If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
The advantage of "Islands Of the North Atlantic" is that you can then use the initialism of IONA, which appeals, although may cause some confusion with the Island of Iona when used in speech.
The Atlantic Archipelago is another alternative that has been proposed, but I tend simply to use "Britain and Ireland".
Bloody terrible idea. North Atlantic goes all the way to the equator so that's everything from iceland to the canaries and cape verde, and west to bermuda.
The Atlantic is in general oceanographic terms normally split into three, South Atlantic, Tropical Atlantic and North Atlantic.
But anyway, I didn't say that IONA was a perfect option.
Isles of Britain and Ireland is the current term in some circles.
What crap.
British Isles DNE UK of Great Britain and NI North America DNE USA Europe DNE European Union
Cf also British, American, and possibly too, European.
I AM talking about the bits of isolated land not including Heligoland, the Canaries, and the Faeroes. Not the UK.
Me too. They’re called the British Isles.
You don't need much imagination to realise that would irk the Irish.
I don’t care. They can call it what they like. They’ve been the British Isles, or some variation of that term, since Roman Times.
There's not much point in using a name for a place that pisses off a large number of people who live in that place, and that they will only use with scare quotes at best.
Language changes and evolves and is contested, often for political reasons. The British Isles was used because of British dominance of the islands. Now that dominance is ended, so the name will go.
I will bet it doesn't. They will still be called the British Isles by geographers, geologists and other sundry scientific types for a long time yet. As I said earlier things do change but I very much doubt will see any change in that naming convention within our lifetimes
Many things are possible. It might be one of the things that the Irish reconcile themselves to if reunification of the island is achieved - the United Ireland would have to accept that a large minority was proud of a historical association with Britain.
You really don't hear the British Isles used in the Republic. It's weirdly parochial for the British to insist that the term will still be used. We shouldn't be so ignorant of our neighbour.
Why is it weirdly parochial of one country to use its own term but not wierdly parochial of another country to use its own term. If we knew what the Irish called it, why would it follow that we also called it that?
Pretty sure "Indian subcontinent" irks the Pakistanis.
If overturning RvW has the effect of properly returning the issue, as in the UK, from courts to electors this will be a massive gain.
Yes, that's very much my opinion.
And Kansas tells us that - in the vast majority of US states - abortion will continue to be legal and available. The exceptions will be in the Deep South and Utah,
It is, however, worth noting that the Republican Party has got itself into a bit of a pickle here. There are a couple of US States where legal abortion is popular, and yet Republican controlled legislatures have passed laws that broadly criminalise it. While RvW existed, this was of little import; it was virtue signaling to primary voters.
Now, though, those laws come into existence.
Voters, for what it's worth, tend to support restrictions on abortion. But very few of them support blanket bans.
The key question, really, is how much abortion matters.
And Kansas tells us the answer is quite a lot. Around 200,000 independents came out to vote in the Kansas ballot proposition, even though they couldn't vote in either party's primaries. Overall turnout was up close to 90% from the 2018 primaries.
That's a hell of a lot of people who cared enough to come out and vote.
Now, this doesn't mean that those people will vote Democrat. But they might well come out to overturn blanket abortion bans. And that probably means voting Democrat.
You've hit us before with your hot take that it's all a thoroughly good thing if the right of women to choose what happens to their own bodies is taken from them and handed to a bare majority in their own state. And if the only losers are a few thousand women, including victims of rape/incest, in Alabama or whatever then, y'know, state rights or something.
It's still a rotten take - as intellectually shallow as it is callous.
I apologize for being intellectually shallow.
But I believe process matters. And process means democratic buy in.
I'm sorry that abortion will be illegal in some states. It sucks for the women involved. But decisions about criminality should be made by voters.
And if those voters decide that slavery should be legal again? Or all homosexuals should be chemically castrated? Would you still hold to that claim?
Churchill's comment on democracy - "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" is perfectly true but within its construction there is an explicit and valid criticism.
Democracy is flawed and like any other system created by man it needs constant supervision and challenge. That is why we have the other arms of Government. Because pure democracy killed Socrates. Because Hitler and Trump were both democratically elected and because there are some basic principles which are even more important than democracy.
I think you have drawn your line in the wrong place in the sand.
And if the judges decide that slavery should be legal again ?
Would that be okay even if the elected representatives opposed it ?
No because no one is saying that the courts should have all the power either. My argument is with Robert's contention that these things MUST be decided by the electorate and that if they are then they are valid. It was just that thinking that led to the bloodiest war in US history.
We have checks and balances for this reason. Because if we do not then the only way this ends is with bloodshed and 'might is right'.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
The advantage of "Islands Of the North Atlantic" is that you can then use the initialism of IONA, which appeals, although may cause some confusion with the Island of Iona when used in speech.
The Atlantic Archipelago is another alternative that has been proposed, but I tend simply to use "Britain and Ireland".
Bloody terrible idea. North Atlantic goes all the way to the equator so that's everything from iceland to the canaries and cape verde, and west to bermuda.
The Atlantic is in general oceanographic terms normally split into three, South Atlantic, Tropical Atlantic and North Atlantic.
But anyway, I didn't say that IONA was a perfect option.
Isles of Britain and Ireland is the current term in some circles.
What crap.
British Isles DNE UK of Great Britain and NI North America DNE USA Europe DNE European Union
Cf also British, American, and possibly too, European.
I AM talking about the bits of isolated land not including Heligoland, the Canaries, and the Faeroes. Not the UK.
Me too. They’re called the British Isles.
You don't need much imagination to realise that would irk the Irish.
I don’t care. They can call it what they like. They’ve been the British Isles, or some variation of that term, since Roman Times.
There's not much point in using a name for a place that pisses off a large number of people who live in that place, and that they will only use with scare quotes at best.
Language changes and evolves and is contested, often for political reasons. The British Isles was used because of British dominance of the islands. Now that dominance is ended, so the name will go.
Actually from a numerical perspective, the number of Irish is quite small.
The geographic term British Isles seems to go back to Roman times, so your point about British dominance may not be correct.
They are still the British Isles on Wikipedia. The alternatives are weird euphemisms.
Quoting numerical perspectives is fraught with difficulty in this context. Before the Irish famine the 1841 census gave a population of Ireland of over 8 million, compared to a population of just over 18 and a half for England, Wales and Scotland.
That's an 1841 ratio of about 9:4 to compare with the modern ratio of about 9.3:1
Can you talk me through that?
Your 1841 figures give a ratio of about 2.3:1
UK today is 67 million next to 5 million for the Irish republic. So over 13:1
Your figures are correct for the UK to Republic of Ireland ratio, but I calculated a ratio for island of Britain to island of Ireland.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
The advantage of "Islands Of the North Atlantic" is that you can then use the initialism of IONA, which appeals, although may cause some confusion with the Island of Iona when used in speech.
The Atlantic Archipelago is another alternative that has been proposed, but I tend simply to use "Britain and Ireland".
Bloody terrible idea. North Atlantic goes all the way to the equator so that's everything from iceland to the canaries and cape verde, and west to bermuda.
The Atlantic is in general oceanographic terms normally split into three, South Atlantic, Tropical Atlantic and North Atlantic.
But anyway, I didn't say that IONA was a perfect option.
Isles of Britain and Ireland is the current term in some circles.
What crap.
British Isles DNE UK of Great Britain and NI North America DNE USA Europe DNE European Union
Cf also British, American, and possibly too, European.
I AM talking about the bits of isolated land not including Heligoland, the Canaries, and the Faeroes. Not the UK.
Me too. They’re called the British Isles.
You don't need much imagination to realise that would irk the Irish.
I don’t care. They can call it what they like. They’ve been the British Isles, or some variation of that term, since Roman Times.
There's not much point in using a name for a place that pisses off a large number of people who live in that place, and that they will only use with scare quotes at best.
Language changes and evolves and is contested, often for political reasons. The British Isles was used because of British dominance of the islands. Now that dominance is ended, so the name will go.
Actually from a numerical perspective, the number of Irish is quite small.
The geographic term British Isles seems to go back to Roman times, so your point about British dominance may not be correct.
They are still the British Isles on Wikipedia. The alternatives are weird euphemisms.
Quoting numerical perspectives is fraught with difficulty in this context. Before the Irish famine the 1841 census gave a population of Ireland of over 8 million, compared to a population of just over 18 and a half for England, Wales and Scotland.
That's an 1841 ratio of about 9:4 to compare with the modern ratio of about 9.3:1
Can you talk me through that?
Your 1841 figures give a ratio of about 2.3:1
UK today is 67 million next to 5 million for the Irish republic. So over 13:1
Have to compare Ireland with Great Britain though to match the previous example? 6.4 million to 61 million.
Ok but I'm not sure it changes very much.
And, also, NI is only 2 million so it'd be more like 7 to 65 million.
I was going by the 'List of islands in the British Islands' page, which doesn't include the likes of Portsea Idland and, on reflection, is probably using 2011 figures.
The Kyiv Independent @KyivIndependent ⚡️Russia pulls military aircraft out of Crimean airbases after recent explosions.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Main Intelligence Directorate reported that no less than 24 planes and 14 helicopters had been transferred out of airfields in Crimea.
Putin's invasion is a military disaster that will be studied for decades.
It must be the most spectacularly counterproductive invasion of a country since the First Coalition issued the Brunswick Manifesto demanding the safety of Louis XVI and then invaded from Koblenz, uniting the French against them and leading to the extermination of the royal family.
We tend to remember the successful invasions more than the much more numerous unsuccessful ones (the Spanish Armada being an exception). Turns out it is quite hard.
The BBC had the latest British military assessment being a long grind for some time, but that's far from the worst outcome to put it mildly.
The number of nations that start a war, and then lose is impressive. When was the last time that someone managed to start a war and then win?
For a continuing win up to the present perhaps Israel in 1967.
India's intervention to secure Bangladesh's independence in 1971 would also be a victory.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
The advantage of "Islands Of the North Atlantic" is that you can then use the initialism of IONA, which appeals, although may cause some confusion with the Island of Iona when used in speech.
The Atlantic Archipelago is another alternative that has been proposed, but I tend simply to use "Britain and Ireland".
Bloody terrible idea. North Atlantic goes all the way to the equator so that's everything from iceland to the canaries and cape verde, and west to bermuda.
The Atlantic is in general oceanographic terms normally split into three, South Atlantic, Tropical Atlantic and North Atlantic.
But anyway, I didn't say that IONA was a perfect option.
Isles of Britain and Ireland is the current term in some circles.
What crap.
British Isles DNE UK of Great Britain and NI North America DNE USA Europe DNE European Union
Cf also British, American, and possibly too, European.
I AM talking about the bits of isolated land not including Heligoland, the Canaries, and the Faeroes. Not the UK.
Me too. They’re called the British Isles.
You don't need much imagination to realise that would irk the Irish.
I don’t care. They can call it what they like. They’ve been the British Isles, or some variation of that term, since Roman Times.
There's not much point in using a name for a place that pisses off a large number of people who live in that place, and that they will only use with scare quotes at best.
Language changes and evolves and is contested, often for political reasons. The British Isles was used because of British dominance of the islands. Now that dominance is ended, so the name will go.
I will bet it doesn't. They will still be called the British Isles by geographers, geologists and other sundry scientific types for a long time yet. As I said earlier things do change but I very much doubt will see any change in that naming convention within our lifetimes
Many things are possible. It might be one of the things that the Irish reconcile themselves to if reunification of the island is achieved - the United Ireland would have to accept that a large minority was proud of a historical association with Britain.
You really don't hear the British Isles used in the Republic. It's weirdly parochial for the British to insist that the term will still be used. We shouldn't be so ignorant of our neighbour.
Why is it weirdly parochial of one country to use its own term but not wierdly parochial of another country to use its own term. If we knew what the Irish called it, why would it follow that we also called it that?
Pretty sure "Indian subcontinent" irks the Pakistanis.
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
Absolutely fine if the company contributes to your home heating/electricity bill.
I suspect a fair few unscrupulous employers will be encouraging their staff to wfh without extra pay to cover their costs, though.
