Unreadable / unjustifiably praised book/author list: Part 1
1.The two biographies of Churchill by Martin Gilbert (one long laundry list of everything Churchill ever did with no attempt to put into context or analyse) and Roy Jenkins: insufferably self-regarding and pompous. 2. Martin Amis 3. Kingsley Amis: parts of Lucky Jim were quite funny but only because no-one else made jokes in books in the 1950s and after that he became a Self-Important Saloon Bar Bore. 4. Hilary Mantel - unreadable. 5. Dickens - also unreadable. Vanity Fair, by contrast, is one of the best novels ever written.
Writers worth reading:
1. Norman Lewis - Jackdaw Cake (his autobiography) and Naples '44 (from his time as an Intelligence Officer in Naples in 1944) are superb but all his travel writing (which understates the quality of his writing) is magnificent. 2. William Trevor: the best writer of English fiction, IMO. No-one writes about evil better, about sad, ordinary, half-fulfilled lives - and he can be laugh-out loud funny too. That he was overlooked by the Booker for meretricious rubbish that no-one (well, OK, me) can remember is to their discredit. 3. J G Farrell: "Troubles" - but all his three books are good. He died in a fishing accident off the coast of Ireland much too young. 4. John McGahern - all his books are good but "Memoir" is superb.
"Chris Whitty warns Britain faces 'prolonged period' of excess deaths not caused by Covid due to collateral effects of lockdown
Chief Medical Officer said heart disease and cancer cases were missed in Covid Comments came in a 'technical report' published on the pandemic challenges Warned speed of vaccine development could lull UK into false sense security"
It will help Sunak a lot in next couple of years to get all this stuff out in the media and out the way asap.
There is a lot of interesting things coming out now. Hindsight makes any lockdown look stupid versus look how many deaths and long covid came from it with lockdowns. Hancock promises to reveal all the fights, the mistakes, the crazy planning such as throw open the prison doors. He has a book out. “Tie my kangaroo testicles down sport”.
All those PBers who refused to watch I’m a celebrity because they wouldn’t get anything - belly laughs or insights - there was definitely both this time.
Did this with a friend in the office a few years back and this is the list we came up with.
Now Voyager An Affair to Remember The Railway Children Voyage to Italy - a marvellous Rossellini film with Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders All about Eve Billy Liar Visconti's The Leopard - magnificent - and his last film "The Innocent". Some Like It Hot Brief Encounter The Third Man Sunset Boulevard Also The Go-Between and Far from the Madding Crowd for Sunday afternoon viewing; the Go-Between is especially good for cold winter nights when you want to be reminded of what hot summers are like. And for big blockbusters: Lawrence of Arabia Lean's Great Expectations - esp the first scene. Hobson's Choice - for Charles Laughton's performance, above all, though all are good. Delicatessen is a delight. Out of Sight and O Brother Where art Thou are the best George Clooney films. Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources / Romuald et Juliette / Le Bossu Casablanca Cinema Paradiso Three Brothers - a Francesco Rosi film, unobtainable on DVD unless you have one of those American Region 1 ones; also his Illustrious Corpses Witness The Godfather 1 + 2. The 39 Steps Annie Hall and Manhattan; also Take The Money and Run Dr Strangelove Cabaret The Lives of Others Bicycle Thieves North by Northwest / Rebecca and Strangers on a Train Mephisto Withnail and I American Beauty One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest The Usual Suspects This is Spinal Tap Gosford Park The Crucible The Elephant Man Spartacus Cool Hand Luke Talk To Her Cyrano de Bergerac Favourite opera films are: Joseph Losey's Don Giovanni - all Venetian masks and Palladian villas; Zeffirelli's wonderfully romantic and over the top La Traviata and Francesco Rosi's Carmen. I have a weakness for Mary Poppins / The Sound of Music / Gone with the Wind / Oliver - and practically any decent b/w Hollywood film from the 1940s/1950s will grab my attention if on TV - Double Indemnity / Jezebel / most films with Cary Grant etc. All the classic kiddie films and Toy Story, Up + ET Rat Race is not a great film but is hilarious - and if you haven't seen it, worth it, if only for the best visual joke about the Nazis ever. The Battle for Algiers Kurosawa's reworking of Macbeth Dersu Ozala
Quite the list, and hard to disagree with (apart from Cinema Parasido, which can get in the Med).
Reminds me too that One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest May be my actual favourite film.
I agree, I'd prefer to watch through Cyclefree's list than the BFI list.
