor
Using online genealogies I traced Ingelric and Co back to Roman senators, and a Nordic god of ice and fire
Complete bollocks of course, but great fun. The trouble is the end of the Roman Empire in the west severed nearly all family trees between 400-600AD. I suppose the only way you could provably trace descent from antiquity would be if you descended from Byzantine aristos who might then, in turn, be traceable back to Roman times?
YAWWWN!
If you go back far enough, we can prove we are all descended from immigrants from Africa c.200,000 BP.
BREAKING: @Potus announces new US military deployments to Europe: 1. Create permanent HQ for US 5th Army Corps in Poland 2. Deploy additional rotational brigade to Romania 3. Deploy 2 additional F-35 squadrons to the UK 4. "Enhance" rotational deployments in Baltics 5. Deploy 2 additional Navy destroyers to Spain, bringing total from 4 to 6 6. Deploy "additional" air defense to Germany, Italy “At a moment Putin has shattered peace in Europe... US and allies are stepping up, proving NATO is more needed than ever, and more important than ever"
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
No. As the Tories would also lose in 2024 by a landslide having lost the UK, Labour is already ahead in England alone anyway and the next 10 to 20 years would be dominated by Scexit divisions and negotiations and infighting and economic chaos and plunging sterling and a hard border at Berwick which would make Brexit look like a storm in a teacup and which Russia and our enemies would also take full advantage of
Either @BartholomewRoberts doesn’t understand economics, or he chooses to ignore it. Scottish indy would be an economic disaster for Scotland and a horrible knock back for rUK, and the ensuing recession/depression would last years, maybe many years, as everyone painfully adjusted
I have no doubt iScotland would EVENTUALLY prosper. Likewise rUK, but the idea both sides would shrug it off and move on is infantile. It would be an economic calamity of the first water
I do understand economics, but I also respect democracy. The voters of Scotland have voted to have another referendum, whether we like it or not (as it happens I do).
Personally I think Scotland going independent is a good thing for the long term. It will eventually prosper, I completely agree. Its not going to eventually prosper if it remains in the UK like a petulant teenager always moaning but never taking responsibility for itself.
Just as Brexit was like having a baby, Scexit is metaphorically like a teenager moving out of their family home and getting a job and home of their own. Yes it will be tough, it will be difficult and it will be expensive - just as having a baby is. But its also the right thing to do and the harsh reality of running your own home will force more grown up and mature politics upon Edinburgh than its ever going to have while they can just be Kevin saying "its so unfair, I hate you".
But it will be fucking horrible for everyone else in rUK, as well
It will be much more like a brutal, terrible, expensive divorce, with both sides poorer at the end. And imagine the rows over who gets the kids and the Chagalls.
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
No. As the Tories would also lose in 2024 by a landslide having lost the UK, Labour is already ahead in England alone anyway and the next 10 to 20 years would be dominated by Scexit divisions and negotiations and infighting and economic chaos and plunging sterling and a hard border at Berwick which would make Brexit look like a storm in a teacup and which Russia and our enemies would also take full advantage of
Either @BartholomewRoberts doesn’t understand economics, or he chooses to ignore it. Scottish indy would be an economic disaster for Scotland and a horrible knock back for rUK, and the ensuing recession/depression would last years, maybe many years, as everyone painfully adjusted
I have no doubt iScotland would EVENTUALLY prosper. Likewise rUK, but the idea both sides would shrug it off and move on is infantile. It would be an economic calamity of the first water
BREAKING: @Potus announces new US military deployments to Europe: 1. Create permanent HQ for US 5th Army Corps in Poland 2. Deploy additional rotational brigade to Romania 3. Deploy 2 additional F-35 squadrons to the UK 4. "Enhance" rotational deployments in Baltics 5. Deploy 2 additional Navy destroyers to Spain, bringing total from 4 to 6 6. Deploy "additional" air defense to Germany, Italy “At a moment Putin has shattered peace in Europe... US and allies are stepping up, proving NATO is more needed than ever, and more important than ever"
I am currently watching Nashville (2013-2018) for (very) light relief. In it there is a storyline wherein one of the characters (they are all C&W music stars based in....) is quoted out of context saying "there is no god".
It is then taken as understood that if such words were spoken it would be the end of her career and features people burning her albums, demonstrating against her, and assaulting her. The story nowhere (yet) includes some eg east coast liberal, or "enlightened" local saying how bonkers it is; the show is just portraying as a given what the reaction is or would be.
Then as now it illustrates how America is, at heart, a religious fundamentalist state.
The original United States was founded by individuals who were mainly fleeing religious persecution or, at least, a regime that they felt restricted their religious freedom. It's no wonder religion is at the heart of the States.
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
No. As the Tories would also lose in 2024 by a landslide having lost the UK, Labour is already ahead in England alone anyway and the next 10 to 20 years would be dominated by Scexit divisions and negotiations and infighting and economic chaos and plunging sterling and a hard border at Berwick which would make Brexit look like a storm in a teacup and which Russia and our enemies would also take full advantage of
Either @BartholomewRoberts doesn’t understand economics, or he chooses to ignore it. Scottish indy would be an economic disaster for Scotland and a horrible knock back for rUK, and the ensuing recession/depression would last years, maybe many years, as everyone painfully adjusted
I have no doubt iScotland would EVENTUALLY prosper. Likewise rUK, but the idea both sides would shrug it off and move on is infantile. It would be an economic calamity of the first water
I do understand economics, but I also respect democracy. The voters of Scotland have voted to have another referendum, whether we like it or not (as it happens I do).
Personally I think Scotland going independent is a good thing for the long term. It will eventually prosper, I completely agree. Its not going to eventually prosper if it remains in the UK like a petulant teenager always moaning but never taking responsibility for itself.
Just as Brexit was like having a baby, Scexit is metaphorically like a teenager moving out of their family home and getting a job and home of their own. Yes it will be tough, it will be difficult and it will be expensive - just as having a baby is. But its also the right thing to do and the harsh reality of running your own home will force more grown up and mature politics upon Edinburgh than its ever going to have while they can just be Kevin saying "its so unfair, I hate you".
Plus we will have the example of grown up and mature politics from Westminster to inspire us.
(4/4) Would they actually reduce infections like that? What about: "I thought the vaccines don’t stop you getting Omicron. Or covid at all."
Have you seen the levels of infection and speed of rise? We’ve got an Rt of maybe 1.4. With a virus five to ten times as infectious as original strain covid (which was about 2.4 to 3.0). That means it “should” be somewhere in the 12-30 range. With exponential growth, multiplying by 12 every cycle rather than 1.4 means the ONS prevalence levels should go up within a couple of weeks until it’s a vertical line and the spreadsheet simply says “everyone.”
So, no, it doesn’t stop it dead. It’s not a suit of armour. But it does bounce off quite a bit. If it takes five attempts to get through, down from twenty, it’s reduced your infection level by a lot. People use the seatbelt analogy, and it’s a good one. Seat belts and airbags don’t stop you from dying in a car crash. But they reduce the rate a long way.
“But what about the cost and disruption of rolling them out?”
What disruption? It wouldn’t be the desperate “get jabs in arms NOW so we can release NPIs” of 2021. It’d be more like the winter flu jab regime.
And cost-wise: well you blow past the price of a jab within five minutes of presenting to hospital. And if it saves one day off work per year, you’ve more than made up the difference, haven’t you? Zero covid? Yeah, people still talk about that, but it’s not happening. It would need simultaneous eradication of covid worldwide, and we can’t do that with vaccines, so we’d need a worldwide lockdown at China levels with perfect adherence. No, that’s never happening. It’s here, we’re living with it; we merely have to select how we live with it.
Caution for the most vulnerable, regular boosters, reformulating for the latest strain (and here, the fact that covid seems to be stuck on the Omicron branch of the evolutionary tree is very helpful), HEPA filters, and possibly an increase in hospital capacity make the difference.
Thanks for that. 4x a year sounds excessive for an individual risk, even if 4 waves per year is the current pattern of infection as Omicron mutates. And it is still nasty enough for some who are triple vaccinated (albeit with waning immunity) and have had previous infection.
It wasn't supposed to be quite like this. The other coronaviruses became pretty mild seasonal colds in time, for all the talk of curing "the common cold" not really worth that particular effort.
Are we just not there yet, for immunity levels to remain such that the mutations allow a sneaky R 1.2 in winter, for prior natural immunity to make it mild, for the hospitalisation load to be not noticeable or not worth noting. Or was this phase of Spanish Flu just not noticed?
Or has the difference since the long ago last deadly pandemic, in the emphasis on social protection as a government responsibility, in vaccination, in driving COVID out over years - has it fundamentally altered the long term course of this pandemic, has it forced a massive transmissibility that would otherwise not have occured, has it led to a very different endemic course that differs from past Coronaviruses?
I think it's possibly a bit of both. The wave pattern may not yet be the settled endemic pattern and the evolution of sneaky rather than high R will develop further, but I also suspect some R estimates are at the exaggerated end and have not accounted for shorter reinfection times which can do a lot of the same rapid spread job, but are quicker to suppress. I also think there is road to travel, revaccination or no, on it getting milder in effect (due to human immunity over years rather than the virus evolving milder than it is now).
But I do think the end result endemic coronavirus will be a product of 21st century public health policy, and will be rather different from had this virus hit in 1920. Does that change what we do next time - perhaps, but I'm not necessarily sure how - an 19/20th century response still feels unconscionable to me, and I'm not ready on a bit of amateur suspicion, to side with the let it rip merchants. The answer is for someone much more expert than me, but I'd like the question asked.
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
No. As the Tories would also lose in 2024 by a landslide having lost the UK, Labour is already ahead in England alone anyway and the next 10 to 20 years would be dominated by Scexit divisions and negotiations and infighting and economic chaos and plunging sterling and a hard border at Berwick which would make Brexit look like a storm in a teacup and which Russia and our enemies would also take full advantage of
Either @BartholomewRoberts doesn’t understand economics, or he chooses to ignore it. Scottish indy would be an economic disaster for Scotland and a horrible knock back for rUK, and the ensuing recession/depression would last years, maybe many years, as everyone painfully adjusted
I have no doubt iScotland would EVENTUALLY prosper. Likewise rUK, but the idea both sides would shrug it off and move on is infantile. It would be an economic calamity of the first water
An infant speaks
Scottish constitutional politics is like a blocked toilet that won’t flush; you are the large human turd that floats at the surface
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
No. As the Tories would also lose in 2024 by a landslide having lost the UK, Labour is already ahead in England alone anyway and the next 10 to 20 years would be dominated by Scexit divisions and negotiations and infighting and economic chaos and plunging sterling and a hard border at Berwick which would make Brexit look like a storm in a teacup and which Russia and our enemies would also take full advantage of
Either @BartholomewRoberts doesn’t understand economics, or he chooses to ignore it. Scottish indy would be an economic disaster for Scotland and a horrible knock back for rUK, and the ensuing recession/depression would last years, maybe many years, as everyone painfully adjusted
I have no doubt iScotland would EVENTUALLY prosper. Likewise rUK, but the idea both sides would shrug it off and move on is infantile. It would be an economic calamity of the first water
I do understand economics, but I also respect democracy. The voters of Scotland have voted to have another referendum, whether we like it or not (as it happens I do).
Personally I think Scotland going independent is a good thing for the long term. It will eventually prosper, I completely agree. Its not going to eventually prosper if it remains in the UK like a petulant teenager always moaning but never taking responsibility for itself.
Just as Brexit was like having a baby, Scexit is metaphorically like a teenager moving out of their family home and getting a job and home of their own. Yes it will be tough, it will be difficult and it will be expensive - just as having a baby is. But its also the right thing to do and the harsh reality of running your own home will force more grown up and mature politics upon Edinburgh than its ever going to have while they can just be Kevin saying "its so unfair, I hate you".
But it will be fucking horrible for everyone else in rUK, as well
It will be much more like a brutal, terrible, expensive divorce, with both sides poorer at the end. And imagine the rows over who gets the kids and the Chagalls.
UGH
If the love is over, then divorce is sadly the responsible thing to do.
If one party explicitly wants a divorce, the other party simply saying "no" for many years on end isn't appropriate either.
Just because something is going to be difficult, and expensive, doesn't make it wrong. Like Brexit.
I am currently watching Nashville (2013-2018) for (very) light relief. In it there is a storyline wherein one of the characters (they are all C&W music stars based in....) is quoted out of context saying "there is no god".
It is then taken as understood that if such words were spoken it would be the end of her career and features people burning her albums, demonstrating against her, and assaulting her. The story nowhere (yet) includes some eg east coast liberal, or "enlightened" local saying how bonkers it is; the show is just portraying as a given what the reaction is or would be.
Then as now it illustrates how America is, at heart, a religious fundamentalist state.
The original United States was founded by individuals who were mainly fleeing religious persecution or, at least, a regime that they felt restricted their religious freedom. It's no wonder religion is at the heart of the States.
You could easily draw a line from there to here. The question is whether this is something which is good or not. And if it is accepted that the US is a religious fundamentalist state how does that put into perspective our view of other religious fundamentalist states.