Though few, if any, firms have ever contributed to the costs of commuting into the office.
Romford to Central London is £14 a day on the train, and plenty pay more than that. Even at the new rates, that's quite a bit of heating- especially if you only do one room during the day.
It's different for everyone.
When I was living in London and working in an office in zone 1, it was the cost of the weekly travel cap, currently £38.40.
Considering I'd usually be making at least one personal trip on the tube a day (e.g. to the gym, the pub, to see friends etc) the cost of the commute was essentially free as I'd be hitting the weekly cap anyway - so my travel expenses wouldn't change at all if I was WFH. I'd still be spending the same £38 a week on travel.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
Except 'Celt' is a meaningless word with no historical basis.
Yes, but understood in the modern layman context to mean the not English/anglo bits
It is always sad when someone can only define themselves as what they are not rather than what they are.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
The advantage of "Islands Of the North Atlantic" is that you can then use the initialism of IONA, which appeals, although may cause some confusion with the Island of Iona when used in speech.
The Atlantic Archipelago is another alternative that has been proposed, but I tend simply to use "Britain and Ireland".
Bloody terrible idea. North Atlantic goes all the way to the equator so that's everything from iceland to the canaries and cape verde, and west to bermuda.
The Atlantic is in general oceanographic terms normally split into three, South Atlantic, Tropical Atlantic and North Atlantic.
But anyway, I didn't say that IONA was a perfect option.
Isles of Britain and Ireland is the current term in some circles.
What crap.
British Isles DNE UK of Great Britain and NI North America DNE USA Europe DNE European Union
Cf also British, American, and possibly too, European.
I AM talking about the bits of isolated land not including Heligoland, the Canaries, and the Faeroes. Not the UK.
Me too. They’re called the British Isles.
You don't need much imagination to realise that would irk the Irish.
I don’t care. They can call it what they like. They’ve been the British Isles, or some variation of that term, since Roman Times.
There's not much point in using a name for a place that pisses off a large number of people who live in that place, and that they will only use with scare quotes at best.
Language changes and evolves and is contested, often for political reasons. The British Isles was used because of British dominance of the islands. Now that dominance is ended, so the name will go.
Actually from a numerical perspective, the number of Irish is quite small.
The geographic term British Isles seems to go back to Roman times, so your point about British dominance may not be correct.
They are still the British Isles on Wikipedia. The alternatives are weird euphemisms.
Ireland is not a British island. There was actually a war about this. (You lost.)
Geographically it is.
I don’t remember fighting a war. Personally I have fought no wars, what about you?
Geographically I hope you're insisting on "European Britain".
British people who thought Ireland was British fought a war and lost.
Europe is a continent. The British Isles are an archipelago Ireland is an island
After that I get confused with all the UK vs Great Britain vs just Britain
Archipelagos are generally named after the dominant Island or country within them. So the Japanese Archipelago includes all the islands of that group including those belonging to other countries.
It is quite revealing that my insistence on “British Isles” provokes some quite odd posting about genocide and the British aristocracy.
What's odd is thinking that British war crimes and genocide are somehow peripheral to the question of which exact places remained British and which didn't.
Unless you're suggesting that these places gathered their petticoats and deposited themselves elsewhere, nobody has ceased to be British who was before, nor has anyone in modern history begun to be British when they weren't before. Britain and the British Isles are geographical expressions. You are ascribing bogus political and emotional characteristics to simple geographical designations. It's the same ignorance that suggests we've now 'left Europe'.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
The advantage of "Islands Of the North Atlantic" is that you can then use the initialism of IONA, which appeals, although may cause some confusion with the Island of Iona when used in speech.
The Atlantic Archipelago is another alternative that has been proposed, but I tend simply to use "Britain and Ireland".
Bloody terrible idea. North Atlantic goes all the way to the equator so that's everything from iceland to the canaries and cape verde, and west to bermuda.
The Atlantic is in general oceanographic terms normally split into three, South Atlantic, Tropical Atlantic and North Atlantic.
But anyway, I didn't say that IONA was a perfect option.
Isles of Britain and Ireland is the current term in some circles.
What crap.
British Isles DNE UK of Great Britain and NI North America DNE USA Europe DNE European Union
Cf also British, American, and possibly too, European.
I AM talking about the bits of isolated land not including Heligoland, the Canaries, and the Faeroes. Not the UK.
Me too. They’re called the British Isles.
You don't need much imagination to realise that would irk the Irish.
I don’t care. They can call it what they like. They’ve been the British Isles, or some variation of that term, since Roman Times.
There's not much point in using a name for a place that pisses off a large number of people who live in that place, and that they will only use with scare quotes at best.
Language changes and evolves and is contested, often for political reasons. The British Isles was used because of British dominance of the islands. Now that dominance is ended, so the name will go.
Actually from a numerical perspective, the number of Irish is quite small.
The geographic term British Isles seems to go back to Roman times, so your point about British dominance may not be correct.
They are still the British Isles on Wikipedia. The alternatives are weird euphemisms.
Ireland is not a British island. There was actually a war about this. (You lost.)
Geographically it is.
I don’t remember fighting a war. Personally I have fought no wars, what about you?
Geographically I hope you're insisting on "European Britain".
British people who thought Ireland was British fought a war and lost.
Europe is a continent. The British Isles are an archipelago Ireland is an island
After that I get confused with all the UK vs Great Britain vs just Britain
Archipelagos are generally named after the dominant Island or country within them. So the Japanese Archipelago includes all the islands of that group including those belonging to other countries.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
The advantage of "Islands Of the North Atlantic" is that you can then use the initialism of IONA, which appeals, although may cause some confusion with the Island of Iona when used in speech.
The Atlantic Archipelago is another alternative that has been proposed, but I tend simply to use "Britain and Ireland".
Bloody terrible idea. North Atlantic goes all the way to the equator so that's everything from iceland to the canaries and cape verde, and west to bermuda.
The Atlantic is in general oceanographic terms normally split into three, South Atlantic, Tropical Atlantic and North Atlantic.
But anyway, I didn't say that IONA was a perfect option.
Isles of Britain and Ireland is the current term in some circles.
What crap.
British Isles DNE UK of Great Britain and NI North America DNE USA Europe DNE European Union
Cf also British, American, and possibly too, European.
I AM talking about the bits of isolated land not including Heligoland, the Canaries, and the Faeroes. Not the UK.
Me too. They’re called the British Isles.
You don't need much imagination to realise that would irk the Irish.
I don’t care. They can call it what they like. They’ve been the British Isles, or some variation of that term, since Roman Times.
There's not much point in using a name for a place that pisses off a large number of people who live in that place, and that they will only use with scare quotes at best.
Language changes and evolves and is contested, often for political reasons. The British Isles was used because of British dominance of the islands. Now that dominance is ended, so the name will go.
Actually from a numerical perspective, the number of Irish is quite small.
The geographic term British Isles seems to go back to Roman times, so your point about British dominance may not be correct.
They are still the British Isles on Wikipedia. The alternatives are weird euphemisms.
Ireland is not a British island. There was actually a war about this. (You lost.)
Geographically it is.
I don’t remember fighting a war. Personally I have fought no wars, what about you?
Geographically I hope you're insisting on "European Britain".
British people who thought Ireland was British fought a war and lost.
Europe is a continent. The British Isles are an archipelago Ireland is an island
After that I get confused with all the UK vs Great Britain vs just Britain
Archipelagos are generally named after the dominant Island or country within them. So the Japanese Archipelago includes all the islands of that group including those belonging to other countries.
IOW is The Island and North Island is where all the ferries go. That’s all you need to know.
And The Mainland is the principal island of both Shetland and Orkney, but separately.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
The advantage of "Islands Of the North Atlantic" is that you can then use the initialism of IONA, which appeals, although may cause some confusion with the Island of Iona when used in speech.
The Atlantic Archipelago is another alternative that has been proposed, but I tend simply to use "Britain and Ireland".
Bloody terrible idea. North Atlantic goes all the way to the equator so that's everything from iceland to the canaries and cape verde, and west to bermuda.
The Atlantic is in general oceanographic terms normally split into three, South Atlantic, Tropical Atlantic and North Atlantic.
But anyway, I didn't say that IONA was a perfect option.
Isles of Britain and Ireland is the current term in some circles.
What crap.
British Isles DNE UK of Great Britain and NI North America DNE USA Europe DNE European Union
Cf also British, American, and possibly too, European.
I AM talking about the bits of isolated land not including Heligoland, the Canaries, and the Faeroes. Not the UK.
Me too. They’re called the British Isles.
You don't need much imagination to realise that would irk the Irish.
I don’t care. They can call it what they like. They’ve been the British Isles, or some variation of that term, since Roman Times.
There's not much point in using a name for a place that pisses off a large number of people who live in that place, and that they will only use with scare quotes at best.
Language changes and evolves and is contested, often for political reasons. The British Isles was used because of British dominance of the islands. Now that dominance is ended, so the name will go.
Actually from a numerical perspective, the number of Irish is quite small.
The geographic term British Isles seems to go back to Roman times, so your point about British dominance may not be correct.
They are still the British Isles on Wikipedia. The alternatives are weird euphemisms.
Quoting numerical perspectives is fraught with difficulty in this context. Before the Irish famine the 1841 census gave a population of Ireland of over 8 million, compared to a population of just over 18 and a half for England, Wales and Scotland.
That's an 1841 ratio of about 9:4 to compare with the modern ratio of about 9.3:1
Can you talk me through that?
Your 1841 figures give a ratio of about 2.3:1
UK today is 67 million next to 5 million for the Irish republic. So over 13:1
Have to compare Ireland with Great Britain though to match the previous example? 6.4 million to 61 million.
Ok but I'm not sure it changes very much.
And, also, NI is only 2 million so it'd be more like 7 to 65 million.
I was going by the 'List of islands in the British Islands' page, which doesn't include the likes of Portsea Idland and, on reflection, is probably using 2011 figures.
It is quite revealing that my insistence on “British Isles” provokes some quite odd posting about genocide and the British aristocracy.
What's odd is thinking that British war crimes and genocide are somehow peripheral to the question of which exact places remained British and which didn't.
Except it's bollocks in the case of the Irish potato famine, and even Irish historians agree.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
The advantage of "Islands Of the North Atlantic" is that you can then use the initialism of IONA, which appeals, although may cause some confusion with the Island of Iona when used in speech.
The Atlantic Archipelago is another alternative that has been proposed, but I tend simply to use "Britain and Ireland".
Bloody terrible idea. North Atlantic goes all the way to the equator so that's everything from iceland to the canaries and cape verde, and west to bermuda.
The Atlantic is in general oceanographic terms normally split into three, South Atlantic, Tropical Atlantic and North Atlantic.
But anyway, I didn't say that IONA was a perfect option.
Isles of Britain and Ireland is the current term in some circles.
What crap.
British Isles DNE UK of Great Britain and NI North America DNE USA Europe DNE European Union
Cf also British, American, and possibly too, European.
I AM talking about the bits of isolated land not including Heligoland, the Canaries, and the Faeroes. Not the UK.
Me too. They’re called the British Isles.
You don't need much imagination to realise that would irk the Irish.
I don’t care. They can call it what they like. They’ve been the British Isles, or some variation of that term, since Roman Times.
There's not much point in using a name for a place that pisses off a large number of people who live in that place, and that they will only use with scare quotes at best.
Language changes and evolves and is contested, often for political reasons. The British Isles was used because of British dominance of the islands. Now that dominance is ended, so the name will go.
Actually from a numerical perspective, the number of Irish is quite small.
The geographic term British Isles seems to go back to Roman times, so your point about British dominance may not be correct.
They are still the British Isles on Wikipedia. The alternatives are weird euphemisms.
Ireland is not a British island. There was actually a war about this. (You lost.)
Geographically it is.
I don’t remember fighting a war. Personally I have fought no wars, what about you?
Geographically I hope you're insisting on "European Britain".
British people who thought Ireland was British fought a war and lost.
