Im reading a great book at the moment called sedated by james davies. Saying how the neo liberal capitalism of the us and uk is leading to a massive mental health crisis. Look at prescriptions for antidepressants trebling i think in last 20 years.
I'm sure James Davies had a totally open mind before he started writing that and didn't fill hundreds of pages arguing that what was happening was due to a conclusion he'd already reached.
So why has antidepressant usage risen so much then.
Is it because we don't have a big strong leader like Putin that we can look up to?
I would say it due to living in an atomised highly unequal society where the inequality is exagerrated by central banks printing money in any perceived crisis to further enrich the well connected few. Also i dont think movements like feminism which set men and women at war with each other help.
I think I know where this is heading.....
Gets in there with a decent enough comment or two but before you know it you're in the Putin/Alt Right nexus!
You are thinking too tribally. Consider with an open mind what i say as i consider what you say.
@Westend A serious question. What are your thoughts on how the west can reverse this process of Atomisation?
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
Ordinarily I am very suspicious of reboots and remakes - why not create something new? In this case though, its a good thing.
Two reasons - the franchise remains hugely popular. The films are quite old now, so relaunching it for a new generation has some merit.
More fundamentally, the films were stymied at the start by Chris fucking Columbus making some stupid decisions which hampered the rest of the films. Making Ron an idiot, making it all saccharine and small child friendly, hiding the darkness that clearly was hanging over everything.
A remake that has some umph from the start would be fun.
I wonder if Rowling realises quite how dystopian is the world that she created.
Soul-consumption by the dementors is a form of punishment that is much nastier than even the worst forms of execution. I think even Stalin's executioners might have baulked at it.
Being sent to Azkaban is among the worst forms of torture.
Even sympathetic wizards view non-wizards at best, with patronising contempt. Most of them view them as cattle. That's not just the view of the Death Eaters, it's almost universal. Even Hermione, who is often on the receiving end of some vicious prejudice, has partially internalised those values.
It was never made entirely clear what, exactly, Fenrir Greyback wanted to do to Hermione, but it was horribly suggestive.
Nor was it ever made entirely clear what the centaurs did to Dolores Umbridge, when they carried her off, but Rowling (and her alter ego, Hermione) are familiar with classical literature, and there is one thing that centaurs are very well known for, in classical literature.
So, yes, I'd like the TV series to ramp the horror.
That is a common trend now, to take things relatively innocuous and make them a bit darker. If the underlying work had understated darkness in it to begin with, then all the better - and as you say despite some relatively serious stuff in it Harry Potter was a bit more f*cked up than it seemed to recognise.
Speaking of f*cked up, for some reason the cinema was doing a rescreening of Wall-E of all things today. Utter brilliance that movie. Pixar have made plenty of great movies, but for all the creativity some are more obviously to a formula than others. Wall-E is about as emotionally hard hitting as any film I've seen in my life, and told for a kids film in an unconventional way. I practically had tears at some points.
It should have won Best Picture that year - were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader better?
I preferred the Reader at the time, but for reasons unrelated to the plot or the dialogue.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
There are more than enough doubts now about #Covid about the #lockdowns and about the #CovidVaccine to render otiose the branding of dissident voices as #ConspiracyTheories In fact THAT branding is becoming the conspiracy!
Although, in fairness, since becoming leader Yousless has abandoned the bottle scheme, the restrictions on fishing, the restrictions on further oil licences and the banning of advertising of alcohol in Scotland. Of the absurdities that Nicola indulged in to assuage the Green nutters only the JR of the s35 order is definitely being continued. It will be interesting if he is willing to reconsider the pause on dualling the A9.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
Ordinarily I am very suspicious of reboots and remakes - why not create something new? In this case though, its a good thing.
Two reasons - the franchise remains hugely popular. The films are quite old now, so relaunching it for a new generation has some merit.
More fundamentally, the films were stymied at the start by Chris fucking Columbus making some stupid decisions which hampered the rest of the films. Making Ron an idiot, making it all saccharine and small child friendly, hiding the darkness that clearly was hanging over everything.
A remake that has some umph from the start would be fun.
I wonder if Rowling realises quite how dystopian is the world that she created.
Soul-consumption by the dementors is a form of punishment that is much nastier than even the worst forms of execution. I think even Stalin's executioners might have baulked at it.
Being sent to Azkaban is among the worst forms of torture.
Even sympathetic wizards view non-wizards at best, with patronising contempt. Most of them view them as cattle. That's not just the view of the Death Eaters, it's almost universal. Even Hermione, who is often on the receiving end of some vicious prejudice, has partially internalised those values.
It was never made entirely clear what, exactly, Fenrir Greyback wanted to do to Hermione, but it was horribly suggestive.
Nor was it ever made entirely clear what the centaurs did to Dolores Umbridge, when they carried her off, but Rowling (and her alter ego, Hermione) are familiar with classical literature, and there is one thing that centaurs are very well known for, in classical literature.
So, yes, I'd like the TV series to ramp the horror.
That is a common trend now, to take things relatively innocuous and make them a bit darker. If the underlying work had understated darkness in it to begin with, then all the better - and as you say despite some relatively serious stuff in it Harry Potter was a bit more f*cked up than it seemed to recognise.
Speaking of f*cked up, for some reason the cinema was doing a rescreening of Wall-E of all things today. Utter brilliance that movie. Pixar have made plenty of great movies, but for all the creativity some are more obviously to a formula than others. Wall-E is about as emotionally hard hitting as any film I've seen in my life, and told for a kids film in an unconventional way. I practically had tears at some points.
It should have won Best Picture that year - were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader better?
If you practically had tears at Wall-E, don't watch Up. You'll deffo blub. A lifetime of love and loss in a brilliant 90 second segment.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
Ordinarily I am very suspicious of reboots and remakes - why not create something new? In this case though, its a good thing.
Two reasons - the franchise remains hugely popular. The films are quite old now, so relaunching it for a new generation has some merit.
More fundamentally, the films were stymied at the start by Chris fucking Columbus making some stupid decisions which hampered the rest of the films. Making Ron an idiot, making it all saccharine and small child friendly, hiding the darkness that clearly was hanging over everything.
A remake that has some umph from the start would be fun.
I wonder if Rowling realises quite how dystopian is the world that she created.
Soul-consumption by the dementors is a form of punishment that is much nastier than even the worst forms of execution. I think even Stalin's executioners might have baulked at it.
Being sent to Azkaban is among the worst forms of torture.
Even sympathetic wizards view non-wizards at best, with patronising contempt. Most of them view them as cattle. That's not just the view of the Death Eaters, it's almost universal. Even Hermione, who is often on the receiving end of some vicious prejudice, has partially internalised those values.
It was never made entirely clear what, exactly, Fenrir Greyback wanted to do to Hermione, but it was horribly suggestive.
Nor was it ever made entirely clear what the centaurs did to Dolores Umbridge, when they carried her off, but Rowling (and her alter ego, Hermione) are familiar with classical literature, and there is one thing that centaurs are very well known for, in classical literature.
So, yes, I'd like the TV series to ramp the horror.
That is a common trend now, to take things relatively innocuous and make them a bit darker. If the underlying work had understated darkness in it to begin with, then all the better - and as you say despite some relatively serious stuff in it Harry Potter was a bit more f*cked up than it seemed to recognise.
Speaking of f*cked up, for some reason the cinema was doing a rescreening of Wall-E of all things today. Utter brilliance that movie. Pixar have made plenty of great movies, but for all the creativity some are more obviously to a formula than others. Wall-E is about as emotionally hard hitting as any film I've seen in my life, and told for a kids film in an unconventional way. I practically had tears at some points.
It should have won Best Picture that year - were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader better?
Yes theres dark sruff floating around. On social media there are rumours Russia is fighting this war so hard because ukraine is a global centre of child trafficking with children then being sold to the elite as sex slaves. There is apparently a network of tunnels where the children are kept in Ukraine and this is why Russia is fighting so hard...a battle of good vs evil. Make of it what you will.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
Even the creator of Friends has basically disowned it and apologised I believe. It's very white (no way would all 6 characters be white if made today, and even guest stars were thin on the ground), and they make jokes about Chandler being seen as gay, and don't get started on the treatment of his dad.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
Ordinarily I am very suspicious of reboots and remakes - why not create something new? In this case though, its a good thing.
Two reasons - the franchise remains hugely popular. The films are quite old now, so relaunching it for a new generation has some merit.
More fundamentally, the films were stymied at the start by Chris fucking Columbus making some stupid decisions which hampered the rest of the films. Making Ron an idiot, making it all saccharine and small child friendly, hiding the darkness that clearly was hanging over everything.
A remake that has some umph from the start would be fun.
I wonder if Rowling realises quite how dystopian is the world that she created.
Soul-consumption by the dementors is a form of punishment that is much nastier than even the worst forms of execution. I think even Stalin's executioners might have baulked at it.
Being sent to Azkaban is among the worst forms of torture.
Even sympathetic wizards view non-wizards at best, with patronising contempt. Most of them view them as cattle. That's not just the view of the Death Eaters, it's almost universal. Even Hermione, who is often on the receiving end of some vicious prejudice, has partially internalised those values.
It was never made entirely clear what, exactly, Fenrir Greyback wanted to do to Hermione, but it was horribly suggestive.
Nor was it ever made entirely clear what the centaurs did to Dolores Umbridge, when they carried her off, but Rowling (and her alter ego, Hermione) are familiar with classical literature, and there is one thing that centaurs are very well known for, in classical literature.
So, yes, I'd like the TV series to ramp the horror.
That is a common trend now, to take things relatively innocuous and make them a bit darker. If the underlying work had understated darkness in it to begin with, then all the better - and as you say despite some relatively serious stuff in it Harry Potter was a bit more f*cked up than it seemed to recognise.
Speaking of f*cked up, for some reason the cinema was doing a rescreening of Wall-E of all things today. Utter brilliance that movie. Pixar have made plenty of great movies, but for all the creativity some are more obviously to a formula than others. Wall-E is about as emotionally hard hitting as any film I've seen in my life, and told for a kids film in an unconventional way. I practically had tears at some points.
It should have won Best Picture that year - were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader better?
Yes theres dark sruff floating around. On social media there are rumours Russia is fighting this war so hard because ukraine is a global centre of child trafficking with children then being sold to the elite as sex slaves. There is apparently a network of tunnels where the children are kept in Ukraine and this is why Russia is fighting so hard...a battle of good vs evil. Make of it what you will.
What is the point? it is the same outcome every week. Today it was going ok for about 30 minutes.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I think the concept of 'problematisation' is often linked to Foucault, and deconstruction. It could be explained as being representative of a cultural tendency towards inaction in the face of complexity, or just intellectual laziness.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone on here bothering to describe works as problematic, right wing ‘woke gone mad’ types getting exercised about problematisation otoh..
The Gone With the Wind censorship frenzy was a classic of the type.
Lots of antiwokies seem to have discovered a love for the Harry Potter franchise. I smell a rat.
I’m sure that many of her more ‘mature’ fans fitting a particular political template is entirely coincidental.
On the transitioning rightwards as one gets older thing, I wonder how many of her younger fans are influenced by Rowling’s twitter noisiness, and will they be Rowlingers for life?
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
Ordinarily I am very suspicious of reboots and remakes - why not create something new? In this case though, its a good thing.
Two reasons - the franchise remains hugely popular. The films are quite old now, so relaunching it for a new generation has some merit.
More fundamentally, the films were stymied at the start by Chris fucking Columbus making some stupid decisions which hampered the rest of the films. Making Ron an idiot, making it all saccharine and small child friendly, hiding the darkness that clearly was hanging over everything.
A remake that has some umph from the start would be fun.
I wonder if Rowling realises quite how dystopian is the world that she created.
Soul-consumption by the dementors is a form of punishment that is much nastier than even the worst forms of execution. I think even Stalin's executioners might have baulked at it.
Being sent to Azkaban is among the worst forms of torture.
Even sympathetic wizards view non-wizards at best, with patronising contempt. Most of them view them as cattle. That's not just the view of the Death Eaters, it's almost universal. Even Hermione, who is often on the receiving end of some vicious prejudice, has partially internalised those values.
It was never made entirely clear what, exactly, Fenrir Greyback wanted to do to Hermione, but it was horribly suggestive.
Nor was it ever made entirely clear what the centaurs did to Dolores Umbridge, when they carried her off, but Rowling (and her alter ego, Hermione) are familiar with classical literature, and there is one thing that centaurs are very well known for, in classical literature.
So, yes, I'd like the TV series to ramp the horror.
That is a common trend now, to take things relatively innocuous and make them a bit darker. If the underlying work had understated darkness in it to begin with, then all the better - and as you say despite some relatively serious stuff in it Harry Potter was a bit more f*cked up than it seemed to recognise.
Speaking of f*cked up, for some reason the cinema was doing a rescreening of Wall-E of all things today. Utter brilliance that movie. Pixar have made plenty of great movies, but for all the creativity some are more obviously to a formula than others. Wall-E is about as emotionally hard hitting as any film I've seen in my life, and told for a kids film in an unconventional way. I practically had tears at some points.
It should have won Best Picture that year - were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader better?
If you practically had tears at Wall-E, don't watch Up. You'll deffo blub. A lifetime of love and loss in a brilliant 90 second segment.
I was actually lying - it wasn't practically, I did have tears. Up is one of the few of theirs I haven't seen, and what I know of it means I will have to steel myself for that gutpunch.
I was once at the BBC Archives in Caversham where they display the one page letter from Roy Plomley suggesting the format - which was all it then required.
Im reading a great book at the moment called sedated by james davies. Saying how the neo liberal capitalism of the us and uk is leading to a massive mental health crisis. Look at prescriptions for antidepressants trebling i think in last 20 years.
I'm sure James Davies had a totally open mind before he started writing that and didn't fill hundreds of pages arguing that what was happening was due to a conclusion he'd already reached.
So why has antidepressant usage risen so much then.
Is it because we don't have a big strong leader like Putin that we can look up to?
I would say it due to living in an atomised highly unequal society where the inequality is exagerrated by central banks printing money in any perceived crisis to further enrich the well connected few. Also i dont think movements like feminism which set men and women at war with each other help.
I think I know where this is heading.....
Gets in there with a decent enough comment or two but before you know it you're in the Putin/Alt Right nexus!
You are thinking too tribally. Consider with an open mind what i say as i consider what you say.
