Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
The main trigger warning on Hardy should surely be that this book is indescribably boring and pompous and there is a serious risk of losing the will to live whilst studying it.
My faction was into communitarian hivemind living, so we decided China were our natural allies (Putin seemed a bit too elitist for our taste). We agreed with them that they would allow us to settle our huge alien amphibious domes in the South China Sea, in return for which we would defend it against the Americans or any other low-tech (compared to our scary alien tech) opponents.
Sadly, we didn't actually have any advanced weapons tech, but I, um, forgot to mention that to them. However, since everyone, including the American players, thought that we had, it was a perfectly good deterrent.
There are some terrifying speculations by quite serious people positing the theory that aliens, should they be visiting us, might be actively malign - or appear so to us, in their indifference
I guess I always presume that if aliens did ever arrive, they'd be kinda friendly if vastly superior, or neutral observers of our funny ways. ET in the movie
What if they want to hurt us? Or toy with us for sport?
omg I'M GOING TO THE GYM
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods aliens; They kill us for their sport.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Well, Rotters, they apparently can't be asked to think about structural racism without sending the white ones into paroxyms of deeply damaging personal guilt, so you know ...
So a bit like the left, the Civil Service and antisemitism then?
Yes - in the sense of not at all and I'm not sure even you know what point you're trying to make.
I think polling against privatisation has been pretty consistent for decades.
People want stuff and think they can get cheaper stuff if some politician can be instructed. Do they want to pay the capital cost of the stuff infrastructure? Not really.
What's that got to do with privatisation/nationalisation?
The stuff = water, etc. The cheap stuff = politicians holding the price down by running working losses and recapitalising it and borrowing against your kids' tax bill. The capital cost = paying for the water treatment, generating plants, sorting offices, etc.
I ask once again, what has any of that got to do with privatisation/nationalisation?
People think you can nationalise water or mail and you convince Boris to hold down the price by telling pollsters you'll vote Labour, so they borrow to keep it cheap.
I think you underestimate people. They just don't see how privatisation has helped improve these services.
But that doesn't explain a 3:1 margin in favour of Neo British Rail.
I think polling against privatisation has been pretty consistent for decades.
People want stuff and think they can get cheaper stuff if some politician can be instructed. Do they want to pay the capital cost of the stuff infrastructure? Not really.
What's that got to do with privatisation/nationalisation?
The stuff = water, etc. The cheap stuff = politicians holding the price down by running working losses and recapitalising it and borrowing against your kids' tax bill. The capital cost = paying for the water treatment, generating plants, sorting offices, etc.
I ask once again, what has any of that got to do with privatisation/nationalisation?
People think you can nationalise water or mail and you convince Boris to hold down the price by telling pollsters you'll vote Labour, so they borrow to keep it cheap.
I think you underestimate people. They just don't see how privatisation has helped improve these services.
But that doesn't explain a 3:1 margin in favour of Neo British Rail.
How has privatisation helped the railways?
(Hint: not at all.)
That's why nobody uses the railways now compared to the 80s.
Hint: it helps when you don't need to compete for worthwhile capital investment against the NHS.
Wow. Just got around to reading the Paul Johnson piece in Times.
Talk about taking both barrels to the politicians we have today and their economic lies and cakeist, popularist nonsense.
"Neither [candidate] even seems to want to acknowledge that, without more money, runaway inflation will impose another dose of austerity on our public services."
"The so-called fiscal headroom which is being merrily spent is largely illusory."
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
The main trigger warning on Hardy should surely be that this book is indescribably boring and pompous and there is a serious risk of losing the will to live whilst studying it.
Not Far from the Madding Crowd.
Under the Greenwood Tree or The Woodlanders maybe.
This *feels* quite convincing. But then the "rock in a loch" hypothesis felt equally convincing
So I wonder if there is - as I suggested before - a human urge to believe the least weird explanation for something weird, to the extent that you will mentally overrule what your eyes are seeing
What the photo shows is a whacking big weird thing hanging in the sky. What my brains tells me I am seeing is just a rock in a puddle! No, it's just a mountain!
Never "it's a really big weird thing hanging in the sky"
Whatever is going on in that photograph is very very unlikely to be a temperature inversion (cloud sea). I've seen quite a few of these in Scotland.
For a start they usually have a clear sky above, and although you can occasionally see layers during fronts these are normally very local and you can't see distant objects.
What definition there is in the sky in the photograph is also visible both above and below the 'object'. Layered cloud of any kind would be visible as a line across the image.
Interesting. So that rules out the mountain hypothesis?
Well, I don't buy it, anyway. For what that's worth.
All opinions are worth something, and yours is quite persuasive here
I tend to agree. The shape being so similar to a mountaintop is probably coincidence. Nothing else supports this thesis. How could it happen, photographically? Psychologically? How come the plane is in the photo but no other landscape features? Nor does this hypothesis remotely square with the eye-witness accounts (which might all be lies, of course)
I'm down to three explanations
1. A long elaborate hoax 2. Surprising human tech 3. Aliens!???!
I'm suspicious of those branches at the top: suggests they've hung something - perhaps some symmetrical stone object - from them with transparent thread.
If you were going to hang something, you'd make very sure there was no visible means of support, surely!
Anyway, here's a cropped picture of Schiehallion (being a suitable hill for an EXPERIMENT) in a cloud inversion. I took this in January, not August, but you get the idea. The location is only a few miles from Calvine (in the Drumochter hills).
Even with a serious overexposure I think you'd struggle to get something similar to the mystery image.
I still think it is a reflection but am prepared to be convinced.
I totally understand the obsession with ALIENS. Are we alone? It is a fundamental question which will shape how we see the universe if it can ever answered in the negative.
I doubt we'll discover them in this way, though.
The mountain top/stone in loch theories ignore the backstory to the photo. They would be great if there were none, and this was just a photo of unknown provenance bought at a car boot sale. But there is, there's the statement of the guys who took the photo (or at least provided it) who say it was a thing in the sky, which shot upwards after 10 minutes. So if they are lying, what's the theory? That a stone in a loch is the best way of faking the UAP or that they took a picture of an uninteresting lochstone and later looked at it and said Hey, that looks like a spaceship? Neither sems likely. The photo is 1 of 6 by the way, so the mountain in clouds claim looks a non starter unlessly they were spookily static clouds.
What it is, it's the USAF Aurora project.
There is also the plentiful evidence that the MoD took this seriously, and decided the photos showed a real object, hanging in the sky. Not a rock or a mountain
Nick Pope has been a much derided figure in Fortean UFOlogical circles, but he has been adamant for years that these photos existed and they were lost/hidden, and after all that derision, here indeed is one of the photos, and it is a very close match to what he has described all along. He's been entirely consistent. He is vindicated
He is particularly interesting because, in his opinion and those of some colleagues- it seems - this is NOT American tech
Have you eve4 wondered why we never see the same UFO in other reports? If this is an alien craft, and an example of the ones that have been visiting for 60 years, why is there no consistency?
On this particular case, and Nick Pope in particular, I have never doubted the existence of at least one photo, that likely spooked someone in the RAF. But Pope has a new career to push, and books to sell, and a living to make. He is skin in the game.
There are other photos and videos with similar shaped craft, same with 'saucer' shaped, triangles etc. There are other eye witness cases with similar shaped craft - Todmorden Yorks in the 70s for example.
Todmorden - the ex policeman who wrote a story and then pretended it was real? With some startling similarities to other stories? That Todmorden?
Godfreys book was written long after what he reported (and covered his experience, the Adamski case he had investigated as an officer and Travis Walton amongst others) and obviously like any report you can believe, dismiss or scoff as pleases you. Its an example, before the 1990 Calvine photo, of diamond shaped craft in ufo lore. No more, no less.
I’d suggest nothing actually happened at Todmorden. He initially wrote a piece of fiction, that somehow mutated into a report of true events. The Adamski link is the giveaway.
Its quite possible nothing did happen and Godfrey made it up, yes, its also possible he saw something weird. Im not sure where this 'wrote a piece of fiction' comes from? He had never written anything, his alleged encounter was reported by him at the time in 1980? Adamski is just odd regardless. Guy disappears and turns up on top of a coal pile, dead. But its just an unsolved possible murder mystery, theres no indication of paranormal involvement imo.
There was a piece in Fortean Times recently about this. That’s when I was struck by the similarity of the name Adamski and George Adamski. Very fishy.
Well he was called Zigmund Adamski and he turned up dead on top of a coal pile. The coroner who examined his body was called James Turnbull. It was reported on in the national press at the time. Its an interesting mystery, there is no need for paranormal extras on that one. The surname is a common enough Polish surname. He was Polish.
Why did the PC leap to the idea of alien abduction? Maybe he’d been reading about George Adamski...
He didnt. Others (tabloids via 'locals') proposed that. Godfrey just said he couldnt rule it out, he doesn't know how Adamski wound up atop the coal pile but believes he was placed there. I agree the initial suggestions of alien involvement might come from the name coincidence. Godfreys encounter later might be made up or he might have seen something weird, i have no way of knowing. As i said i was just using it as an example of similar shaped craft in ufo lore
Wow. Just got around to reading the Paul Johnson piece in Times.
Talk about taking both barrels to the politicians we have today and their economic lies and cakeist, popularist nonsense.
"Neither [candidate] even seems to want to acknowledge that, without more money, runaway inflation will impose another dose of austerity on our public services."
"The so-called fiscal headroom which is being merrily spent is largely illusory."
He's one of the culprits IMO. His articles are constantly calling for more spending, he's turned the IFS into a lobby group for big government and unlimited welfare spending. He can be safely ignored.
This *feels* quite convincing. But then the "rock in a loch" hypothesis felt equally convincing
So I wonder if there is - as I suggested before - a human urge to believe the least weird explanation for something weird, to the extent that you will mentally overrule what your eyes are seeing
What the photo shows is a whacking big weird thing hanging in the sky. What my brains tells me I am seeing is just a rock in a puddle! No, it's just a mountain!
Never "it's a really big weird thing hanging in the sky"
Whatever is going on in that photograph is very very unlikely to be a temperature inversion (cloud sea). I've seen quite a few of these in Scotland.
For a start they usually have a clear sky above, and although you can occasionally see layers during fronts these are normally very local and you can't see distant objects.
What definition there is in the sky in the photograph is also visible both above and below the 'object'. Layered cloud of any kind would be visible as a line across the image.
Interesting. So that rules out the mountain hypothesis?
Well, I don't buy it, anyway. For what that's worth.
All opinions are worth something, and yours is quite persuasive here
I tend to agree. The shape being so similar to a mountaintop is probably coincidence. Nothing else supports this thesis. How could it happen, photographically? Psychologically? How come the plane is in the photo but no other landscape features? Nor does this hypothesis remotely square with the eye-witness accounts (which might all be lies, of course)
I'm down to three explanations
1. A long elaborate hoax 2. Surprising human tech 3. Aliens!???!
I'm suspicious of those branches at the top: suggests they've hung something - perhaps some symmetrical stone object - from them with transparent thread.
If you were going to hang something, you'd make very sure there was no visible means of support, surely!
Anyway, here's a cropped picture of Schiehallion (being a suitable hill for an EXPERIMENT) in a cloud inversion. I took this in January, not August, but you get the idea. The location is only a few miles from Calvine (in the Drumochter hills).
Even with a serious overexposure I think you'd struggle to get something similar to the mystery image.
I still think it is a reflection but am prepared to be convinced.
I totally understand the obsession with ALIENS. Are we alone? It is a fundamental question which will shape how we see the universe if it can ever answered in the negative.
I doubt we'll discover them in this way, though.
The mountain top/stone in loch theories ignore the backstory to the photo. They would be great if there were none, and this was just a photo of unknown provenance bought at a car boot sale. But there is, there's the statement of the guys who took the photo (or at least provided it) who say it was a thing in the sky, which shot upwards after 10 minutes. So if they are lying, what's the theory? That a stone in a loch is the best way of faking the UAP or that they took a picture of an uninteresting lochstone and later looked at it and said Hey, that looks like a spaceship? Neither sems likely. The photo is 1 of 6 by the way, so the mountain in clouds claim looks a non starter unlessly they were spookily static clouds.
What it is, it's the USAF Aurora project.
There is also the plentiful evidence that the MoD took this seriously, and decided the photos showed a real object, hanging in the sky. Not a rock or a mountain
Nick Pope has been a much derided figure in Fortean UFOlogical circles, but he has been adamant for years that these photos existed and they were lost/hidden, and after all that derision, here indeed is one of the photos, and it is a very close match to what he has described all along. He's been entirely consistent. He is vindicated
He is particularly interesting because, in his opinion and those of some colleagues- it seems - this is NOT American tech
Have you eve4 wondered why we never see the same UFO in other reports? If this is an alien craft, and an example of the ones that have been visiting for 60 years, why is there no consistency?
On this particular case, and Nick Pope in particular, I have never doubted the existence of at least one photo, that likely spooked someone in the RAF. But Pope has a new career to push, and books to sell, and a living to make. He is skin in the game.
There are other photos and videos with similar shaped craft, same with 'saucer' shaped, triangles etc. There are other eye witness cases with similar shaped craft - Todmorden Yorks in the 70s for example.
Todmorden - the ex policeman who wrote a story and then pretended it was real? With some startling similarities to other stories? That Todmorden?
Godfreys book was written long after what he reported (and covered his experience, the Adamski case he had investigated as an officer and Travis Walton amongst others) and obviously like any report you can believe, dismiss or scoff as pleases you. Its an example, before the 1990 Calvine photo, of diamond shaped craft in ufo lore. No more, no less.
I’d suggest nothing actually happened at Todmorden. He initially wrote a piece of fiction, that somehow mutated into a report of true events. The Adamski link is the giveaway.
Its quite possible nothing did happen and Godfrey made it up, yes, its also possible he saw something weird. Im not sure where this 'wrote a piece of fiction' comes from? He had never written anything, his alleged encounter was reported by him at the time in 1980? Adamski is just odd regardless. Guy disappears and turns up on top of a coal pile, dead. But its just an unsolved possible murder mystery, theres no indication of paranormal involvement imo.
There was a piece in Fortean Times recently about this. That’s when I was struck by the similarity of the name Adamski and George Adamski. Very fishy.