Europe is a continent. The British Isles are an archipelago Ireland is an island
After that I get confused with all the UK vs Great Britain vs just Britain
Archipelagos are generally named after the dominant Island or country within them. So the Japanese Archipelago includes all the islands of that group including those belonging to other countries.
That seems pretty uncontenious,
Not sure the Russians see it that way
They have so little landmass you have to expect them to be touchy about outlying parts of it.
Why, they are so worried about having borders with NATO countries they launched a special military operation which would have massively increased that border!
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
The advantage of "Islands Of the North Atlantic" is that you can then use the initialism of IONA, which appeals, although may cause some confusion with the Island of Iona when used in speech.
The Atlantic Archipelago is another alternative that has been proposed, but I tend simply to use "Britain and Ireland".
Bloody terrible idea. North Atlantic goes all the way to the equator so that's everything from iceland to the canaries and cape verde, and west to bermuda.
The Atlantic is in general oceanographic terms normally split into three, South Atlantic, Tropical Atlantic and North Atlantic.
But anyway, I didn't say that IONA was a perfect option.
Isles of Britain and Ireland is the current term in some circles.
What crap.
British Isles DNE UK of Great Britain and NI North America DNE USA Europe DNE European Union
Cf also British, American, and possibly too, European.
I AM talking about the bits of isolated land not including Heligoland, the Canaries, and the Faeroes. Not the UK.
Me too. They’re called the British Isles.
You don't need much imagination to realise that would irk the Irish.
I don’t care. They can call it what they like. They’ve been the British Isles, or some variation of that term, since Roman Times.
There's not much point in using a name for a place that pisses off a large number of people who live in that place, and that they will only use with scare quotes at best.
Language changes and evolves and is contested, often for political reasons. The British Isles was used because of British dominance of the islands. Now that dominance is ended, so the name will go.
Actually from a numerical perspective, the number of Irish is quite small.
The geographic term British Isles seems to go back to Roman times, so your point about British dominance may not be correct.
They are still the British Isles on Wikipedia. The alternatives are weird euphemisms.
Quoting numerical perspectives is fraught with difficulty in this context. Before the Irish famine the 1841 census gave a population of Ireland of over 8 million, compared to a population of just over 18 and a half for England, Wales and Scotland.
That's an 1841 ratio of about 9:4 to compare with the modern ratio of about 9.3:1
Can you talk me through that?
Your 1841 figures give a ratio of about 2.3:1
UK today is 67 million next to 5 million for the Irish republic. So over 13:1
Your figures are correct for the UK to Republic of Ireland ratio, but I calculated a ratio for island of Britain to island of Ireland.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
The advantage of "Islands Of the North Atlantic" is that you can then use the initialism of IONA, which appeals, although may cause some confusion with the Island of Iona when used in speech.
The Atlantic Archipelago is another alternative that has been proposed, but I tend simply to use "Britain and Ireland".
Bloody terrible idea. North Atlantic goes all the way to the equator so that's everything from iceland to the canaries and cape verde, and west to bermuda.
The Atlantic is in general oceanographic terms normally split into three, South Atlantic, Tropical Atlantic and North Atlantic.
But anyway, I didn't say that IONA was a perfect option.
Isles of Britain and Ireland is the current term in some circles.
What crap.
British Isles DNE UK of Great Britain and NI North America DNE USA Europe DNE European Union
Cf also British, American, and possibly too, European.
I AM talking about the bits of isolated land not including Heligoland, the Canaries, and the Faeroes. Not the UK.
Me too. They’re called the British Isles.
You don't need much imagination to realise that would irk the Irish.
I don’t care. They can call it what they like. They’ve been the British Isles, or some variation of that term, since Roman Times.
There's not much point in using a name for a place that pisses off a large number of people who live in that place, and that they will only use with scare quotes at best.
Language changes and evolves and is contested, often for political reasons. The British Isles was used because of British dominance of the islands. Now that dominance is ended, so the name will go.
Actually from a numerical perspective, the number of Irish is quite small.
The geographic term British Isles seems to go back to Roman times, so your point about British dominance may not be correct.
They are still the British Isles on Wikipedia. The alternatives are weird euphemisms.
Quoting numerical perspectives is fraught with difficulty in this context. Before the Irish famine the 1841 census gave a population of Ireland of over 8 million, compared to a population of just over 18 and a half for England, Wales and Scotland.
That's an 1841 ratio of about 9:4 to compare with the modern ratio of about 9.3:1
Can you talk me through that?
Your 1841 figures give a ratio of about 2.3:1
UK today is 67 million next to 5 million for the Irish republic. So over 13:1
Have to compare Ireland with Great Britain though to match the previous example? 6.4 million to 61 million.
Ok but I'm not sure it changes very much.
And, also, NI is only 2 million so it'd be more like 7 to 65 million.
I was going by the 'List of islands in the British Islands' page, which doesn't include the likes of Portsea Idland and, on reflection, is probably using 2011 figures.
It is quite revealing that my insistence on “British Isles” provokes some quite odd posting about genocide and the British aristocracy.
What's odd is thinking that British war crimes and genocide are somehow peripheral to the question of which exact places remained British and which didn't.
The Irish government recognises "the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both Governments and would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland."
In effect a united Ireland would be a, but not the, British state.
If overturning RvW has the effect of properly returning the issue, as in the UK, from courts to electors this will be a massive gain.
Yes, that's very much my opinion.
And Kansas tells us that - in the vast majority of US states - abortion will continue to be legal and available. The exceptions will be in the Deep South and Utah,
It is, however, worth noting that the Republican Party has got itself into a bit of a pickle here. There are a couple of US States where legal abortion is popular, and yet Republican controlled legislatures have passed laws that broadly criminalise it. While RvW existed, this was of little import; it was virtue signaling to primary voters.
Now, though, those laws come into existence.
Voters, for what it's worth, tend to support restrictions on abortion. But very few of them support blanket bans.
The key question, really, is how much abortion matters.
And Kansas tells us the answer is quite a lot. Around 200,000 independents came out to vote in the Kansas ballot proposition, even though they couldn't vote in either party's primaries. Overall turnout was up close to 90% from the 2018 primaries.
That's a hell of a lot of people who cared enough to come out and vote.
Now, this doesn't mean that those people will vote Democrat. But they might well come out to overturn blanket abortion bans. And that probably means voting Democrat.
You've hit us before with your hot take that it's all a thoroughly good thing if the right of women to choose what happens to their own bodies is taken from them and handed to a bare majority in their own state. And if the only losers are a few thousand women, including victims of rape/incest, in Alabama or whatever then, y'know, state rights or something.
It's still a rotten take - as intellectually shallow as it is callous.
I apologize for being intellectually shallow.
But I believe process matters. And process means democratic buy in.
I'm sorry that abortion will be illegal in some states. It sucks for the women involved. But decisions about criminality should be made by voters.
And if those voters decide that slavery should be legal again? Or all homosexuals should be chemically castrated? Would you still hold to that claim?
Churchill's comment on democracy - "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" is perfectly true but within its construction there is an explicit and valid criticism.
Democracy is flawed and like any other system created by man it needs constant supervision and challenge. That is why we have the other arms of Government. Because pure democracy killed Socrates. Because Hitler and Trump were both democratically elected and because there are some basic principles which are even more important than democracy.
I think you have drawn your line in the wrong place in the sand.
And if the judges decide that slavery should be legal again ?
Would that be okay even if the elected representatives opposed it ?
No because no one is saying that the courts should have all the power either. My argument is with Robert's contention that these things MUST be decided by the electorate and that if they are then they are valid. It was just that thinking that led to the bloodiest war in US history.
We have checks and balances for this reason. Because if we do not then the only way this ends is with bloodshed and 'might is right'.
And who decides these checks and balances ?
Ultimately you come back to needing the population to accept the decision making process.
And for that to happen that requires them to have a say in how it happens.
Which is why we don't obsess about abortion in this country because it is decided by elected representatives.
It is quite revealing that my insistence on “British Isles” provokes some quite odd posting about genocide and the British aristocracy.
What's odd is thinking that British war crimes and genocide are somehow peripheral to the question of which exact places remained British and which didn't.
Now you’re adding war crimes to the mix. Something tells me you’d prefer they were called the Islands of Ireland and Imperialist Arseholes.
But you can call them what you want. In the English language - well, you probably have another name for that, too - they are commonly called the British Isles, and Wikipedia concurs.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
Except 'Celt' is a meaningless word with no historical basis.
Yes, but understood in the modern layman context to mean the not English/anglo bits
It is always sad when someone can only define themselves as what they are not rather than what they are.
I find that's usually the main way people define themselves, especially as other reasons listed would often not in actuality provide a distinction at all.
It is quite revealing that my insistence on “British Isles” provokes some quite odd posting about genocide and the British aristocracy.
What's odd is thinking that British war crimes and genocide are somehow peripheral to the question of which exact places remained British and which didn't.
Now you’re adding war crimes to the mix. Something tells me you’d prefer they were called the Islands of Ireland and Imperialist Arseholes.
But you can call them what you want. In the English language - well, you probably have another name for that, too - they are commonly called the British Isles, and Wikipedia concurs.
Island of the Most Oppressed People Ever and Imperialist Arseholes.
There are two fundamental issues in RvW and successors:
Does the constitution require that all of the USA adhere to a particular principle - the one in question.
If yes, what is that principle and how shall it be exercised.
I think you could add a third issue at this point: to what extent is it valid for the Supreme Court to go back and effectively re-decide points that were apparently previously settled by earlier judgements, just because the set of judges now on the court have a different set of views to the previous set? This isn't a black-and-white question: at least sometimes old decisions are so obviously wrong that they need fixing. But there is value to society and the system in the ground not being drastically shifted under peoples' feet. Personally I think the court went rather far here. My prediction is that the new conservative majority will continue to happily overrule old rulings in a way that for example Roberts is not going to be happy about.
In the UK the SC can overrule itself - which is an important provision, and a fairly recent change and in the long run a little bit of a defence against tyranny.
In the USA the way the constitution has been (often wrongly IMHO) interpreted means that there is a large area of life where the courts are the legislator, judge, jury and executioner, with the elected legislator being powerless of change it. This is rare in the UK.
The more this is the case the more important it is that the court can reflect social change by overruling itself. Because no-one else can.
Can we hope for guns next? The historic interpretation from the SC of the alleged right to bear arms is just historically and textually illiterate drivel. At least reversing RvW was properly arguable and gave power back to the voters.
It is quite revealing that my insistence on “British Isles” provokes some quite odd posting about genocide and the British aristocracy.
What's odd is thinking that British war crimes and genocide are somehow peripheral to the question of which exact places remained British and which didn't.
The Irish government recognises "the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both Governments and would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland."
In effect a united Ireland would be a, but not the, British state.
A quote which also renders the faux shock that sometimes happens about 'forgetting' the Northern Irish when talking about Brits rather silly.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
Except 'Celt' is a meaningless word with no historical basis.
Yes, but understood in the modern layman context to mean the not English/anglo bits
It is always sad when someone can only define themselves as what they are not rather than what they are.
I find that's usually the main way people define themselves, especially as other reasons listed would often not in actuality provide a distinction at all.
There used to be a poster called Antifrank, who must have really hated the French.
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
WFH is a terrible idea in my opinion.
Do you work?
WFH is a great idea if you have a big enough house with a dedicated separate space, and a good support network of friends you see regularly.
If on the other hand you're crammed into a house share, living with parents, living in a tiny one bedroom flat, or you don't have much of a social life and you miss the cameraderie of after work drinks, etc, it's a terrible idea.
WFH works for some people. It doesn't work for others.
It is quite revealing that my insistence on “British Isles” provokes some quite odd posting about genocide and the British aristocracy.
What's odd is thinking that British war crimes and genocide are somehow peripheral to the question of which exact places remained British and which didn't.
Now you’re adding war crimes to the mix. Something tells me you’d prefer they were called the Islands of Ireland and Imperialist Arseholes.
But you can call them what you want. In the English language - well, you probably have another name for that, too - they are commonly called the British Isles, and Wikipedia concurs.
