I've made this comparison before, but I do believe PB is like a local pub you can put in your pocket, on your phone or your tablet
Which makes it quite marvellous
You can be anywhere in the world - Glasgow, LA, Brazil, Antarctica - and you open PB on your screen and that's like opening the door to the pub. And inside you find the regulars, just like in Cheers, wittering away as normal. TSE is polishing the glasses and rolling his eyes at @HYUFD, in the corner by the broken slot machine @Nigel_Foremain is bickering with @BartholomewRoberts, meanwhile @rcs1000 has just rolled out of the loos with cocaine on his moustache and is being teased by @Cyclefree, and @IshmaelZ is completely fucked off his tits AGAIN, but no one minds, and @CorrectHorseBattery is taking notes
@Theuniondivvie is in the corner talking to himself about indyref, with a tartan lampshade over his head
It's brilliant
And, like a pub, people get barred.
Yes, the deeper you go, the more pertinent the comparison becomes. Sadly, local pubs full of regulars you know well are becoming rare. I've only had one real local in my adult, post Uni life - as in a place I could walk in and guarantee to find friends drinking at the bar. It was fabulous. Deeply reassuring. And it lasted about3 years (it was The Dolphin near Red Lion Square in Holborn)
These days my friends are dispersed around London, UK, Europe, the world and I love them, but I can't guarantee to walk in any bar and find them, not at all. It has to be arranged
That's fine, that's normal. But I can push the battered old door to PB and here you all are. So maybe this is an archetype which the internet is reinventing
Endearing post, and quite true. An agreeable always-available space with familiar figures is hard to beat as a valuable part of life. The moderators do a good job in keeping us more or less civil and there's an element of self-restraint too which makes PB stand out from some of the wilder fringes of the internet.
One of the early things I did when I retired, and moved, was the find a pub where I was 'comfortable'! Took me two or three goes but I eventually did. One of the worst things about my present condition is the fact that I can no longer walk down to the pub. And it's only about 5 or so minutes away! Think I'm going to get one of those electric scooters!
For all her manifold faults, Liz Truss will be our first declared atheist prime minister. Bozza is an atheist but pretends not to be occasionally so doesn’t count.
She isn't, she is Christian even if a token one, Johnson is Roman Catholic.
In any case we have had atheist PMs before, Callaghan and Attlee for starters.
Starmer is also an atheist, albeit married to a Jew and respectful of religion
Can someone explain to me the concept of a ‘token Christian’ ? Is it like Professor Richard Dawkins, a self-declared ‘cultural Christian’?
She doesn’t believe in God. She’s an atheist.
When had she said she doesn't believe in God?
Isn’t someone who doesn’t believe in God an agnostic.
An atheist believes in no God
One has an absence of belief, the other has a belief of absence.
I quite like the idea of God. I'd love Her to be real, and I understand how belief could be a relief and joy to some people. I often pray, particularly after hearing about traumatic events - but I understand that's only a mental comfort, a coping mechanism for events I cannot alter.
But if She is real; then she is a sh*t...
Why the certainty about gender - surely god's pronouns are They/Them ? How else would one refer to the Trinity ?
I'd like to think that God wouldn't be too bothered about pronouns, but when someone claims the power of smiting over you, how confident would you be?
It's covered the Commandments - thou shalt not take my name in vain...
For all her manifold faults, Liz Truss will be our first declared atheist prime minister. Bozza is an atheist but pretends not to be occasionally so doesn’t count.
She isn't, she is Christian even if a token one, Johnson is Roman Catholic.
In any case we have had atheist PMs before, Callaghan and Attlee for starters.
Starmer is also an atheist, albeit married to a Jew and respectful of religion
Can someone explain to me the concept of a ‘token Christian’ ? Is it like Professor Richard Dawkins, a self-declared ‘cultural Christian’?
She doesn’t believe in God. She’s an atheist.
When had she said she doesn't believe in God?
Isn’t someone who doesn’t believe in God an agnostic.
An atheist believes in no God
One has an absence of belief, the other has a belief of absence.
Technically correct, but misleading in colloquial usage, where agnostic in the UK tends to mean you are on the fence whether the religion you were brought up with is real or not. For example, where the probabilities you put to God / no God are something like 50:50 or 70:30.
I am technically agnostic but put as much likelihood of the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu Gods being real as I do the Greek, Roman, Pagan or Deist ones. Which based on available evidence is incredibly close to, but not at, zero.
I find atheist is a more practical term to use in everyday usage.
I've made this comparison before, but I do believe PB is like a local pub you can put in your pocket, on your phone or your tablet
Which makes it quite marvellous
You can be anywhere in the world - Glasgow, LA, Brazil, Antarctica - and you open PB on your screen and that's like opening the door to the pub. And inside you find the regulars, just like in Cheers, wittering away as normal. TSE is polishing the glasses and rolling his eyes at @HYUFD, in the corner by the broken slot machine @Nigel_Foremain is bickering with @BartholomewRoberts, meanwhile @rcs1000 has just rolled out of the loos with cocaine on his moustache and is being teased by @Cyclefree, and @IshmaelZ is completely fucked off his tits AGAIN, but no one minds, and @CorrectHorseBattery is taking notes
@Theuniondivvie is in the corner talking to himself about indyref, with a tartan lampshade over his head
It's brilliant
And, like a pub, people get barred.
Yes, the deeper you go, the more pertinent the comparison becomes. Sadly, local pubs full of regulars you know well are becoming rare. I've only had one real local in my adult, post Uni life - as in a place I could walk in and guarantee to find friends drinking at the bar. It was fabulous. Deeply reassuring. And it lasted about3 years (it was The Dolphin near Red Lion Square in Holborn)
These days my friends are dispersed around London, UK, Europe, the world and I love them, but I can't guarantee to walk in any bar and find them, not at all. It has to be arranged
That's fine, that's normal. But I can push the battered old door to PB and here you all are. So maybe this is an archetype which the internet is reinventing
Endearing post, and quite true. An agreeable always-available space with familiar figures is hard to beat as a valuable part of life. The moderators do a good job in keeping us more or less civil and there's an element of self-restraint too which makes PB stand out from some of the wilder fringes of the internet.
One of the early things I did when I retired, and moved, was the find a pub where I was 'comfortable'! Took me two or three goes but I eventually did. One of the worst things about my present condition is the fact that I can no longer walk down to the pub. And it's only about 5 or so minutes away! Think I'm going to get one of those electric scooters!
Sorry to hear about your mobility issues. Electric scooters are great for the elderly, but IME some elderly people are not quite aware enough of fellow road or pavement users...
On your point: a nice feature of the mid-season Rebus books are Rebus's attempts to find a church where he feels he fits. It goes on for several books as a very minor plot point, and was a great piece of characterisation. He so wants to belong in a church, but cannot find one where he does.
I feel the same way about pubs. Perhaps the only one I got close to feeling like I 'belonged' in was the Square and Compass in Darley Dale, in the Peak District. And I haven't been back there in over twenty years...
"Put simply, the emperor has no clothes. The establishment simply has no message for voters in the face of hardship. The only vision for the future it can conjure up is net zero – a dystopian agenda that takes the sacrificial politics of austerity and financialisation of the world economy to new heights. Actively campaigning for boiler bans, 15mph speed limits, and speculative green bubbles may seem like madness. But it is a perfectly logical programme for an elite that has become unhinged from the real world."
I couldn't read past the non- paywalled first paragraph. Nonetheless I read enough to know she was writing absolute bollocks.
You had to click on the link?
The Telegraph hasn’t published an article worth reading since the Clinton Administration.
To be fair, they were the ones who broke the MP Expenses Scandal. Not sure they've done anything since then mind you.
That was a partisan story, at least to start with, as they broke the Labour misdeeds before the Conservative ones. The story was broken in stages to maximise Labour and minimise Conservative ramifications. It pretty much became a Labour scandal, duck houses not withstanding.