Unreadable / unjustifiably praised book/author list: Part 1
1.The two biographies of Churchill by Martin Gilbert (one long laundry list of everything Churchill ever did with no attempt to put into context or analyse) and Roy Jenkins: insufferably self-regarding and pompous. 2. Martin Amis 3. Kingsley Amis: parts of Lucky Jim were quite funny but only because no-one else made jokes in books in the 1950s and after that he became a Self-Important Saloon Bar Bore. 4. Hilary Mantel - unreadable. 5. Dickens - also unreadable. Vanity Fair, by contrast, is one of the best novels ever written.
Writers worth reading:
1. Norman Lewis - Jackdaw Cake (his autobiography) and Naples '44 (from his time as an Intelligence Officer in Naples in 1944) are superb but all his travel writing (which understates the quality of his writing) is magnificent. 2. William Trevor: the best writer of English fiction, IMO. No-one writes about evil better, about sad, ordinary, half-fulfilled lives - and he can be laugh-out loud funny too. That he was overlooked by the Booker for meretricious rubbish that no-one (well, OK, me) can remember is to their discredit. 3. J G Farrell: "Troubles" - but all his three books are good. He died in a fishing accident off the coast of Ireland much too young. 4. John McGahern - all his books are good but "Memoir" is superb.
I eventually got through The Secret History by Donna Tartt and Scoop by Evelyn Waugh but thought both were vastly overrated
"A university chancellor said that he was also questioned about his background by Lady Susan Hussey at the same event that she asked a black charity chief executive about “where she really came from.
Nazir Afzal, 60, chancellor of the University of Manchester and a former member of the Crown Prosecution Service, said the aide had asked about his heritage “and seemed to accept my answer — Manchester currently. Racism is never far away though.”
Why do these people think it is racist to suggest they originate from Africa or India? What have they got against it?
It is racist to imply that they are not British because of their "exotic" looks. It really is that simple.
That is SUCH balls. Who ever thought that previous heritage has any bearing AT ALL on current citizenship? Other than 1. Balls out National Fronters, and 2. Thoroughly confused uberliberal wannabes like you? You are the one making the leap from 1. Dark skin to 2. Can't be British. Why do you think that other people think like this?
And yet you sub the laddish ape-grunting, banana-waving football sub culture to the tune of 4 figures a year. Remarkable.
I’ll bite.
I’m guessing that you’ve never been on receiving end of such a line of questioning. I have.
Sadly there are a lot of racists out there who do believe that previous heritage has a bearing on current status. Indeed most the time people who have asked me that question have been racists.
Consequently people in a public facing role tend to avoid that question unless they are a) racist; b) ignorant of the above; c) have no empathy and don’t understand the issue.
My dad (80+) sadly falls into category (b) or possibly (c) but fortunately he’s not chosen by the Crown to represent them in a public facing role but instead watches endless episodes of Pointless in a care home.
It's interesting that the abolition of the British monarchy has clearly become a political objective for activists like this:
@SholaMos1 'Hussey by name Hussey nature' - Lady Susan Hussey embodied her name with utter caucacity in her negativity & pessimism towards Ngozi Fulani.
Love @kelechnekoff fearlessness when asked what the Royal Household can do to address it she said "it should abolish itself"
It's interesting that the abolition of the British monarchy has clearly become a political objective for activists like this:
@SholaMos1 'Hussey by name Hussey nature' - Lady Susan Hussey embodied her name with utter caucacity in her negativity & pessimism towards Ngozi Fulani.
Love @kelechnekoff fearlessness when asked what the Royal Household can do to address it she said "it should abolish itself"
It's clearly a sign of overreach when some people, already in favour of abolition, try to argue such an incident, racist as it was, is grounds for abolition.
At first I thought, that's funny, two of the edgy extreme-right boys on PB are also self-proclaimed ex-druggies. But then I realised maybe it was only one after all.
Unreadable / unjustifiably praised book/author list: Part 1
1.The two biographies of Churchill by Martin Gilbert (one long laundry list of everything Churchill ever did with no attempt to put into context or analyse) and Roy Jenkins: insufferably self-regarding and pompous. 2. Martin Amis 3. Kingsley Amis: parts of Lucky Jim were quite funny but only because no-one else made jokes in books in the 1950s and after that he became a Self-Important Saloon Bar Bore. 4. Hilary Mantel - unreadable. 5. Dickens - also unreadable. Vanity Fair, by contrast, is one of the best novels ever written.
Writers worth reading:
1. Norman Lewis - Jackdaw Cake (his autobiography) and Naples '44 (from his time as an Intelligence Officer in Naples in 1944) are superb but all his travel writing (which understates the quality of his writing) is magnificent. 2. William Trevor: the best writer of English fiction, IMO. No-one writes about evil better, about sad, ordinary, half-fulfilled lives - and he can be laugh-out loud funny too. That he was overlooked by the Booker for meretricious rubbish that no-one (well, OK, me) can remember is to their discredit. 3. J G Farrell: "Troubles" - but all his three books are good. He died in a fishing accident off the coast of Ireland much too young. 4. John McGahern - all his books are good but "Memoir" is superb.