Island of the Most Oppressed People Ever and Imperialist Arseholes.
How do the Irish feel about Scots who lay claim to the Most Oppressed People Ever title ?
Especially as Scots have done much of the oppressing of the Irish.
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
WFH is a terrible idea in my opinion.
Do you work?
WFH is a great idea if you have a big enough house with a dedicated separate space, and a good support network of friends you see regularly.
If on the other hand you're crammed into a house share, living with parents, living in a tiny one bedroom flat, or you don't have much of a social life and you miss the cameraderie of after work drinks, etc, it's a terrible idea.
WFH works for some people. It doesn't work for others.
I agree, but Andy takes a much more severe position it seems that it is simply a terrible idea, which is not the same thing I think.
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
WFH is a terrible idea in my opinion.
Do you work?
WFH is a great idea if you have a big enough house with a dedicated separate space, and a good support network of friends you see regularly.
If on the other hand you're crammed into a house share, living with parents, living in a tiny one bedroom flat, or you don't have much of a social life and you miss the cameraderie of after work drinks, etc, it's a terrible idea.
WFH works for some people. It doesn't work for others.
I think the biggest barrier to WFH is broadband speed.
It is quite revealing that my insistence on “British Isles” provokes some quite odd posting about genocide and the British aristocracy.
What's odd is thinking that British war crimes and genocide are somehow peripheral to the question of which exact places remained British and which didn't.
The Irish government recognises "the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both Governments and would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland."
In effect a united Ireland would be a, but not the, British state.
I dream of a single nation of the islands, with a capital in Dublin, an equal respect for the traditional living languages of the islands, of which English is honoured but only as one of several, all of us learning two at least of the languages from reception class onwards, and all of us compromising by being in EFTA/EEA. And then I wake up.
If overturning RvW has the effect of properly returning the issue, as in the UK, from courts to electors this will be a massive gain.
Yes, that's very much my opinion.
And Kansas tells us that - in the vast majority of US states - abortion will continue to be legal and available. The exceptions will be in the Deep South and Utah,
It is, however, worth noting that the Republican Party has got itself into a bit of a pickle here. There are a couple of US States where legal abortion is popular, and yet Republican controlled legislatures have passed laws that broadly criminalise it. While RvW existed, this was of little import; it was virtue signaling to primary voters.
Now, though, those laws come into existence.
Voters, for what it's worth, tend to support restrictions on abortion. But very few of them support blanket bans.
The key question, really, is how much abortion matters.
And Kansas tells us the answer is quite a lot. Around 200,000 independents came out to vote in the Kansas ballot proposition, even though they couldn't vote in either party's primaries. Overall turnout was up close to 90% from the 2018 primaries.
That's a hell of a lot of people who cared enough to come out and vote.
Now, this doesn't mean that those people will vote Democrat. But they might well come out to overturn blanket abortion bans. And that probably means voting Democrat.
You've hit us before with your hot take that it's all a thoroughly good thing if the right of women to choose what happens to their own bodies is taken from them and handed to a bare majority in their own state. And if the only losers are a few thousand women, including victims of rape/incest, in Alabama or whatever then, y'know, state rights or something.
It's still a rotten take - as intellectually shallow as it is callous.
I apologize for being intellectually shallow.
But I believe process matters. And process means democratic buy in.
I'm sorry that abortion will be illegal in some states. It sucks for the women involved. But decisions about criminality should be made by voters.
And if those voters decide that slavery should be legal again? Or all homosexuals should be chemically castrated? Would you still hold to that claim?
Churchill's comment on democracy - "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" is perfectly true but within its construction there is an explicit and valid criticism.
Democracy is flawed and like any other system created by man it needs constant supervision and challenge. That is why we have the other arms of Government. Because pure democracy killed Socrates. Because Hitler and Trump were both democratically elected and because there are some basic principles which are even more important than democracy.
I think you have drawn your line in the wrong place in the sand.
And if the judges decide that slavery should be legal again ?
Would that be okay even if the elected representatives opposed it ?
No because no one is saying that the courts should have all the power either. My argument is with Robert's contention that these things MUST be decided by the electorate and that if they are then they are valid. It was just that thinking that led to the bloodiest war in US history.
We have checks and balances for this reason. Because if we do not then the only way this ends is with bloodshed and 'might is right'.
And who decides these checks and balances ?
Ultimately you come back to needing the population to accept the decision making process.
And for that to happen that requires them to have a say in how it happens.
Which is why we don't obsess about abortion in this country because it is decided by elected representatives.
You don't believe there is anything that stands above that principle? That if the majority in Britain decided to drive all the non-whites out of the country or kill them then we should accept it because that is what the majority want?
Surely the whole point of our system is to ensure that there are some standards which are fundamentally important and which no amount of mob rule can be allowed to overturn.
A mature democracy is one where there is a balance between the separate parts of the state to ensure no one part of it is overly powerful. The US has ceased to be a mature democracy - if it ever really was one.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
Except 'Celt' is a meaningless word with no historical basis.
Yes, but understood in the modern layman context to mean the not English/anglo bits
It is always sad when someone can only define themselves as what they are not rather than what they are.
I find that's usually the main way people define themselves, especially as other reasons listed would often not in actuality provide a distinction at all.
There used to be a poster called Antifrank, who must have really hated the French.
Or just really liked using proper postage stamps for work letters.
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
WFH is a terrible idea in my opinion.
Do you work?
WFH is a great idea if you have a big enough house with a dedicated separate space, and a good support network of friends you see regularly.
If on the other hand you're crammed into a house share, living with parents, living in a tiny one bedroom flat, or you don't have much of a social life and you miss the cameraderie of after work drinks, etc, it's a terrible idea.
WFH works for some people. It doesn't work for others.
I think the biggest barrier to WFH is broadband speed.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
The advantage of "Islands Of the North Atlantic" is that you can then use the initialism of IONA, which appeals, although may cause some confusion with the Island of Iona when used in speech.
The Atlantic Archipelago is another alternative that has been proposed, but I tend simply to use "Britain and Ireland".
Bloody terrible idea. North Atlantic goes all the way to the equator so that's everything from iceland to the canaries and cape verde, and west to bermuda.
The Atlantic is in general oceanographic terms normally split into three, South Atlantic, Tropical Atlantic and North Atlantic.
But anyway, I didn't say that IONA was a perfect option.
Isles of Britain and Ireland is the current term in some circles.
What crap.
British Isles DNE UK of Great Britain and NI North America DNE USA Europe DNE European Union
Cf also British, American, and possibly too, European.
I AM talking about the bits of isolated land not including Heligoland, the Canaries, and the Faeroes. Not the UK.
Me too. They’re called the British Isles.
You don't need much imagination to realise that would irk the Irish.
I don’t care. They can call it what they like. They’ve been the British Isles, or some variation of that term, since Roman Times.
There's not much point in using a name for a place that pisses off a large number of people who live in that place, and that they will only use with scare quotes at best.
Language changes and evolves and is contested, often for political reasons. The British Isles was used because of British dominance of the islands. Now that dominance is ended, so the name will go.
Actually from a numerical perspective, the number of Irish is quite small.
The geographic term British Isles seems to go back to Roman times, so your point about British dominance may not be correct.
They are still the British Isles on Wikipedia. The alternatives are weird euphemisms.
Quoting numerical perspectives is fraught with difficulty in this context. Before the Irish famine the 1841 census gave a population of Ireland of over 8 million, compared to a population of just over 18 and a half for England, Wales and Scotland.
That's an 1841 ratio of about 9:4 to compare with the modern ratio of about 9.3:1
Can you talk me through that?
Your 1841 figures give a ratio of about 2.3:1 Of UK today is 67 million next to 5 million for the Irish republic. So over 13:1
Your figures are correct for the UK to Republic of Ireland ratio, but I calculated a ratio for island of Britain to island of Ireland.
Ok but I think even those are off.
Population of island of Ireland is ~7 million.
Population of island of Britain is ~65 million.
7 * 9 = 63 7 * 3 = 21
Consequently modern ratio of the population of the two islands is ~ 9.3:1 which is >>> ~ 9:4 ratio in 1841, before the famine.
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
WFH is a terrible idea in my opinion.
Do you work?
WFH is a great idea if you have a big enough house with a dedicated separate space, and a good support network of friends you see regularly.
If on the other hand you're crammed into a house share, living with parents, living in a tiny one bedroom flat, or you don't have much of a social life and you miss the cameraderie of after work drinks, etc, it's a terrible idea.
WFH works for some people. It doesn't work for others.
And for all the fuss about WFH how many jobs is it applicable to ?
Not many in health, education, manufacturing, construction, agriculture, retail, hospitality, transportation.
So ultimately people who do strongly want to WFH will be attracted to the minority of jobs where it is possible.
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
The notion of mothballing corporate HQ buildings through the coming winter is growing apace especially for those who have little or no public facing activity.
Oddly enough, I'm to be convinced it will be bad as some are predicting but we do need to see some flexibility and sense from Government which I know is asking a lot of Liz Truss who will presumably be whipping us all into our offices (personally, so I'm led to believe).
With inflation now at 10%, the idea London tube, bus and train fares should rise 10% in January is completely unsupportable - Sadiq Khan has found a cause for which he's going to have a lot of support in the capital. To be honest, given TfL is effectively run and financed by the Government, they may as well freeze the fares ar 2022 levels to try and bring back some passengers,
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
WFH is a terrible idea in my opinion.
Do you work?
WFH is a great idea if you have a big enough house with a dedicated separate space, and a good support network of friends you see regularly.
If on the other hand you're crammed into a house share, living with parents, living in a tiny one bedroom flat, or you don't have much of a social life and you miss the cameraderie of after work drinks, etc, it's a terrible idea.
WFH works for some people. It doesn't work for others.
I think the biggest barrier to WFH is broadband speed.
I had a colleague on ADSL.
And how was it for her?
She was really grateful to me her giving massive downloads.
It is quite revealing that my insistence on “British Isles” provokes some quite odd posting about genocide and the British aristocracy.
What's odd is thinking that British war crimes and genocide are somehow peripheral to the question of which exact places remained British and which didn't.
The Irish government recognises "the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both Governments and would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland."
In effect a united Ireland would be a, but not the, British state.
I dream of a single nation of the islands, with a capital in Dublin, an equal respect for the traditional living languages of the islands, of which English is honoured but only as one of several, and all of us compromising by being in EFTA/EEA. And then I wake up.
You see for all our arguing about names, I agree with you entirely there.
It is quite revealing that my insistence on “British Isles” provokes some quite odd posting about genocide and the British aristocracy.
What's odd is thinking that British war crimes and genocide are somehow peripheral to the question of which exact places remained British and which didn't.
The Irish government recognises "the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both Governments and would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland."
In effect a united Ireland would be a, but not the, British state.
I dream of a single nation of the islands, with a capital in Dublin, an equal respect for the traditional living languages of the islands, of which English is honoured but only as one of several, and all of us compromising by being in EFTA/EEA. And then I wake up.
That's very detailed. I dreamed of sliding down the bannisters showing the French lady who works in the local Deli how to do it but she couldn't and banged her head, and then she was teaching me how to waltz, and then I woke up.
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
WFH is a terrible idea in my opinion.
Do you work?
Teaching from home is terrible and dismal. So is doing school from home as a pupil. I'm sure that there are other jobs like that.
But there is lots of work that can be done pretty well from home. Not perfectly, and the team building, idea sparking stuff is important and needs to be engineered, since it won't happen spontaneously. And then I'm reminded of the old adverts for Cadbury's Smash;
"We have observed the humans. They wake up early, and spend lots of their Earth money to put themselves in little cans for thirty to sixty minutes before they can start working. Then at the end of the day they do the same in reverse. They clearly are a most primitive people."
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
The notion of mothballing corporate HQ buildings through the coming winter is growing apace especially for those who have little or no public facing activity.
Oddly enough, I'm to be convinced it will be bad as some are predicting but we do need to see some flexibility and sense from Government which I know is asking a lot of Liz Truss who will presumably be whipping us all into our offices (personally, so I'm led to believe).
