For all the dithering off stages, incoherence and forgetting his words Biden or Biden's team have indeed played a blinder in Ukraine and the Trumpists look ever more absurd.
I find it very difficult to get through, these days, even the Times Saturday Review without being tempted.
There are some that I purposely keep unread, waiting, as a treat at some point.
I detest people who say "oh you should read this" as the motives are near-universal point-scoring but....I don't think anyone should go through life without reading Portrait of the Artist.
Are there stats, with demographic breakdown, on how many people read books AT ALL? Opinium periodically asks me what I've done this year and how often, with a list of major things like taking a long-haul flight. One of them is "I've read a book". There aren't many days when I've not read a few pages, at least, but I get the impression that this marks me as Olde School, like stamp-collecting or reading a physical newspaper.
Do you mean read a book as opposed to read it on kindle or just read a book. I daren't think what the demographic would look like for either, frankly.
Kindle's not my scene, but I'd count it as equivalent - it's the readiness to read stuff rather than how you do it that's interesting. Leon's stats don't sounds bad (if one agrees that reading is a Good Thing) - 2+ per head for the year to September, which must amount to nearly 3 if one excludes infants. I still wonder about demography, but Nigelb is probably right that either you get into it early or never do.
I'm less interested in whether they're reading Proust or Valley of the Dolls - the willingness to read someone else's ideas is the distinctive difference from people who never read anything.
What about Proust *and* Valley of the Dolls?
Both excellent. I can still now (some XX years after) remember the final dilemma/choice in VotD. Fantastic.
Proust in his first book wrote about, wrote about…..
I can't imagine that Charles uses anything other than a fountain pen - he's a traditionalist. Biro is far too modern.
Even if you do like modern, biros are just straight-up bad as writing instruments compared to a good disposable gel ink pen, which writes far more smoothly and reliably. The only thing biros have going for them is that they are the cheapest of the cheap, and then you get what you pay for...
I can't imagine that Charles uses anything other than a fountain pen - he's a traditionalist. Biro is far too modern.
Even if you do like modern, biros are just straight-up bad as writing instruments compared to a good disposable gel ink pen, which writes far more smoothly and reliably. The only thing biros have going for them is that they are the cheapest of the cheap, and then you get what you pay for...
...Some gel ink pens are actually deliberately erasable. I buy them for marking up proofs in different colours, as I can then erase any mistakes or resolved queries. I have to be very careful not to use them for writing a cheque, for instance.
Or very careful when to use them for writing a cheque...
Byth yn mynd i roi'r gorau iddi Ni fydd byth yn eich siomi Peidiwch byth â rhedeg o gwmpas a'ch gadael Byth yn mynd i wneud i chi grio Byth yn mynd i ffarwelio Byth yn mynd i ddweud celwydd a brifo i chi
I wonder if William is having second thoughts?
He actually lived in a Welsh-speaking part of Wales for quite a long time. He would have had a chance to have second thoughts then, if he wished.
One thing that did strike me is there's no sign he learned Welsh during his time on Mon, but he was quite busy.
He used to fly his rescue helicopter over our house quite regularly as people got into difficulty on the Little Orne and Angel Bay
For all the dithering off stages, incoherence and forgetting his words Biden or Biden's team have indeed played a blinder in Ukraine and the Trumpists look ever more absurd.
Nevertheless..
I'm sure there will be PBers who think these people will have 'genuine concerns' and it's all the fault of Woke.
I find it very difficult to get through, these days, even the Times Saturday Review without being tempted.
There are some that I purposely keep unread, waiting, as a treat at some point.
I detest people who say "oh you should read this" as the motives are near-universal point-scoring but....I don't think anyone should go through life without reading Portrait of the Artist.
Are there stats, with demographic breakdown, on how many people read books AT ALL? Opinium periodically asks me what I've done this year and how often, with a list of major things like taking a long-haul flight. One of them is "I've read a book". There aren't many days when I've not read a few pages, at least, but I get the impression that this marks me as Olde School, like stamp-collecting or reading a physical newspaper.
Do you mean read a book as opposed to read it on kindle or just read a book. I daren't think what the demographic would look like for either, frankly.
Kindle's not my scene, but I'd count it as equivalent - it's the readiness to read stuff rather than how you do it that's interesting. Leon's stats don't sounds bad (if one agrees that reading is a Good Thing) - 2+ per head for the year to September, which must amount to nearly 3 if one excludes infants. I still wonder about demography, but Nigelb is probably right that either you get into it early or never do.
I'm less interested in whether they're reading Proust or Valley of the Dolls - the willingness to read someone else's ideas is the distinctive difference from people who never read anything.
I must admit the Scottish Book Trust is one charity I support - one reason being that they spend some of their effort in giving books to children who often wouldn't otherwise have their own copies to keep and read. (Something very dear to my heart.) They do have other programmes, of course, for writers as well as readers.
Edit: With a particular interest in getting readers started early. Mother and toddler programmes (some mums don't grasp the notion of reading to their children), and so on.
Also, Scottish in the sense that it's a Scottish charity - nto the books, thouigh obvs local authors feature, as do Scots and Gaelic as well as English.
Judge Cannon says: “[T]here has been no actual suggestion by the Government of any identifiable emergency or imminent disclosure of classified information arising from Plaintiff’s allegedly unlawful retention of the seized property.”
Conway: This ruling is absolutely a disgrace. And I don't think it's going to take very much to overturn it. Barr told The New York Times that the original motion by Trump's lawyers was a crock of shit, a crock of shit. This opinion is worse than that.. https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1570570377486647296
Unfortunately, having to appeal drags the process out. Trump just needs to keep dragging everything out and he's fine.
Note the judge picked as Special Master, while fair, is notorious for the length of time he takes over issuing opinions. And Cannon's ruling has left herself the power to change Special Master on a whim.
It is the most disgraceful episode in a recent catalogue of judicial degradations.
The problem is that the appellate court is also packed with Trump appointees. Its far from clear the appeal will work despite the absurdity of the judgment.
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
For all the dithering off stages, incoherence and forgetting his words Biden or Biden's team have indeed played a blinder in Ukraine and the Trumpists look ever more absurd.
Nevertheless..
I'm sure there will be PBers who think these people will have 'genuine concerns' and it's all the fault of Woke.
Call me cynical, but I suspect those numbers would be reversed if the president was from the opposing party.
Re; Ben Okri, I haven't followed his latest works, but looking up I saw that he's got too recent books out - "the age of magic" and "the freedom artist". I agree with you that he's a good, richly imaginative writer.
He wrote this quite nice piece about the Queen last week, which got very little exposure. I don't agree with everythng he says, but I think it's broadly good , and it's striking how he reveals more by taking such a different tone to the ultra-secular tone of the majority of modern society, but also remaining liberal and open. I haven't see a single other writer or journalist cover it in this sort of way.
"Queen Elizabeth ruled at a time when the spiritual energy of the world was moving from a male-centred universe to one desperately in need of feminine energies. After two world wars, after the toxicity of Nazism, which was male energy at its most disordered and insane, what the world truly needed, at the level of its subconscious, was a female force, a stable, balancing, presence."
Interesting that there are Okri fans on here - I thought Famished Road was one of most turgid things I had ever read, as did the friend who lent it to me. Another (bookshop-owning) friend finds his books sell to the sort of people she describews as 'shelf-decorators'.
Yes not for everyone. A bit like Mantel or, yes, Proust or even JJ himself. You've got to give yourself over completely to their world. If so much as your big toe remains outside it's all over.
And yet Mantel and Proust are fine for me (haven't read Joyce). The big modern worldbuilder for me is John Crowley. The Aegypt cycle is extremely dense and rewarding.
Are you saying that people have different tastes in literature???
I will have to give it a go never heard of him, embarrassing to say.
As for the "shelf-decorators" it begs two questions - first, are there really people who buy books just so they can have an impressive bookcase; and secondly, the more important question - what proportion of your books should you legitimately not have read and be planning to.
Re the shelf-decorators: yes, I can attest to this as a former bookseller myself. Keys are: they buy hardbacks; they won't buy more than one by any given author; prizewinners are important; the author's name needs to be very visible from a distance. I've heard people talk about who's getting 'demoted' to make room for a current big name. Mantel was v. popular because of the size of her Wolf Hall series.
What proportion of books can you have unread, but be planning to? For me it's currently running at around 5%: nearly 3000 books, of which around 150 are on the 'to be read' shelves.
Joyce: no, haven't got round to him yet. Even at around 100 books a year, there's only so much I can get through.
I use the Library Thing website to keep a track of my books. Currently just under 4000 of which I have read about 2/3rds. Like you, I try to read 100 books a year but rarely ever hit the target. Normally around 80-90. So I reckon that as long as I live a reasonably long life I still have plenty of time to finish all the books I own but have not yet read.
4000 is _very_impressive. I've known a lot of people who say they've got 'thousands of books', and when I go around... not quite so many.
I'm probably going to be around 80-90 this year, partly due to reading some chunky books - Don Quixote, Tom Jones and the like.
Have you come across the Japenese concept of 'tsundoku'? The library of books that you own, and will reads, but haven't yet. Considered a sign of an open mind.
The line between that and outright hoarding isn't too thin but still scarily easy to cross. Read three books a month and buy five. It adds up.
I know the feeling only too well. Though lockdown prompted me to start reading through my "new" books with some success.
Must have more than 50 metres of shelf space, some in double parking, and some in boxes, as a result of bringing home some of my late father's books. I am in the middle of a huge sort out and rationalisation over some months. Easier than expected as interests change and so on - Mervyn Peake no longer attracts me as much as it did my teenage self, for instance - but even so I'd estimate about 15++ wine boxes of books have gone to charity (specialist) or recycling for the disintegrating ones - with more to go. I'll wait on counting them till I have finished!
I've given away two hordes of books in my lifetime. Once when my parents sold the boyhood home and the other when I had to move flats. Unread or read, there's no feeling like donating hundreds upon hundreds of books at a time.
For all the dithering off stages, incoherence and forgetting his words Biden or Biden's team have indeed played a blinder in Ukraine and the Trumpists look ever more absurd.
Nevertheless..
I'm sure there will be PBers who think these people will have 'genuine concerns' and it's all the fault of Woke.
Call me cynical, but I suspect those numbers would be reversed if the president was from the opposing party.
The level of support may also be reversed if that POTUS was u-kno-who!
For all the dithering off stages, incoherence and forgetting his words Biden or Biden's team have indeed played a blinder in Ukraine and the Trumpists look ever more absurd.
Nevertheless..
I'm sure there will be PBers who think these people will have 'genuine concerns' and it's all the fault of Woke.
The GOP number is actually surprising given Fucker Carlson etc - that it is as low as that.
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
The highest rated CNN news show is Anderson Cooper. He gets 767,000 viewers. It's TINY. He probably gets fewer viewers than GB News
Where, then, are Americans getting their news?!
Not from cable?
Google says social media, especially Facebook. That's where 50%+ of Americans now get their news
I wonder if that is still true (about FB), and even if it is true, the news has to be generated somewhere else. FB is merely the medium
You missed my quite excellent summary travelblog yesterday evening, of our road trip to Italy!
TLDR: France and Italy both remain exquisite in pretty much every respect (at least the parts we visited).
Eating out though is, as you suggested, is not what it was. Quality good not outstanding but pricier than the UK (except cheese and good wine).
No, I read it, and thought it interesting and judicious
France and Italy are indeed magnificently beautiful countries, which have not trashed their cities and towns, the way we have, too often - and continue to do, amazingly. What is wrong with us. The turd in Edinburgh!
That said, most tourism is confirmation bias, you go to the beautiful bits. France and Italy have some crap regions as well. Large parts of Picardy in France, also the Cognac region down to Bordeaux: often surprisingly bleak. An industrial landscape, except the industry there is wine, so we don't realise
Shit bits of Italy: urban parts of Liguria, the endless suburbia of the Veneto, the sprawl north of Milan, the dormitory towns of Naples, nearly all of Calabria
But they probably don't have as many crap regions/towns as us, and they are simply bigger, so they can hide them better
Re the food, I can't work out if the decline is relative or absolute. Have we just caught up with French/Italian food so we are less impressed, or has it actually got worse? I suspect both. And we notice the lack of variety more, as our own food is so diverse
Speaking of food I had another absolutely excellent meal in Seville last night. The fourth in a row. It is not a fluke. Spanish food is now the best in Europe, maybe the world
It's good to see people catching up with Spain. When I lived there, I was perpetually delighted by how good the food was and at such brilliant prices. Going back there now, it rarely disappoints. I have three weeks in October in Cantabria, Castilla-Leon, Madrid and the Asturias. I know I will eat and drink like a king. Remember the rule: Spanish cuisine is like the country's weather: in the north they boil, in the centre they roast and in the south they fry.
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
The highest rated CNN news show is Anderson Cooper. He gets 767,000 viewers. It's TINY. He probably gets fewer viewers than GB News
Where, then, are Americans getting their news?!
Not from cable?