Well he was called Zigmund Adamski and he turned up dead on top of a coal pile. The coroner who examined his body was called James Turnbull. It was reported on in the national press at the time. Its an interesting mystery, there is no need for paranormal extras on that one. The surname is a common enough Polish surname. He was Polish.
Why did the PC leap to the idea of alien abduction? Maybe he’d been reading about George Adamski...
He didnt. Others (tabloids via 'locals') proposed that. Godfrey just said he couldnt rule it out, he doesn't know how Adamski wound up atop the coal pile but believes he was placed there. I agree the initial suggestions of alien involvement might come from the name coincidence. Godfreys encounter later might be made up or he might have seen sonething weird, i have no way of knowing. As i said i was just using it as an example of similar shaped craft in ufo lore
Fair enough. The Fortean Times piece was essentially saying he made up everything, initially for a short story, and later it became an ‘it happened to me’ story, following on from other stories.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Well, Rotters, they apparently can't be asked to think about structural racism without sending the white ones into paroxyms of deeply damaging personal guilt, so you know ...
So a bit like the left, the Civil Service and antisemitism then?
Yes - in the sense of not at all and I'm not sure even you know what point you're trying to make.
You know exactly the point I'm making, and you know its right too.
There's no difference between 'the white ones' getting upset asking to think about structural racism and 'the left ones' being asked to do so about antisemitism. The vitriol and anger we saw this weekend about being asked to think about antisemitism would make any gammon proud.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
The main trigger warning on Hardy should surely be that this book is indescribably boring and pompous and there is a serious risk of losing the will to live whilst studying it.
Not Far from the Madding Crowd.
Under the Greenwood Tree or The Woodlanders maybe.
I certainly don't remember Far From being pompous and boring.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Well, Rotters, they apparently can't be asked to think about structural racism without sending the white ones into paroxyms of deeply damaging personal guilt, so you know ...
Yes? That would also be stupid.
I don't get it - if the story is true it is utterly silly, and the presence of snowflake reactions to structural racism or whatever wouldn't make it less silly. It would be incredibly infantilising if true, and manbaby reactions on another matter wouldn't affect that.
Both notions are arguably silly. But the arguable silliness of one sort gets more airtime. Many opine on the silliness of things like R just linked to there from the Mail. Fewer opine on the silliness of thinking white kids can't cope with a bit of the old CRT.
I think polling against privatisation has been pretty consistent for decades.
People want stuff and think they can get cheaper stuff if some politician can be instructed. Do they want to pay the capital cost of the stuff infrastructure? Not really.
What's that got to do with privatisation/nationalisation?
The stuff = water, etc. The cheap stuff = politicians holding the price down by running working losses and recapitalising it and borrowing against your kids' tax bill. The capital cost = paying for the water treatment, generating plants, sorting offices, etc.
I ask once again, what has any of that got to do with privatisation/nationalisation?
People think you can nationalise water or mail and you convince Boris to hold down the price by telling pollsters you'll vote Labour, so they borrow to keep it cheap.
I think you underestimate people. They just don't see how privatisation has helped improve these services.
But that doesn't explain a 3:1 margin in favour of Neo British Rail.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Well, Rotters, they apparently can't be asked to think about structural racism without sending the white ones into paroxyms of deeply damaging personal guilt, so you know ...
So a bit like the left, the Civil Service and antisemitism then?
Yes - in the sense of not at all and I'm not sure even you know what point you're trying to make.
You know exactly the point I'm making, and you know its right too.
There's no difference between 'the white ones' getting upset asking to think about structural racism and 'the left ones' being asked to do so about antisemitism. The vitriol and anger we saw this weekend about being asked to think about antisemitism would make any gammon proud.
Barty, love, even by your standards this is howling at the moon. It's like accusing Freya the walrus of anti semitism. The idea is derided, and not because anti semitism differs from other flavours of racism.
They quite sensibly don't want to get the blame when it doesn't improve anything, especially if 70% of people think it will.
If you're saying it's equally useless whether privately owned or publicly owned, I'm inclined to agree.
We can therefore also argue all the money spent on the privatisation process was also wasted as it's made no difference at all.
Still when you have a political class so paralysed by fear of the largely foreign-owned media that the very concept of a tax rise can't even be mentioned without a cesspit full of slurry being figuratively emptied over anyone proposing such an idea, it may be we need to re-think notions of ownership down to fundamental levels.
I think polling against privatisation has been pretty consistent for decades.
I think it’s interesting! Has the polling always been so high, across multiple sectors?
Yes, it's only really where people view it as a consumer product they can exercise an active choice over (banks, flights and telecoms) and not a 'natural monopoly ' that have produced majorities for privatisation.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Well, Rotters, they apparently can't be asked to think about structural racism without sending the white ones into paroxyms of deeply damaging personal guilt, so you know ...
So a bit like the left, the Civil Service and antisemitism then?
Yes - in the sense of not at all and I'm not sure even you know what point you're trying to make.
You know exactly the point I'm making, and you know its right too.
There's no difference between 'the white ones' getting upset asking to think about structural racism and 'the left ones' being asked to do so about antisemitism. The vitriol and anger we saw this weekend about being asked to think about antisemitism would make any gammon proud.
Barty, love, even by your standards this is howling at the moon. It's like accusing Freya the walrus of anti semitism. The idea is derided, and not because anti semitism differs from other flavours of racism.
So structural racism is a real problem, but the Civil Service uniquely is completely free from structural racism?
They quite sensibly don't want to get the blame when it doesn't improve anything, especially if 70% of people think it will.
If you're saying it's equally useless whether privately owned or publicly owned, I'm inclined to agree.
We can therefore also argue all the money spent on the privatisation process was also wasted as it's made no difference at all.
Still when you have a political class so paralysed by fear of the largely foreign-owned media that the very concept of a tax rise can't even be mentioned without a cesspit full of slurry being figuratively emptied over anyone proposing such an idea, it may be we need to re-think notions of ownership down to fundamental levels.
You release money from privatisation to spend on other things, like NHS that actually win votes, and other free owls. Admittedly, these are probably not much better uses of money.
Looks like the exact spot where the Calvine photo was taken has been found: fence, trees, location, it all tallies, and matches the eye-witness reports
That rules out "rock in a loch", pretty much (unless of course the entire thing is a highly elaborate hoax extending over decades). Still a chance it is mountain-in-cloud, but I agree with other PB-ers that seems far fetched, photographically
So we are left with this *thing* hanging in the grey Scottish sky. Or a hoax
As many, many, many people have pointed out already, the thing looks like - and is in the right time period for - the top secret SR-91 Aurora spy plane.
D notice in newspaper? US government notified someone's been taking pictures of their secret spy plane? Colour me surprised. It's Aurora.
Case closed. How many more days are we going to spend on this?
Why this obsession with Aurora? If it ever existed, it was a hypersonic plane designed to operate at extreme altitude, not fly down a Scottish glen at low speed.
There's only one top secret plane that definitely existed - was being tested by the RAF in 1990 - and looked very odd and triangular. That's the F117 / Nighthawk.
But I still don't think the photograph looks like one, nor could it ascend vertically as described.
I think polling against privatisation has been pretty consistent for decades.
Apart from the privatisations of BA and BT the public have long wanted to keep the utilities and railways etc nationalised even when they were privatised yes
Utilities as sexy businesses delivering big bucks for shareholders and senior execs feels wrong to people, I think.
Labour are missing a trick by being scared to suggest nationalisation of major utilities, especially those that are natural monopolies.
I support it but I think they are - with good reason - wary of landing themselves with having to explain how they'd fund the upfront cost.
I think polling against privatisation has been pretty consistent for decades.
People want stuff and think they can get cheaper stuff if some politician can be instructed. Do they want to pay the capital cost of the stuff infrastructure? Not really.
What's that got to do with privatisation/nationalisation?
The stuff = water, etc. The cheap stuff = politicians holding the price down by running working losses and recapitalising it and borrowing against your kids' tax bill. The capital cost = paying for the water treatment, generating plants, sorting offices, etc.
I ask once again, what has any of that got to do with privatisation/nationalisation?
People think you can nationalise water or mail and you convince Boris to hold down the price by telling pollsters you'll vote Labour, so they borrow to keep it cheap.
I think you underestimate people. They just don't see how privatisation has helped improve these services.
But that doesn't explain a 3:1 margin in favour of Neo British Rail.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Don't remember much about it except thinking Bathsheba was a complete c--- and Gabriel deserved better. But the one about the Oxford stonemason is as disturbing as it gets.
Jude the Obscure.
Tess of the D'Urbevilles definitely has its moments too.
Looks like the exact spot where the Calvine photo was taken has been found: fence, trees, location, it all tallies, and matches the eye-witness reports
That rules out "rock in a loch", pretty much (unless of course the entire thing is a highly elaborate hoax extending over decades). Still a chance it is mountain-in-cloud, but I agree with other PB-ers that seems far fetched, photographically
So we are left with this *thing* hanging in the grey Scottish sky. Or a hoax
As many, many, many people have pointed out already, the thing looks like - and is in the right time period for - the top secret SR-91 Aurora spy plane.
D notice in newspaper? US government notified someone's been taking pictures of their secret spy plane? Colour me surprised. It's Aurora.
Case closed. How many more days are we going to spend on this?
Why this obsession with Aurora? If it ever existed, it was a hypersonic plane designed to operate at extreme altitude, not fly down a Scottish glen at low speed.
There's only one top secret plane that definitely existed - was being tested by the RAF in 1990 - and looked very odd and triangular. That's the F117 / Nighthawk.
But I still don't think the photograph looks like one, nor could it ascend vertically as described.
Which assumes the witness reports are not lies, or at best not fully accurate.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
The main trigger warning on Hardy should surely be that this book is indescribably boring and pompous and there is a serious risk of losing the will to live whilst studying it.
Not Far from the Madding Crowd.
Under the Greenwood Tree or The Woodlanders maybe.
I think that it’s one of those books that might be an ok read if simply read for pleasure but studying it in English ground any possible pleasure or enjoyment out of it and the millstones ground extremely fine.
I think polling against privatisation has been pretty consistent for decades.
People want stuff and think they can get cheaper stuff if some politician can be instructed. Do they want to pay the capital cost of the stuff infrastructure? Not really.
What's that got to do with privatisation/nationalisation?
The stuff = water, etc. The cheap stuff = politicians holding the price down by running working losses and recapitalising it and borrowing against your kids' tax bill. The capital cost = paying for the water treatment, generating plants, sorting offices, etc.
I ask once again, what has any of that got to do with privatisation/nationalisation?
People think you can nationalise water or mail and you convince Boris to hold down the price by telling pollsters you'll vote Labour, so they borrow to keep it cheap.
I think you underestimate people. They just don't see how privatisation has helped improve these services.
But that doesn't explain a 3:1 margin in favour of Neo British Rail.
I think polling against privatisation has been pretty consistent for decades.
People want stuff and think they can get cheaper stuff if some politician can be instructed. Do they want to pay the capital cost of the stuff infrastructure? Not really.
What's that got to do with privatisation/nationalisation?
The stuff = water, etc. The cheap stuff = politicians holding the price down by running working losses and recapitalising it and borrowing against your kids' tax bill. The capital cost = paying for the water treatment, generating plants, sorting offices, etc.
I ask once again, what has any of that got to do with privatisation/nationalisation?
People think you can nationalise water or mail and you convince Boris to hold down the price by telling pollsters you'll vote Labour, so they borrow to keep it cheap.
I think you underestimate people. They just don't see how privatisation has helped improve these services.
But that doesn't explain a 3:1 margin in favour of Neo British Rail.
How has privatisation helped the railways?
(Hint: not at all.)
Let the numbers do the talking.
The best thing that can be said about BR was that if it’s trends had continued there would by now be nothing left to subsidise.
This *feels* quite convincing. But then the "rock in a loch" hypothesis felt equally convincing
So I wonder if there is - as I suggested before - a human urge to believe the least weird explanation for something weird, to the extent that you will mentally overrule what your eyes are seeing
What the photo shows is a whacking big weird thing hanging in the sky. What my brains tells me I am seeing is just a rock in a puddle! No, it's just a mountain!
Never "it's a really big weird thing hanging in the sky"
Whatever is going on in that photograph is very very unlikely to be a temperature inversion (cloud sea). I've seen quite a few of these in Scotland.
For a start they usually have a clear sky above, and although you can occasionally see layers during fronts these are normally very local and you can't see distant objects.
What definition there is in the sky in the photograph is also visible both above and below the 'object'. Layered cloud of any kind would be visible as a line across the image.
Interesting. So that rules out the mountain hypothesis?
Well, I don't buy it, anyway. For what that's worth.
All opinions are worth something, and yours is quite persuasive here
I tend to agree. The shape being so similar to a mountaintop is probably coincidence. Nothing else supports this thesis. How could it happen, photographically? Psychologically? How come the plane is in the photo but no other landscape features? Nor does this hypothesis remotely square with the eye-witness accounts (which might all be lies, of course)
I'm down to three explanations
1. A long elaborate hoax 2. Surprising human tech 3. Aliens!???!
I'm suspicious of those branches at the top: suggests they've hung something - perhaps some symmetrical stone object - from them with transparent thread.
If you were going to hang something, you'd make very sure there was no visible means of support, surely!
Anyway, here's a cropped picture of Schiehallion (being a suitable hill for an EXPERIMENT) in a cloud inversion. I took this in January, not August, but you get the idea. The location is only a few miles from Calvine (in the Drumochter hills).
Even with a serious overexposure I think you'd struggle to get something similar to the mystery image.
I still think it is a reflection but am prepared to be convinced.
I totally understand the obsession with ALIENS. Are we alone? It is a fundamental question which will shape how we see the universe if it can ever answered in the negative.
I doubt we'll discover them in this way, though.
The mountain top/stone in loch theories ignore the backstory to the photo. They would be great if there were none, and this was just a photo of unknown provenance bought at a car boot sale. But there is, there's the statement of the guys who took the photo (or at least provided it) who say it was a thing in the sky, which shot upwards after 10 minutes. So if they are lying, what's the theory? That a stone in a loch is the best way of faking the UAP or that they took a picture of an uninteresting lochstone and later looked at it and said Hey, that looks like a spaceship? Neither sems likely. The photo is 1 of 6 by the way, so the mountain in clouds claim looks a non starter unlessly they were spookily static clouds.