With inflation now at 10%, the idea London tube, bus and train fares should rise 10% in January is completely unsupportable - Sadiq Khan has found a cause for which he's going to have a lot of support in the capital. To be honest, given TfL is effectively run and financed by the Government, they may as well freeze the fares ar 2022 levels to try and bring back some passengers,
I also think it will see the death knell for many more bank branches.
We have industry trackers, and footfall was falling well before the pandemic, and pretty much 99% of customers who go into branch can do it online/via the app.
Heating branches for the 1% was never viable, now you're breaking your fiduciary duty by keeping them open.
It is quite revealing that my insistence on “British Isles” provokes some quite odd posting about genocide and the British aristocracy.
What's odd is thinking that British war crimes and genocide are somehow peripheral to the question of which exact places remained British and which didn't.
The Irish government recognises "the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both Governments and would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland."
In effect a united Ireland would be a, but not the, British state.
I dream of a single nation of the islands, with a capital in Dublin, an equal respect for the traditional living languages of the islands, of which English is honoured but only as one of several, and all of us compromising by being in EFTA/EEA. And then I wake up.
Obviously a non-starter for all manner of reasons, but given the way people sometimes try to oversimplify matters of borders as if proximity to another place or that islands should naturally be unified (Of course the Island of Ireland should be united, absurd not to be, of course the Iberian Penninsula should not have Gibraltar separate from Spain, that's absurd, Las Malvinas is closer to Argentina of course) the same logic would suggest an archipelago should be united.
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
The notion of mothballing corporate HQ buildings through the coming winter is growing apace especially for those who have little or no public facing activity.
Oddly enough, I'm to be convinced it will be bad as some are predicting but we do need to see some flexibility and sense from Government which I know is asking a lot of Liz Truss who will presumably be whipping us all into our offices (personally, so I'm led to believe).
With inflation now at 10%, the idea London tube, bus and train fares should rise 10% in January is completely unsupportable - Sadiq Khan has found a cause for which he's going to have a lot of support in the capital. To be honest, given TfL is effectively run and financed by the Government, they may as well freeze the fares ar 2022 levels to try and bring back some passengers,
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Yes, I doubt if many Irish Republicans would be interested in voting Conservative, and I would not expect the Conservatives to be courting their votes.
I'm glad we can then ignore any blathering from Rishi and Liz while they do their tour of the territories when they claim to speak for Scotland rather than solely to and for their niche selectorate.
It is quite revealing that my insistence on “British Isles” provokes some quite odd posting about genocide and the British aristocracy.
What's odd is thinking that British war crimes and genocide are somehow peripheral to the question of which exact places remained British and which didn't.
The Irish government recognises "the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both Governments and would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland."
In effect a united Ireland would be a, but not the, British state.
I dream of a single nation of the islands, with a capital in Dublin, an equal respect for the traditional living languages of the islands, of which English is honoured but only as one of several, and all of us compromising by being in EFTA/EEA. And then I wake up.
That's very detailed. I dreamed of sliding down the bannisters showing the French lady who works in the local Deli how to do it but she couldn't and banged her head, and then she was teaching me how to waltz, and then I woke up.
and you were almost there, as well; how frustrating.
If overturning RvW has the effect of properly returning the issue, as in the UK, from courts to electors this will be a massive gain.
Yes, that's very much my opinion.
And Kansas tells us that - in the vast majority of US states - abortion will continue to be legal and available. The exceptions will be in the Deep South and Utah,
It is, however, worth noting that the Republican Party has got itself into a bit of a pickle here. There are a couple of US States where legal abortion is popular, and yet Republican controlled legislatures have passed laws that broadly criminalise it. While RvW existed, this was of little import; it was virtue signaling to primary voters.
Now, though, those laws come into existence.
Voters, for what it's worth, tend to support restrictions on abortion. But very few of them support blanket bans.
The key question, really, is how much abortion matters.
And Kansas tells us the answer is quite a lot. Around 200,000 independents came out to vote in the Kansas ballot proposition, even though they couldn't vote in either party's primaries. Overall turnout was up close to 90% from the 2018 primaries.
That's a hell of a lot of people who cared enough to come out and vote.
Now, this doesn't mean that those people will vote Democrat. But they might well come out to overturn blanket abortion bans. And that probably means voting Democrat.
You've hit us before with your hot take that it's all a thoroughly good thing if the right of women to choose what happens to their own bodies is taken from them and handed to a bare majority in their own state. And if the only losers are a few thousand women, including victims of rape/incest, in Alabama or whatever then, y'know, state rights or something.
It's still a rotten take - as intellectually shallow as it is callous.
I apologize for being intellectually shallow.
But I believe process matters. And process means democratic buy in.
I'm sorry that abortion will be illegal in some states. It sucks for the women involved. But decisions about criminality should be made by voters.
And if those voters decide that slavery should be legal again? Or all homosexuals should be chemically castrated? Would you still hold to that claim?
Churchill's comment on democracy - "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" is perfectly true but within its construction there is an explicit and valid criticism.
Democracy is flawed and like any other system created by man it needs constant supervision and challenge. That is why we have the other arms of Government. Because pure democracy killed Socrates. Because Hitler and Trump were both democratically elected and because there are some basic principles which are even more important than democracy.
I think you have drawn your line in the wrong place in the sand.
And if the judges decide that slavery should be legal again ?
Would that be okay even if the elected representatives opposed it ?
No because no one is saying that the courts should have all the power either. My argument is with Robert's contention that these things MUST be decided by the electorate and that if they are then they are valid. It was just that thinking that led to the bloodiest war in US history.
We have checks and balances for this reason. Because if we do not then the only way this ends is with bloodshed and 'might is right'.
Agreed. And the principle of checks and balances between the legislature, executive and judiciary is of course precisely the basis on which the US Constitution was designed.
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
WFH is a terrible idea in my opinion.
Do you work?
WFH is a great idea if you have a big enough house with a dedicated separate space, and a good support network of friends you see regularly.
If on the other hand you're crammed into a house share, living with parents, living in a tiny one bedroom flat, or you don't have much of a social life and you miss the cameraderie of after work drinks, etc, it's a terrible idea.
WFH works for some people. It doesn't work for others.
I think the biggest barrier to WFH is broadband speed.
I had a colleague on ADSL.
And how was it for her?
She was really grateful to me her giving massive downloads.
It's your transmission control protocol that does it.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
Except 'Celt' is a meaningless word with no historical basis.
Yes, but understood in the modern layman context to mean the not English/anglo bits
It is always sad when someone can only define themselves as what they are not rather than what they are.
I find that's usually the main way people define themselves, especially as other reasons listed would often not in actuality provide a distinction at all.
There used to be a poster called Antifrank, who must have really hated the French.
Or just really liked using proper postage stamps for work letters.
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
The notion of mothballing corporate HQ buildings through the coming winter is growing apace especially for those who have little or no public facing activity.
Oddly enough, I'm to be convinced it will be bad as some are predicting but we do need to see some flexibility and sense from Government which I know is asking a lot of Liz Truss who will presumably be whipping us all into our offices (personally, so I'm led to believe).
With inflation now at 10%, the idea London tube, bus and train fares should rise 10% in January is completely unsupportable - Sadiq Khan has found a cause for which he's going to have a lot of support in the capital. To be honest, given TfL is effectively run and financed by the Government, they may as well freeze the fares ar 2022 levels to try and bring back some passengers,
Meanwhile, buses in the rest of the country face huge service cuts. They are already eye wateringly expensive in comparison.
A minor point, but surely removing his skin colour from the description is just unhelpful in the circumstances.
“Police now want to identify the man from CCTV as a matter of urgency.
He is described as wearing grey shorts, a dark coloured T-shirt, a white baseball cap and white patterned builder style gloves.”
White/Black/Asian should be included in the description, imo. It’s perhaps less important when you have a photo, but still, it’s helpful information that might make identifying the suspect a little easier.
Also, I don’t think deliberately withholding a suspects obvious skin colour does the anti-racism cause (to which I’m broadly sympathetic) any good.
I also think it will see the death knell for many more bank branches.
We have industry trackers, and footfall was falling well before the pandemic, and pretty much 99% of customers who go into branch can do it online/via the app.
Heating branches for the 1% was never viable, now you're breaking your fiduciary duty by keeping them open.
Some of the projected energy bill numbers are going to be absolute killers for business. I think we'll see restaurants perhaps only open 2-3 nights per week. I'm no expert but betting shops look incredibly expensive to heat and light and most of them are empty during the winter evenings.
Forget evening floodlit racing for this winter and close the shops at 5pm.
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
WFH is a terrible idea in my opinion.
Do you work?
WFH is a great idea if you have a big enough house with a dedicated separate space, and a good support network of friends you see regularly.
If on the other hand you're crammed into a house share, living with parents, living in a tiny one bedroom flat, or you don't have much of a social life and you miss the cameraderie of after work drinks, etc, it's a terrible idea.
WFH works for some people. It doesn't work for others.
And for all the fuss about WFH how many jobs is it applicable to ?
Not many in health, education, manufacturing, construction, agriculture, retail, hospitality, transportation.
So ultimately people who do strongly want to WFH will be attracted to the minority of jobs where it is possible.
Actually probably a large number in all almost all those areas you mention. Yes front line staff still need to be there but many of the backroom staff can do their job just as well from home.
In the last 7 or 8 years I have ran drilling campaigns amounting to probably 30 wells for various companies. I have travelled to offices all over the UK, Europe and the Middle East. But I have never done it to actually do any work. Work gets done at home. Office visits are to see friends and colleagues, have a few face to face meetings and generally shoot the breeze. Whilst you need people on the rigs (and even there services such as directional drilling and well control are more often run from onshore now) the vast majority of people working for oil companies can do their jobs just as well - if not better - working from home. Shift work becomes massively easier for a start.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
The advantage of "Islands Of the North Atlantic" is that you can then use the initialism of IONA, which appeals, although may cause some confusion with the Island of Iona when used in speech.
The Atlantic Archipelago is another alternative that has been proposed, but I tend simply to use "Britain and Ireland".
Bloody terrible idea. North Atlantic goes all the way to the equator so that's everything from iceland to the canaries and cape verde, and west to bermuda.
The Atlantic is in general oceanographic terms normally split into three, South Atlantic, Tropical Atlantic and North Atlantic.
But anyway, I didn't say that IONA was a perfect option.
Isles of Britain and Ireland is the current term in some circles.
What crap.
British Isles DNE UK of Great Britain and NI North America DNE USA Europe DNE European Union
Cf also British, American, and possibly too, European.
I AM talking about the bits of isolated land not including Heligoland, the Canaries, and the Faeroes. Not the UK.
Me too. They’re called the British Isles.
You don't need much imagination to realise that would irk the Irish.
I don’t care. They can call it what they like. They’ve been the British Isles, or some variation of that term, since Roman Times.
There's not much point in using a name for a place that pisses off a large number of people who live in that place, and that they will only use with scare quotes at best.
Language changes and evolves and is contested, often for political reasons. The British Isles was used because of British dominance of the islands. Now that dominance is ended, so the name will go.
Actually from a numerical perspective, the number of Irish is quite small.
The geographic term British Isles seems to go back to Roman times, so your point about British dominance may not be correct.
They are still the British Isles on Wikipedia. The alternatives are weird euphemisms.
Quoting numerical perspectives is fraught with difficulty in this context. Before the Irish famine the 1841 census gave a population of Ireland of over 8 million, compared to a population of just over 18 and a half for England, Wales and Scotland.
That's an 1841 ratio of about 9:4 to compare with the modern ratio of about 9.3:1
Can you talk me through that?
Your 1841 figures give a ratio of about 2.3:1 Of UK today is 67 million next to 5 million for the Irish republic. So over 13:1
Your figures are correct for the UK to Republic of Ireland ratio, but I calculated a ratio for island of Britain to island of Ireland.
Ok but I think even those are off.
Population of island of Ireland is ~7 million.