Google says social media, especially Facebook. That's where 50%+ of Americans now get their news
I wonder if that is still true (about FB), and even if it is true, the news has to be generated somewhere else. FB is merely the medium
You missed my quite excellent summary travelblog yesterday evening, of our road trip to Italy!
TLDR: France and Italy both remain exquisite in pretty much every respect (at least the parts we visited).
Eating out though is, as you suggested, is not what it was. Quality good not outstanding but pricier than the UK (except cheese and good wine).
No, I read it, and thought it interesting and judicious
France and Italy are indeed magnificently beautiful countries, which have not trashed their cities and towns, the way we have, too often - and continue to do, amazingly. What is wrong with us. The turd in Edinburgh!
That said, most tourism is confirmation bias, you go to the beautiful bits. France and Italy have some crap regions as well. Large parts of Picardy in France, also the Cognac region down to Bordeaux: often surprisingly bleak. An industrial landscape, except the industry there is wine, so we don't realise
Shit bits of Italy: urban parts of Liguria, the endless suburbia of the Veneto, the sprawl north of Milan, the dormitory towns of Naples, nearly all of Calabria
But they probably don't have as many crap regions/towns as us, and they are simply bigger, so they can hide them better
Re the food, I can't work out if the decline is relative or absolute. Have we just caught up with French/Italian food so we are less impressed, or has it actually got worse? I suspect both. And we notice the lack of variety more, as our own food is so diverse
Speaking of food I had another absolutely excellent meal in Seville last night. The fourth in a row. It is not a fluke. Spanish food is now the best in Europe, maybe the world
It's good to see people catching up with Spain. When I lived there, I was perpetually delighted by how good the food was and at such brilliant prices. Going back there now, it rarely disappoints. I have three weeks in October in Cantabria, Castilla-Leon, Madrid and the Asturias. I know I will eat and drink like a king. Remember the rule: Spanish cuisine is like the country's weather: in the north they boil, in the centre they roast and in the south they fry.
I had a great time in Granada in 2013, and I'm going on a working holiday to Madrid, in October.
For all the dithering off stages, incoherence and forgetting his words Biden or Biden's team have indeed played a blinder in Ukraine and the Trumpists look ever more absurd.
Nevertheless..
I'm sure there will be PBers who think these people will have 'genuine concerns' and it's all the fault of Woke.
Call me cynical, but I suspect those numbers would be reversed if the president was from the opposing party.
The level of support may also be reversed if that POTUS was u-kno-who!
Who, Trump? Well yes, last time I checked he was in the republican party. But I guess the same would be true if it was any republican.
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
The highest rated CNN news show is Anderson Cooper. He gets 767,000 viewers. It's TINY. He probably gets fewer viewers than GB News
Where, then, are Americans getting their news?!
Not from cable?
Google says social media, especially Facebook. That's where 50%+ of Americans now get their news
I wonder if that is still true (about FB), and even if it is true, the news has to be generated somewhere else. FB is merely the medium
You missed my quite excellent summary travelblog yesterday evening, of our road trip to Italy!
TLDR: France and Italy both remain exquisite in pretty much every respect (at least the parts we visited).
Eating out though is, as you suggested, is not what it was. Quality good not outstanding but pricier than the UK (except cheese and good wine).
No, I read it, and thought it interesting and judicious
France and Italy are indeed magnificently beautiful countries, which have not trashed their cities and towns, the way we have, too often - and continue to do, amazingly. What is wrong with us. The turd in Edinburgh!
That said, most tourism is confirmation bias, you go to the beautiful bits. France and Italy have some crap regions as well. Large parts of Picardy in France, also the Cognac region down to Bordeaux: often surprisingly bleak. An industrial landscape, except the industry there is wine, so we don't realise
Shit bits of Italy: urban parts of Liguria, the endless suburbia of the Veneto, the sprawl north of Milan, the dormitory towns of Naples, nearly all of Calabria
But they probably don't have as many crap regions/towns as us, and they are simply bigger, so they can hide them better
Re the food, I can't work out if the decline is relative or absolute. Have we just caught up with French/Italian food so we are less impressed, or has it actually got worse? I suspect both. And we notice the lack of variety more, as our own food is so diverse
Speaking of food I had another absolutely excellent meal in Seville last night. The fourth in a row. It is not a fluke. Spanish food is now the best in Europe, maybe the world
It's good to see people catching up with Spain. When I lived there, I was perpetually delighted by how good the food was and at such brilliant prices. Going back there now, it rarely disappoints. I have three weeks in October in Cantabria, Castilla-Leon, Madrid and the Asturias. I know I will eat and drink like a king. Remember the rule: Spanish cuisine is like the country's weather: in the north they boil, in the centre they roast and in the south they fry.
The most expensive of the four brilliant meals I've had here was €41 including wine. The cheapest was €16 including wine
What accounts for it? Why is modern Spanish food so good when France and Italy go backwards, and Portugal - an hour from here - is so limited?
I remember Spanish food being fairly boring when I came in the 1980s. Now: wow
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Hence my even more inspired suggestion that a video game of the queue should be created on the lines of Desert Bus so that non-attendees can reap the same rewatd
Interesting to hear discussion of the Fox News "The Five". I used to watch it a little in its early days but of course it was really different for the token "liberal" (or "lefty" as the friends of @SeanT and @Leon are called) being outnumbered and outgunned day after day by four conservatives of various hues.
That's the thing about "balance" - you either do it or you don't. The pretence of balance especially if not enforced in terms of numbers or air time is just that. We have argued frequently over the QT panel and how "representative" it is or isn't.
Channels like GBN or Talk TV don't even pretend to do balance. The nightly anti-Meghan tirade from Dan Wootton goes largely unchallenged as one example.
I've always believed it's important in a plural democracy for as many voices to be heard as possible. If all you hear are the same voices, plurality is lost and arguably democracy suffers too. The other side of that is not just opposing voices are heard but opposing opinions are aired in the same place. The "panel" type shows on GBN or Talk TV seem replete with a group of people whose views are all very similar - first, that's dull. The next stage is they try to out-extreme each other so the median point of the argument shifts further in one direction.
I really hope the perpetrators see justice. Hell, they may already be dead, killed by the Ukranians. I'm struggling how the rest of the world is still talking to Putin. I get diplomacy, but this is WW2 levels of behavior.
And this is just one small town. Imagine what they will find in a place like Mariupol
It is a bleak prospect, indeed. Ukrainians will want a terrible revenge
The tragedy is that the best way (maybe the only way) to stop the cycle is to not extract the revenge you are entitled to. See Germany 1945, or Spain 1975.
But it's hard to do for oneself, and impossible for a mortal to tell someone else to do that.
South Africa did OK with the Truth and Reconciliation Committee.
But that was made easier by the fact there was a widely respected figure to chair it. I do not see a possible equivalent to Tutu in Ukraine.
There's no right answer.
Enforce justice, and you forfeit reconciliation. Stress reconciliation, and you sacrifice justice.
It sticks in the throat, but probably millions of lives have been saved by allowing tyrants to live in comfortable retirement.
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Not sure about Cherry-Garrard. His take on the Queue, as in *The Worst Queue in the World*:
'Capt. S. tells me to go to Westminster Hall and report back. [...] Day 4. Bermondsey. Pemmican finished. Cracked feet. This place is the most hellish on earth. [....] Day 6. Last of the huskies finished. [...] Day 8. Captain Oates finished. Bit tough. [...] Day 11. At last, we cross the Thames and achieve our aim. UJ broken out. God bless our gracious sovereigns. [...] Day 21. Fifth toe falls off, nose black on the end. [...] Day 32. Get in to see Captain S. who asks me why I took so long. I start "Reporting back from West-". He breaks in and says "Yes, yes, never mind about all that, Bowen came in with the supply ship two weeks back with Mr Bell's latest invention - a cableless telephone. See, it's got a kinematoscope, all the details one could want. No need to queue these days."'
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
How can David Beckham have been in the queue for some 12 hours before any of the hundreds of people around him thought to mention it? What's happened to citizen journalism in this country? https://twitter.com/sturgios/status/1570761380504150018
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
The highest rated CNN news show is Anderson Cooper. He gets 767,000 viewers. It's TINY. He probably gets fewer viewers than GB News
Where, then, are Americans getting their news?!
Not from cable?
Google says social media, especially Facebook. That's where 50%+ of Americans now get their news
I wonder if that is still true (about FB), and even if it is true, the news has to be generated somewhere else. FB is merely the medium
You missed my quite excellent summary travelblog yesterday evening, of our road trip to Italy!
TLDR: France and Italy both remain exquisite in pretty much every respect (at least the parts we visited).
Eating out though is, as you suggested, is not what it was. Quality good not outstanding but pricier than the UK (except cheese and good wine).
No, I read it, and thought it interesting and judicious
France and Italy are indeed magnificently beautiful countries, which have not trashed their cities and towns, the way we have, too often - and continue to do, amazingly. What is wrong with us. The turd in Edinburgh!
That said, most tourism is confirmation bias, you go to the beautiful bits. France and Italy have some crap regions as well. Large parts of Picardy in France, also the Cognac region down to Bordeaux: often surprisingly bleak. An industrial landscape, except the industry there is wine, so we don't realise
Shit bits of Italy: urban parts of Liguria, the endless suburbia of the Veneto, the sprawl north of Milan, the dormitory towns of Naples, nearly all of Calabria
But they probably don't have as many crap regions/towns as us, and they are simply bigger, so they can hide them better
Re the food, I can't work out if the decline is relative or absolute. Have we just caught up with French/Italian food so we are less impressed, or has it actually got worse? I suspect both. And we notice the lack of variety more, as our own food is so diverse
Speaking of food I had another absolutely excellent meal in Seville last night. The fourth in a row. It is not a fluke. Spanish food is now the best in Europe, maybe the world
Of course, you're right about tourism confirmation bias. But sod it, I'm not going to holiday in Bully-les-Mines anytime soon.
I also agree re Spanish food, when we went to Seville, Cordoba & Granada just pre covid the food there was a step up from our recent France & Italy experiences. I think our food has got better rather than France & Italy getting worse tbh.
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
So absolutely worth it.
Bravo! 8 hours. Impressive
Yes I still vividly recall queueing for the Queen Mum, and I have forgotten any of the downsides, and therefore I am very glad I did it
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
I was going to stretch the point the relationship between Monarch and Subject hadn't changed in 500 years either.
To be fair, a big crowd turned up for the end of Charles I's reign - there's that old story the head spoke to the crowd for a good few minutes after being severed from the body.
Haven't read the Spectator article - is it by anyone interesting?
I really hope the perpetrators see justice. Hell, they may already be dead, killed by the Ukranians. I'm struggling how the rest of the world is still talking to Putin. I get diplomacy, but this is WW2 levels of behavior.
And this is just one small town. Imagine what they will find in a place like Mariupol
It is a bleak prospect, indeed. Ukrainians will want a terrible revenge
The tragedy is that the best way (maybe the only way) to stop the cycle is to not extract the revenge you are entitled to. See Germany 1945, or Spain 1975.
But it's hard to do for oneself, and impossible for a mortal to tell someone else to do that.
South Africa did OK with the Truth and Reconciliation Committee.
But that was made easier by the fact there was a widely respected figure to chair it. I do not see a possible equivalent to Tutu in Ukraine.
There's no right answer.
Enforce justice, and you forfeit reconciliation. Stress reconciliation, and you sacrifice justice.
It sticks in the throat, but probably millions of lives have been saved by allowing tyrants to live in comfortable retirement.
Because of all the tropes about "Employing the bad guys" in Germany and Japan after WWII, the Baathtubists were all excluded from the new government system.
Which then proved, in great detail, why the occupations of Japan and Germany were run the way they were.
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
So absolutely worth it.
Bravo! 8 hours. Impressive
Yes I still vividly recall queueing for the Queen Mum, and I have forgotten any of the downsides, and therefore I am very glad I did it
Random sample looking this minute at the live stream (for @thart if he's still with us).
Asian woman White bloke (a rev as it turns out) White couple White woman White woman White woman White woman White bloke White bloke White woman White woman
OK I am prepared to say that the queue to pay respect is pretty white.
Don't like this double line business either. Would be well stressed if I was on the outer line.
Anyway, enough with queues.
11 out of 12 white, 91%. National total is 86% so not ridiculously out of line, if you'll forgive the pun. Especially considering that the queue almost certainly skews older than the population as a whole.
86% was at the 2011 census. Net migration has average around 300000 a year since. Thats about 3,300,000 extra ethnic minorities over 11 years. That accounts to an extra 5%. So now likely around 81% white british. And of course London much lower. So well out of line
I quoted white, not white British (which is indeed around 81% on the source I used). Also people will have travelled from outside of London, and some will be tourists.
All in all, the sample quoted isn't enough to legitimately try divisive race-baiting nonsense.