What it is, it's the USAF Aurora project.
There is also the plentiful evidence that the MoD took this seriously, and decided the photos showed a real object, hanging in the sky. Not a rock or a mountain
Nick Pope has been a much derided figure in Fortean UFOlogical circles, but he has been adamant for years that these photos existed and they were lost/hidden, and after all that derision, here indeed is one of the photos, and it is a very close match to what he has described all along. He's been entirely consistent. He is vindicated
He is particularly interesting because, in his opinion and those of some colleagues- it seems - this is NOT American tech
Have you eve4 wondered why we never see the same UFO in other reports? If this is an alien craft, and an example of the ones that have been visiting for 60 years, why is there no consistency?
On this particular case, and Nick Pope in particular, I have never doubted the existence of at least one photo, that likely spooked someone in the RAF. But Pope has a new career to push, and books to sell, and a living to make. He is skin in the game.
There are other photos and videos with similar shaped craft, same with 'saucer' shaped, triangles etc. There are other eye witness cases with similar shaped craft - Todmorden Yorks in the 70s for example.
Todmorden - the ex policeman who wrote a story and then pretended it was real? With some startling similarities to other stories? That Todmorden?
Godfreys book was written long after what he reported (and covered his experience, the Adamski case he had investigated as an officer and Travis Walton amongst others) and obviously like any report you can believe, dismiss or scoff as pleases you. Its an example, before the 1990 Calvine photo, of diamond shaped craft in ufo lore. No more, no less.
I’d suggest nothing actually happened at Todmorden. He initially wrote a piece of fiction, that somehow mutated into a report of true events. The Adamski link is the giveaway.
Its quite possible nothing did happen and Godfrey made it up, yes, its also possible he saw something weird. Im not sure where this 'wrote a piece of fiction' comes from? He had never written anything, his alleged encounter was reported by him at the time in 1980? Adamski is just odd regardless. Guy disappears and turns up on top of a coal pile, dead. But its just an unsolved possible murder mystery, theres no indication of paranormal involvement imo.
There was a piece in Fortean Times recently about this. That’s when I was struck by the similarity of the name Adamski and George Adamski. Very fishy.
Well he was called Zigmund Adamski and he turned up dead on top of a coal pile. The coroner who examined his body was called James Turnbull. It was reported on in the national press at the time. Its an interesting mystery, there is no need for paranormal extras on that one. The surname is a common enough Polish surname. He was Polish.
Why did the PC leap to the idea of alien abduction? Maybe he’d been reading about George Adamski...
He didnt. Others (tabloids via 'locals') proposed that. Godfrey just said he couldnt rule it out, he doesn't know how Adamski wound up atop the coal pile but believes he was placed there. I agree the initial suggestions of alien involvement might come from the name coincidence. Godfreys encounter later might be made up or he might have seen sonething weird, i have no way of knowing. As i said i was just using it as an example of similar shaped craft in ufo lore
Fair enough. The Fortean Times piece was essentially saying he made up everything, initially for a short story, and later it became an ‘it happened to me’ story, following on from other stories.
I've never heard of him writing a short story but that doesnt mean he didnt i suppose. My understanding of the timeline is.....
June 1980 Adamski disappears and turns up dead on top of a coal pile, Alan Godfrey is one of the PCs called to the scene where he is found December 1980 Alan Godfrey reports a diamond shaped craft blocking the road in Todmorden, his radio doesnt work and next thing he knows its 25 mins later and he is a few hundred yards up the road, its wet except under where he saw the alleged craft where it is dry Sometime in late 1980 to 1981 reports in tabloids play up the mystery of Adamski and suggest 'paranormality' including alien involvement 1981 Godfrey undergoes hypnosis at a friends suggestion as he is facing ridicule at work and 'recovers memories' of an abduction in the missing 25 minutes, he now says he thinks this was the memory of a dream and has never claimed he was abducted but he stands by the initial report of a diamond etc, he leaves the police force later saying he was not taken seriously and it affected his home life 2016 Godfrey releases a book about Adamski, his experience, what he sees as similarities with the Travis Walton case and others.
I think polling against privatisation has been pretty consistent for decades.
People want stuff and think they can get cheaper stuff if some politician can be instructed. Do they want to pay the capital cost of the stuff infrastructure? Not really.
What's that got to do with privatisation/nationalisation?
The stuff = water, etc. The cheap stuff = politicians holding the price down by running working losses and recapitalising it and borrowing against your kids' tax bill. The capital cost = paying for the water treatment, generating plants, sorting offices, etc.
I ask once again, what has any of that got to do with privatisation/nationalisation?
People think you can nationalise water or mail and you convince Boris to hold down the price by telling pollsters you'll vote Labour, so they borrow to keep it cheap.
I think you underestimate people. They just don't see how privatisation has helped improve these services.
But that doesn't explain a 3:1 margin in favour of Neo British Rail.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Well, Rotters, they apparently can't be asked to think about structural racism without sending the white ones into paroxyms of deeply damaging personal guilt, so you know ...
So a bit like the left, the Civil Service and antisemitism then?
Yes - in the sense of not at all and I'm not sure even you know what point you're trying to make.
You know exactly the point I'm making, and you know its right too.
There's no difference between 'the white ones' getting upset asking to think about structural racism and 'the left ones' being asked to do so about antisemitism. The vitriol and anger we saw this weekend about being asked to think about antisemitism would make any gammon proud.
Ok so you're postulating a concept of "lefty fragility" - ie people of that bent flying off the handle when asked to think about antisemitism.
I'll mull and revert. On my phone atm so only doing one or two liners.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Well, Rotters, they apparently can't be asked to think about structural racism without sending the white ones into paroxyms of deeply damaging personal guilt, so you know ...
Yes? That would also be stupid.
I don't get it - if the story is true it is utterly silly, and the presence of snowflake reactions to structural racism or whatever wouldn't make it less silly. It would be incredibly infantilising if true, and manbaby reactions on another matter wouldn't affect that.
Both notions are arguably silly. But the arguable silliness of one sort gets more airtime. Many opine on the silliness of things like R just linked to there from the Mail. Fewer opine on the silliness of thinking white kids can't cope with a bit of the old CRT.
The objection to Critical Race Theory, is that it is complete and utter shite. It is also completely self destructive because it is the product of black academics, and therefore lends a sinister credibility to the theory that black academics are shit. Yes, there is serious systemic denial about the magnitude of the offence of slavery, despite any amount of yebbut WILBERFORCE wankerdom. No, it does not follow that white guys are inescapably white supremacist whether they know it or not.
I think polling against privatisation has been pretty consistent for decades.
People want stuff and think they can get cheaper stuff if some politician can be instructed. Do they want to pay the capital cost of the stuff infrastructure? Not really.
What's that got to do with privatisation/nationalisation?
The stuff = water, etc. The cheap stuff = politicians holding the price down by running working losses and recapitalising it and borrowing against your kids' tax bill. The capital cost = paying for the water treatment, generating plants, sorting offices, etc.
I ask once again, what has any of that got to do with privatisation/nationalisation?
People think you can nationalise water or mail and you convince Boris to hold down the price by telling pollsters you'll vote Labour, so they borrow to keep it cheap.
I think you underestimate people. They just don't see how privatisation has helped improve these services.
But that doesn't explain a 3:1 margin in favour of Neo British Rail.
How has privatisation helped the railways?
(Hint: not at all.)
Let the numbers do the talking.
What's the value graphed?
Passenger journeys on railways over time.
Per hour? Or millions per year? Population adjusted yourney's per year for 1000 population?
This *feels* quite convincing. But then the "rock in a loch" hypothesis felt equally convincing
So I wonder if there is - as I suggested before - a human urge to believe the least weird explanation for something weird, to the extent that you will mentally overrule what your eyes are seeing
What the photo shows is a whacking big weird thing hanging in the sky. What my brains tells me I am seeing is just a rock in a puddle! No, it's just a mountain!
Never "it's a really big weird thing hanging in the sky"
Whatever is going on in that photograph is very very unlikely to be a temperature inversion (cloud sea). I've seen quite a few of these in Scotland.
For a start they usually have a clear sky above, and although you can occasionally see layers during fronts these are normally very local and you can't see distant objects.
What definition there is in the sky in the photograph is also visible both above and below the 'object'. Layered cloud of any kind would be visible as a line across the image.
Interesting. So that rules out the mountain hypothesis?
Well, I don't buy it, anyway. For what that's worth.
All opinions are worth something, and yours is quite persuasive here
I tend to agree. The shape being so similar to a mountaintop is probably coincidence. Nothing else supports this thesis. How could it happen, photographically? Psychologically? How come the plane is in the photo but no other landscape features? Nor does this hypothesis remotely square with the eye-witness accounts (which might all be lies, of course)
I'm down to three explanations
1. A long elaborate hoax 2. Surprising human tech 3. Aliens!???!
I'm suspicious of those branches at the top: suggests they've hung something - perhaps some symmetrical stone object - from them with transparent thread.
If you were going to hang something, you'd make very sure there was no visible means of support, surely!
Anyway, here's a cropped picture of Schiehallion (being a suitable hill for an EXPERIMENT) in a cloud inversion. I took this in January, not August, but you get the idea. The location is only a few miles from Calvine (in the Drumochter hills).
Even with a serious overexposure I think you'd struggle to get something similar to the mystery image.
I still think it is a reflection but am prepared to be convinced.
I totally understand the obsession with ALIENS. Are we alone? It is a fundamental question which will shape how we see the universe if it can ever answered in the negative.
I doubt we'll discover them in this way, though.
The mountain top/stone in loch theories ignore the backstory to the photo. They would be great if there were none, and this was just a photo of unknown provenance bought at a car boot sale. But there is, there's the statement of the guys who took the photo (or at least provided it) who say it was a thing in the sky, which shot upwards after 10 minutes. So if they are lying, what's the theory? That a stone in a loch is the best way of faking the UAP or that they took a picture of an uninteresting lochstone and later looked at it and said Hey, that looks like a spaceship? Neither sems likely. The photo is 1 of 6 by the way, so the mountain in clouds claim looks a non starter unlessly they were spookily static clouds.
What it is, it's the USAF Aurora project.
There is also the plentiful evidence that the MoD took this seriously, and decided the photos showed a real object, hanging in the sky. Not a rock or a mountain
Nick Pope has been a much derided figure in Fortean UFOlogical circles, but he has been adamant for years that these photos existed and they were lost/hidden, and after all that derision, here indeed is one of the photos, and it is a very close match to what he has described all along. He's been entirely consistent. He is vindicated
He is particularly interesting because, in his opinion and those of some colleagues- it seems - this is NOT American tech
Have you eve4 wondered why we never see the same UFO in other reports? If this is an alien craft, and an example of the ones that have been visiting for 60 years, why is there no consistency?
On this particular case, and Nick Pope in particular, I have never doubted the existence of at least one photo, that likely spooked someone in the RAF. But Pope has a new career to push, and books to sell, and a living to make. He is skin in the game.
There are other photos and videos with similar shaped craft, same with 'saucer' shaped, triangles etc. There are other eye witness cases with similar shaped craft - Todmorden Yorks in the 70s for example.
Todmorden - the ex policeman who wrote a story and then pretended it was real? With some startling similarities to other stories? That Todmorden?
Godfreys book was written long after what he reported (and covered his experience, the Adamski case he had investigated as an officer and Travis Walton amongst others) and obviously like any report you can believe, dismiss or scoff as pleases you. Its an example, before the 1990 Calvine photo, of diamond shaped craft in ufo lore. No more, no less.
I’d suggest nothing actually happened at Todmorden. He initially wrote a piece of fiction, that somehow mutated into a report of true events. The Adamski link is the giveaway.
Its quite possible nothing did happen and Godfrey made it up, yes, its also possible he saw something weird. Im not sure where this 'wrote a piece of fiction' comes from? He had never written anything, his alleged encounter was reported by him at the time in 1980? Adamski is just odd regardless. Guy disappears and turns up on top of a coal pile, dead. But its just an unsolved possible murder mystery, theres no indication of paranormal involvement imo.
There was a piece in Fortean Times recently about this. That’s when I was struck by the similarity of the name Adamski and George Adamski. Very fishy.
Well he was called Zigmund Adamski and he turned up dead on top of a coal pile. The coroner who examined his body was called James Turnbull. It was reported on in the national press at the time. Its an interesting mystery, there is no need for paranormal extras on that one. The surname is a common enough Polish surname. He was Polish.
Why did the PC leap to the idea of alien abduction? Maybe he’d been reading about George Adamski...
He didnt. Others (tabloids via 'locals') proposed that. Godfrey just said he couldnt rule it out, he doesn't know how Adamski wound up atop the coal pile but believes he was placed there. I agree the initial suggestions of alien involvement might come from the name coincidence. Godfreys encounter later might be made up or he might have seen sonething weird, i have no way of knowing. As i said i was just using it as an example of similar shaped craft in ufo lore
Fair enough. The Fortean Times piece was essentially saying he made up everything, initially for a short story, and later it became an ‘it happened to me’ story, following on from other stories.
I've never heard of him writing a short story but that doesnt mean he didnt i suppose. My understanding of the timeline is.....
June 1980 Adamski disappears and turns up dead on top of a coal pile, Alan Godfrey is one of the PCs called to the scene where he is found December 1980 Alan Godfrey reports a diamond shaped craft blocking the road in Todmorden, his radio doesnt work and next thing he knows its 25 mins later and he is a few hundred yards up the road, its wet except ubder ehere he saw the alleged craft where it is dry Sometime in late 1980 to 1981 reports in tabloids play up the mystery of Adamski and suggest 'paranormality' inckuding alien involvement 1981 Godfrey undergoes hypnosis at a friends suggestion as he is facing ridicule at work and 'recovers memories' of an abduction in the missing 25 minutes, he now says he thinks this was the memory of a dream and has never claimed he was abducted but he stands by the initial report of a diamond etc, he leaves the police force later saying he was not taken seriously and it affected hus home life 2016 Godfrey releases a book about Adamski, his experience, what he sees as similarities with the Travis Walton case and others.