That's not the way I remember it. It was also a Labour government at the time, with far more Labour MPs. And lots of Conservatives were caught out as well - some fairly, some unfairly on both sides of the aisle.
You didn't read what I said. Perhaps I should have been clearer. The Telegraph engineered the release of the story to damage the Labour Government more than the Conservative Opposition.
One could argue that in the grand scheme of things, as Labour MPs wound up with custodial sentences their breaches were worse anyway. Although there was one incident of a married couple whose case seemed wholly and disproportionately inappropriate, and yet it never made it to court.
I reiterate, my point was how the Telegraph staged their expose.
I did read what you said, and I still disagree with it.
Think about it logically: there was a Labour government. You want headlines, so you go after the big names first - and there will be more of them in government than in opposition. From the Telegraph's POV, that was the important fact. If they'd get bigger stories from releasing the opposition's bad stories first, they would have done so.
It's also a hilarious claim given (say) the Guardian's sick approach to Wikileaks.
The point made by @CatMan was the last decent work by the Telegraph was the expenses scandal. My point was even that stunning expose was not even handed and was promoted for partisan political gain. I suppose I could have precised three or four posts simply into "the Telegraph has been nothing more than a partisan Conservative Party comic from the moment Conrad Black bought it".
For all her manifold faults, Liz Truss will be our first declared atheist prime minister. Bozza is an atheist but pretends not to be occasionally so doesn’t count.
She isn't, she is Christian even if a token one, Johnson is Roman Catholic.
In any case we have had atheist PMs before, Callaghan and Attlee for starters.
Starmer is also an atheist, albeit married to a Jew and respectful of religion
Can someone explain to me the concept of a ‘token Christian’ ? Is it like Professor Richard Dawkins, a self-declared ‘cultural Christian’?
She doesn’t believe in God. She’s an atheist.
When had she said she doesn't believe in God?
Isn’t someone who doesn’t believe in God an agnostic.
An atheist believes in no God
One has an absence of belief, the other has a belief of absence.
Technically correct, but misleading in colloquial usage, where agnostic in the UK tends to mean you are on the fence whether the religion you were brought up with is real or not. For example, where the probabilities you put to God / no God are something like 50:50 or 70:30.
I am technically agnostic but put as much likelihood of the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu Gods being real as I do the Greek, Roman, Pagan or Deist ones. Which based on available evidence is incredibly close to, but not at, zero.
I find atheist is a more practical term to use in everyday usage.
Yes. The way I'd put it is that I'm atheist, but not serious about it.
Just catching up with the thread overnight and the idea of PB as a virtual pub. Was thinking the other day that it can’t be long until tech allows PB to have the facility to be like a radio programme.
Every poster can record a few selected words that AI used to base their entire voice on and then you can choose the “listen option” with pub background soundtrack - maybe you could synchronise your own Spotify into the background..
You could then sit outside if on your own on a summer evening listening to the conversation and chipping in when you want instead of holding your phone etc and scrolling and refreshing.
The Old Testament has some interesting passages. The story of a tribal society going around doing a lot of smiting, as was the fashion at the time. I liked the story of Abraham giving a God a good talking to. "You'd destroy Sodom when there's as many as 50 good men there? Shame on you." I summarise a little.
If Moses did write it, he could get a job on the Guardian now. The OT was a very wordy explanation of how people need to change their ways.
I've made this comparison before, but I do believe PB is like a local pub you can put in your pocket, on your phone or your tablet
Which makes it quite marvellous
You can be anywhere in the world - Glasgow, LA, Brazil, Antarctica - and you open PB on your screen and that's like opening the door to the pub. And inside you find the regulars, just like in Cheers, wittering away as normal. TSE is polishing the glasses and rolling his eyes at @HYUFD, in the corner by the broken slot machine @Nigel_Foremain is bickering with @BartholomewRoberts, meanwhile @rcs1000 has just rolled out of the loos with cocaine on his moustache and is being teased by @Cyclefree, and @IshmaelZ is completely fucked off his tits AGAIN, but no one minds, and @CorrectHorseBattery is taking notes
@Theuniondivvie is in the corner talking to himself about indyref, with a tartan lampshade over his head
It's brilliant
And, like a pub, people get barred.
Yes, the deeper you go, the more pertinent the comparison becomes. Sadly, local pubs full of regulars you know well are becoming rare. I've only had one real local in my adult, post Uni life - as in a place I could walk in and guarantee to find friends drinking at the bar. It was fabulous. Deeply reassuring. And it lasted about3 years (it was The Dolphin near Red Lion Square in Holborn)
These days my friends are dispersed around London, UK, Europe, the world and I love them, but I can't guarantee to walk in any bar and find them, not at all. It has to be arranged
That's fine, that's normal. But I can push the battered old door to PB and here you all are. So maybe this is an archetype which the internet is reinventing
Endearing post, and quite true. An agreeable always-available space with familiar figures is hard to beat as a valuable part of life. The moderators do a good job in keeping us more or less civil and there's an element of self-restraint too which makes PB stand out from some of the wilder fringes of the internet.
One of the early things I did when I retired, and moved, was the find a pub where I was 'comfortable'! Took me two or three goes but I eventually did. One of the worst things about my present condition is the fact that I can no longer walk down to the pub. And it's only about 5 or so minutes away! Think I'm going to get one of those electric scooters!
There was a pub near a workplace of mine where my colleagues and/or I would often have a pint and a hot lunch on a quiet (no meetings or public interface) day - this was in the mid-1980s. For extra homely comfort it had a couple of slightly broken down old sofas, too, as well as the usual pub furniture. I was there often enough that it got to the point when I would walk in and my beer would be pouring by the time I got to the counter. But the old couple who had it retired and it got bought and tarted up into a wine bar with plaster statues and rubber plants. An early and valuable lesson for me in the caducity of human endeavour.
"Put simply, the emperor has no clothes. The establishment simply has no message for voters in the face of hardship. The only vision for the future it can conjure up is net zero – a dystopian agenda that takes the sacrificial politics of austerity and financialisation of the world economy to new heights. Actively campaigning for boiler bans, 15mph speed limits, and speculative green bubbles may seem like madness. But it is a perfectly logical programme for an elite that has become unhinged from the real world."
I couldn't read past the non- paywalled first paragraph. Nonetheless I read enough to know she was writing absolute bollocks.
You had to click on the link?
The Telegraph hasn’t published an article worth reading since the Clinton Administration.
To be fair, they were the ones who broke the MP Expenses Scandal. Not sure they've done anything since then mind you.
That was a partisan story, at least to start with, as they broke the Labour misdeeds before the Conservative ones. The story was broken in stages to maximise Labour and minimise Conservative ramifications. It pretty much became a Labour scandal, duck houses not withstanding.
That's not the way I remember it. It was also a Labour government at the time, with far more Labour MPs. And lots of Conservatives were caught out as well - some fairly, some unfairly on both sides of the aisle.
You didn't read what I said. Perhaps I should have been clearer. The Telegraph engineered the release of the story to damage the Labour Government more than the Conservative Opposition.
One could argue that in the grand scheme of things, as Labour MPs wound up with custodial sentences their breaches were worse anyway. Although there was one incident of a married couple whose case seemed wholly and disproportionately inappropriate, and yet it never made it to court.
I reiterate, my point was how the Telegraph staged their expose.
I did read what you said, and I still disagree with it.
Think about it logically: there was a Labour government. You want headlines, so you go after the big names first - and there will be more of them in government than in opposition. From the Telegraph's POV, that was the important fact. If they'd get bigger stories from releasing the opposition's bad stories first, they would have done so.
It's also a hilarious claim given (say) the Guardian's sick approach to Wikileaks.