The point i am making is there is less support for the monarchy amongst ethnic minorities. Polls show this as do the mainly white crowds in London. The bbc in its coverage is i think being disrespectful to ethnic minorities by acting as if this is the white Britain of the 1950s....which has thankfully long gone
Support for the monarchy skews old, ethnic minorities in the UK currently skew young... so at least partially a confounding effect?
Young people tend to have jobs and dependent children as well - so can't spare the time to do the queue.
Then you have to compare the young people in the queue. If the young people in the queue are also predominantly white suggests young white people support monarchy more than young ethnic minority people
So what you're saying is - people whose parents and grandparents and great grandparents were British are on average slightly more invested in the mythology of Britishness than those whose recent ancestry is from abroad? I'm not sure that's anything which need frighten or alarm us.
Right now, FiveThirtyEight makes Republicans the favorites to win the House, 72-28, and Democrats the favorites to win the Senate, 71-29: https://fivethirtyeight.com/
Off hand those odds seem a little too high for both houses, though I agree on which party should be the favorite for each -- but I haven't sat down and done the hard work of going through the seats one by one. Yet. (And I may not before the election. As I recall, I beat FiveThirtyEight on the 2010 House election, coming within a few seats of the actual results.)
How can David Beckham have been in the queue for some 12 hours before any of the hundreds of people around him thought to mention it? What's happened to citizen journalism in this country? https://twitter.com/sturgios/status/1570761380504150018
The Peaky Blinder is strong in this one. No doubt a concealed Webley about his person to take out any soap dodging republicans.
About Joan Armatrading, there does seem to be a bit of a divide between younger and older people in Afro-Carribean and African communities. Ben Okri is another slightly older figure who's been making his broadly both liberal and monarchist views fairly clear this week.
It is extremely important for the Royals that they don't allow themselves to become totems of one side of a culture war against Harry and Meghan, as the Daily Mail and others would so dearly like, and they've made quite a bit of progress on that this week too.
The Royal Family needs to be careful not to get tied to the Conservative Party. Having the Prime Minister trail round the country with the new King is one danger point, and some recent guest lists have looked a tad lopsided.
I don't think anyone's likely to mistake the new king for a Conservative.
For all the dithering off stages, incoherence and forgetting his words Biden or Biden's team have indeed played a blinder in Ukraine and the Trumpists look ever more absurd.
Nevertheless..
I'm sure there will be PBers who think these people will have 'genuine concerns' and it's all the fault of Woke.
Call me cynical, but I suspect those numbers would be reversed if the president was from the opposing party.
About Joan Armatrading, there does seem to be a bit of a divide between younger and older people in Afro-Carribean and African communities. Ben Okri is another slightly older figure who's been making his broadly both liberal and monarchist views fairly clear this week.
It is extremely important for the Royals that they don't allow themselves to become totems of one side of a culture war against Harry and Meghan, as the Daily Mail and others would so dearly like, and they've made quite a bit of progress on that this week too.
The Royal Family needs to be careful not to get tied to the Conservative Party. Having the Prime Minister trail round the country with the new King is one danger point, and some recent guest lists have looked a tad lopsided.
I don't think anyone's likely to mistake the new king for a Conservative.
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
The highest rated CNN news show is Anderson Cooper. He gets 767,000 viewers. It's TINY. He probably gets fewer viewers than GB News
Where, then, are Americans getting their news?!
Not from cable?
Google says social media, especially Facebook. That's where 50%+ of Americans now get their news
I wonder if that is still true (about FB), and even if it is true, the news has to be generated somewhere else. FB is merely the medium
You missed my quite excellent summary travelblog yesterday evening, of our road trip to Italy!
TLDR: France and Italy both remain exquisite in pretty much every respect (at least the parts we visited).
Eating out though is, as you suggested, is not what it was. Quality good not outstanding but pricier than the UK (except cheese and good wine).
No, I read it, and thought it interesting and judicious
France and Italy are indeed magnificently beautiful countries, which have not trashed their cities and towns, the way we have, too often - and continue to do, amazingly. What is wrong with us. The turd in Edinburgh!
That said, most tourism is confirmation bias, you go to the beautiful bits. France and Italy have some crap regions as well. Large parts of Picardy in France, also the Cognac region down to Bordeaux: often surprisingly bleak. An industrial landscape, except the industry there is wine, so we don't realise
Shit bits of Italy: urban parts of Liguria, the endless suburbia of the Veneto, the sprawl north of Milan, the dormitory towns of Naples, nearly all of Calabria
But they probably don't have as many crap regions/towns as us, and they are simply bigger, so they can hide them better
Re the food, I can't work out if the decline is relative or absolute. Have we just caught up with French/Italian food so we are less impressed, or has it actually got worse? I suspect both. And we notice the lack of variety more, as our own food is so diverse
Speaking of food I had another absolutely excellent meal in Seville last night. The fourth in a row. It is not a fluke. Spanish food is now the best in Europe, maybe the world
It's good to see people catching up with Spain. When I lived there, I was perpetually delighted by how good the food was and at such brilliant prices. Going back there now, it rarely disappoints. I have three weeks in October in Cantabria, Castilla-Leon, Madrid and the Asturias. I know I will eat and drink like a king. Remember the rule: Spanish cuisine is like the country's weather: in the north they boil, in the centre they roast and in the south they fry.
The most expensive of the four brilliant meals I've had here was €41 including wine. The cheapest was €16 including wine
What accounts for it? Why is modern Spanish food so good when France and Italy go backwards, and Portugal - an hour from here - is so limited?
I remember Spanish food being fairly boring when I came in the 1980s. Now: wow
I think a lot of it is because the Spanish travel a lot more than the French and Italians. I bet a lot of the people cooking for you have either spent time abroad or in Spanish regions away from Andalusia. They are not afraid to adapt and experiment because they will not be cut down for doing so.
There are the two Spains, people say, and they compete: sometimes the inward looking, dour Castillian side is in the supremacy; at other times it's the more outward looking Mediterranean personality that holds sway. Culturally, the latter is in charge right now and has been for a couple of decades. It may be about to switch again soon, though.
Re; Ben Okri, I haven't followed his latest works, but looking up I saw that he's got too recent books out - "the age of magic" and "the freedom artist". I agree with you that he's a good, richly imaginative writer.
He wrote this quite nice piece about the Queen last week, which got very little exposure. I don't agree with everythng he says, but I think it's broadly good , and it's striking how he reveals more by taking such a different tone to the ultra-secular tone of the majority of modern society, but also remaining liberal and open. I haven't see a single other writer or journalist cover it in this sort of way.
"Queen Elizabeth ruled at a time when the spiritual energy of the world was moving from a male-centred universe to one desperately in need of feminine energies. After two world wars, after the toxicity of Nazism, which was male energy at its most disordered and insane, what the world truly needed, at the level of its subconscious, was a female force, a stable, balancing, presence."
Interesting that there are Okri fans on here - I thought Famished Road was one of most turgid things I had ever read, as did the friend who lent it to me. Another (bookshop-owning) friend finds his books sell to the sort of people she describews as 'shelf-decorators'.
Yes not for everyone. A bit like Mantel or, yes, Proust or even JJ himself. You've got to give yourself over completely to their world. If so much as your big toe remains outside it's all over.
And yet Mantel and Proust are fine for me (haven't read Joyce). The big modern worldbuilder for me is John Crowley. The Aegypt cycle is extremely dense and rewarding.
Are you saying that people have different tastes in literature???
I will have to give it a go never heard of him, embarrassing to say.
As for the "shelf-decorators" it begs two questions - first, are there really people who buy books just so they can have an impressive bookcase; and secondly, the more important question - what proportion of your books should you legitimately not have read and be planning to.
Re the shelf-decorators: yes, I can attest to this as a former bookseller myself. Keys are: they buy hardbacks; they won't buy more than one by any given author; prizewinners are important; the author's name needs to be very visible from a distance. I've heard people talk about who's getting 'demoted' to make room for a current big name. Mantel was v. popular because of the size of her Wolf Hall series.
What proportion of books can you have unread, but be planning to? For me it's currently running at around 5%: nearly 3000 books, of which around 150 are on the 'to be read' shelves.
Joyce: no, haven't got round to him yet. Even at around 100 books a year, there's only so much I can get through.
I use the Library Thing website to keep a track of my books. Currently just under 4000 of which I have read about 2/3rds. Like you, I try to read 100 books a year but rarely ever hit the target. Normally around 80-90. So I reckon that as long as I live a reasonably long life I still have plenty of time to finish all the books I own but have not yet read.
4000 is _very_impressive. I've known a lot of people who say they've got 'thousands of books', and when I go around... not quite so many.
I'm probably going to be around 80-90 this year, partly due to reading some chunky books - Don Quixote, Tom Jones and the like.
Have you come across the Japenese concept of 'tsundoku'? The library of books that you own, and will reads, but haven't yet. Considered a sign of an open mind.
The line between that and outright hoarding isn't too thin but still scarily easy to cross. Read three books a month and buy five. It adds up.
I know the feeling only too well. Though lockdown prompted me to start reading through my "new" books with some success.
Must have more than 50 metres of shelf space, some in double parking, and some in boxes, as a result of bringing home some of my late father's books. I am in the middle of a huge sort out and rationalisation over some months. Easier than expected as interests change and so on - Mervyn Peake no longer attracts me as much as it did my teenage self, for instance - but even so I'd estimate about 15++ wine boxes of books have gone to charity (specialist) or recycling for the disintegrating ones - with more to go. I'll wait on counting them till I have finished!
I've given away two hordes of books in my lifetime. Once when my parents sold the boyhood home and the other when I had to move flats. Unread or read, there's no feeling like donating hundreds upon hundreds of books at a time.
I take the approach that if nobody in the house is going to read a book again, then there is no point having it.
Read it, donate it, buy another.
I need to spend a bit more time reading books, but I keep getting drawn back to the comments on PB!
About Joan Armatrading, there does seem to be a bit of a divide between younger and older people in Afro-Carribean and African communities. Ben Okri is another slightly older figure who's been making his broadly both liberal and monarchist views fairly clear this week.
It is extremely important for the Royals that they don't allow themselves to become totems of one side of a culture war against Harry and Meghan, as the Daily Mail and others would so dearly like, and they've made quite a bit of progress on that this week too.
The Royal Family needs to be careful not to get tied to the Conservative Party. Having the Prime Minister trail round the country with the new King is one danger point, and some recent guest lists have looked a tad lopsided.
I don't think anyone's likely to mistake the new king for a Conservative.
Except when it comes to state benefits for the elderly, and handing on property free of tax...
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
The highest rated CNN news show is Anderson Cooper. He gets 767,000 viewers. It's TINY. He probably gets fewer viewers than GB News
Where, then, are Americans getting their news?!
Not from cable?
Google says social media, especially Facebook. That's where 50%+ of Americans now get their news
I wonder if that is still true (about FB), and even if it is true, the news has to be generated somewhere else. FB is merely the medium
You missed my quite excellent summary travelblog yesterday evening, of our road trip to Italy!
TLDR: France and Italy both remain exquisite in pretty much every respect (at least the parts we visited).
Eating out though is, as you suggested, is not what it was. Quality good not outstanding but pricier than the UK (except cheese and good wine).
No, I read it, and thought it interesting and judicious
France and Italy are indeed magnificently beautiful countries, which have not trashed their cities and towns, the way we have, too often - and continue to do, amazingly. What is wrong with us. The turd in Edinburgh!
That said, most tourism is confirmation bias, you go to the beautiful bits. France and Italy have some crap regions as well. Large parts of Picardy in France, also the Cognac region down to Bordeaux: often surprisingly bleak. An industrial landscape, except the industry there is wine, so we don't realise
Shit bits of Italy: urban parts of Liguria, the endless suburbia of the Veneto, the sprawl north of Milan, the dormitory towns of Naples, nearly all of Calabria
But they probably don't have as many crap regions/towns as us, and they are simply bigger, so they can hide them better
Re the food, I can't work out if the decline is relative or absolute. Have we just caught up with French/Italian food so we are less impressed, or has it actually got worse? I suspect both. And we notice the lack of variety more, as our own food is so diverse
Speaking of food I had another absolutely excellent meal in Seville last night. The fourth in a row. It is not a fluke. Spanish food is now the best in Europe, maybe the world
Of course, you're right about tourism confirmation bias. But sod it, I'm not going to holiday in Bully-les-Mines anytime soon.
I also agree re Spanish food, when we went to Seville, Cordoba & Granada just pre covid the food there was a step up from our recent France & Italy experiences. I think our food has got better rather than France & Italy getting worse tbh.
We've had this debate many times, and will have it again, but there is evidence that French food has got absolutely worse, for many reasons: including labour laws (= no staff = microwaves)
"almost three quarters of all dishes served in French bistros, brasseries and cafes are shipped in from a factory and microwaved, according to a top restaurateur."
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
On the religious aspect: I've just been to Aston upon Mersey, a suburban village in Greater Manchester with about 40-odd businesses on tge High Street. Every single one had a picture of the Queen in the window. The fact that in most cases it was a relatively unobtrusive picture - an icon - made it all the more moving.
