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.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
If abortion, or other contentious issues, are exclusively a matter for the courts, well, the appointment of judges then just becomes a matter of political partisanship, as we've seen.
The issue there is with making the appointment of judges a political matter rather than with the power they exercise.
If ultimate political power resides with the judges, then the judges are political.
This is exactly why, when an attempt was made to use equalities legislation to wrest control of pensions and benefits from Parliament, the U.K. Supreme Court said no. They are the arbiters of the law as passed by Parliament. Not the creators of law.
And Socrates got done for being the tutor of the men who formed an especially nasty and tyrannical government.
Actually no. That was the excuse. Socrates got done because he pissed everyone off by pointing out how stupid they all were. Of the Thirty Tyrants only Critias is known to have studied under Socrates, who was himself forbidden from teaching by the Thirty.
Basically Socrates was executed because no one likes a smart arse.
A psychotic autodidact racist Leaver speaks. Good ole democraceeee.
Watch it. I don't want to have to wave the ban hammer.
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.
What a stupid mistake we made. We'd now have our own chunk of the Med. DUH
Perhaps France had the right idea with their various overseas territories being counted as part of France proper after all.
I believe they did. Tho for them there was an overwhelming cultural imperative: tying territories to France kept them French - in language, especially - that the UK has never faced. Thanks to the might of the English language and the sheer extent of the British Empire -and the vigour of the USA - we were always assured the world would speak English, and so it is. The English speaking world dominates the west, and much of the rest
The depths of French paranoia about the decline of French language prestige are hard to overstate
And the consequences. I can't get my head around Rwanda, but it does seem millions were macheted to death because la francophonie mon brave.
It explains almost all of De Gaulle's opposition to UK membership of the EEC, in the 1960s. I don't believe it was military-economic at all, really. Instead he correctly foresaw that if the UK joined the EEC, then eventually the sheer cultural force of the Anglophonie would mean the EEC went from being French speaking to being English speaking
And he was right, that is what happened. Destroying the last chance of French being a supreme global language, And then we actually left, when the job was done? Sorry, my French friends, but you have to lol. As an English speaker
Even worse French isn't even the second most important European language now.
The USA allowing so much Hispanic immigration has given Spanish a boost.
Is this post-colonial arrogance? Who cares. It is a statement of fact. If you want to learn one foreign language, it is English. That's it
Six of one, half a dozen of another.
I regret not speaking another language but am too lazy to do so, but it's more fortune as opposed to arrogance that means we (presently) can get away with that more than speakers of most other languages. American cultural imperium had to be good for some things.
Should probably pick up Mandarin just to be safe though.
It's actually fucking infuriating. In Greece in the 1970s, if you wanted to stay alive you needed to speak Greek, because otherwise nobody knew what food and drink and accommodation you wanted. But that is the only context in which that has been the case for me. I've since been to some quite obscure bits of Africa and tried quite hard with bantu and swahili and amharic and tigrigna and all I get in response is people wanting to practice their perfect English.
Sure I hear the romantic in you...
But isn't it nice that the world now has a true lingua franca, probably more than at any period before in the history of human beings actually speaking? As in: 200,000 years?
I think that's amazing and potentially a wonderful thing. And it does not mean the end of other languages. It means there will be one language that is shared, and many other languages
The good that will come out of that could be extraordinary. It means Peruvians lost in China might be understood. It means a Namibian hurt in Mexico might get help. It means people across the world can fall in love with one shared language. This is GOOD
People don't fall in love with English; they use English, well, a sort of simplified international variant of English. English is the global language of work and commerce. People love and play in their own language.
That is not true. I have heard of many examples of people falling in love in English, when it is the 2nd language for both of the partners. It is heartwarming. A universal shared language
I'm in Phoenix today, for the first time in six months or so, and the level of homelessness has gotten visibly worse. And this is not a city you want to be homeless in.
It's a city that is a victim of its own success. Property prices and rents have soared at the same time that people in low end jobs have struggled. Energy prices rising is probably only making things worse (not that the US has anywhere near the problems of the rest of the world).