I eventually got through The Secret History by Donna Tartt and Scoop by Evelyn Waugh but thought both were vastly overrated
Agree on the first. Found parts of Scoop very funny indeed but it's a while since I read it so may feel differently now.
Jane Eyre is a book I reread. I adored Anna Karenin and Middlemarch when I first read them.
I thought W. was a massively underrated political film. At the time, because it was too close to the events portrayed, it was absolutely hammered for being too kind to Bush (and of course Bush supporters didn't like it because it was too mean for them).
But it was actually a really subtle satire on group-think and it NOT being a deep state conspiracy... just people getting it horribly wrong. Which is actually more terrifying than conspiracy stuff - that it's all just men and women of straw bumbling about with awful results in some cases.
Tories on 22% and Reform on 9% with the latest YouGov poll is a real problem for the Conservatives.
HY was arguing you must add the two together for what Tories get at next election? Because of what happened last time and previously pre Brexit?
Maybe Tories don’t swallow them this time like last time, without the Boris factor, without the get Brexit done factor, without the Corbyn factor. In fact maybe the next election is the reverse of swallowing, they will vomit back the voters to Farage 2.0 because they broke the immigration system, didn’t deliver growth, and no longer can be trusted on the economy.
Having said that, all the polls are all over shop their methodologies struggling to pin down where the Tory share actually is. Delta had Tories jumping +5 to 30% yougov had the same but higher if you add reform and Tories together as HY suggested.
"Chris Whitty warns Britain faces 'prolonged period' of excess deaths not caused by Covid due to collateral effects of lockdown
Chief Medical Officer said heart disease and cancer cases were missed in Covid Comments came in a 'technical report' published on the pandemic challenges Warned speed of vaccine development could lull UK into false sense security"
It will help Sunak a lot in next couple of years to get all this stuff out in the media and out the way asap.
There is a lot of interesting things coming out now. Hindsight makes any lockdown look stupid versus look how many deaths and long covid came from it with lockdowns. Hancock promises to reveal all the fights, the mistakes, the crazy planning such as throw open the prison doors. He has a book out. “Tie my kangaroo testicles down sport”.
All those PBers who refused to watch I’m a celebrity because they wouldn’t get anything - belly laughs or insights - there was definitely both this time.
The Wicker Man. (The original, with Edward Woodward.) If... Cathy Come Home. (Made for TV, but if Threads has been mentioned...)
Down a notch to the excellent Kes.
2001: A Space Odyssey is garbage. Imagine making a boring film like that in 1968 too. Star Wars is also rubbish. I stopped halfway through both.
Dracula AD 1972 for the premise and the vase scene. Psychomania because somebody who doesn't get into it while they're watching it is probably right up themselves.
The Godfather deserves to be there. So does The Exorcist, and not just for the coming down the stairs scene.
I suppose probably A Clockwork Orange too. The book cover was cool as well. Chip Kidd has never done anything half as good as that. His best covers were for Jurassic Park and Dry - they are quite good is about all that can seriously be said, nothing to write home about. By no stretch of the imagination are they brilliant. You would have thought almost any art or design student could knock out stuff of a similar quality.
Yes, it is. Compares to 71% at the GE, so par for Labour (i.e. no progress whatever, and scaling everyone down proportionately) would be a majority of 3600. In reality I should think it'll be 6000+.
Unreadable / unjustifiably praised book/author list: Part 1
1.The two biographies of Churchill by Martin Gilbert (one long laundry list of everything Churchill ever did with no attempt to put into context or analyse) and Roy Jenkins: insufferably self-regarding and pompous. 2. Martin Amis 3. Kingsley Amis: parts of Lucky Jim were quite funny but only because no-one else made jokes in books in the 1950s and after that he became a Self-Important Saloon Bar Bore. 4. Hilary Mantel - unreadable. 5. Dickens - also unreadable. Vanity Fair, by contrast, is one of the best novels ever written.
Writers worth reading:
1. Norman Lewis - Jackdaw Cake (his autobiography) and Naples '44 (from his time as an Intelligence Officer in Naples in 1944) are superb but all his travel writing (which understates the quality of his writing) is magnificent. 2. William Trevor: the best writer of English fiction, IMO. No-one writes about evil better, about sad, ordinary, half-fulfilled lives - and he can be laugh-out loud funny too. That he was overlooked by the Booker for meretricious rubbish that no-one (well, OK, me) can remember is to their discredit. 3. J G Farrell: "Troubles" - but all his three books are good. He died in a fishing accident off the coast of Ireland much too young. 4. John McGahern - all his books are good but "Memoir" is superb.