4 years jail without trial in the UK. Scandalous and completely unacceptable, not just for the suspect but also the interests of justice as witnesses recollections will be less reliable and accurate 4 years on.
When Petkovic’s trial did start, on 7 March 2021, its progress was then heavily delayed by the failure of the court’s air conditioning system in heatwave conditions. The trial collapsed in chaos on 27 July and the jury was discharged.
“The prison staff would not attend if the temperature in the court went above 23 degrees,” said Swan, of Stokoe Partnership solicitors.
I know some cases last a long time, but this doesn't sound like one of those.
23 degrees isn’t that hot?
Does sound a bit odd, doesn't it?
I take these stories with a pinch of salt. This was Max Rushden in The Guardian yesterday:
So what should happen to players accused of these crimes? They are, of course, innocent until proven guilty. But since the conviction rate is so low, this kind of all-or-nothing solution feels inadequate. Should football’s authorities become some kind of civil court – on the balance of probability rather than reasonable doubt? Clearly this isn’t what the Premier League or any other governing body was set up to do. “Where there have been allegations there needs to be a serious investigation. And I do think it has to come from an independent ombudsman because the clubs will protect their own, and not every woman wants to go to the police. It is about the clubs taking allegations seriously. And then when there are ongoing investigations, the players shouldn’t be on the pitch.”
Everything before the but...
And the thing is, Mason Greenwood's career is over whatever happens with criminal proceedings. So it's kind of happening anyway where evidence is in the public domain.
It does annoy me that the Guardian goes into bat for people accused of some serious crimes, but not others.
Yes. A simple test is this: Do you apply to all cases without exception the standard you wish to be applied to you when charged with serious offence which you are in fact innocent of?
Everyone has to hold their nose sometimes at the consequences of a proper and consistent test, but that's the way it goes.
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
So absolutely worth it.
Congratulations, I am jealous. The end of the queue is within walking distance of my house but I'm not sure I have a spare eight hours in my schedule over the next couple of days.
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
So absolutely worth it.
Bravo! 8 hours. Impressive
Yes I still vividly recall queueing for the Queen Mum, and I have forgotten any of the downsides, and therefore I am very glad I did it
The Queen Herself must be that times a hundred
So I confess a little jealousy!
David Beckham was interviewed on ITV earlier. He had been in the queue for over 12 hours and had reached Victoria Gardens.
Right now, FiveThirtyEight makes Republicans the favorites to win the House, 72-28, and Democrats the favorites to win the Senate, 71-29: https://fivethirtyeight.com/
Off hand those odds seem a little too high for both houses, though I agree on which party should be the favorite for each -- but I haven't sat down and done the hard work of going through the seats one by one. Yet. (And I may not before the election. As I recall, I beat FiveThirtyEight on the 2010 House election, coming within a few seats of the actual results.)
If we assume that the overall outcome will be about 2% better for the Republicans than in 2020, then it follows that everything that was tight in 2020 will be tight in November.
We should also assume that any State which was carried by the Republicans in 2020 is not going to be in play this year, unless you have a candidate calling for the reintroduction of anti-miscegenation laws, or talking about "legitimate rape."
How can David Beckham have been in the queue for some 12 hours before any of the hundreds of people around him thought to mention it? What's happened to citizen journalism in this country? https://twitter.com/sturgios/status/1570761380504150018
The Peaky Blinder is strong in this one. No doubt a concealed Webley about his person to take out any soap dodging republicans.
A Webley–Fosbery surely - expensive, but with a smoother trigger pull...
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
So absolutely worth it.
Bravo! 8 hours. Impressive
Yes I still vividly recall queueing for the Queen Mum, and I have forgotten any of the downsides, and therefore I am very glad I did it
The Queen Herself must be that times a hundred
So I confess a little jealousy!
It was great. The queuing and the journey was definitely part of it, as it allowed people to come together and experience something together, and the suspense got greater and greater as you got closer. It was exhilarating.
The atmosphere inside was almost otherworldly: holy, solemn and nearly metaphysical. Everyone seemed absorbed in thought as they contemplated the silence and the magnitude of the moment about to come.
The guards themselves were mesmerising and almost distracting: they're very tall, and perfectly turned out, but rocking ever so slightly to keep themselves going and you're never 100% sure they're wholly stable. Of course, they are.
The imperial state crown and orb draw your eye. They sparkle and have a glory of their own. I found I had to work to process the coffin, and who was in it, but once I had I could connect with the catafalque and the lady inside, who meant so much to me and millions (billions?) of others.
I had my personal moment: I bowed, closing my eyes briefly and thanking her, paid my respects for her soul, and left. At the end of Westminster Hall I looked back down, which is almost just as impressive a site because you get a long perspective on the whole event - like you're looking back on your own memory in real time.
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
So absolutely worth it.
Bravo! 8 hours. Impressive
Yes I still vividly recall queueing for the Queen Mum, and I have forgotten any of the downsides, and therefore I am very glad I did it
The Queen Herself must be that times a hundred
So I confess a little jealousy!
David Beckham was interviewed on ITV earlier. He had been in the queue for over 12 hours and had reached Victoria Gardens.
FPT: rcs1000 and GardenWalker asked where the Obamas should live, if not, for part of the year, on Martha's Vineyard. I'll repeat the answer I gave there: They should live in Chicago, which has given them much, which has terrible problems, and which they abandoned.
Martha's Vineyard is especially inappropriate for them because it is a place dominated by wealthy leftists, who have screwed the poor, and even the middle class: "This is the part of Martha’s Vineyard most people never see. An island known for its opulence and natural beauty, a playground for presidents and celebrities, it is kept afloat by workers for whom America’s housing crisis is not an eventuality. It’s here.
Even before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) sent two planes full of asylum seekers to the summer haven this week to make a political point by funneling migrants to liberal communities, the dearth of affordable housing on the Vineyard had pushed the year-round community to a breaking point. Policymakers have chronically underinvested in affordable housing and allowed investment properties and short-term rentals to proliferate unchecked." source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/16/marthas-vineyard-housing-rentals-crisis/?itid=hp-top-table-main-t-5
This isn't a new problem. Tom Wolfe wrote about it in his entertaining satire, "Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine" in 1975.
But the issue of affordable housing has become far larger than it was, then. And it is mostly a problem in places such as Martha's Vineyard that have been run by leftists -- who don't want the poor and working class living anywhere near them -- except as servants.
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
So absolutely worth it.
Bravo! 8 hours. Impressive
Yes I still vividly recall queueing for the Queen Mum, and I have forgotten any of the downsides, and therefore I am very glad I did it
The Queen Herself must be that times a hundred
So I confess a little jealousy!
David Beckham was interviewed on ITV earlier. He had been in the queue for over 12 hours and had reached Victoria Gardens.
Entry to the queue currently suspended
Rationing NHS style, indeed Center Parcs style ... shame though for the people who've come to London.
How can David Beckham have been in the queue for some 12 hours before any of the hundreds of people around him thought to mention it? What's happened to citizen journalism in this country? https://twitter.com/sturgios/status/1570761380504150018
I bet the end of the queue surged a bit when Beckham joined .There may have been that incredibly rare action performed of backwards queue jumping where people jump back to the end
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
The highest rated CNN news show is Anderson Cooper. He gets 767,000 viewers. It's TINY. He probably gets fewer viewers than GB News
Where, then, are Americans getting their news?!
Not from cable?
Google says social media, especially Facebook. That's where 50%+ of Americans now get their news
I wonder if that is still true (about FB), and even if it is true, the news has to be generated somewhere else. FB is merely the medium
You missed my quite excellent summary travelblog yesterday evening, of our road trip to Italy!
TLDR: France and Italy both remain exquisite in pretty much every respect (at least the parts we visited).
Eating out though is, as you suggested, is not what it was. Quality good not outstanding but pricier than the UK (except cheese and good wine).
No, I read it, and thought it interesting and judicious
France and Italy are indeed magnificently beautiful countries, which have not trashed their cities and towns, the way we have, too often - and continue to do, amazingly. What is wrong with us. The turd in Edinburgh!
That said, most tourism is confirmation bias, you go to the beautiful bits. France and Italy have some crap regions as well. Large parts of Picardy in France, also the Cognac region down to Bordeaux: often surprisingly bleak. An industrial landscape, except the industry there is wine, so we don't realise
Shit bits of Italy: urban parts of Liguria, the endless suburbia of the Veneto, the sprawl north of Milan, the dormitory towns of Naples, nearly all of Calabria
But they probably don't have as many crap regions/towns as us, and they are simply bigger, so they can hide them better
Re the food, I can't work out if the decline is relative or absolute. Have we just caught up with French/Italian food so we are less impressed, or has it actually got worse? I suspect both. And we notice the lack of variety more, as our own food is so diverse
Speaking of food I had another absolutely excellent meal in Seville last night. The fourth in a row. It is not a fluke. Spanish food is now the best in Europe, maybe the world
It's good to see people catching up with Spain. When I lived there, I was perpetually delighted by how good the food was and at such brilliant prices. Going back there now, it rarely disappoints. I have three weeks in October in Cantabria, Castilla-Leon, Madrid and the Asturias. I know I will eat and drink like a king. Remember the rule: Spanish cuisine is like the country's weather: in the north they boil, in the centre they roast and in the south they fry.
The most expensive of the four brilliant meals I've had here was €41 including wine. The cheapest was €16 including wine
What accounts for it? Why is modern Spanish food so good when France and Italy go backwards, and Portugal - an hour from here - is so limited?
I remember Spanish food being fairly boring when I came in the 1980s. Now: wow
I think a lot of it is because the Spanish travel a lot more than the French and Italians. I bet a lot of the people cooking for you have either spent time abroad or in Spanish regions away from Andalusia. They are not afraid to adapt and experiment because they will not be cut down for doing so.
There are the two Spains, people say, and they compete: sometimes the inward looking, dour Castillian side is in the supremacy; at other times it's the more outward looking Mediterranean personality that holds sway. Culturally, the latter is in charge right now and has been for a couple of decades. It may be about to switch again soon, though.
Interesting, that must be part of it. There is definitely a stagnancy in French cooking which, ironically, comes from their lingering self-perception as being the best. If we are the best, why change? We have nothing to learn! And so they learn nothing
And when they do innovate it can go so oddly wrong. French fusion food is some of the worst I have had, anywhere
It is a weird world where the French are better at football, and we are better at cooking. For now
I am convinced the UK foodie revolution is also due to TV. From Delia to Jamie to Masterchef to the Hairy Bikers. We watch so much cooking on TV - and then we buy the books. An entire nation has thus been educated in gastronomy
4 years jail without trial in the UK. Scandalous and completely unacceptable, not just for the suspect but also the interests of justice as witnesses recollections will be less reliable and accurate 4 years on.
When Petkovic’s trial did start, on 7 March 2021, its progress was then heavily delayed by the failure of the court’s air conditioning system in heatwave conditions. The trial collapsed in chaos on 27 July and the jury was discharged.
“The prison staff would not attend if the temperature in the court went above 23 degrees,” said Swan, of Stokoe Partnership solicitors.
I know some cases last a long time, but this doesn't sound like one of those.
23 degrees isn’t that hot?
Does sound a bit odd, doesn't it?
I take these stories with a pinch of salt. This was Max Rushden in The Guardian yesterday:
So what should happen to players accused of these crimes? They are, of course, innocent until proven guilty. But since the conviction rate is so low, this kind of all-or-nothing solution feels inadequate. Should football’s authorities become some kind of civil court – on the balance of probability rather than reasonable doubt? Clearly this isn’t what the Premier League or any other governing body was set up to do. “Where there have been allegations there needs to be a serious investigation. And I do think it has to come from an independent ombudsman because the clubs will protect their own, and not every woman wants to go to the police. It is about the clubs taking allegations seriously. And then when there are ongoing investigations, the players shouldn’t be on the pitch.”
Everything before the but...
And the thing is, Mason Greenwood's career is over whatever happens with criminal proceedings. So it's kind of happening anyway where evidence is in the public domain.
It does annoy me that the Guardian goes into bat for people accused of some serious crimes, but not others.
Yes. A simple test is this: Do you apply to all cases without exception the standard you wish to be applied to you when charged with serious offence which you are in fact innocent of?
Everyone has to hold their nose sometimes at the consequences of a proper and consistent test, but that's the way it goes.
tbf i thought Ryan Giggs ordered to retrial next year was harsh
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
So absolutely worth it.
Bravo! 8 hours. Impressive
Yes I still vividly recall queueing for the Queen Mum, and I have forgotten any of the downsides, and therefore I am very glad I did it
The Queen Herself must be that times a hundred
So I confess a little jealousy!
It was great. The queuing and the journey was definitely part of it, as it allowed people to come together and experience something together, and the suspense got greater and greater as you got closer. It was exhilarating.
The atmosphere inside was almost otherworldly: holy, solemn and nearly metaphysical. Everyone seemed absorbed in thought as they contemplated the silence and the magnitude of the moment about to come.