BREAKING: @Potus announces new US military deployments to Europe: 1. Create permanent HQ for US 5th Army Corps in Poland 2. Deploy additional rotational brigade to Romania 3. Deploy 2 additional F-35 squadrons to the UK 4. "Enhance" rotational deployments in Baltics 5. Deploy 2 additional Navy destroyers to Spain, bringing total from 4 to 6 6. Deploy "additional" air defense to Germany, Italy “At a moment Putin has shattered peace in Europe... US and allies are stepping up, proving NATO is more needed than ever, and more important than ever"
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
No. As the Tories would also lose in 2024 by a landslide having lost the UK, Labour is already ahead in England alone anyway and the next 10 to 20 years would be dominated by Scexit divisions and negotiations and infighting and economic chaos and plunging sterling and a hard border at Berwick which would make Brexit look like a storm in a teacup and which Russia and our enemies would also take full advantage of
Either @BartholomewRoberts doesn’t understand economics, or he chooses to ignore it. Scottish indy would be an economic disaster for Scotland and a horrible knock back for rUK, and the ensuing recession/depression would last years, maybe many years, as everyone painfully adjusted
I have no doubt iScotland would EVENTUALLY prosper. Likewise rUK, but the idea both sides would shrug it off and move on is infantile. It would be an economic calamity of the first water
I do understand economics, but I also respect democracy. The voters of Scotland have voted to have another referendum, whether we like it or not (as it happens I do).
Personally I think Scotland going independent is a good thing for the long term. It will eventually prosper, I completely agree. Its not going to eventually prosper if it remains in the UK like a petulant teenager always moaning but never taking responsibility for itself.
Just as Brexit was like having a baby, Scexit is metaphorically like a teenager moving out of their family home and getting a job and home of their own. Yes it will be tough, it will be difficult and it will be expensive - just as having a baby is. But its also the right thing to do and the harsh reality of running your own home will force more grown up and mature politics upon Edinburgh than its ever going to have while they can just be Kevin saying "its so unfair, I hate you".
But it will be fucking horrible for everyone else in rUK, as well
It will be much more like a brutal, terrible, expensive divorce, with both sides poorer at the end. And imagine the rows over who gets the kids and the Chagalls.
UGH
You can certainly keep big, violent kid Northern Ireland.
I am currently watching Nashville (2013-2018) for (very) light relief. In it there is a storyline wherein one of the characters (they are all C&W music stars based in....) is quoted out of context saying "there is no god".
It is then taken as understood that if such words were spoken it would be the end of her career and features people burning her albums, demonstrating against her, and assaulting her. The story nowhere (yet) includes some eg east coast liberal, or "enlightened" local saying how bonkers it is; the show is just portraying as a given what the reaction is or would be.
Then as now it illustrates how America is, at heart, a religious fundamentalist state.
Bits of it are. Tennessee is one of the most extreme examples, I remember driving through Eastern Tennessee on the way to Dollywood (which is excellent except for the food) and there seemed to be more churches than houses. Other bits of it are just like Western Europe or Canada. That's their problem. People outside the US tend to simultaneously underestimate the depth of fundamentalist belief in large parts of the US population and assume that all Americans are religious nutters.
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Depending a bit how patrilinear you are. More recently the Bowes Lyons are pretty Scottish and the Spencers and Middletons pretty English.
It bodes well for the family's future that Kate's Dad appears to still have all his own hair. If George can find a similarly well-endowed father-in-law then there's hope of breeding the baldness out.
Anti baldness truly is the last acceptable form of prejudice.
Can't really see how you can argue there wasn't an attempted Coup? That it failed was incompetence and because a handful of key players resisted. Rafflensperger (sp.?), Pence, Cheney and Hutchinson. And doubtless a few others. But it was an attempted Coup. By a mafia Don. He was well named.
I said there wouldn’t be a coup.
There was no coup.
However one describes the disgraceful, shambolic scenes on 6 January, a coup it was not.
Well. It wasn't a successful Coup. I'll give you that.
It wasn't a successful riot. It wasn't even an attempted coup.
5 dead. What was the intention?
Of course it was a bloody coup (attempt). It’s just that Luckyboy is conditioned (as we all are) to think of them as things that happen in third world countries.
No, it was not. You can repeat it as often as you like; it isn't going to get any truer. There was no attempted coup, because there was no attempt, intention, or plan, to take over the Government of the United States. There wasn't a botched plan, or a fatally-flawed plan, or even an insanely stupid plan, there. wasn't. a. plan. Nobody invading the Capitol that day thought that they were taking over the Government of the US. I find it a bit sad that so many on a forum with a very high level of discussion are prepared to abandon basic fact 'because Trump'. It's disappointingly weak minded.
It appears that there was a plan to take over the Government of the United States, or at least to prevent the relinquishing of power.
The plan was multi-farious, but included the use of a violent mob to suborn, immobilise or perhaps murder the Vice President.
It doesn't appear that there was anything of the sort. As you are perfectly well aware, everything that Trump did, said, or thought in the election aftermath (true or otherwise it would appear from posts upthread) is now being flung in the coup casserole in the hopes that it ammounts to something coup-like. Well quite clearly it doesn't. Even if there were a plan or intention to lynch the VP, it wouldn't have gained the rioters power, or affected the election outcome. Sorry to be dull, but definitions are quite important.
How is that pin head you are dancing on? Pretty empty I guess. Does it never cross your mind that if everyone else thinks it was a coup except you then you might be wrong (Trump followers excluded).
Shall we exclude Biden followers as well, if he want to be fair?
The violence was awful but it was not a coup nor a coup attempt. It was a violent mob that thought it would be a great idea to storm a political institution because they didn't like the outcome. Was the attempted storming by a pro-abortion crowd of the Arizona Senate an attempted coup against the Arizona state government?
The aim of a proportion of the Capitol rioters was to pressure Mike Pence into rejecting the certified results and instead accepting the slates of Trump electors as the valid results of the swing states. If that had been done then Trump would have 'legally' won the 2020 election.
Overturning the results of an election sounds like a coup to me. Maybe you've just got a different standard.
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
No. As the Tories would also lose in 2024 by a landslide having lost the UK, Labour is already ahead in England alone anyway and the next 10 to 20 years would be dominated by Scexit divisions and negotiations and infighting and economic chaos and plunging sterling and a hard border at Berwick which would make Brexit look like a storm in a teacup and which Russia and our enemies would also take full advantage of
Either @BartholomewRoberts doesn’t understand economics, or he chooses to ignore it. Scottish indy would be an economic disaster for Scotland and a horrible knock back for rUK, and the ensuing recession/depression would last years, maybe many years, as everyone painfully adjusted
I have no doubt iScotland would EVENTUALLY prosper. Likewise rUK, but the idea both sides would shrug it off and move on is infantile. It would be an economic calamity of the first water
I do understand economics, but I also respect democracy. The voters of Scotland have voted to have another referendum, whether we like it or not (as it happens I do).
Personally I think Scotland going independent is a good thing for the long term. It will eventually prosper, I completely agree. Its not going to eventually prosper if it remains in the UK like a petulant teenager always moaning but never taking responsibility for itself.
Just as Brexit was like having a baby, Scexit is metaphorically like a teenager moving out of their family home and getting a job and home of their own. Yes it will be tough, it will be difficult and it will be expensive - just as having a baby is. But its also the right thing to do and the harsh reality of running your own home will force more grown up and mature politics upon Edinburgh than its ever going to have while they can just be Kevin saying "its so unfair, I hate you".
But it will be fucking horrible for everyone else in rUK, as well
It will be much more like a brutal, terrible, expensive divorce, with both sides poorer at the end. And imagine the rows over who gets the kids and the Chagalls.
UGH
If the love is over, then divorce is sadly the responsible thing to do.
If one party explicitly wants a divorce, the other party simply saying "no" for many years on end isn't appropriate either.
Just because something is going to be difficult, and expensive, doesn't make it wrong. Like Brexit.
Fair enough. At least your position is consistent and logical
But so is mine
1. Westminster has the right to refuse a referendum, and should do so
2. Not least, because referendums are horribly divisive and destabilising
And
3. Scottish indy will be, in the short term, economically ruinous for Scots AND everyone else in the UK
I am currently watching Nashville (2013-2018) for (very) light relief. In it there is a storyline wherein one of the characters (they are all C&W music stars based in....) is quoted out of context saying "there is no god".
It is then taken as understood that if such words were spoken it would be the end of her career and features people burning her albums, demonstrating against her, and assaulting her. The story nowhere (yet) includes some eg east coast liberal, or "enlightened" local saying how bonkers it is; the show is just portraying as a given what the reaction is or would be.
Then as now it illustrates how America is, at heart, a religious fundamentalist state.
The original United States was founded by individuals who were mainly fleeing religious persecution or, at least, a regime that they felt restricted their religious freedom. It's no wonder religion is at the heart of the States.
That is why the founding fathers put separation of Church and State at the heart of the bill of rights, so future generations of Americans wouldn't face religious persecution themselves and would have freedom to choose which religion, if any, they wanted to follow and how to practice it.
Sadly the modern "religious right" wants to implement religious persecution themselves. They have become what American founders tried to flee and prevent.
I am currently watching Nashville (2013-2018) for (very) light relief. In it there is a storyline wherein one of the characters (they are all C&W music stars based in....) is quoted out of context saying "there is no god".
It is then taken as understood that if such words were spoken it would be the end of her career and features people burning her albums, demonstrating against her, and assaulting her. The story nowhere (yet) includes some eg east coast liberal, or "enlightened" local saying how bonkers it is; the show is just portraying as a given what the reaction is or would be.
Then as now it illustrates how America is, at heart, a religious fundamentalist state.
The original United States was founded by individuals who were mainly fleeing religious persecution or, at least, a regime that they felt restricted their religious freedom. It's no wonder religion is at the heart of the States.
Also people who really wanted to get rich making African people work for nothing on land taken by force from the indigenous population. It's no wonder racism is at the heart of the States.
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Not quite. Biologically of course it's a complete mishmash, like the rest of us, and (sotto voce) in any line of descent the matrilineal line is pretty reliable while it is a wise child who knows who their father is, as any female mallard will testify.
But history being what it is some lines matter a little more than others. The fact that HM the Queen is a direct descendent of Alfred the Great (assuming the ducks and drakes of history are all telling the truth) matters more than that she is a collateral descendent of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, though much history turns on that remarkable relationship.
I remember Charles Moore alleging in the Spectator once that HM the Queen was a direct descendent of the Prophet through Pedro the Cruel. It would add to the lustre as far as I am concerned it that were the case.
A massive reward of honour awaits anyone who could prove reliably the descent of HM the Queen from antiquity (pre c500 AD). Astonishingly it can't be done for her, or anyone else in the west. if it could, it certainly would not be English/British.
I can “provably” trace my descent back to Maud Ingelric, the supposed concubine of William the Conqueror, who married a Normam Knight, Ranulph Peverel. it was the lordly Peverels who later went west into Cornwall, where they eventually became minor gentry, and in some cases really quite poor
Using online genealogies I traced Ingelric and Co back to Roman senators, and a Nordic god of ice and fire
Complete bollocks of course, but great fun. The trouble is the end of the Roman Empire in the west severed nearly all family trees between 400-600AD. I suppose the only way you could provably trace descent from antiquity would be if you descended from Byzantine aristos who might then, in turn, be traceable back to Roman times?
Today everybody of broadly British descent is descended from William the Conqueror.
" You have two parents, and they had two parents and so on, two by two, so the number of ancestors doubles each generation working up your family tree, meaning that by 1600, one person should have 32,768 ancestors. This assumes full outbreeding, which is very unlikely – we’re all inbred over a long enough period – but for our purposes makes little difference.
Therefore, each one of your 32,768 ancestors in the year 1600 has a 0.5 per cent chance of being direct descendants of Edward III. If you reverse the question, and ask ‘what are the chances that none of your 32,768 ancestors in 1600 are in that 0.5 per cent’, the calculation becomes
0.995 x 10^32,768 = 4.64^-72
Which is an absurdly small number."
"Full outbreeding" is an absurd assumption - if it were right the world pop in 1600 would be in at least the trillions - and it makes all the difference
To expose the fallacy: Let's take the remotest inhabited island in the South Pacific and assume it had a population of 30 in 1600. If you add those to the mix the chances that none of them were not direct descendants of E III don't materially change, but we can look at *geography* and say the result is absurd. So, were there factors in UK society which isolated populations as effectively as the ocean? Bloody right there were. Geographically, everywhere in rural England was so isolated that the invention of the bicycle seriously stirred the gene pool because people started screwing people in the next door village not their own. Secondly social class: I am sure it didn't never happen that a gay young aristocratic blade swived a comely wench as he happened to be passing, but see 1. above: the average comely wench probably lived out a life without actually encountering a gay young blade, or anyone other than a peasant who was also multiple times over her cousin.
That doesn't stand up to scrutiny though. Anyone who has investigated their family tree going back a to say 1800 (which is easily doable for most people) will see they have ancestors from across Britain.
So far, in 1800 I have found ancestors in Perthshire, Fife, County Waterford, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Cumbria, London, Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex - and my ancestors during that period are largely ordinary working class people.
Also, you can apply *very* high levels of interbreeding to the calculation above and you still end up with 99.9999...% probability of descent from William the Conqueror.