Not good to be homeless in Phoenix in summer.
But better to be homeless in Phoenix in winter than homeless in Michigan in winter.
Do the homeless in the USA move much ?
That sounds like a 'do they eat cake' question but I've read On The Road recently.
They do: in general they move towards big cities, where there are facilities, crystal meth dealers and ample opportunity for begging. And I suspect you're right: Phoenix will have worse homelessness in December than August.
There is also a second factor in the US which you don't really see in the UK: simply, some municipalities give money (typically around $200) to homeless people and put them on buses to big cities, while making them sign documents saying they won't return (and are subject to arrest if they do).
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.
What a stupid mistake we made. We'd now have our own chunk of the Med. DUH
Perhaps France had the right idea with their various overseas territories being counted as part of France proper after all.
I believe they did. Tho for them there was an overwhelming cultural imperative: tying territories to France kept them French - in language, especially - that the UK has never faced. Thanks to the might of the English language and the sheer extent of the British Empire -and the vigour of the USA - we were always assured the world would speak English, and so it is. The English speaking world dominates the west, and much of the rest
The depths of French paranoia about the decline of French language prestige are hard to overstate
And the consequences. I can't get my head around Rwanda, but it does seem millions were macheted to death because la francophonie mon brave.
It explains almost all of De Gaulle's opposition to UK membership of the EEC, in the 1960s. I don't believe it was military-economic at all, really. Instead he correctly foresaw that if the UK joined the EEC, then eventually the sheer cultural force of the Anglophonie would mean the EEC went from being French speaking to being English speaking
And he was right, that is what happened. Destroying the last chance of French being a supreme global language, And then we actually left, when the job was done? Sorry, my French friends, but you have to lol. As an English speaker
Even worse French isn't even the second most important European language now.
The USA allowing so much Hispanic immigration has given Spanish a boost.
Is this post-colonial arrogance? Who cares. It is a statement of fact. If you want to learn one foreign language, it is English. That's it
Six of one, half a dozen of another.
I regret not speaking another language but am too lazy to do so, but it's more fortune as opposed to arrogance that means we (presently) can get away with that more than speakers of most other languages. American cultural imperium had to be good for some things.
Should probably pick up Mandarin just to be safe though.
It's actually fucking infuriating. In Greece in the 1970s, if you wanted to stay alive you needed to speak Greek, because otherwise nobody knew what food and drink and accommodation you wanted. But that is the only context in which that has been the case for me. I've since been to some quite obscure bits of Africa and tried quite hard with bantu and swahili and amharic and tigrigna and all I get in response is people wanting to practice their perfect English.
Sure I hear the romantic in you...
But isn't it nice that the world now has a true lingua franca, probably more than at any period before in the history of human beings actually speaking? As in: 200,000 years?
I think that's amazing and potentially a wonderful thing. And it does not mean the end of other languages. It means there will be one language that is shared, and many other languages
The good that will come out of that could be extraordinary. It means Peruvians lost in China might be understood. It means a Namibian hurt in Mexico might get help. It means people across the world can fall in love with one shared language. This is GOOD
What was the level of English speaking like the first time you visited Thailand?
Terrible. Now, really rather good
And this is the case across the world
@IshmaelZ, for example, is completely right about Greece. 30-40 years ago, in many parts of Greece, you really struggled to be understood outside central Athens or major tourist islands. Now, everyone under 35 speaks English. Often they are mildly insulted that you even doubt their skill in English, like you are asking "are you a virgin" or "do you have a mobile phone"? It is accepted as universal: they speak English
I wonder if, in the end, this is bad for English speakers. It makes us cognitively lazy, by comparison
Yes: there's a lot of evidence that not learning another language is bad for your mental development.
I wonder how many people earn their living from posting videos on YouTube and similar websites. If you ask people over 50 whether they regard that type of thing as a "real job" most of them would probably say no. Most young people would say yes and perhaps be offended by the idea it isn't a real job.