Looks like the exact spot where the Calvine photo was taken has been found: fence, trees, location, it all tallies, and matches the eye-witness reports
That rules out "rock in a loch", pretty much (unless of course the entire thing is a highly elaborate hoax extending over decades). Still a chance it is mountain-in-cloud, but I agree with other PB-ers that seems far fetched, photographically
So we are left with this *thing* hanging in the grey Scottish sky. Or a hoax
As many, many, many people have pointed out already, the thing looks like - and is in the right time period for - the top secret SR-91 Aurora spy plane.
D notice in newspaper? US government notified someone's been taking pictures of their secret spy plane? Colour me surprised. It's Aurora.
Case closed. How many more days are we going to spend on this?
Why this obsession with Aurora? If it ever existed, it was a hypersonic plane designed to operate at extreme altitude, not fly down a Scottish glen at low speed.
There's only one top secret plane that definitely existed - was being tested by the RAF in 1990 - and looked very odd and triangular. That's the F117 / Nighthawk.
But I still don't think the photograph looks like one, nor could it ascend vertically as described.
Which assumes the witness reports are not lies, or at best not fully accurate.
Witnesses are of course always unreliable, true. There's a chance it could have been an F117 and the witness got a bit excited, although hoax still seems most likely.
If you are going to claim a USAF conspiracy, you might as well go all in on ALIENS.
They quite sensibly don't want to get the blame when it doesn't improve anything, especially if 70% of people think it will.
If you're saying it's equally useless whether privately owned or publicly owned, I'm inclined to agree.
We can therefore also argue all the money spent on the privatisation process was also wasted as it's made no difference at all.
Still when you have a political class so paralysed by fear of the largely foreign-owned media that the very concept of a tax rise can't even be mentioned without a cesspit full of slurry being figuratively emptied over anyone proposing such an idea, it may be we need to re-think notions of ownership down to fundamental levels.
You release money from privatisation to spend on other things, like NHS that actually win votes, and other free owls. Admittedly, these are probably not much better uses of money.
Privatisation is like selling your house - you do it once and it's done. Yes, it's a huge con trick - the public pay for under-valued shares which they then sell at what seems a big profit on day one and the ownership ends up with banks, investment funds and the like.
It's work for share registration companies (well, it was in my time) but the notion of a share-owning democracy doesn't happen - yes, people's pensions and other investments end up in managed funds so we all become dependent on the ebbs and flows of the FTSE250 for example but that's not what I think proponents of a share-owning democracy imagined it might be.
It just rained in Ilford North... for all of five minutes
They keep pushing back all this lovely rain I'm promised
But at least it is a lot cooler than yesterday.
We had truly spectacular thunderstorms last night, probably the loudest I have ever heard, followed by several hours of rain. It has been drizzling today on and off which is probably ideal for absorption.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Well, Rotters, they apparently can't be asked to think about structural racism without sending the white ones into paroxyms of deeply damaging personal guilt, so you know ...
So a bit like the left, the Civil Service and antisemitism then?
Yes - in the sense of not at all and I'm not sure even you know what point you're trying to make.
You know exactly the point I'm making, and you know its right too.
There's no difference between 'the white ones' getting upset asking to think about structural racism and 'the left ones' being asked to do so about antisemitism. The vitriol and anger we saw this weekend about being asked to think about antisemitism would make any gammon proud.
Barty, love, even by your standards this is howling at the moon. It's like accusing Freya the walrus of anti semitism. The idea is derided, and not because anti semitism differs from other flavours of racism.
So structural racism is a real problem, but the Civil Service uniquely is completely free from structural racism?
Its either that, or Jews Don't Count.
No, Barty. Simmer down. Structural racism is a problem in some structures, like the Met and the BNP, but I do not detect it in any structure of which I am a part. There is no earthly reason to think it is prevalent in the majority of organizations in general or the CS in particular.
When you look at the list of how long people were in parliament before they became PM, it does kind of look like Sunak was just one term too soon, though I doubt more time would have helped him now, since he's already had his rise and fall period. Cameron really stands out, but Major never ceases to surprise me with the rapidity of his rise.
Truss - 12 years or Sunak - 7 years Johnson - 11 years May - 19 years Cameron - 9 years Brown - 24 years Blair - 14 years Major - 11 years Thatcher - 20 years Callaghan - 31 years Heath - 20 years Wilson - 19 years Douglas-Home - 27 years (15 as an MP) Macmillan - 31 years Eden - 32 years Attlee - 23 years Churchill - 38 years
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Well, Rotters, they apparently can't be asked to think about structural racism without sending the white ones into paroxyms of deeply damaging personal guilt, so you know ...
But apart from anything else, the best way out is always through. If I were descended from cotton pickin N words I'd want to read every last word of "The Diary Of Thomas Thistlewood - over its 'detail regarding sexual assaults and extreme violence.'" and be enraged about what was done by him to my ancestors. Not be warned off it because triggers.
Thankfully your predilection for being enraged isn't widely shared.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Don't remember much about it except thinking Bathsheba was a complete c--- and Gabriel deserved better. But the one about the Oxford stonemason is as disturbing as it gets.
Jude the Obscure.
Tess of the D'Urbevilles definitely has its moments too.
Someone mentioned Nastassja Kinski on here the other day.
There's a Roman Polanski film with her as the lead from 1980s.
They quite sensibly don't want to get the blame when it doesn't improve anything, especially if 70% of people think it will.
If you're saying it's equally useless whether privately owned or publicly owned, I'm inclined to agree.
We can therefore also argue all the money spent on the privatisation process was also wasted as it's made no difference at all.
Still when you have a political class so paralysed by fear of the largely foreign-owned media that the very concept of a tax rise can't even be mentioned without a cesspit full of slurry being figuratively emptied over anyone proposing such an idea, it may be we need to re-think notions of ownership down to fundamental levels.
You release money from privatisation to spend on other things, like NHS that actually win votes, and other free owls. Admittedly, these are probably not much better uses of money.
Privatisation is like selling your house - you do it once and it's done. Yes, it's a huge con trick - the public pay for under-valued shares which they then sell at what seems a big profit on day one and the ownership ends up with banks, investment funds and the like.
It's work for share registration companies (well, it was in my time) but the notion of a share-owning democracy doesn't happen - yes, people's pensions and other investments end up in managed funds so we all become dependent on the ebbs and flows of the FTSE250 for example but that's not what I think proponents of a share-owning democracy imagined it might be.
It's not really like selling your house, it's more like selling your car. Sometimes you don't need a car of your own, you can pay fare to use the bus provided by someone else.
This *feels* quite convincing. But then the "rock in a loch" hypothesis felt equally convincing
So I wonder if there is - as I suggested before - a human urge to believe the least weird explanation for something weird, to the extent that you will mentally overrule what your eyes are seeing
What the photo shows is a whacking big weird thing hanging in the sky. What my brains tells me I am seeing is just a rock in a puddle! No, it's just a mountain!
Never "it's a really big weird thing hanging in the sky"
Whatever is going on in that photograph is very very unlikely to be a temperature inversion (cloud sea). I've seen quite a few of these in Scotland.
For a start they usually have a clear sky above, and although you can occasionally see layers during fronts these are normally very local and you can't see distant objects.
What definition there is in the sky in the photograph is also visible both above and below the 'object'. Layered cloud of any kind would be visible as a line across the image.
Interesting. So that rules out the mountain hypothesis?
Well, I don't buy it, anyway. For what that's worth.
All opinions are worth something, and yours is quite persuasive here
I tend to agree. The shape being so similar to a mountaintop is probably coincidence. Nothing else supports this thesis. How could it happen, photographically? Psychologically? How come the plane is in the photo but no other landscape features? Nor does this hypothesis remotely square with the eye-witness accounts (which might all be lies, of course)
I'm down to three explanations
1. A long elaborate hoax 2. Surprising human tech 3. Aliens!???!
I'm suspicious of those branches at the top: suggests they've hung something - perhaps some symmetrical stone object - from them with transparent thread.
If you were going to hang something, you'd make very sure there was no visible means of support, surely!
Anyway, here's a cropped picture of Schiehallion (being a suitable hill for an EXPERIMENT) in a cloud inversion. I took this in January, not August, but you get the idea. The location is only a few miles from Calvine (in the Drumochter hills).
Even with a serious overexposure I think you'd struggle to get something similar to the mystery image.
I still think it is a reflection but am prepared to be convinced.
I totally understand the obsession with ALIENS. Are we alone? It is a fundamental question which will shape how we see the universe if it can ever answered in the negative.
I doubt we'll discover them in this way, though.
The mountain top/stone in loch theories ignore the backstory to the photo. They would be great if there were none, and this was just a photo of unknown provenance bought at a car boot sale. But there is, there's the statement of the guys who took the photo (or at least provided it) who say it was a thing in the sky, which shot upwards after 10 minutes. So if they are lying, what's the theory? That a stone in a loch is the best way of faking the UAP or that they took a picture of an uninteresting lochstone and later looked at it and said Hey, that looks like a spaceship? Neither sems likely. The photo is 1 of 6 by the way, so the mountain in clouds claim looks a non starter unlessly they were spookily static clouds.
What it is, it's the USAF Aurora project.
There is also the plentiful evidence that the MoD took this seriously, and decided the photos showed a real object, hanging in the sky. Not a rock or a mountain
Nick Pope has been a much derided figure in Fortean UFOlogical circles, but he has been adamant for years that these photos existed and they were lost/hidden, and after all that derision, here indeed is one of the photos, and it is a very close match to what he has described all along. He's been entirely consistent. He is vindicated
He is particularly interesting because, in his opinion and those of some colleagues- it seems - this is NOT American tech
Have you eve4 wondered why we never see the same UFO in other reports? If this is an alien craft, and an example of the ones that have been visiting for 60 years, why is there no consistency?
On this particular case, and Nick Pope in particular, I have never doubted the existence of at least one photo, that likely spooked someone in the RAF. But Pope has a new career to push, and books to sell, and a living to make. He is skin in the game.
There are other photos and videos with similar shaped craft, same with 'saucer' shaped, triangles etc. There are other eye witness cases with similar shaped craft - Todmorden Yorks in the 70s for example.
Todmorden - the ex policeman who wrote a story and then pretended it was real? With some startling similarities to other stories? That Todmorden?
Godfreys book was written long after what he reported (and covered his experience, the Adamski case he had investigated as an officer and Travis Walton amongst others) and obviously like any report you can believe, dismiss or scoff as pleases you. Its an example, before the 1990 Calvine photo, of diamond shaped craft in ufo lore. No more, no less.
I’d suggest nothing actually happened at Todmorden. He initially wrote a piece of fiction, that somehow mutated into a report of true events. The Adamski link is the giveaway.
Yep. The adamski link was the killer giveaway for me too.
This *feels* quite convincing. But then the "rock in a loch" hypothesis felt equally convincing
So I wonder if there is - as I suggested before - a human urge to believe the least weird explanation for something weird, to the extent that you will mentally overrule what your eyes are seeing
What the photo shows is a whacking big weird thing hanging in the sky. What my brains tells me I am seeing is just a rock in a puddle! No, it's just a mountain!
Never "it's a really big weird thing hanging in the sky"
Whatever is going on in that photograph is very very unlikely to be a temperature inversion (cloud sea). I've seen quite a few of these in Scotland.
For a start they usually have a clear sky above, and although you can occasionally see layers during fronts these are normally very local and you can't see distant objects.
What definition there is in the sky in the photograph is also visible both above and below the 'object'. Layered cloud of any kind would be visible as a line across the image.
Interesting. So that rules out the mountain hypothesis?
Well, I don't buy it, anyway. For what that's worth.
All opinions are worth something, and yours is quite persuasive here
I tend to agree. The shape being so similar to a mountaintop is probably coincidence. Nothing else supports this thesis. How could it happen, photographically? Psychologically? How come the plane is in the photo but no other landscape features? Nor does this hypothesis remotely square with the eye-witness accounts (which might all be lies, of course)
I'm down to three explanations
1. A long elaborate hoax 2. Surprising human tech 3. Aliens!???!
I'm suspicious of those branches at the top: suggests they've hung something - perhaps some symmetrical stone object - from them with transparent thread.
If you were going to hang something, you'd make very sure there was no visible means of support, surely!
Anyway, here's a cropped picture of Schiehallion (being a suitable hill for an EXPERIMENT) in a cloud inversion. I took this in January, not August, but you get the idea. The location is only a few miles from Calvine (in the Drumochter hills).
Even with a serious overexposure I think you'd struggle to get something similar to the mystery image.
I still think it is a reflection but am prepared to be convinced.
I totally understand the obsession with ALIENS. Are we alone? It is a fundamental question which will shape how we see the universe if it can ever answered in the negative.
I doubt we'll discover them in this way, though.
The mountain top/stone in loch theories ignore the backstory to the photo. They would be great if there were none, and this was just a photo of unknown provenance bought at a car boot sale. But there is, there's the statement of the guys who took the photo (or at least provided it) who say it was a thing in the sky, which shot upwards after 10 minutes. So if they are lying, what's the theory? That a stone in a loch is the best way of faking the UAP or that they took a picture of an uninteresting lochstone and later looked at it and said Hey, that looks like a spaceship? Neither sems likely. The photo is 1 of 6 by the way, so the mountain in clouds claim looks a non starter unlessly they were spookily static clouds.
What it is, it's the USAF Aurora project.
There is also the plentiful evidence that the MoD took this seriously, and decided the photos showed a real object, hanging in the sky. Not a rock or a mountain
Nick Pope has been a much derided figure in Fortean UFOlogical circles, but he has been adamant for years that these photos existed and they were lost/hidden, and after all that derision, here indeed is one of the photos, and it is a very close match to what he has described all along. He's been entirely consistent. He is vindicated
He is particularly interesting because, in his opinion and those of some colleagues- it seems - this is NOT American tech
Have you eve4 wondered why we never see the same UFO in other reports? If this is an alien craft, and an example of the ones that have been visiting for 60 years, why is there no consistency?
On this particular case, and Nick Pope in particular, I have never doubted the existence of at least one photo, that likely spooked someone in the RAF. But Pope has a new career to push, and books to sell, and a living to make. He is skin in the game.
There are other photos and videos with similar shaped craft, same with 'saucer' shaped, triangles etc. There are other eye witness cases with similar shaped craft - Todmorden Yorks in the 70s for example.