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
No. As the Tories would also lose in 2024 by a landslide having lost the UK, Labour is already ahead in England alone anyway and the next 10 to 20 years would be dominated by Scexit divisions and negotiations and infighting and economic chaos and plunging sterling and a hard border at Berwick which would make Brexit look like a storm in a teacup and which Russia and our enemies would also take full advantage of
Either @BartholomewRoberts doesn’t understand economics, or he chooses to ignore it. Scottish indy would be an economic disaster for Scotland and a horrible knock back for rUK, and the ensuing recession/depression would last years, maybe many years, as everyone painfully adjusted
I have no doubt iScotland would EVENTUALLY prosper. Likewise rUK, but the idea both sides would shrug it off and move on is infantile. It would be an economic calamity of the first water
I do understand economics, but I also respect democracy. The voters of Scotland have voted to have another referendum, whether we like it or not (as it happens I do).
Personally I think Scotland going independent is a good thing for the long term. It will eventually prosper, I completely agree. Its not going to eventually prosper if it remains in the UK like a petulant teenager always moaning but never taking responsibility for itself.
Just as Brexit was like having a baby, Scexit is metaphorically like a teenager moving out of their family home and getting a job and home of their own. Yes it will be tough, it will be difficult and it will be expensive - just as having a baby is. But its also the right thing to do and the harsh reality of running your own home will force more grown up and mature politics upon Edinburgh than its ever going to have while they can just be Kevin saying "its so unfair, I hate you".
But it will be fucking horrible for everyone else in rUK, as well
It will be much more like a brutal, terrible, expensive divorce, with both sides poorer at the end. And imagine the rows over who gets the kids and the Chagalls.
UGH
If the love is over, then divorce is sadly the responsible thing to do.
If one party explicitly wants a divorce, the other party simply saying "no" for many years on end isn't appropriate either.
Just because something is going to be difficult, and expensive, doesn't make it wrong. Like Brexit.
Fair enough. At least your position is consistent and logical
But so is mine
1. Westminster has the right to refuse a referendum, and should do so
2. Not least, because referendums are horribly divisive and destabilising
And
3. Scottish indy will be, in the short term, economically ruinous for Scots AND everyone else in the UK
I agree that Westminster has the right to do so legally, but not that it should do so democratically. The choice should be with the voters and the voters have spoken.
Referendums are not horribly divisive and destabilising, what is horribly divisive and destabilising is what led to the referendum in the first place - the referendum itself is merely the day of reckoning for a division that already existed. Scottish politics has been on again/off again dominated by the union for decades. British politics had been on again/off again dominated by Europe for decades. Pro-Europeans who tried to make the European issue go away by refusing referenda in the past didn't make the issue go away or end the division, it just meant that when the vote was finally held they lost it.
I agree it will in the short term be economically bad for the Scots, but if they're willing to take that pain, that's their choice.
Why would you as a unionist want to repeat the mistakes of the pro-Europeans by attempting to stifle democracy? All that does is increase the pressure until eventually the rupture is all the more painful for yourself as those who have been aggrieved seize the opportunity when they get the chance.
I’m using my binoculars to look at a beautiful young woman in a bikini on a paddleboard in Kotor Bay
There’s a moral conundrum. Does that count as perving? She will never know. No one else will know. Only I will ever know that I sleazily ogled her, and gained some pathetic middle aged pleasure out of it (me and thousands of people that read PB)
It’s like the whole “tree falling in empty forest” thing
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Depending a bit how patrilinear you are. More recently the Bowes Lyons are pretty Scottish and the Spencers and Middletons pretty English.
It bodes well for the family's future that Kate's Dad appears to still have all his own hair. If George can find a similarly well-endowed father-in-law then there's hope of breeding the baldness out.
Anti baldness truly is the last acceptable form of prejudice.
The overweight people say hi.
Short men got blamed for Putin by the PM yesterday.
Yes, as well as the additional capacity that "living with covid" mandates for all parts of the healthcare system, from pharmacy, to GPs, to Emergency Depts, to hospital beds and to ventilation, we have to factor in a higher staff absence rate due to sickness. Most healthcare is a team effort, and if one member of the team goes ill, the whole team goes down. No anaesthetist and the whole rest of the team is idle.
I think "living with covid" requires a cross the board increase in health care capacity of the order of 10%, as well as the need for passive NPI such as improvements to ventilation and filtering.
Masks for all staff in all areas of my hospital were made compulsory again yesterday at 1700 due to the scale of staff and ward outbreaks.
I've been wondering about the effects of endemic-omicron across the economy as a whole. Say for arguments sake the average person had three days off a year with 'the cold' and that now goes up to six days. That seems to be quite a big hit in the short to medium term.
Also even things like HR departments who have various rules about how many days off someone has sick before they have a little word - that may all have to get N% added onto it to allow for the 'new normal'.
Another concern is the potential long Covid burden on the NHS. There's decent evidence, just to take one example, that repeated infections significantly increase the likelihood of developing diabetes in older individuals. There's a load of stuff like this. The likely overall effects are very unclear for now, but it's pretty certain that there will be an increased burden.
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
The country is paralysed by disputes over trade borders, its economy damaged, politics entirely distorted by questions of nationality and urgent questions of governance and economic reform further neglected.
It would be a monumental disaster.
Did you mean to insert an 'already' between 'is' and 'paralysed'??
"further" would work best, as I used towards the end of the sentence. It would be like the toxic effect Brexit is having, but at least an order of magnitude worse.
I’m using my binoculars to look at a beautiful young woman in a bikini on a paddleboard in Kotor Bay
There’s a moral conundrum. Does that count as perving? She will never know. No one else will know. Only I will ever know that I sleazily ogled her, and gained some pathetic middle aged pleasure out of it (me and thousands of people that read PB)
It’s like the whole “tree falling in empty forest” thing
The tree doesn’t normally admit it’s perving on the internet.
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Not quite. Biologically of course it's a complete mishmash, like the rest of us, and (sotto voce) in any line of descent the matrilineal line is pretty reliable while it is a wise child who knows who their father is, as any female mallard will testify.
But history being what it is some lines matter a little more than others. The fact that HM the Queen is a direct descendent of Alfred the Great (assuming the ducks and drakes of history are all telling the truth) matters more than that she is a collateral descendent of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, though much history turns on that remarkable relationship.
I remember Charles Moore alleging in the Spectator once that HM the Queen was a direct descendent of the Prophet through Pedro the Cruel. It would add to the lustre as far as I am concerned it that were the case.
A massive reward of honour awaits anyone who could prove reliably the descent of HM the Queen from antiquity (pre c500 AD). Astonishingly it can't be done for her, or anyone else in the west. if it could, it certainly would not be English/British.
I can “provably” trace my descent back to Maud Ingelric, the supposed concubine of William the Conqueror, who married a Normam Knight, Ranulph Peverel. it was the lordly Peverels who later went west into Cornwall, where they eventually became minor gentry, and in some cases really quite poor
Using online genealogies I traced Ingelric and Co back to Roman senators, and a Nordic god of ice and fire
Complete bollocks of course, but great fun. The trouble is the end of the Roman Empire in the west severed nearly all family trees between 400-600AD. I suppose the only way you could provably trace descent from antiquity would be if you descended from Byzantine aristos who might then, in turn, be traceable back to Roman times?
Today everybody of broadly British descent is descended from William the Conqueror.
As usual, HYUFD is being hysterical and wrong. It is a fundameental right of any people to determine who they are ruled by - enshrined in international law. While Westminster can try to lay down the rules for conducting and respecting a referendum, it can not block a referendum altogether. If it insists on obstructing a referendum, then the SG can call an election - with Independence being categoricaly stated on parties manifestos. If SNP & SGreeen & Alba >50% in that contect then it is not neccesary to hold a separate Sindy referendum. This would be the peoples mandate.
Westminster surely can block another referendum. Whether it would be politically wise to do so is another matter.
International law has nothing to say on the point.
Except in the UN Charter and the ICCPR...
Neither of which will assist. If, for example, Spain chooses to prevent either the Basque country or Catalonia from seceding, or France prevents Corsica from doing so, there is no legal recourse available to those who wish to secede. It all comes down to realpolitik. Are the costs of preventing secession greater than the costs of allowing it?
And realpolitik has already told in some of our dealings with our former colonies.
For example, if China had been like Spain (a democracy of lesser power than our own) then Hong Kong would today probably have a status similar to Gibraltar.
I don't think that's right. The key difference was that we only ever had a 99-year lease on the New Territories, and the colony wasn't viable without them. Gibraltar was ceded to Britain in perpetuity by the Treaty of Utrecht.
Hong Kong Island and Kowloon were ceded in perpetuity.
A bilateral agreement could have been negotiated for the New Territories to supply essential services in the event the lease couldn't be extended by any sane democratic government.
Can't really see how you can argue there wasn't an attempted Coup? That it failed was incompetence and because a handful of key players resisted. Rafflensperger (sp.?), Pence, Cheney and Hutchinson. And doubtless a few others. But it was an attempted Coup. By a mafia Don. He was well named.
I said there wouldn’t be a coup.
There was no coup.
However one describes the disgraceful, shambolic scenes on 6 January, a coup it was not.
Well. It wasn't a successful Coup. I'll give you that.
It wasn't a successful riot. It wasn't even an attempted coup.
5 dead. What was the intention?
Of course it was a bloody coup (attempt). It’s just that Luckyboy is conditioned (as we all are) to think of them as things that happen in third world countries.
No, it was not. You can repeat it as often as you like; it isn't going to get any truer. There was no attempted coup, because there was no attempt, intention, or plan, to take over the Government of the United States. There wasn't a botched plan, or a fatally-flawed plan, or even an insanely stupid plan, there. wasn't. a. plan. Nobody invading the Capitol that day thought that they were taking over the Government of the US. I find it a bit sad that so many on a forum with a very high level of discussion are prepared to abandon basic fact 'because Trump'. It's disappointingly weak minded.
It appears that there was a plan to take over the Government of the United States, or at least to prevent the relinquishing of power.
The plan was multi-farious, but included the use of a violent mob to suborn, immobilise or perhaps murder the Vice President.
It doesn't appear that there was anything of the sort. As you are perfectly well aware, everything that Trump did, said, or thought in the election aftermath (true or otherwise it would appear from posts upthread) is now being flung in the coup casserole in the hopes that it ammounts to something coup-like. Well quite clearly it doesn't. Even if there were a plan or intention to lynch the VP, it wouldn't have gained the rioters power, or affected the election outcome. Sorry to be dull, but definitions are quite important.
How is that pin head you are dancing on? Pretty empty I guess. Does it never cross your mind that if everyone else thinks it was a coup except you then you might be wrong (Trump followers excluded).
Shall we exclude Biden followers as well, if he want to be fair?
The violence was awful but it was not a coup nor a coup attempt. It was a violent mob that thought it would be a great idea to storm a political institution because they didn't like the outcome. Was the attempted storming by a pro-abortion crowd of the Arizona Senate an attempted coup against the Arizona state government?
The fact that the Republicans had to issue a press release about a couple of small young women banging on a window demonstrates why this so called attempted coup has received bugger all coverage from what remains of our serious media
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Not quite. Biologically of course it's a complete mishmash, like the rest of us, and (sotto voce) in any line of descent the matrilineal line is pretty reliable while it is a wise child who knows who their father is, as any female mallard will testify.
But history being what it is some lines matter a little more than others. The fact that HM the Queen is a direct descendent of Alfred the Great (assuming the ducks and drakes of history are all telling the truth) matters more than that she is a collateral descendent of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, though much history turns on that remarkable relationship.
I remember Charles Moore alleging in the Spectator once that HM the Queen was a direct descendent of the Prophet through Pedro the Cruel. It would add to the lustre as far as I am concerned it that were the case.
A massive reward of honour awaits anyone who could prove reliably the descent of HM the Queen from antiquity (pre c500 AD). Astonishingly it can't be done for her, or anyone else in the west. if it could, it certainly would not be English/British.
I can “provably” trace my descent back to Maud Ingelric, the supposed concubine of William the Conqueror, who married a Normam Knight, Ranulph Peverel. it was the lordly Peverels who later went west into Cornwall, where they eventually became minor gentry, and in some cases really quite poor
Using online genealogies I traced Ingelric and Co back to Roman senators, and a Nordic god of ice and fire
Complete bollocks of course, but great fun. The trouble is the end of the Roman Empire in the west severed nearly all family trees between 400-600AD. I suppose the only way you could provably trace descent from antiquity would be if you descended from Byzantine aristos who might then, in turn, be traceable back to Roman times?
Today everybody of broadly British descent is descended from William the Conqueror.
" You have two parents, and they had two parents and so on, two by two, so the number of ancestors doubles each generation working up your family tree, meaning that by 1600, one person should have 32,768 ancestors. This assumes full outbreeding, which is very unlikely – we’re all inbred over a long enough period – but for our purposes makes little difference.
Therefore, each one of your 32,768 ancestors in the year 1600 has a 0.5 per cent chance of being direct descendants of Edward III. If you reverse the question, and ask ‘what are the chances that none of your 32,768 ancestors in 1600 are in that 0.5 per cent’, the calculation becomes
0.995 x 10^32,768 = 4.64^-72
Which is an absurdly small number."