I eventually got through The Secret History by Donna Tartt and Scoop by Evelyn Waugh but thought both were vastly overrated
"Feather footed through the plashy fens, marches the questing vole." Scoop is pretty short, so not tough to read.
"Chris Whitty warns Britain faces 'prolonged period' of excess deaths not caused by Covid due to collateral effects of lockdown
Chief Medical Officer said heart disease and cancer cases were missed in Covid Comments came in a 'technical report' published on the pandemic challenges Warned speed of vaccine development could lull UK into false sense security"
It will help Sunak a lot in next couple of years to get all this stuff out in the media and out the way asap.
There is a lot of interesting things coming out now. Hindsight makes any lockdown look stupid versus look how many deaths and long covid came from it with lockdowns. Hancock promises to reveal all the fights, the mistakes, the crazy planning such as throw open the prison doors. He has a book out. “Tie my kangaroo testicles down sport”.
All those PBers who refused to watch I’m a celebrity because they wouldn’t get anything - belly laughs or insights - there was definitely both this time.
You know Kwasi Kwarteng is doing the Strictly Christmas Special?
It wasn't lockdown that closed down cancer and cardiac units. They were very busy with covid cases. It was the pandemic, not lockdown.
Why are you saying cancer treatments stopped? You saying it was impossible to have kept key treatment and diagnosis such as cancer going during the pandemic?
It’s true things like that stopped isn’t it? But did it really have to, or was a great mistake made?
Wizard of Oz - terrified me as a child. Screamed so hard had to leave the cinema. Have never seen it since. To this day, if it comes on the TV I switch off (or left the room when the children were young).
Unreadable / unjustifiably praised book/author list: Part 1
1.The two biographies of Churchill by Martin Gilbert (one long laundry list of everything Churchill ever did with no attempt to put into context or analyse) and Roy Jenkins: insufferably self-regarding and pompous. 2. Martin Amis 3. Kingsley Amis: parts of Lucky Jim were quite funny but only because no-one else made jokes in books in the 1950s and after that he became a Self-Important Saloon Bar Bore. 4. Hilary Mantel - unreadable. 5. Dickens - also unreadable. Vanity Fair, by contrast, is one of the best novels ever written...
Neither of the last two are unreadable, it's just that you don't care for them. It's true that Dickens wasn't great at writing women, but I don't think he's exclusively a male preserve; my daughter likes his novels. Agree about 1-3, and Vanity Fair.
Unreadable / unjustifiably praised book/author list: Part 1
1.The two biographies of Churchill by Martin Gilbert (one long laundry list of everything Churchill ever did with no attempt to put into context or analyse) and Roy Jenkins: insufferably self-regarding and pompous. 2. Martin Amis 3. Kingsley Amis: parts of Lucky Jim were quite funny but only because no-one else made jokes in books in the 1950s and after that he became a Self-Important Saloon Bar Bore. 4. Hilary Mantel - unreadable. 5. Dickens - also unreadable. Vanity Fair, by contrast, is one of the best novels ever written...
Stephen Potter (1947, 1950, 1952) ...and as any fule kno...
Wizard of Oz - terrified me as a child. Screamed so hard had to leave the cinema. Have never seen it since. To this day, if it comes on the TV I switch off (or left the room when the children were young).
I would strongly advise you never to watch the sequel, Return to Oz.
Unreadable / unjustifiably praised book/author list: Part 1
1.The two biographies of Churchill by Martin Gilbert (one long laundry list of everything Churchill ever did with no attempt to put into context or analyse) and Roy Jenkins: insufferably self-regarding and pompous. 2. Martin Amis 3. Kingsley Amis: parts of Lucky Jim were quite funny but only because no-one else made jokes in books in the 1950s and after that he became a Self-Important Saloon Bar Bore. 4. Hilary Mantel - unreadable. 5. Dickens - also unreadable. Vanity Fair, by contrast, is one of the best novels ever written...
Neither of the last two are unreadable, it's just that you don't care for them. It's true that Dickens wasn't great at writing women, but I don't think he's exclusively a male preserve; my daughter likes his novels. Agree about 1-3, and Vanity Fair.
It is v rare for me not to finish a book. With Dickens I cannot get past chapter 1. Mantel: I could not finish Wolf Hall. Her style is deeply annoying and she managed to make Tudor politics boring. Hugely overrated. IMO.
I like Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot and Brontë. So dunno what it is about Dickens.
"A university chancellor said that he was also questioned about his background by Lady Susan Hussey at the same event that she asked a black charity chief executive about “where she really came from.