The point made by @CatMan was the last decent work by the Telegraph was the expenses scandal. My point was even that stunning expose was not even handed and was promoted for partisan political gain. I suppose I could have precised three or four posts simply into "the Telegraph has been nothing more than a partisan Conservative Party comic from the moment Conrad Black bought it".
That does not address my comment in any way, but does rather lucidly outline your biases.
I've made this comparison before, but I do believe PB is like a local pub you can put in your pocket, on your phone or your tablet
Which makes it quite marvellous
You can be anywhere in the world - Glasgow, LA, Brazil, Antarctica - and you open PB on your screen and that's like opening the door to the pub. And inside you find the regulars, just like in Cheers, wittering away as normal. TSE is polishing the glasses and rolling his eyes at @HYUFD, in the corner by the broken slot machine @Nigel_Foremain is bickering with @BartholomewRoberts, meanwhile @rcs1000 has just rolled out of the loos with cocaine on his moustache and is being teased by @Cyclefree, and @IshmaelZ is completely fucked off his tits AGAIN, but no one minds, and @CorrectHorseBattery is taking notes
@Theuniondivvie is in the corner talking to himself about indyref, with a tartan lampshade over his head
It's brilliant
And, like a pub, people get barred.
Yes, the deeper you go, the more pertinent the comparison becomes. Sadly, local pubs full of regulars you know well are becoming rare. I've only had one real local in my adult, post Uni life - as in a place I could walk in and guarantee to find friends drinking at the bar. It was fabulous. Deeply reassuring. And it lasted about3 years (it was The Dolphin near Red Lion Square in Holborn)
These days my friends are dispersed around London, UK, Europe, the world and I love them, but I can't guarantee to walk in any bar and find them, not at all. It has to be arranged
That's fine, that's normal. But I can push the battered old door to PB and here you all are. So maybe this is an archetype which the internet is reinventing
Endearing post, and quite true. An agreeable always-available space with familiar figures is hard to beat as a valuable part of life. The moderators do a good job in keeping us more or less civil and there's an element of self-restraint too which makes PB stand out from some of the wilder fringes of the internet.
One of the early things I did when I retired, and moved, was the find a pub where I was 'comfortable'! Took me two or three goes but I eventually did. One of the worst things about my present condition is the fact that I can no longer walk down to the pub. And it's only about 5 or so minutes away! Think I'm going to get one of those electric scooters!
Good for you OKC, have a pint on me, but if you are on the scooter, just the one!
Sinema is doing it, she's going to tank the Reconciliation bill and blow up Dem chances in the mid terms. Truly astonishing. At this point you mist assume she isn't planning to run when her term is up as she's gonna get Primaried so hard if she does run.
I've made this comparison before, but I do believe PB is like a local pub you can put in your pocket, on your phone or your tablet
Which makes it quite marvellous
You can be anywhere in the world - Glasgow, LA, Brazil, Antarctica - and you open PB on your screen and that's like opening the door to the pub. And inside you find the regulars, just like in Cheers, wittering away as normal. TSE is polishing the glasses and rolling his eyes at @HYUFD, in the corner by the broken slot machine @Nigel_Foremain is bickering with @BartholomewRoberts, meanwhile @rcs1000 has just rolled out of the loos with cocaine on his moustache and is being teased by @Cyclefree, and @IshmaelZ is completely fucked off his tits AGAIN, but no one minds, and @CorrectHorseBattery is taking notes
@Theuniondivvie is in the corner talking to himself about indyref, with a tartan lampshade over his head
It's brilliant
And, like a pub, people get barred.
Yes, the deeper you go, the more pertinent the comparison becomes. Sadly, local pubs full of regulars you know well are becoming rare. I've only had one real local in my adult, post Uni life - as in a place I could walk in and guarantee to find friends drinking at the bar. It was fabulous. Deeply reassuring. And it lasted about3 years (it was The Dolphin near Red Lion Square in Holborn)
These days my friends are dispersed around London, UK, Europe, the world and I love them, but I can't guarantee to walk in any bar and find them, not at all. It has to be arranged
That's fine, that's normal. But I can push the battered old door to PB and here you all are. So maybe this is an archetype which the internet is reinventing
Endearing post, and quite true. An agreeable always-available space with familiar figures is hard to beat as a valuable part of life. The moderators do a good job in keeping us more or less civil and there's an element of self-restraint too which makes PB stand out from some of the wilder fringes of the internet.
One of the early things I did when I retired, and moved, was the find a pub where I was 'comfortable'! Took me two or three goes but I eventually did. One of the worst things about my present condition is the fact that I can no longer walk down to the pub. And it's only about 5 or so minutes away! Think I'm going to get one of those electric scooters!
There was a pub near a workplace of mine where my colleagues and/or I would often have a pint and a hot lunch on a quiet (no meetings or public interface) day - this was in the mid-1980s. For extra homely comfort it had a couple of slightly broken down old sofas, too, as well as the usual pub furniture. I was there often enough that it got to the point when I would walk in and my beer would be pouring by the time I got to the counter. But the old couple who had it retired and it got bought and tarted up into a wine bar with plaster statues and rubber plants. An early and valuable lesson for me in the caducity of human endeavour.
"Put simply, the emperor has no clothes. The establishment simply has no message for voters in the face of hardship. The only vision for the future it can conjure up is net zero – a dystopian agenda that takes the sacrificial politics of austerity and financialisation of the world economy to new heights. Actively campaigning for boiler bans, 15mph speed limits, and speculative green bubbles may seem like madness. But it is a perfectly logical programme for an elite that has become unhinged from the real world."
I couldn't read past the non- paywalled first paragraph. Nonetheless I read enough to know she was writing absolute bollocks.
You had to click on the link?
The Telegraph hasn’t published an article worth reading since the Clinton Administration.
To be fair, they were the ones who broke the MP Expenses Scandal. Not sure they've done anything since then mind you.
That was a partisan story, at least to start with, as they broke the Labour misdeeds before the Conservative ones. The story was broken in stages to maximise Labour and minimise Conservative ramifications. It pretty much became a Labour scandal, duck houses not withstanding.
That's not the way I remember it. It was also a Labour government at the time, with far more Labour MPs. And lots of Conservatives were caught out as well - some fairly, some unfairly on both sides of the aisle.
You didn't read what I said. Perhaps I should have been clearer. The Telegraph engineered the release of the story to damage the Labour Government more than the Conservative Opposition.
One could argue that in the grand scheme of things, as Labour MPs wound up with custodial sentences their breaches were worse anyway. Although there was one incident of a married couple whose case seemed wholly and disproportionately inappropriate, and yet it never made it to court.
I reiterate, my point was how the Telegraph staged their expose.
I did read what you said, and I still disagree with it.
Think about it logically: there was a Labour government. You want headlines, so you go after the big names first - and there will be more of them in government than in opposition. From the Telegraph's POV, that was the important fact. If they'd get bigger stories from releasing the opposition's bad stories first, they would have done so.
It's also a hilarious claim given (say) the Guardian's sick approach to Wikileaks.
The point made by @CatMan was the last decent work by the Telegraph was the expenses scandal. My point was even that stunning expose was not even handed and was promoted for partisan political gain. I suppose I could have precised three or four posts simply into "the Telegraph has been nothing more than a partisan Conservative Party comic from the moment Conrad Black bought it".
That does not address my comment in any way, but does rather lucidly outline your biases.
Are you suggesting the Telegraph is the "sword of truth"? I'll need to ponder that one.