Todmorden - the ex policeman who wrote a story and then pretended it was real? With some startling similarities to other stories? That Todmorden?
Godfreys book was written long after what he reported (and covered his experience, the Adamski case he had investigated as an officer and Travis Walton amongst others) and obviously like any report you can believe, dismiss or scoff as pleases you. Its an example, before the 1990 Calvine photo, of diamond shaped craft in ufo lore. No more, no less.
I’d suggest nothing actually happened at Todmorden. He initially wrote a piece of fiction, that somehow mutated into a report of true events. The Adamski link is the giveaway.
Yep. The adamski link was the killer giveaway for me too.
I think polling against privatisation has been pretty consistent for decades.
People want stuff and think they can get cheaper stuff if some politician can be instructed. Do they want to pay the capital cost of the stuff infrastructure? Not really.
What's that got to do with privatisation/nationalisation?
The stuff = water, etc. The cheap stuff = politicians holding the price down by running working losses and recapitalising it and borrowing against your kids' tax bill. The capital cost = paying for the water treatment, generating plants, sorting offices, etc.
I ask once again, what has any of that got to do with privatisation/nationalisation?
People think you can nationalise water or mail and you convince Boris to hold down the price by telling pollsters you'll vote Labour, so they borrow to keep it cheap.
I think you underestimate people. They just don't see how privatisation has helped improve these services.
But that doesn't explain a 3:1 margin in favour of Neo British Rail.
How has privatisation helped the railways?
(Hint: not at all.)
Let the numbers do the talking.
What's the value graphed?
Passenger journeys on railways over time.
Per hour? Or millions per year? Population adjusted yourney's per year for 1000 population?
Its labelled as passengers but not sure the scale, but the chart is impressive either way. Between privatisation and 2019-20 there was a 128% increase in number of journeys and a 126% increase in passenger-km.
Since many of those who like to say "what has privatisation done for us" tend to like European comparisons, here's another one:
Finally this one is pretty compelling too. Rail modal share (ie percentage of travel by rail):
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Well, Rotters, they apparently can't be asked to think about structural racism without sending the white ones into paroxyms of deeply damaging personal guilt, so you know ...
So a bit like the left, the Civil Service and antisemitism then?
Yes - in the sense of not at all and I'm not sure even you know what point you're trying to make.
You know exactly the point I'm making, and you know its right too.
There's no difference between 'the white ones' getting upset asking to think about structural racism and 'the left ones' being asked to do so about antisemitism. The vitriol and anger we saw this weekend about being asked to think about antisemitism would make any gammon proud.
Barty, love, even by your standards this is howling at the moon. It's like accusing Freya the walrus of anti semitism. The idea is derided, and not because anti semitism differs from other flavours of racism.
So structural racism is a real problem, but the Civil Service uniquely is completely free from structural racism?
Its either that, or Jews Don't Count.
No, Barty. Simmer down. Structural racism is a problem in some structures, like the Met and the BNP, but I do not detect it in any structure of which I am a part. There is no earthly reason to think it is prevalent in the majority of organizations in general or the CS in particular.
@kinabalu will be saying you have white fragility for saying that, while nodding along that you're right on antisemitism.
The best thing that can be said about BR was that if it’s trends had continued there would by now be nothing left to subsidise.
How are comparable rail passenger numbers in Germany, France and Spain?
My recent experience of weekend travel on Avanti wasn't wholly unpleasant but what they called "The Shop" was basically the old buffet car and we travelled both ways without a single ticket check on very full trains but, to their credit, the trains ran well to time and weren't uncomfortable but I would lash out £25 for the Standard Premium next time if I were going all the way to the Lakes from London.
There's huge demand for rail for leisure currently - if Mrs Stodge and I go to Edinbugh later in the year, we'll go on the train and we'll travel well because it's part of the holiday.
I treated myself to First Class when I travelled to Cornwall to scatter my father's ashes the summer before the pandemic. It's still a fantastic journey - well worth the money and the time. Even had at seat service right down to beyond Truro which was marvellous.
To be blunt, I don't care who runs the railways - I do care how they are run and the constant strive to improve services and the passenger experience should be the priorities.
Looks like the exact spot where the Calvine photo was taken has been found: fence, trees, location, it all tallies, and matches the eye-witness reports
That rules out "rock in a loch", pretty much (unless of course the entire thing is a highly elaborate hoax extending over decades). Still a chance it is mountain-in-cloud, but I agree with other PB-ers that seems far fetched, photographically
So we are left with this *thing* hanging in the grey Scottish sky. Or a hoax
As many, many, many people have pointed out already, the thing looks like - and is in the right time period for - the top secret SR-91 Aurora spy plane.
D notice in newspaper? US government notified someone's been taking pictures of their secret spy plane? Colour me surprised. It's Aurora.
Case closed. How many more days are we going to spend on this?
Why this obsession with Aurora? If it ever existed, it was a hypersonic plane designed to operate at extreme altitude, not fly down a Scottish glen at low speed.
There's only one top secret plane that definitely existed - was being tested by the RAF in 1990 - and looked very odd and triangular. That's the F117 / Nighthawk.
But I still don't think the photograph looks like one, nor could it ascend vertically as described.
"Why this obsession with Aurora? If it ever existed, it was a hypersonic plane designed to operate at extreme altitude, not fly down a Scottish glen at low speed."
Well, any plane ever designed has it as quite an important part of the spec that it can reproduceably attain sea level altitude and zero speed, surely?
The best thing that can be said about BR was that if it’s trends had continued there would by now be nothing left to subsidise.
How are comparable rail passenger numbers in Germany, France and Spain?
My recent experience of weekend travel on Avanti wasn't wholly unpleasant but what they called "The Shop" was basically the old buffet car and we travelled both ways without a single ticket check on very full trains but, to their credit, the trains ran well to time and weren't uncomfortable but I would lash out £25 for the Standard Premium next time if I were going all the way to the Lakes from London.
There's huge demand for rail for leisure currently - if Mrs Stodge and I go to Edinbugh later in the year, we'll go on the train and we'll travel well because it's part of the holiday.
I treated myself to First Class when I travelled to Cornwall to scatter my father's ashes the summer before the pandemic. It's still a fantastic journey - well worth the money and the time. Even had at seat service right down to beyond Truro which was marvellous.
To be blunt, I don't care who runs the railways - I do care how they are run and the constant strive to improve services and the passenger experience should be the priorities.
I think the big reason for rail growth is the Swampy-Nimby coalition in the south of England which has shut down new road building. Privatisation can't take the credit for that, but it didn't stand in the way either.
The best thing that can be said about BR was that if it’s trends had continued there would by now be nothing left to subsidise.
How are comparable rail passenger numbers in Germany, France and Spain?
My recent experience of weekend travel on Avanti wasn't wholly unpleasant but what they called "The Shop" was basically the old buffet car and we travelled both ways without a single ticket check on very full trains but, to their credit, the trains ran well to time and weren't uncomfortable but I would lash out £25 for the Standard Premium next time if I were going all the way to the Lakes from London.
There's huge demand for rail for leisure currently - if Mrs Stodge and I go to Edinbugh later in the year, we'll go on the train and we'll travel well because it's part of the holiday.
I treated myself to First Class when I travelled to Cornwall to scatter my father's ashes the summer before the pandemic. It's still a fantastic journey - well worth the money and the time. Even had at seat service right down to beyond Truro which was marvellous.
To be blunt, I don't care who runs the railways - I do care how they are run and the constant strive to improve services and the passenger experience should be the priorities.
Avanti are heavily slashing their timetables from today. I had to book with Chiltern for my trip to Brum tomorrow (checking out the tram to Edgbaston). On the plus side, only £25 return.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Well, Rotters, they apparently can't be asked to think about structural racism without sending the white ones into paroxyms of deeply damaging personal guilt, so you know ...
So a bit like the left, the Civil Service and antisemitism then?
Yes - in the sense of not at all and I'm not sure even you know what point you're trying to make.
You know exactly the point I'm making, and you know its right too.
There's no difference between 'the white ones' getting upset asking to think about structural racism and 'the left ones' being asked to do so about antisemitism. The vitriol and anger we saw this weekend about being asked to think about antisemitism would make any gammon proud.
Barty, love, even by your standards this is howling at the moon. It's like accusing Freya the walrus of anti semitism. The idea is derided, and not because anti semitism differs from other flavours of racism.
So structural racism is a real problem, but the Civil Service uniquely is completely free from structural racism?
Its either that, or Jews Don't Count.
No, Barty. Simmer down. Structural racism is a problem in some structures, like the Met and the BNP, but I do not detect it in any structure of which I am a part. There is no earthly reason to think it is prevalent in the majority of organizations in general or the CS in particular.
@kinabalu will be saying you have white fragility for saying that, while nodding along that you're right on antisemitism.
Jews don't count.
Makes no difference to my point, what some other poster might in your view be saying about it.
The best thing that can be said about BR was that if it’s trends had continued there would by now be nothing left to subsidise.
How are comparable rail passenger numbers in Germany, France and Spain?
My recent experience of weekend travel on Avanti wasn't wholly unpleasant but what they called "The Shop" was basically the old buffet car and we travelled both ways without a single ticket check on very full trains but, to their credit, the trains ran well to time and weren't uncomfortable but I would lash out £25 for the Standard Premium next time if I were going all the way to the Lakes from London.
There's huge demand for rail for leisure currently - if Mrs Stodge and I go to Edinbugh later in the year, we'll go on the train and we'll travel well because it's part of the holiday.
I treated myself to First Class when I travelled to Cornwall to scatter my father's ashes the summer before the pandemic. It's still a fantastic journey - well worth the money and the time. Even had at seat service right down to beyond Truro which was marvellous.
To be blunt, I don't care who runs the railways - I do care how they are run and the constant strive to improve services and the passenger experience should be the priorities.
Avanti are heavily slashing their timetables from today. I had to book with Chiltern for my trip to Brum tomorrow (checking out the tram to Edgbaston). On the plus side, only £25 return.
Yes, I saw that, my friend. A response to a number of factors it seems.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Well, Rotters, they apparently can't be asked to think about structural racism without sending the white ones into paroxyms of deeply damaging personal guilt, so you know ...
But apart from anything else, the best way out is always through. If I were descended from cotton pickin N words I'd want to read every last word of "The Diary Of Thomas Thistlewood - over its 'detail regarding sexual assaults and extreme violence.'" and be enraged about what was done by him to my ancestors. Not be warned off it because triggers.
Thankfully your predilection for being enraged isn't widely shared.
Have you read any of Thomas Thistlewood?
No.
Does your post rise above the level of utterly idle shitposting?
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Well, Rotters, they apparently can't be asked to think about structural racism without sending the white ones into paroxyms of deeply damaging personal guilt, so you know ...
So a bit like the left, the Civil Service and antisemitism then?
Yes - in the sense of not at all and I'm not sure even you know what point you're trying to make.
You know exactly the point I'm making, and you know its right too.
There's no difference between 'the white ones' getting upset asking to think about structural racism and 'the left ones' being asked to do so about antisemitism. The vitriol and anger we saw this weekend about being asked to think about antisemitism would make any gammon proud.
Barty, love, even by your standards this is howling at the moon. It's like accusing Freya the walrus of anti semitism. The idea is derided, and not because anti semitism differs from other flavours of racism.
So structural racism is a real problem, but the Civil Service uniquely is completely free from structural racism?
Its either that, or Jews Don't Count.
No, Barty. Simmer down. Structural racism is a problem in some structures, like the Met and the BNP, but I do not detect it in any structure of which I am a part. There is no earthly reason to think it is prevalent in the majority of organizations in general or the CS in particular.
@kinabalu will be saying you have white fragility for saying that, while nodding along that you're right on antisemitism.
Jews don't count.
Makes no difference to my point, what some other poster might in your view be saying about it.
Since my point was about the hypocrisy and inconsistency, it does indeed. I was responding to Kinabalu, you responded to my response to him, then you object that I was referring to his logic I was replying to.
If like kin you want to say that structural racism is widespread and prevalent and that the people objecting to it being called out are "fragile", then you must either think that uniquely antisemitism of all racisms isn't prevalent (despite all evidence to the contrary that its one of the worst racisms), or that uniquely Jews Don't Count, or accept that those criticising it being called out are equally "fragile".
How are comparable rail passenger numbers in Germany, France and Spain?
My recent experience of weekend travel on Avanti wasn't wholly unpleasant but what they called "The Shop" was basically the old buffet car and we travelled both ways without a single ticket check on very full trains but, to their credit, the trains ran well to time and weren't uncomfortable but I would lash out £25 for the Standard Premium next time if I were going all the way to the Lakes from London.
There's huge demand for rail for leisure currently - if Mrs Stodge and I go to Edinbugh later in the year, we'll go on the train and we'll travel well because it's part of the holiday.
I treated myself to First Class when I travelled to Cornwall to scatter my father's ashes the summer before the pandemic. It's still a fantastic journey - well worth the money and the time. Even had at seat service right down to beyond Truro which was marvellous.
To be blunt, I don't care who runs the railways - I do care how they are run and the constant strive to improve services and the passenger experience should be the priorities.
I think the big reason for rail growth is the Swampy-Nimby coalition in the south of England which has shut down new road building. Privatisation can't take the credit for that, but it didn't stand in the way either.
The growth in leisure traffic is country-wide not just in the south. I'm not aware of a large amount of road building in the north either - expanding road capacity and easing known chokepoints is a good idea but I wouldn't drive to the Lake District from London for a week or to Scotland even if the roads were perfectly new.
On topic - There used to be a popular view on here that "Boris" would jack it all in with alacrity in order to "make squillions" and "have fun". This never rang true to me and it still doesn't. It stems from a romantic and false view of the man as some megawatt all-purpose star with many strings to his bow of which politics is just one. Not so. He's devoted his life to politics. Ok, so in a deeply tacky way, driven 100% by narcissism and 0% by public service, but still. He's above all a political animal. I don't think - and I don't think he thinks - he would make a fortune outside politics and I don't think he'd have much fun either. So I reckon he'll stay on - if he survives the "lying" inquiry and he wins his seat again.
You and I both saw the man for who he is decades ago. He really is an unabashed &£#@!
