Sweden has announced plans to build the world’s first electrified motorway, allowing electric cars to charge themselves as they pass along its surface.
The e-motorway, which is due to be completed in about two years, is part of wider efforts by Sweden to decarbonise the transport sector in response to a new EU law that requires new cars to have zero CO2 emissions from 2035. www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/04/30/sweden-build-worlds-first-electrified-motorway/
I had one when I was young. It was called Scalextric.
Will they go airborne if you wang it too fast around one of those banked turns, or flip over if the construction crew don't press the tracks together fully?
It is of course not impossible the Tories will also make some gains in areas where they lost control in 2019 and the new administration is unpopular. For example LD controlled Tunbridge Wells or Independent controlled Uttlesford
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Round here, the roads are in shite order (pot holes like bomb craters!) footpaths and verges are overgrown and fly tipping is out of control. I drove down the A46 last week from my village to the M1 and was appalled at how the embankments were festooned with litter, packaging, takeaway cartons and bits of car. Chaz should just have a quiet knees up with his family and bung my local council some cash to pay for a clean up!
TFS, they need to start making litter louts and criminals wear orange suits and prowl the highways of the UK picking up litter as a punishment
I'd vote for any party that advocated the death penalty for fly tippers. I genuinely hate people who do that, and I don't like to hate anyone.
They are positively encouraged in Gloucestershire.
If you want to take rubbish to your local Council dump you have to make an appointment.
Sweden has announced plans to build the world’s first electrified motorway, allowing electric cars to charge themselves as they pass along its surface.
The e-motorway, which is due to be completed in about two years, is part of wider efforts by Sweden to decarbonise the transport sector in response to a new EU law that requires new cars to have zero CO2 emissions from 2035. www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/04/30/sweden-build-worlds-first-electrified-motorway/
... seriously, though, I had to find an account not paywalled as it is so intriguing. Not at all clear how people are supposed not to fry themselves with some designs, one actually being a Scalextric style strip in the road (albeit sans slot, rather disappointingly) and others relying on e/m fields (bit hard on anyone with a pacemaker or laptop, perhaps)? One hopes those have been sorted out.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Round here, the roads are in shite order (pot holes like bomb craters!) footpaths and verges are overgrown and fly tipping is out of control. I drove down the A46 last week from my village to the M1 and was appalled at how the embankments were festooned with litter, packaging, takeaway cartons and bits of car. Chaz should just have a quiet knees up with his family and bung my local council some cash to pay for a clean up!
TFS, they need to start making litter louts and criminals wear orange suits and prowl the highways of the UK picking up litter as a punishment
I'd vote for any party that advocated the death penalty for fly tippers. I genuinely hate people who do that, and I don't like to hate anyone.
They are positively encouraged in Gloucestershire.
If you want to take rubbish to your local Council dump you have to make an appointment.
It’s a rule universally recognised that the more bureaucratic it is to comply with the law, the fewer people comply with it.
Retail local politics in the good old days focused on things like fly tipping, and pot holes. Now it’s all just don’t build this don’t build that nimbyism.
'SUPPORT for the royal family is at an “all time low”, Professor John Curtice has said.
The polling expert’s assessment comes just one week ahead of King Charles’s coronation, which hit the headlines on Sunday after a call was put out for millions to give a “great cry” of allegiance during the ceremony.
Speaking to GB News, Curtice said that the data was increasingly suggesting that younger generations were moving away from supporting the royals.
“Support for them is now at an all time low and frankly it declined during the Queen Elizabeth era,” Curtice said.'
Hmm. I don't think demands for a loyalty oath will help.
Wokery.
It's deeply fashionable now to be against Britain and any symbols of Britain on the basis that they represent "colonialism", "racism" and "slavery".
Of course, this sentiment will be funded, advocated and encouraged by our enemies in China and Russia; they are hoping that if we lose enough self-confidence we might bring it all down on top of us ourselves.
They might be right.
Russia, and Russian propaganda being well known for ‘wokery’. Strange universe you sometimes inhabit.
Never mind hats, what about ties? I had to wear one every day in my first consulting job, and now I can’t actually remember the last time I put one on.
I wore a tie on Thursday, and I work in consulting.
Never mind hats, what about ties? I had to wear one every day in my first consulting job, and now I can’t actually remember the last time I put one on.
Maybe it's time for ties to come back into fashion again.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
The clowns never went to a Wetherspoons then. Assume the dumb clucks were in London getting ripped off.
London and Herefordshire apparently. It’s true that I doubt they went to Wetherspoons.
Personally, I used to be a big fan of the Spoon, but I boycotted them since 2016 and won’t go back.
They are hard to beat for a good pint , lots of choice , great prices but tend to be big barns most of time. Whole UK is in doldrums but I suspect most of USA is the same apart from the elite
I've had guests from Scandinavian countries over the years and always take them to wetherspoons. Every time they are absolutely shocked at how it is possible to buy a meal and a beer for less than £5 in (what seems like) a perfectly well to do pub/restaurant; and that you could sit there all day without being bothered. It is hard to convey just how impossible this situation would be in many other countries. Although I too got irritated with the Brexit stuff they are an incredible operation, and based on everything I have seen, they have a positive impact when they open up in new locations. Notably it is one of the few pubs where you see young people.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Round here, the roads are in shite order (pot holes like bomb craters!) footpaths and verges are overgrown and fly tipping is out of control. I drove down the A46 last week from my village to the M1 and was appalled at how the embankments were festooned with litter, packaging, takeaway cartons and bits of car. Chaz should just have a quiet knees up with his family and bung my local council some cash to pay for a clean up!
TFS, they need to start making litter louts and criminals wear orange suits and prowl the highways of the UK picking up litter as a punishment
I'd vote for any party that advocated the death penalty for fly tippers. I genuinely hate people who do that, and I don't like to hate anyone.
They are positively encouraged in Gloucestershire.
If you want to take rubbish to your local Council dump you have to make an appointment.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Round here, the roads are in shite order (pot holes like bomb craters!) footpaths and verges are overgrown and fly tipping is out of control. I drove down the A46 last week from my village to the M1 and was appalled at how the embankments were festooned with litter, packaging, takeaway cartons and bits of car. Chaz should just have a quiet knees up with his family and bung my local council some cash to pay for a clean up!
TFS, they need to start making litter louts and criminals wear orange suits and prowl the highways of the UK picking up litter as a punishment
I'd vote for any party that advocated the death penalty for fly tippers. I genuinely hate people who do that, and I don't like to hate anyone.
They are positively encouraged in Gloucestershire.
If you want to take rubbish to your local Council dump you have to make an appointment.
It’s a rule universally recognised that the more bureaucratic it is to comply with the law, the fewer people comply with it.
Retail local politics in the good old days focused on things like fly tipping, and pot holes. Now it’s all just don’t build this don’t build that nimbyism.
Fly tipping and pot holes still features. It just isnt as effective as promising to block housing.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
The clowns never went to a Wetherspoons then. Assume the dumb clucks were in London getting ripped off.
London and Herefordshire apparently. It’s true that I doubt they went to Wetherspoons.
Personally, I used to be a big fan of the Spoon, but I boycotted them since 2016 and won’t go back.
They are hard to beat for a good pint , lots of choice , great prices but tend to be big barns most of time. Whole UK is in doldrums but I suspect most of USA is the same apart from the elite
I've had guests from Scandinavian countries over the years and always take them to wetherspoons. Every time they are absolutely shocked at how it is possible to buy a meal and a beer for less than £5 in (what seems like) a perfectly well to do pub/restaurant; and that you could sit there all day without being bothered. It is hard to convey just how impossible this situation would be in many other countries. Although I too got irritated with the Brexit stuff they are an incredible operation, and based on everything I have seen, they have a positive impact when they open up in new locations. Notably it is one of the few pubs where you see young people.
It’s such a shame Tim went all Brexity. Wetherspoons could otherwise have been up in that rarefied air of the genuinely Major-esque classless consumer society with Greggs, Argos and Boots.
Village chipper has some sad looking union flag pennants hanging from the ceiling. I do wonder if half-arsed will be *the* look this coronation.
Seriously though, the notion that we all sit patriotically around the telly and chant a pledge of fealty at the correct time is the most absurd thing I have heard in ages.
North Hertfordshire, OTOH, does look as though it will be celebrating. There's loads of bunting in the villages.
Same in Hampshire.