I've made this comparison before, but I do believe PB is like a local pub you can put in your pocket, on your phone or your tablet
Which makes it quite marvellous
You can be anywhere in the world - Glasgow, LA, Brazil, Antarctica - and you open PB on your screen and that's like opening the door to the pub. And inside you find the regulars, just like in Cheers, wittering away as normal. TSE is polishing the glasses and rolling his eyes at @HYUFD, in the corner by the broken slot machine @Nigel_Foremain is bickering with @BartholomewRoberts, meanwhile @rcs1000 has just rolled out of the loos with cocaine on his moustache and is being teased by @Cyclefree, and @IshmaelZ is completely fucked off his tits AGAIN, but no one minds, and @CorrectHorseBattery is taking notes
@Theuniondivvie is in the corner talking to himself about indyref, with a tartan lampshade over his head
It's brilliant
And, like a pub, people get barred.
Yes, the deeper you go, the more pertinent the comparison becomes. Sadly, local pubs full of regulars you know well are becoming rare. I've only had one real local in my adult, post Uni life - as in a place I could walk in and guarantee to find friends drinking at the bar. It was fabulous. Deeply reassuring. And it lasted about3 years (it was The Dolphin near Red Lion Square in Holborn)
These days my friends are dispersed around London, UK, Europe, the world and I love them, but I can't guarantee to walk in any bar and find them, not at all. It has to be arranged
That's fine, that's normal. But I can push the battered old door to PB and here you all are. So maybe this is an archetype which the internet is reinventing
Endearing post, and quite true. An agreeable always-available space with familiar figures is hard to beat as a valuable part of life. The moderators do a good job in keeping us more or less civil and there's an element of self-restraint too which makes PB stand out from some of the wilder fringes of the internet.
One of the early things I did when I retired, and moved, was the find a pub where I was 'comfortable'! Took me two or three goes but I eventually did. One of the worst things about my present condition is the fact that I can no longer walk down to the pub. And it's only about 5 or so minutes away! Think I'm going to get one of those electric scooters!
There was a pub near a workplace of mine where my colleagues and/or I would often have a pint and a hot lunch on a quiet (no meetings or public interface) day - this was in the mid-1980s. For extra homely comfort it had a couple of slightly broken down old sofas, too, as well as the usual pub furniture. I was there often enough that it got to the point when I would walk in and my beer would be pouring by the time I got to the counter. But the old couple who had it retired and it got bought and tarted up into a wine bar with plaster statues and rubber plants. An early and valuable lesson for me in the caducity of human endeavour.
I've made this comparison before, but I do believe PB is like a local pub you can put in your pocket, on your phone or your tablet
Which makes it quite marvellous
You can be anywhere in the world - Glasgow, LA, Brazil, Antarctica - and you open PB on your screen and that's like opening the door to the pub. And inside you find the regulars, just like in Cheers, wittering away as normal. TSE is polishing the glasses and rolling his eyes at @HYUFD, in the corner by the broken slot machine @Nigel_Foremain is bickering with @BartholomewRoberts, meanwhile @rcs1000 has just rolled out of the loos with cocaine on his moustache and is being teased by @Cyclefree, and @IshmaelZ is completely fucked off his tits AGAIN, but no one minds, and @CorrectHorseBattery is taking notes
@Theuniondivvie is in the corner talking to himself about indyref, with a tartan lampshade over his head
It's brilliant
And, like a pub, people get barred.
Yes, the deeper you go, the more pertinent the comparison becomes. Sadly, local pubs full of regulars you know well are becoming rare. I've only had one real local in my adult, post Uni life - as in a place I could walk in and guarantee to find friends drinking at the bar. It was fabulous. Deeply reassuring. And it lasted about3 years (it was The Dolphin near Red Lion Square in Holborn)
These days my friends are dispersed around London, UK, Europe, the world and I love them, but I can't guarantee to walk in any bar and find them, not at all. It has to be arranged
That's fine, that's normal. But I can push the battered old door to PB and here you all are. So maybe this is an archetype which the internet is reinventing
Endearing post, and quite true. An agreeable always-available space with familiar figures is hard to beat as a valuable part of life. The moderators do a good job in keeping us more or less civil and there's an element of self-restraint too which makes PB stand out from some of the wilder fringes of the internet.
The moderators do a great job, for sure. We are lucky there.
Are there just the three of them - Smithson père et fils and TSE?
Win or lose, Ukraine is going to be an absolute wasteland after this. Which will probably in its own way suit Russia as well as anything.
Or when they win, the amount of rebuilding the west will support and the “new start” Ukraine goes through could see it being catapulted into being a very advanced state and economy - a new “west Germany” attracting business for the region and being a beacon and role model for other ex soviet states which will not suit Russia.
Win or lose, Ukraine is going to be an absolute wasteland after this. Which will probably in its own way suit Russia as well as anything.
Actually, it may not. One of the things Russia did not want coming out of this was a rich and prosperous large Slavic nation on its doorstep. Ukraine - especially the eastern parts - are going to be devastated, but so will the Russian economy.
Ukraine will need to rebuild its economy and much of its infrastructure - particularly due to Russia's shelling of civilian infrastructure such as schools and hospitals throughout the country - but if they play their cards right, they will have a massive amount of goodwill from rich countries.
Russia, on the other hand, will have a devastated economy and they're killing off their one success area - energy exports. Even if the war ended tomorrow, in ten years the market for Russian energy will be much reduced. Firstly because of the rush for green energy, and secondly because they've shown they're unreliable providers. Russia has wasted twenty years of bounty, stealing rather than investing.
It will be the work of a decade or two, but it's perfectly possible that Ukraine might do a West Germany after WWII, or South Korea after 1955, and turn their economy massively around. And as Germany found, having your infrastructure destroyed can leave you with a very useful blank canvas to rebuild on.
If Ukraine 'wins' this war and peace, they have massive opportunities - if they can take them.
I've made this comparison before, but I do believe PB is like a local pub you can put in your pocket, on your phone or your tablet
Which makes it quite marvellous
You can be anywhere in the world - Glasgow, LA, Brazil, Antarctica - and you open PB on your screen and that's like opening the door to the pub. And inside you find the regulars, just like in Cheers, wittering away as normal. TSE is polishing the glasses and rolling his eyes at @HYUFD, in the corner by the broken slot machine @Nigel_Foremain is bickering with @BartholomewRoberts, meanwhile @rcs1000 has just rolled out of the loos with cocaine on his moustache and is being teased by @Cyclefree, and @IshmaelZ is completely fucked off his tits AGAIN, but no one minds, and @CorrectHorseBattery is taking notes
@Theuniondivvie is in the corner talking to himself about indyref, with a tartan lampshade over his head
It's brilliant
And, like a pub, people get barred.
Yes, the deeper you go, the more pertinent the comparison becomes. Sadly, local pubs full of regulars you know well are becoming rare. I've only had one real local in my adult, post Uni life - as in a place I could walk in and guarantee to find friends drinking at the bar. It was fabulous. Deeply reassuring. And it lasted about3 years (it was The Dolphin near Red Lion Square in Holborn)
These days my friends are dispersed around London, UK, Europe, the world and I love them, but I can't guarantee to walk in any bar and find them, not at all. It has to be arranged
That's fine, that's normal. But I can push the battered old door to PB and here you all are. So maybe this is an archetype which the internet is reinventing
Endearing post, and quite true. An agreeable always-available space with familiar figures is hard to beat as a valuable part of life. The moderators do a good job in keeping us more or less civil and there's an element of self-restraint too which makes PB stand out from some of the wilder fringes of the internet.
One of the early things I did when I retired, and moved, was the find a pub where I was 'comfortable'! Took me two or three goes but I eventually did. One of the worst things about my present condition is the fact that I can no longer walk down to the pub. And it's only about 5 or so minutes away! Think I'm going to get one of those electric scooters!
Do it! So many people curtail themselves by not using the technology that's available.
"Put simply, the emperor has no clothes. The establishment simply has no message for voters in the face of hardship. The only vision for the future it can conjure up is net zero – a dystopian agenda that takes the sacrificial politics of austerity and financialisation of the world economy to new heights. Actively campaigning for boiler bans, 15mph speed limits, and speculative green bubbles may seem like madness. But it is a perfectly logical programme for an elite that has become unhinged from the real world."