"Full outbreeding" is an absurd assumption - if it were right the world pop in 1600 would be in at least the trillions - and it makes all the difference
To expose the fallacy: Let's take the remotest inhabited island in the South Pacific and assume it had a population of 30 in 1600. If you add those to the mix the chances that none of them were not direct descendants of E III don't materially change, but we can look at *geography* and say the result is absurd. So, were there factors in UK society which isolated populations as effectively as the ocean? Bloody right there were. Geographically, everywhere in rural England was so isolated that the invention of the bicycle seriously stirred the gene pool because people started screwing people in the next door village not their own. Secondly social class: I am sure it didn't never happen that a gay young aristocratic blade swived a comely wench as he happened to be passing, but see 1. above: the average comely wench probably lived out a life without actually encountering a gay young blade, or anyone other than a peasant who was also multiple times over her cousin.
That doesn't stand up to scrutiny though. Anyone who has investigated their family tree going back a to say 1800 (which is easily doable for most people) will see they have ancestors from across Britain.
So far, in 1800 I have found ancestors in Perthshire, Fife, County Waterford, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Cumbria, London, Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex - and my ancestors during that period are largely ordinary working class people.
Also, you can apply *very* high levels of interbreeding to the calculation above and you still end up with 99.9999...% probability of descent from William the Conqueror.
Observation bias: the sort of people who investigate their ancestors, find that they have ancestors from all over the shop..
As usual, HYUFD is being hysterical and wrong. It is a fundameental right of any people to determine who they are ruled by - enshrined in international law. While Westminster can try to lay down the rules for conducting and respecting a referendum, it can not block a referendum altogether. If it insists on obstructing a referendum, then the SG can call an election - with Independence being categoricaly stated on parties manifestos. If SNP & SGreeen & Alba >50% in that contect then it is not neccesary to hold a separate Sindy referendum. This would be the peoples mandate.
Westminster surely can block another referendum. Whether it would be politically wise to do so is another matter.
International law has nothing to say on the point.
Except in the UN Charter and the ICCPR...
Neither of which will assist. If, for example, Spain chooses to prevent either the Basque country or Catalonia from seceding, or France prevents Corsica from doing so, there is no legal recourse available to those who wish to secede. It all comes down to realpolitik. Are the costs of preventing secession greater than the costs of allowing it?
And realpolitik has already told in some of our dealings with our former colonies.
For example, if China had been like Spain (a democracy of lesser power than our own) then Hong Kong would today probably have a status similar to Gibraltar.
I don't think that's right. The key difference was that we only ever had a 99-year lease on the New Territories, and the colony wasn't viable without them. Gibraltar was ceded to Britain in perpetuity by the Treaty of Utrecht.
Hong Kong Island and Kowloon were ceded in perpetuity.
A bilateral agreement could have been negotiated for the New Territories to supply essential services in the event the lease couldn't be extended by any sane democratic government.
Think Monaco, or indeed Macau.
Except the Chinese don't have a democratic government and they weren't willing to negotiate such an agreement. So Hong Kong wasn't viable without the New Territories, unlike Monaco or Gibraltar.
Sad, but realpolitik, it was what it was.
EDIT: Nevermind, I see you were making the same point about democracy in an earlier post - ignore my reply.
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
46% of English voters oppose Scottish independence, 34% say it is up to Scots, 13% back Scottish independence.
54% of English Tory voters and 62% of English LDs outright oppose Scottish independence even if only 42% of English Labour voters outright oppose it
Pretty much everyone that I know seems to think that Scottish self determination is for Scots to decide.
Yes well you are a leftwinger so most people you know will be leftwing.
How many rightwing Tories do you know who voted for Boris in 2019? The majority of Tory voters as that poll shows are outright opposed to Scottish independence and this Tory government will refuse to allow an official indyref2
That that people only mix with those who think like them is not an assumption that you are entitled to make. At various times of my life I have mixed with people with similar opinions and other times I have been the only progressive in the village. Don't judge everyone by yourself!
I am currently watching Nashville (2013-2018) for (very) light relief. In it there is a storyline wherein one of the characters (they are all C&W music stars based in....) is quoted out of context saying "there is no god".
It is then taken as understood that if such words were spoken it would be the end of her career and features people burning her albums, demonstrating against her, and assaulting her. The story nowhere (yet) includes some eg east coast liberal, or "enlightened" local saying how bonkers it is; the show is just portraying as a given what the reaction is or would be.
Then as now it illustrates how America is, at heart, a religious fundamentalist state.
The original United States was founded by individuals who were mainly fleeing religious persecution or, at least, a regime that they felt restricted their religious freedom. It's no wonder religion is at the heart of the States.
Also people who really wanted to get rich making African people work for nothing on land taken by force from the indigenous population. It's no wonder racism is at the heart of the States.
My main interest in Scottish independence is what whisky and other smuggling opportunities there may be, living as I do close to the border and the coast with lots of coves for fishing boats. I rather fancy a Whisky Galore-style retirement.
Having revealed that desire - HMRC will be adding you to their watchlists..
Given that HMRC can't even answer the phone to genuine queries, that is not very scary.
I’m using my binoculars to look at a beautiful young woman in a bikini on a paddleboard in Kotor Bay
There’s a moral conundrum. Does that count as perving? She will never know. No one else will know. Only I will ever know that I sleazily ogled her, and gained some pathetic middle aged pleasure out of it (me and thousands of people that read PB)
It’s like the whole “tree falling in empty forest” thing
You're meant to be watching cricket and organising the first PB wedding. I'm surprised you have the time.
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Not quite. Biologically of course it's a complete mishmash, like the rest of us, and (sotto voce) in any line of descent the matrilineal line is pretty reliable while it is a wise child who knows who their father is, as any female mallard will testify.
But history being what it is some lines matter a little more than others. The fact that HM the Queen is a direct descendent of Alfred the Great (assuming the ducks and drakes of history are all telling the truth) matters more than that she is a collateral descendent of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, though much history turns on that remarkable relationship.
I remember Charles Moore alleging in the Spectator once that HM the Queen was a direct descendent of the Prophet through Pedro the Cruel. It would add to the lustre as far as I am concerned it that were the case.
A massive reward of honour awaits anyone who could prove reliably the descent of HM the Queen from antiquity (pre c500 AD). Astonishingly it can't be done for her, or anyone else in the west. if it could, it certainly would not be English/British.
I can “provably” trace my descent back to Maud Ingelric, the supposed concubine of William the Conqueror, who married a Normam Knight, Ranulph Peverel. it was the lordly Peverels who later went west into Cornwall, where they eventually became minor gentry, and in some cases really quite poor
Using online genealogies I traced Ingelric and Co back to Roman senators, and a Nordic god of ice and fire
Complete bollocks of course, but great fun. The trouble is the end of the Roman Empire in the west severed nearly all family trees between 400-600AD. I suppose the only way you could provably trace descent from antiquity would be if you descended from Byzantine aristos who might then, in turn, be traceable back to Roman times?
Today everybody of broadly British descent is descended from William the Conqueror.
" You have two parents, and they had two parents and so on, two by two, so the number of ancestors doubles each generation working up your family tree, meaning that by 1600, one person should have 32,768 ancestors. This assumes full outbreeding, which is very unlikely – we’re all inbred over a long enough period – but for our purposes makes little difference.
Therefore, each one of your 32,768 ancestors in the year 1600 has a 0.5 per cent chance of being direct descendants of Edward III. If you reverse the question, and ask ‘what are the chances that none of your 32,768 ancestors in 1600 are in that 0.5 per cent’, the calculation becomes
0.995 x 10^32,768 = 4.64^-72
Which is an absurdly small number."
"Full outbreeding" is an absurd assumption - if it were right the world pop in 1600 would be in at least the trillions - and it makes all the difference
To expose the fallacy: Let's take the remotest inhabited island in the South Pacific and assume it had a population of 30 in 1600. If you add those to the mix the chances that none of them were not direct descendants of E III don't materially change, but we can look at *geography* and say the result is absurd. So, were there factors in UK society which isolated populations as effectively as the ocean? Bloody right there were. Geographically, everywhere in rural England was so isolated that the invention of the bicycle seriously stirred the gene pool because people started screwing people in the next door village not their own. Secondly social class: I am sure it didn't never happen that a gay young aristocratic blade swived a comely wench as he happened to be passing, but see 1. above: the average comely wench probably lived out a life without actually encountering a gay young blade, or anyone other than a peasant who was also multiple times over her cousin.
That doesn't stand up to scrutiny though. Anyone who has investigated their family tree going back a to say 1800 (which is easily doable for most people) will see they have ancestors from across Britain.
So far, in 1800 I have found ancestors in Perthshire, Fife, County Waterford, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Cumbria, London, Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex - and my ancestors during that period are largely ordinary working class people.
Also, you can apply *very* high levels of interbreeding to the calculation above and you still end up with 99.9999...% probability of descent from William the Conqueror.
Maybe, though I have my doubts, but more interestingly, perhaps, is that even if you can prove direct descent from Alfred the Great, and you assume no adultery was involved, the chance that you have inherited any of Alfred's DNA is very slim. The way in which DNA is sliced and diced when gametes are created means that you don't inherit one-eighth of your DNA from each great-grandparent. It's all a lot more random than that.
Inheritance of mitochondrial DNA, down the matrilineal line, is the only inheritance that can be relied upon.
I am currently watching Nashville (2013-2018) for (very) light relief. In it there is a storyline wherein one of the characters (they are all C&W music stars based in....) is quoted out of context saying "there is no god".
It is then taken as understood that if such words were spoken it would be the end of her career and features people burning her albums, demonstrating against her, and assaulting her. The story nowhere (yet) includes some eg east coast liberal, or "enlightened" local saying how bonkers it is; the show is just portraying as a given what the reaction is or would be.
Then as now it illustrates how America is, at heart, a religious fundamentalist state.
The original United States was founded by individuals who were mainly fleeing religious persecution or, at least, a regime that they felt restricted their religious freedom. It's no wonder religion is at the heart of the States.
Also people who really wanted to get rich making African people work for nothing on land taken by force from the indigenous population. It's no wonder racism is at the heart of the States.
I wonder where they got the idea from.
The Spanish, the Portugese, the Romans and every other empire in history before them?
Slavery was not a new concept, the slave trade wasn't new either, what was new was egalitarianism and abolitionism.
I’m using my binoculars to look at a beautiful young woman in a bikini on a paddleboard in Kotor Bay
There’s a moral conundrum. Does that count as perving? She will never know. No one else will know. Only I will ever know that I sleazily ogled her, and gained some pathetic middle aged pleasure out of it (me and thousands of people that read PB)
It’s like the whole “tree falling in empty forest” thing
The tree doesn’t normally admit it’s perving on the internet.
I’m doing SCHRODINGER’S PERVING
The perving only exists if it is observed by the perved, or by non-perving bystanders. And thanks to HEISENBERG’S PERVING PRINCIPLE, when the perving is observed the universe changes: ie by being observed in my perving, I will cease perving and have another pickled cornichon.
Ergo, there is no such thing as unobserved perving, and i can pick up my binos again
I’m using my binoculars to look at a beautiful young woman in a bikini on a paddleboard in Kotor Bay
There’s a moral conundrum. Does that count as perving? She will never know. No one else will know. Only I will ever know that I sleazily ogled her, and gained some pathetic middle aged pleasure out of it (me and thousands of people that read PB)
It’s like the whole “tree falling in empty forest” thing
It's just the same as when you are at home in your flat except for looking through a different piece of glass.
(1/4) I saw the chat last night on the current covid state, so I, inevitably, have decided to put in my semi-informed two penn’orth. Which is: we’re in the third Omicron wave. Around one in thirty of us have covid right now (up from a low of one in seventy). For some, it’s a summer cold. For others, it’s a nasty flu. For a few, it’s severe enough for hospitalisation, even with the immunity levels we’ve got.
This is the end state as it stands. You will catch covid an average of 1-4 times per year. All of us will. Some will be lucky and miss a year or two; others will be unlucky and catch it at every wave. And reinfections aren't necessarily less nasty than the previous infection.
I’ve had real ‘flu maybe three or four times in my life (rather than a bad cold). That’s a bit under once per decade, and I think that’s pretty representative. You probably get just under one real case of flu per decade. You will catch covid 10-40 times over the next decade, unless something changes. So will each of your loved ones.
There is also the question of what proportion of hospitalisations are FOR rather than WITH covid. We don’t need to speculate, the figures are published. It’s about 36% right now (up from 30% at the low). But it’s still WAY below the 70-80% in the pre-Omicron and pre-vaccine days. Don’t get me wrong, those with incidental covid are not irrelevant. You still have to isolate them, it causes complexities in treatment, and worsens prognoses (there are no cases where “Oh, and you’ve got covid as well,” is a positive phrase to hear if you’re hospitalised and vulnerable due to something else). But it’s still qualitatively different from “You’ve caught covid so bad you’ve been rushed to hospital due to covid itself.”
And, yes, we still have a baseline of about 50 people per day dying FROM covid, who would have lived otherwise.
We will have between 1 million and 5 million people in the UK with covid; it’ll vary as the waves come and go. These are hitting fairly regularly – we had the original Omicron wave in December/January, the BA.2 wave in March/April, and now the BA.4/5 wave in June/July.
(Which implies that February and May were good months, and maybe August will be as well).
Thanks for an excellent series of posts.
On "real flu" vs "bad cold" how do you know it is three or four and not ten or more? We do not test for the difference between colds and flus, and surely a big lesson from covid is that the range of outcomes from such illnesses is very wide. Will there not be asymptomatic and mild flu and severe colds that overlap significantly in severity such that we cannot tell the difference without testing?