Nazir Afzal, 60, chancellor of the University of Manchester and a former member of the Crown Prosecution Service, said the aide had asked about his heritage “and seemed to accept my answer — Manchester currently. Racism is never far away though.”
Why do these people think it is racist to suggest they originate from Africa or India? What have they got against it?
It is racist to imply that they are not British because of their "exotic" looks. It really is that simple.
That is SUCH balls. Who ever thought that previous heritage has any bearing AT ALL on current citizenship? Other than 1. Balls out National Fronters, and 2. Thoroughly confused uberliberal wannabes like you? You are the one making the leap from 1. Dark skin to 2. Can't be British. Why do you think that other people think like this?
And yet you sub the laddish ape-grunting, banana-waving football sub culture to the tune of 4 figures a year. Remarkable.
We already have one edgelord on this site, we have no need for another.
Did this with a friend in the office a few years back and this is the list we came up with.
Now Voyager An Affair to Remember The Railway Children Voyage to Italy - a marvellous Rossellini film with Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders All about Eve Billy Liar Visconti's The Leopard - magnificent - and his last film "The Innocent". Some Like It Hot Brief Encounter The Third Man Sunset Boulevard Also The Go-Between and Far from the Madding Crowd for Sunday afternoon viewing; the Go-Between is especially good for cold winter nights when you want to be reminded of what hot summers are like. And for big blockbusters: Lawrence of Arabia Lean's Great Expectations - esp the first scene. Hobson's Choice - for Charles Laughton's performance, above all, though all are good. Delicatessen is a delight. Out of Sight and O Brother Where art Thou are the best George Clooney films. Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources / Romuald et Juliette / Le Bossu Casablanca Cinema Paradiso Three Brothers - a Francesco Rosi film, unobtainable on DVD unless you have one of those American Region 1 ones; also his Illustrious Corpses Witness The Godfather 1 + 2. The 39 Steps Annie Hall and Manhattan; also Take The Money and Run Dr Strangelove Cabaret The Lives of Others Bicycle Thieves North by Northwest / Rebecca and Strangers on a Train Mephisto Withnail and I American Beauty One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest The Usual Suspects This is Spinal Tap Gosford Park The Crucible The Elephant Man Spartacus Cool Hand Luke Talk To Her Cyrano de Bergerac Favourite opera films are: Joseph Losey's Don Giovanni - all Venetian masks and Palladian villas; Zeffirelli's wonderfully romantic and over the top La Traviata and Francesco Rosi's Carmen. I have a weakness for Mary Poppins / The Sound of Music / Gone with the Wind / Oliver - and practically any decent b/w Hollywood film from the 1940s/1950s will grab my attention if on TV - Double Indemnity / Jezebel / most films with Cary Grant etc. All the classic kiddie films and Toy Story, Up + ET Rat Race is not a great film but is hilarious - and if you haven't seen it, worth it, if only for the best visual joke about the Nazis ever. The Battle for Algiers Kurosawa's reworking of Macbeth Dersu Ozala
Quite the list, and hard to disagree with (apart from Cinema Parasido, which can get in the Med).
Reminds me too that One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest May be my actual favourite film.
Hard to pick one, as it depends what mood I am in, but I would plump for "Apocalypse Now". Each time I see it, I get something new.
Sad to see no Australian films in either list. Walkabout, Wake in Fright, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Muriels Wedding, Strictly Ballroom, Mad Max 2. Loads to choose from.
And, of course, High Noon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Noon Which presidents Reagan and Clinton both loved, and which received this endorsement: 'The film was criticized in the Soviet Union as "glorification of the individual".'
"This wasn't just a bad result for the Conservatives and Rishi Sunak, it was a disaster. The Tory share of the vote in the City of Chester by-election slumped to just 22.4%.
Tory MPs in those "red wall" seats in the north of England will be even more despondent about their prospects at the next general election after this crushing defeat.
The swing of 13.8% from the Conservatives to Labour was the sixth worst by-election performance for the Tories in a fight with Labour since 1945.
It was also the worst result for the Conservatives in Chester since 1832. Spare a thought for the poor hapless Tory candidate Liz Wardlaw, who saw Labour's majority leap from just over 6,000 to nearly 11,000.
A terrible start, therefore, for Mr Sunak in his first by-election as Prime Minister"
The only thing surprising about the Chester result is that anyone is surprised. The Tories are performing abysmally. They took a difficult economic situation and actively made it worse. They argued that tax cuts are essential and then implemented the big tax rises. Boris broke his own strict regulations and disrespected the late Queen. Public services are in a dire state. There is no direction out of the mess. They are divided and can’t go two days without ripping each other apart.