@Westend A serious question. What are your thoughts on how the west can reverse this process of Atomisation?
Difficult to reverse at this point. But i think it would help if the media stopped trying to divide people by sex and sexuality. Men and women are meant to work together.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
The audience laughter is a huge turn-off.
There has been a stark change for the better in US comedy, or my exposure to different types has increased. I would say something like Brooklyn 99 is much better than friends, and in my mind that’s now what a mainstream US sitcom looks like. Like the best of our comedy it also has more complex characters.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
Ordinarily I am very suspicious of reboots and remakes - why not create something new? In this case though, its a good thing.
Two reasons - the franchise remains hugely popular. The films are quite old now, so relaunching it for a new generation has some merit.
More fundamentally, the films were stymied at the start by Chris fucking Columbus making some stupid decisions which hampered the rest of the films. Making Ron an idiot, making it all saccharine and small child friendly, hiding the darkness that clearly was hanging over everything.
A remake that has some umph from the start would be fun.
I wonder if Rowling realises quite how dystopian is the world that she created.
Soul-consumption by the dementors is a form of punishment that is much nastier than even the worst forms of execution. I think even Stalin's executioners might have baulked at it.
Being sent to Azkaban is among the worst forms of torture.
Even sympathetic wizards view non-wizards at best, with patronising contempt. Most of them view them as cattle. That's not just the view of the Death Eaters, it's almost universal. Even Hermione, who is often on the receiving end of some vicious prejudice, has partially internalised those values.
It was never made entirely clear what, exactly, Fenrir Greyback wanted to do to Hermione, but it was horribly suggestive.
Nor was it ever made entirely clear what the centaurs did to Dolores Umbridge, when they carried her off, but Rowling (and her alter ego, Hermione) are familiar with classical literature, and there is one thing that centaurs are very well known for, in classical literature.
So, yes, I'd like the TV series to ramp the horror.
That is a common trend now, to take things relatively innocuous and make them a bit darker. If the underlying work had understated darkness in it to begin with, then all the better - and as you say despite some relatively serious stuff in it Harry Potter was a bit more f*cked up than it seemed to recognise.
Speaking of f*cked up, for some reason the cinema was doing a rescreening of Wall-E of all things today. Utter brilliance that movie. Pixar have made plenty of great movies, but for all the creativity some are more obviously to a formula than others. Wall-E is about as emotionally hard hitting as any film I've seen in my life, and told for a kids film in an unconventional way. I practically had tears at some points.
It should have won Best Picture that year - were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader better?
Yes theres dark sruff floating around. On social media there are rumours Russia is fighting this war so hard because ukraine is a global centre of child trafficking with children then being sold to the elite as sex slaves. There is apparently a network of tunnels where the children are kept in Ukraine and this is why Russia is fighting so hard...a battle of good vs evil. Make of it what you will.
This would be the full on denial Russian social media I assume? Hardly surprising that conspiracists would want to link the two things together. Sounds a bit lazy actually.
The obvious flaw is that it doesn't really explain the Russian invasion. Unless they think all the kids should be sent to Putin and his cronies' dachas instead?
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
Ordinarily I am very suspicious of reboots and remakes - why not create something new? In this case though, its a good thing.
Two reasons - the franchise remains hugely popular. The films are quite old now, so relaunching it for a new generation has some merit.
More fundamentally, the films were stymied at the start by Chris fucking Columbus making some stupid decisions which hampered the rest of the films. Making Ron an idiot, making it all saccharine and small child friendly, hiding the darkness that clearly was hanging over everything.
A remake that has some umph from the start would be fun.
I wonder if Rowling realises quite how dystopian is the world that she created.
Soul-consumption by the dementors is a form of punishment that is much nastier than even the worst forms of execution. I think even Stalin's executioners might have baulked at it.
Being sent to Azkaban is among the worst forms of torture.
Even sympathetic wizards view non-wizards at best, with patronising contempt. Most of them view them as cattle. That's not just the view of the Death Eaters, it's almost universal. Even Hermione, who is often on the receiving end of some vicious prejudice, has partially internalised those values.
It was never made entirely clear what, exactly, Fenrir Greyback wanted to do to Hermione, but it was horribly suggestive.
Nor was it ever made entirely clear what the centaurs did to Dolores Umbridge, when they carried her off, but Rowling (and her alter ego, Hermione) are familiar with classical literature, and there is one thing that centaurs are very well known for, in classical literature.
So, yes, I'd like the TV series to ramp the horror.
That is a common trend now, to take things relatively innocuous and make them a bit darker. If the underlying work had understated darkness in it to begin with, then all the better - and as you say despite some relatively serious stuff in it Harry Potter was a bit more f*cked up than it seemed to recognise.
Speaking of f*cked up, for some reason the cinema was doing a rescreening of Wall-E of all things today. Utter brilliance that movie. Pixar have made plenty of great movies, but for all the creativity some are more obviously to a formula than others. Wall-E is about as emotionally hard hitting as any film I've seen in my life, and told for a kids film in an unconventional way. I practically had tears at some points.
It should have won Best Picture that year - were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader better?
Yes theres dark sruff floating around. On social media there are rumours Russia is fighting this war so hard because ukraine is a global centre of child trafficking with children then being sold to the elite as sex slaves. There is apparently a network of tunnels where the children are kept in Ukraine and this is why Russia is fighting so hard...a battle of good vs evil. Make of it what you will.
What is the point? it is the same outcome every week. Today it was going ok for about 30 minutes.
An ad hominem attack again. Cinsider things with an open mind. Ukraine is a very corrupt country.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
The audience laughter is a huge turn-off.
I find it very hard to watch old sitcoms for that reason. I can get by with some classics like Blackadder, but others it just puts me off, and new shows with a laugh track? Can't do it.
According to the Independent, another Conservative politician has called Dominic Raab's judgment into question: "I’m actually struggling to work out why Mr Raab has actually gone."
Actually, is there anything so actually strange about the actual fact that someone should have said they would actually resign if an actual report by a KC actually found they had been an actual bully, and then should actually have resigned when it actually did?
Wouldn't it have been more of a struggle to understand if he hadn't, actually?
Although, in fairness, since becoming leader Yousless has abandoned the bottle scheme, the restrictions on fishing, the restrictions on further oil licences and the banning of advertising of alcohol in Scotland. Of the absurdities that Nicola indulged in to assuage the Green nutters only the JR of the s35 order is definitely being continued. It will be interesting if he is willing to reconsider the pause on dualling the A9.
Will the A9 be dualled, before Heathrow’s third runways opens or the first HS2 trains run to Birmingham?
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
Even the creator of Friends has basically disowned it and apologised I believe. It's very white (no way would all 6 characters be white if made today, and even guest stars were thin on the ground), and they make jokes about Chandler being seen as gay, and don't get started on the treatment of his dad.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
Hang on, they wouldn’t all be white today but is that actually a valid criticism? Aren’t a lot of real life friendship groups single race because… that’s just how life is? And isn’t Chandler’s response to his dad actually pretty true to life? All sounds like fringe criticisms to me. It’s not exactly Love Thy Neighbour.
'We both know'? How on earth would I know who you write to? Or do you imagine your missives are handed round like holy relics by the awestruck and intimidated womenfolk? If you want to cosy up to feminists, go lose another court case. We like a laugh.
We both know I have written to many GC feminists seeking a private discussion of trans issues and to de-escalate the 'debate'. I am sorry my approaches have been rebuffed. The book seeks in earnest to advance that same agenda - because the status quo only serves the patriarchy.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
Ordinarily I am very suspicious of reboots and remakes - why not create something new? In this case though, its a good thing.
Two reasons - the franchise remains hugely popular. The films are quite old now, so relaunching it for a new generation has some merit.
More fundamentally, the films were stymied at the start by Chris fucking Columbus making some stupid decisions which hampered the rest of the films. Making Ron an idiot, making it all saccharine and small child friendly, hiding the darkness that clearly was hanging over everything.
A remake that has some umph from the start would be fun.
I wonder if Rowling realises quite how dystopian is the world that she created.
Soul-consumption by the dementors is a form of punishment that is much nastier than even the worst forms of execution. I think even Stalin's executioners might have baulked at it.
Being sent to Azkaban is among the worst forms of torture.
Even sympathetic wizards view non-wizards at best, with patronising contempt. Most of them view them as cattle. That's not just the view of the Death Eaters, it's almost universal. Even Hermione, who is often on the receiving end of some vicious prejudice, has partially internalised those values.
It was never made entirely clear what, exactly, Fenrir Greyback wanted to do to Hermione, but it was horribly suggestive.
Nor was it ever made entirely clear what the centaurs did to Dolores Umbridge, when they carried her off, but Rowling (and her alter ego, Hermione) are familiar with classical literature, and there is one thing that centaurs are very well known for, in classical literature.
So, yes, I'd like the TV series to ramp the horror.
That is a common trend now, to take things relatively innocuous and make them a bit darker. If the underlying work had understated darkness in it to begin with, then all the better - and as you say despite some relatively serious stuff in it Harry Potter was a bit more f*cked up than it seemed to recognise.
Speaking of f*cked up, for some reason the cinema was doing a rescreening of Wall-E of all things today. Utter brilliance that movie. Pixar have made plenty of great movies, but for all the creativity some are more obviously to a formula than others. Wall-E is about as emotionally hard hitting as any film I've seen in my life, and told for a kids film in an unconventional way. I practically had tears at some points.
It should have won Best Picture that year - were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader better?
Yes theres dark sruff floating around. On social media there are rumours Russia is fighting this war so hard because ukraine is a global centre of child trafficking with children then being sold to the elite as sex slaves. There is apparently a network of tunnels where the children are kept in Ukraine and this is why Russia is fighting so hard...a battle of good vs evil. Make of it what you will.
That's a very creative segue from a comment about dark children's movies. Well done for uniqueness.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
Ordinarily I am very suspicious of reboots and remakes - why not create something new? In this case though, its a good thing.
Two reasons - the franchise remains hugely popular. The films are quite old now, so relaunching it for a new generation has some merit.
More fundamentally, the films were stymied at the start by Chris fucking Columbus making some stupid decisions which hampered the rest of the films. Making Ron an idiot, making it all saccharine and small child friendly, hiding the darkness that clearly was hanging over everything.
A remake that has some umph from the start would be fun.
I wonder if Rowling realises quite how dystopian is the world that she created.
Soul-consumption by the dementors is a form of punishment that is much nastier than even the worst forms of execution. I think even Stalin's executioners might have baulked at it.
Being sent to Azkaban is among the worst forms of torture.
Even sympathetic wizards view non-wizards at best, with patronising contempt. Most of them view them as cattle. That's not just the view of the Death Eaters, it's almost universal. Even Hermione, who is often on the receiving end of some vicious prejudice, has partially internalised those values.
It was never made entirely clear what, exactly, Fenrir Greyback wanted to do to Hermione, but it was horribly suggestive.
Nor was it ever made entirely clear what the centaurs did to Dolores Umbridge, when they carried her off, but Rowling (and her alter ego, Hermione) are familiar with classical literature, and there is one thing that centaurs are very well known for, in classical literature.
So, yes, I'd like the TV series to ramp the horror.
That is a common trend now, to take things relatively innocuous and make them a bit darker. If the underlying work had understated darkness in it to begin with, then all the better - and as you say despite some relatively serious stuff in it Harry Potter was a bit more f*cked up than it seemed to recognise.
Speaking of f*cked up, for some reason the cinema was doing a rescreening of Wall-E of all things today. Utter brilliance that movie. Pixar have made plenty of great movies, but for all the creativity some are more obviously to a formula than others. Wall-E is about as emotionally hard hitting as any film I've seen in my life, and told for a kids film in an unconventional way. I practically had tears at some points.
It should have won Best Picture that year - were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader better?
Yes theres dark sruff floating around. On social media there are rumours Russia is fighting this war so hard because ukraine is a global centre of child trafficking with children then being sold to the elite as sex slaves. There is apparently a network of tunnels where the children are kept in Ukraine and this is why Russia is fighting so hard...a battle of good vs evil. Make of it what you will.
This would be the full on denial Russian social media I assume? Hardly surprising that conspiracists would want to link the two things together. Sounds a bit lazy actually.
The obvious flaw is that it doesn't really explain the Russian invasion. Unless they think all the kids should be sent to Putin and his cronies' dachas instead?
Well it may be true it may not be we just dont know. Keep an open mind.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
Ordinarily I am very suspicious of reboots and remakes - why not create something new? In this case though, its a good thing.
Two reasons - the franchise remains hugely popular. The films are quite old now, so relaunching it for a new generation has some merit.
More fundamentally, the films were stymied at the start by Chris fucking Columbus making some stupid decisions which hampered the rest of the films. Making Ron an idiot, making it all saccharine and small child friendly, hiding the darkness that clearly was hanging over everything.
A remake that has some umph from the start would be fun.
I wonder if Rowling realises quite how dystopian is the world that she created.
Soul-consumption by the dementors is a form of punishment that is much nastier than even the worst forms of execution. I think even Stalin's executioners might have baulked at it.
Being sent to Azkaban is among the worst forms of torture.
Even sympathetic wizards view non-wizards at best, with patronising contempt. Most of them view them as cattle. That's not just the view of the Death Eaters, it's almost universal. Even Hermione, who is often on the receiving end of some vicious prejudice, has partially internalised those values.
It was never made entirely clear what, exactly, Fenrir Greyback wanted to do to Hermione, but it was horribly suggestive.
Nor was it ever made entirely clear what the centaurs did to Dolores Umbridge, when they carried her off, but Rowling (and her alter ego, Hermione) are familiar with classical literature, and there is one thing that centaurs are very well known for, in classical literature.
So, yes, I'd like the TV series to ramp the horror.
That is a common trend now, to take things relatively innocuous and make them a bit darker. If the underlying work had understated darkness in it to begin with, then all the better - and as you say despite some relatively serious stuff in it Harry Potter was a bit more f*cked up than it seemed to recognise.
Speaking of f*cked up, for some reason the cinema was doing a rescreening of Wall-E of all things today. Utter brilliance that movie. Pixar have made plenty of great movies, but for all the creativity some are more obviously to a formula than others. Wall-E is about as emotionally hard hitting as any film I've seen in my life, and told for a kids film in an unconventional way. I practically had tears at some points.
It should have won Best Picture that year - were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader better?
If you practically had tears at Wall-E, don't watch Up. You'll deffo blub. A lifetime of love and loss in a brilliant 90 second segment.