Good point. I don't know if influenza has a significant rate of asymptomatic infections - or if it doesn't. Best to put that I've had three to four cases of significant asymptomatic 'flu.
Andy - great set of posts. I agree almost totally, except that we really don't know the future. Some are suggesting we will be stuck in this loop forever, with as you say up to 4 bouts of covid each a year. I am not convinced by this. Its certainly true that omicron is great at evading pre-existing neutralising antibodies, but the vaccines and infections have hammered the potential for serious disease. At the moment covid has become stuck at omicron (variants of). Its possible, if not likely that a new variant will emerge in time that is from a different branch, or significantly different to warrant its own designation. But its also quite possible that two or three goes at omicron will lead to a much lower chance of future infections.
I, along with many others, have still not had covid (that I know of).
As to what we do - totally agree on air quality and its frankly a disgrace that government isn't doing a moonshot to do this in every hospital ward, care home and school classroom.
I also agree about treating people who choose to wear a mask with respect. You cannot know their reasons - they may well be clinically vulnerable but also wish to live their lives. It does cut both ways.
So - thanks for taking the time to lay that out.
Edit - Care home, not car home, which is of course a garage...
Thanks - also a good point. There does seem to be immunity waning across the board to this virus, but we may be able to keep ahead of that with regular boosters.
I've also not had covid (that I know about - and have tested whenever I've felt likely to have been exposed or when feeling under the weather) so far (and really don't want to have cursed it by saying that).
I think one test will be this current wave. The trough between the BA.2 wave and this wave fell lower than between the BA.1 and BA.2 waves in both prevalence and hospital loading. Was that just chance? The peak in infections was higher for BA.2 and hospital loading fractionally lower (indicating slight lower rates of severe infection). If we top out infection-wise in the next couple of weeks and if hospital loading follows suit, there's a decent chance that the peaks could be significantly smaller going forwards. That would help.
Can't really see how you can argue there wasn't an attempted Coup? That it failed was incompetence and because a handful of key players resisted. Rafflensperger (sp.?), Pence, Cheney and Hutchinson. And doubtless a few others. But it was an attempted Coup. By a mafia Don. He was well named.
I said there wouldn’t be a coup.
There was no coup.
However one describes the disgraceful, shambolic scenes on 6 January, a coup it was not.
Well. It wasn't a successful Coup. I'll give you that.
It wasn't a successful riot. It wasn't even an attempted coup.
5 dead. What was the intention?
Of course it was a bloody coup (attempt). It’s just that Luckyboy is conditioned (as we all are) to think of them as things that happen in third world countries.
No, it was not. You can repeat it as often as you like; it isn't going to get any truer. There was no attempted coup, because there was no attempt, intention, or plan, to take over the Government of the United States. There wasn't a botched plan, or a fatally-flawed plan, or even an insanely stupid plan, there. wasn't. a. plan. Nobody invading the Capitol that day thought that they were taking over the Government of the US. I find it a bit sad that so many on a forum with a very high level of discussion are prepared to abandon basic fact 'because Trump'. It's disappointingly weak minded.
It appears that there was a plan to take over the Government of the United States, or at least to prevent the relinquishing of power.
The plan was multi-farious, but included the use of a violent mob to suborn, immobilise or perhaps murder the Vice President.
It doesn't appear that there was anything of the sort. As you are perfectly well aware, everything that Trump did, said, or thought in the election aftermath (true or otherwise it would appear from posts upthread) is now being flung in the coup casserole in the hopes that it ammounts to something coup-like. Well quite clearly it doesn't. Even if there were a plan or intention to lynch the VP, it wouldn't have gained the rioters power, or affected the election outcome. Sorry to be dull, but definitions are quite important.
How is that pin head you are dancing on? Pretty empty I guess. Does it never cross your mind that if everyone else thinks it was a coup except you then you might be wrong (Trump followers excluded).
Shall we exclude Biden followers as well, if he want to be fair?
The violence was awful but it was not a coup nor a coup attempt. It was a violent mob that thought it would be a great idea to storm a political institution because they didn't like the outcome. Was the attempted storming by a pro-abortion crowd of the Arizona Senate an attempted coup against the Arizona state government?
I am currently watching Nashville (2013-2018) for (very) light relief. In it there is a storyline wherein one of the characters (they are all C&W music stars based in....) is quoted out of context saying "there is no god".
It is then taken as understood that if such words were spoken it would be the end of her career and features people burning her albums, demonstrating against her, and assaulting her. The story nowhere (yet) includes some eg east coast liberal, or "enlightened" local saying how bonkers it is; the show is just portraying as a given what the reaction is or would be.
Then as now it illustrates how America is, at heart, a religious fundamentalist state.
The original United States was founded by individuals who were mainly fleeing religious persecution or, at least, a regime that they felt restricted their religious freedom. It's no wonder religion is at the heart of the States.
You could easily draw a line from there to here. The question is whether this is something which is good or not. And if it is accepted that the US is a religious fundamentalist state how does that put into perspective our view of other religious fundamentalist states.
Issues need separating out here. The USA has like us a Christian, religious foundation, going back to days when that's how everything was - not all that long ago.
The UK, if history had been different, could be a religious theocracy now. (The Economist appears to believe, fatuously, that it is). Christian monarch, established and endowed church (in England), Bishops in HoL, church schools, a church or churches in every tiny corner of the land, a recognisable class of clergy, all ancient Oxbridge colleges and public schools with a continuing Christian foundation; HoC starting each day with Christian prayers. Daily Christian worship on the state broadcaster
The stuff is in place to be a Christian theocracy if we wanted to. But you couldn't be more wrong if you think it is.
Same with America, but the people have chosen a slightly different path from similar foundations.
Edmund Burke would understand.
And, BTW, even in USA most religious people are not fundamentalists. They just make more noise.
Possibly the ideal chain of events for the Conservatives as a Party is . . .
Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
SNP win IndyRef2
Boris resigns
New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?
No. As the Tories would also lose in 2024 by a landslide having lost the UK, Labour is already ahead in England alone anyway and the next 10 to 20 years would be dominated by Scexit divisions and negotiations and infighting and economic chaos and plunging sterling and a hard border at Berwick which would make Brexit look like a storm in a teacup and which Russia and our enemies would also take full advantage of
Either @BartholomewRoberts doesn’t understand economics, or he chooses to ignore it. Scottish indy would be an economic disaster for Scotland and a horrible knock back for rUK, and the ensuing recession/depression would last years, maybe many years, as everyone painfully adjusted
I have no doubt iScotland would EVENTUALLY prosper. Likewise rUK, but the idea both sides would shrug it off and move on is infantile. It would be an economic calamity of the first water
I do understand economics, but I also respect democracy. The voters of Scotland have voted to have another referendum, whether we like it or not (as it happens I do).
Personally I think Scotland going independent is a good thing for the long term. It will eventually prosper, I completely agree. Its not going to eventually prosper if it remains in the UK like a petulant teenager always moaning but never taking responsibility for itself.
Just as Brexit was like having a baby, Scexit is metaphorically like a teenager moving out of their family home and getting a job and home of their own. Yes it will be tough, it will be difficult and it will be expensive - just as having a baby is. But its also the right thing to do and the harsh reality of running your own home will force more grown up and mature politics upon Edinburgh than its ever going to have while they can just be Kevin saying "its so unfair, I hate you".
No it wouldn't at all anymore than the Brexit you voted for stopped Leave voters blaming the EU for their problems. Instead sterling would collapse, there would be a hard border at Berwick and we would face recession and probably depression to add to the economic problems we already have.
Russia and China too would take full advantage of a further weakening of the West as Britain ripped itself apart
(4/4) Would they actually reduce infections like that? What about: "I thought the vaccines don’t stop you getting Omicron. Or covid at all."
Have you seen the levels of infection and speed of rise? We’ve got an Rt of maybe 1.4. With a virus five to ten times as infectious as original strain covid (which was about 2.4 to 3.0). That means it “should” be somewhere in the 12-30 range. With exponential growth, multiplying by 12 every cycle rather than 1.4 means the ONS prevalence levels should go up within a couple of weeks until it’s a vertical line and the spreadsheet simply says “everyone.”
So, no, it doesn’t stop it dead. It’s not a suit of armour. But it does bounce off quite a bit. If it takes five attempts to get through, down from twenty, it’s reduced your infection level by a lot. People use the seatbelt analogy, and it’s a good one. Seat belts and airbags don’t stop you from dying in a car crash. But they reduce the rate a long way.
“But what about the cost and disruption of rolling them out?”
What disruption? It wouldn’t be the desperate “get jabs in arms NOW so we can release NPIs” of 2021. It’d be more like the winter flu jab regime.
And cost-wise: well you blow past the price of a jab within five minutes of presenting to hospital. And if it saves one day off work per year, you’ve more than made up the difference, haven’t you? Zero covid? Yeah, people still talk about that, but it’s not happening. It would need simultaneous eradication of covid worldwide, and we can’t do that with vaccines, so we’d need a worldwide lockdown at China levels with perfect adherence. No, that’s never happening. It’s here, we’re living with it; we merely have to select how we live with it.
Caution for the most vulnerable, regular boosters, reformulating for the latest strain (and here, the fact that covid seems to be stuck on the Omicron branch of the evolutionary tree is very helpful), HEPA filters, and possibly an increase in hospital capacity make the difference.
Andy - great set of posts. I agree almost totally, except that we really don't know the future. Some are suggesting we will be stuck in this loop forever, with as you say up to 4 bouts of covid each a year. I am not convinced by this. Its certainly true that omicron is great at evading pre-existing neutralising antibodies, but the vaccines and infections have hammered the potential for serious disease. At the moment covid has become stuck at omicron (variants of). Its possible, if not likely that a new variant will emerge in time that is from a different branch, or significantly different to warrant its own designation. But its also quite possible that two or three goes at omicron will lead to a much lower chance of future infections.
I, along with many others, have still not had covid (that I know of).
As to what we do - totally agree on air quality and its frankly a disgrace that government isn't doing a moonshot to do this in every hospital ward, care home and school classroom.
I also agree about treating people who choose to wear a mask with respect. You cannot know their reasons - they may well be clinically vulnerable but also wish to live their lives. It does cut both ways.
So - thanks for taking the time to lay that out.
Edit - Care home, not car home, which is of course a garage...
Andy is as informative as ever, but I'm going to take it further than @turbotubbs - it seems like potentially catastrophizing from the worst case scenarios for individuals, and from one current variant.
What I still don't understand is how many people seem to be dodging this. Unless my possible brush with Wuhan strain in December/Jan 2019/20 and triple Pfizer have conferred immense levels of immunity, it seems somewhat bizaare that I haven't ever had a confirmed case of Covid. I haven't worn a mask since the middle of last year, I have travelled all over Britain and Europe. I work in a shop. Most of my friends have kids and we spend time together. I have been to conferences with hundreds of people. I have had meals and boozy evenings with people who 24 hours later tested positive.
I don't know anyone who has had covid more than twice.
So where are the 4 times a year predictions coming from??
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Not quite. Biologically of course it's a complete mishmash, like the rest of us, and (sotto voce) in any line of descent the matrilineal line is pretty reliable while it is a wise child who knows who their father is, as any female mallard will testify.
But history being what it is some lines matter a little more than others. The fact that HM the Queen is a direct descendent of Alfred the Great (assuming the ducks and drakes of history are all telling the truth) matters more than that she is a collateral descendent of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, though much history turns on that remarkable relationship.
I remember Charles Moore alleging in the Spectator once that HM the Queen was a direct descendent of the Prophet through Pedro the Cruel. It would add to the lustre as far as I am concerned it that were the case.
A massive reward of honour awaits anyone who could prove reliably the descent of HM the Queen from antiquity (pre c500 AD). Astonishingly it can't be done for her, or anyone else in the west. if it could, it certainly would not be English/British.
I can “provably” trace my descent back to Maud Ingelric, the supposed concubine of William the Conqueror, who married a Normam Knight, Ranulph Peverel. it was the lordly Peverels who later went west into Cornwall, where they eventually became minor gentry, and in some cases really quite poor
Using online genealogies I traced Ingelric and Co back to Roman senators, and a Nordic god of ice and fire
Complete bollocks of course, but great fun. The trouble is the end of the Roman Empire in the west severed nearly all family trees between 400-600AD. I suppose the only way you could provably trace descent from antiquity would be if you descended from Byzantine aristos who might then, in turn, be traceable back to Roman times?
Today everybody of broadly British descent is descended from William the Conqueror.
" You have two parents, and they had two parents and so on, two by two, so the number of ancestors doubles each generation working up your family tree, meaning that by 1600, one person should have 32,768 ancestors. This assumes full outbreeding, which is very unlikely – we’re all inbred over a long enough period – but for our purposes makes little difference.
Therefore, each one of your 32,768 ancestors in the year 1600 has a 0.5 per cent chance of being direct descendants of Edward III. If you reverse the question, and ask ‘what are the chances that none of your 32,768 ancestors in 1600 are in that 0.5 per cent’, the calculation becomes
0.995 x 10^32,768 = 4.64^-72
Which is an absurdly small number."