To the broader point on public attitudes to the coronation I expect a very decent level of participation.
It's very British to whinge about class and privilege when actually all people want is a little piece of it themselves.
When did absolutely everybody first start disliking Jews and giving them such a bad press? Does it start with the Jews having Jesus killed?
Careful, that is another antisemitic trope. Two of them in fact. That Jews killed Jesus and more fundamentally that Jews did anything to deserve universal antisemitism.
Indeed, it was the Romans. We are supposed to skip over that because Constantine turned the Romans into goodies.
“Careful, that is another antisemitic trope. That Jews killed Jesus” “Indeed, it was the Romans. We are supposed to skip over that because Constantine turned the Romans into goodies”
Obviously I don’t expect much understanding from DecrepitJohn, who like 98% of PB likely not a Christian. But I am very surprised you say this Foxy. I am surprised we are so far apart on the passion 🥺
The Passion According To MoonRabbit
Jesus was a Jew from a time of sectarian turbulence. Jesus and his followers launched what can be called a terror attack on the Temple and the authority of high priests running the Jewish council, the headline was attacking money lenders and saying they were defiling a holy place. I see this attack like the reformation - Jesus argument is money lenders charged rip off rates, the sacrificial dove sellers were a rip off, and the need to pay for ritual bathing to get clean to pray a rip off too. leading priests and scribes (law writers) lived lavish lifestyles, they liked having this income. The ruling council were pissed off and feeling humiliated by Jesus attack on their authority. Joseph (Of Aramathea) was at hastily called elite council meeting, representing his sect, but out voted on decision to arrest Jesus and have him killed. Some on ruling council happy Jesus appeared to over step the mark; Pharisee, a strict religious sect of Jews, didn’t like Jesus message, it wasn’t orthodox preaching as he was mingling Greek philosophy particularly from Plato, for example The Sermon On The Mount, with the Torah forming not so strict Jewish code, a more hellenised message for Jews. Jesus arrest by the Temple Guards (Jews) was a sword fight, indeed lead Jew arresting Jesus lost an ear (AN Wilson reckons this player went on to become Paul). Jesus was tried by the Jewish court, the charge was Blasphemy for claiming to be King of the Jews. to the Jewish ruling council, Jesus deliberately rode into town on a donkey, fulfilling a prophecy in the Hebrew Bible about the coming of the Messiah, and was mobbed by an adoring crowd. The court found Jesus guilty. But the court didn’t have the power to execute people. Jesus was handed over to the Romans with strong recommendation from the Jewish Council to execute him for sedition. The Roman occupiers had their own considerations. Passover always difficult time for running the province, crowds piling in. Pilate, however you characterise him, had career in Roman Empire depending on running the province smooth and efficiently, had 6,000 soldiers on hand to keep the peace in a city now bulging with 2.5 million Jews, and religious authorities, whose cooperation he needed for a quiet life, wanted him to execute Jesus, supported by angry mob possibly organised by Temple authorities, if strict in their faith, like Pharisee, happy to come baying for Jesus' blood. Jesus had public support but Pharisee could get a lot of supporters out demonstrating too. It all leads to an obvious conclusion except the question, did Jesus come here knowing it would lead to this or not.
It wasn’t a terror attack. He simply overturned some tables.
Was he and supporters armed? How did the guards react? No speech denouncing rip off bathing and dove prices?
No - they were devout Jews at worship - they would not have been armed. He cast out those who bought and sold, overturned the tables of the moneylenders and those that sold doves. He said unto them “my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have turned it into a den of thieves”
Basically a Rabbi had a bit of a rant and chased some people out of the Temple. More speakers corner than Manchester arena.
We have completely different takes on this, and different understandings of Jesus too no doubt. Where you are wrong I am sure is how Jesus could have got away with what you are claiming, he needed hundreds around him to deter arrest. You are not reading it correctly as the larger scale demo it could only have been to have avoided intervention.
“expels the merchants and consumers from the temple” How many followers did Jesus take to achieve this? so Guards feared a riot if they intervened? One account says 340. If Jesus followers had breast plates as reported they likely had arms too. Knocked over tables probably undersells the size and intent of the actual flash mob protest.
There’s a strong underlying point to the demo, Rich ripping off the poor, but it was also to show growing strength - popularity and public support for protest and change and its charismatic leader.
Is this the only part of The Passion According to MoonRabbit you have a problem with?
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Round here, the roads are in shite order (pot holes like bomb craters!) footpaths and verges are overgrown and fly tipping is out of control. I drove down the A46 last week from my village to the M1 and was appalled at how the embankments were festooned with litter, packaging, takeaway cartons and bits of car. Chaz should just have a quiet knees up with his family and bung my local council some cash to pay for a clean up!
TFS, they need to start making litter louts and criminals wear orange suits and prowl the highways of the UK picking up litter as a punishment
I'd vote for any party that advocated the death penalty for fly tippers. I genuinely hate people who do that, and I don't like to hate anyone.
They are positively encouraged in Gloucestershire.
If you want to take rubbish to your local Council dump you have to make an appointment.
And in Essex.
You used to be able to just drop in. Then Covid happened and they instituted a booking system. Fairy nuff. But when Covid ended, the booking system stayed. The site management got paid the same for doing less work. It ain't going to change. Meanwhile fly-tipping inevitably increases.
...YouGov interviewed 6,004 British adults between 21 and 28 April. Not a huge sample to back up such precision predictions, or is it?...
Good question.
DEEP BREATH
The saying goes "you don't have to drink all the soup to know if it's salty"
AND
Polling techniques that rely on the central limit theorem have a well-discussed formula for the margin of error and six thousand is more than enough
BUT
Poll response in the modern day is so poor it makes poll-response self-selective and nonrandom and makes that formula inapplicable
AND
MRP is a modelling technique that isn't theoretically underpinned by the CLT - it's just a big data technique - and so that formula doesn't apply anyway
SO
We don't know.
ALSO
Following the reforms of the past few years the polling companies committed to include a statement on what the margin of error should be...but YouGov haven't in this poll
Are we happy now?
What goes on in MRP? Is it like propensity matching?
I don't know what propensity matching is. But I do know what MRP is. It goes like this:
You have a massive online panel
You know the characteristics of the people on that panel (age, sex, loc'n, social group, etc)
You ask them some questions about who they gonna vote for
When they've answered you know the propensity to vote for X in each characteristic
You know the number of people in each voting area with those characteristics
So you match one to the other - oh, you may be right - fiddle with the propensity to vote, and - voila - you know what the votes will be in each voting area.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
When did absolutely everybody first start disliking Jews and giving them such a bad press? Does it start with the Jews having Jesus killed?
Careful, that is another antisemitic trope. Two of them in fact. That Jews killed Jesus and more fundamentally that Jews did anything to deserve universal antisemitism.
Indeed, it was the Romans. We are supposed to skip over that because Constantine turned the Romans into goodies.
“Careful, that is another antisemitic trope. That Jews killed Jesus” “Indeed, it was the Romans. We are supposed to skip over that because Constantine turned the Romans into goodies”
Obviously I don’t expect much understanding from DecrepitJohn, who like 98% of PB likely not a Christian. But I am very surprised you say this Foxy. I am surprised we are so far apart on the passion 🥺
The Passion According To MoonRabbit
Jesus was a Jew from a time of sectarian turbulence. Jesus and his followers launched what can be called a terror attack on the Temple and the authority of high priests running the Jewish council, the headline was attacking money lenders and saying they were defiling a holy place. I see this attack like the reformation - Jesus argument is money lenders charged rip off rates, the sacrificial dove sellers were a rip off, and the need to pay for ritual bathing to get clean to pray a rip off too. leading priests and scribes (law writers) lived lavish lifestyles, they liked having this income. The ruling council were pissed off and feeling humiliated by Jesus attack on their authority. Joseph (Of Aramathea) was at hastily called elite council meeting, representing his sect, but out voted on decision to arrest Jesus and have him killed. Some on ruling council happy Jesus appeared to over step the mark; Pharisee, a strict religious sect of Jews, didn’t like Jesus message, it wasn’t orthodox preaching as he was mingling Greek philosophy particularly from Plato, for example The Sermon On The Mount, with the Torah forming not so strict Jewish code, a more hellenised message for Jews. Jesus arrest by the Temple Guards (Jews) was a sword fight, indeed lead Jew arresting Jesus lost an ear (AN Wilson reckons this player went on to become Paul). Jesus was tried by the Jewish court, the charge was Blasphemy for claiming to be King of the Jews. to the Jewish ruling council, Jesus deliberately rode into town on a donkey, fulfilling a prophecy in the Hebrew Bible about the coming of the Messiah, and was mobbed by an adoring crowd. The court found Jesus guilty. But the court didn’t have the power to execute people. Jesus was handed over to the Romans with strong recommendation from the Jewish Council to execute him for sedition. The Roman occupiers had their own considerations. Passover always difficult time for running the province, crowds piling in. Pilate, however you characterise him, had career in Roman Empire depending on running the province smooth and efficiently, had 6,000 soldiers on hand to keep the peace in a city now bulging with 2.5 million Jews, and religious authorities, whose cooperation he needed for a quiet life, wanted him to execute Jesus, supported by angry mob possibly organised by Temple authorities, if strict in their faith, like Pharisee, happy to come baying for Jesus' blood. Jesus had public support but Pharisee could get a lot of supporters out demonstrating too. It all leads to an obvious conclusion except the question, did Jesus come here knowing it would lead to this or not.