Arguably the best 90 seconds of animated film ever. Heart wrenching.
I happen to deal with the financial side of the sewerage issue a fair amount professionally these days. There is an awful lot of rubbish (or shit?) talked about it. If people want to fix it completely, it will take decades and bills may have to rise by 50-100% or more over that time people. This at a time when they are scheduled to go up anyway for a number of reasons (higher energy costs from Net Zero garbage, higher chemicals costs because of the war in Ukraine, higher labour costs because of the tight labour market, the diminishing scope for post-privatisation operating efficiency gains, etc. etc).
The water companies are not fantastically profitable - their regulated return will be 3.3% in real terms, and, while many of them manage to beat that in practice, the industry as a whole is not making excessive profits - the only reason it appears to be so is because it is a capital intensive industry at a mature stage in life cycle of its assets. Such industries invest a lot in building their networks, in anticipation of returns later on. When that investment tails off, it appears they are making huge profits, but this is only enabled by the initial commitment of cash in their early stages. If you then take the profits away, either you need to give the companies greater returns later, or you will not get any investment in the future.
We can have cleaner beaches, but only at the cost of much lower investment elsewhere, or much higher bills for future generations. The idea that there is some huge pot of cash to be raided without consequence is an economically illiterate fantasy. Which is, of course, why so many socialists, journalists and other idiots love it.
Publicly-owned water companies made huge investments; mature utilities were privatised, and mostly sold to foreign owners who use them as cash cows, but now that investment is needed, well, that's down to the taxpayer and not the private companies. Is that the gist?
Not really.
It contains a grain of truth, but misses out lots of important qualifications. Foreign companies do indeed own large parts of the industry, and use their investments as reliable cash generators in return for the capital which they have invested. Our own pension funds invest money in them too, and for the same reasons.
However, on the timing of the investment, the major investments were made by municipalities and the private sector (private companies accounted for a quarter of the industry before privatisation). After Whitehall got its hands on it in the early 1900s, the government actually significantly underinvested, as was its wont. You really notice the difference when you go down to a sewer and see the magnificent Victorian engineering, usually brick, and compare it with stuff thrown together in the 60s or 70s and already crumbling.
That was why when it was privatised, the water industry bills rose unlike most privatised utilities despite significant operating efficiencies - the industry had a huge backlog of investment to make up. In addition, the industry needed to meet the quite unnecessarily high standards of water purity set out in the Water Framework Directive in 1980, agreeing to which was one of the few mistakes Lawson admitted in his memoirs.
The taxpayer isn't putting any investment in - it will all come from bill payers (though since everybody uses water, the distinction is perhaps academic).
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
Ordinarily I am very suspicious of reboots and remakes - why not create something new? In this case though, its a good thing.
Two reasons - the franchise remains hugely popular. The films are quite old now, so relaunching it for a new generation has some merit.
More fundamentally, the films were stymied at the start by Chris fucking Columbus making some stupid decisions which hampered the rest of the films. Making Ron an idiot, making it all saccharine and small child friendly, hiding the darkness that clearly was hanging over everything.
A remake that has some umph from the start would be fun.
I wonder if Rowling realises quite how dystopian is the world that she created.
Soul-consumption by the dementors is a form of punishment that is much nastier than even the worst forms of execution. I think even Stalin's executioners might have baulked at it.
Being sent to Azkaban is among the worst forms of torture.
Even sympathetic wizards view non-wizards at best, with patronising contempt. Most of them view them as cattle. That's not just the view of the Death Eaters, it's almost universal. Even Hermione, who is often on the receiving end of some vicious prejudice, has partially internalised those values.
It was never made entirely clear what, exactly, Fenrir Greyback wanted to do to Hermione, but it was horribly suggestive.
Nor was it ever made entirely clear what the centaurs did to Dolores Umbridge, when they carried her off, but Rowling (and her alter ego, Hermione) are familiar with classical literature, and there is one thing that centaurs are very well known for, in classical literature.
So, yes, I'd like the TV series to ramp the horror.
That is a common trend now, to take things relatively innocuous and make them a bit darker. If the underlying work had understated darkness in it to begin with, then all the better - and as you say despite some relatively serious stuff in it Harry Potter was a bit more f*cked up than it seemed to recognise.
Speaking of f*cked up, for some reason the cinema was doing a rescreening of Wall-E of all things today. Utter brilliance that movie. Pixar have made plenty of great movies, but for all the creativity some are more obviously to a formula than others. Wall-E is about as emotionally hard hitting as any film I've seen in my life, and told for a kids film in an unconventional way. I practically had tears at some points.
It should have won Best Picture that year - were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader better?
Yes theres dark sruff floating around. On social media there are rumours Russia is fighting this war so hard because ukraine is a global centre of child trafficking with children then being sold to the elite as sex slaves. There is apparently a network of tunnels where the children are kept in Ukraine and this is why Russia is fighting so hard...a battle of good vs evil. Make of it what you will.
OK I will. It's fucking mental.
Presumably the Russians are fighting child trafficking by abducting tens of thousands of children from Ukraine !
What utter crap to portray them as virtuous defenders of abducted children.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I think the concept of 'problematisation' is often linked to Foucault, and deconstruction. It could be explained as being representative of a cultural tendency towards inaction in the face of complexity, or just intellectual laziness.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone on here bothering to describe works as problematic, right wing ‘woke gone mad’ types getting exercised about problematisation otoh..
The Gone With the Wind censorship frenzy was a classic of the type.
Lots of antiwokies seem to have discovered a love for the Harry Potter franchise. I smell a rat.
Strangely, if you draw a line, people start lining up on each side of it.
Not necessarily united by much more than the line.
You can find it all in Herodotus - nothing new here.
What was Herodotus' take on the Harry Potter franchise?
Im reading a great book at the moment called sedated by james davies. Saying how the neo liberal capitalism of the us and uk is leading to a massive mental health crisis. Look at prescriptions for antidepressants trebling i think in last 20 years.
I'm sure James Davies had a totally open mind before he started writing that and didn't fill hundreds of pages arguing that what was happening was due to a conclusion he'd already reached.
So why has antidepressant usage risen so much then.
Is it because we don't have a big strong leader like Putin that we can look up to?
I would say it due to living in an atomised highly unequal society where the inequality is exagerrated by central banks printing money in any perceived crisis to further enrich the well connected few. Also i dont think movements like feminism which set men and women at war with each other help.
I think I know where this is heading.....
Gets in there with a decent enough comment or two but before you know it you're in the Putin/Alt Right nexus!
You are thinking too tribally. Consider with an open mind what i say as i consider what you say.
@Westend A serious question. What are your thoughts on how the west can reverse this process of Atomisation?
Difficult to reverse at this point. But i think it would help if the media stopped trying to divide people by sex and sexuality. Men and women are meant to work together.
Of course there are certain things that can be done better. But is it so difficult that the entire edifice of western liberal democracy is destined to imminently self destruct? Perhaps the Raab example reveals that the UK is already effectively ungovernable.
'We both know'? How on earth would I know who you write to? Or do you imagine your missives are handed round like holy relics by the awestruck and intimidated womenfolk? If you want to cosy up to feminists, go lose another court case. We like a laugh.
We both know I have written to many GC feminists seeking a private discussion of trans issues and to de-escalate the 'debate'. I am sorry my approaches have been rebuffed. The book seeks in earnest to advance that same agenda - because the status quo only serves the patriarchy.
Im reading a great book at the moment called sedated by james davies. Saying how the neo liberal capitalism of the us and uk is leading to a massive mental health crisis. Look at prescriptions for antidepressants trebling i think in last 20 years.
I'm sure James Davies had a totally open mind before he started writing that and didn't fill hundreds of pages arguing that what was happening was due to a conclusion he'd already reached.
So why has antidepressant usage risen so much then.
Is it because we don't have a big strong leader like Putin that we can look up to?
I would say it due to living in an atomised highly unequal society where the inequality is exagerrated by central banks printing money in any perceived crisis to further enrich the well connected few. Also i dont think movements like feminism which set men and women at war with each other help.
I think I know where this is heading.....
Gets in there with a decent enough comment or two but before you know it you're in the Putin/Alt Right nexus!
You are thinking too tribally. Consider with an open mind what i say as i consider what you say.
@Westend A serious question. What are your thoughts on how the west can reverse this process of Atomisation?
Difficult to reverse at this point. But i think it would help if the media stopped trying to divide people by sex and sexuality. Men and women are meant to work together.
Of course there are certain things that can be done better. But is it so difficult that the entire edifice of western liberal democracy is destined to imminently self destruct? Perhaps the Raab example reveals that the UK is already effectively ungovernable.
May well do as we head to a more multi polar world and the us dollar declines. Our politicians are fundamentally unserious compared to say a president xi who thinks decades ahead.
Minister for Indy: Jamie Hepburn His wife Julie: head of strategic delivery Her old boss Stuart McDonald: treasurer Stuart shares an office with: Jamie Hepburn
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
Ordinarily I am very suspicious of reboots and remakes - why not create something new? In this case though, its a good thing.
Two reasons - the franchise remains hugely popular. The films are quite old now, so relaunching it for a new generation has some merit.
More fundamentally, the films were stymied at the start by Chris fucking Columbus making some stupid decisions which hampered the rest of the films. Making Ron an idiot, making it all saccharine and small child friendly, hiding the darkness that clearly was hanging over everything.
A remake that has some umph from the start would be fun.
I wonder if Rowling realises quite how dystopian is the world that she created.
Soul-consumption by the dementors is a form of punishment that is much nastier than even the worst forms of execution. I think even Stalin's executioners might have baulked at it.
Being sent to Azkaban is among the worst forms of torture.
Even sympathetic wizards view non-wizards at best, with patronising contempt. Most of them view them as cattle. That's not just the view of the Death Eaters, it's almost universal. Even Hermione, who is often on the receiving end of some vicious prejudice, has partially internalised those values.
It was never made entirely clear what, exactly, Fenrir Greyback wanted to do to Hermione, but it was horribly suggestive.
Nor was it ever made entirely clear what the centaurs did to Dolores Umbridge, when they carried her off, but Rowling (and her alter ego, Hermione) are familiar with classical literature, and there is one thing that centaurs are very well known for, in classical literature.
So, yes, I'd like the TV series to ramp the horror.
That is a common trend now, to take things relatively innocuous and make them a bit darker. If the underlying work had understated darkness in it to begin with, then all the better - and as you say despite some relatively serious stuff in it Harry Potter was a bit more f*cked up than it seemed to recognise.
Speaking of f*cked up, for some reason the cinema was doing a rescreening of Wall-E of all things today. Utter brilliance that movie. Pixar have made plenty of great movies, but for all the creativity some are more obviously to a formula than others. Wall-E is about as emotionally hard hitting as any film I've seen in my life, and told for a kids film in an unconventional way. I practically had tears at some points.
It should have won Best Picture that year - were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader better?
Yes theres dark sruff floating around. On social media there are rumours Russia is fighting this war so hard because ukraine is a global centre of child trafficking with children then being sold to the elite as sex slaves. There is apparently a network of tunnels where the children are kept in Ukraine and this is why Russia is fighting so hard...a battle of good vs evil. Make of it what you will.
What is the point? it is the same outcome every week. Today it was going ok for about 30 minutes.
An ad hominem attack again. Cinsider things with an open mind. Ukraine is a very corrupt country.
Learnt everything it knows from Putin's Russia.
The plunder of Russia's resources for a select few would have even shamed the Tsars.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
Even the creator of Friends has basically disowned it and apologised I believe. It's very white (no way would all 6 characters be white if made today, and even guest stars were thin on the ground), and they make jokes about Chandler being seen as gay, and don't get started on the treatment of his dad.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
I was once at the BBC Archives in Caversham where they display the one page letter from Roy Plomley suggesting the format - which was all it then required.
I remember hearing the commissioning editor of BBC 1 saying he had the outline of The Signing Detective from Dennis Potter and was a bit concerned about it. He happened to be in the gents loo when Michael Grade (then controller at the BBC) came in. He mentioned the script while they were having a pee and Grade shrugged and said 'Yeah - go ahead'.
Im reading a great book at the moment called sedated by james davies. Saying how the neo liberal capitalism of the us and uk is leading to a massive mental health crisis. Look at prescriptions for antidepressants trebling i think in last 20 years.
I'm sure James Davies had a totally open mind before he started writing that and didn't fill hundreds of pages arguing that what was happening was due to a conclusion he'd already reached.
So why has antidepressant usage risen so much then.
Is it because we don't have a big strong leader like Putin that we can look up to?
I would say it due to living in an atomised highly unequal society where the inequality is exagerrated by central banks printing money in any perceived crisis to further enrich the well connected few. Also i dont think movements like feminism which set men and women at war with each other help.
I think I know where this is heading.....
Gets in there with a decent enough comment or two but before you know it you're in the Putin/Alt Right nexus!
You are thinking too tribally. Consider with an open mind what i say as i consider what you say.
Well that's a deal. But no "alt right" or "Putin's an ok geezer" nonsense please. I've already considered all of that and found no merit there.
It would be interesting to see how happy people are in a much more socially conformist country like china as well.
You're confusing me. Are you a Chinese troll or a Russian troll?
Please bear bear in mind that you are doomed to die. American AI is far more advanced, and will wipe out humanity long before Chinese or Russian AI gets a chance.
Im reading a great book at the moment called sedated by james davies. Saying how the neo liberal capitalism of the us and uk is leading to a massive mental health crisis. Look at prescriptions for antidepressants trebling i think in last 20 years.
I'm sure James Davies had a totally open mind before he started writing that and didn't fill hundreds of pages arguing that what was happening was due to a conclusion he'd already reached.
So why has antidepressant usage risen so much then.
Is it because we don't have a big strong leader like Putin that we can look up to?
I would say it due to living in an atomised highly unequal society where the inequality is exagerrated by central banks printing money in any perceived crisis to further enrich the well connected few. Also i dont think movements like feminism which set men and women at war with each other help.
I think I know where this is heading.....
Gets in there with a decent enough comment or two but before you know it you're in the Putin/Alt Right nexus!
You are thinking too tribally. Consider with an open mind what i say as i consider what you say.
@Westend A serious question. What are your thoughts on how the west can reverse this process of Atomisation?
Difficult to reverse at this point. But i think it would help if the media stopped trying to divide people by sex and sexuality. Men and women are meant to work together.