I can't recall a UK politician quite so repellent to me, and with Farage and Corbyn* waiting in the wings that is some bold assessment.
* Worse even than Chris Williamson and Rob Roberts. I even prefer Chope, Bridgen, Francois, Bone and Philip Davies.
I agree with every word of that. I've usually got quite a latitude for public figures that some find repulsive. But not Boris Johnson. I'd even add people who like or admire him-for any reason whatsoever-to your list
The best thing that can be said about BR was that if it’s trends had continued there would by now be nothing left to subsidise.
How are comparable rail passenger numbers in Germany, France and Spain?
My recent experience of weekend travel on Avanti wasn't wholly unpleasant but what they called "The Shop" was basically the old buffet car and we travelled both ways without a single ticket check on very full trains but, to their credit, the trains ran well to time and weren't uncomfortable but I would lash out £25 for the Standard Premium next time if I were going all the way to the Lakes from London.
There's huge demand for rail for leisure currently - if Mrs Stodge and I go to Edinbugh later in the year, we'll go on the train and we'll travel well because it's part of the holiday.
I treated myself to First Class when I travelled to Cornwall to scatter my father's ashes the summer before the pandemic. It's still a fantastic journey - well worth the money and the time. Even had at seat service right down to beyond Truro which was marvellous.
To be blunt, I don't care who runs the railways - I do care how they are run and the constant strive to improve services and the passenger experience should be the priorities.
@BartholomewRoberts has answered that better than I can. Other EU countries have not matched the passenger boost that privatisation has given us.
When I came south by rail for test matches we used to book first class well in advance. I found it excellent value and very much part of the trip. On Scotrail first class sometimes amounts to no more than a doilie on the seat but on the longer trips the attention, drinks, snacks and space are worth the extra. Sometimes even the internet works.
Looks like the exact spot where the Calvine photo was taken has been found: fence, trees, location, it all tallies, and matches the eye-witness reports
That rules out "rock in a loch", pretty much (unless of course the entire thing is a highly elaborate hoax extending over decades). Still a chance it is mountain-in-cloud, but I agree with other PB-ers that seems far fetched, photographically
So we are left with this *thing* hanging in the grey Scottish sky. Or a hoax
As many, many, many people have pointed out already, the thing looks like - and is in the right time period for - the top secret SR-91 Aurora spy plane.
D notice in newspaper? US government notified someone's been taking pictures of their secret spy plane? Colour me surprised. It's Aurora.
Case closed. How many more days are we going to spend on this?
Why this obsession with Aurora? If it ever existed, it was a hypersonic plane designed to operate at extreme altitude, not fly down a Scottish glen at low speed.
There's only one top secret plane that definitely existed - was being tested by the RAF in 1990 - and looked very odd and triangular. That's the F117 / Nighthawk.
But I still don't think the photograph looks like one, nor could it ascend vertically as described.
"Why this obsession with Aurora? If it ever existed, it was a hypersonic plane designed to operate at extreme altitude, not fly down a Scottish glen at low speed."
Well, any plane ever designed has it as quite an important part of the spec that it can reproduceably attain sea level altitude and zero speed, surely?
Most experimental planes of this type were air launched at altitude.
Yes, they could land, but they weren't really designed to operate for long in soupy air and definitely not at low speed.
The SR-71 was a bit of an exception but you didn't see that buzzing people in Pitlochry. Admittedly it did buzz some people in Norfolk on one famous occasion but they were very lucky it didn't crash.
The best thing that can be said about BR was that if it’s trends had continued there would by now be nothing left to subsidise.
How are comparable rail passenger numbers in Germany, France and Spain?
My recent experience of weekend travel on Avanti wasn't wholly unpleasant but what they called "The Shop" was basically the old buffet car and we travelled both ways without a single ticket check on very full trains but, to their credit, the trains ran well to time and weren't uncomfortable but I would lash out £25 for the Standard Premium next time if I were going all the way to the Lakes from London.
There's huge demand for rail for leisure currently - if Mrs Stodge and I go to Edinbugh later in the year, we'll go on the train and we'll travel well because it's part of the holiday.
I treated myself to First Class when I travelled to Cornwall to scatter my father's ashes the summer before the pandemic. It's still a fantastic journey - well worth the money and the time. Even had at seat service right down to beyond Truro which was marvellous.
To be blunt, I don't care who runs the railways - I do care how they are run and the constant strive to improve services and the passenger experience should be the priorities.
@BartholomewRoberts has answered that better than I can. Other EU countries have not matched the passenger boost that privatisation has given us.
When I came south by rail for test matches we used to book first class well in advance. I found it excellent value and very much part of the trip. On Scotrail first class sometimes amounts to no more than a doilie on the seat but on the longer trips the attention, drinks, snacks and space are worth the extra. Sometimes even the internet works.
Most of peoples' issues with privatisation stem from the separation between franchises and the network. It was done that way because of EU regulations. It should never have been nationalised in the first place.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Well, Rotters, they apparently can't be asked to think about structural racism without sending the white ones into paroxyms of deeply damaging personal guilt, so you know ...
Yes? That would also be stupid.
I don't get it - if the story is true it is utterly silly, and the presence of snowflake reactions to structural racism or whatever wouldn't make it less silly. It would be incredibly infantilising if true, and manbaby reactions on another matter wouldn't affect that.
Both notions are arguably silly. But the arguable silliness of one sort gets more airtime. Many opine on the silliness of things like R just linked to there from the Mail. Fewer opine on the silliness of thinking white kids can't cope with a bit of the old CRT.
The objection to Critical Race Theory, is that it is complete and utter shite. It is also completely self destructive because it is the product of black academics, and therefore lends a sinister credibility to the theory that black academics are shit. Yes, there is serious systemic denial about the magnitude of the offence of slavery, despite any amount of yebbut WILBERFORCE wankerdom. No, it does not follow that white guys are inescapably white supremacist whether they know it or not.
I think polling against privatisation has been pretty consistent for decades.
Apart from the privatisations of BA and BT the public have long wanted to keep the utilities and railways etc nationalised even when they were privatised yes
Utilities as sexy businesses delivering big bucks for shareholders and senior execs feels wrong to people, I think.
How many Brits have ever heard of Enron?
In USA private utilities are the norm, but my guess is that a poll of Americans would show preference for public power, varying from region to region, but with perhaps surprising support from some otherwise conservative people and areas.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
The main trigger warning on Hardy should surely be that this book is indescribably boring and pompous and there is a serious risk of losing the will to live whilst studying it.
This *feels* quite convincing. But then the "rock in a loch" hypothesis felt equally convincing
So I wonder if there is - as I suggested before - a human urge to believe the least weird explanation for something weird, to the extent that you will mentally overrule what your eyes are seeing
What the photo shows is a whacking big weird thing hanging in the sky. What my brains tells me I am seeing is just a rock in a puddle! No, it's just a mountain!
Never "it's a really big weird thing hanging in the sky"
Whatever is going on in that photograph is very very unlikely to be a temperature inversion (cloud sea). I've seen quite a few of these in Scotland.
For a start they usually have a clear sky above, and although you can occasionally see layers during fronts these are normally very local and you can't see distant objects.
What definition there is in the sky in the photograph is also visible both above and below the 'object'. Layered cloud of any kind would be visible as a line across the image.
Interesting. So that rules out the mountain hypothesis?
Well, I don't buy it, anyway. For what that's worth.
All opinions are worth something, and yours is quite persuasive here
I tend to agree. The shape being so similar to a mountaintop is probably coincidence. Nothing else supports this thesis. How could it happen, photographically? Psychologically? How come the plane is in the photo but no other landscape features? Nor does this hypothesis remotely square with the eye-witness accounts (which might all be lies, of course)
I'm down to three explanations
1. A long elaborate hoax 2. Surprising human tech 3. Aliens!???!
I'm suspicious of those branches at the top: suggests they've hung something - perhaps some symmetrical stone object - from them with transparent thread.
If you were going to hang something, you'd make very sure there was no visible means of support, surely!
Anyway, here's a cropped picture of Schiehallion (being a suitable hill for an EXPERIMENT) in a cloud inversion. I took this in January, not August, but you get the idea. The location is only a few miles from Calvine (in the Drumochter hills).
Even with a serious overexposure I think you'd struggle to get something similar to the mystery image.
I still think it is a reflection but am prepared to be convinced.
I totally understand the obsession with ALIENS. Are we alone? It is a fundamental question which will shape how we see the universe if it can ever answered in the negative.
I doubt we'll discover them in this way, though.
The mountain top/stone in loch theories ignore the backstory to the photo. They would be great if there were none, and this was just a photo of unknown provenance bought at a car boot sale. But there is, there's the statement of the guys who took the photo (or at least provided it) who say it was a thing in the sky, which shot upwards after 10 minutes. So if they are lying, what's the theory? That a stone in a loch is the best way of faking the UAP or that they took a picture of an uninteresting lochstone and later looked at it and said Hey, that looks like a spaceship? Neither sems likely. The photo is 1 of 6 by the way, so the mountain in clouds claim looks a non starter unlessly they were spookily static clouds.
What it is, it's the USAF Aurora project.
There is also the plentiful evidence that the MoD took this seriously, and decided the photos showed a real object, hanging in the sky. Not a rock or a mountain
Nick Pope has been a much derided figure in Fortean UFOlogical circles, but he has been adamant for years that these photos existed and they were lost/hidden, and after all that derision, here indeed is one of the photos, and it is a very close match to what he has described all along. He's been entirely consistent. He is vindicated
He is particularly interesting because, in his opinion and those of some colleagues- it seems - this is NOT American tech
Have you eve4 wondered why we never see the same UFO in other reports? If this is an alien craft, and an example of the ones that have been visiting for 60 years, why is there no consistency?
On this particular case, and Nick Pope in particular, I have never doubted the existence of at least one photo, that likely spooked someone in the RAF. But Pope has a new career to push, and books to sell, and a living to make. He is skin in the game.
There are other photos and videos with similar shaped craft, same with 'saucer' shaped, triangles etc. There are other eye witness cases with similar shaped craft - Todmorden Yorks in the 70s for example.
Todmorden - the ex policeman who wrote a story and then pretended it was real? With some startling similarities to other stories? That Todmorden?
Godfreys book was written long after what he reported (and covered his experience, the Adamski case he had investigated as an officer and Travis Walton amongst others) and obviously like any report you can believe, dismiss or scoff as pleases you. Its an example, before the 1990 Calvine photo, of diamond shaped craft in ufo lore. No more, no less.
I’d suggest nothing actually happened at Todmorden. He initially wrote a piece of fiction, that somehow mutated into a report of true events. The Adamski link is the giveaway.
Its quite possible nothing did happen and Godfrey made it up, yes, its also possible he saw something weird. Im not sure where this 'wrote a piece of fiction' comes from? He had never written anything, his alleged encounter was reported by him at the time in 1980? Adamski is just odd regardless. Guy disappears and turns up on top of a coal pile, dead. But its just an unsolved possible murder mystery, theres no indication of paranormal involvement imo.
There was a piece in Fortean Times recently about this. That’s when I was struck by the similarity of the name Adamski and George Adamski. Very fishy.
Well he was called Zigmund Adamski and he turned up dead on top of a coal pile. The coroner who examined his body was called James Turnbull. It was reported on in the national press at the time. Its an interesting mystery, there is no need for paranormal extras on that one. The surname is a common enough Polish surname. He was Polish.
Why did the PC leap to the idea of alien abduction? Maybe he’d been reading about George Adamski...
He didnt. Others (tabloids via 'locals') proposed that. Godfrey just said he couldnt rule it out, he doesn't know how Adamski wound up atop the coal pile but believes he was placed there. I agree the initial suggestions of alien involvement might come from the name coincidence. Godfreys encounter later might be made up or he might have seen sonething weird, i have no way of knowing. As i said i was just using it as an example of similar shaped craft in ufo lore
Fair enough. The Fortean Times piece was essentially saying he made up everything, initially for a short story, and later it became an ‘it happened to me’ story, following on from other stories.
I've never heard of him writing a short story but that doesnt mean he didnt i suppose. My understanding of the timeline is.....
June 1980 Adamski disappears and turns up dead on top of a coal pile, Alan Godfrey is one of the PCs called to the scene where he is found December 1980 Alan Godfrey reports a diamond shaped craft blocking the road in Todmorden, his radio doesnt work and next thing he knows its 25 mins later and he is a few hundred yards up the road, its wet except under where he saw the alleged craft where it is dry
Sometime in late 1980 to 1981 reports in tabloids play up the mystery of Adamski and suggest 'paranormality' including alien involvement
1981 Godfrey undergoes hypnosis at a friends suggestion as he is facing ridicule at work and 'recovers memories' of an abduction in the missing 25 minutes, he now says he thinks this was the memory of a dream and has never claimed he was abducted but he stands by the initial report of a diamond etc, he leaves the police force later saying he was not taken seriously and it affected his home lif
2016 Godfrey releases a book about Adamski, his experience, what he sees as similarities with the Travis Walton case and others.
Garry Nolan at Stanford has been performing medical examinations of govt individuals who have been in proximity to UAP. Some findings indicate changes in the brain similar to those with Havana Syndrome. Dead tissue showing on MRI, akin to white matter disease that would show for MND patients. A quarter of patients who showed damage after claiming coming into contact with a UAP died of the injuries. It’s unknown whether any of the Tic Tac / Gimbal / Go Fast patients were part of the study, or what corroborating evidence there is of UAP encounters for the patients in question (ie did the medical condition cause a delusion or is there reliable sensor data corroborating the encounter?).
Leon’s bias towards “the Others” being cuddly and friendly may be optimistic. We are generally neither wholly benign nor outwardly malevolent to other intelligent species on earth. As a rule we are casually indifferent, from catching dolphins in tuna nets to burning orangutang forest for palm plantations. We mitigate damage if we can but for society overall it’s meh, pass the John West.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Don't remember much about it except thinking Bathsheba was a complete c--- and Gabriel deserved better. But the one about the Oxford stonemason is as disturbing as it gets.
Jude the Obscure.
Tess of the D'Urbevilles definitely has its moments too.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Well, Rotters, they apparently can't be asked to think about structural racism without sending the white ones into paroxyms of deeply damaging personal guilt, so you know ...