An example of the spread of English is this: I always used to ask "do you speak English" before I spoke English, anywhere in the non-English speaking world. Often I would try and use the local lingo. Parlez Vous, Habla Usted Ingles, etc
Increasingly this is pointless. Not only does everyone under 40 speak English, they are often actually insulted that you ask. They roll their eyes and say Of course I speak English, like YOU are a moron for doubting this
I am talking mainly about outgoing people in hospitality industries: bars, hotels, the arts. But it spreads, and it spreads globally
I'm in Phoenix today, for the first time in six months or so, and the level of homelessness has gotten visibly worse. And this is not a city you want to be homeless in.
It's a city that is a victim of its own success. Property prices and rents have soared at the same time that people in low end jobs have struggled. Energy prices rising is probably only making things worse (not that the US has anywhere near the problems of the rest of the world).
Not good to be homeless in Phoenix in summer.
But better to be homeless in Phoenix in winter than homeless in Michigan in winter.
Do the homeless in the USA move much ?
That sounds like a 'do they eat cake' question but I've read On The Road recently.
I read On the Road recently, for the first time, and found myself, in an awful parochial way, getting pissed off at the hero characters for stealing cigarettes from poor rural gas stations and so on. Maybe it’s a book better read by teenagers who can’t imagine being the person stolen from.
I wonder how many people earn their living from posting videos on YouTube and similar websites. If you ask people over 50 whether they regard that type of thing as a "real job" most of them would probably say no. Most young people would say yes.
You can earn a decent living (i.e. 50k Sterling a year) on YouTube, but it is far from easy.
From a straight Google revenues perspective, you will probably earn 0.1-0.3 cents a view. So, you need about 25 million views a year. (If your audience is older and richer, you'll earn more per view; if it is poorer and younger, you will earn less.)
If you post a video a week, you need to make 500,000 views per video.
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.
What a stupid mistake we made. We'd now have our own chunk of the Med. DUH
Perhaps France had the right idea with their various overseas territories being counted as part of France proper after all.
I believe they did. Tho for them there was an overwhelming cultural imperative: tying territories to France kept them French - in language, especially - that the UK has never faced. Thanks to the might of the English language and the sheer extent of the British Empire -and the vigour of the USA - we were always assured the world would speak English, and so it is. The English speaking world dominates the west, and much of the rest
The depths of French paranoia about the decline of French language prestige are hard to overstate
And the consequences. I can't get my head around Rwanda, but it does seem millions were macheted to death because la francophonie mon brave.
It explains almost all of De Gaulle's opposition to UK membership of the EEC, in the 1960s. I don't believe it was military-economic at all, really. Instead he correctly foresaw that if the UK joined the EEC, then eventually the sheer cultural force of the Anglophonie would mean the EEC went from being French speaking to being English speaking
And he was right, that is what happened. Destroying the last chance of French being a supreme global language, And then we actually left, when the job was done? Sorry, my French friends, but you have to lol. As an English speaker
Even worse French isn't even the second most important European language now.
The USA allowing so much Hispanic immigration has given Spanish a boost.
Is this post-colonial arrogance? Who cares. It is a statement of fact. If you want to learn one foreign language, it is English. That's it
Six of one, half a dozen of another.
I regret not speaking another language but am too lazy to do so, but it's more fortune as opposed to arrogance that means we (presently) can get away with that more than speakers of most other languages. American cultural imperium had to be good for some things.
Should probably pick up Mandarin just to be safe though.
It's actually fucking infuriating. In Greece in the 1970s, if you wanted to stay alive you needed to speak Greek, because otherwise nobody knew what food and drink and accommodation you wanted. But that is the only context in which that has been the case for me. I've since been to some quite obscure bits of Africa and tried quite hard with bantu and swahili and amharic and tigrigna and all I get in response is people wanting to practice their perfect English.
Sure I hear the romantic in you...