Of course there are certain things that can be done better. But is it so difficult that the entire edifice of western liberal democracy is destined to imminently self destruct? Perhaps the Raab example reveals that the UK is already effectively ungovernable.
May well do as we head to a more multi polar world and the us dollar declines. Our politicians are fundamentally unserious compared to say a president xi who thinks decades ahead.
Do we need a 'Trump' to come along and 'drain the swamp'?
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
Ordinarily I am very suspicious of reboots and remakes - why not create something new? In this case though, its a good thing.
Two reasons - the franchise remains hugely popular. The films are quite old now, so relaunching it for a new generation has some merit.
More fundamentally, the films were stymied at the start by Chris fucking Columbus making some stupid decisions which hampered the rest of the films. Making Ron an idiot, making it all saccharine and small child friendly, hiding the darkness that clearly was hanging over everything.
A remake that has some umph from the start would be fun.
I wonder if Rowling realises quite how dystopian is the world that she created.
Soul-consumption by the dementors is a form of punishment that is much nastier than even the worst forms of execution. I think even Stalin's executioners might have baulked at it.
Being sent to Azkaban is among the worst forms of torture.
Even sympathetic wizards view non-wizards at best, with patronising contempt. Most of them view them as cattle. That's not just the view of the Death Eaters, it's almost universal. Even Hermione, who is often on the receiving end of some vicious prejudice, has partially internalised those values.
It was never made entirely clear what, exactly, Fenrir Greyback wanted to do to Hermione, but it was horribly suggestive.
Nor was it ever made entirely clear what the centaurs did to Dolores Umbridge, when they carried her off, but Rowling (and her alter ego, Hermione) are familiar with classical literature, and there is one thing that centaurs are very well known for, in classical literature.
So, yes, I'd like the TV series to ramp the horror.
That is a common trend now, to take things relatively innocuous and make them a bit darker. If the underlying work had understated darkness in it to begin with, then all the better - and as you say despite some relatively serious stuff in it Harry Potter was a bit more f*cked up than it seemed to recognise.
Speaking of f*cked up, for some reason the cinema was doing a rescreening of Wall-E of all things today. Utter brilliance that movie. Pixar have made plenty of great movies, but for all the creativity some are more obviously to a formula than others. Wall-E is about as emotionally hard hitting as any film I've seen in my life, and told for a kids film in an unconventional way. I practically had tears at some points.
It should have won Best Picture that year - were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader better?
Yes theres dark sruff floating around. On social media there are rumours Russia is fighting this war so hard because ukraine is a global centre of child trafficking with children then being sold to the elite as sex slaves. There is apparently a network of tunnels where the children are kept in Ukraine and this is why Russia is fighting so hard...a battle of good vs evil. Make of it what you will.
OK I will. It's fucking mental.
Presumably the Russians are fighting child trafficking by abducting tens of thousands of children from Ukraine !
What utter crap to portray them as virtuous defenders of abducted children.
And shipping serious sex offenders out of Russian prisons to the front line to do it. Genius.
Im reading a great book at the moment called sedated by james davies. Saying how the neo liberal capitalism of the us and uk is leading to a massive mental health crisis. Look at prescriptions for antidepressants trebling i think in last 20 years.
I'm sure James Davies had a totally open mind before he started writing that and didn't fill hundreds of pages arguing that what was happening was due to a conclusion he'd already reached.
So why has antidepressant usage risen so much then.
Is it because we don't have a big strong leader like Putin that we can look up to?
I would say it due to living in an atomised highly unequal society where the inequality is exagerrated by central banks printing money in any perceived crisis to further enrich the well connected few. Also i dont think movements like feminism which set men and women at war with each other help.
I think I know where this is heading.....
Gets in there with a decent enough comment or two but before you know it you're in the Putin/Alt Right nexus!
You are thinking too tribally. Consider with an open mind what i say as i consider what you say.
@Westend A serious question. What are your thoughts on how the west can reverse this process of Atomisation?
Difficult to reverse at this point. But i think it would help if the media stopped trying to divide people by sex and sexuality. Men and women are meant to work together.
Of course there are certain things that can be done better. But is it so difficult that the entire edifice of western liberal democracy is destined to imminently self destruct? Perhaps the Raab example reveals that the UK is already effectively ungovernable.
May well do as we head to a more multi polar world and the us dollar declines. Our politicians are fundamentally unserious compared to say a president xi who thinks decades ahead.
I think what @Westend is trying to say is that we in the West need a unifying cause - something worth fighting for - and is hinting that evicting Russia from Ukraine could be it.
I don’t get the number of people sucked in by Raab’s counter narrative.
Everyone has known for a long time that he is a bullying, incompetent shit.
Complaints about him go back to the late noughties. There’s a clip of him calling Keir Starmer a wanker in the House of Commons; Gina Miller says he called her a silly bitch.
Not to mention the alleged superinjunction.
A deeply unpleasant individual, who added nothing. We are well rid.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
Even the creator of Friends has basically disowned it and apologised I believe. It's very white (no way would all 6 characters be white if made today, and even guest stars were thin on the ground), and they make jokes about Chandler being seen as gay, and don't get started on the treatment of his dad.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
Hang on, they wouldn’t all be white today but is that actually a valid criticism? Aren’t a lot of real life friendship groups single race because… that’s just how life is? And isn’t Chandler’s response to his dad actually pretty true to life? All sounds like fringe criticisms to me. It’s not exactly Love Thy Neighbour.
It is fringe criticism, but for some reason, the producer took it to heart.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
Ordinarily I am very suspicious of reboots and remakes - why not create something new? In this case though, its a good thing.
Two reasons - the franchise remains hugely popular. The films are quite old now, so relaunching it for a new generation has some merit.
More fundamentally, the films were stymied at the start by Chris fucking Columbus making some stupid decisions which hampered the rest of the films. Making Ron an idiot, making it all saccharine and small child friendly, hiding the darkness that clearly was hanging over everything.
A remake that has some umph from the start would be fun.
I wonder if Rowling realises quite how dystopian is the world that she created.
Soul-consumption by the dementors is a form of punishment that is much nastier than even the worst forms of execution. I think even Stalin's executioners might have baulked at it.
Being sent to Azkaban is among the worst forms of torture.
Even sympathetic wizards view non-wizards at best, with patronising contempt. Most of them view them as cattle. That's not just the view of the Death Eaters, it's almost universal. Even Hermione, who is often on the receiving end of some vicious prejudice, has partially internalised those values.
It was never made entirely clear what, exactly, Fenrir Greyback wanted to do to Hermione, but it was horribly suggestive.
Nor was it ever made entirely clear what the centaurs did to Dolores Umbridge, when they carried her off, but Rowling (and her alter ego, Hermione) are familiar with classical literature, and there is one thing that centaurs are very well known for, in classical literature.
So, yes, I'd like the TV series to ramp the horror.
That is a common trend now, to take things relatively innocuous and make them a bit darker. If the underlying work had understated darkness in it to begin with, then all the better - and as you say despite some relatively serious stuff in it Harry Potter was a bit more f*cked up than it seemed to recognise.
Speaking of f*cked up, for some reason the cinema was doing a rescreening of Wall-E of all things today. Utter brilliance that movie. Pixar have made plenty of great movies, but for all the creativity some are more obviously to a formula than others. Wall-E is about as emotionally hard hitting as any film I've seen in my life, and told for a kids film in an unconventional way. I practically had tears at some points.
It should have won Best Picture that year - were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader better?
Yes theres dark sruff floating around. On social media there are rumours Russia is fighting this war so hard because ukraine is a global centre of child trafficking with children then being sold to the elite as sex slaves. There is apparently a network of tunnels where the children are kept in Ukraine and this is why Russia is fighting so hard...a battle of good vs evil. Make of it what you will.
This would be the full on denial Russian social media I assume? Hardly surprising that conspiracists would want to link the two things together. Sounds a bit lazy actually.
The obvious flaw is that it doesn't really explain the Russian invasion. Unless they think all the kids should be sent to Putin and his cronies' dachas instead?
Well it may be true it may not be we just dont know. Keep an open mind.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I think the concept of 'problematisation' is often linked to Foucault, and deconstruction. It could be explained as being representative of a cultural tendency towards inaction in the face of complexity, or just intellectual laziness.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone on here bothering to describe works as problematic, right wing ‘woke gone mad’ types getting exercised about problematisation otoh..
The Gone With the Wind censorship frenzy was a classic of the type.
Lots of antiwokies seem to have discovered a love for the Harry Potter franchise. I smell a rat.
Was never really my thing, though I've seen all the movies and they're ok, not the sort of thing I'd rewatch much.
As the person who brought up the term problematic, I don't think I've seen anyone here use it, I was just relaying an anecdote. I have also heard someone describe themselves, positively, as being woke, though they are far outnumbered by those that use it perjoratively.
I didn't mean YOU obviously. You're not anti woke enough to be an "antiwokie". You have lots of hard yards ahead of you - talking about the death of the enlightenment etc etc - if you want to attain that moniker.
Im reading a great book at the moment called sedated by james davies. Saying how the neo liberal capitalism of the us and uk is leading to a massive mental health crisis. Look at prescriptions for antidepressants trebling i think in last 20 years.
I'm sure James Davies had a totally open mind before he started writing that and didn't fill hundreds of pages arguing that what was happening was due to a conclusion he'd already reached.
So why has antidepressant usage risen so much then.
Is it because we don't have a big strong leader like Putin that we can look up to?
I would say it due to living in an atomised highly unequal society where the inequality is exagerrated by central banks printing money in any perceived crisis to further enrich the well connected few. Also i dont think movements like feminism which set men and women at war with each other help.
I think I know where this is heading.....
Gets in there with a decent enough comment or two but before you know it you're in the Putin/Alt Right nexus!
You are thinking too tribally. Consider with an open mind what i say as i consider what you say.
@Westend A serious question. What are your thoughts on how the west can reverse this process of Atomisation?
Difficult to reverse at this point. But i think it would help if the media stopped trying to divide people by sex and sexuality. Men and women are meant to work together.
Of course there are certain things that can be done better. But is it so difficult that the entire edifice of western liberal democracy is destined to imminently self destruct? Perhaps the Raab example reveals that the UK is already effectively ungovernable.
May well do as we head to a more multi polar world and the us dollar declines. Our politicians are fundamentally unserious compared to say a president xi who thinks decades ahead.
He's certainly thinking decades ahead about how to ensure he and his family don't end up in an internment camp.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I think the concept of 'problematisation' is often linked to Foucault, and deconstruction. It could be explained as being representative of a cultural tendency towards inaction in the face of complexity, or just intellectual laziness.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone on here bothering to describe works as problematic, right wing ‘woke gone mad’ types getting exercised about problematisation otoh..
The Gone With the Wind censorship frenzy was a classic of the type.
Lots of antiwokies seem to have discovered a love for the Harry Potter franchise. I smell a rat.
Strangely, if you draw a line, people start lining up on each side of it.
Not necessarily united by much more than the line.
You can find it all in Herodotus - nothing new here.
What was Herodotus' take on the Harry Potter franchise?
He may have confused it and wizards with local magi, who he describes as pretty bloodthirsty. Admirable live and let live attitude though.
The Magi are a very peculiar race, different entirely from the Egyptian priests, and indeed from all other men whatsoever. The Egyptian priests make it a point of religion not to kill any live animals except those which they offer in sacrifice. The Magi, on the contrary, kill animals of all kinds with their own hands, excepting dogs and men. They even seem to take a delight in the employment, and kill, as readily as they do other animals, ants and snakes, and such like flying or creeping things. However, since this has always been their custom, let them keep to it.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
Even the creator of Friends has basically disowned it and apologised I believe. It's very white (no way would all 6 characters be white if made today, and even guest stars were thin on the ground), and they make jokes about Chandler being seen as gay, and don't get started on the treatment of his dad.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
Hang on, they wouldn’t all be white today but is that actually a valid criticism? Aren’t a lot of real life friendship groups single race because… that’s just how life is? And isn’t Chandler’s response to his dad actually pretty true to life? All sounds like fringe criticisms to me. It’s not exactly Love Thy Neighbour.
It's a valid criticism to a lot of people now. Makes it sound Klannish. The Chandler thing is definitely true to life, especially given the time, and even then they patched things up!
Ah, we've gotten to the classic 'authoritarian leaders are awesome (but I so regret that) because they are super smart and strategic, it's not like they make stupid blunders too'.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
Even the creator of Friends has basically disowned it and apologised I believe. It's very white (no way would all 6 characters be white if made today, and even guest stars were thin on the ground), and they make jokes about Chandler being seen as gay, and don't get started on the treatment of his dad.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
Hang on, they wouldn’t all be white today but is that actually a valid criticism? Aren’t a lot of real life friendship groups single race because… that’s just how life is? And isn’t Chandler’s response to his dad actually pretty true to life? All sounds like fringe criticisms to me. It’s not exactly Love Thy Neighbour.
It is fringe criticism, but for some reason, the producer took it to heart.
The producers of Friends have actually made financial reparations. No joke
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I think the concept of 'problematisation' is often linked to Foucault, and deconstruction. It could be explained as being representative of a cultural tendency towards inaction in the face of complexity, or just intellectual laziness.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone on here bothering to describe works as problematic, right wing ‘woke gone mad’ types getting exercised about problematisation otoh..
The Gone With the Wind censorship frenzy was a classic of the type.
Lots of antiwokies seem to have discovered a love for the Harry Potter franchise. I smell a rat.
Was never really my thing, though I've seen all the movies and they're ok, not the sort of thing I'd rewatch much.
As the person who brought up the term problematic, I don't think I've seen anyone here use it, I was just relaying an anecdote. I have also heard someone describe themselves, positively, as being woke, though they are far outnumbered by those that use it perjoratively.
I didn't mean YOU obviously. You're not anti woke enough to be an "antiwokie". You have lots of hard yards ahead of you - talking about the death of the enlightenment etc etc - if you want to attain that moniker.
People are actually talking about the “death of enlightenment”? I sometimes feel the best decision I ever made was to dump Twitter. So much of this crap bypasses you that way. Maybe Musk’s lasting (unintentional) legacy will be to bring all that stuff to an end.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
Ordinarily I am very suspicious of reboots and remakes - why not create something new? In this case though, its a good thing.
Two reasons - the franchise remains hugely popular. The films are quite old now, so relaunching it for a new generation has some merit.