If you do all that you are going to lose elections.
The only thing surprising about the Chester result is that anyone is surprised. The Tories are performing abysmally. They took a difficult economic situation and actively made it worse. They argued that tax cuts are essential and then implemented the big tax rises. Boris broke his own strict regulations and disrespected the late Queen. Public services are in a dire state. There is no direction out of the mess. They are divided and can’t go two days without ripping each other apart.
If you do all that you are going to lose elections.
Well quite.
But some people on here apparently still need convincing that Labour are going to win the next election outright.
We hear a lot of talk about precedent but these are simply unprecedented times, for all the reasons you give to which we could add more. There has never been anything like the covid pandemic and those awful lockdowns, not to mention other viscerally sapping events like war in Ukraine, even death of HMQ. Then the atrocious cost of living crisis.
This is a period that people will want to put behind them, consciously and unconsciously, and they won't do so by voting back in the people who oversaw it all.
Like 1945 it will be a thumping victory for Labour.
"Chris Whitty warns Britain faces 'prolonged period' of excess deaths not caused by Covid due to collateral effects of lockdown
Chief Medical Officer said heart disease and cancer cases were missed in Covid Comments came in a 'technical report' published on the pandemic challenges Warned speed of vaccine development could lull UK into false sense security"
It will help Sunak a lot in next couple of years to get all this stuff out in the media and out the way asap.
There is a lot of interesting things coming out now. Hindsight makes any lockdown look stupid versus look how many deaths and long covid came from it with lockdowns. Hancock promises to reveal all the fights, the mistakes, the crazy planning such as throw open the prison doors. He has a book out. “Tie my kangaroo testicles down sport”.
All those PBers who refused to watch I’m a celebrity because they wouldn’t get anything - belly laughs or insights - there was definitely both this time.
You know Kwasi Kwarteng is doing the Strictly Christmas Special?
It wasn't lockdown that closed down cancer and cardiac units. They were very busy with covid cases. It was the pandemic, not lockdown.
Why are you saying cancer treatments stopped? You saying it was impossible to have kept key treatment and diagnosis such as cancer going during the pandemic?
It’s true things like that stopped isn’t it? But did it really have to, or was a great mistake made?
Known cancers were treated, but lots of routine stuff stopped and a lot of new diagnoses come that way.
Like I said, it wasn't stopped as a policy, it was stopped by disease. Our specialist breast unit was full of covid respiratory patients for example.
Will be mailing a card off to Canada later today. Have also had to send an email to the recipient, containing a screen grab from Twitter of the front of today's edition of the i, apologising for the fact that Royal Mail is so very, very fucked now that it probably won't turn up until Easter.
This country is falling apart, and in essence it's all down to the fact that earned incomes are crushed by a combination of inflation and taxation, whereas assets and inheritances are grossly undertaxed and pensions are shielded with hugely expensive inflation-proofing guarantees.
We are now finding out what happens when the have-nots in such a system both can't and won't pay to keep propping it up. So, let the country fall apart. Something better cannot be built until that which currently exists has been destroyed.
Pretty terrifying result for the Tories. Mirrors national polls. They are down from the high 30s to low 20s
They are going to get utterly crushed.
Their only hope is to send Rishi to Kiev once a week from now until the election.
Beyond that it is very difficult to see what the tory offer will be. Economic management? Fuck off. Save Brexit? There is only a dwindling band of elderly derelicts who want it saving. Control immigration? NHS? Nah.
They might as well go full culture wars with Asleep Vice-Semaphoring because that's all they have at this point. Statues, WEF, Blob, etc.
"Chris Whitty warns Britain faces 'prolonged period' of excess deaths not caused by Covid due to collateral effects of lockdown
Chief Medical Officer said heart disease and cancer cases were missed in Covid Comments came in a 'technical report' published on the pandemic challenges Warned speed of vaccine development could lull UK into false sense security"
It will help Sunak a lot in next couple of years to get all this stuff out in the media and out the way asap.
There is a lot of interesting things coming out now. Hindsight makes any lockdown look stupid versus look how many deaths and long covid came from it with lockdowns. Hancock promises to reveal all the fights, the mistakes, the crazy planning such as throw open the prison doors. He has a book out. “Tie my kangaroo testicles down sport”.
All those PBers who refused to watch I’m a celebrity because they wouldn’t get anything - belly laughs or insights - there was definitely both this time.
You know Kwasi Kwarteng is doing the Strictly Christmas Special?
It wasn't lockdown that closed down cancer and cardiac units. They were very busy with covid cases. It was the pandemic, not lockdown.
Why are you saying cancer treatments stopped? You saying it was impossible to have kept key treatment and diagnosis such as cancer going during the pandemic?