It wasn’t a terror attack. He simply overturned some tables.
Was he and supporters armed? How did the guards react? No speech denouncing rip off bathing and dove prices?
No - they were devout Jews at worship - they would not have been armed. He cast out those who bought and sold, overturned the tables of the moneylenders and those that sold doves. He said unto them “my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have turned it into a den of thieves”
Basically a Rabbi had a bit of a rant and chased some people out of the Temple. More speakers corner than Manchester arena.
We have completely different takes on this, and different understandings of Jesus too no doubt. Where you are wrong I am sure is how Jesus could have got away with what you are claiming, he needed hundreds around him to deter arrest. You are not reading it correctly as the larger scale demo it could only have been to have avoided intervention.
“expels the merchants and consumers from the temple” How many followers did Jesus take to achieve this? so Guards feared a riot if they intervened? One account says 340. If Jesus followers had breast plates as reported they likely had arms too. Knocked over tables probably undersells the size and intent of the actual flash mob protest.
There’s a strong underlying point to the demo, Rich ripping off the poor, but it was also to show growing strength - popularity and public support for protest and change and its charismatic leader.
Is this the only part of the Gospel According to MoonRabbit you have a problem with?
A devout Jew would not have brought a mob into the Temple.
'SUPPORT for the royal family is at an “all time low”, Professor John Curtice has said.
The polling expert’s assessment comes just one week ahead of King Charles’s coronation, which hit the headlines on Sunday after a call was put out for millions to give a “great cry” of allegiance during the ceremony.
Speaking to GB News, Curtice said that the data was increasingly suggesting that younger generations were moving away from supporting the royals.
“Support for them is now at an all time low and frankly it declined during the Queen Elizabeth era,” Curtice said.'
Hmm. I don't think demands for a loyalty oath will help.
Wokery.
It's deeply fashionable now to be against Britain and any symbols of Britain on the basis that they represent "colonialism", "racism" and "slavery".
Of course, this sentiment will be funded, advocated and encouraged by our enemies in China and Russia; they are hoping that if we lose enough self-confidence we might bring it all down on top of us ourselves.
They might be right.
Russia, and Russian propaganda being well known for ‘wokery’. Strange universe you sometimes inhabit.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Grant you the Lizzie Line, but sometimes that just throws the creeping mediocrity of everything else into relief. How could it not be, when we've spent a decade or so not spending enough on maintenance?
And an awful lot of town centres have an awful lot of empty or last resort shops in them.
Yes. London and most of our other large cities are in pretty good shape. And the villages are okay. It's the towns in between, small and large, that are often shabby, with decaying centres, miserable cloned high streets, and desolate estates where there's nothing to do, especially for the young.
What we need is some levelling-up.
I live in Hampshire, much of which is simply stunning. But, it is largely affluent. It's not the case for places like Aldershot, or some wards of Portsmouth and Southampton.
But, I've travelled a lot and - outside some unfortunate inner cities - the UK does scrub up well compared to most other countries. We have good planning standards and protection of rural and green areas, and fairly good civic attitudes to tidiness.
Greece and Thailand have appalling littering and development control, the US seemingly has none, and Ireland lets itself down by some random unsightly development in rural areas along its main roads. And I've seen some proper shitholes in France.
Now, just imagine the reaction if you'd expressed concern about bringing people into the country wearing yarmulkas ...
It's baseball caps that I'd like to see outlawed.
A baseball cap is an amazing thing. When someone wears one it sucks the intelligence out of their brain.
I don't think I have ever worn one. Probably just as well, all things considered.
They are quite useful for actual sports. For example, I use one to keep rain off my glasses when rowing.
If you can find one which fits your headshape (far from a given with my massive head) they do a decent job of keeping summer sun off a scalp not as shielded by hair as it once was, and in my case look less preposterous in doing so than most other hats.
Tilley hats do the trick. Not as Croc Dundee as some.
Very popular in Seattle AND also ugliest hats ever.
Personally would rather wear an old bucket on my fool head.
Some of us don't have any choice. Too fair and too sensitive to the sun.
Village chipper has some sad looking union flag pennants hanging from the ceiling. I do wonder if half-arsed will be *the* look this coronation.
Seriously though, the notion that we all sit patriotically around the telly and chant a pledge of fealty at the correct time is the most absurd thing I have heard in ages.
North Hertfordshire, OTOH, does look as though it will be celebrating. There's loads of bunting in the villages.
Same in Hampshire.
To the broader point on public attitudes to the coronation I expect a very decent level of participation.
It's very British to whinge about class and privilege when actually all people want is a little piece of it themselves.
No most people want money. They dont want to be the aristocracy.
Nor can they be unless they are either born into it or marry into it
Now, just imagine the reaction if you'd expressed concern about bringing people into the country wearing yarmulkas ...
It's baseball caps that I'd like to see outlawed.
A baseball cap is an amazing thing. When someone wears one it sucks the intelligence out of their brain.
I don't think I have ever worn one. Probably just as well, all things considered.
They are quite useful for actual sports. For example, I use one to keep rain off my glasses when rowing.
If you can find one which fits your headshape (far from a given with my massive head) they do a decent job of keeping summer sun off a scalp not as shielded by hair as it once was, and in my case look less preposterous in doing so than most other hats.
Tilley hats do the trick. Not as Croc Dundee as some.
Very popular in Seattle AND also ugliest hats ever.
Personally would rather wear an old bucket on my fool head.
Some of us don't have any choice. Too fair and too sensitive to the sun.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Round here, the roads are in shite order (pot holes like bomb craters!) footpaths and verges are overgrown and fly tipping is out of control. I drove down the A46 last week from my village to the M1 and was appalled at how the embankments were festooned with litter, packaging, takeaway cartons and bits of car. Chaz should just have a quiet knees up with his family and bung my local council some cash to pay for a clean up!
TFS, they need to start making litter louts and criminals wear orange suits and prowl the highways of the UK picking up litter as a punishment
I'd vote for any party that advocated the death penalty for fly tippers. I genuinely hate people who do that, and I don't like to hate anyone.
They are positively encouraged in Gloucestershire.
If you want to take rubbish to your local Council dump you have to make an appointment.
And in Essex.
You used to be able to just drop in. Then Covid happened and they instituted a booking system. Fairy nuff. But when Covid ended, the booking system stayed. The site management got paid the same for doing less work. It ain't going to change. Meanwhile fly-tipping inevitably increases.
Leicestershire have dropped the booking, but charge for sheet glass, rubble, plasterboard, toilets, sinks and they moan about things like sofas and beds and sometimes won't take them if the relevant skip is full. Guess what gets fly tipped down our country lanes?
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
Hard disagree. London’s looking a lot better. And how you can call the Elizabeth Line “shabby” living on the hell that is the NY Metro means you must be on crack.
Wild guess, but am guessing that few of Garden's NYC friends to travel to UK are riding the London Underground OR a New York City SUBWAY.
So re: "shabby" doubt it was re: the Elizabeth line.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
Indeed. It’s where so much of austerity hit, on local budgets, and we reap what we sowed now.
The other issue in England is the growth of car use since around 2010 and the trend for SUV style cars, leading to congestion, potholes, air pollution, parking problems etc. It is making places less and less liveable.
When did absolutely everybody first start disliking Jews and giving them such a bad press? Does it start with the Jews having Jesus killed?