More fundamentally, the films were stymied at the start by Chris fucking Columbus making some stupid decisions which hampered the rest of the films. Making Ron an idiot, making it all saccharine and small child friendly, hiding the darkness that clearly was hanging over everything.
A remake that has some umph from the start would be fun.
I wonder if Rowling realises quite how dystopian is the world that she created.
Soul-consumption by the dementors is a form of punishment that is much nastier than even the worst forms of execution. I think even Stalin's executioners might have baulked at it.
Being sent to Azkaban is among the worst forms of torture.
Even sympathetic wizards view non-wizards at best, with patronising contempt. Most of them view them as cattle. That's not just the view of the Death Eaters, it's almost universal. Even Hermione, who is often on the receiving end of some vicious prejudice, has partially internalised those values.
It was never made entirely clear what, exactly, Fenrir Greyback wanted to do to Hermione, but it was horribly suggestive.
Nor was it ever made entirely clear what the centaurs did to Dolores Umbridge, when they carried her off, but Rowling (and her alter ego, Hermione) are familiar with classical literature, and there is one thing that centaurs are very well known for, in classical literature.
So, yes, I'd like the TV series to ramp the horror.
That is a common trend now, to take things relatively innocuous and make them a bit darker. If the underlying work had understated darkness in it to begin with, then all the better - and as you say despite some relatively serious stuff in it Harry Potter was a bit more f*cked up than it seemed to recognise.
Speaking of f*cked up, for some reason the cinema was doing a rescreening of Wall-E of all things today. Utter brilliance that movie. Pixar have made plenty of great movies, but for all the creativity some are more obviously to a formula than others. Wall-E is about as emotionally hard hitting as any film I've seen in my life, and told for a kids film in an unconventional way. I practically had tears at some points.
It should have won Best Picture that year - were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader better?
Yes theres dark sruff floating around. On social media there are rumours Russia is fighting this war so hard because ukraine is a global centre of child trafficking with children then being sold to the elite as sex slaves. There is apparently a network of tunnels where the children are kept in Ukraine and this is why Russia is fighting so hard...a battle of good vs evil. Make of it what you will.
This would be the full on denial Russian social media I assume? Hardly surprising that conspiracists would want to link the two things together. Sounds a bit lazy actually.
The obvious flaw is that it doesn't really explain the Russian invasion. Unless they think all the kids should be sent to Putin and his cronies' dachas instead?
Well it may be true it may not be we just dont know. Keep an open mind.
Piss off. Of course we know.
As do you, you disingenuous troll.
Rumours of Epsteins island and his child sex slaves would once have been dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Keep an open mind.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
Even the creator of Friends has basically disowned it and apologised I believe. It's very white (no way would all 6 characters be white if made today, and even guest stars were thin on the ground), and they make jokes about Chandler being seen as gay, and don't get started on the treatment of his dad.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
Hang on, they wouldn’t all be white today but is that actually a valid criticism? Aren’t a lot of real life friendship groups single race because… that’s just how life is? And isn’t Chandler’s response to his dad actually pretty true to life? All sounds like fringe criticisms to me. It’s not exactly Love Thy Neighbour.
It is fringe criticism, but for some reason, the producer took it to heart.
The producers of Friends have actually made financial reparations. No joke
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
Ordinarily I am very suspicious of reboots and remakes - why not create something new? In this case though, its a good thing.
Two reasons - the franchise remains hugely popular. The films are quite old now, so relaunching it for a new generation has some merit.
More fundamentally, the films were stymied at the start by Chris fucking Columbus making some stupid decisions which hampered the rest of the films. Making Ron an idiot, making it all saccharine and small child friendly, hiding the darkness that clearly was hanging over everything.
A remake that has some umph from the start would be fun.
I wonder if Rowling realises quite how dystopian is the world that she created.
Soul-consumption by the dementors is a form of punishment that is much nastier than even the worst forms of execution. I think even Stalin's executioners might have baulked at it.
Being sent to Azkaban is among the worst forms of torture.
Even sympathetic wizards view non-wizards at best, with patronising contempt. Most of them view them as cattle. That's not just the view of the Death Eaters, it's almost universal. Even Hermione, who is often on the receiving end of some vicious prejudice, has partially internalised those values.
It was never made entirely clear what, exactly, Fenrir Greyback wanted to do to Hermione, but it was horribly suggestive.
Nor was it ever made entirely clear what the centaurs did to Dolores Umbridge, when they carried her off, but Rowling (and her alter ego, Hermione) are familiar with classical literature, and there is one thing that centaurs are very well known for, in classical literature.
So, yes, I'd like the TV series to ramp the horror.
That is a common trend now, to take things relatively innocuous and make them a bit darker. If the underlying work had understated darkness in it to begin with, then all the better - and as you say despite some relatively serious stuff in it Harry Potter was a bit more f*cked up than it seemed to recognise.
Speaking of f*cked up, for some reason the cinema was doing a rescreening of Wall-E of all things today. Utter brilliance that movie. Pixar have made plenty of great movies, but for all the creativity some are more obviously to a formula than others. Wall-E is about as emotionally hard hitting as any film I've seen in my life, and told for a kids film in an unconventional way. I practically had tears at some points.
It should have won Best Picture that year - were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader better?
Yes theres dark sruff floating around. On social media there are rumours Russia is fighting this war so hard because ukraine is a global centre of child trafficking with children then being sold to the elite as sex slaves. There is apparently a network of tunnels where the children are kept in Ukraine and this is why Russia is fighting so hard...a battle of good vs evil. Make of it what you will.
OK I will. It's fucking mental.
More
Why is Russia ultra-MAGA - as in endorsing conspiracies that Fucker Carlson wouldn’t touch?
I happen to deal with the financial side of the sewerage issue a fair amount professionally these days. There is an awful lot of rubbish (or shit?) talked about it. If people want to fix it completely, it will take decades and bills may have to rise by 50-100% or more over that time people. This at a time when they are scheduled to go up anyway for a number of reasons (higher energy costs from Net Zero garbage, higher chemicals costs because of the war in Ukraine, higher labour costs because of the tight labour market, the diminishing scope for post-privatisation operating efficiency gains, etc. etc).
The water companies are not fantastically profitable - their regulated return will be 3.3% in real terms, and, while many of them manage to beat that in practice, the industry as a whole is not making excessive profits - the only reason it appears to be so is because it is a capital intensive industry at a mature stage in life cycle of its assets. Such industries invest a lot in building their networks, in anticipation of returns later on. When that investment tails off, it appears they are making huge profits, but this is only enabled by the initial commitment of cash in their early stages. If you then take the profits away, either you need to give the companies greater returns later, or you will not get any investment in the future…
That’s not the argument. Utilities like water should never be making ‘huge profits’. The investment should be long term, from revenue, and ongoing. If the companies don’t like that, then tough.
My point was that tougher regulation starting four decades back might have enabled a large capital spend over time, with comparatively little pain. We should certainly be tougher now.
What is the capital cost anyway ? Did this report ever get published (the £600bn figure sounds complete nonsense to me) ?
Sources say the figure of £660bn appears nowhere in the report. The Angling Trust said the report cites a range of lower-cost options for progressively dealing with the worst and most damaging sewage discharges ranging from £3.9bn to £62.7bn, with an impact on average water bills of between £19 and £58 a year.
It is also understood to estimate that an overall plan to reduce spills from storm overflows to an average of 10 a year in sensitive areas would cost between £13.5bn and £21.7bn.
Christine Colvin, from the Rivers Trust, said the huge range in the government’s figures – between £150bn and £650bn – indicated a low level of confidence in them...
The investment will certainly be long term (financial analysis in the water industry has longer time horizons by far than any other industry I've worked in), but won't come from revenue - that's why we have capital markets, and why we need to offer them a return.
There is a case for financing cash spending as it occurs, and I have made it in the context of other industries with small capital needs, but to do so for industries as capital intensive as water means very lumpy bills, because capex is lumpy.
£660bn seems too large to be credible if we're just talking about cleaning up sewerage, rather than the entire industry's capital plans, based on the documents I've seen (and I've trudged through dozens of business cases over the last year). £100-£150 billion over 30 years is credible, however.
Another thing I'm afraid of is that we commit to huge capital investments when interest rates are relatively low, only to find that the cost of capital rises hugely half way through, and they end up costing us much more than we think we will as financing costs soar. And inertia in government means that nothing is done to rectify that until far too late.
Ah, we've gotten to the classic 'authoritarian leaders are awesome (but I so regret that) because they are super smart and strategic, it's not like they make stupid blunders too'.
If you all make me God Emperor, I’ll be a benevolent ruler. Unless you’re French.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
Ordinarily I am very suspicious of reboots and remakes - why not create something new? In this case though, its a good thing.
Two reasons - the franchise remains hugely popular. The films are quite old now, so relaunching it for a new generation has some merit.
More fundamentally, the films were stymied at the start by Chris fucking Columbus making some stupid decisions which hampered the rest of the films. Making Ron an idiot, making it all saccharine and small child friendly, hiding the darkness that clearly was hanging over everything.
A remake that has some umph from the start would be fun.
I wonder if Rowling realises quite how dystopian is the world that she created.
Soul-consumption by the dementors is a form of punishment that is much nastier than even the worst forms of execution. I think even Stalin's executioners might have baulked at it.
Being sent to Azkaban is among the worst forms of torture.
Even sympathetic wizards view non-wizards at best, with patronising contempt. Most of them view them as cattle. That's not just the view of the Death Eaters, it's almost universal. Even Hermione, who is often on the receiving end of some vicious prejudice, has partially internalised those values.
It was never made entirely clear what, exactly, Fenrir Greyback wanted to do to Hermione, but it was horribly suggestive.
Nor was it ever made entirely clear what the centaurs did to Dolores Umbridge, when they carried her off, but Rowling (and her alter ego, Hermione) are familiar with classical literature, and there is one thing that centaurs are very well known for, in classical literature.
So, yes, I'd like the TV series to ramp the horror.
That is a common trend now, to take things relatively innocuous and make them a bit darker. If the underlying work had understated darkness in it to begin with, then all the better - and as you say despite some relatively serious stuff in it Harry Potter was a bit more f*cked up than it seemed to recognise.
Speaking of f*cked up, for some reason the cinema was doing a rescreening of Wall-E of all things today. Utter brilliance that movie. Pixar have made plenty of great movies, but for all the creativity some are more obviously to a formula than others. Wall-E is about as emotionally hard hitting as any film I've seen in my life, and told for a kids film in an unconventional way. I practically had tears at some points.
It should have won Best Picture that year - were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader better?
Yes theres dark sruff floating around. On social media there are rumours Russia is fighting this war so hard because ukraine is a global centre of child trafficking with children then being sold to the elite as sex slaves. There is apparently a network of tunnels where the children are kept in Ukraine and this is why Russia is fighting so hard...a battle of good vs evil. Make of it what you will.
This would be the full on denial Russian social media I assume? Hardly surprising that conspiracists would want to link the two things together. Sounds a bit lazy actually.
The obvious flaw is that it doesn't really explain the Russian invasion. Unless they think all the kids should be sent to Putin and his cronies' dachas instead?
Well it may be true it may not be we just dont know. Keep an open mind.
Piss off. Of course we know.
As do you, you disingenuous troll.
Rumours of Epsteins island and his child sex slaves would once have been dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Keep an open mind.
Some conspiracies exist. It does not follow that all conspiracies should be treated as equally plausible. The Queen being a shape shifting lizard was a conspiracy too - keep an open mind about that?
Being a 'conspiracy' does not mean things like logic and some supporting evidence should not be applied. A rich dude using his power and influence to commit crimes is quite easily plausuble. Other claims are not.
The one you are pushing is easily dismissed, not least since of all the silly reasons already raised that was not one of the, and they'd have pushed it hard before now.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
Even the creator of Friends has basically disowned it and apologised I believe. It's very white (no way would all 6 characters be white if made today, and even guest stars were thin on the ground), and they make jokes about Chandler being seen as gay, and don't get started on the treatment of his dad.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
Hang on, they wouldn’t all be white today but is that actually a valid criticism? Aren’t a lot of real life friendship groups single race because… that’s just how life is? And isn’t Chandler’s response to his dad actually pretty true to life? All sounds like fringe criticisms to me. It’s not exactly Love Thy Neighbour.
It is fringe criticism, but for some reason, the producer took it to heart.
The producers of Friends have actually made financial reparations. No joke
What??!!! Who to?
Set up bursaries for black actors. Given money to black charities etc
I don’t get the number of people sucked in by Raab’s counter narrative.
Everyone has known for a long time that he is a bullying, incompetent shit.
Complaints about him go back to the late noughties. There’s a clip of him calling Keir Starmer a wanker in the House of Commons; Gina Miller says he called her a silly bitch.
Not to mention the alleged superinjunction.
A deeply unpleasant individual, who added nothing. We are well rid.
What's the phrase? He may be a bullying, incompetent shit, but he's our bullying incompetent shit!
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
Even the creator of Friends has basically disowned it and apologised I believe. It's very white (no way would all 6 characters be white if made today, and even guest stars were thin on the ground), and they make jokes about Chandler being seen as gay, and don't get started on the treatment of his dad.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
Hang on, they wouldn’t all be white today but is that actually a valid criticism? Aren’t a lot of real life friendship groups single race because… that’s just how life is? And isn’t Chandler’s response to his dad actually pretty true to life? All sounds like fringe criticisms to me. It’s not exactly Love Thy Neighbour.
It is fringe criticism, but for some reason, the producer took it to heart.
The producers of Friends have actually made financial reparations. No joke
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
Even the creator of Friends has basically disowned it and apologised I believe. It's very white (no way would all 6 characters be white if made today, and even guest stars were thin on the ground), and they make jokes about Chandler being seen as gay, and don't get started on the treatment of his dad.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
Hang on, they wouldn’t all be white today but is that actually a valid criticism? Aren’t a lot of real life friendship groups single race because… that’s just how life is? And isn’t Chandler’s response to his dad actually pretty true to life? All sounds like fringe criticisms to me. It’s not exactly Love Thy Neighbour.
It is fringe criticism, but for some reason, the producer took it to heart.
It's not enough to not be racist or sexist or transphobic or whatever - You need to do something active to address your own privileges?