The guards themselves were mesmerising and almost distracting: they're very tall, and perfectly turned out, but rocking ever so slightly to keep themselves going and you're never 100% sure they're wholly stable. Of course, they are.
The imperial state crown and orb draw your eye. They sparkle and have a glory of their own. I found I had to work to process the coffin, and who was in it, but once I had I could connect with the catafalque and the lady inside, who meant so much to me and millions (billions?) of others.
I had my personal moment: I bowed, closing my eyes briefly and thanking her, paid my respects for her soul, and left. At the end of Westminster Hall I looked back down, which is almost just as impressive a site because you get a long perspective on the whole event - like you're looking back on your own memory in real time.
Random sample looking this minute at the live stream (for @thart if he's still with us).
Asian woman White bloke (a rev as it turns out) White couple White woman White woman White woman White woman White bloke White bloke White woman White woman
OK I am prepared to say that the queue to pay respect is pretty white.
Don't like this double line business either. Would be well stressed if I was on the outer line.
Anyway, enough with queues.
11 out of 12 white, 91%. National total is 86% so not ridiculously out of line, if you'll forgive the pun. Especially considering that the queue almost certainly skews older than the population as a whole.
86% was at the 2011 census. Net migration has average around 300000 a year since. Thats about 3,300,000 extra ethnic minorities over 11 years. That accounts to an extra 5%. So now likely around 81% white british. And of course London much lower. So well out of line
I quoted white, not white British (which is indeed around 81% on the source I used). Also people will have travelled from outside of London, and some will be tourists.
All in all, the sample quoted isn't enough to legitimately try divisive race-baiting nonsense.
The point i am making is there is less support for the monarchy amongst ethnic minorities. Polls show this as do the mainly white crowds in London. The bbc in its coverage is i think being disrespectful to ethnic minorities by acting as if this is the white Britain of the 1950s....which has thankfully long gone
Support for the monarchy skews old, ethnic minorities in the UK currently skew young... so at least partially a confounding effect?
Young people tend to have jobs and dependent children as well - so can't spare the time to do the queue.
Then you have to compare the young people in the queue. If the young people in the queue are also predominantly white suggests young white people support monarchy more than young ethnic minority people
So what you're saying is - people whose parents and grandparents and great grandparents were British are on average slightly more invested in the mythology of Britishness than those whose recent ancestry is from abroad? I'm not sure that's anything which need frighten or alarm us.
oh i agree doesnt alarm me....but it may not be good for the future of the monarchy
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
So absolutely worth it.
Bravo! 8 hours. Impressive
Yes I still vividly recall queueing for the Queen Mum, and I have forgotten any of the downsides, and therefore I am very glad I did it
The Queen Herself must be that times a hundred
So I confess a little jealousy!
David Beckham was interviewed on ITV earlier. He had been in the queue for over 12 hours and had reached Victoria Gardens.
Entry to the queue currently suspended
Rationing NHS style, indeed Center Parcs style ... shame though for the people who've come to London.
Few or none of the berks who are honouring the queen feel any shame about their actions.
Those who write bilge in the Spectator and who have travelled the world won't call it a personality cult either. It's just Britain doing what it knows how to do better than anyone else. Not a personality cult; not shameful.
It's obvious that the next step after "queue entry suspended" will be "queue entry reopens owing to mass popular demand".
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
The highest rated CNN news show is Anderson Cooper. He gets 767,000 viewers. It's TINY. He probably gets fewer viewers than GB News
Where, then, are Americans getting their news?!
Not from cable?
Google says social media, especially Facebook. That's where 50%+ of Americans now get their news
I wonder if that is still true (about FB), and even if it is true, the news has to be generated somewhere else. FB is merely the medium
You missed my quite excellent summary travelblog yesterday evening, of our road trip to Italy!
TLDR: France and Italy both remain exquisite in pretty much every respect (at least the parts we visited).
Eating out though is, as you suggested, is not what it was. Quality good not outstanding but pricier than the UK (except cheese and good wine).
No, I read it, and thought it interesting and judicious
France and Italy are indeed magnificently beautiful countries, which have not trashed their cities and towns, the way we have, too often - and continue to do, amazingly. What is wrong with us. The turd in Edinburgh!
That said, most tourism is confirmation bias, you go to the beautiful bits. France and Italy have some crap regions as well. Large parts of Picardy in France, also the Cognac region down to Bordeaux: often surprisingly bleak. An industrial landscape, except the industry there is wine, so we don't realise
Shit bits of Italy: urban parts of Liguria, the endless suburbia of the Veneto, the sprawl north of Milan, the dormitory towns of Naples, nearly all of Calabria
But they probably don't have as many crap regions/towns as us, and they are simply bigger, so they can hide them better
Re the food, I can't work out if the decline is relative or absolute. Have we just caught up with French/Italian food so we are less impressed, or has it actually got worse? I suspect both. And we notice the lack of variety more, as our own food is so diverse
Speaking of food I had another absolutely excellent meal in Seville last night. The fourth in a row. It is not a fluke. Spanish food is now the best in Europe, maybe the world
It's good to see people catching up with Spain. When I lived there, I was perpetually delighted by how good the food was and at such brilliant prices. Going back there now, it rarely disappoints. I have three weeks in October in Cantabria, Castilla-Leon, Madrid and the Asturias. I know I will eat and drink like a king. Remember the rule: Spanish cuisine is like the country's weather: in the north they boil, in the centre they roast and in the south they fry.
i always think the old west germany has very few truly bad parts...maybe ugly and bland in parts but not shitholes such as you find in the uk
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
So absolutely worth it.
Bravo! 8 hours. Impressive
Yes I still vividly recall queueing for the Queen Mum, and I have forgotten any of the downsides, and therefore I am very glad I did it
The Queen Herself must be that times a hundred
So I confess a little jealousy!
It was great. The queuing and the journey was definitely part of it, as it allowed people to come together and experience something together, and the suspense got greater and greater as you got closer. It was exhilarating.
The atmosphere inside was almost otherworldly: holy, solemn and nearly metaphysical. Everyone seemed absorbed in thought as they contemplated the silence and the magnitude of the moment about to come.
The guards themselves were mesmerising and almost distracting: they're very tall, and perfectly turned out, but rocking ever so slightly to keep themselves going and you're never 100% sure they're wholly stable. Of course, they are.
The imperial state crown and orb draw your eye. They sparkle and have a glory of their own. I found I had to work to process the coffin, and who was in it, but once I had I could connect with the catafalque and the lady inside, who meant so much to me and millions (billions?) of others.
I had my personal moment: I bowed, closing my eyes briefly and thanking her, paid my respects for her soul, and left. At the end of Westminster Hall I looked back down, which is almost just as impressive a site because you get a long perspective on the whole event - like you're looking back on your own memory in real time.
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
The highest rated CNN news show is Anderson Cooper. He gets 767,000 viewers. It's TINY. He probably gets fewer viewers than GB News
Where, then, are Americans getting their news?!
Not from cable?
Google says social media, especially Facebook. That's where 50%+ of Americans now get their news
I wonder if that is still true (about FB), and even if it is true, the news has to be generated somewhere else. FB is merely the medium
You missed my quite excellent summary travelblog yesterday evening, of our road trip to Italy!
TLDR: France and Italy both remain exquisite in pretty much every respect (at least the parts we visited).
Eating out though is, as you suggested, is not what it was. Quality good not outstanding but pricier than the UK (except cheese and good wine).
No, I read it, and thought it interesting and judicious
France and Italy are indeed magnificently beautiful countries, which have not trashed their cities and towns, the way we have, too often - and continue to do, amazingly. What is wrong with us. The turd in Edinburgh!
That said, most tourism is confirmation bias, you go to the beautiful bits. France and Italy have some crap regions as well. Large parts of Picardy in France, also the Cognac region down to Bordeaux: often surprisingly bleak. An industrial landscape, except the industry there is wine, so we don't realise
Shit bits of Italy: urban parts of Liguria, the endless suburbia of the Veneto, the sprawl north of Milan, the dormitory towns of Naples, nearly all of Calabria
But they probably don't have as many crap regions/towns as us, and they are simply bigger, so they can hide them better
Re the food, I can't work out if the decline is relative or absolute. Have we just caught up with French/Italian food so we are less impressed, or has it actually got worse? I suspect both. And we notice the lack of variety more, as our own food is so diverse
Speaking of food I had another absolutely excellent meal in Seville last night. The fourth in a row. It is not a fluke. Spanish food is now the best in Europe, maybe the world
It's good to see people catching up with Spain. When I lived there, I was perpetually delighted by how good the food was and at such brilliant prices. Going back there now, it rarely disappoints. I have three weeks in October in Cantabria, Castilla-Leon, Madrid and the Asturias. I know I will eat and drink like a king. Remember the rule: Spanish cuisine is like the country's weather: in the north they boil, in the centre they roast and in the south they fry.
The most expensive of the four brilliant meals I've had here was €41 including wine. The cheapest was €16 including wine
What accounts for it? Why is modern Spanish food so good when France and Italy go backwards, and Portugal - an hour from here - is so limited?
I remember Spanish food being fairly boring when I came in the 1980s. Now: wow
I think a lot of it is because the Spanish travel a lot more than the French and Italians. I bet a lot of the people cooking for you have either spent time abroad or in Spanish regions away from Andalusia. They are not afraid to adapt and experiment because they will not be cut down for doing so.
There are the two Spains, people say, and they compete: sometimes the inward looking, dour Castillian side is in the supremacy; at other times it's the more outward looking Mediterranean personality that holds sway. Culturally, the latter is in charge right now and has been for a couple of decades. It may be about to switch again soon, though.
Interesting, that must be part of it. There is definitely a stagnancy in French cooking which, ironically, comes from their lingering self-perception as being the best. If we are the best, why change? We have nothing to learn! And so they learn nothing
And when they do innovate it can go so oddly wrong. French fusion food is some of the worst I have had, anywhere
It is a weird world where the French are better at football, and we are better at cooking. For now
I am convinced the UK foodie revolution is also due to TV. From Delia to Jamie to Masterchef to the Hairy Bikers. We watch so much cooking on TV - and then we buy the books. An entire nation has thus been educated in gastronomy
Keith Floyd kicked it all off, I reckon. He was the Daddy of them all.
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
The highest rated CNN news show is Anderson Cooper. He gets 767,000 viewers. It's TINY. He probably gets fewer viewers than GB News
Where, then, are Americans getting their news?!
Not from cable?
Google says social media, especially Facebook. That's where 50%+ of Americans now get their news
I wonder if that is still true (about FB), and even if it is true, the news has to be generated somewhere else. FB is merely the medium
You missed my quite excellent summary travelblog yesterday evening, of our road trip to Italy!
TLDR: France and Italy both remain exquisite in pretty much every respect (at least the parts we visited).
Eating out though is, as you suggested, is not what it was. Quality good not outstanding but pricier than the UK (except cheese and good wine).
No, I read it, and thought it interesting and judicious
France and Italy are indeed magnificently beautiful countries, which have not trashed their cities and towns, the way we have, too often - and continue to do, amazingly. What is wrong with us. The turd in Edinburgh!
That said, most tourism is confirmation bias, you go to the beautiful bits. France and Italy have some crap regions as well. Large parts of Picardy in France, also the Cognac region down to Bordeaux: often surprisingly bleak. An industrial landscape, except the industry there is wine, so we don't realise
Shit bits of Italy: urban parts of Liguria, the endless suburbia of the Veneto, the sprawl north of Milan, the dormitory towns of Naples, nearly all of Calabria
But they probably don't have as many crap regions/towns as us, and they are simply bigger, so they can hide them better
Re the food, I can't work out if the decline is relative or absolute. Have we just caught up with French/Italian food so we are less impressed, or has it actually got worse? I suspect both. And we notice the lack of variety more, as our own food is so diverse
Speaking of food I had another absolutely excellent meal in Seville last night. The fourth in a row. It is not a fluke. Spanish food is now the best in Europe, maybe the world
It's good to see people catching up with Spain. When I lived there, I was perpetually delighted by how good the food was and at such brilliant prices. Going back there now, it rarely disappoints. I have three weeks in October in Cantabria, Castilla-Leon, Madrid and the Asturias. I know I will eat and drink like a king. Remember the rule: Spanish cuisine is like the country's weather: in the north they boil, in the centre they roast and in the south they fry.
i always think the old west germany has very few truly bad parts...maybe ugly and bland in parts but not shitholes such as you find in the uk
You should have been here in August. We conclusively proved that the UK has no bad parts.
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
So absolutely worth it.
Bravo! 8 hours. Impressive
Yes I still vividly recall queueing for the Queen Mum, and I have forgotten any of the downsides, and therefore I am very glad I did it
The Queen Herself must be that times a hundred
So I confess a little jealousy!
David Beckham was interviewed on ITV earlier. He had been in the queue for over 12 hours and had reached Victoria Gardens.
Entry to the queue currently suspended
Rationing NHS style, indeed Center Parcs style ... shame though for the people who've come to London.