I couldn't read past the non- paywalled first paragraph. Nonetheless I read enough to know she was writing absolute bollocks.
You had to click on the link?
The Telegraph hasn’t published an article worth reading since the Clinton Administration.
To be fair, they were the ones who broke the MP Expenses Scandal. Not sure they've done anything since then mind you.
That was a partisan story, at least to start with, as they broke the Labour misdeeds before the Conservative ones. The story was broken in stages to maximise Labour and minimise Conservative ramifications. It pretty much became a Labour scandal, duck houses not withstanding.
That's not the way I remember it. It was also a Labour government at the time, with far more Labour MPs. And lots of Conservatives were caught out as well - some fairly, some unfairly on both sides of the aisle.
You didn't read what I said. Perhaps I should have been clearer. The Telegraph engineered the release of the story to damage the Labour Government more than the Conservative Opposition.
One could argue that in the grand scheme of things, as Labour MPs wound up with custodial sentences their breaches were worse anyway. Although there was one incident of a married couple whose case seemed wholly and disproportionately inappropriate, and yet it never made it to court.
I reiterate, my point was how the Telegraph staged their expose.
I did read what you said, and I still disagree with it.
Think about it logically: there was a Labour government. You want headlines, so you go after the big names first - and there will be more of them in government than in opposition. From the Telegraph's POV, that was the important fact. If they'd get bigger stories from releasing the opposition's bad stories first, they would have done so.
It's also a hilarious claim given (say) the Guardian's sick approach to Wikileaks.
The point made by @CatMan was the last decent work by the Telegraph was the expenses scandal. My point was even that stunning expose was not even handed and was promoted for partisan political gain. I suppose I could have precised three or four posts simply into "the Telegraph has been nothing more than a partisan Conservative Party comic from the moment Conrad Black bought it".
That does not address my comment in any way, but does rather lucidly outline your biases.
Are you suggesting the Telegraph is the "sword of truth"? I'll need to ponder that one.
When did I say that? But to turn it around: are you suggesting any media source is the 'sword of truth' ? If not, what point are you trying to make?
"Put simply, the emperor has no clothes. The establishment simply has no message for voters in the face of hardship. The only vision for the future it can conjure up is net zero – a dystopian agenda that takes the sacrificial politics of austerity and financialisation of the world economy to new heights. Actively campaigning for boiler bans, 15mph speed limits, and speculative green bubbles may seem like madness. But it is a perfectly logical programme for an elite that has become unhinged from the real world."
I couldn't read past the non- paywalled first paragraph. Nonetheless I read enough to know she was writing absolute bollocks.
You had to click on the link?
The Telegraph hasn’t published an article worth reading since the Clinton Administration.
To be fair, they were the ones who broke the MP Expenses Scandal. Not sure they've done anything since then mind you.
That was a partisan story, at least to start with, as they broke the Labour misdeeds before the Conservative ones. The story was broken in stages to maximise Labour and minimise Conservative ramifications. It pretty much became a Labour scandal, duck houses not withstanding.
That's not the way I remember it. It was also a Labour government at the time, with far more Labour MPs. And lots of Conservatives were caught out as well - some fairly, some unfairly on both sides of the aisle.
You didn't read what I said. Perhaps I should have been clearer. The Telegraph engineered the release of the story to damage the Labour Government more than the Conservative Opposition.
One could argue that in the grand scheme of things, as Labour MPs wound up with custodial sentences their breaches were worse anyway. Although there was one incident of a married couple whose case seemed wholly and disproportionately inappropriate, and yet it never made it to court.
I reiterate, my point was how the Telegraph staged their expose.
I did read what you said, and I still disagree with it.
Think about it logically: there was a Labour government. You want headlines, so you go after the big names first - and there will be more of them in government than in opposition. From the Telegraph's POV, that was the important fact. If they'd get bigger stories from releasing the opposition's bad stories first, they would have done so.
It's also a hilarious claim given (say) the Guardian's sick approach to Wikileaks.
The point made by @CatMan was the last decent work by the Telegraph was the expenses scandal. My point was even that stunning expose was not even handed and was promoted for partisan political gain. I suppose I could have precised three or four posts simply into "the Telegraph has been nothing more than a partisan Conservative Party comic from the moment Conrad Black bought it".
Wasn't it offered to the Guardian but they were only going to publish on the Tories? So it went to the Telegraph.
I remember it being pretty bipartisan. The Tories were more extravagant, as I recall, but it's kinda expected behaviour. While for Labour more damaging, as they're supposed to be the good guys.
Win or lose, Ukraine is going to be an absolute wasteland after this. Which will probably in its own way suit Russia as well as anything.
Or when they win, the amount of rebuilding the west will support and the “new start” Ukraine goes through could see it being catapulted into being a very advanced state and economy - a new “west Germany” attracting business for the region and being a beacon and role model for other ex soviet states which will not suit Russia.
It would be nice to think so. But I have a horrible feeling once the immediate emergency is over the West will spend much more time worrying about the impact on their own economies than coming up with a new Marshall Plan for Ukraine.
"Put simply, the emperor has no clothes. The establishment simply has no message for voters in the face of hardship. The only vision for the future it can conjure up is net zero – a dystopian agenda that takes the sacrificial politics of austerity and financialisation of the world economy to new heights. Actively campaigning for boiler bans, 15mph speed limits, and speculative green bubbles may seem like madness. But it is a perfectly logical programme for an elite that has become unhinged from the real world."
I couldn't read past the non- paywalled first paragraph. Nonetheless I read enough to know she was writing absolute bollocks.
You had to click on the link?
The Telegraph hasn’t published an article worth reading since the Clinton Administration.
To be fair, they were the ones who broke the MP Expenses Scandal. Not sure they've done anything since then mind you.
That was a partisan story, at least to start with, as they broke the Labour misdeeds before the Conservative ones. The story was broken in stages to maximise Labour and minimise Conservative ramifications. It pretty much became a Labour scandal, duck houses not withstanding.
That's not the way I remember it. It was also a Labour government at the time, with far more Labour MPs. And lots of Conservatives were caught out as well - some fairly, some unfairly on both sides of the aisle.
You didn't read what I said. Perhaps I should have been clearer. The Telegraph engineered the release of the story to damage the Labour Government more than the Conservative Opposition.
One could argue that in the grand scheme of things, as Labour MPs wound up with custodial sentences their breaches were worse anyway. Although there was one incident of a married couple whose case seemed wholly and disproportionately inappropriate, and yet it never made it to court.
I reiterate, my point was how the Telegraph staged their expose.
I did read what you said, and I still disagree with it.
Think about it logically: there was a Labour government. You want headlines, so you go after the big names first - and there will be more of them in government than in opposition. From the Telegraph's POV, that was the important fact. If they'd get bigger stories from releasing the opposition's bad stories first, they would have done so.
It's also a hilarious claim given (say) the Guardian's sick approach to Wikileaks.
The point made by @CatMan was the last decent work by the Telegraph was the expenses scandal. My point was even that stunning expose was not even handed and was promoted for partisan political gain. I suppose I could have precised three or four posts simply into "the Telegraph has been nothing more than a partisan Conservative Party comic from the moment Conrad Black bought it".
That does not address my comment in any way, but does rather lucidly outline your biases.
Are you suggesting the Telegraph is the "sword of truth"? I'll need to ponder that one.
When did I say that? But to turn it around: are you suggesting any media source is the 'sword of truth' ? If not, what point are you trying to make?
Well I watched the opening credits to Dan Wooton's GB News extravaganza last evening and he said his show had "no spin, and no bias", so if that isn't close enough to a claim to be "the sword of truth" I don't know what is.
Win or lose, Ukraine is going to be an absolute wasteland after this. Which will probably in its own way suit Russia as well as anything.