"Full outbreeding" is an absurd assumption - if it were right the world pop in 1600 would be in at least the trillions - and it makes all the difference
To expose the fallacy: Let's take the remotest inhabited island in the South Pacific and assume it had a population of 30 in 1600. If you add those to the mix the chances that none of them were not direct descendants of E III don't materially change, but we can look at *geography* and say the result is absurd. So, were there factors in UK society which isolated populations as effectively as the ocean? Bloody right there were. Geographically, everywhere in rural England was so isolated that the invention of the bicycle seriously stirred the gene pool because people started screwing people in the next door village not their own. Secondly social class: I am sure it didn't never happen that a gay young aristocratic blade swived a comely wench as he happened to be passing, but see 1. above: the average comely wench probably lived out a life without actually encountering a gay young blade, or anyone other than a peasant who was also multiple times over her cousin.
That doesn't stand up to scrutiny though. Anyone who has investigated their family tree going back a to say 1800 (which is easily doable for most people) will see they have ancestors from across Britain.
So far, in 1800 I have found ancestors in Perthshire, Fife, County Waterford, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Cumbria, London, Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex - and my ancestors during that period are largely ordinary working class people.
Also, you can apply *very* high levels of interbreeding to the calculation above and you still end up with 99.9999...% probability of descent from William the Conqueror.
Maybe, though I have my doubts, but more interestingly, perhaps, is that even if you can prove direct descent from Alfred the Great, and you assume no adultery was involved, the chance that you have inherited any of Alfred's DNA is very slim. The way in which DNA is signed and diced when gametes are created means that you don't inherit one-eighth of your DNA from each great-grandparent. It's all a lot more random than that.
Inheritance of mitochondrial DNA, down the matrilineal line, is the only inheritance that can be relied upon.
That's something I've never understood. If mitochondrial DNA isn't sliced and diced itself, then how come we don't all basically have the same mitochondrial DNA in the first place?
My main interest in Scottish independence is what whisky and other smuggling opportunities there may be, living as I do close to the border and the coast with lots of coves for fishing boats. I rather fancy a Whisky Galore-style retirement.
Having revealed that desire - HMRC will be adding you to their watchlists..
Given that HMRC can't even answer the phone to genuine queries, that is not very scary.
I’m using my binoculars to look at a beautiful young woman in a bikini on a paddleboard in Kotor Bay
There’s a moral conundrum. Does that count as perving? She will never know. No one else will know. Only I will ever know that I sleazily ogled her, and gained some pathetic middle aged pleasure out of it (me and thousands of people that read PB)
It’s like the whole “tree falling in empty forest” thing
You're meant to be watching cricket and organising the first PB wedding. I'm surprised you have the time.
You still want to go ahead after that ?
He'll always be looking over your shoulder... with binoculars.
I am currently watching Nashville (2013-2018) for (very) light relief. In it there is a storyline wherein one of the characters (they are all C&W music stars based in....) is quoted out of context saying "there is no god".
It is then taken as understood that if such words were spoken it would be the end of her career and features people burning her albums, demonstrating against her, and assaulting her. The story nowhere (yet) includes some eg east coast liberal, or "enlightened" local saying how bonkers it is; the show is just portraying as a given what the reaction is or would be.
Then as now it illustrates how America is, at heart, a religious fundamentalist state.
The original United States was founded by individuals who were mainly fleeing religious persecution or, at least, a regime that they felt restricted their religious freedom. It's no wonder religion is at the heart of the States.
Also people who really wanted to get rich making African people work for nothing on land taken by force from the indigenous population. It's no wonder racism is at the heart of the States.
I wonder where they got the idea from.
The Spanish, the Portugese, the Romans and every other empire in history before them?
Slavery was not a new concept, the slave trade wasn't new either, what was new was egalitarianism and abolitionism.
Sitting on continent A arranging wholesale deportation of natives of continent B to continent C for pure commercial gain, was entirely new. Furthermore slavery had been not a thing for so long in the UK that any claim of continuity is ridiculous.
The Portuguese and (less so) Spanish concentrated their efforts further South. Black African Americans are the product of Anglo Scottish greed.
I’m using my binoculars to look at a beautiful young woman in a bikini on a paddleboard in Kotor Bay
There’s a moral conundrum. Does that count as perving? She will never know. No one else will know. Only I will ever know that I sleazily ogled her, and gained some pathetic middle aged pleasure out of it (me and thousands of people that read PB)
It’s like the whole “tree falling in empty forest” thing
It's just the same as when you are at home in your flat except for looking through a different piece of glass.
I hope the binoculars ensure that his hands are positioned differently.
I’m using my binoculars to look at a beautiful young woman in a bikini on a paddleboard in Kotor Bay
There’s a moral conundrum. Does that count as perving? She will never know. No one else will know. Only I will ever know that I sleazily ogled her, and gained some pathetic middle aged pleasure out of it (me and thousands of people that read PB)
It’s like the whole “tree falling in empty forest” thing
The tree doesn’t normally admit it’s perving on the internet.
I’m doing SCHRODINGER’S PERVING
The perving only exists if it is observed by the perved, or by non-perving bystanders. And thanks to HEISENBERG’S PERVING PRINCIPLE, when the perving is observed the universe changes: ie by being observed in my perving, I will cease perving and have another pickled cornichon.
Ergo, there is no such thing as unobserved perving, and i can pick up by binos again
A perv is a perv even if they're not witnessed. If you're touching yourself while perving on other people, then you're a voyeuristic perv whether or not someone sees you using one of your hands to hold up your binos.
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Not quite. Biologically of course it's a complete mishmash, like the rest of us, and (sotto voce) in any line of descent the matrilineal line is pretty reliable while it is a wise child who knows who their father is, as any female mallard will testify.
But history being what it is some lines matter a little more than others. The fact that HM the Queen is a direct descendent of Alfred the Great (assuming the ducks and drakes of history are all telling the truth) matters more than that she is a collateral descendent of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, though much history turns on that remarkable relationship.
I remember Charles Moore alleging in the Spectator once that HM the Queen was a direct descendent of the Prophet through Pedro the Cruel. It would add to the lustre as far as I am concerned it that were the case.
A massive reward of honour awaits anyone who could prove reliably the descent of HM the Queen from antiquity (pre c500 AD). Astonishingly it can't be done for her, or anyone else in the west. if it could, it certainly would not be English/British.
I can “provably” trace my descent back to Maud Ingelric, the supposed concubine of William the Conqueror, who married a Normam Knight, Ranulph Peverel. it was the lordly Peverels who later went west into Cornwall, where they eventually became minor gentry, and in some cases really quite poor
Using online genealogies I traced Ingelric and Co back to Roman senators, and a Nordic god of ice and fire
Complete bollocks of course, but great fun. The trouble is the end of the Roman Empire in the west severed nearly all family trees between 400-600AD. I suppose the only way you could provably trace descent from antiquity would be if you descended from Byzantine aristos who might then, in turn, be traceable back to Roman times?
Today everybody of broadly British descent is descended from William the Conqueror.
" You have two parents, and they had two parents and so on, two by two, so the number of ancestors doubles each generation working up your family tree, meaning that by 1600, one person should have 32,768 ancestors. This assumes full outbreeding, which is very unlikely – we’re all inbred over a long enough period – but for our purposes makes little difference.
Therefore, each one of your 32,768 ancestors in the year 1600 has a 0.5 per cent chance of being direct descendants of Edward III. If you reverse the question, and ask ‘what are the chances that none of your 32,768 ancestors in 1600 are in that 0.5 per cent’, the calculation becomes
0.995 x 10^32,768 = 4.64^-72
Which is an absurdly small number."
"Full outbreeding" is an absurd assumption - if it were right the world pop in 1600 would be in at least the trillions - and it makes all the difference
To expose the fallacy: Let's take the remotest inhabited island in the South Pacific and assume it had a population of 30 in 1600. If you add those to the mix the chances that none of them were not direct descendants of E III don't materially change, but we can look at *geography* and say the result is absurd. So, were there factors in UK society which isolated populations as effectively as the ocean? Bloody right there were. Geographically, everywhere in rural England was so isolated that the invention of the bicycle seriously stirred the gene pool because people started screwing people in the next door village not their own. Secondly social class: I am sure it didn't never happen that a gay young aristocratic blade swived a comely wench as he happened to be passing, but see 1. above: the average comely wench probably lived out a life without actually encountering a gay young blade, or anyone other than a peasant who was also multiple times over her cousin.
That doesn't stand up to scrutiny though. Anyone who has investigated their family tree going back a to say 1800 (which is easily doable for most people) will see they have ancestors from across Britain.
So far, in 1800 I have found ancestors in Perthshire, Fife, County Waterford, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Cumbria, London, Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex - and my ancestors during that period are largely ordinary working class people.
Also, you can apply *very* high levels of interbreeding to the calculation above and you still end up with 99.9999...% probability of descent from William the Conqueror.
Observation bias: the sort of people who investigate their ancestors, find that they have ancestors from all over the shop..
Hah! I can see how that might work the other way - people who never bother to investigate their ancestors assume they all lived in the same hamlet for the past 1,000 years.
People who do investigate find out the actual facts, of course. Those results are surprising. When I started I genuinely expected to find all my ancestors in Sussex and in London, where my mum and dad each came from.
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Not quite. Biologically of course it's a complete mishmash, like the rest of us, and (sotto voce) in any line of descent the matrilineal line is pretty reliable while it is a wise child who knows who their father is, as any female mallard will testify.
But history being what it is some lines matter a little more than others. The fact that HM the Queen is a direct descendent of Alfred the Great (assuming the ducks and drakes of history are all telling the truth) matters more than that she is a collateral descendent of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, though much history turns on that remarkable relationship.
I remember Charles Moore alleging in the Spectator once that HM the Queen was a direct descendent of the Prophet through Pedro the Cruel. It would add to the lustre as far as I am concerned it that were the case.
A massive reward of honour awaits anyone who could prove reliably the descent of HM the Queen from antiquity (pre c500 AD). Astonishingly it can't be done for her, or anyone else in the west. if it could, it certainly would not be English/British.
I can “provably” trace my descent back to Maud Ingelric, the supposed concubine of William the Conqueror, who married a Normam Knight, Ranulph Peverel. it was the lordly Peverels who later went west into Cornwall, where they eventually became minor gentry, and in some cases really quite poor
Using online genealogies I traced Ingelric and Co back to Roman senators, and a Nordic god of ice and fire
Complete bollocks of course, but great fun. The trouble is the end of the Roman Empire in the west severed nearly all family trees between 400-600AD. I suppose the only way you could provably trace descent from antiquity would be if you descended from Byzantine aristos who might then, in turn, be traceable back to Roman times?
Today everybody of broadly British descent is descended from William the Conqueror.
" You have two parents, and they had two parents and so on, two by two, so the number of ancestors doubles each generation working up your family tree, meaning that by 1600, one person should have 32,768 ancestors. This assumes full outbreeding, which is very unlikely – we’re all inbred over a long enough period – but for our purposes makes little difference.
Therefore, each one of your 32,768 ancestors in the year 1600 has a 0.5 per cent chance of being direct descendants of Edward III. If you reverse the question, and ask ‘what are the chances that none of your 32,768 ancestors in 1600 are in that 0.5 per cent’, the calculation becomes
0.995 x 10^32,768 = 4.64^-72
Which is an absurdly small number."
"Full outbreeding" is an absurd assumption - if it were right the world pop in 1600 would be in at least the trillions - and it makes all the difference
To expose the fallacy: Let's take the remotest inhabited island in the South Pacific and assume it had a population of 30 in 1600. If you add those to the mix the chances that none of them were not direct descendants of E III don't materially change, but we can look at *geography* and say the result is absurd. So, were there factors in UK society which isolated populations as effectively as the ocean? Bloody right there were. Geographically, everywhere in rural England was so isolated that the invention of the bicycle seriously stirred the gene pool because people started screwing people in the next door village not their own. Secondly social class: I am sure it didn't never happen that a gay young aristocratic blade swived a comely wench as he happened to be passing, but see 1. above: the average comely wench probably lived out a life without actually encountering a gay young blade, or anyone other than a peasant who was also multiple times over her cousin.
That doesn't stand up to scrutiny though. Anyone who has investigated their family tree going back a to say 1800 (which is easily doable for most people) will see they have ancestors from across Britain.
So far, in 1800 I have found ancestors in Perthshire, Fife, County Waterford, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Cumbria, London, Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex - and my ancestors during that period are largely ordinary working class people.
Also, you can apply *very* high levels of interbreeding to the calculation above and you still end up with 99.9999...% probability of descent from William the Conqueror.
Maybe, though I have my doubts, but more interestingly, perhaps, is that even if you can prove direct descent from Alfred the Great, and you assume no adultery was involved, the chance that you have inherited any of Alfred's DNA is very slim. The way in which DNA is signed and diced when gametes are created means that you don't inherit one-eighth of your DNA from each great-grandparent. It's all a lot more random than that.
Inheritance of mitochondrial DNA, down the matrilineal line, is the only inheritance that can be relied upon.
That's something I've never understood. If mitochondrial DNA isn't sliced and diced itself, then how come we don't all basically have the same mitochondrial DNA in the first place?
Cos it's not mixed up every time, but it is subject to mutations an copying errors an ting.
(1/4) I saw the chat last night on the current covid state, so I, inevitably, have decided to put in my semi-informed two penn’orth. Which is: we’re in the third Omicron wave. Around one in thirty of us have covid right now (up from a low of one in seventy). For some, it’s a summer cold. For others, it’s a nasty flu. For a few, it’s severe enough for hospitalisation, even with the immunity levels we’ve got.