Population of island of Britain is ~65 million.
7 * 9 = 63 7 * 3 = 21
Consequently modern ratio of the population of the two islands is ~ 9.3:1 which is >>> ~ 9:4 ratio in 1841, before the famine.
The population collapse in some Irish counties suggest they were either massively overpopulated before the potato famine or massively underpopulated now. Or a combination of both.
Has anywhere else in Europe experienced such a population reduction as rural Munster and Connaught have done:
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
Except 'Celt' is a meaningless word with no historical basis.
Yes, but understood in the modern layman context to mean the not English/anglo bits
It is always sad when someone can only define themselves as what they are not rather than what they are.
I find that's usually the main way people define themselves, especially as other reasons listed would often not in actuality provide a distinction at all.
There used to be a poster called Antifrank, who must have really hated the French.
Or just really liked using proper postage stamps for work letters.
and then he met Frank and was gone?
ISTR he really hated Frank Field. I don't know if that was what inspired the name. Antipathy to Frank Field may be sincere but it seems an odd thing to define yourself by.
I also think it will see the death knell for many more bank branches.
We have industry trackers, and footfall was falling well before the pandemic, and pretty much 99% of customers who go into branch can do it online/via the app.
Heating branches for the 1% was never viable, now you're breaking your fiduciary duty by keeping them open.
Some of the projected energy bill numbers are going to be absolute killers for business. I think we'll see restaurants perhaps only open 2-3 nights per week. I'm no expert but betting shops look incredibly expensive to heat and light and most of them are empty during the winter evenings.
Forget evening floodlit racing for this winter and close the shops at 5pm.
I was reading about a charity and a food bank who both are going to see their energy bills go from something like £10k per annum to £50k per annum.
ONS needs to create an inflation stat that is focussed on the most basic essentials that someone on benefits needs to spend. Basic foodstuff, energy, basic clothes, toiletry and so on.
BBC news saying that these things are up 19 or 20% not the headline 10%
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
The notion of mothballing corporate HQ buildings through the coming winter is growing apace especially for those who have little or no public facing activity.
Oddly enough, I'm to be convinced it will be bad as some are predicting but we do need to see some flexibility and sense from Government which I know is asking a lot of Liz Truss who will presumably be whipping us all into our offices (personally, so I'm led to believe).
With inflation now at 10%, the idea London tube, bus and train fares should rise 10% in January is completely unsupportable - Sadiq Khan has found a cause for which he's going to have a lot of support in the capital. To be honest, given TfL is effectively run and financed by the Government, they may as well freeze the fares ar 2022 levels to try and bring back some passengers,
I also think it will see the death knell for many more bank branches.
We have industry trackers, and footfall was falling well before the pandemic, and pretty much 99% of customers who go into branch can do it online/via the app.
Heating branches for the 1% was never viable, now you're breaking your fiduciary duty by keeping them open.
I have not been into an actual bank for 5 years but the people who still go there are self selected as the 10% who are too old and dim to set up telephone or online banking. Queuing behind them is testing.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
Except 'Celt' is a meaningless word with no historical basis.
Yes, but understood in the modern layman context to mean the not English/anglo bits
It is always sad when someone can only define themselves as what they are not rather than what they are.
I find that's usually the main way people define themselves, especially as other reasons listed would often not in actuality provide a distinction at all.
There used to be a poster called Antifrank, who must have really hated the French.
Or just really liked using proper postage stamps for work letters.
and then he met Frank and was gone?
ISTR he really hated Frank Field. I don't know if that was what inspired the name. Antipathy to Frank Field may be sincere but it seems an odd thing to define yourself by.
The big event today was the brilliant BAAEED winning the Juddmonte at York. The best horse since Frankel who won this race 10 years ago and avoided the fate of the great Brigadier Gerard 50 years ago.
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
WFH is a terrible idea in my opinion.
Do you work?
WFH is a great idea if you have a big enough house with a dedicated separate space, and a good support network of friends you see regularly.
If on the other hand you're crammed into a house share, living with parents, living in a tiny one bedroom flat, or you don't have much of a social life and you miss the cameraderie of after work drinks, etc, it's a terrible idea.
WFH works for some people. It doesn't work for others.
And for all the fuss about WFH how many jobs is it applicable to ?
Not many in health, education, manufacturing, construction, agriculture, retail, hospitality, transportation.
So ultimately people who do strongly want to WFH will be attracted to the minority of jobs where it is possible.
Actually probably a large number in all almost all those areas you mention. Yes front line staff still need to be there but many of the backroom staff can do their job just as well from home.
In the last 7 or 8 years I have ran drilling campaigns amounting to probably 30 wells for various companies. I have travelled to offices all over the UK, Europe and the Middle East. But I have never done it to actually do any work. Work gets done at home. Office visits are to see friends and colleagues, have a few face to face meetings and generally shoot the breeze. Whilst you need people on the rigs (and even there services such as directional drilling and well control are more often run from onshore now) the vast majority of people working for oil companies can do their jobs just as well - if not better - working from home. Shift work becomes massively easier for a start.
I'd be interested to know what proportion of workers are WFH by profession and sector.
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
WFH is a terrible idea in my opinion.
Do you work?
WFH is a great idea if you have a big enough house with a dedicated separate space, and a good support network of friends you see regularly.
If on the other hand you're crammed into a house share, living with parents, living in a tiny one bedroom flat, or you don't have much of a social life and you miss the cameraderie of after work drinks, etc, it's a terrible idea.
WFH works for some people. It doesn't work for others.
And for all the fuss about WFH how many jobs is it applicable to ?
Not many in health, education, manufacturing, construction, agriculture, retail, hospitality, transportation.
So ultimately people who do strongly want to WFH will be attracted to the minority of jobs where it is possible.
Actually probably a large number in all almost all those areas you mention. Yes front line staff still need to be there but many of the backroom staff can do their job just as well from home.
In the last 7 or 8 years I have ran drilling campaigns amounting to probably 30 wells for various companies. I have travelled to offices all over the UK, Europe and the Middle East. But I have never done it to actually do any work. Work gets done at home. Office visits are to see friends and colleagues, have a few face to face meetings and generally shoot the breeze. Whilst you need people on the rigs (and even there services such as directional drilling and well control are more often run from onshore now) the vast majority of people working for oil companies can do their jobs just as well - if not better - working from home. Shift work becomes massively easier for a start.
The same is even true in medicine; each hour of frontline patient contact creates a lot of work for that medic (communicating, recording, thinking, planning) that can be done, possibly better, elsewhere.
If we are serious about cutting energy use this winter (and we damn well should be), offices and the stuff associated with them are a poor use of energy.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
Except 'Celt' is a meaningless word with no historical basis.
Yes, but understood in the modern layman context to mean the not English/anglo bits
It is always sad when someone can only define themselves as what they are not rather than what they are.
I find that's usually the main way people define themselves, especially as other reasons listed would often not in actuality provide a distinction at all.
There used to be a poster called Antifrank, who must have really hated the French.
Or just really liked using proper postage stamps for work letters.
and then he met Frank and was gone?
ISTR he really hated Frank Field. I don't know if that was what inspired the name. Antipathy to Frank Field may be sincere but it seems an odd thing to define yourself by.
iirc antifrank is a jargon term in pensions law, in which Antifrank specialised.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
The advantage of "Islands Of the North Atlantic" is that you can then use the initialism of IONA, which appeals, although may cause some confusion with the Island of Iona when used in speech.
The Atlantic Archipelago is another alternative that has been proposed, but I tend simply to use "Britain and Ireland".
Bloody terrible idea. North Atlantic goes all the way to the equator so that's everything from iceland to the canaries and cape verde, and west to bermuda.
The Atlantic is in general oceanographic terms normally split into three, South Atlantic, Tropical Atlantic and North Atlantic.
But anyway, I didn't say that IONA was a perfect option.
Isles of Britain and Ireland is the current term in some circles.
What crap.
British Isles DNE UK of Great Britain and NI North America DNE USA Europe DNE European Union
Cf also British, American, and possibly too, European.
I AM talking about the bits of isolated land not including Heligoland, the Canaries, and the Faeroes. Not the UK.
Me too. They’re called the British Isles.
You don't need much imagination to realise that would irk the Irish.
I don’t care. They can call it what they like. They’ve been the British Isles, or some variation of that term, since Roman Times.
There's not much point in using a name for a place that pisses off a large number of people who live in that place, and that they will only use with scare quotes at best.
Language changes and evolves and is contested, often for political reasons. The British Isles was used because of British dominance of the islands. Now that dominance is ended, so the name will go.
Actually from a numerical perspective, the number of Irish is quite small.
The geographic term British Isles seems to go back to Roman times, so your point about British dominance may not be correct.
They are still the British Isles on Wikipedia. The alternatives are weird euphemisms.
Quoting numerical perspectives is fraught with difficulty in this context. Before the Irish famine the 1841 census gave a population of Ireland of over 8 million, compared to a population of just over 18 and a half for England, Wales and Scotland.
That's an 1841 ratio of about 9:4 to compare with the modern ratio of about 9.3:1
Can you talk me through that?
Your 1841 figures give a ratio of about 2.3:1 Of UK today is 67 million next to 5 million for the Irish republic. So over 13:1
Your figures are correct for the UK to Republic of Ireland ratio, but I calculated a ratio for island of Britain to island of Ireland.
Ok but I think even those are off.
Population of island of Ireland is ~7 million.
Population of island of Britain is ~65 million.
7 * 9 = 63 7 * 3 = 21
Consequently modern ratio of the population of the two islands is ~ 9.3:1 which is >>> ~ 9:4 ratio in 1841, before the famine.
The population collapse in some Irish counties suggest they were either massively overpopulated before the potato famine or massively underpopulated now. Or a combination of both.
Has anywhere else in Europe experienced such a population reduction as rural Munster and Connaught have done:
I also think it will see the death knell for many more bank branches.
We have industry trackers, and footfall was falling well before the pandemic, and pretty much 99% of customers who go into branch can do it online/via the app.
Heating branches for the 1% was never viable, now you're breaking your fiduciary duty by keeping them open.
Some of the projected energy bill numbers are going to be absolute killers for business. I think we'll see restaurants perhaps only open 2-3 nights per week. I'm no expert but betting shops look incredibly expensive to heat and light and most of them are empty during the winter evenings.
Forget evening floodlit racing for this winter and close the shops at 5pm.
Your nightly reminder: a vicious new covid variant justifying total lockdown would be the answer to the government's prayers.
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
The notion of mothballing corporate HQ buildings through the coming winter is growing apace especially for those who have little or no public facing activity.
Oddly enough, I'm to be convinced it will be bad as some are predicting but we do need to see some flexibility and sense from Government which I know is asking a lot of Liz Truss who will presumably be whipping us all into our offices (personally, so I'm led to believe).
With inflation now at 10%, the idea London tube, bus and train fares should rise 10% in January is completely unsupportable - Sadiq Khan has found a cause for which he's going to have a lot of support in the capital. To be honest, given TfL is effectively run and financed by the Government, they may as well freeze the fares ar 2022 levels to try and bring back some passengers,
I also think it will see the death knell for many more bank branches.
We have industry trackers, and footfall was falling well before the pandemic, and pretty much 99% of customers who go into branch can do it online/via the app.
Heating branches for the 1% was never viable, now you're breaking your fiduciary duty by keeping them open.
I have not been into an actual bank for 5 years but the people who still go there are self selected as the 10% who are too old and dim to set up telephone or online banking. Queuing behind them is testing.
Yeah, last time I was in a branch was when I had to deposit a cheque that was too large for the app.
I was stuck behind one old dear who withdrew £80 over the counter as she didn't like using cash machines.
ONS needs to create an inflation stat that is focussed on the most basic essentials that someone on benefits needs to spend. Basic foodstuff, energy, basic clothes, toiletry and so on.
BBC news saying that these things are up 19 or 20% not the headline 10%
That's the point of the Vimes Boot Index that the ONS is indeed working on.
And the reason they are up so much is easy to grasp.