Careful, that is another antisemitic trope. Two of them in fact. That Jews killed Jesus and more fundamentally that Jews did anything to deserve universal antisemitism.
Indeed, it was the Romans. We are supposed to skip over that because Constantine turned the Romans into goodies.
“Careful, that is another antisemitic trope. That Jews killed Jesus” “Indeed, it was the Romans. We are supposed to skip over that because Constantine turned the Romans into goodies”
Obviously I don’t expect much understanding from DecrepitJohn, who like 98% of PB likely not a Christian. But I am very surprised you say this Foxy. I am surprised we are so far apart on the passion 🥺
The Passion According To MoonRabbit
Jesus was a Jew from a time of sectarian turbulence. Jesus and his followers launched what can be called a terror attack on the Temple and the authority of high priests running the Jewish council, the headline was attacking money lenders and saying they were defiling a holy place. I see this attack like the reformation - Jesus argument is money lenders charged rip off rates, the sacrificial dove sellers were a rip off, and the need to pay for ritual bathing to get clean to pray a rip off too. leading priests and scribes (law writers) lived lavish lifestyles, they liked having this income. The ruling council were pissed off and feeling humiliated by Jesus attack on their authority. Joseph (Of Aramathea) was at hastily called elite council meeting, representing his sect, but out voted on decision to arrest Jesus and have him killed. Some on ruling council happy Jesus appeared to over step the mark; Pharisee, a strict religious sect of Jews, didn’t like Jesus message, it wasn’t orthodox preaching as he was mingling Greek philosophy particularly from Plato, for example The Sermon On The Mount, with the Torah forming not so strict Jewish code, a more hellenised message for Jews. Jesus arrest by the Temple Guards (Jews) was a sword fight, indeed lead Jew arresting Jesus lost an ear (AN Wilson reckons this player went on to become Paul). Jesus was tried by the Jewish court, the charge was Blasphemy for claiming to be King of the Jews. to the Jewish ruling council, Jesus deliberately rode into town on a donkey, fulfilling a prophecy in the Hebrew Bible about the coming of the Messiah, and was mobbed by an adoring crowd. The court found Jesus guilty. But the court didn’t have the power to execute people. Jesus was handed over to the Romans with strong recommendation from the Jewish Council to execute him for sedition. The Roman occupiers had their own considerations. Passover always difficult time for running the province, crowds piling in. Pilate, however you characterise him, had career in Roman Empire depending on running the province smooth and efficiently, had 6,000 soldiers on hand to keep the peace in a city now bulging with 2.5 million Jews, and religious authorities, whose cooperation he needed for a quiet life, wanted him to execute Jesus, supported by angry mob possibly organised by Temple authorities, if strict in their faith, like Pharisee, happy to come baying for Jesus' blood. Jesus had public support but Pharisee could get a lot of supporters out demonstrating too. It all leads to an obvious conclusion except the question, did Jesus come here knowing it would lead to this or not.
It wasn’t a terror attack. He simply overturned some tables.
Was he and supporters armed? How did the guards react? No speech denouncing rip off bathing and dove prices?
No - they were devout Jews at worship - they would not have been armed. He cast out those who bought and sold, overturned the tables of the moneylenders and those that sold doves. He said unto them “my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have turned it into a den of thieves”
Basically a Rabbi had a bit of a rant and chased some people out of the Temple. More speakers corner than Manchester arena.
We have completely different takes on this, and different understandings of Jesus too no doubt. Where you are wrong I am sure is how Jesus could have got away with what you are claiming, he needed hundreds around him to deter arrest. You are not reading it correctly as the larger scale demo it could only have been to have avoided intervention.
“expels the merchants and consumers from the temple” How many followers did Jesus take to achieve this? so Guards feared a riot if they intervened? One account says 340. If Jesus followers had breast plates as reported they likely had arms too. Knocked over tables probably undersells the size and intent of the actual flash mob protest.
There’s a strong underlying point to the demo, Rich ripping off the poor, but it was also to show growing strength - popularity and public support for protest and change and its charismatic leader.
Is this the only part of the Gospel According to MoonRabbit you have a problem with?
A devout Jew would not have brought a mob into the Temple.
Not a mob, A protesting group who passionately don’t agree the purpose of the New Temple as the place and means for the rich to rip off the poor and keep the rich in luxury. Not a mob, a large scale demonstration for reform and change.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
Hard disagree. London’s looking a lot better. And how you can call the Elizabeth Line “shabby” living on the hell that is the NY Metro means you must be on crack.
Wild guess, but am guessing that few of Garden's NYC friends to travel to UK are riding the London Underground OR a New York City SUBWAY.
So re: "shabby" doubt it was re: the Elizabeth line.
Was on the Paris Metro on the weekend. They've made some big improvements. It certainly smells less of piss. But the stairs everywhere.... Up, down, up, down, up, down. Makes TfLs issues with inaccessibility look insignificant.
Village chipper has some sad looking union flag pennants hanging from the ceiling. I do wonder if half-arsed will be *the* look this coronation.
Seriously though, the notion that we all sit patriotically around the telly and chant a pledge of fealty at the correct time is the most absurd thing I have heard in ages.
North Hertfordshire, OTOH, does look as though it will be celebrating. There's loads of bunting in the villages.
Same in Hampshire.
To the broader point on public attitudes to the coronation I expect a very decent level of participation.
It's very British to whinge about class and privilege when actually all people want is a little piece of it themselves.
No most people want money. They dont want to be the aristocracy.
There's still status to be had. That's why some people still buy peerages and honours.
'SUPPORT for the royal family is at an “all time low”, Professor John Curtice has said.
The polling expert’s assessment comes just one week ahead of King Charles’s coronation, which hit the headlines on Sunday after a call was put out for millions to give a “great cry” of allegiance during the ceremony.
Speaking to GB News, Curtice said that the data was increasingly suggesting that younger generations were moving away from supporting the royals.
“Support for them is now at an all time low and frankly it declined during the Queen Elizabeth era,” Curtice said.'
Hmm. I don't think demands for a loyalty oath will help.
Wokery.
It's deeply fashionable now to be against Britain and any symbols of Britain on the basis that they represent "colonialism", "racism" and "slavery".
Of course, this sentiment will be funded, advocated and encouraged by our enemies in China and Russia; they are hoping that if we lose enough self-confidence we might bring it all down on top of us ourselves.
They might be right.
Russia, and Russian propaganda being well known for ‘wokery’. Strange universe you sometimes inhabit.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Grant you the Lizzie Line, but sometimes that just throws the creeping mediocrity of everything else into relief. How could it not be, when we've spent a decade or so not spending enough on maintenance?
And an awful lot of town centres have an awful lot of empty or last resort shops in them.
Yes. London and most of our other large cities are in pretty good shape. And the villages are okay. It's the towns in between, small and large, that are often shabby, with decaying centres, miserable cloned high streets, and desolate estates where there's nothing to do, especially for the young.
What we need is some levelling-up.
I live in Hampshire, much of which is simply stunning. But, it is largely affluent. It's not the case for places like Aldershot, or some wards of Portsmouth and Southampton.
But, I've travelled a lot and - outside some unfortunate inner cities - the UK does scrub up well compared to most other countries. We have good planning standards and protection of rural and green areas, and fairly good civic attitudes to tidiness.
Greece and Thailand have appalling littering and development control, the US seemingly has none, and Ireland lets itself down by some random unsightly development in rural areas along its main roads. And I've seen some proper shitholes in France.
Switzerland is probably the tidiest I've seen.
Weirdly, I find the US countryside (upstate NY and New England) very tidy.
I can’t quite figure out why, since in the towns it’s wall to wall strip malls and Dunkin’ Donuts, and Americans don’t recycle like Europe does.
'SUPPORT for the royal family is at an “all time low”, Professor John Curtice has said.
The polling expert’s assessment comes just one week ahead of King Charles’s coronation, which hit the headlines on Sunday after a call was put out for millions to give a “great cry” of allegiance during the ceremony.
Speaking to GB News, Curtice said that the data was increasingly suggesting that younger generations were moving away from supporting the royals.
“Support for them is now at an all time low and frankly it declined during the Queen Elizabeth era,” Curtice said.'
Hmm. I don't think demands for a loyalty oath will help.
Wokery.
It's deeply fashionable now to be against Britain and any symbols of Britain on the basis that they represent "colonialism", "racism" and "slavery".