Actually, it may not. One of the things Russia did not want coming out of this was a rich and prosperous large Slavic nation on its doorstep. Ukraine - especially the eastern parts - are going to be devastated, but so will the Russian economy.
Ukraine will need to rebuild its economy and much of its infrastructure - particularly due to Russia's shelling of civilian infrastructure such as schools and hospitals throughout the country - but if they play their cards right, they will have a massive amount of goodwill from rich countries.
Russia, on the other hand, will have a devastated economy and they're killing off their one success area - energy exports. Even if the war ended tomorrow, in ten years the market for Russian energy will be much reduced. Firstly because of the rush for green energy, and secondly because they've shown they're unreliable providers. Russia has wasted twenty years of bounty, stealing rather than investing.
It will be the work of a decade or two, but it's perfectly possible that Ukraine might do a West Germany after WWII, or South Korea after 1955, and turn their economy massively around. And as Germany found, having your infrastructure destroyed can leave you with a very useful blank canvas to rebuild on.
If Ukraine 'wins' this war and peace, they have massive opportunities - if they can take them.
The big test, post-war, will be on corruption. If early investment is diverted by corruption to create a new oligarchy, then the reconstruction will be hobbled, and later investment will not come.
Let's see if that revelation can't get you past your previous top tally of "likes". You've got a like from me for putting your cross in the correct box for starters.
I've made this comparison before, but I do believe PB is like a local pub you can put in your pocket, on your phone or your tablet
Which makes it quite marvellous
You can be anywhere in the world - Glasgow, LA, Brazil, Antarctica - and you open PB on your screen and that's like opening the door to the pub. And inside you find the regulars, just like in Cheers, wittering away as normal. TSE is polishing the glasses and rolling his eyes at @HYUFD, in the corner by the broken slot machine @Nigel_Foremain is bickering with @BartholomewRoberts, meanwhile @rcs1000 has just rolled out of the loos with cocaine on his moustache and is being teased by @Cyclefree, and @IshmaelZ is completely fucked off his tits AGAIN, but no one minds, and @CorrectHorseBattery is taking notes
@Theuniondivvie is in the corner talking to himself about indyref, with a tartan lampshade over his head
It's brilliant
And, like a pub, people get barred.
Yes, the deeper you go, the more pertinent the comparison becomes. Sadly, local pubs full of regulars you know well are becoming rare. I've only had one real local in my adult, post Uni life - as in a place I could walk in and guarantee to find friends drinking at the bar. It was fabulous. Deeply reassuring. And it lasted about3 years (it was The Dolphin near Red Lion Square in Holborn)
These days my friends are dispersed around London, UK, Europe, the world and I love them, but I can't guarantee to walk in any bar and find them, not at all. It has to be arranged
That's fine, that's normal. But I can push the battered old door to PB and here you all are. So maybe this is an archetype which the internet is reinventing
Endearing post, and quite true. An agreeable always-available space with familiar figures is hard to beat as a valuable part of life. The moderators do a good job in keeping us more or less civil and there's an element of self-restraint too which makes PB stand out from some of the wilder fringes of the internet.
One of the early things I did when I retired, and moved, was the find a pub where I was 'comfortable'! Took me two or three goes but I eventually did. One of the worst things about my present condition is the fact that I can no longer walk down to the pub. And it's only about 5 or so minutes away! Think I'm going to get one of those electric scooters!
Sorry to hear about your mobility issues. Electric scooters are great for the elderly, but IME some elderly people are not quite aware enough of fellow road or pavement users...
On your point: a nice feature of the mid-season Rebus books are Rebus's attempts to find a church where he feels he fits. It goes on for several books as a very minor plot point, and was a great piece of characterisation. He so wants to belong in a church, but cannot find one where he does.
I feel the same way about pubs. Perhaps the only one I got close to feeling like I 'belonged' in was the Square and Compass in Darley Dale, in the Peak District. And I haven't been back there in over twenty years...
Paradox of choice- we think having lots of choices makes us feel good, but there's some evidence that it doesn't.
Before mass ownership of cars, your local pub/church/school was just that- your local and you were happy with that and it was mostly OK. Now we have much more choice because geography matters less. We end up with the extra stress of choosing, and that outweighs any benefits of optimisation.
And in some contexts- certainly churches, probably schools- the stratification and avoidance of different others works against the purpose of the place, in the same way that pb is better than ConHome.
I've made this comparison before, but I do believe PB is like a local pub you can put in your pocket, on your phone or your tablet
Which makes it quite marvellous
You can be anywhere in the world - Glasgow, LA, Brazil, Antarctica - and you open PB on your screen and that's like opening the door to the pub. And inside you find the regulars, just like in Cheers, wittering away as normal. TSE is polishing the glasses and rolling his eyes at @HYUFD, in the corner by the broken slot machine @Nigel_Foremain is bickering with @BartholomewRoberts, meanwhile @rcs1000 has just rolled out of the loos with cocaine on his moustache and is being teased by @Cyclefree, and @IshmaelZ is completely fucked off his tits AGAIN, but no one minds, and @CorrectHorseBattery is taking notes
@Theuniondivvie is in the corner talking to himself about indyref, with a tartan lampshade over his head
It's brilliant
And, like a pub, people get barred.
Yes, the deeper you go, the more pertinent the comparison becomes. Sadly, local pubs full of regulars you know well are becoming rare. I've only had one real local in my adult, post Uni life - as in a place I could walk in and guarantee to find friends drinking at the bar. It was fabulous. Deeply reassuring. And it lasted about3 years (it was The Dolphin near Red Lion Square in Holborn)
These days my friends are dispersed around London, UK, Europe, the world and I love them, but I can't guarantee to walk in any bar and find them, not at all. It has to be arranged
That's fine, that's normal. But I can push the battered old door to PB and here you all are. So maybe this is an archetype which the internet is reinventing
Endearing post, and quite true. An agreeable always-available space with familiar figures is hard to beat as a valuable part of life. The moderators do a good job in keeping us more or less civil and there's an element of self-restraint too which makes PB stand out from some of the wilder fringes of the internet.
One of the early things I did when I retired, and moved, was the find a pub where I was 'comfortable'! Took me two or three goes but I eventually did. One of the worst things about my present condition is the fact that I can no longer walk down to the pub. And it's only about 5 or so minutes away! Think I'm going to get one of those electric scooters!
Sorry to hear about your mobility issues. Electric scooters are great for the elderly, but IME some elderly people are not quite aware enough of fellow road or pavement users...
On your point: a nice feature of the mid-season Rebus books are Rebus's attempts to find a church where he feels he fits. It goes on for several books as a very minor plot point, and was a great piece of characterisation. He so wants to belong in a church, but cannot find one where he does.
I feel the same way about pubs. Perhaps the only one I got close to feeling like I 'belonged' in was the Square and Compass in Darley Dale, in the Peak District. And I haven't been back there in over twenty years...
Paradox of choice- we think having lots of choices makes us feel good, but there's some evidence that it doesn't.
Before mass ownership of cars, your local pub/church/school was just that- your local and you were happy with that and it was mostly OK. Now we have much more choice because geography matters less. We end up with the extra stress of choosing, and that outweighs any benefits of optimisation.
And in some contexts- certainly churches, probably schools- the stratification and avoidance of different others works against the purpose of the place, in the same way that pb is better than ConHome.
James Heale @JAHeale Source close to IDS said “if he takes Chief Whip after the jobs he has had, I’ll glue my naked torso to the Chinese embassy gate.”
The Old Testament has some interesting passages. The story of a tribal society going around doing a lot of smiting, as was the fashion at the time. I liked the story of Abraham giving a God a good talking to. "You'd destroy Sodom when there's as many as 50 good men there? Shame on you." I summarise a little.
If Moses did write it, he could get a job on the Guardian now. The OT was a very wordy explanation of how people need to change their ways.