But isn't it nice that the world now has a true lingua franca, probably more than at any period before in the history of human beings actually speaking? As in: 200,000 years?
I think that's amazing and potentially a wonderful thing. And it does not mean the end of other languages. It means there will be one language that is shared, and many other languages
The good that will come out of that could be extraordinary. It means Peruvians lost in China might be understood. It means a Namibian hurt in Mexico might get help. It means people across the world can fall in love with one shared language. This is GOOD
What was the level of English speaking like the first time you visited Thailand?
Terrible. Now, really rather good
And this is the case across the world
@IshmaelZ, for example, is completely right about Greece. 30-40 years ago, in many parts of Greece, you really struggled to be understood outside central Athens or major tourist islands. Now, everyone under 35 speaks English. Often they are mildly insulted that you even doubt their skill in English, like you are asking "are you a virgin" or "do you have a mobile phone"? It is accepted as universal: they speak English
I wonder if, in the end, this is bad for English speakers. It makes us cognitively lazy, by comparison
You try to speak the local language and usually it's a complete waste of time because they reply in English giving you no opportunity to learn the local language. My mum visited Greece in the 1970s, I'll have to ask her what it was like at that time.
For the first time since uni, my friends are asking what the price of stuff is before we book it. I appreciate that sounds pretty bad, given the hardship some people are going through, but you really want your mid - late 20s population to be spending money.
I've just cancelled prime. I'm not going to a gig on Saturday cos it's £50. I might not go through to Glasgow for Kaiser Chiefs. I'm having a quick browse through LinkedIn to see if I can bump my salary up a few grand.
I'm in Phoenix today, for the first time in six months or so, and the level of homelessness has gotten visibly worse. And this is not a city you want to be homeless in.
It's a city that is a victim of its own success. Property prices and rents have soared at the same time that people in low end jobs have struggled. Energy prices rising is probably only making things worse (not that the US has anywhere near the problems of the rest of the world).
Not good to be homeless in Phoenix in summer.
But better to be homeless in Phoenix in winter than homeless in Michigan in winter.
Do the homeless in the USA move much ?
That sounds like a 'do they eat cake' question but I've read On The Road recently.
They do: in general they move towards big cities, where there are facilities, crystal meth dealers and ample opportunity for begging. And I suspect you're right: Phoenix will have worse homelessness in December than August.
There is also a second factor in the US which you don't really see in the UK: simply, some municipalities give money (typically around $200) to homeless people and put them on buses to big cities, while making them sign documents saying they won't return (and are subject to arrest if they do).
It's pretty sick.
There's been plenty of social dumping in this country:
Many vulnerable young people from across the UK have ended up in children's homes in Blackpool in the past few years. But the approach - in part because of a national shortage of places elsewhere - is raising concerns.
Thanks to the pandemic, staycation tourists have flocked back to the Lancashire resort over the past two summers. Alongside the familiar Pleasure Beach and amusement arcades is a smart new California-style beach cafe.
But few visitors will have noticed that, at the same time, Blackpool has taken on a new status - as an epicentre of children's homes.
Blackpool already has the highest proportion of its own children in care in England - but with property in the resort town being relatively cheap, and with a surge in the national demand for places, some local providers have expanded rapidly.
BBC analysis of the latest Ofsted data shows of the 39 children's homes in the two Blackpool parliamentary constituencies, 29 have been registered only since 2016. As a result, children have been sent from across the country to children's homes in Blackpool and adjacent areas.
Jade, 21, from London, was placed in a home just outside the town when she was 16 and stayed there for 18 months.
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.
What a stupid mistake we made. We'd now have our own chunk of the Med. DUH
Perhaps France had the right idea with their various overseas territories being counted as part of France proper after all.
I believe they did. Tho for them there was an overwhelming cultural imperative: tying territories to France kept them French - in language, especially - that the UK has never faced. Thanks to the might of the English language and the sheer extent of the British Empire -and the vigour of the USA - we were always assured the world would speak English, and so it is. The English speaking world dominates the west, and much of the rest
The depths of French paranoia about the decline of French language prestige are hard to overstate
And the consequences. I can't get my head around Rwanda, but it does seem millions were macheted to death because la francophonie mon brave.