Of course, this sentiment will be funded, advocated and encouraged by our enemies in China and Russia; they are hoping that if we lose enough self-confidence we might bring it all down on top of us ourselves.
They might be right.
Russia, and Russian propaganda being well known for ‘wokery’. Strange universe you sometimes inhabit.
Actually he has a point. Russia is willing to fund any movement that looks like it can disrupt UK stability. That has certainly included Scottish independence in recent times, but also Brexit.
They are equal opportunity disrupters.
Indeed - but that was hardly the thrust of his post.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
Article in unherd this week about how the home counties are now declining too. The parts of the country that have improved seem to be central manchester and parts of central london. By contrast much of old london suburbia ie areas like wembley are in steep decline. Many of the uk small towns are also in steep decline.
As always, it's a very mixed bag and it depends where you go. Some of our towns and cities are poverty sinks with a lot of intractable problems. Others are in pretty good shape and much of the appearance of shabbiness comes from empty retail units which are simply surplus to requirements in the age of online retail, and end up either rotting or being occupied by charity tat outlets. It ought not to be beyond the wit of man to solve both of these problems - especially the proliferation of junk shops which, if it doesn't already exist, could be remedied by giving local authorities the power to veto such outlets where they're spreading like a nasty rash, and active encouragement to use it. But getting long-term empty units converted or redeveloped to provide much-needed residential accommodation is going to need a lot of money in cases where freeholders are unwilling or unable to put in the required investment.
When did absolutely everybody first start disliking Jews and giving them such a bad press? Does it start with the Jews having Jesus killed?
Careful, that is another antisemitic trope. Two of them in fact. That Jews killed Jesus and more fundamentally that Jews did anything to deserve universal antisemitism.
Indeed, it was the Romans. We are supposed to skip over that because Constantine turned the Romans into goodies.
“Careful, that is another antisemitic trope. That Jews killed Jesus” “Indeed, it was the Romans. We are supposed to skip over that because Constantine turned the Romans into goodies”
Obviously I don’t expect much understanding from DecrepitJohn, who like 98% of PB likely not a Christian. But I am very surprised you say this Foxy. I am surprised we are so far apart on the passion 🥺
The Passion According To MoonRabbit
Jesus was a Jew from a time of sectarian turbulence. Jesus and his followers launched what can be called a terror attack on the Temple and the authority of high priests running the Jewish council, the headline was attacking money lenders and saying they were defiling a holy place. I see this attack like the reformation - Jesus argument is money lenders charged rip off rates, the sacrificial dove sellers were a rip off, and the need to pay for ritual bathing to get clean to pray a rip off too. leading priests and scribes (law writers) lived lavish lifestyles, they liked having this income. The ruling council were pissed off and feeling humiliated by Jesus attack on their authority. Joseph (Of Aramathea) was at hastily called elite council meeting, representing his sect, but out voted on decision to arrest Jesus and have him killed. Some on ruling council happy Jesus appeared to over step the mark; Pharisee, a strict religious sect of Jews, didn’t like Jesus message, it wasn’t orthodox preaching as he was mingling Greek philosophy particularly from Plato, for example The Sermon On The Mount, with the Torah forming not so strict Jewish code, a more hellenised message for Jews. Jesus arrest by the Temple Guards (Jews) was a sword fight, indeed lead Jew arresting Jesus lost an ear (AN Wilson reckons this player went on to become Paul). Jesus was tried by the Jewish court, the charge was Blasphemy for claiming to be King of the Jews. to the Jewish ruling council, Jesus deliberately rode into town on a donkey, fulfilling a prophecy in the Hebrew Bible about the coming of the Messiah, and was mobbed by an adoring crowd. The court found Jesus guilty. But the court didn’t have the power to execute people. Jesus was handed over to the Romans with strong recommendation from the Jewish Council to execute him for sedition. The Roman occupiers had their own considerations. Passover always difficult time for running the province, crowds piling in. Pilate, however you characterise him, had career in Roman Empire depending on running the province smooth and efficiently, had 6,000 soldiers on hand to keep the peace in a city now bulging with 2.5 million Jews, and religious authorities, whose cooperation he needed for a quiet life, wanted him to execute Jesus, supported by angry mob possibly organised by Temple authorities, if strict in their faith, like Pharisee, happy to come baying for Jesus' blood. Jesus had public support but Pharisee could get a lot of supporters out demonstrating too. It all leads to an obvious conclusion except the question, did Jesus come here knowing it would lead to this or not.
It wasn’t a terror attack. He simply overturned some tables.
Was he and supporters armed? How did the guards react? No speech denouncing rip off bathing and dove prices?
No - they were devout Jews at worship - they would not have been armed. He cast out those who bought and sold, overturned the tables of the moneylenders and those that sold doves. He said unto them “my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have turned it into a den of thieves”
Basically a Rabbi had a bit of a rant and chased some people out of the Temple. More speakers corner than Manchester arena.
We have completely different takes on this, and different understandings of Jesus too no doubt. Where you are wrong I am sure is how Jesus could have got away with what you are claiming, he needed hundreds around him to deter arrest. You are not reading it correctly as the larger scale demo it could only have been to have avoided intervention.
“expels the merchants and consumers from the temple” How many followers did Jesus take to achieve this? so Guards feared a riot if they intervened? One account says 340. If Jesus followers had breast plates as reported they likely had arms too. Knocked over tables probably undersells the size and intent of the actual flash mob protest.
There’s a strong underlying point to the demo, Rich ripping off the poor, but it was also to show growing strength - popularity and public support for protest and change and its charismatic leader.
Is this the only part of the Gospel According to MoonRabbit you have a problem with?
A devout Jew would not have brought a mob into the Temple.
Not a mob, A protesting group who passionately don’t agree the purpose of the New Temple as the place and means for the rich to rip off the poor and keep the rich in luxury. Not a mob, a large scale demonstration for reform and change.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
Very much agree with this. It doesn’t actually matter who you vote for in these coming council elections; the sector has basically been totally fucked by austerity (and changes with stretch back much further), and everyone has to live with the consequences.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
Very much agree with this. It doesn’t actually matter who you vote for in these coming council elections; the sector has basically been totally fucked by austerity (and changes with stretch back much further), and everyone has to live with the consequences.
There are few strategic policy decisions to pick from and they dont align with national party political positions. The rest is arguing over operational matters and managing discretionary stuff, if you can afford it.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
Hard disagree. London’s looking a lot better. And how you can call the Elizabeth Line “shabby” living on the hell that is the NY Metro means you must be on crack.
Wild guess, but am guessing that few of Garden's NYC friends to travel to UK are riding the London Underground OR a New York City SUBWAY.
So re: "shabby" doubt it was re: the Elizabeth line.
Was on the Paris Metro on the weekend. They've made some big improvements. It certainly smells less of piss. But the stairs everywhere.... Up, down, up, down, up, down. Makes TfLs issues with inaccessibility look insignificant.
I much prefer the Paris Metro. Always just a hop and skip down to the platforms and the stations are so close you can sometimes see the lights of the next one through the tunnel.
As for piss, that’s more of a New York problem. They pump the Paris Metro with a scent, ‘Madeleine’, which I personally quite like.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
Very much agree with this.
It doesn’t actually matter who you vote for in these coming council elections; the sector has basically been totally fucked by austerity (and changes with stretch back much further), and everyone has to live with the consequences.
That's probably not far wrong. Local authorities seem to have so little cash left that the large bulk of it goes on statutory obligations, mainly social services. If there's any discussion of what policies ought to be implemented by the council then it seems largely limited to Nimby issues and how long one should be made to wait to have one's bins emptied.
Never mind hats, what about ties? I had to wear one every day in my first consulting job, and now I can’t actually remember the last time I put one on.
We wear ties when we are dressing down in a suit. White bow ties and wing collars are an absurd part of the costume most of the time.
Village chipper has some sad looking union flag pennants hanging from the ceiling. I do wonder if half-arsed will be *the* look this coronation.
Seriously though, the notion that we all sit patriotically around the telly and chant a pledge of fealty at the correct time is the most absurd thing I have heard in ages.
North Hertfordshire, OTOH, does look as though it will be celebrating. There's loads of bunting in the villages.
Same in Hampshire.
To the broader point on public attitudes to the coronation I expect a very decent level of participation.