This is the end state as it stands. You will catch covid an average of 1-4 times per year. All of us will. Some will be lucky and miss a year or two; others will be unlucky and catch it at every wave. And reinfections aren't necessarily less nasty than the previous infection.
I’ve had real ‘flu maybe three or four times in my life (rather than a bad cold). That’s a bit under once per decade, and I think that’s pretty representative. You probably get just under one real case of flu per decade. You will catch covid 10-40 times over the next decade, unless something changes. So will each of your loved ones.
There is also the question of what proportion of hospitalisations are FOR rather than WITH covid. We don’t need to speculate, the figures are published. It’s about 36% right now (up from 30% at the low). But it’s still WAY below the 70-80% in the pre-Omicron and pre-vaccine days. Don’t get me wrong, those with incidental covid are not irrelevant. You still have to isolate them, it causes complexities in treatment, and worsens prognoses (there are no cases where “Oh, and you’ve got covid as well,” is a positive phrase to hear if you’re hospitalised and vulnerable due to something else). But it’s still qualitatively different from “You’ve caught covid so bad you’ve been rushed to hospital due to covid itself.”
And, yes, we still have a baseline of about 50 people per day dying FROM covid, who would have lived otherwise.
We will have between 1 million and 5 million people in the UK with covid; it’ll vary as the waves come and go. These are hitting fairly regularly – we had the original Omicron wave in December/January, the BA.2 wave in March/April, and now the BA.4/5 wave in June/July.
(Which implies that February and May were good months, and maybe August will be as well).
This makes me quite fearful. I have been told in no uncertain terms to avoid future lung infections. I also have a condition which makes me prone to blood clots, which I've had and which are also pretty unpleasant. So I try to do this. Even so I got a nasty bout of bronchitis earlier this year.
If this is going to be widespread, I am going to have to resign myself to living largely in the open air and staying away from crowded inside spaces. Fortunately, this is relatively easy to do in the Lakes. But still it's not ideal.
I'm sorry. As @turbotubbs points out, there are factors that could shift the endemic levels downwards. If the Government do get moving on HEPA and far-UV air filters, indoors could be almost as safe as outdoors. And if it looks like this endemic level with rollercoaster swings is here to stay, sooner or later, they're going to have to look at what minimally disruptive things they could do, surely?
And if you're eligible for a fourth dose, taking it seems to help considerably (A fourteen-fold reduction in mortality between 3-dose and 4-dose vulnerable people found in Israel).
And I do wish your husband and daughter a speedy and full recovery.
I am currently watching Nashville (2013-2018) for (very) light relief. In it there is a storyline wherein one of the characters (they are all C&W music stars based in....) is quoted out of context saying "there is no god".
It is then taken as understood that if such words were spoken it would be the end of her career and features people burning her albums, demonstrating against her, and assaulting her. The story nowhere (yet) includes some eg east coast liberal, or "enlightened" local saying how bonkers it is; the show is just portraying as a given what the reaction is or would be.
Then as now it illustrates how America is, at heart, a religious fundamentalist state.
The original United States was founded by individuals who were mainly fleeing religious persecution or, at least, a regime that they felt restricted their religious freedom. It's no wonder religion is at the heart of the States.
Also people who really wanted to get rich making African people work for nothing on land taken by force from the indigenous population. It's no wonder racism is at the heart of the States.
I wonder where they got the idea from.
The Spanish, the Portugese, the Romans and every other empire in history before them?
Slavery was not a new concept, the slave trade wasn't new either, what was new was egalitarianism and abolitionism.
Sitting on continent A arranging wholesale deportation of natives of continent B to continent C for pure commercial gain, was entirely new. Furthermore slavery had been not a thing for so long in the UK that any claim of continuity is ridiculous.
The Portuguese and (less so) Spanish concentrated their efforts further South.Black African Americans are the product of Anglo Scottish greed.
It was not remotely new. The Romans had intercontinental slave trading, the only reason they didn't involve the Americas was because their jurisdiction didn't go that far but they did trade slaves between three continents.
My main interest in Scottish independence is what whisky and other smuggling opportunities there may be, living as I do close to the border and the coast with lots of coves for fishing boats. I rather fancy a Whisky Galore-style retirement.
Having revealed that desire - HMRC will be adding you to their watchlists..
Given that HMRC can't even answer the phone to genuine queries, that is not very scary.
HMRC's current modus operandi seems to be open case - do nothing for 15 years and then present a very large bill with 50%+ interest on top.
So while it's not immediately scary there are longer term issues.
I am currently watching Nashville (2013-2018) for (very) light relief. In it there is a storyline wherein one of the characters (they are all C&W music stars based in....) is quoted out of context saying "there is no god".
It is then taken as understood that if such words were spoken it would be the end of her career and features people burning her albums, demonstrating against her, and assaulting her. The story nowhere (yet) includes some eg east coast liberal, or "enlightened" local saying how bonkers it is; the show is just portraying as a given what the reaction is or would be.
Then as now it illustrates how America is, at heart, a religious fundamentalist state.
The original United States was founded by individuals who were mainly fleeing religious persecution or, at least, a regime that they felt restricted their religious freedom. It's no wonder religion is at the heart of the States.
You could easily draw a line from there to here. The question is whether this is something which is good or not. And if it is accepted that the US is a religious fundamentalist state how does that put into perspective our view of other religious fundamentalist states.
Issues need separating out here. The USA has like us a Christian, religious foundation, going back to days when that's how everything was - not all that long ago.
The UK, if history had been different, could be a religious theocracy now. (The Economist appears to believe, fatuously, that it is). Christian monarch, established and endowed church (in England), Bishops in HoL, church schools, a church or churches in every tiny corner of the land, a recognisable class of clergy, all ancient Oxbridge colleges and public schools with a continuing Christian foundation; HoC starting each day with Christian prayers. Daily Christian worship on the state broadcaster
The stuff is in place to be a Christian theocracy if we wanted to. But you couldn't be more wrong if you think it is.
Same with America, but the people have chosen a slightly different path from similar foundations.
Edmund Burke would understand.
And, BTW, even in USA most religious people are not fundamentalists. They just make more noise.
The difference is most Christians in America are Roman Catholics or Protestant evangelicals, while most Christians in the UK are less hardline Anglican. Thanks in part to the Church of England being the established church
It occurs to me that ‘allowing’ Indy ref II might solve a lot of Johnson’s short term problems (and when has the FLSOJ ever thought much beyond the short term). Unlike a GE he can say it has been forced on him, we are a country that respects democracy, more in regret than in anger etc. He can then indulge in his favourite activity of wrapping himself in the flag for 15 months and rally the UKIP lite party that is now the Cons: we must unite to resist the vile secessionists who seek to divide this great country. His politics thrives on divisiveness and what would be more divisive than a Engnat government squaring off with a Scotnat one? And of course there’s the big prize which PB Sc*tch experts insist is the most likely outcome, BJ could win it.
It would also put SKS and Lab in an exceedingly awkward position.
I am not particularly convinced that Unionism is a popular policy in England, whether of the Scottish or Irish persuasion. Obviously potent for Unionist communities in those countries, but in England I think there are only a few HYUFD tankies, the rest would just shrug, or even encourage the Scots or Irish to go.
I think in HYUFD think and perhaps more generally it is tied up with monarchy. The union of the crowns was a necessary precondition of the union proper at a time when these things mattered.
Er, doesn't make sense. The monarchy is not particularly under threat in Scotland, independence or not.
It shouldn't be.
It's basically Scottish.
Louis XVI, basically French
Tsar Nicholas II basically Russian
Etc
I would have thought our Royal Family was German first (the Georgians), then Dutch (William of Orange), then Scottish (James 6th / 1st) and then Norman. The Royal Family have never been English as before the Normans it was Anglo Saxon and there wasn't such a thing as a single country called England.
Not quite. Biologically of course it's a complete mishmash, like the rest of us, and (sotto voce) in any line of descent the matrilineal line is pretty reliable while it is a wise child who knows who their father is, as any female mallard will testify.
But history being what it is some lines matter a little more than others. The fact that HM the Queen is a direct descendent of Alfred the Great (assuming the ducks and drakes of history are all telling the truth) matters more than that she is a collateral descendent of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, though much history turns on that remarkable relationship.
I remember Charles Moore alleging in the Spectator once that HM the Queen was a direct descendent of the Prophet through Pedro the Cruel. It would add to the lustre as far as I am concerned it that were the case.
A massive reward of honour awaits anyone who could prove reliably the descent of HM the Queen from antiquity (pre c500 AD). Astonishingly it can't be done for her, or anyone else in the west. if it could, it certainly would not be English/British.
I can “provably” trace my descent back to Maud Ingelric, the supposed concubine of William the Conqueror, who married a Normam Knight, Ranulph Peverel. it was the lordly Peverels who later went west into Cornwall, where they eventually became minor gentry, and in some cases really quite poor
Using online genealogies I traced Ingelric and Co back to Roman senators, and a Nordic god of ice and fire
Complete bollocks of course, but great fun. The trouble is the end of the Roman Empire in the west severed nearly all family trees between 400-600AD. I suppose the only way you could provably trace descent from antiquity would be if you descended from Byzantine aristos who might then, in turn, be traceable back to Roman times?
Today everybody of broadly British descent is descended from William the Conqueror.
" You have two parents, and they had two parents and so on, two by two, so the number of ancestors doubles each generation working up your family tree, meaning that by 1600, one person should have 32,768 ancestors. This assumes full outbreeding, which is very unlikely – we’re all inbred over a long enough period – but for our purposes makes little difference.
Therefore, each one of your 32,768 ancestors in the year 1600 has a 0.5 per cent chance of being direct descendants of Edward III. If you reverse the question, and ask ‘what are the chances that none of your 32,768 ancestors in 1600 are in that 0.5 per cent’, the calculation becomes
0.995 x 10^32,768 = 4.64^-72
Which is an absurdly small number."
"Full outbreeding" is an absurd assumption - if it were right the world pop in 1600 would be in at least the trillions - and it makes all the difference
To expose the fallacy: Let's take the remotest inhabited island in the South Pacific and assume it had a population of 30 in 1600. If you add those to the mix the chances that none of them were not direct descendants of E III don't materially change, but we can look at *geography* and say the result is absurd. So, were there factors in UK society which isolated populations as effectively as the ocean? Bloody right there were. Geographically, everywhere in rural England was so isolated that the invention of the bicycle seriously stirred the gene pool because people started screwing people in the next door village not their own. Secondly social class: I am sure it didn't never happen that a gay young aristocratic blade swived a comely wench as he happened to be passing, but see 1. above: the average comely wench probably lived out a life without actually encountering a gay young blade, or anyone other than a peasant who was also multiple times over her cousin.
That doesn't stand up to scrutiny though. Anyone who has investigated their family tree going back a to say 1800 (which is easily doable for most people) will see they have ancestors from across Britain.
So far, in 1800 I have found ancestors in Perthshire, Fife, County Waterford, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Cumbria, London, Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex - and my ancestors during that period are largely ordinary working class people.
Also, you can apply *very* high levels of interbreeding to the calculation above and you still end up with 99.9999...% probability of descent from William the Conqueror.
Observation bias: the sort of people who investigate their ancestors, find that they have ancestors from all over the shop..
Hah! I can see how that might work the other way - people who never bother to investigate their ancestors assume they all lived in the same hamlet for the past 1,000 years.
People who do investigate find out the actual facts, of course. Those results are surprising. When I started I genuinely expected to find all my ancestors in Sussex and in London, where my mum and dad each came from.
Also, there was a big shake-up pre-bicycle in the 18th C with improvements in turnpikes and shipping, growth of cities, and then railways. lot more stagnant before all that.
Comments
If a line could be traced from the Merovingian to Carolingian kings it would help, but I don't think it can be done. Once you get to Alfred the Great/Charlesmagne you are in modern times (for me) and it's relatively plain sailing. If you are HM the Queen.
If this is going to be widespread, I am going to have to resign myself to living largely in the open air and staying away from crowded inside spaces. Fortunately, this is relatively easy to do in the Lakes. But still it's not ideal. Thank you. It is hard not to be able to do anything for them.
If we'd had the Brexit referendum first and Remain had very narrowly won, then Scotland had voted for Indy and left the UK, I know that I'd have argued that that was a big enough change to need a rerun of the Brexit referendum.
- Boris respects democracy and agrees to Section 30 order.
- SNP win IndyRef2
- Boris resigns
- New Tory leader in place for 2024 election
Parliament is rid of the ~50+ neverTory MPs, Boris is gone. Win/win surely?I’m guessing here but I recall they were William the Bastard, the Prophet M,… possibly King David…. And maybe Charlemagne? Or Alfred? Something like that
I strongly doubt anyone can reliably evidence “King David” as an ancestor
The Prophet M makes more sense, his line has been studied and inscribed very closely, for religious reasons, so if you are related to any of his proven descendants, bingo
It’s interesting to speculate who has the world’s oldest/tallest provable family tree. Perhaps the Japanese royal family?
That said, Wiki suggests they go back about as far as the Queen - ie 500AD or so
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_tree_of_Japanese_monarchs
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_tree.
Though they're not noted for learning lessons north of Gretna, I would imagine that after their last indy ref experience Lab will remain at arms lenght from the Cons, BJ in charge or not. SKS will quack on about constitutional conventions and a mummified Brown will be wheeled around the country and revivified to do his thing.