It explains almost all of De Gaulle's opposition to UK membership of the EEC, in the 1960s. I don't believe it was military-economic at all, really. Instead he correctly foresaw that if the UK joined the EEC, then eventually the sheer cultural force of the Anglophonie would mean the EEC went from being French speaking to being English speaking
And he was right, that is what happened. Destroying the last chance of French being a supreme global language, And then we actually left, when the job was done? Sorry, my French friends, but you have to lol. As an English speaker
Even worse French isn't even the second most important European language now.
The USA allowing so much Hispanic immigration has given Spanish a boost.
Is this post-colonial arrogance? Who cares. It is a statement of fact. If you want to learn one foreign language, it is English. That's it
Six of one, half a dozen of another.
I regret not speaking another language but am too lazy to do so, but it's more fortune as opposed to arrogance that means we (presently) can get away with that more than speakers of most other languages. American cultural imperium had to be good for some things.
Should probably pick up Mandarin just to be safe though.
It's actually fucking infuriating. In Greece in the 1970s, if you wanted to stay alive you needed to speak Greek, because otherwise nobody knew what food and drink and accommodation you wanted. But that is the only context in which that has been the case for me. I've since been to some quite obscure bits of Africa and tried quite hard with bantu and swahili and amharic and tigrigna and all I get in response is people wanting to practice their perfect English.
Sure I hear the romantic in you...
But isn't it nice that the world now has a true lingua franca, probably more than at any period before in the history of human beings actually speaking? As in: 200,000 years?
I think that's amazing and potentially a wonderful thing. And it does not mean the end of other languages. It means there will be one language that is shared, and many other languages
The good that will come out of that could be extraordinary. It means Peruvians lost in China might be understood. It means a Namibian hurt in Mexico might get help. It means people across the world can fall in love with one shared language. This is GOOD
What was the level of English speaking like the first time you visited Thailand?
Terrible. Now, really rather good
And this is the case across the world
@IshmaelZ, for example, is completely right about Greece. 30-40 years ago, in many parts of Greece, you really struggled to be understood outside central Athens or major tourist islands. Now, everyone under 35 speaks English. Often they are mildly insulted that you even doubt their skill in English, like you are asking "are you a virgin" or "do you have a mobile phone"? It is accepted as universal: they speak English
I wonder if, in the end, this is bad for English speakers. It makes us cognitively lazy, by comparison
Same story in Brazil, which I’ve been visiting regularly over the last 20 years. I recall in 2001 a forlorn and ultimately unsuccessful search for someone who spoke English at Guarulhos Airport.
Inconceivable that anyone would have the same problem nowadays. In fact, my Portuguese is now serviceable though far from fluent - and I regularly, and frustratingly, get Brazilians responding to my broken Portuguese with their broken English.
I'm in Phoenix today, for the first time in six months or so, and the level of homelessness has gotten visibly worse. And this is not a city you want to be homeless in.
It's a city that is a victim of its own success. Property prices and rents have soared at the same time that people in low end jobs have struggled. Energy prices rising is probably only making things worse (not that the US has anywhere near the problems of the rest of the world).
Not good to be homeless in Phoenix in summer.
But better to be homeless in Phoenix in winter than homeless in Michigan in winter.
Do the homeless in the USA move much ?
That sounds like a 'do they eat cake' question but I've read On The Road recently.
They do: in general they move towards big cities, where there are facilities, crystal meth dealers and ample opportunity for begging. And I suspect you're right: Phoenix will have worse homelessness in December than August.
There is also a second factor in the US which you don't really see in the UK: simply, some municipalities give money (typically around $200) to homeless people and put them on buses to big cities, while making them sign documents saying they won't return (and are subject to arrest if they do).
It's pretty sick.