It's very British to whinge about class and privilege when actually all people want is a little piece of it themselves.
No most people want money. They dont want to be the aristocracy.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
Hard disagree. London’s looking a lot better. And how you can call the Elizabeth Line “shabby” living on the hell that is the NY Metro means you must be on crack.
Wild guess, but am guessing that few of Garden's NYC friends to travel to UK are riding the London Underground OR a New York City SUBWAY.
So re: "shabby" doubt it was re: the Elizabeth line.
Was on the Paris Metro on the weekend. They've made some big improvements. It certainly smells less of piss. But the stairs everywhere.... Up, down, up, down, up, down. Makes TfLs issues with inaccessibility look insignificant.
I much prefer the Paris Metro. Always just a hop and skip down to the platforms and the stations are so close you can sometimes see the lights of the next one through the tunnel.
As for piss, that’s more of a New York problem. They pump the Paris Metro with a scent, ‘Madeleine’, which I personally quite like.
There's quite a lot of the London underground where you can pretty much see the next station. It's also rather inefficient to do that.
The inaccessibility on the Metro is ridiculous in the modern world - lots of small flights of steps up and then down.
The rolling stock is ancient and needs some updating.
When did absolutely everybody first start disliking Jews and giving them such a bad press? Does it start with the Jews having Jesus killed?
Careful, that is another antisemitic trope. Two of them in fact. That Jews killed Jesus and more fundamentally that Jews did anything to deserve universal antisemitism.
Indeed, it was the Romans. We are supposed to skip over that because Constantine turned the Romans into goodies.
“Careful, that is another antisemitic trope. That Jews killed Jesus” “Indeed, it was the Romans. We are supposed to skip over that because Constantine turned the Romans into goodies”
Obviously I don’t expect much understanding from DecrepitJohn, who like 98% of PB likely not a Christian. But I am very surprised you say this Foxy. I am surprised we are so far apart on the passion 🥺
The Passion According To MoonRabbit
Jesus was a Jew from a time of sectarian turbulence. Jesus and his followers launched what can be called a terror attack on the Temple and the authority of high priests running the Jewish council, the headline was attacking money lenders and saying they were defiling a holy place. I see this attack like the reformation - Jesus argument is money lenders charged rip off rates, the sacrificial dove sellers were a rip off, and the need to pay for ritual bathing to get clean to pray a rip off too. leading priests and scribes (law writers) lived lavish lifestyles, they liked having this income. The ruling council were pissed off and feeling humiliated by Jesus attack on their authority. Joseph (Of Aramathea) was at hastily called elite council meeting, representing his sect, but out voted on decision to arrest Jesus and have him killed. Some on ruling council happy Jesus appeared to over step the mark; Pharisee, a strict religious sect of Jews, didn’t like Jesus message, it wasn’t orthodox preaching as he was mingling Greek philosophy particularly from Plato, for example The Sermon On The Mount, with the Torah forming not so strict Jewish code, a more hellenised message for Jews. Jesus arrest by the Temple Guards (Jews) was a sword fight, indeed lead Jew arresting Jesus lost an ear (AN Wilson reckons this player went on to become Paul). Jesus was tried by the Jewish court, the charge was Blasphemy for claiming to be King of the Jews. to the Jewish ruling council, Jesus deliberately rode into town on a donkey, fulfilling a prophecy in the Hebrew Bible about the coming of the Messiah, and was mobbed by an adoring crowd. The court found Jesus guilty. But the court didn’t have the power to execute people. Jesus was handed over to the Romans with strong recommendation from the Jewish Council to execute him for sedition. The Roman occupiers had their own considerations. Passover always difficult time for running the province, crowds piling in. Pilate, however you characterise him, had career in Roman Empire depending on running the province smooth and efficiently, had 6,000 soldiers on hand to keep the peace in a city now bulging with 2.5 million Jews, and religious authorities, whose cooperation he needed for a quiet life, wanted him to execute Jesus, supported by angry mob possibly organised by Temple authorities, if strict in their faith, like Pharisee, happy to come baying for Jesus' blood. Jesus had public support but Pharisee could get a lot of supporters out demonstrating too. It all leads to an obvious conclusion except the question, did Jesus come here knowing it would lead to this or not.
It wasn’t a terror attack. He simply overturned some tables.
Was he and supporters armed? How did the guards react? No speech denouncing rip off bathing and dove prices?
No - they were devout Jews at worship - they would not have been armed. He cast out those who bought and sold, overturned the tables of the moneylenders and those that sold doves. He said unto them “my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have turned it into a den of thieves”
Basically a Rabbi had a bit of a rant and chased some people out of the Temple. More speakers corner than Manchester arena.
We have completely different takes on this, and different understandings of Jesus too no doubt. Where you are wrong I am sure is how Jesus could have got away with what you are claiming, he needed hundreds around him to deter arrest. You are not reading it correctly as the larger scale demo it could only have been to have avoided intervention.
“expels the merchants and consumers from the temple” How many followers did Jesus take to achieve this? so Guards feared a riot if they intervened? One account says 340. If Jesus followers had breast plates as reported they likely had arms too. Knocked over tables probably undersells the size and intent of the actual flash mob protest.
There’s a strong underlying point to the demo, Rich ripping off the poor, but it was also to show growing strength - popularity and public support for protest and change and its charismatic leader.
Is this the only part of the Gospel According to MoonRabbit you have a problem with?
A devout Jew would not have brought a mob into the Temple.
Not a mob, A protesting group who passionately don’t agree the purpose of the New Temple as the place and means for the rich to rip off the poor and keep the rich in luxury. Not a mob, a large scale demonstration for reform and change.
Would it not be just as possible - if speculating on basis of rather limited evidence (to put it mildly) -that Jesus was actually the front man for a criminal syndicate engaged in a classic "protection" racket, who was assaulting the ancient Hebrew equivalent of Barclays (or American Express) for failure to pay up?
Village chipper has some sad looking union flag pennants hanging from the ceiling. I do wonder if half-arsed will be *the* look this coronation.
Seriously though, the notion that we all sit patriotically around the telly and chant a pledge of fealty at the correct time is the most absurd thing I have heard in ages.
North Hertfordshire, OTOH, does look as though it will be celebrating. There's loads of bunting in the villages.
Same in Hampshire.
To the broader point on public attitudes to the coronation I expect a very decent level of participation.
It's very British to whinge about class and privilege when actually all people want is a little piece of it themselves.
No most people want money. They dont want to be the aristocracy.
They would if they could.
Is there actually anything in law to prevent people from giving themselves titles, so long as they don't pretend to be the monarch?
'SUPPORT for the royal family is at an “all time low”, Professor John Curtice has said.
The polling expert’s assessment comes just one week ahead of King Charles’s coronation, which hit the headlines on Sunday after a call was put out for millions to give a “great cry” of allegiance during the ceremony.
Speaking to GB News, Curtice said that the data was increasingly suggesting that younger generations were moving away from supporting the royals.
“Support for them is now at an all time low and frankly it declined during the Queen Elizabeth era,” Curtice said.'
Hmm. I don't think demands for a loyalty oath will help.
Wokery.
It's deeply fashionable now to be against Britain and any symbols of Britain on the basis that they represent "colonialism", "racism" and "slavery".
Of course, this sentiment will be funded, advocated and encouraged by our enemies in China and Russia; they are hoping that if we lose enough self-confidence we might bring it all down on top of us ourselves.
They might be right.
Russia, and Russian propaganda being well known for ‘wokery’. Strange universe you sometimes inhabit.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Grant you the Lizzie Line, but sometimes that just throws the creeping mediocrity of everything else into relief. How could it not be, when we've spent a decade or so not spending enough on maintenance?
And an awful lot of town centres have an awful lot of empty or last resort shops in them.
Yes. London and most of our other large cities are in pretty good shape. And the villages are okay. It's the towns in between, small and large, that are often shabby, with decaying centres, miserable cloned high streets, and desolate estates where there's nothing to do, especially for the young.
What we need is some levelling-up.
I live in Hampshire, much of which is simply stunning. But, it is largely affluent. It's not the case for places like Aldershot, or some wards of Portsmouth and Southampton.
But, I've travelled a lot and - outside some unfortunate inner cities - the UK does scrub up well compared to most other countries. We have good planning standards and protection of rural and green areas, and fairly good civic attitudes to tidiness.