It’s true things like that stopped isn’t it? But did it really have to, or was a great mistake made?
Known cancers were treated, but lots of routine stuff stopped and a lot of new diagnoses come that way.
Like I said, it wasn't stopped as a policy, it was stopped by disease. Our specialist breast unit was full of covid respiratory patients for example.
@MoonRabbit see this clip of Chris Whitty on the subject at a committee hearing at the time.
EXCLUSIVE: A joint investigation by TalkTV and The Sun can reveal a senior Conservative MP has been reported to the police over a string of alleged rapes and sexual assaults. But the backbench MP has not been suspended by Tory party bosses.
And again, here we go. Alleged. If he is charged suspend him. It’s quite simple. It’s not as if we haven’t had examples of ‘ No case to answer’ quite recently is it? What’s the fecking drama here?
Doesn't apply in teaching. You'd be escorted off the premises on an allegation. Why are MP's different?
Because teachers are looking after children. Look if you want a world where anyone in any job gets suspended because allegations are made, fine. But I still believe people have a right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Yes it’s made harder by certain roles, such as teaching, but it needs to be fair to both accuser and accused. You must know of teachers wrongfully accused?
Comments
1.The two biographies of Churchill by Martin Gilbert (one long laundry list of everything Churchill ever did with no attempt to put into context or analyse) and Roy Jenkins: insufferably self-regarding and pompous.
2. Martin Amis
3. Kingsley Amis: parts of Lucky Jim were quite funny but only because no-one else made jokes in books in the 1950s and after that he became a Self-Important Saloon Bar Bore.
4. Hilary Mantel - unreadable.
5. Dickens - also unreadable. Vanity Fair, by contrast, is one of the best novels ever written.
Writers worth reading:
1. Norman Lewis - Jackdaw Cake (his autobiography) and Naples '44 (from his time as an Intelligence Officer in Naples in 1944) are superb but all his travel writing (which understates the quality of his writing) is magnificent.
2. William Trevor: the best writer of English fiction, IMO. No-one writes about evil better, about sad, ordinary, half-fulfilled lives - and he can be laugh-out loud funny too. That he was overlooked by the Booker for meretricious rubbish that no-one (well, OK, me) can remember is to their discredit.
3. J G Farrell: "Troubles" - but all his three books are good. He died in a fishing accident off the coast of Ireland much too young.
4. John McGahern - all his books are good but "Memoir" is superb.
It’s probably Harrison Ford’s best picture.
There is a lot of interesting things coming out now. Hindsight makes any lockdown look stupid versus look how many deaths and long covid came from it with lockdowns. Hancock promises to reveal all the fights, the mistakes, the crazy planning such as throw open the prison doors. He has a book out. “Tie my kangaroo testicles down sport”.
All those PBers who refused to watch I’m a celebrity because they wouldn’t get anything - belly laughs or insights - there was definitely both this time.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/watch-matt-hancock-grilled-about-affair/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJhWDVExs1I
You know Kwasi Kwarteng is doing the Strictly Christmas Special?
Spartacus though has plenty of soul and emotion.
I’m guessing that you’ve never been on receiving end of such a line of questioning. I have.
Sadly there are a lot of racists out there who do believe that previous heritage has a bearing on current status. Indeed most the time people who have asked me that question have been racists.
Consequently people in a public facing role tend to avoid that question unless they are a) racist; b) ignorant of the above; c) have no empathy and don’t understand the issue.
My dad (80+) sadly falls into category (b) or possibly (c) but fortunately he’s not chosen by the Crown to represent them in a public facing role but instead watches endless episodes of Pointless in a care home.
@SholaMos1
'Hussey by name Hussey nature' - Lady Susan Hussey embodied her name with utter caucacity in her negativity & pessimism towards Ngozi Fulani.
Love @kelechnekoff fearlessness when asked what the Royal Household can do to address it she said "it should abolish itself"
https://twitter.com/SholaMos1/status/1598430156938420226
Jane Eyre is a book I reread. I adored Anna Karenin and Middlemarch when I first read them.
Mr Smith Goes to Washington.
All the King's Men
Seven Days in May
But it was actually a really subtle satire on group-think and it NOT being a deep state conspiracy... just people getting it horribly wrong. Which is actually more terrifying than conspiracy stuff - that it's all just men and women of straw bumbling about with awful results in some cases.
Maybe Tories don’t swallow them this time like last time, without the Boris factor, without the get Brexit done factor, without the Corbyn factor. In fact maybe the next election is the reverse of swallowing, they will vomit back the voters to Farage 2.0 because they broke the immigration system, didn’t deliver growth, and no longer can be trusted on the economy.