There's been plenty of social dumping in this country:
Many vulnerable young people from across the UK have ended up in children's homes in Blackpool in the past few years. But the approach - in part because of a national shortage of places elsewhere - is raising concerns.
Thanks to the pandemic, staycation tourists have flocked back to the Lancashire resort over the past two summers. Alongside the familiar Pleasure Beach and amusement arcades is a smart new California-style beach cafe.
But few visitors will have noticed that, at the same time, Blackpool has taken on a new status - as an epicentre of children's homes.
Blackpool already has the highest proportion of its own children in care in England - but with property in the resort town being relatively cheap, and with a surge in the national demand for places, some local providers have expanded rapidly.
BBC analysis of the latest Ofsted data shows of the 39 children's homes in the two Blackpool parliamentary constituencies, 29 have been registered only since 2016. As a result, children have been sent from across the country to children's homes in Blackpool and adjacent areas.
Jade, 21, from London, was placed in a home just outside the town when she was 16 and stayed there for 18 months.
And I wonder how many of Europe's more deprived have been 'encouraged' to move to richer countries.
I was always told that a particular part of the town I grew up in was the result of the slums in Glasgow being demolished, and people being shipped north. Was that really a thing in Scotland/UK?
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.
What a stupid mistake we made. We'd now have our own chunk of the Med. DUH
Perhaps France had the right idea with their various overseas territories being counted as part of France proper after all.
I believe they did. Tho for them there was an overwhelming cultural imperative: tying territories to France kept them French - in language, especially - that the UK has never faced. Thanks to the might of the English language and the sheer extent of the British Empire -and the vigour of the USA - we were always assured the world would speak English, and so it is. The English speaking world dominates the west, and much of the rest
The depths of French paranoia about the decline of French language prestige are hard to overstate
And the consequences. I can't get my head around Rwanda, but it does seem millions were macheted to death because la francophonie mon brave.
It explains almost all of De Gaulle's opposition to UK membership of the EEC, in the 1960s. I don't believe it was military-economic at all, really. Instead he correctly foresaw that if the UK joined the EEC, then eventually the sheer cultural force of the Anglophonie would mean the EEC went from being French speaking to being English speaking
And he was right, that is what happened. Destroying the last chance of French being a supreme global language, And then we actually left, when the job was done? Sorry, my French friends, but you have to lol. As an English speaker
Even worse French isn't even the second most important European language now.
The USA allowing so much Hispanic immigration has given Spanish a boost.
Is this post-colonial arrogance? Who cares. It is a statement of fact. If you want to learn one foreign language, it is English. That's it
Six of one, half a dozen of another.
I regret not speaking another language but am too lazy to do so, but it's more fortune as opposed to arrogance that means we (presently) can get away with that more than speakers of most other languages. American cultural imperium had to be good for some things.
Should probably pick up Mandarin just to be safe though.
It's actually fucking infuriating. In Greece in the 1970s, if you wanted to stay alive you needed to speak Greek, because otherwise nobody knew what food and drink and accommodation you wanted. But that is the only context in which that has been the case for me. I've since been to some quite obscure bits of Africa and tried quite hard with bantu and swahili and amharic and tigrigna and all I get in response is people wanting to practice their perfect English.
Sure I hear the romantic in you...
But isn't it nice that the world now has a true lingua franca, probably more than at any period before in the history of human beings actually speaking? As in: 200,000 years?
I think that's amazing and potentially a wonderful thing. And it does not mean the end of other languages. It means there will be one language that is shared, and many other languages
The good that will come out of that could be extraordinary. It means Peruvians lost in China might be understood. It means a Namibian hurt in Mexico might get help. It means people across the world can fall in love with one shared language. This is GOOD
What was the level of English speaking like the first time you visited Thailand?