Greece and Thailand have appalling littering and development control, the US seemingly has none, and Ireland lets itself down by some random unsightly development in rural areas along its main roads. And I've seen some proper shitholes in France.
Switzerland is probably the tidiest I've seen.
Fair enough, but I wasn't just thinking about tidiness and cleanliness. To give an example, we spent a day in Chichester recently. Pretty affluent, nice cathedral, reasonably neat and tidy. But so, so boring and anodyne. The high street(s) had no independent retailers at all that we could find, and were just full of the usual chain shops, coffee bars and restaurants: Claire's Accessories, Costa, Pizza Express and so on. No individuality or charm; you could have been in any town centre. In poorer towns, the chains are largely charity shops. Mrs Al was distinctly unimpressed, as she hoped to find some vintage boutiques. Very depressing; we will never go back.
Village chipper has some sad looking union flag pennants hanging from the ceiling. I do wonder if half-arsed will be *the* look this coronation.
Seriously though, the notion that we all sit patriotically around the telly and chant a pledge of fealty at the correct time is the most absurd thing I have heard in ages.
North Hertfordshire, OTOH, does look as though it will be celebrating. There's loads of bunting in the villages.
Same in Hampshire.
To the broader point on public attitudes to the coronation I expect a very decent level of participation.
It's very British to whinge about class and privilege when actually all people want is a little piece of it themselves.
No most people want money. They dont want to be the aristocracy.
They would if they could.
Is there actually anything in law to prevent people from giving themselves titles, so long as they don't pretend to be the monarch?
I’d have thought so since all honours and titles are supposed to be given by the monarch.
The other issue in England is the growth of car use since around 2010 and the trend for SUV style cars, leading to congestion, potholes, air pollution, parking problems etc. It is making places less and less liveable.
It's not just the SUV-style cars that are bad. The people who drive them are even worse.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.e
Village chipper has some sad looking union flag pennants hanging from the ceiling. I do wonder if half-arsed will be *the* look this coronation.
Seriously though, the notion that we all sit patriotically around the telly and chant a pledge of fealty at the correct time is the most absurd thing I have heard in ages.
North Hertfordshire, OTOH, does look as though it will be celebrating. There's loads of bunting in the villages.
Same in Hampshire.
To the broader point on public attitudes to the coronation I expect a very decent level of participation.
It's very British to whinge about class and privilege when actually all people want is a little piece of it themselves.
No most people want money. They dont want to be the aristocracy.
I sort of disagree. The National Trust is very popular, as our costume dramas, because people like to fantasise what it would be like, and people love getting ceremonial titles, uniforms, dressing up and reenacting.
We like to cos-play our history and its roles for real, not just read about them.
On the assumption that Ladbrokes rules are based on a simple count of seats, with no account taken on mayoral casting votes, I think that the 1/6 odds on the Conservatives to retain Walsall are far too tight.
YouGov have it as "too close to call". The Conservatives currently have 38 seats out of 60 and are defending 14, so need to win 7 out of 20 to retain their majority. Looking at the margins in the individual seats in 2022 I doubt whether the local Conservatives consider more than 4 or at most 5 of their 14 as safe, even though they won 13 of the 20 in 2022.
It's worth noting that electorally Walsall has been an underperforming basket case for Labour for several decades now, with Walsall and neighbouring Wolverhampton going in completely opposite directions electorally since the 1990s, despite the two boroughs remaining quite similar demographically. Parts of Walsall have also seen huge swings to the Conservatives in recent years - between 2015 and 2019 for example there was a 19% swing to the Conservatives in Walsall North which is big even allowing for change of incumbency kicking in. Basically the electorate had been very volatile in the Conservative direction. So I wonder whether it's time for a significant correction. Eddie Hughes the Walsall North MP is standing down at the next GE, despite a huge majority on the old boundaries, and that may be a straw in the wind for a volatile electorate as he's citing boundary changes as the cause.
I'm not saying that the Conservatives should be favourite to lose control of Walsall, but the chances of them doing so seem higher than the probabilities imputed by Ladbrokes' odds. I suggest a value bet on NOC at 9/2 plus a much smaller amount on a Labour majority at 14/1, weighted to turn it into a vanilla bet on the Conservatives losing control one way or the other.
'SUPPORT for the royal family is at an “all time low”, Professor John Curtice has said.
The polling expert’s assessment comes just one week ahead of King Charles’s coronation, which hit the headlines on Sunday after a call was put out for millions to give a “great cry” of allegiance during the ceremony.
Speaking to GB News, Curtice said that the data was increasingly suggesting that younger generations were moving away from supporting the royals.
“Support for them is now at an all time low and frankly it declined during the Queen Elizabeth era,” Curtice said.'
Hmm. I don't think demands for a loyalty oath will help.
Wokery.
It's deeply fashionable now to be against Britain and any symbols of Britain on the basis that they represent "colonialism", "racism" and "slavery".
Of course, this sentiment will be funded, advocated and encouraged by our enemies in China and Russia; they are hoping that if we lose enough self-confidence we might bring it all down on top of us ourselves.
They might be right.
Russia, and Russian propaganda being well known for ‘wokery’. Strange universe you sometimes inhabit.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Grant you the Lizzie Line, but sometimes that just throws the creeping mediocrity of everything else into relief. How could it not be, when we've spent a decade or so not spending enough on maintenance?
And an awful lot of town centres have an awful lot of empty or last resort shops in them.
Yes. London and most of our other large cities are in pretty good shape. And the villages are okay. It's the towns in between, small and large, that are often shabby, with decaying centres, miserable cloned high streets, and desolate estates where there's nothing to do, especially for the young.
What we need is some levelling-up.
I live in Hampshire, much of which is simply stunning. But, it is largely affluent. It's not the case for places like Aldershot, or some wards of Portsmouth and Southampton.
But, I've travelled a lot and - outside some unfortunate inner cities - the UK does scrub up well compared to most other countries. We have good planning standards and protection of rural and green areas, and fairly good civic attitudes to tidiness.
Greece and Thailand have appalling littering and development control, the US seemingly has none, and Ireland lets itself down by some random unsightly development in rural areas along its main roads. And I've seen some proper shitholes in France.
Switzerland is probably the tidiest I've seen.
Weirdly, I find the US countryside (upstate NY and New England) very tidy.
I can’t quite figure out why, since in the towns it’s wall to wall strip malls and Dunkin’ Donuts, and Americans don’t recycle like Europe does.
But it’s definitely a thing.
Am wondering, where exactly has Casino R traveled in USA?
There are significant regional differences from sea to shining sea when it comes to tidiness.
With much of rural New England tending to one end of the spectrum, contrasted with much of the South leaning (sometimes literally) toward the other.
My own impression, based on traveling by bus, car, train throughout both UK and USA, is that when averaged out, they are about on a par in the tidy dept.
'SUPPORT for the royal family is at an “all time low”, Professor John Curtice has said.
The polling expert’s assessment comes just one week ahead of King Charles’s coronation, which hit the headlines on Sunday after a call was put out for millions to give a “great cry” of allegiance during the ceremony.
Speaking to GB News, Curtice said that the data was increasingly suggesting that younger generations were moving away from supporting the royals.
“Support for them is now at an all time low and frankly it declined during the Queen Elizabeth era,” Curtice said.'
Hmm. I don't think demands for a loyalty oath will help.
Wokery.
It's deeply fashionable now to be against Britain and any symbols of Britain on the basis that they represent "colonialism", "racism" and "slavery".
Of course, this sentiment will be funded, advocated and encouraged by our enemies in China and Russia; they are hoping that if we lose enough self-confidence we might bring it all down on top of us ourselves.
'SUPPORT for the royal family is at an “all time low”, Professor John Curtice has said.
The polling expert’s assessment comes just one week ahead of King Charles’s coronation, which hit the headlines on Sunday after a call was put out for millions to give a “great cry” of allegiance during the ceremony.
Speaking to GB News, Curtice said that the data was increasingly suggesting that younger generations were moving away from supporting the royals.
“Support for them is now at an all time low and frankly it declined during the Queen Elizabeth era,” Curtice said.'
Hmm. I don't think demands for a loyalty oath will help.
Wokery.
It's deeply fashionable now to be against Britain and any symbols of Britain on the basis that they represent "colonialism", "racism" and "slavery".
Of course, this sentiment will be funded, advocated and encouraged by our enemies in China and Russia; they are hoping that if we lose enough self-confidence we might bring it all down on top of us ourselves.