So a bit like the left, the Civil Service and antisemitism then?
Yes - in the sense of not at all and I'm not sure even you know what point you're trying to make.
You know exactly the point I'm making, and you know its right too.
There's no difference between 'the white ones' getting upset asking to think about structural racism and 'the left ones' being asked to do so about antisemitism. The vitriol and anger we saw this weekend about being asked to think about antisemitism would make any gammon proud.
Barty, love, even by your standards this is howling at the moon. It's like accusing Freya the walrus of anti semitism. The idea is derided, and not because anti semitism differs from other flavours of racism.
So structural racism is a real problem, but the Civil Service uniquely is completely free from structural racism?
Its either that, or Jews Don't Count.
No, Barty. Simmer down. Structural racism is a problem in some structures, like the Met and the BNP, but I do not detect it in any structure of which I am a part. There is no earthly reason to think it is prevalent in the majority of organizations in general or the CS in particular.
@kinabalu will be saying you have white fragility for saying that, while nodding along that you're right on antisemitism.
Jews don't count.
This isn't a good threeball we have going here!
Let's just go mano a mano. But not now cos I can't. TV beckons.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Well, Rotters, they apparently can't be asked to think about structural racism without sending the white ones into paroxyms of deeply damaging personal guilt, so you know ...
So a bit like the left, the Civil Service and antisemitism then?
Yes - in the sense of not at all and I'm not sure even you know what point you're trying to make.
You know exactly the point I'm making, and you know its right too.
There's no difference between 'the white ones' getting upset asking to think about structural racism and 'the left ones' being asked to do so about antisemitism. The vitriol and anger we saw this weekend about being asked to think about antisemitism would make any gammon proud.
Barty, love, even by your standards this is howling at the moon. It's like accusing Freya the walrus of anti semitism. The idea is derided, and not because anti semitism differs from other flavours of racism.
So structural racism is a real problem, but the Civil Service uniquely is completely free from structural racism?
Its either that, or Jews Don't Count.
No, Barty. Simmer down. Structural racism is a problem in some structures, like the Met and the BNP, but I do not detect it in any structure of which I am a part. There is no earthly reason to think it is prevalent in the majority of organizations in general or the CS in particular.
@kinabalu will be saying you have white fragility for saying that, while nodding along that you're right on antisemitism.
Jews don't count.
This isn't a good threeball we have going here!
Let's just go mano a mano. But not now cos I can't. TV beckons.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Don't remember much about it except thinking Bathsheba was a complete c--- and Gabriel deserved better. But the one about the Oxford stonemason is as disturbing as it gets.
Jude the Obscure.
Tess of the D'Urbevilles definitely has its moments too.
The best thing that can be said about BR was that if it’s trends had continued there would by now be nothing left to subsidise.
How are comparable rail passenger numbers in Germany, France and Spain?
My recent experience of weekend travel on Avanti wasn't wholly unpleasant but what they called "The Shop" was basically the old buffet car and we travelled both ways without a single ticket check on very full trains but, to their credit, the trains ran well to time and weren't uncomfortable but I would lash out £25 for the Standard Premium next time if I were going all the way to the Lakes from London.
There's huge demand for rail for leisure currently - if Mrs Stodge and I go to Edinbugh later in the year, we'll go on the train and we'll travel well because it's part of the holiday.
I treated myself to First Class when I travelled to Cornwall to scatter my father's ashes the summer before the pandemic. It's still a fantastic journey - well worth the money and the time. Even had at seat service right down to beyond Truro which was marvellous.
To be blunt, I don't care who runs the railways - I do care how they are run and the constant strive to improve services and the passenger experience should be the priorities.
@BartholomewRoberts has answered that better than I can. Other EU countries have not matched the passenger boost that privatisation has given us.
When I came south by rail for test matches we used to book first class well in advance. I found it excellent value and very much part of the trip. On Scotrail first class sometimes amounts to no more than a doilie on the seat but on the longer trips the attention, drinks, snacks and space are worth the extra. Sometimes even the internet works.
Most of peoples' issues with privatisation stem from the separation between franchises and the network. It was done that way because of EU regulations. It should never have been nationalised in the first place.
But it was and we cannot blame the EU for that. I completely agree the way it was privatised and indeed the way it has been run since is suboptimal but at least our rail service is no longer being run into the deck as it was during state ownership.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
The main trigger warning on Hardy should surely be that this book is indescribably boring and pompous and there is a serious risk of losing the will to live whilst studying it.
Not Far from the Madding Crowd.
Under the Greenwood Tree or The Woodlanders maybe.
I think that it’s one of those books that might be an ok read if simply read for pleasure but studying it in English ground any possible pleasure or enjoyment out of it and the millstones ground extremely fine.
Most British people get turned off of most literature they're forced to study at school - for the whole of their lives. Typically this includes Shakespeare. The same is true about mathematics. Who should I vote for if I want this to be changed, if I want education actually to be taken seriously?
Looks like the exact spot where the Calvine photo was taken has been found: fence, trees, location, it all tallies, and matches the eye-witness reports
That rules out "rock in a loch", pretty much (unless of course the entire thing is a highly elaborate hoax extending over decades). Still a chance it is mountain-in-cloud, but I agree with other PB-ers that seems far fetched, photographically
So we are left with this *thing* hanging in the grey Scottish sky. Or a hoax
As many, many, many people have pointed out already, the thing looks like - and is in the right time period for - the top secret SR-91 Aurora spy plane.
D notice in newspaper? US government notified someone's been taking pictures of their secret spy plane? Colour me surprised. It's Aurora.
Case closed. How many more days are we going to spend on this?
Why this obsession with Aurora? If it ever existed, it was a hypersonic plane designed to operate at extreme altitude, not fly down a Scottish glen at low speed.
There's only one top secret plane that definitely existed - was being tested by the RAF in 1990 - and looked very odd and triangular. That's the F117 / Nighthawk.
But I still don't think the photograph looks like one, nor could it ascend vertically as described.
An artist's rendering of what an aurora type plane might look like up close from the back
It's pretty close to the "UFO" photo, and we have no idea what the actual Skunk Works was cooking up at the time - however from the F117 we know they were keen on painting things black and making them triangular. They presumably had something in development to replace the SR-71.
So it's not an enormous leap of faith to suggest it's an experimental US spy plane on a test flight. Or at least, it's a somewhat smaller leap of faith than to suggest it's an interstellar space craft piloted by little green men.
They quite sensibly don't want to get the blame when it doesn't improve anything, especially if 70% of people think it will.
If you're saying it's equally useless whether privately owned or publicly owned, I'm inclined to agree.
We can therefore also argue all the money spent on the privatisation process was also wasted as it's made no difference at all.
Still when you have a political class so paralysed by fear of the largely foreign-owned media that the very concept of a tax rise can't even be mentioned without a cesspit full of slurry being figuratively emptied over anyone proposing such an idea, it may be we need to re-think notions of ownership down to fundamental levels.
You release money from privatisation to spend on other things, like NHS that actually win votes, and other free owls. Admittedly, these are probably not much better uses of money.
Privatisation is like selling your house - you do it once and it's done. Yes, it's a huge con trick - the public pay for under-valued shares which they then sell at what seems a big profit on day one and the ownership ends up with banks, investment funds and the like.
It's work for share registration companies (well, it was in my time) but the notion of a share-owning democracy doesn't happen - yes, people's pensions and other investments end up in managed funds so we all become dependent on the ebbs and flows of the FTSE250 for example but that's not what I think proponents of a share-owning democracy imagined it might be.
That's rubbish. It *can* be like that, but doesn't have to be.
Let's turn it around: "Nationalisation is like buying your house - you do it once and it's done. Yes, it's a huge con trick - the public pay for a company that the state that runs into the ground because the public has zero choice left - they use the product or nothing."
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Well, Rotters, they apparently can't be asked to think about structural racism without sending the white ones into paroxyms of deeply damaging personal guilt, so you know ...
So a bit like the left, the Civil Service and antisemitism then?
Yes - in the sense of not at all and I'm not sure even you know what point you're trying to make.
You know exactly the point I'm making, and you know its right too.
There's no difference between 'the white ones' getting upset asking to think about structural racism and 'the left ones' being asked to do so about antisemitism. The vitriol and anger we saw this weekend about being asked to think about antisemitism would make any gammon proud.
Barty, love, even by your standards this is howling at the moon. It's like accusing Freya the walrus of anti semitism. The idea is derided, and not because anti semitism differs from other flavours of racism.
So structural racism is a real problem, but the Civil Service uniquely is completely free from structural racism?
Its either that, or Jews Don't Count.
No, Barty. Simmer down. Structural racism is a problem in some structures, like the Met and the BNP, but I do not detect it in any structure of which I am a part. There is no earthly reason to think it is prevalent in the majority of organizations in general or the CS in particular.
@kinabalu will be saying you have white fragility for saying that, while nodding along that you're right on antisemitism.
Jews don't count.
This isn't a good threeball we have going here!
Let's just go mano a mano. But not now cos I can't. TV beckons.
Jeez, the level of debate on twitter, particularly the lefty end, about the energy crisis is depressing.
The basic assumption seems to be that freezing prices as per Davey/Starmer plan is just handing fat cat energy companies a massive subsidy.
Eh?
It is. Its paying them to hold prices at the current cap. It is state subsidy of their profit margin whilst holding bills at levels the poorest are struggling with. And taking away the £400 direct help. And it only gets us to April. 29 billion to prop up the energy distribution industry and hold down bills for Keir Starmer and other very wealthy people. Its shit.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Don't remember much about it except thinking Bathsheba was a complete c--- and Gabriel deserved better. But the one about the Oxford stonemason is as disturbing as it gets.
Jude the Obscure.
Tess of the D'Urbevilles definitely has its moments too.
The best thing that can be said about BR was that if it’s trends had continued there would by now be nothing left to subsidise.
How are comparable rail passenger numbers in Germany, France and Spain?
My recent experience of weekend travel on Avanti wasn't wholly unpleasant but what they called "The Shop" was basically the old buffet car and we travelled both ways without a single ticket check on very full trains but, to their credit, the trains ran well to time and weren't uncomfortable but I would lash out £25 for the Standard Premium next time if I were going all the way to the Lakes from London.
There's huge demand for rail for leisure currently - if Mrs Stodge and I go to Edinbugh later in the year, we'll go on the train and we'll travel well because it's part of the holiday.
I treated myself to First Class when I travelled to Cornwall to scatter my father's ashes the summer before the pandemic. It's still a fantastic journey - well worth the money and the time. Even had at seat service right down to beyond Truro which was marvellous.
To be blunt, I don't care who runs the railways - I do care how they are run and the constant strive to improve services and the passenger experience should be the priorities.
Avanti are heavily slashing their timetables from today. I had to book with Chiltern for my trip to Brum tomorrow (checking out the tram to Edgbaston). On the plus side, only £25 return.
I hope you have booked on the loco hauled services to enjoy some thrash from the Cats*.
*Class 68 locomotives. So called due to their Caterpillar engines. Who says rail enthusiasts lack imagination?
Scottish Water is publicly owned. Spot the difference.
Scotland is wilderness. Spot the difference.
You might think that fxrom your expertise. But I can tell you that
(a) that includes some very intensively farmed areas - Laich of Moray, Aberdeenshire and the Mearns, Strathmore, Howe of Fife, Lothian, Merse and Ayrshire. And intensive farming and water quality don't alwasy go together in the UK as a whole.
(b) that map is on the basis of river basin district, so it's not a simple matter of the Highlands and Southern Uplands signal.
And what about Derbyshire, Cornwall, etc.
It's like the public approval of planning in their area map - a huge difference at the border. Why, is another question.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Don't remember much about it except thinking Bathsheba was a complete c--- and Gabriel deserved better. But the one about the Oxford stonemason is as disturbing as it gets.
Jude the Obscure.
Not from Oxford, but aspires to 'Christminster' ie Oxford. Utterly horrible but great book. 'Done because we are too menny'. Stick to the poetry. His 50 or so best are consolation for getting older, as there is no real chance of anyone really getting them until reaching quite a ripe age. 'At Castle Boterel' is the best of the best.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Don't remember much about it except thinking Bathsheba was a complete c--- and Gabriel deserved better. But the one about the Oxford stonemason is as disturbing as it gets.
Jude the Obscure.
Tess of the D'Urbevilles definitely has its moments too.
Effing Angel Clare.
Shudders.
The problem was he wouldn't eff her.
Had no problem effing someone else, previously.
And her sister.
You think T of the D'Us is bad?
Just try Jude the Obscure. It's a comedy compared to that.
Jeez, the level of debate on twitter, particularly the lefty end, about the energy crisis is depressing.
The basic assumption seems to be that freezing prices as per Davey/Starmer plan is just handing fat cat energy companies a massive subsidy.
Eh?
It is. Its paying them to hold prices at the current cap. It is state subsidy of their profit margin whilst holding bills at levels the poorest are struggling with. And taking away the £400 direct help. And it only gets us to April. 29 billion to prop up the energy distribution industry and hold down bills for Keir Starmer and other very wealthy people. Its shit.
If we could guarantee that this energy crisis was going to be over in 6 months it would be a somewhat extravagent and regressive use of tax payers money. But we can't. If it lasts 12 months we are talking serious economic damage, akin to that done by the furlough scheme under Covid. If it lasts 18 months we are looking at massive tax increases to pay for our subsidy which encourages consumption rather than discouraging it. If it lasts 2 years things would start to collapse.
Most of our politicians have painfully short focus in their policies which is a major reason that we are in this mess. But this really takes the biscuit. If this is the sort of policy SKS comes up with he might be better advised sticking to the blank sheet of paper he has had up to now.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
The main trigger warning on Hardy should surely be that this book is indescribably boring and pompous and there is a serious risk of losing the will to live whilst studying it.
Not Far from the Madding Crowd.
Under the Greenwood Tree or The Woodlanders maybe.
I think that it’s one of those books that might be an ok read if simply read for pleasure but studying it in English ground any possible pleasure or enjoyment out of it and the millstones ground extremely fine.
Most British people get turned off of most literature they're forced to study at school - for the whole of their lives. Typically this includes Shakespeare. The same is true about mathematics. Who should I vote for if I want this to be changed, if I want education actually to be taken seriously?