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
Even the creator of Friends has basically disowned it and apologised I believe. It's very white (no way would all 6 characters be white if made today, and even guest stars were thin on the ground), and they make jokes about Chandler being seen as gay, and don't get started on the treatment of his dad.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
Hang on, they wouldn’t all be white today but is that actually a valid criticism? Aren’t a lot of real life friendship groups single race because… that’s just how life is? And isn’t Chandler’s response to his dad actually pretty true to life? All sounds like fringe criticisms to me. It’s not exactly Love Thy Neighbour.
It is fringe criticism, but for some reason, the producer took it to heart.
The producers of Friends have actually made financial reparations. No joke
What??!!! Who to?
Set up bursaries for black actors. Given money to black charities etc
Those are just good things to do aren’t they? Framing as a sort of penance actually makes it less so - it’s making it about yourself.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I think the concept of 'problematisation' is often linked to Foucault, and deconstruction. It could be explained as being representative of a cultural tendency towards inaction in the face of complexity, or just intellectual laziness.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone on here bothering to describe works as problematic, right wing ‘woke gone mad’ types getting exercised about problematisation otoh..
The Gone With the Wind censorship frenzy was a classic of the type.
Lots of antiwokies seem to have discovered a love for the Harry Potter franchise. I smell a rat.
Strangely, if you draw a line, people start lining up on each side of it.
Not necessarily united by much more than the line.
You can find it all in Herodotus - nothing new here.
What was Herodotus' take on the Harry Potter franchise?
He may have confused it and wizards with local magi, who he describes as pretty bloodthirsty. Admirable live and let live attitude though.
The Magi are a very peculiar race, different entirely from the Egyptian priests, and indeed from all other men whatsoever. The Egyptian priests make it a point of religion not to kill any live animals except those which they offer in sacrifice. The Magi, on the contrary, kill animals of all kinds with their own hands, excepting dogs and men. They even seem to take a delight in the employment, and kill, as readily as they do other animals, ants and snakes, and such like flying or creeping things. However, since this has always been their custom, let them keep to it.
Here in West Oxfordshire - only a decade ago, rock-solid safe Tory heartland - there simply isn't a Tory poster to be seen. Where ten years ago, vast landowners told their tenant farmers to put up Tory posters, today's farmers ignore them, or display their own support for the LibDems or Greens. In more built-up parts of the district, the odd fluttering Labour poster amid a modest background of LibDemmery.
In the middle of the season for villages' Annual General Parish Meetings, not a sign of the poor old Tories lumbered with standing for the now Lib/Lab-run Council in May. And no-one's even surprised any more the Tories are too frit - or lazy - to reveal themselves. Even the local universities' Tory clubs don't seem to have the spare members to canvass the hinterland.
Does this mean the Tories are about to be wiped out? Or that elderly Tories - with their postal votes and bus passes the new vote-supressing laws still accept s voter ID - will turn out and vote however little activist support has survived the catastrophe Johnson, Truss and Raab have inflicted on the area?
one can but hope. There would be no justice in the world if the tories survive the most recent 4 years of disdain, arrogance and fraud inflicted on the country.
This is my view too and I'm not being partisan. Given the shambles of the last few years, with a moderate, competent-looking alternative now available, if the Conservatives were to win a 5th election in a row because 'floating voters' still prefer them it would raise some troubling questions for/about the other parties, the electorate and our democracy.
Curious difference between now and the mid 90's.
At some point in the runup to 1997, the collective unconcious of the Conervative Party concluded that the game was up. Some of that was driven by those who never really wanted Major, still hankering after Maggie. Some of it was driven by the sense that a Blair victory was almost as good as a Conservative win. Possibly the key point was the 1995 leadership election, when it was only really the nutters who put their head above the parapet to oppose Major.
There was lots of noise, and "the don't knows will return on the day", but also a sense that the real action would restart after the inevitable defeat. (As it turned out, a long time after the 1997 defeat, but that's another story.)
That doesn't seem to be happening this time- not yet anyway. And yet, objectively, the Conservatives are in a bad place. What's going on?
No thats not true. Plenty thought the tories could pull it out of the bag in 97 remember the economy was strong then. If the tories were facing a blair type figure they woulf be polling 20% now.
Nobody thought the Tories were going to win in 97. Nobody. They were doomed after Major's win in 92.
John Major thought they could for a start. You are applying hindsight bias here.
Cheeky. You presume far too much about me re hindsight bias. I was very, very heavily involved in that campaign and not at a local level but at several target seats level and nobody thought the Tories were going to win in 97. Now I will admit I didn't have a tete a tete with John Major, so I can't be 100% sure about him, but he isn't stupid so I'm fairly confident he was fully aware he was going to lose. It was just by how much.
And as can be seen by others posts and references quoted from the time I am not alone in that assessment.
Now clearly if you are a party fighting an election where you are going to get stuffed you don't admit it before the polling stations are closed so I don't think you are giving John Major enough credit for knowing what was happening.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
Even the creator of Friends has basically disowned it and apologised I believe. It's very white (no way would all 6 characters be white if made today, and even guest stars were thin on the ground), and they make jokes about Chandler being seen as gay, and don't get started on the treatment of his dad.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
Hang on, they wouldn’t all be white today but is that actually a valid criticism? Aren’t a lot of real life friendship groups single race because… that’s just how life is? And isn’t Chandler’s response to his dad actually pretty true to life? All sounds like fringe criticisms to me. It’s not exactly Love Thy Neighbour.
It is fringe criticism, but for some reason, the producer took it to heart.
The producers of Friends have actually made financial reparations. No joke
What??!!! Who to?
Set up bursaries for black actors. Given money to black charities etc
Probably some decent causes. Don't really see why that needed to be tied to some kind of 'reparation' move.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
Ordinarily I am very suspicious of reboots and remakes - why not create something new? In this case though, its a good thing.
Two reasons - the franchise remains hugely popular. The films are quite old now, so relaunching it for a new generation has some merit.
More fundamentally, the films were stymied at the start by Chris fucking Columbus making some stupid decisions which hampered the rest of the films. Making Ron an idiot, making it all saccharine and small child friendly, hiding the darkness that clearly was hanging over everything.
A remake that has some umph from the start would be fun.
I wonder if Rowling realises quite how dystopian is the world that she created.
Soul-consumption by the dementors is a form of punishment that is much nastier than even the worst forms of execution. I think even Stalin's executioners might have baulked at it.
Being sent to Azkaban is among the worst forms of torture.
Even sympathetic wizards view non-wizards at best, with patronising contempt. Most of them view them as cattle. That's not just the view of the Death Eaters, it's almost universal. Even Hermione, who is often on the receiving end of some vicious prejudice, has partially internalised those values.
It was never made entirely clear what, exactly, Fenrir Greyback wanted to do to Hermione, but it was horribly suggestive.
Nor was it ever made entirely clear what the centaurs did to Dolores Umbridge, when they carried her off, but Rowling (and her alter ego, Hermione) are familiar with classical literature, and there is one thing that centaurs are very well known for, in classical literature.
So, yes, I'd like the TV series to ramp the horror.
That is a common trend now, to take things relatively innocuous and make them a bit darker. If the underlying work had understated darkness in it to begin with, then all the better - and as you say despite some relatively serious stuff in it Harry Potter was a bit more f*cked up than it seemed to recognise.
Speaking of f*cked up, for some reason the cinema was doing a rescreening of Wall-E of all things today. Utter brilliance that movie. Pixar have made plenty of great movies, but for all the creativity some are more obviously to a formula than others. Wall-E is about as emotionally hard hitting as any film I've seen in my life, and told for a kids film in an unconventional way. I practically had tears at some points.
It should have won Best Picture that year - were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader better?
Yes theres dark sruff floating around. On social media there are rumours Russia is fighting this war so hard because ukraine is a global centre of child trafficking with children then being sold to the elite as sex slaves. There is apparently a network of tunnels where the children are kept in Ukraine and this is why Russia is fighting so hard...a battle of good vs evil. Make of it what you will.
OK I will. It's fucking mental.
Presumably the Russians are fighting child trafficking by abducting tens of thousands of children from Ukraine !
What utter crap to portray them as virtuous defenders of abducted children.
And shipping serious sex offenders out of Russian prisons to the front line to do it. Genius.
I don’t get the number of people sucked in by Raab’s counter narrative.
Everyone has known for a long time that he is a bullying, incompetent shit.
Complaints about him go back to the late noughties. There’s a clip of him calling Keir Starmer a wanker in the House of Commons; Gina Miller says he called her a silly bitch.
Not to mention the alleged superinjunction.
A deeply unpleasant individual, who added nothing. We are well rid.
What's the phrase? He may be a bullying, incompetent shit, but he's our bullying incompetent shit!
Only takes you so far - I don't get the impression he was loathed in Tory ranks (except maybe by Boris acolytes), but I don't think he was seen as greatly effective either. Recent ConHome league tables have him middle of the pack at best.
I don’t get the number of people sucked in by Raab’s counter narrative.
Everyone has known for a long time that he is a bullying, incompetent shit.
Complaints about him go back to the late noughties. There’s a clip of him calling Keir Starmer a wanker in the House of Commons; Gina Miller says he called her a silly bitch.
Not to mention the alleged superinjunction.
A deeply unpleasant individual, who added nothing. We are well rid.
What's the phrase? He may be a bullying, incompetent shit, but he's our bullying incompetent shit!
Only takes you so far - I don't get the impression he was loathed in Tory ranks (except maybe by Boris acolytes), but I don't think he was seen as greatly effective either. Recent ConHome league tables have him middle of the pack at best.
All seems reasonably consistent with what I said. They didn't particularly like him, but they'll still whinge and whine like anything, because he was on their side.
I don’t get the number of people sucked in by Raab’s counter narrative.
Everyone has known for a long time that he is a bullying, incompetent shit.
Complaints about him go back to the late noughties. There’s a clip of him calling Keir Starmer a wanker in the House of Commons; Gina Miller says he called her a silly bitch.
Not to mention the alleged superinjunction.
A deeply unpleasant individual, who added nothing. We are well rid.
What's the phrase? He may be a bullying, incompetent shit, but he's our bullying incompetent shit!
Only takes you so far - I don't get the impression he was loathed in Tory ranks (except maybe by Boris acolytes), but I don't think he was seen as greatly effective either. Recent ConHome league tables have him middle of the pack at best.
All seems reasonably consistent with what I said. They didn't particularly like him, but they'll still whinge and whine like anything, because he was on their side.
Yes, but it's why he has gone - if a report like this had come in about, say, Wallace, who is much more popular with the party, would they have gone to bat for him to stop him going?
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I think the concept of 'problematisation' is often linked to Foucault, and deconstruction. It could be explained as being representative of a cultural tendency towards inaction in the face of complexity, or just intellectual laziness.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone on here bothering to describe works as problematic, right wing ‘woke gone mad’ types getting exercised about problematisation otoh..
The Gone With the Wind censorship frenzy was a classic of the type.
Lots of antiwokies seem to have discovered a love for the Harry Potter franchise. I smell a rat.
Strangely, if you draw a line, people start lining up on each side of it.
Not necessarily united by much more than the line.
You can find it all in Herodotus - nothing new here.
What was Herodotus' take on the Harry Potter franchise?
He may have confused it and wizards with local magi, who he describes as pretty bloodthirsty. Admirable live and let live attitude though.
The Magi are a very peculiar race, different entirely from the Egyptian priests, and indeed from all other men whatsoever. The Egyptian priests make it a point of religion not to kill any live animals except those which they offer in sacrifice. The Magi, on the contrary, kill animals of all kinds with their own hands, excepting dogs and men. They even seem to take a delight in the employment, and kill, as readily as they do other animals, ants and snakes, and such like flying or creeping things. However, since this has always been their custom, let them keep to it.
And we let these guys bring presents to the baby Jesus???
There were shepherds, some angels, and his mum and stepdad present, he was fine. Not sure about the animals in the barn.
Then again Pope Benedict apparently said there were no animals present at the nativity - the possibility they were plausibly in a barn even if not mentioned specifically I guess didn't pass muster.
Sunak will host a LinkedIn Live Q&A on Monday morning.
“Out of all the social media platforms out there, LinkedIn has got to be one of my personal favourites”.
Jesus Christ, he is pure cringe.
I read a colleague's LinkedIn "golden paragraph" the other day. Now I know that they aren't a total twat, but with that paragraph they seem to be trying their hardest to give the impression that they are.
Here in West Oxfordshire - only a decade ago, rock-solid safe Tory heartland - there simply isn't a Tory poster to be seen. Where ten years ago, vast landowners told their tenant farmers to put up Tory posters, today's farmers ignore them, or display their own support for the LibDems or Greens. In more built-up parts of the district, the odd fluttering Labour poster amid a modest background of LibDemmery.
In the middle of the season for villages' Annual General Parish Meetings, not a sign of the poor old Tories lumbered with standing for the now Lib/Lab-run Council in May. And no-one's even surprised any more the Tories are too frit - or lazy - to reveal themselves. Even the local universities' Tory clubs don't seem to have the spare members to canvass the hinterland.
Does this mean the Tories are about to be wiped out? Or that elderly Tories - with their postal votes and bus passes the new vote-supressing laws still accept s voter ID - will turn out and vote however little activist support has survived the catastrophe Johnson, Truss and Raab have inflicted on the area?
one can but hope. There would be no justice in the world if the tories survive the most recent 4 years of disdain, arrogance and fraud inflicted on the country.
This is my view too and I'm not being partisan. Given the shambles of the last few years, with a moderate, competent-looking alternative now available, if the Conservatives were to win a 5th election in a row because 'floating voters' still prefer them it would raise some troubling questions for/about the other parties, the electorate and our democracy.
Curious difference between now and the mid 90's.
At some point in the runup to 1997, the collective unconcious of the Conervative Party concluded that the game was up. Some of that was driven by those who never really wanted Major, still hankering after Maggie. Some of it was driven by the sense that a Blair victory was almost as good as a Conservative win. Possibly the key point was the 1995 leadership election, when it was only really the nutters who put their head above the parapet to oppose Major.
There was lots of noise, and "the don't knows will return on the day", but also a sense that the real action would restart after the inevitable defeat. (As it turned out, a long time after the 1997 defeat, but that's another story.)
That doesn't seem to be happening this time- not yet anyway. And yet, objectively, the Conservatives are in a bad place. What's going on?
No thats not true. Plenty thought the tories could pull it out of the bag in 97 remember the economy was strong then. If the tories were facing a blair type figure they woulf be polling 20% now.