It only takes ~40 Tory MPs to rebel to defeat legislation, but they don't even need to rebel to change it. Dozens of Tory MPs telling the whips that they're not happy with legislation can see it be amended or changed, or even withdrawn entirely, before it even gets to the vote.
That doesn't happen in dictatorships - elected or otherwise.
Here's why: https://www.waterstones.com/blog/family-fortunes-adam-rutherford-on-how-were-all-related-to-royalty
teacup and which Russia and our enemies would also take full advantage of
It would be a monumental disaster.
Did we go in ’gainst bloody Ian Smith
When he seized power in ’65? … No Task Force
Then rushed in and said we’re here to defend
Rhodesia’s black men
And do not think for old Hong Kong
We’ll go in there and fight, no fear,
China’s a bit too big for us, my dear.
The difference is whether you can find written records to PROVE it
I can do that back to Maud (beyond that it’s much vaguer)
The Queen can do it back to Alfred (though of course a few bastards probably snuck in somewhere, in reality, breaking the direct line)
I have no doubt iScotland would EVENTUALLY prosper. Likewise rUK, but the idea both sides would shrug it off and move on is infantile. It would be an economic calamity of the first water
If you go back far enough, we can prove we are all descended from immigrants from Africa c.200,000 BP.
Far more than 1% of issues this government have dealt with have had u-turns forced upon them. Not because they lost votes, but they didn't lose votes because they u-turned and despite Thatcher's infamous quote all PMs u-turn when required rather than losing votes normally.
Also even things like HR departments who have various rules about how many days off someone has sick before they have a little word - that may all have to get N% added onto it to allow for the 'new normal'.
It is then taken as understood that if such words were spoken it would be the end of her career and features people burning her albums, demonstrating against her, and assaulting her. The story nowhere (yet) includes some eg east coast liberal, or "enlightened" local saying how bonkers it is; the show is just portraying as a given what the reaction is or would be.
Then as now it illustrates how America is, at heart, a religious fundamentalist state.
The violence was awful but it was not a coup nor a coup attempt. It was a violent mob that thought it would be a great idea to storm a political institution because they didn't like the outcome. Was the attempted storming by a pro-abortion crowd of the Arizona Senate an attempted coup against the Arizona state government?
https://twitter.com/JamesFallows/status/1541965690856407045
—On the one hand we have a witness who testified under oath
—On the other we have “sources close to” info about what people are “prepared to testify.” Which is placing the two on comparable footing they don’t *yet* deserve
When people testify, OK
Also...
To spell out the obvious (which may be necessary):
- The “steering wheel” is not the story.
- Knowingly encouraging an armed mob toward the Capitol, and fiddling while they attacked and chanted “Hang Mike Pence," is the story.
Two types of stories we can do without for a while:
—What GOP officials or former Trumpists think “privately."
—What people are “prepared to testify” about, without appearing under oath.
If you want to put something on the record, go on the record.
" You have two parents, and they had two parents and so on, two by two, so the number of ancestors doubles each generation working up your family tree, meaning that by 1600, one person should have 32,768 ancestors. This assumes full outbreeding, which is very unlikely – we’re all inbred over a long enough period – but for our purposes makes little difference.
Therefore, each one of your 32,768 ancestors in the year 1600 has a 0.5 per cent chance of being direct descendants of Edward III. If you reverse the question, and ask ‘what are the chances that none of your 32,768 ancestors in 1600 are in that 0.5 per cent’, the calculation becomes
0.995 x 10^32,768 = 4.64^-72
Which is an absurdly small number."
"Full outbreeding" is an absurd assumption - if it were right the world pop in 1600 would be in at least the trillions - and it makes all the difference
To expose the fallacy: Let's take the remotest inhabited island in the South Pacific and assume it had a population of 30 in 1600. If you add those to the mix the chances that none of them were not direct descendants of E III don't materially change, but we can look at *geography* and say the result is absurd. So, were there factors in UK society which isolated populations as effectively as the ocean? Bloody right there were. Geographically, everywhere in rural England was so isolated that the invention of the bicycle seriously stirred the gene pool because people started screwing people in the next door village not their own. Secondly social class: I am sure it didn't never happen that a gay young aristocratic blade swived a comely wench as he happened to be passing, but see 1. above: the average comely wench probably lived out a life without actually encountering a gay young blade, or anyone other than a peasant who was also multiple times over her cousin.
Personally I think Scotland going independent is a good thing for the long term. It will eventually prosper, I completely agree. Its not going to eventually prosper if it remains in the UK like a petulant teenager always moaning but never taking responsibility for itself.
Just as Brexit was like having a baby, Scexit is metaphorically like a teenager moving out of their family home and getting a job and home of their own. Yes it will be tough, it will be difficult and it will be expensive - just as having a baby is. But its also the right thing to do and the harsh reality of running your own home will force more grown up and mature politics upon Edinburgh than its ever going to have while they can just be Kevin saying "its so unfair, I hate you".
In some ways, that may suit the GOP, at least until the midterms as it may take some of the heat out of the issue. Post-November, of course, some legislatures may decide to go full-pelt.
@Potus
announces new US military deployments to Europe:
1. Create permanent HQ for US 5th Army Corps in Poland
2. Deploy additional rotational brigade to Romania
3. Deploy 2 additional F-35 squadrons to the UK
4. "Enhance" rotational deployments in Baltics
5. Deploy 2 additional Navy destroyers to Spain, bringing total from 4 to 6
6. Deploy "additional" air defense to Germany, Italy
“At a moment Putin has shattered peace in Europe... US and allies are stepping up, proving NATO is more needed than ever, and more important than ever"
https://twitter.com/nickschifrin/status/1542063170172452868
It will be much more like a brutal, terrible, expensive divorce, with both sides poorer at the end. And imagine the rows over who gets the kids and the Chagalls.
UGH
https://youtu.be/dhl8xiToIsQ
It wasn't supposed to be quite like this. The other coronaviruses became pretty mild seasonal colds in time, for all the talk of curing "the common cold" not really worth that particular effort.
Are we just not there yet, for immunity levels to remain such that the mutations allow a sneaky R 1.2 in winter, for prior natural immunity to make it mild, for the hospitalisation load to be not noticeable or not worth noting. Or was this phase of Spanish Flu just not noticed?
Or has the difference since the long ago last deadly pandemic, in the emphasis on social protection as a government responsibility, in vaccination, in driving COVID out over years - has it fundamentally altered the long term course of this pandemic, has it forced a massive transmissibility that would otherwise not have occured, has it led to a very different endemic course that differs from past Coronaviruses?
I think it's possibly a bit of both. The wave pattern may not yet be the settled endemic pattern and the evolution of sneaky rather than high R will develop further, but I also suspect some R estimates are at the exaggerated end and have not accounted for shorter reinfection times which can do a lot of the same rapid spread job, but are quicker to suppress. I also think there is road to travel, revaccination or no, on it getting milder in effect (due to human immunity over years rather than the virus evolving milder than it is now).
But I do think the end result endemic coronavirus will be a product of 21st century public health policy, and will be rather different from had this virus hit in 1920. Does that change what we do next time - perhaps, but I'm not necessarily sure how - an 19/20th century response still feels unconscionable to me, and I'm not ready on a bit of amateur suspicion, to side with the let it rip merchants. The answer is for someone much more expert than me, but I'd like the question asked.
If one party explicitly wants a divorce, the other party simply saying "no" for many years on end isn't appropriate either.
Just because something is going to be difficult, and expensive, doesn't make it wrong. Like Brexit.
People outside the US tend to simultaneously underestimate the depth of fundamentalist belief in large parts of the US population and assume that all Americans are religious nutters.
Overturning the results of an election sounds like a coup to me. Maybe you've just got a different standard.
But so is mine
1. Westminster has the right to refuse a referendum, and should do so
2. Not least, because referendums are horribly divisive and destabilising
And
3. Scottish indy will be, in the short term, economically ruinous for Scots AND everyone else in the UK
Sadly the modern "religious right" wants to implement religious persecution themselves. They have become what American founders tried to flee and prevent.
So far, in 1800 I have found ancestors in Perthshire, Fife, County Waterford, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Cumbria, London, Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex - and my ancestors during that period are largely ordinary working class people.
Also, you can apply *very* high levels of interbreeding to the calculation above and you still end up with 99.9999...% probability of descent from William the Conqueror.
Referendums are not horribly divisive and destabilising, what is horribly divisive and destabilising is what led to the referendum in the first place - the referendum itself is merely the day of reckoning for a division that already existed. Scottish politics has been on again/off again dominated by the union for decades. British politics had been on again/off again dominated by Europe for decades. Pro-Europeans who tried to make the European issue go away by refusing referenda in the past didn't make the issue go away or end the division, it just meant that when the vote was finally held they lost it.
I agree it will in the short term be economically bad for the Scots, but if they're willing to take that pain, that's their choice.
Why would you as a unionist want to repeat the mistakes of the pro-Europeans by attempting to stifle democracy? All that does is increase the pressure until eventually the rupture is all the more painful for yourself as those who have been aggrieved seize the opportunity when they get the chance.
There’s a moral conundrum. Does that count as perving? She will never know. No one else will know. Only I will ever know that I sleazily ogled her, and gained some pathetic middle aged pleasure out of it (me and thousands of people that read PB)
It’s like the whole “tree falling in empty forest” thing
There's decent evidence, just to take one example, that repeated infections significantly increase the likelihood of developing diabetes in older individuals. There's a load of stuff like this.
The likely overall effects are very unclear for now, but it's pretty certain that there will be an increased burden.
Seems a bit unlikely to me.
A bilateral agreement could have been negotiated for the New Territories to supply essential services in the event the lease couldn't be extended by any sane democratic government.
Think Monaco, or indeed Macau.
Sad, but realpolitik, it was what it was.
EDIT: Nevermind, I see you were making the same point about democracy in an earlier post - ignore my reply.
"Ernst & Young pays $100m to settle US charges of cheating on ethics exams"
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jun/28/ernst-and-young-fined-cheating-audit-settlement
Inheritance of mitochondrial DNA, down the matrilineal line, is the only inheritance that can be relied upon.
Slavery was not a new concept, the slave trade wasn't new either, what was new was egalitarianism and abolitionism.
I’m doing SCHRODINGER’S PERVING
The perving only exists if it is observed by the perved, or by non-perving bystanders. And thanks to HEISENBERG’S PERVING PRINCIPLE, when the perving is observed the universe changes: ie by being observed in my perving, I will cease perving and have another pickled cornichon.
Ergo, there is no such thing as unobserved perving, and i can pick up my binos again
I've also not had covid (that I know about - and have tested whenever I've felt likely to have been exposed or when feeling under the weather) so far (and really don't want to have cursed it by saying that).
I think one test will be this current wave. The trough between the BA.2 wave and this wave fell lower than between the BA.1 and BA.2 waves in both prevalence and hospital loading. Was that just chance? The peak in infections was higher for BA.2 and hospital loading fractionally lower (indicating slight lower rates of severe infection). If we top out infection-wise in the next couple of weeks and if hospital loading follows suit, there's a decent chance that the peaks could be significantly smaller going forwards. That would help.
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/3986828#Comment_3986828
The UK, if history had been different, could be a religious theocracy now. (The Economist appears to believe, fatuously, that it is). Christian monarch, established and endowed church (in England), Bishops in HoL, church schools, a church or churches in every tiny corner of the land, a recognisable class of clergy, all ancient Oxbridge colleges and public schools with a continuing Christian foundation; HoC starting each day with Christian prayers. Daily Christian worship on the state broadcaster
The stuff is in place to be a Christian theocracy if we wanted to. But you couldn't be more wrong if you think it is.
Same with America, but the people have chosen a slightly different path from similar foundations.
Edmund Burke would understand.
And, BTW, even in USA most religious people are not fundamentalists. They just make more noise.
the Brexit you voted for stopped Leave voters blaming the EU for their problems. Instead sterling would collapse, there would be a hard border at Berwick and we would face recession and probably depression to add to the economic problems we already have.
Russia and China too would take full advantage of a further weakening of the West as Britain ripped itself apart
What I still don't understand is how many people seem to be dodging this. Unless my possible brush with Wuhan strain in December/Jan 2019/20 and triple Pfizer have conferred immense levels of immunity, it seems somewhat bizaare that I haven't ever had a confirmed case of Covid. I haven't worn a mask since the middle of last year, I have travelled all over Britain and Europe. I work in a shop. Most of my friends have kids and we spend time together. I have been to conferences with hundreds of people. I have had meals and boozy evenings with people who 24 hours later tested positive.
I don't know anyone who has had covid more than twice.
So where are the 4 times a year predictions coming from??
He'll always be looking over your shoulder... with binoculars.
The Portuguese and (less so) Spanish concentrated their efforts further South. Black African Americans are the product of Anglo Scottish greed.
People who do investigate find out the actual facts, of course. Those results are surprising. When I started I genuinely expected to find all my ancestors in Sussex and in London, where my mum and dad each came from.
And if you're eligible for a fourth dose, taking it seems to help considerably (A fourteen-fold reduction in mortality between 3-dose and 4-dose vulnerable people found in Israel).
And I do wish your husband and daughter a speedy and full recovery.
So while it's not immediately scary there are longer term issues.