Having said that, all the polls are all over shop their methodologies struggling to pin down where the Tory share actually is. Delta had Tories jumping +5 to 30% yougov had the same but higher if you add reform and Tories together as HY suggested.
If...
Cathy Come Home. (Made for TV, but if Threads has been mentioned...)
Down a notch to the excellent Kes.
2001: A Space Odyssey is garbage. Imagine making a boring film like that in 1968 too.
Star Wars is also rubbish.
I stopped halfway through both.
Dracula AD 1972 for the premise and the vase scene.
Psychomania because somebody who doesn't get into it while they're watching it is probably right up themselves.
The Godfather deserves to be there.
So does The Exorcist, and not just for the coming down the stairs scene.
I suppose probably A Clockwork Orange too. The book cover was cool as well. Chip Kidd has never done anything half as good as that. His best covers were for Jurassic Park and Dry - they are quite good is about all that can seriously be said, nothing to write home about. By no stretch of the imagination are they brilliant. You would have thought almost any art or design student could knock out stuff of a similar quality.
Scoop is pretty short, so not tough to read.
It’s true things like that stopped isn’t it? But did it really have to, or was a great mistake made?
Agree about 1-3, and Vanity Fair.
...and as any fule kno...
I like Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot and Brontë. So dunno what it is about Dickens.
Labour (Sam Dixon): 17,309
Conservatives (Liz Wardlaw): 6,335
Liberal Democrats (Rob Herd): 2,368
Ukip (Cain Griffiths): 179
Green Party (Paul Bowers): 787
Rejoin EU (Richard Hewison): 277
Freedom Alliance (Chris Quartermaine): 91
Reform UK (Jeanie Barton): 773
Monster Raving Loony Party: 156
CON: 22.4% (-15.9)
LDEM: 8.4% (+1.5)
GRN: 2.8% (+0.1)
REF: 2.7% (+0.2)
REU: 1.0% (+1.0)
UKIP: 0.6% (+0.6)
MRLP: 0.6% (+0.6)
FA: 0.3% (+0.3)
The Great Dictator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Dictator , and
The Last Hurrah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Hurrah_(1958_film) .
And, of course, High Noon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Noon
Which presidents Reagan and Clinton both loved, and which received this endorsement: 'The film was criticized in the Soviet Union as "glorification of the individual".'
From Sky News:
"This wasn't just a bad result for the Conservatives and Rishi Sunak, it was a disaster. The Tory share of the vote in the City of Chester by-election slumped to just 22.4%.
Tory MPs in those "red wall" seats in the north of England will be even more despondent about their prospects at the next general election after this crushing defeat.
The swing of 13.8% from the Conservatives to Labour was the sixth worst by-election performance for the Tories in a fight with Labour since 1945.
It was also the worst result for the Conservatives in Chester since 1832. Spare a thought for the poor hapless Tory candidate Liz Wardlaw, who saw Labour's majority leap from just over 6,000 to nearly 11,000.
A terrible start, therefore, for Mr Sunak in his first by-election as Prime Minister"
I think it will be worse than 1945.
If you do all that you are going to lose elections.
But some people on here apparently still need convincing that Labour are going to win the next election outright.
We hear a lot of talk about precedent but these are simply unprecedented times, for all the reasons you give to which we could add more. There has never been anything like the covid pandemic and those awful lockdowns, not to mention other viscerally sapping events like war in Ukraine, even death of HMQ. Then the atrocious cost of living crisis.
This is a period that people will want to put behind them, consciously and unconsciously, and they won't do so by voting back in the people who oversaw it all.
Like 1945 it will be a thumping victory for Labour.
Like I said, it wasn't stopped as a policy, it was stopped by disease. Our specialist breast unit was full of covid respiratory patients for example.
This country is falling apart, and in essence it's all down to the fact that earned incomes are crushed by a combination of inflation and taxation, whereas assets and inheritances are grossly undertaxed and pensions are shielded with hugely expensive inflation-proofing guarantees.
We are now finding out what happens when the have-nots in such a system both can't and won't pay to keep propping it up. So, let the country fall apart. Something better cannot be built until that which currently exists has been destroyed.
Beyond that it is very difficult to see what the tory offer will be. Economic management? Fuck off. Save Brexit? There is only a dwindling band of elderly derelicts who want it saving. Control immigration? NHS? Nah.
They might as well go full culture wars with Asleep Vice-Semaphoring because that's all they have at this point. Statues, WEF, Blob, etc.
https://twitter.com/bmay/status/1560567875110178817?t=NDkKuu3rQcvLydJsf-jlJw&s=19
Tories sub 200 seats after the next GE looks likely, not inconceivable sub 100.