Nobody thought the Tories were going to win in 97. Nobody. They were doomed after Major's win in 92.
John Major thought they could for a start. You are applying hindsight bias here.
Cheeky. You presume far too much about me re hindsight bias. I was very, very heavily involved in that campaign and not at a local level but at several target seats level and nobody thought the Tories were going to win in 97. Now I will admit I didn't have a tete a tete with John Major, so I can't be 100% sure about him, but he isn't stupid so I'm fairly confident he was fully aware he was going to lose. It was just by how much.
And as can be seen by others posts and references quoted from the time I am not alone in that assessment.
Now clearly if you are a party fighting an election where you are going to get stuffed you don't admit it before the polling stations are closed so I don't think you are giving John Major enough credit for knowing what was happening.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
Even the creator of Friends has basically disowned it and apologised I believe. It's very white (no way would all 6 characters be white if made today, and even guest stars were thin on the ground), and they make jokes about Chandler being seen as gay, and don't get started on the treatment of his dad.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
Hang on, they wouldn’t all be white today but is that actually a valid criticism? Aren’t a lot of real life friendship groups single race because… that’s just how life is? And isn’t Chandler’s response to his dad actually pretty true to life? All sounds like fringe criticisms to me. It’s not exactly Love Thy Neighbour.
It is fringe criticism, but for some reason, the producer took it to heart.
The producers of Friends have actually made financial reparations. No joke
What??!!! Who to?
Set up bursaries for black actors. Given money to black charities etc
Probably some decent causes. Don't really see why that needed to be tied to some kind of 'reparation' move.
Because Woke is a performative religion. You have to be SEEN to be doing it. Like those penitents that flog themselves in crowds
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I think the concept of 'problematisation' is often linked to Foucault, and deconstruction. It could be explained as being representative of a cultural tendency towards inaction in the face of complexity, or just intellectual laziness.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone on here bothering to describe works as problematic, right wing ‘woke gone mad’ types getting exercised about problematisation otoh..
The Gone With the Wind censorship frenzy was a classic of the type.
Lots of antiwokies seem to have discovered a love for the Harry Potter franchise. I smell a rat.
Strangely, if you draw a line, people start lining up on each side of it.
Not necessarily united by much more than the line.
You can find it all in Herodotus - nothing new here.
What was Herodotus' take on the Harry Potter franchise?
He may have confused it and wizards with local magi, who he describes as pretty bloodthirsty. Admirable live and let live attitude though.
The Magi are a very peculiar race, different entirely from the Egyptian priests, and indeed from all other men whatsoever. The Egyptian priests make it a point of religion not to kill any live animals except those which they offer in sacrifice. The Magi, on the contrary, kill animals of all kinds with their own hands, excepting dogs and men. They even seem to take a delight in the employment, and kill, as readily as they do other animals, ants and snakes, and such like flying or creeping things. However, since this has always been their custom, let them keep to it.
And we let these guys bring presents to the baby Jesus???
There were shepherds, some angels, and his mum and stepdad present, he was fine. Not sure about the animals in the barn.
Then again Pope Benedict apparently said there were no animals present at the nativity - the possibility they were plausibly in a barn even if not mentioned specifically I guess didn't pass muster.
There was some serious misreporting at the time. Confusion over Mary's condition being "stable"....
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
Even the creator of Friends has basically disowned it and apologised I believe. It's very white (no way would all 6 characters be white if made today, and even guest stars were thin on the ground), and they make jokes about Chandler being seen as gay, and don't get started on the treatment of his dad.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
Hang on, they wouldn’t all be white today but is that actually a valid criticism? Aren’t a lot of real life friendship groups single race because… that’s just how life is? And isn’t Chandler’s response to his dad actually pretty true to life? All sounds like fringe criticisms to me. It’s not exactly Love Thy Neighbour.
It is fringe criticism, but for some reason, the producer took it to heart.
The producers of Friends have actually made financial reparations. No joke
What??!!! Who to?
Set up bursaries for black actors. Given money to black charities etc
Those are just good things to do aren’t they? Framing as a sort of penance actually makes it less so - it’s making it about yourself.
You begin to understand Wokeness. It has to be a public seeking of forgiveness
“‘Friends’ lack of diversity ‘embarrassed’ its co-creator. So she made a $4-million decision“
The series’ failure to be more inclusive, Kauffman says, was a symptom of her internalization of the systemic racism that plagues our society, which she came to see more clearly in the aftermath of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the worldwide protest movement that erupted around it.
That reckoning was the catalyst for her decision to pledge $4 million to her alma mater, the Boston area’s Brandeis University, to establish an endowed professorship in the school’s African and African American studies department.“
There should be a special word for these trolls/bots that are happy to be banned after about ten comments
They are like a mixture of Tamil suicide bombers and one of those castes of social insects that commit suicide defending the nest
They know they are going to be mown down, but on they go. They start off with one or two sensible posts, then they get quite spicy, then by comment 9 it’s full on Kyiv-is-full-of-pedos, like they all have the same self-destruct programming
I wonder if they are actually computer bots, as in; there is no human involvement at all. It would explain the constant/rigid repetition of the suicidal behaviour. And they would take no time and very little money to create
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
Even the creator of Friends has basically disowned it and apologised I believe. It's very white (no way would all 6 characters be white if made today, and even guest stars were thin on the ground), and they make jokes about Chandler being seen as gay, and don't get started on the treatment of his dad.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
Hang on, they wouldn’t all be white today but is that actually a valid criticism? Aren’t a lot of real life friendship groups single race because… that’s just how life is? And isn’t Chandler’s response to his dad actually pretty true to life? All sounds like fringe criticisms to me. It’s not exactly Love Thy Neighbour.
It is fringe criticism, but for some reason, the producer took it to heart.
The producers of Friends have actually made financial reparations. No joke
What??!!! Who to?
Set up bursaries for black actors. Given money to black charities etc
Those are just good things to do aren’t they? Framing as a sort of penance actually makes it less so - it’s making it about yourself.
You begin to understand Wokeness. It has to be a public seeking of forgiveness
“‘Friends’ lack of diversity ‘embarrassed’ its co-creator. So she made a $4-million decision“
The series’ failure to be more inclusive, Kauffman says, was a symptom of her internalization of the systemic racism that plagues our society, which she came to see more clearly in the aftermath of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the worldwide protest movement that erupted around it.
That reckoning was the catalyst for her decision to pledge $4 million to her alma mater, the Boston area’s Brandeis University, to establish an endowed professorship in the school’s African and African American studies department.“
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I think the concept of 'problematisation' is often linked to Foucault, and deconstruction. It could be explained as being representative of a cultural tendency towards inaction in the face of complexity, or just intellectual laziness.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone on here bothering to describe works as problematic, right wing ‘woke gone mad’ types getting exercised about problematisation otoh..
The Gone With the Wind censorship frenzy was a classic of the type.
Lots of antiwokies seem to have discovered a love for the Harry Potter franchise. I smell a rat.
Strangely, if you draw a line, people start lining up on each side of it.
Not necessarily united by much more than the line.
You can find it all in Herodotus - nothing new here.
What was Herodotus' take on the Harry Potter franchise?
He may have confused it and wizards with local magi, who he describes as pretty bloodthirsty. Admirable live and let live attitude though.
The Magi are a very peculiar race, different entirely from the Egyptian priests, and indeed from all other men whatsoever. The Egyptian priests make it a point of religion not to kill any live animals except those which they offer in sacrifice. The Magi, on the contrary, kill animals of all kinds with their own hands, excepting dogs and men. They even seem to take a delight in the employment, and kill, as readily as they do other animals, ants and snakes, and such like flying or creeping things. However, since this has always been their custom, let them keep to it.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
Even the creator of Friends has basically disowned it and apologised I believe. It's very white (no way would all 6 characters be white if made today, and even guest stars were thin on the ground), and they make jokes about Chandler being seen as gay, and don't get started on the treatment of his dad.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
Hang on, they wouldn’t all be white today but is that actually a valid criticism? Aren’t a lot of real life friendship groups single race because… that’s just how life is? And isn’t Chandler’s response to his dad actually pretty true to life? All sounds like fringe criticisms to me. It’s not exactly Love Thy Neighbour.
It is fringe criticism, but for some reason, the producer took it to heart.
The producers of Friends have actually made financial reparations. No joke
What??!!! Who to?
Set up bursaries for black actors. Given money to black charities etc
Those are just good things to do aren’t they? Framing as a sort of penance actually makes it less so - it’s making it about yourself.
You begin to understand Wokeness. It has to be a public seeking of forgiveness
“‘Friends’ lack of diversity ‘embarrassed’ its co-creator. So she made a $4-million decision“
The series’ failure to be more inclusive, Kauffman says, was a symptom of her internalization of the systemic racism that plagues our society, which she came to see more clearly in the aftermath of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the worldwide protest movement that erupted around it.
That reckoning was the catalyst for her decision to pledge $4 million to her alma mater, the Boston area’s Brandeis University, to establish an endowed professorship in the school’s African and African American studies department.“
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I think the concept of 'problematisation' is often linked to Foucault, and deconstruction. It could be explained as being representative of a cultural tendency towards inaction in the face of complexity, or just intellectual laziness.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone on here bothering to describe works as problematic, right wing ‘woke gone mad’ types getting exercised about problematisation otoh..
The Gone With the Wind censorship frenzy was a classic of the type.
Lots of antiwokies seem to have discovered a love for the Harry Potter franchise. I smell a rat.
I’m sure that many of her more ‘mature’ fans fitting a particular political template is entirely coincidental.
On the transitioning rightwards as one gets older thing, I wonder how many of her younger fans are influenced by Rowling’s twitter noisiness, and will they be Rowlingers for life?
The Potters aren't the sort of thing you stay with as an adult, I wouldn't have thought. Although I confess I haven't read any. Seen a couple of the films and liked them well enough.
It'd be interesting to know how many new young readers JKR is attracting these days. Her anti-trans/pro-biology (delete to taste) stance is at odds with younger people but does this turn them off the books? Don't know.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I think the concept of 'problematisation' is often linked to Foucault, and deconstruction. It could be explained as being representative of a cultural tendency towards inaction in the face of complexity, or just intellectual laziness.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone on here bothering to describe works as problematic, right wing ‘woke gone mad’ types getting exercised about problematisation otoh..
The Gone With the Wind censorship frenzy was a classic of the type.
Lots of antiwokies seem to have discovered a love for the Harry Potter franchise. I smell a rat.
I’m sure that many of her more ‘mature’ fans fitting a particular political template is entirely coincidental.
On the transitioning rightwards as one gets older thing, I wonder how many of her younger fans are influenced by Rowling’s twitter noisiness, and will they be Rowlingers for life?
The Potters aren't the sort of thing you stay with as an adult, I wouldn't have thought. Although I confess I haven't read any. Seen a couple of the films and liked them well enough.
It'd be interesting to know how many new young readers JKR is attracting these days. Her anti-trans/pro-biology (delete to taste) stance is at odds with younger people but does this turn them off the books? Don't know.
Pretty sure she still sells trillions of copies . You could of course Google this for yourself in 3 seconds, but you’re too lazy
“Sales of Harry Potter titles were strong, up 35%. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was the 2nd bestselling children’s book of the year to date on UK Nielsen Bookscan, on the 25th anniversary of its first publication, showing the enduring appeal of this classic series”
WHY are you so lazy and willfully misinformed? It’s somewhat irritating. But, as I have oft said, in keeping with your narrow I’m-an-accountant-and-I-know-what-I-like character
I don’t get the number of people sucked in by Raab’s counter narrative.
Everyone has known for a long time that he is a bullying, incompetent shit.
Complaints about him go back to the late noughties. There’s a clip of him calling Keir Starmer a wanker in the House of Commons; Gina Miller says he called her a silly bitch.
Not to mention the alleged superinjunction.
A deeply unpleasant individual, who added nothing. We are well rid.
What's the phrase? He may be a bullying, incompetent shit, but he's our bullying incompetent shit!
Only takes you so far - I don't get the impression he was loathed in Tory ranks (except maybe by Boris acolytes), but I don't think he was seen as greatly effective either. Recent ConHome league tables have him middle of the pack at best.
All seems reasonably consistent with what I said. They didn't particularly like him, but they'll still whinge and whine like anything, because he was on their side.
Yes, but it's why he has gone - if a report like this had come in about, say, Wallace, who is much more popular with the party, would they have gone to bat for him to stop him going?
The question as I understood it was why anyone at all was defending him, not why more people hadn't defended him.
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
Even the creator of Friends has basically disowned it and apologised I believe. It's very white (no way would all 6 characters be white if made today, and even guest stars were thin on the ground), and they make jokes about Chandler being seen as gay, and don't get started on the treatment of his dad.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
Hang on, they wouldn’t all be white today but is that actually a valid criticism? Aren’t a lot of real life friendship groups single race because… that’s just how life is? And isn’t Chandler’s response to his dad actually pretty true to life? All sounds like fringe criticisms to me. It’s not exactly Love Thy Neighbour.
It is fringe criticism, but for some reason, the producer took it to heart.
The producers of Friends have actually made financial reparations. No joke
What??!!! Who to?
Set up bursaries for black actors. Given money to black charities etc
There should be a special word for these trolls/bots that are happy to be banned after about ten comments
They are like a mixture of Tamil suicide bombers and one of those castes of social insects that commit suicide defending the nest
They know they are going to be mown down, but on they go. They start off with one or two sensible posts, then they get quite spicy, then by comment 9 it’s full on Kyiv-is-full-of-pedos, like they all have the same self-destruct programming
I wonder if they are actually computer bots, as in; there is no human involvement at all. It would explain the constant/rigid repetition of the suicidal behaviour. And they would take no time and very little money to create
But the spelling mistakes and the lack of caps wouldn’t have been made by a language model, which knows these rules. It must be a human, who does actually have a reasonable amount of knowledge about UK politics.
Why they do it though, is a question best directed at next Saturday morning’s new user. If they ever understand the need to avoid getting onto Russian talking points within a couple of hours and a couple of dozen posts.
A politician getting the better of Dame Edna - Ted Heath of all people:
A special moment and a HUGE laugh. A Yorkshirewoman, by the way, was some kind of gay naval term that only Barry would know that ted Heath would know too. Another side of that myseterious infinite @Barry_Humphries genius.[VIDEO]
My ferry doesn't leave for eight hours, but I'm stopping for a few beers at a mate's place on the way down to Portsmouth and heading off in about half an hour
This is all my luggage for the next three weeks (weighs just over 8kg), and my walking hat. The beer is for scale, and has now been opened as my "one for the road"
Cheers!