500g on basics value pasta has just as many fixed transportation costs as 500g of regular pasta or a 500g of speciality pasta. So if the 23p bag of pasts rises by 5pence due to fuel costs and the 85p bag of regular pasta rises 5 pence then the middle class shopper ahs seen their pasta cost rise 6% whilst the pverty level shopper has seen their costs rise 22%.
Indeed the middle class shopper also has the option of dropping down to the value range and slashing their food bills, the poverty level purchaser has the choice of dropping down to no food at all
Those of us on PB who predicted massive inflation down the tracks when the total, population-wide lockdowns started have been vindicated me thinks.
Who needs economists at leading global banks to analyse things when you have PB!!
Inflation is down to Putin.
Inflation means a continuously rising general price level. Putin's actions have caused a gas and oil shortage which has pushed up their price relative to other goods and services. Converting that into a continuing process for prices in general (including factor prices like the price of labour, i.e. wages) is down to the BoE and the government.
Does anyone know why the price hikes are so extraordinary? Someone said gas supply globally will be down 15%. Not great, but not seemingly not beyond some efficiencies and economies to sort out. Is it a bidding war?
It is quite revealing that my insistence on “British Isles” provokes some quite odd posting about genocide and the British aristocracy.
What's odd is thinking that British war crimes and genocide are somehow peripheral to the question of which exact places remained British and which didn't.
The Irish government recognises "the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both Governments and would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland."
In effect a united Ireland would be a, but not the, British state.
I dream of a single nation of the islands, with a capital in Dublin, an equal respect for the traditional living languages of the islands, of which English is honoured but only as one of several, all of us learning two at least of the languages from reception class onwards, and all of us compromising by being in EFTA/EEA. And then I wake up.
Ugh. Dublin is an OK large-ish British city. About as noble as Liverpool, less impressive than Edinburgh or Glasgow, less important than Manc
London is THE world city. Let it be the capital of the NUK, the New United Kingdom of Britain, Ireland, the Caymans, Antarctica, the Falklands, Australia and the Moon
Those of us on PB who predicted massive inflation down the tracks when the total, population-wide lockdowns started have been vindicated me thinks.
Who needs economists at leading global banks to analyse things when you have PB!!
Inflation is down to Putin.
It seems to me that it is down to both of these things, and possibly a few more (the Chinese covid strategy being one which springs to mind). For various reasons there is more money and fewer goods snd services. Hence, money is worth less in relation to the goods and services it seeks to procure.
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
The notion of mothballing corporate HQ buildings through the coming winter is growing apace especially for those who have little or no public facing activity.
Oddly enough, I'm to be convinced it will be bad as some are predicting but we do need to see some flexibility and sense from Government which I know is asking a lot of Liz Truss who will presumably be whipping us all into our offices (personally, so I'm led to believe).
With inflation now at 10%, the idea London tube, bus and train fares should rise 10% in January is completely unsupportable - Sadiq Khan has found a cause for which he's going to have a lot of support in the capital. To be honest, given TfL is effectively run and financed by the Government, they may as well freeze the fares ar 2022 levels to try and bring back some passengers,
I also think it will see the death knell for many more bank branches.
We have industry trackers, and footfall was falling well before the pandemic, and pretty much 99% of customers who go into branch can do it online/via the app.
Heating branches for the 1% was never viable, now you're breaking your fiduciary duty by keeping them open.
I have not been into an actual bank for 5 years but the people who still go there are self selected as the 10% who are too old and dim to set up telephone or online banking. Queuing behind them is testing.
Yeah, last time I was in a branch was when I had to deposit a cheque that was too large for the app.
I was stuck behind one old dear who withdrew £80 over the counter as she didn't like using cash machines.
And she was stuck in front of some old geezer who did not realise you can deposit even large cheques by machine.
ONS needs to create an inflation stat that is focussed on the most basic essentials that someone on benefits needs to spend. Basic foodstuff, energy, basic clothes, toiletry and so on.
BBC news saying that these things are up 19 or 20% not the headline 10%
Where do you think the BBC got their figures from?
ONS needs to create an inflation stat that is focussed on the most basic essentials that someone on benefits needs to spend. Basic foodstuff, energy, basic clothes, toiletry and so on.
BBC news saying that these things are up 19 or 20% not the headline 10%
That's the point of the Vimes Boot Index that the ONS is indeed working on.
And the reason they are up so much is easy to grasp.
500g on basics value pasta has just as many fixed transportation costs as 500g of regular pasta or a 500g of speciality pasta. So if the 23p bag of pasts rises by 5pence due to fuel costs and the 85p bag of regular pasta rises 5 pence then the middle class shopper ahs seen their pasta cost rise 6% whilst the pverty level shopper has seen their costs rise 22%.
Indeed the middle class shopper also has the option of dropping down to the value range and slashing their food bills, the poverty level purchaser has the choice of dropping down to no food at all
Value basic lines are increasingly sold out as well.
Two African players from Viborg FF will not be able to travel for their Europa Conference League playoff against West Ham due to English entry rules for non-EU citizens after Brexit, the Danish club said on Wednesday.
Nigerian winger Ibrahim Said and Gambian forward Alassana Jatta will have to stay behind as the club could not secure visas for the two players before Thursday’s first leg at the London Stadium.
It is quite revealing that my insistence on “British Isles” provokes some quite odd posting about genocide and the British aristocracy.
What's odd is thinking that British war crimes and genocide are somehow peripheral to the question of which exact places remained British and which didn't.
The Irish government recognises "the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both Governments and would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland."
In effect a united Ireland would be a, but not the, British state.
I dream of a single nation of the islands, with a capital in Dublin, an equal respect for the traditional living languages of the islands, of which English is honoured but only as one of several, all of us learning two at least of the languages from reception class onwards, and all of us compromising by being in EFTA/EEA. And then I wake up.
Ugh. Dublin is an OK large-ish British city. About as noble as Liverpool, less impressive than Edinburgh or Glasgow, less important than Manc
London is THE world city. Let it be the capital of the NUK, the New United Kingdom of Britain, Ireland, the Caymans, Antarctica, the Falklands, Australia and the Moon
Heck, let's tell Malta we're accepting that 1956 referendum after all, with an independence take backsies.
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
The notion of mothballing corporate HQ buildings through the coming winter is growing apace especially for those who have little or no public facing activity.
Oddly enough, I'm to be convinced it will be bad as some are predicting but we do need to see some flexibility and sense from Government which I know is asking a lot of Liz Truss who will presumably be whipping us all into our offices (personally, so I'm led to believe).
With inflation now at 10%, the idea London tube, bus and train fares should rise 10% in January is completely unsupportable - Sadiq Khan has found a cause for which he's going to have a lot of support in the capital. To be honest, given TfL is effectively run and financed by the Government, they may as well freeze the fares ar 2022 levels to try and bring back some passengers,
I also think it will see the death knell for many more bank branches.
We have industry trackers, and footfall was falling well before the pandemic, and pretty much 99% of customers who go into branch can do it online/via the app.
Heating branches for the 1% was never viable, now you're breaking your fiduciary duty by keeping them open.
I have not been into an actual bank for 5 years but the people who still go there are self selected as the 10% who are too old and dim to set up telephone or online banking. Queuing behind them is testing.
Yeah, last time I was in a branch was when I had to deposit a cheque that was too large for the app.
I was stuck behind one old dear who withdrew £80 over the counter as she didn't like using cash machines.
Isn't that what Post Offices are for?
Though a lot of Post Offices are dismal counters in corner shops these days, they can do pretty much all the routine banking stuff for everyone.
My Decree Number Two (the first one was mandatory wicker baskets for all bicycles). Every parish in the land shall have a properly diginfied Post Office with the Union Flag and at least one different subsiduary flag of equal size and status outside. If you want to make that the Council of Europe, that's fine by me.
Following discussions at work, it looks like we will going full WFH starting October until next Aprilish.
The energy cap doesn't apply to businesses, and well I suspect we won't be the only ones going full WFH.
Latest projections are we could pay each employee several thousands over the winter to WFH and it will still be cheaper than heating the office.
That's another blow to city centres and businesses who rely on commuters/workers.
The notion of mothballing corporate HQ buildings through the coming winter is growing apace especially for those who have little or no public facing activity.
Oddly enough, I'm to be convinced it will be bad as some are predicting but we do need to see some flexibility and sense from Government which I know is asking a lot of Liz Truss who will presumably be whipping us all into our offices (personally, so I'm led to believe).
With inflation now at 10%, the idea London tube, bus and train fares should rise 10% in January is completely unsupportable - Sadiq Khan has found a cause for which he's going to have a lot of support in the capital. To be honest, given TfL is effectively run and financed by the Government, they may as well freeze the fares ar 2022 levels to try and bring back some passengers,
I also think it will see the death knell for many more bank branches.
We have industry trackers, and footfall was falling well before the pandemic, and pretty much 99% of customers who go into branch can do it online/via the app.
Heating branches for the 1% was never viable, now you're breaking your fiduciary duty by keeping them open.
I have not been into an actual bank for 5 years but the people who still go there are self selected as the 10% who are too old and dim to set up telephone or online banking. Queuing behind them is testing.
Yeah, last time I was in a branch was when I had to deposit a cheque that was too large for the app.
I was stuck behind one old dear who withdrew £80 over the counter as she didn't like using cash machines.
And she was stuck in front of some old geezer who did not realise you can deposit even large cheques by machine.
It was a cheque from HMRC that don't scan in the app or fit in the machines.
Depends on why people thought lockdowns would lead to higher inflation.
Covid resulted in the developed world shifting its spending from services to goods. Combined with China repeatedly locking down hubs of manufacturing and their ports and price of goods has sky rocketed as increased demand has met diminished capacity.
ONS needs to create an inflation stat that is focussed on the most basic essentials that someone on benefits needs to spend. Basic foodstuff, energy, basic clothes, toiletry and so on.
BBC news saying that these things are up 19 or 20% not the headline 10%
That's the point of the Vimes Boot Index that the ONS is indeed working on.
And the reason they are up so much is easy to grasp.
500g on basics value pasta has just as many fixed transportation costs as 500g of regular pasta or a 500g of speciality pasta. So if the 23p bag of pasts rises by 5pence due to fuel costs and the 85p bag of regular pasta rises 5 pence then the middle class shopper ahs seen their pasta cost rise 6% whilst the pverty level shopper has seen their costs rise 22%.
Indeed the middle class shopper also has the option of dropping down to the value range and slashing their food bills, the poverty level purchaser has the choice of dropping down to no food at all
Tesco have put a big sign up next to the self scanner handsets saying roughly Use these and you will know when you have run out of money vs being humiliated at the checkout till. Chilling.
Two African players from Viborg FF will not be able to travel for their Europa Conference League playoff against West Ham due to English entry rules for non-EU citizens after Brexit, the Danish club said on Wednesday.
Nigerian winger Ibrahim Said and Gambian forward Alassana Jatta will have to stay behind as the club could not secure visas for the two players before Thursday’s first leg at the London Stadium.
Two African players from Viborg FF will not be able to travel for their Europa Conference League playoff against West Ham due to English entry rules for non-EU citizens after Brexit, the Danish club said on Wednesday.
Nigerian winger Ibrahim Said and Gambian forward Alassana Jatta will have to stay behind as the club could not secure visas for the two players before Thursday’s first leg at the London Stadium.
If there was a smidgeon of doubt, Rishi only interested in talking to one section of the NI population.
British isles? Or is that not correct?
Britain is one of the islands, Ireland the other (major) one, so you could as well say the Irish Isles as the British Isles.
But, anyway, the Good Friday Agreement allows everyone in Northern Ireland to identify as British, and it's pretty safe to assume that any members of the Conservative and Unionist Party will identify as British, though they may think of themselves as Irish as well.
The criticism is bizarre. How many Irish Republicans would you expect to find as members of the Tory party?
Britannia was the name the Romans originally gave to the whole of the British Isles including Ireland. Nor did the Romans ever refer to just the largest island as Britannia. They transferred the name to the specific province they ruled in the southern half of that largest island. It only came to refer to the largest island alone after the act of Union in 1707.