Few or none of the berks who are honouring the queen feel any shame about their actions.
Those who write bilge in the Spectator and who have travelled the world won't call it a personality cult either. It's just Britain doing what it knows how to do better than anyone else. Not a personality cult; not shameful.
It's obvious that the next step after "queue entry suspended" will be "queue entry reopens owing to mass popular demand".
think all this makes britain a bit backward looking to be honest.....we are a dynamic multi ethnic society....yet here we have nearly all white crowds against a background of olde worlde pomp and pageantry....
As well as greying out its front page, the US advertising and surveillance company Google has now put up a single line of text under its websearch button, saying "Thank you, Ma’am. Reflect on the extraordinary life of Queen Elizabeth II".
I'm not kidding. "Thank you, Ma'am."
The second sentence links to a subsite they have made containing reverential pictures. It may contain other stuff too that reinforces the personality cult. My stomach couldn't take it.
Which of course is even a bigger story than the fact there was life on Mars - as it means life has formed independently from that on Earth - that is staggering and must show the universe is teaming with life
Random sample looking this minute at the live stream (for @thart if he's still with us).
Asian woman White bloke (a rev as it turns out) White couple White woman White woman White woman White woman White bloke White bloke White woman White woman
OK I am prepared to say that the queue to pay respect is pretty white.
Don't like this double line business either. Would be well stressed if I was on the outer line.
Anyway, enough with queues.
11 out of 12 white, 91%. National total is 86% so not ridiculously out of line, if you'll forgive the pun. Especially considering that the queue almost certainly skews older than the population as a whole.
86% was at the 2011 census. Net migration has average around 300000 a year since. Thats about 3,300,000 extra ethnic minorities over 11 years. That accounts to an extra 5%. So now likely around 81% white british. And of course London much lower. So well out of line
I quoted white, not white British (which is indeed around 81% on the source I used). Also people will have travelled from outside of London, and some will be tourists.
All in all, the sample quoted isn't enough to legitimately try divisive race-baiting nonsense.
The point i am making is there is less support for the monarchy amongst ethnic minorities. Polls show this as do the mainly white crowds in London. The bbc in its coverage is i think being disrespectful to ethnic minorities by acting as if this is the white Britain of the 1950s....which has thankfully long gone
Support for the monarchy skews old, ethnic minorities in the UK currently skew young... so at least partially a confounding effect?
Young people tend to have jobs and dependent children as well - so can't spare the time to do the queue.
Then you have to compare the young people in the queue. If the young people in the queue are also predominantly white suggests young white people support monarchy more than young ethnic minority people
So what you're saying is - people whose parents and grandparents and great grandparents were British are on average slightly more invested in the mythology of Britishness than those whose recent ancestry is from abroad? I'm not sure that's anything which need frighten or alarm us.
oh i agree doesnt alarm me....but it may not be good for the future of the monarchy
Well not great for the future of the monarchy if the reason that there are fewer out-and-out monarchists among ethnic minorities because they are black. My theory is fewer out and out monarchists among ethnic minorities because fewer generations of being British. By which token, their great grandchildren will be more invested than they are. Though on the other hand it seems hard to argue that 100 years from now our descendants will be keener monarchists than we are.
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
On the religious aspect: I've just been to Aston upon Mersey, a suburban village in Greater Manchester with about 40-odd businesses on tge High Street. Every single one had a picture of the Queen in the window. The fact that in most cases it was a relatively unobtrusive picture - an icon - made it all the more moving.
The first two (and I think the third, but harder to tell) have the same picture at the same size - makes it look like an organised rather than spontaneous thing. Is that the case, do you think?
'Organised' could of course be as simple as the local print shop having offered the portraits to any business that would care to show them.
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
The highest rated CNN news show is Anderson Cooper. He gets 767,000 viewers. It's TINY. He probably gets fewer viewers than GB News
Where, then, are Americans getting their news?!
Not from cable?
Google says social media, especially Facebook. That's where 50%+ of Americans now get their news
I wonder if that is still true (about FB), and even if it is true, the news has to be generated somewhere else. FB is merely the medium
You missed my quite excellent summary travelblog yesterday evening, of our road trip to Italy!
TLDR: France and Italy both remain exquisite in pretty much every respect (at least the parts we visited).
Eating out though is, as you suggested, is not what it was. Quality good not outstanding but pricier than the UK (except cheese and good wine).
No, I read it, and thought it interesting and judicious
France and Italy are indeed magnificently beautiful countries, which have not trashed their cities and towns, the way we have, too often - and continue to do, amazingly. What is wrong with us. The turd in Edinburgh!
That said, most tourism is confirmation bias, you go to the beautiful bits. France and Italy have some crap regions as well. Large parts of Picardy in France, also the Cognac region down to Bordeaux: often surprisingly bleak. An industrial landscape, except the industry there is wine, so we don't realise
Shit bits of Italy: urban parts of Liguria, the endless suburbia of the Veneto, the sprawl north of Milan, the dormitory towns of Naples, nearly all of Calabria
But they probably don't have as many crap regions/towns as us, and they are simply bigger, so they can hide them better
Re the food, I can't work out if the decline is relative or absolute. Have we just caught up with French/Italian food so we are less impressed, or has it actually got worse? I suspect both. And we notice the lack of variety more, as our own food is so diverse
Speaking of food I had another absolutely excellent meal in Seville last night. The fourth in a row. It is not a fluke. Spanish food is now the best in Europe, maybe the world
It's good to see people catching up with Spain. When I lived there, I was perpetually delighted by how good the food was and at such brilliant prices. Going back there now, it rarely disappoints. I have three weeks in October in Cantabria, Castilla-Leon, Madrid and the Asturias. I know I will eat and drink like a king. Remember the rule: Spanish cuisine is like the country's weather: in the north they boil, in the centre they roast and in the south they fry.
The most expensive of the four brilliant meals I've had here was €41 including wine. The cheapest was €16 including wine
What accounts for it? Why is modern Spanish food so good when France and Italy go backwards, and Portugal - an hour from here - is so limited?
I remember Spanish food being fairly boring when I came in the 1980s. Now: wow
I think a lot of it is because the Spanish travel a lot more than the French and Italians. I bet a lot of the people cooking for you have either spent time abroad or in Spanish regions away from Andalusia. They are not afraid to adapt and experiment because they will not be cut down for doing so.
There are the two Spains, people say, and they compete: sometimes the inward looking, dour Castillian side is in the supremacy; at other times it's the more outward looking Mediterranean personality that holds sway. Culturally, the latter is in charge right now and has been for a couple of decades. It may be about to switch again soon, though.
Interesting, that must be part of it. There is definitely a stagnancy in French cooking which, ironically, comes from their lingering self-perception as being the best. If we are the best, why change? We have nothing to learn! And so they learn nothing
And when they do innovate it can go so oddly wrong. French fusion food is some of the worst I have had, anywhere
It is a weird world where the French are better at football, and we are better at cooking. For now
I am convinced the UK foodie revolution is also due to TV. From Delia to Jamie to Masterchef to the Hairy Bikers. We watch so much cooking on TV - and then we buy the books. An entire nation has thus been educated in gastronomy
Keith Floyd kicked it all off, I reckon. He was the Daddy of them all.
They've all played a part. Gary Rhodes as well. Two Fat Ladies. Bake Off. Nigella!
Probably Jamie was the crucial one
He made cooking look fun, youthful, interesting, and something for boys to do, and still be totally cool
He's probably past his prime now, but he was an absolutely massive influence
Good. Until they get over Trump they are not fit to govern anything.
It is virtually unprecedented in modern times for a party that has won the White House for the first time not to win it a second time, only Carter and Trump himself were the exceptions to that rule since the start of the 20th Century.
Its virtually unprecedented in recent years for the House not to switch in the first term that a new party has the White House. 2002 in the aftermath of 9/11 being an obvious exception to the rule.
Hopefully this year is another exception and helps make the point to sensible GOPers that Trump and Trumpists are the problem and not the solution.
Bush I ?
Bush I was the third time his Party held the White House, following Reagan I and Reagan II.
Of 12 occasions that the White House switched party since the start of the 20th Century, in 10/12 times the party that had just gained the White House at the previous occasion kept it at the next one. Carter and Trump are the only exceptions to that rule.
Can you imagine if Carter, having been shellacked by Reagan in 1980, came back for a second swing in 1984?
It's quite astonishing how about one-in-four of the US electorate (i.e. the uber Trump fans) is able to completely fuck up politics.
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
The highest rated CNN news show is Anderson Cooper. He gets 767,000 viewers. It's TINY. He probably gets fewer viewers than GB News
Where, then, are Americans getting their news?!
Not from cable?
Google says social media, especially Facebook. That's where 50%+ of Americans now get their news
I wonder if that is still true (about FB), and even if it is true, the news has to be generated somewhere else. FB is merely the medium
You missed my quite excellent summary travelblog yesterday evening, of our road trip to Italy!
TLDR: France and Italy both remain exquisite in pretty much every respect (at least the parts we visited).
Eating out though is, as you suggested, is not what it was. Quality good not outstanding but pricier than the UK (except cheese and good wine).
No, I read it, and thought it interesting and judicious
France and Italy are indeed magnificently beautiful countries, which have not trashed their cities and towns, the way we have, too often - and continue to do, amazingly. What is wrong with us. The turd in Edinburgh!
That said, most tourism is confirmation bias, you go to the beautiful bits. France and Italy have some crap regions as well. Large parts of Picardy in France, also the Cognac region down to Bordeaux: often surprisingly bleak. An industrial landscape, except the industry there is wine, so we don't realise
Shit bits of Italy: urban parts of Liguria, the endless suburbia of the Veneto, the sprawl north of Milan, the dormitory towns of Naples, nearly all of Calabria
But they probably don't have as many crap regions/towns as us, and they are simply bigger, so they can hide them better
Re the food, I can't work out if the decline is relative or absolute. Have we just caught up with French/Italian food so we are less impressed, or has it actually got worse? I suspect both. And we notice the lack of variety more, as our own food is so diverse
Speaking of food I had another absolutely excellent meal in Seville last night. The fourth in a row. It is not a fluke. Spanish food is now the best in Europe, maybe the world
It's good to see people catching up with Spain. When I lived there, I was perpetually delighted by how good the food was and at such brilliant prices. Going back there now, it rarely disappoints. I have three weeks in October in Cantabria, Castilla-Leon, Madrid and the Asturias. I know I will eat and drink like a king. Remember the rule: Spanish cuisine is like the country's weather: in the north they boil, in the centre they roast and in the south they fry.
The most expensive of the four brilliant meals I've had here was €41 including wine. The cheapest was €16 including wine
What accounts for it? Why is modern Spanish food so good when France and Italy go backwards, and Portugal - an hour from here - is so limited?
I remember Spanish food being fairly boring when I came in the 1980s. Now: wow
I think a lot of it is because the Spanish travel a lot more than the French and Italians. I bet a lot of the people cooking for you have either spent time abroad or in Spanish regions away from Andalusia. They are not afraid to adapt and experiment because they will not be cut down for doing so.
There are the two Spains, people say, and they compete: sometimes the inward looking, dour Castillian side is in the supremacy; at other times it's the more outward looking Mediterranean personality that holds sway. Culturally, the latter is in charge right now and has been for a couple of decades. It may be about to switch again soon, though.
Interesting, that must be part of it. There is definitely a stagnancy in French cooking which, ironically, comes from their lingering self-perception as being the best. If we are the best, why change? We have nothing to learn! And so they learn nothing
And when they do innovate it can go so oddly wrong. French fusion food is some of the worst I have had, anywhere
It is a weird world where the French are better at football, and we are better at cooking. For now
I am convinced the UK foodie revolution is also due to TV. From Delia to Jamie to Masterchef to the Hairy Bikers. We watch so much cooking on TV - and then we buy the books. An entire nation has thus been educated in gastronomy
Keith Floyd kicked it all off, I reckon. He was the Daddy of them all.
They've all played a part. Gary Rhodes as well. Two Fat Ladies. Bake Off. Nigella!
Probably Jamie was the absolutely crucial one
He made cooking look fun, youthful, interesting, and something for boys to do, and still be totally cool
He's probably past his prime now, but he was an absolutely massive influence
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
So absolutely worth it.
Bravo! 8 hours. Impressive
Yes I still vividly recall queueing for the Queen Mum, and I have forgotten any of the downsides, and therefore I am very glad I did it
The Queen Herself must be that times a hundred
So I confess a little jealousy!
David Beckham was interviewed on ITV earlier. He had been in the queue for over 12 hours and had reached Victoria Gardens.
Entry to the queue currently suspended
Rationing NHS style, indeed Center Parcs style ... shame though for the people who've come to London.
Few or none of the berks who are honouring the queen feel any shame about their actions.
Those who write bilge in the Spectator and who have travelled the world won't call it a personality cult either. It's just Britain doing what it knows how to do better than anyone else. Not a personality cult; not shameful.