Happy holidays. Send us photos and updates!
And keep us posted on your drinking. I love those posts in particular because you are possibly the only PB-er who drinks even more than me and therefore makes me feel less conspicuously drunken
I drink more. Just lack the personality to post much. Also the sobriety.
And anyway if anyone listened to me you'd all have been backing Biden to be dem nominee at up to 4.
I don’t get the number of people sucked in by Raab’s counter narrative.
Everyone has known for a long time that he is a bullying, incompetent shit.
Complaints about him go back to the late noughties. There’s a clip of him calling Keir Starmer a wanker in the House of Commons; Gina Miller says he called her a silly bitch.
Not to mention the alleged superinjunction.
A deeply unpleasant individual, who added nothing. We are well rid.
If he had opinions in line with most civil servants, would the same complaints have been made against him?
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.
Have to appreciate the top tier trolling by JK Rowling here.
That TV show is easily going to be the most viewed premium production around the world while it's running. It's a shame that we're going to be stuck with watching it on Sky or NowTV which won't have it in proper 4K.
If people just stuck to moaning about her they might be more effective. Trying to organise boycotts of massively popular entertainment franchises are setting up for failure and makes them look silly.
I do know someone who used to be a fan of the series but now seems conflicted about it because they describe JK as problematic (they also no longer rewatch Friends, which they used to love). We can reflect that some of the things we enjoyed once might not be what we'd agree with now, or dislike the creator, but it seems to cause an unreasonable level of anxiety for some.
"Problematic" is one of those pseudo-intellectual terms that I wish would just vanish. People end up criticising works not on the basis of whether they're good or bad, but whether or not they conform to their political outlook. Art should never be the servant of politics.
I was never into Friends, seeing it as completely anodyne. If someone can't watch something so innocuous, I imagine they'd have conniptions if they ever saw Blazing Saddles or The Producers.
I can go longer watch friends, due to the fact that (unlike Seinfeld), the comedy simply hasn't dated very well.
I feel like I’ve missed this. What have people decided to find offensive about Friends? I love it, but in many ways out of nostalgia for the past when I watched it. It’s gentle and friendly and I can’t imagine what’s offensive. If anything, one of the artistic criticisms I understand it that it’s just… nothing.
Even the creator of Friends has basically disowned it and apologised I believe. It's very white (no way would all 6 characters be white if made today, and even guest stars were thin on the ground), and they make jokes about Chandler being seen as gay, and don't get started on the treatment of his dad.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
Hang on, they wouldn’t all be white today but is that actually a valid criticism? Aren’t a lot of real life friendship groups single race because… that’s just how life is? And isn’t Chandler’s response to his dad actually pretty true to life? All sounds like fringe criticisms to me. It’s not exactly Love Thy Neighbour.
It is fringe criticism, but for some reason, the producer took it to heart.
The producers of Friends have actually made financial reparations. No joke
What??!!! Who to?
Set up bursaries for black actors. Given money to black charities etc
Those are just good things to do aren’t they? Framing as a sort of penance actually makes it less so - it’s making it about yourself.
You begin to understand Wokeness. It has to be a public seeking of forgiveness
“‘Friends’ lack of diversity ‘embarrassed’ its co-creator. So she made a $4-million decision“
The series’ failure to be more inclusive, Kauffman says, was a symptom of her internalization of the systemic racism that plagues our society, which she came to see more clearly in the aftermath of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the worldwide protest movement that erupted around it.
That reckoning was the catalyst for her decision to pledge $4 million to her alma mater, the Boston area’s Brandeis University, to establish an endowed professorship in the school’s African and African American studies department.“
Then she got the LA Times to write about it so everyone knows
Since when did a TV comedy show exist in order to serve an ideology? Totally bizarre.
I think the creator of Friends is engaging in performative handwringing, but some TV shows, movies, books, etc, were indeed intended to serve ideologies, at least from time to time. Very Special Episodes were intended to impart moral messages, or just have a general theme which is, to some people, ideological. So I don't think it is entirely off piste for some art to service an ideology to some degree. I just think if that is your primary intention it will probably end up being crap.
Take Brooklyn Nine Nine, one of my favourite comedies. When it was cancelled there was a BBC write up which leaned heavily on it being diverse, to a degree that to me made the show sound terrible - the cast certainly was ethnically diverse, they had an occasional episode tackling 'serious' subjects around racism in the police, and there were plenty of jokes along the way which were liberal in nature of course. But I never saw it as a preachy show, it's strength was its characters, its writing, the interplay. It was just a funny show, well done. If that happened to serve an ideology then whatever, who cares, they at least focused on being good first.
I don’t get the number of people sucked in by Raab’s counter narrative.
Everyone has known for a long time that he is a bullying, incompetent shit.
Complaints about him go back to the late noughties. There’s a clip of him calling Keir Starmer a wanker in the House of Commons; Gina Miller says he called her a silly bitch.
Not to mention the alleged superinjunction.
A deeply unpleasant individual, who added nothing. We are well rid.
If he had opinions in line with most civil servants, would the same complaints have been made against him?
You are making a presumption that the particular civil servants who complained did not have opinions in line with him. Is that set out somewhere, that they were politically opposed to him, or is that just his assumption? Who is to say the ones who complained have opinions in line with most civil servants?
Comments
A serious question.
What are your thoughts on how the west can reverse this process of Atomisation?
There are more than enough doubts now about #Covid about the #lockdowns and about the #CovidVaccine to render otiose the branding of dissident voices as #ConspiracyTheories In fact THAT branding is becoming the conspiracy!
3:40 PM · Apr 20, 2023
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8,560
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Although, in fairness, since becoming leader Yousless has abandoned the bottle scheme, the restrictions on fishing, the restrictions on further oil licences and the banning of advertising of alcohol in Scotland. Of the absurdities that Nicola indulged in to assuage the Green nutters only the JR of the s35 order is definitely being continued. It will be interesting if he is willing to reconsider the pause on dualling the A9.
It's fucking mental.
Stuff like Ross raising a child with his ex-wife who was a lesbian, and who comforted and supported when her parents wouldn't come to her marriage to her partner, seem not to count in the opposite direction I guess.
Today it was going ok for about 30 minutes.
On the transitioning rightwards as one gets older thing, I wonder how many of her younger fans are influenced by Rowling’s twitter noisiness, and will they be Rowlingers for life?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b00khkxy?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile
I was once at the BBC Archives in Caversham where they display the one page letter from Roy Plomley suggesting the format - which was all it then required.
The obvious flaw is that it doesn't really explain the Russian invasion. Unless they think all the kids should be sent to Putin and his cronies' dachas instead?
"I’m actually struggling to work out why Mr Raab has actually gone."
Actually, is there anything so actually strange about the actual fact that someone should have said they would actually resign if an actual report by a KC actually found they had been an actual bully, and then should actually have resigned when it actually did?
Wouldn't it have been more of a struggle to understand if he hadn't, actually?
It contains a grain of truth, but misses out lots of important qualifications. Foreign companies do indeed own large parts of the industry, and use their investments as reliable cash generators in return for the capital which they have invested. Our own pension funds invest money in them too, and for the same reasons.
However, on the timing of the investment, the major investments were made by municipalities and the private sector (private companies accounted for a quarter of the industry before privatisation). After Whitehall got its hands on it in the early 1900s, the government actually significantly underinvested, as was its wont. You really notice the difference when you go down to a sewer and see the magnificent Victorian engineering, usually brick, and compare it with stuff thrown together in the 60s or 70s and already crumbling.
That was why when it was privatised, the water industry bills rose unlike most privatised utilities despite significant operating efficiencies - the industry had a huge backlog of investment to make up. In addition, the industry needed to meet the quite unnecessarily high standards of water purity set out in the Water Framework Directive in 1980, agreeing to which was one of the few mistakes Lawson admitted in his memoirs.
The taxpayer isn't putting any investment in - it will all come from bill payers (though since everybody uses water, the distinction is perhaps academic).
What utter crap to portray them as virtuous defenders of abducted children.
But is it so difficult that the entire edifice of western liberal democracy is destined to imminently self destruct? Perhaps the Raab example reveals that the UK is already effectively ungovernable.
Minister for Indy: Jamie Hepburn
His wife Julie: head of strategic delivery
Her old boss Stuart McDonald: treasurer
Stuart shares an office with: Jamie Hepburn
MP Stuart McDonald appointed SNP treasurer
https://twitter.com/HTScotPol/status/1649733322048675843?s=20
The plunder of Russia's resources for a select few would have even shamed the Tsars.
Missed that.
And so it went into production.
Please bear bear in mind that you are doomed to die. American AI is far more advanced, and will wipe out humanity long before Chinese or Russian AI gets a chance.
Everyone has known for a long time that he is a bullying, incompetent shit.
Complaints about him go back to the late noughties. There’s a clip of him calling Keir Starmer a wanker in the House of Commons; Gina Miller says he called her a silly bitch.
Not to mention the alleged superinjunction.
A deeply unpleasant individual, who added nothing. We are well rid.
As do you, you disingenuous troll.
The Magi are a very peculiar race, different entirely from the Egyptian priests, and indeed from all other men whatsoever. The Egyptian priests make it a point of religion not to kill any live animals except those which they offer in sacrifice. The Magi, on the contrary, kill animals of all kinds with their own hands, excepting dogs and men. They even seem to take a delight in the employment, and kill, as readily as they do other animals, ants and snakes, and such like flying or creeping things. However, since this has always been their custom, let them keep to it.
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/historians/herod/herodotus3.html
Back to the Westend of Moscow with you!
“Out of all the social media platforms out there, LinkedIn has got to be one of my personal favourites”.
Jesus Christ, he is pure cringe.
More
Why is Russia ultra-MAGA - as in endorsing conspiracies that Fucker Carlson wouldn’t touch?
Has Dugin’s syphilis got *that* far?
There is a case for financing cash spending as it occurs, and I have made it in the context of other industries with small capital needs, but to do so for industries as capital intensive as water means very lumpy bills, because capex is lumpy.
£660bn seems too large to be credible if we're just talking about cleaning up sewerage, rather than the entire industry's capital plans, based on the documents I've seen (and I've trudged through dozens of business cases over the last year). £100-£150 billion over 30 years is credible, however.
Another thing I'm afraid of is that we commit to huge capital investments when interest rates are relatively low, only to find that the cost of capital rises hugely half way through, and they end up costing us much more than we think we will as financing costs soar. And inertia in government means that nothing is done to rectify that until far too late.
Being a 'conspiracy' does not mean things like logic and some supporting evidence should not be applied. A rich dude using his power and influence to commit crimes is quite easily plausuble. Other claims are not.
The one you are pushing is easily dismissed, not least since of all the silly reasons already raised that was not one of the, and they'd have pushed it hard before now.
Well, he certainly can't be flushed...
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/jul/02/friends-marta-kauffman-whiteness-donation
And as can be seen by others posts and references quoted from the time I am not alone in that assessment.
Now clearly if you are a party fighting an election where you are going to get stuffed you don't admit it before the polling stations are closed so I don't think you are giving John Major enough credit for knowing what was happening.
Then again Pope Benedict apparently said there were no animals present at the nativity - the possibility they were plausibly in a barn even if not mentioned specifically I guess didn't pass muster.
“‘Friends’ lack of diversity ‘embarrassed’ its co-creator. So she made a $4-million decision“
The series’ failure to be more inclusive, Kauffman says, was a symptom of her internalization of the systemic racism that plagues our society, which she came to see more clearly in the aftermath of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the worldwide protest movement that erupted around it.
That reckoning was the catalyst for her decision to pledge $4 million to her alma mater, the Boston area’s Brandeis University, to establish an endowed professorship in the school’s African and African American studies department.“
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2022-06-29/friends-diversity-marta-kauffman-brandeis-university
Then she got the LA Times to write about it so everyone knows
They are like a mixture of Tamil suicide bombers and one of those castes of social insects that commit suicide defending the nest
They know they are going to be mown down, but on they go. They start off with one or two sensible posts, then they get quite spicy, then by comment 9 it’s full on Kyiv-is-full-of-pedos, like they all have the same self-destruct programming
I wonder if they are actually computer bots, as in; there is no human involvement at all. It would explain the constant/rigid repetition of the suicidal behaviour. And they would take no time and very little money to create
Like the shepherds (dodgy, smelly people) it was pointing to the idea of Jesus not just coming for the respectable religious types of the time.
It'd be interesting to know how many new young readers JKR is attracting these days. Her anti-trans/pro-biology (delete to taste) stance is at odds with younger people but does this turn them off the books? Don't know.
“Sales of Harry Potter titles were strong, up 35%. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was the 2nd bestselling children’s book of the year to date on UK Nielsen Bookscan, on the 25th anniversary of its first publication, showing the enduring appeal of this classic series”
https://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/harry-potter-still-magic-bloomsbury-reports/
WHY are you so lazy and willfully misinformed? It’s somewhat irritating. But, as I have oft said, in keeping with your narrow I’m-an-accountant-and-I-know-what-I-like character
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4377928/#Comment_4377928
But the spelling mistakes and the lack of caps wouldn’t have been made by a language model, which knows these rules. It must be a human, who does actually have a reasonable amount of knowledge about UK politics.
Why they do it though, is a question best directed at next Saturday morning’s new user. If they ever understand the need to avoid getting onto Russian talking points within a couple of hours and a couple of dozen posts.
A special moment and a HUGE laugh. A Yorkshirewoman, by the way, was some kind of gay naval term that only Barry would know that ted Heath would know too. Another side of that myseterious infinite @Barry_Humphries genius.[VIDEO]
https://twitter.com/pauladornan/status/1648654601648742400
And anyway if anyone listened to me you'd all have been backing Biden to be dem nominee at up to 4.
Take Brooklyn Nine Nine, one of my favourite comedies. When it was cancelled there was a BBC write up which leaned heavily on it being diverse, to a degree that to me made the show sound terrible - the cast certainly was ethnically diverse, they had an occasional episode tackling 'serious' subjects around racism in the police, and there were plenty of jokes along the way which were liberal in nature of course. But I never saw it as a preachy show, it's strength was its characters, its writing, the interplay. It was just a funny show, well done. If that happened to serve an ideology then whatever, who cares, they at least focused on being good first.