Terrible. Now, really rather good
And this is the case across the world
@IshmaelZ, for example, is completely right about Greece. 30-40 years ago, in many parts of Greece, you really struggled to be understood outside central Athens or major tourist islands. Now, everyone under 35 speaks English. Often they are mildly insulted that you even doubt their skill in English, like you are asking "are you a virgin" or "do you have a mobile phone"? It is accepted as universal: they speak English
I wonder if, in the end, this is bad for English speakers. It makes us cognitively lazy, by comparison
You try to speak the local language and usually it's a complete waste of time because they reply in English giving you no opportunity to learn the local language. My mum visited Greece in the 1970s, I'll have to ask her what it was like at that time.
One of the few reasons I liked working French rigs rather than Dutch. On a French rig everyone spoke French so you had to learn it. On a Dutch rig you walked into the smoko and even though it was full of Dutch speaking Dutch they would immediately switch to English when you came in. Really polite and kind of them but a pain when you are actually wanting to try and learn the language.
Norway was similar although there as a matter of policy on Norsk Hydro rigs the working language was Norwegian so much more opportunity to learn.
For the first time since uni, my friends are asking what the price of stuff is before we book it. I appreciate that sounds pretty bad, given the hardship some people are going through, but you really want your mid - late 20s population to be spending money.
It's actually a telling point, and one I've noticed too - people who are not penny pinchers suddenly thinking about the cost of mundane things. Never seen its like before so widely (as a youth, sure, among families of a similar situation to our own, but not generally).
Are the homeless drug addicts along the South Coast seaside towns native born drop-outs, or were they somehow bussed in from elsewhere?
I was told they gravitate there because it's nicer being on benefits in a seaside town compared to the alternatives. Hastings is apparently first choice because it's the cheapest place to stay, or used to be.
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:
There are still famine-era ruins to be found all over rural western Ireland. I imagine the closest parallel would have been with Tudor England, about the same distance in time from the Black Death.
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.
What a stupid mistake we made. We'd now have our own chunk of the Med. DUH
Perhaps France had the right idea with their various overseas territories being counted as part of France proper after all.
I believe they did. Tho for them there was an overwhelming cultural imperative: tying territories to France kept them French - in language, especially - that the UK has never faced. Thanks to the might of the English language and the sheer extent of the British Empire -and the vigour of the USA - we were always assured the world would speak English, and so it is. The English speaking world dominates the west, and much of the rest
The depths of French paranoia about the decline of French language prestige are hard to overstate
And the consequences. I can't get my head around Rwanda, but it does seem millions were macheted to death because la francophonie mon brave.
It explains almost all of De Gaulle's opposition to UK membership of the EEC, in the 1960s. I don't believe it was military-economic at all, really. Instead he correctly foresaw that if the UK joined the EEC, then eventually the sheer cultural force of the Anglophonie would mean the EEC went from being French speaking to being English speaking
And he was right, that is what happened. Destroying the last chance of French being a supreme global language, And then we actually left, when the job was done? Sorry, my French friends, but you have to lol. As an English speaker
Even worse French isn't even the second most important European language now.
The USA allowing so much Hispanic immigration has given Spanish a boost.
Is this post-colonial arrogance? Who cares. It is a statement of fact. If you want to learn one foreign language, it is English. That's it
Six of one, half a dozen of another.
I regret not speaking another language but am too lazy to do so, but it's more fortune as opposed to arrogance that means we (presently) can get away with that more than speakers of most other languages. American cultural imperium had to be good for some things.
Should probably pick up Mandarin just to be safe though.
My prediction is that English will now remain the dominant global language - indeed it will only grow in dominance, as a default global standard - until it is replaced by truly automatic AI translation, and the Babelfish, and languages no longer matter
Even if America self-destructs in the looming Woke civil wars, and Britain sinks beneath the Brexit waves, all the forces point towards true linguistic hegemony. Quite something for a tiny language hatched in bits of East Anglia and eastern Kent by a few feral, fur-clad Jutish warriors 1500 years ago. What happened to Latin and Mandarin?
But so it is
Were it not for the impending rapid decline in the Chinese population I would guess that Mandarin had the best chance of supplanting English, not least because the Chinese political leadership would love to achieve that end, and would be prepared to expend significant time and effort to achieving it.