It's obvious that the next step after "queue entry suspended" will be "queue entry reopens owing to mass popular demand".
think all this makes britain a bit backward looking to be honest.....we are a dynamic multi ethnic society....yet here we have nearly all white crowds against a background of olde worlde pomp and pageantry....
I think a lot of the world is fascinated and will be good for tourism , international student applications , even exports for years to come.
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
So absolutely worth it.
Bravo! 8 hours. Impressive
Yes I still vividly recall queueing for the Queen Mum, and I have forgotten any of the downsides, and therefore I am very glad I did it
The Queen Herself must be that times a hundred
So I confess a little jealousy!
It was great. The queuing and the journey was definitely part of it, as it allowed people to come together and experience something together, and the suspense got greater and greater as you got closer. It was exhilarating.
The atmosphere inside was almost otherworldly: holy, solemn and nearly metaphysical. Everyone seemed absorbed in thought as they contemplated the silence and the magnitude of the moment about to come.
The guards themselves were mesmerising and almost distracting: they're very tall, and perfectly turned out, but rocking ever so slightly to keep themselves going and you're never 100% sure they're wholly stable. Of course, they are.
The imperial state crown and orb draw your eye. They sparkle and have a glory of their own. I found I had to work to process the coffin, and who was in it, but once I had I could connect with the catafalque and the lady inside, who meant so much to me and millions (billions?) of others.
I had my personal moment: I bowed, closing my eyes briefly and thanking her, paid my respects for her soul, and left. At the end of Westminster Hall I looked back down, which is almost just as impressive a site because you get a long perspective on the whole event - like you're looking back on your own memory in real time.
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Random sample looking this minute at the live stream (for @thart if he's still with us).
Asian woman White bloke (a rev as it turns out) White couple White woman White woman White woman White woman White bloke White bloke White woman White woman
OK I am prepared to say that the queue to pay respect is pretty white.
Don't like this double line business either. Would be well stressed if I was on the outer line.
Anyway, enough with queues.
11 out of 12 white, 91%. National total is 86% so not ridiculously out of line, if you'll forgive the pun. Especially considering that the queue almost certainly skews older than the population as a whole.
86% was at the 2011 census. Net migration has average around 300000 a year since. Thats about 3,300,000 extra ethnic minorities over 11 years. That accounts to an extra 5%. So now likely around 81% white british. And of course London much lower. So well out of line
Net migration is nowhere near 100% non-white.
In fact, I would be very surprised if it was more than 40% non-white.
As well as greying out its front page, the US advertising and surveillance company Google has now put up a single line of text under its websearch button, saying "Thank you, Ma’am. Reflect on the extraordinary life of Queen Elizabeth II".
I'm not kidding. "Thank you, Ma'am."
The second sentence links to a subsite they have made containing reverential pictures. It may contain other stuff too that reinforces the personality cult. My stomach couldn't take it.
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
So absolutely worth it.
Bravo! 8 hours. Impressive
Yes I still vividly recall queueing for the Queen Mum, and I have forgotten any of the downsides, and therefore I am very glad I did it
The Queen Herself must be that times a hundred
So I confess a little jealousy!
It was great. The queuing and the journey was definitely part of it, as it allowed people to come together and experience something together, and the suspense got greater and greater as you got closer. It was exhilarating.
The atmosphere inside was almost otherworldly: holy, solemn and nearly metaphysical. Everyone seemed absorbed in thought as they contemplated the silence and the magnitude of the moment about to come.
The guards themselves were mesmerising and almost distracting: they're very tall, and perfectly turned out, but rocking ever so slightly to keep themselves going and you're never 100% sure they're wholly stable. Of course, they are.
The imperial state crown and orb draw your eye. They sparkle and have a glory of their own. I found I had to work to process the coffin, and who was in it, but once I had I could connect with the catafalque and the lady inside, who meant so much to me and millions (billions?) of others.
I had my personal moment: I bowed, closing my eyes briefly and thanking her, paid my respects for her soul, and left. At the end of Westminster Hall I looked back down, which is almost just as impressive a site because you get a long perspective on the whole event - like you're looking back on your own memory in real time.
and to have been part of one of the great historic occasions that have took place at Westminster Hall ! What a building ,what history it has
Random sample looking this minute at the live stream (for @thart if he's still with us).
Asian woman White bloke (a rev as it turns out) White couple White woman White woman White woman White woman White bloke White bloke White woman White woman
OK I am prepared to say that the queue to pay respect is pretty white.
Don't like this double line business either. Would be well stressed if I was on the outer line.
Anyway, enough with queues.
11 out of 12 white, 91%. National total is 86% so not ridiculously out of line, if you'll forgive the pun. Especially considering that the queue almost certainly skews older than the population as a whole.
86% was at the 2011 census. Net migration has average around 300000 a year since. Thats about 3,300,000 extra ethnic minorities over 11 years. That accounts to an extra 5%. So now likely around 81% white british. And of course London much lower. So well out of line
Net migration is nowhere near 100% non-white.
In fact, I would be very surprised if it was more than 40% non-white.
since Brexit it has been much more non white for obvious reasons but also remember it includes many older white britons who retire abroad
I'd be tempted by a conspiracy theory where the queue was deliberately set up to induce people into making stupid comments like that, thereby undermining the republican movement.
That's full on barking mad. Late Stage Strasbourg Syndrome
He's one more bonkers theory from becoming an even louder Steve Bray
It has been a very bad week for Republicans. Long may that remain the case.
The weird thing is the way anti-monarchism is overlapping with Remoanerism
Like, if you are a Remoaner, nothing can be good about Britain, and nothing must be honoured or praised - including a dead Queen - because if you do this you are.... somehow accepting Brexit, or something? Fuck knows
It's a sad cul de sac to go down. TBF most of PB's Remainers are not taking this wrong turn
On topic... I saw that NH Senate candidate and far right psycho Don Bolduc had swiftly resiled from his election fraud position and acknowldged that Biden is POTUS. He was deep MAGAworld and if he's turned things must be desperate.
There's a lot of reverse ferreting going on on the American Right.
Bolduc has repudiated his electoral theft position. Something, weirdly, that he believed in just a few weeks ago in the Republican Senatorial debates.
Masters won the Republican Primary in Arizona on a "life begins at conception" platform. Indeed, he characterized his opponent (who had a rather nuanced position) as abortion rights advocate. Now he's the candidate, all traces of his previous views have been scrubbed from his website, and when asked about abortion, he said that he "like most Americans" was against "late term abortions".
It's hard to know exactly what impact these (violent) shifts in views will have.
But if I were the Democratic opponent of either of these candidates, I'd make it a "question of honesty".
Random sample looking this minute at the live stream (for @thart if he's still with us).
Asian woman White bloke (a rev as it turns out) White couple White woman White woman White woman White woman White bloke White bloke White woman White woman
OK I am prepared to say that the queue to pay respect is pretty white.
Don't like this double line business either. Would be well stressed if I was on the outer line.
Anyway, enough with queues.
11 out of 12 white, 91%. National total is 86% so not ridiculously out of line, if you'll forgive the pun. Especially considering that the queue almost certainly skews older than the population as a whole.
86% was at the 2011 census. Net migration has average around 300000 a year since. Thats about 3,300,000 extra ethnic minorities over 11 years. That accounts to an extra 5%. So now likely around 81% white british. And of course London much lower. So well out of line
Net migration is nowhere near 100% non-white.
In fact, I would be very surprised if it was more than 40% non-white.
Given around half the migration over that period (2011-) was from the EU, 40% is probably pretty much the ceiling on non-white. Once you factor in signficant numbers from Aus/NZ, and non-EU Europeans, it may well be significantly lower
Random sample looking this minute at the live stream (for @thart if he's still with us).
Asian woman White bloke (a rev as it turns out) White couple White woman White woman White woman White woman White bloke White bloke White woman White woman
OK I am prepared to say that the queue to pay respect is pretty white.
Don't like this double line business either. Would be well stressed if I was on the outer line.
Anyway, enough with queues.
11 out of 12 white, 91%. National total is 86% so not ridiculously out of line, if you'll forgive the pun. Especially considering that the queue almost certainly skews older than the population as a whole.
86% was at the 2011 census. Net migration has average around 300000 a year since. Thats about 3,300,000 extra ethnic minorities over 11 years. That accounts to an extra 5%. So now likely around 81% white british. And of course London much lower. So well out of line
Net migration is nowhere near 100% non-white.
In fact, I would be very surprised if it was more than 40% non-white.
I've always found the assumption behind the line of argument you're responding too, somewhat unpleasant - ie non-white left wing people will eventually outbreed right wing white people.
Ethnic and religious groups vote differently over time.
As well as greying out its front page, the US advertising and surveillance company Google has now put up a single line of text under its websearch button, saying "Thank you, Ma’am. Reflect on the extraordinary life of Queen Elizabeth II".
I'm not kidding. "Thank you, Ma'am."
The second sentence links to a subsite they have made containing reverential pictures. It may contain other stuff too that reinforces the personality cult. My stomach couldn't take it.
My stomach cannot take Putin and his cronies war crimes
On topic... I saw that NH Senate candidate and far right psycho Don Bolduc had swiftly resiled from his election fraud position and acknowldged that Biden is POTUS. He was deep MAGAworld and if he's turned things must be desperate.
There's a lot of reverse ferreting going on on the American Right.
Bolduc has repudiated his electoral theft position. Something, weirdly, that he believed in just a few weeks ago in the Republican Senatorial debates.
Masters won the Republican Primary in Arizona on a "life begins at conception" platform. Indeed, he characterized his opponent (who had a rather nuanced position) as abortion rights advocate. Now he's the candidate, all traces of his previous views have been scrubbed from his website, and when asked about abortion, he said that he "like most Americans" was against "late term abortions".
It's hard to know exactly what impact these (violent) shifts in views will have.
But if I were the Democratic opponent of either of these candidates, I'd make it a "question of honesty".
It's good to think there are still some Republicans whose honesty is merely in question.
That's full on barking mad. Late Stage Strasbourg Syndrome
He's one more bonkers theory from becoming an even louder Steve Bray
It has been a very bad week for Republicans. Long may that remain the case.
The weird thing is the way anti-monarchism is overlapping with Remoanerism
Like, if you are a Remoaner, nothing can be good about Britain, and nothing must be honoured or praised - including a dead Queen - because if you do this you are.... somehow accepting Brexit, or something? Fuck knows
It's a sad cul de sac to go down. TBF most of PB's Remainers are not taking this wrong turn
i think you can be in favour of a more slimmed down scandinavian type monarchy....for example i dont think the Queen should make a speech to Parliament for example
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
So absolutely worth it.
Bravo! 8 hours. Impressive
Yes I still vividly recall queueing for the Queen Mum, and I have forgotten any of the downsides, and therefore I am very glad I did it
The Queen Herself must be that times a hundred
So I confess a little jealousy!
It was great. The queuing and the journey was definitely part of it, as it allowed people to come together and experience something together, and the suspense got greater and greater as you got closer. It was exhilarating.
The atmosphere inside was almost otherworldly: holy, solemn and nearly metaphysical. Everyone seemed absorbed in thought as they contemplated the silence and the magnitude of the moment about to come.
The guards themselves were mesmerising and almost distracting: they're very tall, and perfectly turned out, but rocking ever so slightly to keep themselves going and you're never 100% sure they're wholly stable. Of course, they are.
The imperial state crown and orb draw your eye. They sparkle and have a glory of their own. I found I had to work to process the coffin, and who was in it, but once I had I could connect with the catafalque and the lady inside, who meant so much to me and millions (billions?) of others.
I had my personal moment: I bowed, closing my eyes briefly and thanking her, paid my respects for her soul, and left. At the end of Westminster Hall I looked back down, which is almost just as impressive a site because you get a long perspective on the whole event - like you're looking back on your own memory in real time.
Beautiful. That description fits the experience in Edinburgh, too.
Even before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) sent two planes full of asylum seekers to the summer haven this week to make a political point by funneling migrants to liberal communities, the dearth of affordable housing on the Vineyard had pushed the year-round community to a breaking point. Policymakers have chronically underinvested in affordable housing and allowed investment properties and short-term rentals to proliferate unchecked." source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/16/marthas-vineyard-housing-rentals-crisis/?itid=hp-top-table-main-t-5
The Vineyard community responded to having a bunch of asylum seekers dumped on them by being very welcoming and helpful towards them. As someone on Twitter observed, it's like the story of the good Samaritan.
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
This analogy to a pilgrimage, indeed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, was made a couple of days ago in The Spectator. Are you plagiarising? Or just another sockpuppet of @Mysticrose?
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
So absolutely worth it.
Bravo! 8 hours. Impressive
Yes I still vividly recall queueing for the Queen Mum, and I have forgotten any of the downsides, and therefore I am very glad I did it
The Queen Herself must be that times a hundred
So I confess a little jealousy!
It was great. The queuing and the journey was definitely part of it, as it allowed people to come together and experience something together, and the suspense got greater and greater as you got closer. It was exhilarating.