I always liked Dylan's retelling of it on Highway 61 Revisited: God said to Abraham, kill me a son. Abe said man you must be putting me on. God said no, Abe said what? God said you can do what you want Abe but, the next time you see me coming you better run. Abe said where you want this killing done? God said, right here, down on Highway 61. I assume the last line isn't in the original. But it does capture the batshit craziness of the story.
I've made this comparison before, but I do believe PB is like a local pub you can put in your pocket, on your phone or your tablet
Which makes it quite marvellous
You can be anywhere in the world - Glasgow, LA, Brazil, Antarctica - and you open PB on your screen and that's like opening the door to the pub. And inside you find the regulars, just like in Cheers, wittering away as normal. TSE is polishing the glasses and rolling his eyes at @HYUFD, in the corner by the broken slot machine @Nigel_Foremain is bickering with @BartholomewRoberts, meanwhile @rcs1000 has just rolled out of the loos with cocaine on his moustache and is being teased by @Cyclefree, and @IshmaelZ is completely fucked off his tits AGAIN, but no one minds, and @CorrectHorseBattery is taking notes
@Theuniondivvie is in the corner talking to himself about indyref, with a tartan lampshade over his head
It's brilliant
And, like a pub, people get barred.
Yes, the deeper you go, the more pertinent the comparison becomes. Sadly, local pubs full of regulars you know well are becoming rare. I've only had one real local in my adult, post Uni life - as in a place I could walk in and guarantee to find friends drinking at the bar. It was fabulous. Deeply reassuring. And it lasted about3 years (it was The Dolphin near Red Lion Square in Holborn)
These days my friends are dispersed around London, UK, Europe, the world and I love them, but I can't guarantee to walk in any bar and find them, not at all. It has to be arranged
That's fine, that's normal. But I can push the battered old door to PB and here you all are. So maybe this is an archetype which the internet is reinventing
Endearing post, and quite true. An agreeable always-available space with familiar figures is hard to beat as a valuable part of life. The moderators do a good job in keeping us more or less civil and there's an element of self-restraint too which makes PB stand out from some of the wilder fringes of the internet.
One of the early things I did when I retired, and moved, was the find a pub where I was 'comfortable'! Took me two or three goes but I eventually did. One of the worst things about my present condition is the fact that I can no longer walk down to the pub. And it's only about 5 or so minutes away! Think I'm going to get one of those electric scooters!
Sorry to hear about your mobility issues. Electric scooters are great for the elderly, but IME some elderly people are not quite aware enough of fellow road or pavement users...
On your point: a nice feature of the mid-season Rebus books are Rebus's attempts to find a church where he feels he fits. It goes on for several books as a very minor plot point, and was a great piece of characterisation. He so wants to belong in a church, but cannot find one where he does.
I feel the same way about pubs. Perhaps the only one I got close to feeling like I 'belonged' in was the Square and Compass in Darley Dale, in the Peak District. And I haven't been back there in over twenty years...
Paradox of choice- we think having lots of choices makes us feel good, but there's some evidence that it doesn't.
Before mass ownership of cars, your local pub/church/school was just that- your local and you were happy with that and it was mostly OK. Now we have much more choice because geography matters less. We end up with the extra stress of choosing, and that outweighs any benefits of optimisation.
And in some contexts- certainly churches, probably schools- the stratification and avoidance of different others works against the purpose of the place, in the same way that pb is better than ConHome.
Speaking as someone who grew up in a huge world city I have some sympathy with that view, but my wife, who grew up in a small village, where the population of the nearest major town is only about two House of Lords has a different perspective. A lack of choice can be particularly restrictive for those people who are a bit different. Where they have more choice they have a better chance of finding like-minded people to fit in more easily with. Small communities can be quite intolerant of difference.
Win or lose, Ukraine is going to be an absolute wasteland after this. Which will probably in its own way suit Russia as well as anything.
Actually, it may not. One of the things Russia did not want coming out of this was a rich and prosperous large Slavic nation on its doorstep. Ukraine - especially the eastern parts - are going to be devastated, but so will the Russian economy.
Ukraine will need to rebuild its economy and much of its infrastructure - particularly due to Russia's shelling of civilian infrastructure such as schools and hospitals throughout the country - but if they play their cards right, they will have a massive amount of goodwill from rich countries.
Russia, on the other hand, will have a devastated economy and they're killing off their one success area - energy exports. Even if the war ended tomorrow, in ten years the market for Russian energy will be much reduced. Firstly because of the rush for green energy, and secondly because they've shown they're unreliable providers. Russia has wasted twenty years of bounty, stealing rather than investing.
It will be the work of a decade or two, but it's perfectly possible that Ukraine might do a West Germany after WWII, or South Korea after 1955, and turn their economy massively around. And as Germany found, having your infrastructure destroyed can leave you with a very useful blank canvas to rebuild on.
If Ukraine 'wins' this war and peace, they have massive opportunities - if they can take them.
And when this ends, Russia has another problem waiting for them. Because of the seized planes etc they have people out there who will be seeking many, many billions in legal restitution. They will have to deal with that before re-entering a number of markets. The process of sorting out the legal stuff will take decades and involve a lot of money.
Mr. Password, entirely possible both things are true. Smaller settlements grow up as more natural communities and see more mixing of different people (generations, for example) but are especially difficult for those who don't fit into the mould (the ballet dreamer in a mining town. Or the miner dreamer in a ballet town...).
I've made this comparison before, but I do believe PB is like a local pub you can put in your pocket, on your phone or your tablet
Which makes it quite marvellous
You can be anywhere in the world - Glasgow, LA, Brazil, Antarctica - and you open PB on your screen and that's like opening the door to the pub. And inside you find the regulars, just like in Cheers, wittering away as normal. TSE is polishing the glasses and rolling his eyes at @HYUFD, in the corner by the broken slot machine @Nigel_Foremain is bickering with @BartholomewRoberts, meanwhile @rcs1000 has just rolled out of the loos with cocaine on his moustache and is being teased by @Cyclefree, and @IshmaelZ is completely fucked off his tits AGAIN, but no one minds, and @CorrectHorseBattery is taking notes
@Theuniondivvie is in the corner talking to himself about indyref, with a tartan lampshade over his head
It's brilliant
And, like a pub, people get barred.
Yes, the deeper you go, the more pertinent the comparison becomes. Sadly, local pubs full of regulars you know well are becoming rare. I've only had one real local in my adult, post Uni life - as in a place I could walk in and guarantee to find friends drinking at the bar. It was fabulous. Deeply reassuring. And it lasted about3 years (it was The Dolphin near Red Lion Square in Holborn)
These days my friends are dispersed around London, UK, Europe, the world and I love them, but I can't guarantee to walk in any bar and find them, not at all. It has to be arranged
That's fine, that's normal. But I can push the battered old door to PB and here you all are. So maybe this is an archetype which the internet is reinventing
Endearing post, and quite true. An agreeable always-available space with familiar figures is hard to beat as a valuable part of life. The moderators do a good job in keeping us more or less civil and there's an element of self-restraint too which makes PB stand out from some of the wilder fringes of the internet.
The moderators do a great job, for sure. We are lucky there.
Are there just the three of them - Smithson père et fils and TSE?
Except that there's no-one here who has to go round collecting the used glasses and picking half-eaten crisps off the carpet at the end of the day, or who has to find Leon's comatose body snoring under the corner table....