That said, it's interesting how many public statements by EU officials are made in English by, for example, Von Der Leyen.
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:
There are still famine-era ruins to be found all over rural western Ireland. I imagine the closest parallel would have been with Tudor England, about the same distance in time from the Black Death.
The population of England had recovered by Tudor times, well, by the reign of Mary anyway. And because almost all abandoned houses in England were built of wood, not stone, there wasn't much left after 25 years unless there was a stone church or manor - and that was usually quarried for stone. Go to an abandoned town - say, Bere in North Wales or Hale in Northamptonshire - and you would swear blind there was never a town there at all.
Comments
There is also a second factor in the US which you don't really see in the UK: simply, some municipalities give money (typically around $200) to homeless people and put them on buses to big cities, while making them sign documents saying they won't return (and are subject to arrest if they do).
It's pretty sick.
We shouldn't have too narrow a definition of what 'society' is.
Was French your worst subject at school?
Increasingly this is pointless. Not only does everyone under 40 speak English, they are often actually insulted that you ask. They roll their eyes and say Of course I speak English, like YOU are a moron for doubting this
I am talking mainly about outgoing people in hospitality industries: bars, hotels, the arts. But it spreads, and it spreads globally
From a straight Google revenues perspective, you will probably earn 0.1-0.3 cents a view. So, you need about 25 million views a year. (If your audience is older and richer, you'll earn more per view; if it is poorer and younger, you will earn less.)
If you post a video a week, you need to make 500,000 views per video.
My most viewed video got around 220,000 views.
I've just cancelled prime. I'm not going to a gig on Saturday cos it's £50. I might not go through to Glasgow for Kaiser Chiefs. I'm having a quick browse through LinkedIn to see if I can bump my salary up a few grand.
Kinda considering selling the car? Hmmmm.
Many vulnerable young people from across the UK have ended up in children's homes in Blackpool in the past few years. But the approach - in part because of a national shortage of places elsewhere - is raising concerns.
Thanks to the pandemic, staycation tourists have flocked back to the Lancashire resort over the past two summers. Alongside the familiar Pleasure Beach and amusement arcades is a smart new California-style beach cafe.
But few visitors will have noticed that, at the same time, Blackpool has taken on a new status - as an epicentre of children's homes.
Blackpool already has the highest proportion of its own children in care in England - but with property in the resort town being relatively cheap, and with a surge in the national demand for places, some local providers have expanded rapidly.
BBC analysis of the latest Ofsted data shows of the 39 children's homes in the two Blackpool parliamentary constituencies, 29 have been registered only since 2016. As a result, children have been sent from across the country to children's homes in Blackpool and adjacent areas.
Jade, 21, from London, was placed in a home just outside the town when she was 16 and stayed there for 18 months.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62479564
And I wonder how many of Europe's more deprived have been 'encouraged' to move to richer countries.
Inconceivable that anyone would have the same problem nowadays. In fact, my Portuguese is now serviceable though far from fluent - and I regularly, and frustratingly, get Brazilians responding to my broken Portuguese with their broken English.
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/en/politics-betting-2378961
Norway was similar although there as a matter of policy on Norsk Hydro rigs the working language was Norwegian so much more opportunity to learn.
"How Oxford Street was overrun by sweet shops"
https://www.ft.com/content/534dc8ab-d8f3-4f6d-bfca-e817c03655f9
Interesting fact;
Rainfall in East Africa has increased by ~40% in recent centuries, thanks to crop irrigation in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan via evaporation.
Accounts for an extra 3 1/2 centimetres of rainfall, per year - and the additional cloud cover cools East Africa by 1/2 a degree.
https://conservativehome.com/2022/08/17/conhomes-latest-tory-leadership-election-survey-truss-60-per-cent-sunak-28-per-cent-nine-per-cent-undecided/
That said, it's interesting how many public statements by EU officials are made in English by, for example, Von Der Leyen.