Scottish Water is publicly owned. Spot the difference.
Scotland is wilderness. Spot the difference.
The Central Belt is much more densely populated than eg the Scottish & English borders and much of Wales, so what is the difference?
Remember the PB experts who claimed that the area between Glasgow and Edinburgh was the rarely crossed Great Scottish Desert? You know, the one with the palm-shaded oasis of Bathgate, in the shade of the ancient Pyramids, on the old trade route north through the dunes of burnt oilshale to the spice and coffee port of Borrowstounness.
Now Thomas Hardy gets a trigger warning: Warwick university students are told 'Far from the Madding Crowd' contains 'upsetting scenes' about the 'cruelty of nature' and 'rural life'
I did this book for 'o' level english at 15/16. Are these academics seriously saying an 18 or 19 year old cannot cope with some of the stuff in this classic novel?
How are young people going to handle what actually happens in the real world if they are constantly protected from its depiction in art?
The whole world's gone stark bonkers mad.
Don't remember much about it except thinking Bathsheba was a complete c--- and Gabriel deserved better. But the one about the Oxford stonemason is as disturbing as it gets.
Jude the Obscure.
Tess of the D'Urbevilles definitely has its moments too.
Effing Angel Clare.
Shudders.
The problem was he wouldn't eff her.
Had no problem effing someone else, previously.
And her sister.
Which just made him a raging hypocrite. Probably even an effing hypocrite.
But if he had been 'effing Angel Clare' at the right moment the book would have been considerably shorter.
How are comparable rail passenger numbers in Germany, France and Spain?
My recent experience of weekend travel on Avanti wasn't wholly unpleasant but what they called "The Shop" was basically the old buffet car and we travelled both ways without a single ticket check on very full trains but, to their credit, the trains ran well to time and weren't uncomfortable but I would lash out £25 for the Standard Premium next time if I were going all the way to the Lakes from London.
There's huge demand for rail for leisure currently - if Mrs Stodge and I go to Edinbugh later in the year, we'll go on the train and we'll travel well because it's part of the holiday.
I treated myself to First Class when I travelled to Cornwall to scatter my father's ashes the summer before the pandemic. It's still a fantastic journey - well worth the money and the time. Even had at seat service right down to beyond Truro which was marvellous.
To be blunt, I don't care who runs the railways - I do care how they are run and the constant strive to improve services and the passenger experience should be the priorities.
I think the big reason for rail growth is the Swampy-Nimby coalition in the south of England which has shut down new road building. Privatisation can't take the credit for that, but it didn't stand in the way either.
The growth in leisure traffic is country-wide not just in the south. I'm not aware of a large amount of road building in the north either - expanding road capacity and easing known chokepoints is a good idea but I wouldn't drive to the Lake District from London for a week or to Scotland even if the roads were perfectly new.
I just don't understand your argument at all.
My case is that most of the growth in rail traffic is not leisure traffic, it is commuters who would have taken cars if 1960s-80s trends had been simply extrapolated. And the lion's share of the jobs growth is in the South of England, where the opposition to roadbuilding is strongest.
Scottish Water is publicly owned. Spot the difference.
Scotland is wilderness. Spot the difference.
The Central Belt is much more densely populated than eg the Scottish & English borders and much of Wales, so what is the difference?
Remember the PB experts who claimed that the area between Glasgow and Edinburgh was the rarely crossed Great Scottish Desert? You know, the one with the palm-shaded oasis of Bathgate, in the shade of the ancient Pyramids, on the old trade route north through the dunes of burnt oilshale to the spice and coffee port of Borrowstounness.
How are comparable rail passenger numbers in Germany, France and Spain?
My recent experience of weekend travel on Avanti wasn't wholly unpleasant but what they called "The Shop" was basically the old buffet car and we travelled both ways without a single ticket check on very full trains but, to their credit, the trains ran well to time and weren't uncomfortable but I would lash out £25 for the Standard Premium next time if I were going all the way to the Lakes from London.
There's huge demand for rail for leisure currently - if Mrs Stodge and I go to Edinbugh later in the year, we'll go on the train and we'll travel well because it's part of the holiday.
I treated myself to First Class when I travelled to Cornwall to scatter my father's ashes the summer before the pandemic. It's still a fantastic journey - well worth the money and the time. Even had at seat service right down to beyond Truro which was marvellous.
To be blunt, I don't care who runs the railways - I do care how they are run and the constant strive to improve services and the passenger experience should be the priorities.
I think the big reason for rail growth is the Swampy-Nimby coalition in the south of England which has shut down new road building. Privatisation can't take the credit for that, but it didn't stand in the way either.
The growth in leisure traffic is country-wide not just in the south. I'm not aware of a large amount of road building in the north either - expanding road capacity and easing known chokepoints is a good idea but I wouldn't drive to the Lake District from London for a week or to Scotland even if the roads were perfectly new.
I just don't understand your argument at all.
My case is that most of the growth in rail traffic is not leisure traffic, it is commuters who would have taken cars if 1960s-80s trends had been simply extrapolated. And the lion's share of the jobs growth is in the South of England, where the opposition to roadbuilding is strongest.
I'd like to see figures for the relative construction of roads per head of population. They seem to have built an awful lot of roads south of, say, Daventry and east of Cirencester.
Comments
godsaliens;They kill us for their sport.
(Hint: not at all.)
Hint: it helps when you don't need to compete for worthwhile capital investment against the NHS.
Talk about taking both barrels to the politicians we have today and their economic lies and cakeist, popularist nonsense.
"Neither [candidate] even seems to want to acknowledge that, without more money, runaway inflation will impose another dose of austerity on our public services."
"The so-called fiscal headroom which is being merrily spent is largely illusory."
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/can-we-all-eat-cake-political-leaders-should-explain-that-is-pure-fantasy-cnzpq3fgc
Bravo.
Under the Greenwood Tree or The Woodlanders maybe.
The flooded quarry in question was popular with amateur scuba divers in general, but also where the Lancs police sub aqua team trained.
Scottish Water is publicly owned. Spot the difference.
Godfreys encounter later might be made up or he might have seen something weird, i have no way of knowing. As i said i was just using it as an example of similar shaped craft in ufo lore
There's no difference between 'the white ones' getting upset asking to think about structural racism and 'the left ones' being asked to do so about antisemitism. The vitriol and anger we saw this weekend about being asked to think about antisemitism would make any gammon proud.
Let the numbers do the talking.
We can therefore also argue all the money spent on the privatisation process was also wasted as it's made no difference at all.
Still when you have a political class so paralysed by fear of the largely foreign-owned media that the very concept of a tax rise can't even be mentioned without a cesspit full of slurry being figuratively emptied over anyone proposing such an idea, it may be we need to re-think notions of ownership down to fundamental levels.
Its either that, or Jews Don't Count.
There's only one top secret plane that definitely existed - was being tested by the RAF in 1990 - and looked very odd and triangular. That's the F117 / Nighthawk.
But I still don't think the photograph looks like one, nor could it ascend vertically as described.
Still, although Water is in their name, their job is not actually to be the lake police.
June 1980 Adamski disappears and turns up dead on top of a coal pile, Alan Godfrey is one of the PCs called to the scene where he is found
December 1980 Alan Godfrey reports a diamond shaped craft blocking the road in Todmorden, his radio doesnt work and next thing he knows its 25 mins later and he is a few hundred yards up the road, its wet except under where he saw the alleged craft where it is dry
Sometime in late 1980 to 1981 reports in tabloids play up the mystery of Adamski and suggest 'paranormality' including alien involvement
1981 Godfrey undergoes hypnosis at a friends suggestion as he is facing ridicule at work and 'recovers memories' of an abduction in the missing 25 minutes, he now says he thinks this was the memory of a dream and has never claimed he was abducted but he stands by the initial report of a diamond etc, he leaves the police force later saying he was not taken seriously and it affected his home life
2016 Godfrey releases a book about Adamski, his experience, what he sees as similarities with the Travis Walton case and others.
But at least it is a lot cooler than yesterday.
I'll mull and revert. On my phone atm so only doing one or two liners.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebZvr3xaV3s
If you are going to claim a USAF conspiracy, you might as well go all in on ALIENS.
It's work for share registration companies (well, it was in my time) but the notion of a share-owning democracy doesn't happen - yes, people's pensions and other investments end up in managed funds so we all become dependent on the ebbs and flows of the FTSE250 for example but that's not what I think proponents of a share-owning democracy imagined it might be.
Truss - 12 years or Sunak - 7 years
Johnson - 11 years
May - 19 years
Cameron - 9 years
Brown - 24 years
Blair - 14 years
Major - 11 years
Thatcher - 20 years
Callaghan - 31 years
Heath - 20 years
Wilson - 19 years
Douglas-Home - 27 years (15 as an MP)
Macmillan - 31 years
Eden - 32 years
Attlee - 23 years
Churchill - 38 years
There's a Roman Polanski film with her as the lead from 1980s.
Since many of those who like to say "what has privatisation done for us" tend to like European comparisons, here's another one:
Finally this one is pretty compelling too. Rail modal share (ie percentage of travel by rail):
Jews don't count.
My recent experience of weekend travel on Avanti wasn't wholly unpleasant but what they called "The Shop" was basically the old buffet car and we travelled both ways without a single ticket check on very full trains but, to their credit, the trains ran well to time and weren't uncomfortable but I would lash out £25 for the Standard Premium next time if I were going all the way to the Lakes from London.
There's huge demand for rail for leisure currently - if Mrs Stodge and I go to Edinbugh later in the year, we'll go on the train and we'll travel well because it's part of the holiday.
I treated myself to First Class when I travelled to Cornwall to scatter my father's ashes the summer before the pandemic. It's still a fantastic journey - well worth the money and the time. Even had at seat service right down to beyond Truro which was marvellous.
To be blunt, I don't care who runs the railways - I do care how they are run and the constant strive to improve services and the passenger experience should be the priorities.
Well, any plane ever designed has it as quite an important part of the spec that it can reproduceably attain sea level altitude and zero speed, surely?
No.
Does your post rise above the level of utterly idle shitposting?
Work it out for yourself.
If like kin you want to say that structural racism is widespread and prevalent and that the people objecting to it being called out are "fragile", then you must either think that uniquely antisemitism of all racisms isn't prevalent (despite all evidence to the contrary that its one of the worst racisms), or that uniquely Jews Don't Count, or accept that those criticising it being called out are equally "fragile".
I just don't understand your argument at all.
When I came south by rail for test matches we used to book first class well in advance. I found it excellent value and very much part of the trip. On Scotrail first class sometimes amounts to no more than a doilie on the seat but on the longer trips the attention, drinks, snacks and space are worth the extra. Sometimes even the internet works.
Yes, they could land, but they weren't really designed to operate for long in soupy air and definitely not at low speed.
The SR-71 was a bit of an exception but you didn't see that buzzing people in Pitlochry. Admittedly it did buzz some people in Norfolk on one famous occasion but they were very lucky it didn't crash.
Alleluia.
In USA private utilities are the norm, but my guess is that a poll of Americans would show preference for public power, varying from region to region, but with perhaps surprising support from some otherwise conservative people and areas.
Wish someone had warned me.
medical examinations of govt individuals who have been in proximity to UAP. Some findings
indicate changes in the brain similar to those with Havana Syndrome. Dead tissue showing on MRI, akin to white matter disease that would show for MND patients. A quarter of patients who showed damage after claiming coming into contact with a UAP died of the injuries. It’s unknown whether any of the Tic Tac / Gimbal / Go Fast patients were part of the study, or what corroborating evidence there is of UAP encounters for the patients in question (ie did the medical condition cause a delusion or is there reliable sensor data corroborating the encounter?).
Leon’s bias towards “the Others” being cuddly and friendly may be optimistic. We are generally neither wholly benign nor outwardly malevolent to other intelligent species on earth. As a rule we are casually indifferent, from catching dolphins in tuna nets to burning orangutang forest for palm plantations. We mitigate damage if we can but for society overall it’s meh, pass the John West.
Shudders.
Let's just go mano a mano. But not now cos I can't. TV beckons.
The basic assumption seems to be that freezing prices as per Davey/Starmer plan is just handing fat cat energy companies a massive subsidy.
Eh?
The same is true about mathematics.
Who should I vote for if I want this to be changed, if I want education actually to be taken seriously?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(aircraft)#/media/File:Aurora_x-plane_1.jpg
It's pretty close to the "UFO" photo, and we have no idea what the actual Skunk Works was cooking up at the time - however from the F117 we know they were keen on painting things black and making them triangular. They presumably had something in development to replace the SR-71.
So it's not an enormous leap of faith to suggest it's an experimental US spy plane on a test flight. Or at least, it's a somewhat smaller leap of faith than to suggest it's an interstellar space craft piloted by little green men.
Let's turn it around:
"Nationalisation is like buying your house - you do it once and it's done. Yes, it's a huge con trick - the public pay for a company that the state that runs into the ground because the public has zero choice left - they use the product or nothing."
Its shit.
And her sister.
*Class 68 locomotives. So called due to their Caterpillar engines. Who says rail enthusiasts lack imagination?
(a) that includes some very intensively farmed areas - Laich of Moray, Aberdeenshire and the Mearns, Strathmore, Howe of Fife, Lothian, Merse and Ayrshire. And intensive farming and water quality don't alwasy go together in the UK as a whole.
(b) that map is on the basis of river basin district, so it's not a simple matter of the Highlands and Southern Uplands signal.
And what about Derbyshire, Cornwall, etc.
It's like the public approval of planning in their area map - a huge difference at the border. Why, is another question.
Utterly horrible but great book. 'Done because we are too menny'. Stick to the poetry. His 50 or so best are consolation for getting older, as there is no real chance of anyone really getting them until reaching quite a ripe age. 'At Castle Boterel' is the best of the best.
Just try Jude the Obscure. It's a comedy compared to that.
Edit: ah, Algarkirk has got to that first.
Most of our politicians have painfully short focus in their policies which is a major reason that we are in this mess. But this really takes the biscuit. If this is the sort of policy SKS comes up with he might be better advised sticking to the blank sheet of paper he has had up to now.
But if he had been 'effing Angel Clare' at the right moment the book would have been considerably shorter.