I've made this comparison before, but I do believe PB is like a local pub you can put in your pocket, on your phone or your tablet
Which makes it quite marvellous
You can be anywhere in the world - Glasgow, LA, Brazil, Antarctica - and you open PB on your screen and that's like opening the door to the pub. And inside you find the regulars, just like in Cheers, wittering away as normal. TSE is polishing the glasses and rolling his eyes at @HYUFD, in the corner by the broken slot machine @Nigel_Foremain is bickering with @BartholomewRoberts, meanwhile @rcs1000 has just rolled out of the loos with cocaine on his moustache and is being teased by @Cyclefree, and @IshmaelZ is completely fucked off his tits AGAIN, but no one minds, and @CorrectHorseBattery is taking notes
@Theuniondivvie is in the corner talking to himself about indyref, with a tartan lampshade over his head
It's brilliant
And, like a pub, people get barred.
Yes, the deeper you go, the more pertinent the comparison becomes. Sadly, local pubs full of regulars you know well are becoming rare. I've only had one real local in my adult, post Uni life - as in a place I could walk in and guarantee to find friends drinking at the bar. It was fabulous. Deeply reassuring. And it lasted about3 years (it was The Dolphin near Red Lion Square in Holborn)
These days my friends are dispersed around London, UK, Europe, the world and I love them, but I can't guarantee to walk in any bar and find them, not at all. It has to be arranged
That's fine, that's normal. But I can push the battered old door to PB and here you all are. So maybe this is an archetype which the internet is reinventing
Endearing post, and quite true. An agreeable always-available space with familiar figures is hard to beat as a valuable part of life. The moderators do a good job in keeping us more or less civil and there's an element of self-restraint too which makes PB stand out from some of the wilder fringes of the internet.
One of the early things I did when I retired, and moved, was the find a pub where I was 'comfortable'! Took me two or three goes but I eventually did. One of the worst things about my present condition is the fact that I can no longer walk down to the pub. And it's only about 5 or so minutes away! Think I'm going to get one of those electric scooters!
Sorry to hear about your mobility issues. Electric scooters are great for the elderly, but IME some elderly people are not quite aware enough of fellow road or pavement users...
On your point: a nice feature of the mid-season Rebus books are Rebus's attempts to find a church where he feels he fits. It goes on for several books as a very minor plot point, and was a great piece of characterisation. He so wants to belong in a church, but cannot find one where he does.
I feel the same way about pubs. Perhaps the only one I got close to feeling like I 'belonged' in was the Square and Compass in Darley Dale, in the Peak District. And I haven't been back there in over twenty years...
Paradox of choice- we think having lots of choices makes us feel good, but there's some evidence that it doesn't.
Before mass ownership of cars, your local pub/church/school was just that- your local and you were happy with that and it was mostly OK. Now we have much more choice because geography matters less. We end up with the extra stress of choosing, and that outweighs any benefits of optimisation.
And in some contexts- certainly churches, probably schools- the stratification and avoidance of different others works against the purpose of the place, in the same way that pb is better than ConHome.
Our local pub (Skehans on Kitto Road, SE14) is really brilliant. It is a genuine local boozer popular with everyone in the community, from the old timers like my neighbour who was born on our street and has been going for decades, to trendy young students. The beer is reasonable for London, it does great Thai food, and has regular music nights. There's usually someone I know in there. My only problem is finding the time to go there!
Mr. Password, entirely possible both things are true. Smaller settlements grow up as more natural communities and see more mixing of different people (generations, for example) but are especially difficult for those who don't fit into the mould (the ballet dreamer in a mining town. Or the miner dreamer in a ballet town...).
I think so, yes. Which means you have a situation with unavoidable tradeoffs.
It would appear that there's an extent to which you can have strong local communities, or you can have a world that allows strong non-local communities of non-conformists, but not both.
Comments
One of the worst things about my present condition is the fact that I can no longer walk down to the pub. And it's only about 5 or so minutes away! Think I'm going to get one of those electric scooters!
I am technically agnostic but put as much likelihood of the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu Gods being real as I do the Greek, Roman, Pagan or Deist ones. Which based on available evidence is incredibly close to, but not at, zero.
I find atheist is a more practical term to use in everyday usage.
On your point: a nice feature of the mid-season Rebus books are Rebus's attempts to find a church where he feels he fits. It goes on for several books as a very minor plot point, and was a great piece of characterisation. He so wants to belong in a church, but cannot find one where he does.
I feel the same way about pubs. Perhaps the only one I got close to feeling like I 'belonged' in was the Square and Compass in Darley Dale, in the Peak District. And I haven't been back there in over twenty years...
Also, command post of Russia's Black Sea Fleet 22nd Army Corps of Coastal Forces destroyed in Chornobaivka - OperCommand South
https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1555072751655964672
Every poster can record a few selected words that AI used to base their entire voice on and then you can choose the “listen option” with pub background soundtrack - maybe you could synchronise your own Spotify into the background..
You could then sit outside if on your own on a summer evening listening to the conversation and chipping in when you want instead of holding your phone etc and scrolling and refreshing.
If Moses did write it, he could get a job on the Guardian now. The OT was a very wordy explanation of how people need to change their ways.
It's frustrating, but still possible that she and Manchin will reach some sort of accommodation.
Bare majorities put any legislation at the mercy of every party's awkward squad. And those two are about as awkward as it gets.
Haven't seen that in a while.
Are there just the three of them - Smithson père et fils and TSE?
PS, the pub is a great analogy @Leon.
Couldn't find a pub he liked, so he opened his own.
https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1555078582405308418
In contrast Russia appears embarrassed by their war dead.
Ukraine will need to rebuild its economy and much of its infrastructure - particularly due to Russia's shelling of civilian infrastructure such as schools and hospitals throughout the country - but if they play their cards right, they will have a massive amount of goodwill from rich countries.
Russia, on the other hand, will have a devastated economy and they're killing off their one success area - energy exports. Even if the war ended tomorrow, in ten years the market for Russian energy will be much reduced. Firstly because of the rush for green energy, and secondly because they've shown they're unreliable providers. Russia has wasted twenty years of bounty, stealing rather than investing.
It will be the work of a decade or two, but it's perfectly possible that Ukraine might do a West Germany after WWII, or South Korea after 1955, and turn their economy massively around. And as Germany found, having your infrastructure destroyed can leave you with a very useful blank canvas to rebuild on.
If Ukraine 'wins' this war and peace, they have massive opportunities - if they can take them.
Without enthusiasm.
Not much chance here.
I remember it being pretty bipartisan. The Tories were more extravagant, as I recall, but it's kinda expected behaviour. While for Labour more damaging, as they're supposed to be the good guys.
I very much hope I'm wrong.
I thought money was the standard third topic to be swerved?
You forgot money - but that also applies to it too ... ah. TUD has preempted me.
F1: Williams have signed up Albon for more years:
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.breaking-williams-confirm-albon-for-2023-on-new-multi-year-contract.1rpexVv61cyqPW7h7La6LZ.html
Excitingly, it seems the driver agrees with the team in this instance.
I don't go to church, but I do vote. So to quote Meatloaf "two out of three ain't bad".
https://www.nato-pa.int/content/finland-sweden-accession
Before mass ownership of cars, your local pub/church/school was just that- your local and you were happy with that and it was mostly OK. Now we have much more choice because geography matters less. We end up with the extra stress of choosing, and that outweighs any benefits of optimisation.
And in some contexts- certainly churches, probably schools- the stratification and avoidance of different others works against the purpose of the place, in the same way that pb is better than ConHome.
@JAHeale
Source close to IDS said “if he takes Chief Whip after the jobs he has had, I’ll glue my naked torso to the Chinese embassy gate.”
https://twitter.com/JAHeale/status/1554951515500122112
God said to Abraham, kill me a son. Abe said man you must be putting me on. God said no, Abe said what? God said you can do what you want Abe but, the next time you see me coming you better run. Abe said where you want this killing done? God said, right here, down on Highway 61.
I assume the last line isn't in the original. But it does capture the batshit craziness of the story.
It would appear that there's an extent to which you can have strong local communities, or you can have a world that allows strong non-local communities of non-conformists, but not both.
Ming performed like he was still living in the 1930s.