The atmosphere inside was almost otherworldly: holy, solemn and nearly metaphysical. Everyone seemed absorbed in thought as they contemplated the silence and the magnitude of the moment about to come.
The guards themselves were mesmerising and almost distracting: they're very tall, and perfectly turned out, but rocking ever so slightly to keep themselves going and you're never 100% sure they're wholly stable. Of course, they are.
The imperial state crown and orb draw your eye. They sparkle and have a glory of their own. I found I had to work to process the coffin, and who was in it, but once I had I could connect with the catafalque and the lady inside, who meant so much to me and millions (billions?) of others.
I had my personal moment: I bowed, closing my eyes briefly and thanking her, paid my respects for her soul, and left. At the end of Westminster Hall I looked back down, which is almost just as impressive a site because you get a long perspective on the whole event - like you're looking back on your own memory in real time.
and to have been part of one of the great historic occasions that have took place at Westminster Hall ! What a building ,what history it has
My partner and I are going up tonight. Will try and join the queue. I'm not convinced we'll get in but will try.
I think this dates from Dan Snow's comments on Channel 4 the other day, that the queue and flow of people could have been managed slightly differently.
Comments
For all the dithering off stages, incoherence and forgetting his words Biden or Biden's team have indeed played a blinder in Ukraine and the Trumpists look ever more absurd.
RUSSIA'S PUTIN TELLS INDIA'S MODI ON CONFLICT IN UKRAINE VIA TRANSLATOR: WE WANT THIS TO END AS SOON AS POSSIBLE - INDIAN TV
https://twitter.com/DeItaone/status/1570761252778958852
I'm sure there will be PBers who think these people will have 'genuine concerns' and it's all the fault of Woke.
Edit: With a particular interest in getting readers started early. Mother and toddler programmes (some mums don't grasp the notion of reading to their children), and so on.
Also, Scottish in the sense that it's a Scottish charity - nto the books, thouigh obvs local authors feature, as do Scots and Gaelic as well as English.
A rare day off so some exploring this morning including my first trip on the Elizabeth Line from Woolwich to Whitechapel. Very pleasant and comfortable - trains every 5 minutes - and I now have about four different ways to get to Woolwich (including the clipper from the new Barking Riverside Pier).
On wider matters - there's something more than a bit devotional indeed spiritual about The Queue. There are analogies with the long journeys pilgrims took in often inclement weather across hundreds of miles of pathways and tracks to visit shrines such as Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela (and others).
Part of the experience was the journey - the test of faith in the conditions, the fellowship of meeting with other pilgrims and sharing the journey and the experience. a 5-mile walk from Southwark Bridge to Westminster Hall may not be quite the same as a trek across the Downs or the mountains of Northern Spain but the sense of fellowship from talking and walking with those alongside you must be of a similar nature.
I understand it and I respect it and to be honest admire those who do it - Mrs Stodge's colleague, having spent the thick end of 12 hours getting to and from Westminster Hall, logged on at 8.30am for his day's work.
It's not for me - here I'm going to be honest but blunt. The late Queen's passing hasn't evoked the same emotional response in me as it has in others - perhaps it will one day, I don't know but not at the moment.
"The queue for the lying-in-state is itself a medieval pilgrimage. The long painful queue is fundamental to the experience. There is no emotional gain from getting a taxi to Santiago de Compostela. You need to suffer to get the spiritual reward."
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-the-live-streamed-lying-in-state-says-to-us
What accounts for it? Why is modern Spanish food so good when France and Italy go backwards, and Portugal - an hour from here - is so limited?
I remember Spanish food being fairly boring when I came in the 1980s. Now: wow
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/desert-bus-the-very-worst-video-game-ever-created
That's the thing about "balance" - you either do it or you don't. The pretence of balance especially if not enforced in terms of numbers or air time is just that. We have argued frequently over the QT panel and how "representative" it is or isn't.
Channels like GBN or Talk TV don't even pretend to do balance. The nightly anti-Meghan tirade from Dan Wootton goes largely unchallenged as one example.
I've always believed it's important in a plural democracy for as many voices to be heard as possible. If all you hear are the same voices, plurality is lost and arguably democracy suffers too. The other side of that is not just opposing voices are heard but opposing opinions are aired in the same place. The "panel" type shows on GBN or Talk TV seem replete with a group of people whose views are all very similar - first, that's dull. The next stage is they try to out-extreme each other so the median point of the argument shifts further in one direction.
Enforce justice, and you forfeit reconciliation. Stress reconciliation, and you sacrifice justice.
It sticks in the throat, but probably millions of lives have been saved by allowing tyrants to live in comfortable retirement.
'Capt. S. tells me to go to Westminster Hall and report back. [...]
Day 4. Bermondsey. Pemmican finished. Cracked feet. This place is the most hellish on earth. [....]
Day 6. Last of the huskies finished. [...]
Day 8. Captain Oates finished. Bit tough. [...]
Day 11. At last, we cross the Thames and achieve our aim. UJ broken out. God bless our gracious sovereigns. [...]
Day 21. Fifth toe falls off, nose black on the end. [...]
Day 32. Get in to see Captain S. who asks me why I took so long. I start "Reporting back from West-". He breaks in and says "Yes, yes, never mind about all that, Bowen came in with the supply ship two weeks back with Mr Bell's latest invention - a cableless telephone. See, it's got a kinematoscope, all the details one could want. No need to queue these days."'
Loved it, even the queuing. The only hard bit was the snake which was extremely tedious, and everyone was struggling towards the end of that, but you get 5 seconds in front of the casket yourself to pay your respects, and it doesn't just last those 5 seconds - you reflect and dine on that moment for days, weeks and years after.
So absolutely worth it.
https://twitter.com/sturgios/status/1570761380504150018
I also agree re Spanish food, when we went to Seville, Cordoba & Granada just pre covid the food there was a step up from our recent France & Italy experiences. I think our food has got better rather than France & Italy getting worse tbh.
Yes I still vividly recall queueing for the Queen Mum, and I have forgotten any of the downsides, and therefore I am very glad I did it
The Queen Herself must be that times a hundred
So I confess a little jealousy!
I was going to stretch the point the relationship between Monarch and Subject hadn't changed in 500 years either.
To be fair, a big crowd turned up for the end of Charles I's reign - there's that old story the head spoke to the crowd for a good few minutes after being severed from the body.
Haven't read the Spectator article - is it by anyone interesting?
Which then proved, in great detail, why the occupations of Japan and Germany were run the way they were.
Edit: or by train for that matter!
I'm not sure that's anything which need frighten or alarm us.
Off hand those odds seem a little too high for both houses, though I agree on which party should be the favorite for each -- but I haven't sat down and done the hard work of going through the seats one by one. Yet. (And I may not before the election. As I recall, I beat FiveThirtyEight on the 2010 House election, coming within a few seats of the actual results.)
Not cynical, just wrong.
There are the two Spains, people say, and they compete: sometimes the inward looking, dour Castillian side is in the supremacy; at other times it's the more outward looking Mediterranean personality that holds sway. Culturally, the latter is in charge right now and has been for a couple of decades. It may be about to switch again soon, though.
https://news.sky.com/story/queen-dies-a-queue-for-the-queue-mourners-waiting-to-see-coffin-now-placed-in-holding-pen-12698799
Read it, donate it, buy another.
I need to spend a bit more time reading books, but I keep getting drawn back to the comments on PB!
"almost three quarters of all dishes served in French bistros, brasseries and cafes are shipped in from a factory and microwaved, according to a top restaurateur."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3036590/Almost-three-quarters-food-served-French-bistros-factory-heated-microwave-according-restauranteur.html
The fact that in most cases it was a relatively unobtrusive picture - an icon - made it all the more moving.
Everyone has to hold their nose sometimes at the consequences of a proper and consistent test, but that's the way it goes.
We should also assume that any State which was carried by the Republicans in 2020 is not going to be in play this year, unless you have a candidate calling for the reintroduction of anti-miscegenation laws, or talking about "legitimate rape."
The atmosphere inside was almost otherworldly: holy, solemn and nearly metaphysical. Everyone seemed absorbed in thought as they contemplated the silence and the magnitude of the moment about to come.
The guards themselves were mesmerising and almost distracting: they're very tall, and perfectly turned out, but rocking ever so slightly to keep themselves going and you're never 100% sure they're wholly stable. Of course, they are.
The imperial state crown and orb draw your eye. They sparkle and have a glory of their own. I found I had to work to process the coffin, and who was in it, but once I had I could connect with the catafalque and the lady inside, who meant so much to me and millions (billions?) of others.
I had my personal moment: I bowed, closing my eyes briefly and thanking her, paid my respects for her soul, and left. At the end of Westminster Hall I looked back down, which is almost just as impressive a site because you get a long perspective on the whole event - like you're looking back on your own memory in real time.
Martha's Vineyard is especially inappropriate for them because it is a place dominated by wealthy leftists, who have screwed the poor, and even the middle class: "This is the part of Martha’s Vineyard most people never see. An island known for its opulence and natural beauty, a playground for presidents and celebrities, it is kept afloat by workers for whom America’s housing crisis is not an eventuality. It’s here.
Even before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) sent two planes full of asylum seekers to the summer haven this week to make a political point by funneling migrants to liberal communities, the dearth of affordable housing on the Vineyard had pushed the year-round community to a breaking point. Policymakers have chronically underinvested in affordable housing and allowed investment properties and short-term rentals to proliferate unchecked."
source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/16/marthas-vineyard-housing-rentals-crisis/?itid=hp-top-table-main-t-5
This isn't a new problem. Tom Wolfe wrote about it in his entertaining satire, "Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine" in 1975.
But the issue of affordable housing has become far larger than it was, then. And it is mostly a problem in places such as Martha's Vineyard that have been run by leftists -- who don't want the poor and working class living anywhere near them -- except as servants.
@LBC
'They could have conducted the ticketing system in a way that did not involve an enormous queue snaking through London.'
James O'Brien deems ‘The Establishment’s’ choice to cause enormous queues to enter Westminster Hall 'completely deliberate’.
https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1570713491195166721
And when they do innovate it can go so oddly wrong. French fusion food is some of the worst I have had, anywhere
It is a weird world where the French are better at football, and we are better at cooking. For now
I am convinced the UK foodie revolution is also due to TV. From Delia to Jamie to Masterchef to the Hairy Bikers. We watch so much cooking on TV - and then we buy the books. An entire nation has thus been educated in gastronomy
Those who write bilge in the Spectator and who have travelled the world won't call it a personality cult either. It's just Britain doing what it knows how to do better than anyone else. Not a personality cult; not shameful.
It's obvious that the next step after "queue entry suspended" will be "queue entry reopens owing to mass popular demand".
You're making me want to go...
https://spaceexplored.com/2022/09/15/perseverance-rover-finds-organic-matter-in-rock-samples-on-mars/
🤡 Russian propaganda showed a fragment of the 1899 film as a video of Elizabeth II throwing food to African children on the ground
The video was made in the Annam Protectorate (now Vietnam) were two women threw money to local children.
Original video:youtu.be/WE9vxl9VQ0U
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1570754108784771072?
He's one more bonkers theory from becoming an even louder Steve Bray
I'm not kidding. "Thank you, Ma'am."
The second sentence links to a subsite they have made containing reverential pictures. It may contain other stuff too that reinforces the personality cult. My stomach couldn't take it.
Though on the other hand it seems hard to argue that 100 years from now our descendants will be keener monarchists than we are.
'Organised' could of course be as simple as the local print shop having offered the portraits to any business that would care to show them.
Probably Jamie was the crucial one
He made cooking look fun, youthful, interesting, and something for boys to do, and still be totally cool
He's probably past his prime now, but he was an absolutely massive influence
It's quite astonishing how about one-in-four of the US electorate (i.e. the uber Trump fans) is able to completely fuck up politics.
https://twitter.com/b_judah/status/1570542249167163394
My raspberry canes are still going well.
pilgrim
noun
a person who makes a journey, often a long and difficult one, to a special place for religious reasons
In fact, I would be very surprised if it was more than 40% non-white.
Like, if you are a Remoaner, nothing can be good about Britain, and nothing must be honoured or praised - including a dead Queen - because if you do this you are.... somehow accepting Brexit, or something? Fuck knows
It's a sad cul de sac to go down. TBF most of PB's Remainers are not taking this wrong turn
Bolduc has repudiated his electoral theft position. Something, weirdly, that he believed in just a few weeks ago in the Republican Senatorial debates.
Masters won the Republican Primary in Arizona on a "life begins at conception" platform. Indeed, he characterized his opponent (who had a rather nuanced position) as abortion rights advocate. Now he's the candidate, all traces of his previous views have been scrubbed from his website, and when asked about abortion, he said that he "like most Americans" was against "late term abortions".
It's hard to know exactly what impact these (violent) shifts in views will have.
But if I were the Democratic opponent of either of these candidates, I'd make it a "question of honesty".
Ethnic and religious groups vote differently over time.