Geographically The British Isles are the whole archipelago including Ireland. But of course that derives from the fact that the British (as opposed to the Irish) wrote the rules and named stuff.
As an aside interestingly, names can of course change and quite quickly. The North Sea was usually known as The German Sea until the middle of the 18th Century. Perhaps in the future The British Isles will indeed be The Irish Isles. It does have a rather more poetic alliteration to it.
Better than Islands of the North Atlantic, which was apparently one suggestion.
I'd be happy with British-Irish Isles, though who knows what a Manxer would think of it.
Wiki tells me UK Law uses the subtly different 'British Islands' to include the bits that include the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. So if someone uses that one they are not including the Republic and are well set if someone gets huffy about the name.
Edit: Another suggestion was Anglo-Celtic Isles, which I guess might be more accurate than British?
The advantage of "Islands Of the North Atlantic" is that you can then use the initialism of IONA, which appeals, although may cause some confusion with the Island of Iona when used in speech.
The Atlantic Archipelago is another alternative that has been proposed, but I tend simply to use "Britain and Ireland".
Bloody terrible idea. North Atlantic goes all the way to the equator so that's everything from iceland to the canaries and cape verde, and west to bermuda.
The Atlantic is in general oceanographic terms normally split into three, South Atlantic, Tropical Atlantic and North Atlantic.
But anyway, I didn't say that IONA was a perfect option.
Isles of Britain and Ireland is the current term in some circles.
What crap.
British Isles DNE UK of Great Britain and NI North America DNE USA Europe DNE European Union
Cf also British, American, and possibly too, European.
I AM talking about the bits of isolated land not including Heligoland, the Canaries, and the Faeroes. Not the UK.
Me too. They’re called the British Isles.
You don't need much imagination to realise that would irk the Irish.
I don’t care. They can call it what they like. They’ve been the British Isles, or some variation of that term, since Roman Times.
There's not much point in using a name for a place that pisses off a large number of people who live in that place, and that they will only use with scare quotes at best.
Language changes and evolves and is contested, often for political reasons. The British Isles was used because of British dominance of the islands. Now that dominance is ended, so the name will go.
Actually from a numerical perspective, the number of Irish is quite small.
The geographic term British Isles seems to go back to Roman times, so your point about British dominance may not be correct.
They are still the British Isles on Wikipedia. The alternatives are weird euphemisms.
Quoting numerical perspectives is fraught with difficulty in this context. Before the Irish famine the 1841 census gave a population of Ireland of over 8 million, compared to a population of just over 18 and a half for England, Wales and Scotland.
That's an 1841 ratio of about 9:4 to compare with the modern ratio of about 9.3:1
Can you talk me through that?
Your 1841 figures give a ratio of about 2.3:1 Of UK today is 67 million next to 5 million for the Irish republic. So over 13:1
Your figures are correct for the UK to Republic of Ireland ratio, but I calculated a ratio for island of Britain to island of Ireland.
Ok but I think even those are off.
Population of island of Ireland is ~7 million.
Population of island of Britain is ~65 million.
7 * 9 = 63 7 * 3 = 21
Consequently modern ratio of the population of the two islands is ~ 9.3:1 which is >>> ~ 9:4 ratio in 1841, before the famine.
The population collapse in some Irish counties suggest they were either massively overpopulated before the potato famine or massively underpopulated now. Or a combination of both.
Has anywhere else in Europe experienced such a population reduction as rural Munster and Connaught have done:
Comments
We have checks and balances for this reason. Because if we do not then the only way this ends is with bloodshed and 'might is right'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_the_British_Isles
India's intervention to secure Bangladesh's independence in 1971 would also be a victory.
When I was living in London and working in an office in zone 1, it was the cost of the weekly travel cap, currently £38.40.
Considering I'd usually be making at least one personal trip on the tube a day (e.g. to the gym, the pub, to see friends etc) the cost of the commute was essentially free as I'd be hitting the weekly cap anyway - so my travel expenses wouldn't change at all if I was WFH. I'd still be spending the same £38 a week on travel.
Why, they are so worried about having borders with NATO countries they launched a special military operation which would have massively increased that border!
In effect a united Ireland would be a, but not the, British state.
Ultimately you come back to needing the population to accept the decision making process.
And for that to happen that requires them to have a say in how it happens.
Which is why we don't obsess about abortion in this country because it is decided by elected representatives.
Something tells me you’d prefer they were called the Islands of Ireland and Imperialist Arseholes.
But you can call them what you want.
In the English language - well, you probably have another name for that, too - they are commonly called the British Isles, and Wikipedia concurs.
That of course is the precursor to Civil War.
In the USA the way the constitution has been (often wrongly IMHO) interpreted means that there is a large area of life where the courts are the legislator, judge, jury and executioner, with the elected legislator being powerless of change it. This is rare in the UK.
The more this is the case the more important it is that the court can reflect social change by overruling itself. Because no-one else can.
Can we hope for guns next? The historic interpretation from the SC of the alleged right to bear arms is just historically and textually illiterate drivel. At least reversing RvW was properly arguable and gave power back to the voters.
https://www.britishirishcouncil.org/about/british-irish-agreement
It doesn't work for me, I'm on PB far too often WFH, although I can manage more time than I should in the office too.
If one has the self-discipline to make it work I think it's a great idea.
If on the other hand you're crammed into a house share, living with parents, living in a tiny one bedroom flat, or you don't have much of a social life and you miss the cameraderie of after work drinks, etc, it's a terrible idea.
WFH works for some people. It doesn't work for others.
Especially as Scots have done much of the oppressing of the Irish.
He was right geographically, and he was not even wrong politically.
Rishi is crap of course, but not for this reason.
I had a colleague on ADSL.
Surely the whole point of our system is to ensure that there are some standards which are fundamentally important and which no amount of mob rule can be allowed to overturn.
A mature democracy is one where there is a balance between the separate parts of the state to ensure no one part of it is overly powerful. The US has ceased to be a mature democracy - if it ever really was one.
Population of island of Britain is ~65 million.
7 * 9 = 63
7 * 3 = 21
Consequently modern ratio of the population of the two islands is ~ 9.3:1 which is >>> ~ 9:4 ratio in 1841, before the famine.
Not many in health, education, manufacturing, construction, agriculture, retail, hospitality, transportation.
So ultimately people who do strongly want to WFH will be attracted to the minority of jobs where it is possible.
Oddly enough, I'm to be convinced it will be bad as some are predicting but we do need to see some flexibility and sense from Government which I know is asking a lot of Liz Truss who will presumably be whipping us all into our offices (personally, so I'm led to believe).
With inflation now at 10%, the idea London tube, bus and train fares should rise 10% in January is completely unsupportable - Sadiq Khan has found a cause for which he's going to have a lot of support in the capital. To be honest, given TfL is effectively run and financed by the Government, they may as well freeze the fares ar 2022 levels to try and bring back some passengers,
But there is lots of work that can be done pretty well from home. Not perfectly, and the team building, idea sparking stuff is important and needs to be engineered, since it won't happen spontaneously. And then I'm reminded of the old adverts for Cadbury's Smash;
"We have observed the humans. They wake up early, and spend lots of their Earth money to put themselves in little cans for thirty to sixty minutes before they can start working. Then at the end of the day they do the same in reverse. They clearly are a most primitive people."
https://youtu.be/TBRCZLzn5pM
If commuting to offices didn't already exist, anyone inventing it would be considered some sort of capitalist psycho.
We have industry trackers, and footfall was falling well before the pandemic, and pretty much 99% of customers who go into branch can do it online/via the app.
Heating branches for the 1% was never viable, now you're breaking your fiduciary duty by keeping them open.
So I have heard.
And the principle of checks and balances between the legislature, executive and judiciary is of course precisely the basis on which the US Constitution was designed.
Who needs economists at leading global banks to analyse things when you have PB!!
This is awful.
A minor point, but surely removing his skin colour from the description is just unhelpful in the circumstances.
“Police now want to identify the man from CCTV as a matter of urgency.
He is described as wearing grey shorts, a dark coloured T-shirt, a white baseball cap and white patterned builder style gloves.”
White/Black/Asian should be included in the description, imo. It’s perhaps less important when you have a photo, but still, it’s helpful information that might make identifying the suspect a little easier.
Also, I don’t think deliberately withholding a suspects obvious skin colour does the anti-racism cause (to which I’m broadly sympathetic) any good.
Forget evening floodlit racing for this winter and close the shops at 5pm.
Actually probably a large number in all almost all those areas you mention. Yes front line staff still need to be there but many of the backroom staff can do their job just as well from home.
In the last 7 or 8 years I have ran drilling campaigns amounting to probably 30 wells for various companies. I have travelled to offices all over the UK, Europe and the Middle East. But I have never done it to actually do any work. Work gets done at home. Office visits are to see friends and colleagues, have a few face to face meetings and generally shoot the breeze. Whilst you need people on the rigs (and even there services such as directional drilling and well control are more often run from onshore now) the vast majority of people working for oil companies can do their jobs just as well - if not better - working from home. Shift work becomes massively easier for a start.
Has anywhere else in Europe experienced such a population reduction as rural Munster and Connaught have done:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_population_of_Ireland#Historical_populations_per_county
BBC news saying that these things are up 19 or 20% not the headline 10%
It was a very niche name for a pensions lawyer.
The big event today was the brilliant BAAEED winning the Juddmonte at York. The best horse since Frankel who won this race 10 years ago and avoided the fate of the great Brigadier Gerard 50 years ago.
If we are serious about cutting energy use this winter (and we damn well should be), offices and the stuff associated with them are a poor use of energy.
Household bills that is.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/timeseries/l55o/mm23
I was stuck behind one old dear who withdrew £80 over the counter as she didn't like using cash machines.
And the reason they are up so much is easy to grasp.
500g on basics value pasta has just as many fixed transportation costs as 500g of regular pasta or a 500g of speciality pasta. So if the 23p bag of pasts rises by 5pence due to fuel costs and the 85p bag of regular pasta rises 5 pence then the middle class shopper ahs seen their pasta cost rise 6% whilst the pverty level shopper has seen their costs rise 22%.
Indeed the middle class shopper also has the option of dropping down to the value range and slashing their food bills, the poverty level purchaser has the choice of dropping down to no food at all
There is no way we would not be facing high inflation now even if Vlad had no stirred from his dacha.
London is THE world city. Let it be the capital of the NUK, the New United Kingdom of Britain, Ireland, the Caymans, Antarctica, the Falklands, Australia and the Moon
For various reasons there is more money and fewer goods snd services. Hence, money is worth less in relation to the goods and services it seeks to procure.
Two African players from Viborg FF will not be able to travel for their Europa Conference League playoff against West Ham due to English entry rules for non-EU citizens after Brexit, the Danish club said on Wednesday.
Nigerian winger Ibrahim Said and Gambian forward Alassana Jatta will have to stay behind as the club could not secure visas for the two players before Thursday’s first leg at the London Stadium.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/aug/17/viborg-lose-two-african-players-for-west-ham-playoff-due-to-visa-problems
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Maltese_United_Kingdom_integration_referendum
Though a lot of Post Offices are dismal counters in corner shops these days, they can do pretty much all the routine banking stuff for everyone.
My Decree Number Two (the first one was mandatory wicker baskets for all bicycles). Every parish in the land shall have a properly diginfied Post Office with the Union Flag and at least one different subsiduary flag of equal size and status outside. If you want to make that the Council of Europe, that's fine by me.
Covid resulted in the developed world shifting its spending from services to goods. Combined with China repeatedly locking down hubs of manufacturing and their ports and price of goods has sky rocketed as increased demand has met diminished capacity.
Visit a town like Cahersiveen in Co Kerry. It has the scale of a large town - the spirit and buildings - yet a population of about 1,500
Why is this?
Before the Famine, Cahersiveen and environs had a population of 25,000 or more. It went down to 1,000
And this is repeated across western Ireland. Pretty much unique, I think, and worse than the Clearances