They might be right.
Russia, and Russian propaganda being well known for ‘wokery’. Strange universe you sometimes inhabit.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Grant you the Lizzie Line, but sometimes that just throws the creeping mediocrity of everything else into relief. How could it not be, when we've spent a decade or so not spending enough on maintenance?
And an awful lot of town centres have an awful lot of empty or last resort shops in them.
Yes. London and most of our other large cities are in pretty good shape. And the villages are okay. It's the towns in between, small and large, that are often shabby, with decaying centres, miserable cloned high streets, and desolate estates where there's nothing to do, especially for the young.
What we need is some levelling-up.
I live in Hampshire, much of which is simply stunning. But, it is largely affluent. It's not the case for places like Aldershot, or some wards of Portsmouth and Southampton.
But, I've travelled a lot and - outside some unfortunate inner cities - the UK does scrub up well compared to most other countries. We have good planning standards and protection of rural and green areas, and fairly good civic attitudes to tidiness.
Greece and Thailand have appalling littering and development control, the US seemingly has none, and Ireland lets itself down by some random unsightly development in rural areas along its main roads. And I've seen some proper shitholes in France.
Switzerland is probably the tidiest I've seen.
Fair enough, but I wasn't just thinking about tidiness and cleanliness. To give an example, we spent a day in Chichester recently. Pretty affluent, nice cathedral, reasonably neat and tidy. But so, so boring and anodyne. The high street(s) had no independent retailers at all that we could find, and were just full of the usual chain shops, coffee bars and restaurants: Claire's Accessories, Costa, Pizza Express and so on. No individuality or charm; you could have been in any town centre. In poorer towns, the chains are largely charity shops. Mrs Al was distinctly unimpressed, as she hoped to find some vintage boutiques. Very depressing; we will never go back.
I'm surprised to hear that.
Did you go off the High Street?
Alresford, Romsey and Winchester all have lots of independents. Even Alton, which isn't exactly the road to riches, has some.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.e
There are important debates around the cost of social care, but I think blaming social care for cuts in local authority spending is misleading.
Central (Conservative) Government chose to impose austerity, but sought to avoid the consequences by pushing so many of the cuts on to local authorities.
When did absolutely everybody first start disliking Jews and giving them such a bad press? Does it start with the Jews having Jesus killed?
Careful, that is another antisemitic trope. Two of them in fact. That Jews killed Jesus and more fundamentally that Jews did anything to deserve universal antisemitism.
Indeed, it was the Romans. We are supposed to skip over that because Constantine turned the Romans into goodies.
“Careful, that is another antisemitic trope. That Jews killed Jesus” “Indeed, it was the Romans. We are supposed to skip over that because Constantine turned the Romans into goodies”
Obviously I don’t expect much understanding from DecrepitJohn, who like 98% of PB likely not a Christian. But I am very surprised you say this Foxy. I am surprised we are so far apart on the passion 🥺
The Passion According To MoonRabbit
Jesus was a Jew from a time of sectarian turbulence. Jesus and his followers launched what can be called a terror attack on the Temple and the authority of high priests running the Jewish council, the headline was attacking money lenders and saying they were defiling a holy place. I see this attack like the reformation - Jesus argument is money lenders charged rip off rates, the sacrificial dove sellers were a rip off, and the need to pay for ritual bathing to get clean to pray a rip off too. leading priests and scribes (law writers) lived lavish lifestyles, they liked having this income. The ruling council were pissed off and feeling humiliated by Jesus attack on their authority. Joseph (Of Aramathea) was at hastily called elite council meeting, representing his sect, but out voted on decision to arrest Jesus and have him killed. Some on ruling council happy Jesus appeared to over step the mark; Pharisee, a strict religious sect of Jews, didn’t like Jesus message, it wasn’t orthodox preaching as he was mingling Greek philosophy particularly from Plato, for example The Sermon On The Mount, with the Torah forming not so strict Jewish code, a more hellenised message for Jews. Jesus arrest by the Temple Guards (Jews) was a sword fight, indeed lead Jew arresting Jesus lost an ear (AN Wilson reckons this player went on to become Paul). Jesus was tried by the Jewish court, the charge was Blasphemy for claiming to be King of the Jews. to the Jewish ruling council, Jesus deliberately rode into town on a donkey, fulfilling a prophecy in the Hebrew Bible about the coming of the Messiah, and was mobbed by an adoring crowd. The court found Jesus guilty. But the court didn’t have the power to execute people. Jesus was handed over to the Romans with strong recommendation from the Jewish Council to execute him for sedition. The Roman occupiers had their own considerations. Passover always difficult time for running the province, crowds piling in. Pilate, however you characterise him, had career in Roman Empire depending on running the province smooth and efficiently, had 6,000 soldiers on hand to keep the peace in a city now bulging with 2.5 million Jews, and religious authorities, whose cooperation he needed for a quiet life, wanted him to execute Jesus, supported by angry mob possibly organised by Temple authorities, if strict in their faith, like Pharisee, happy to come baying for Jesus' blood. Jesus had public support but Pharisee could get a lot of supporters out demonstrating too. It all leads to an obvious conclusion except the question, did Jesus come here knowing it would lead to this or not.
It wasn’t a terror attack. He simply overturned some tables.
Was he and supporters armed? How did the guards react? No speech denouncing rip off bathing and dove prices?
No - they were devout Jews at worship - they would not have been armed. He cast out those who bought and sold, overturned the tables of the moneylenders and those that sold doves. He said unto them “my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have turned it into a den of thieves”
Basically a Rabbi had a bit of a rant and chased some people out of the Temple. More speakers corner than Manchester arena.
We have completely different takes on this, and different understandings of Jesus too no doubt. Where you are wrong I am sure is how Jesus could have got away with what you are claiming, he needed hundreds around him to deter arrest. You are not reading it correctly as the larger scale demo it could only have been to have avoided intervention.
“expels the merchants and consumers from the temple” How many followers did Jesus take to achieve this? so Guards feared a riot if they intervened? One account says 340. If Jesus followers had breast plates as reported they likely had arms too. Knocked over tables probably undersells the size and intent of the actual flash mob protest.
There’s a strong underlying point to the demo, Rich ripping off the poor, but it was also to show growing strength - popularity and public support for protest and change and its charismatic leader.
Is this the only part of the Gospel According to MoonRabbit you have a problem with?
A devout Jew would not have brought a mob into the Temple.
Not a mob, A protesting group who passionately don’t agree the purpose of the New Temple as the place and means for the rich to rip off the poor and keep the rich in luxury. Not a mob, a large scale demonstration for reform and change.
That’s not how the Temple was used
No, the New Temple was used to ensure racial purity of the Jewish people. The book of Ezra documents how the Jews in exile wished to return and build the New Temple, and gain permission from the Persians to do so.
On their return, they are shocked that the remaining Jews in Israel had intermarriage and had children with gentiles. Ezra, backed by both the exiles wealth and the power of the Persian state organised mass divorces and expulsion from Israel of the gentile wives and children.
"10 And Ezra the priest stood up, and said unto them, Ye have transgressed, and have taken strange wives, to increase the trespass of Israel.
11 Now therefore make confession unto the Lord God of your fathers, and do his pleasure: and separate yourselves from the people of the land, and from the strange wives.
12 Then all the congregation answered and said with a loud voice, As thou hast said, so must we do."
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
Hard disagree. London’s looking a lot better. And how you can call the Elizabeth Line “shabby” living on the hell that is the NY Metro means you must be on crack.
Wild guess, but am guessing that few of Garden's NYC friends to travel to UK are riding the London Underground OR a New York City SUBWAY.
So re: "shabby" doubt it was re: the Elizabeth line.
Was on the Paris Metro on the weekend. They've made some big improvements. It certainly smells less of piss. But the stairs everywhere.... Up, down, up, down, up, down. Makes TfLs issues with inaccessibility look insignificant.
I much prefer the Paris Metro. Always just a hop and skip down to the platforms and the stations are so close you can sometimes see the lights of the next one through the tunnel.
As for piss, that’s more of a New York problem. They pump the Paris Metro with a scent, ‘Madeleine’, which I personally quite like.
Are you having a laugh?
The Paris Metro is full of tramps and beggars, and stinks of piss.
They even sleep on top of the air vents at street level at night.
At times, Paris reminds me of a European San Francisco.
I live in Hampshire, much of which is simply stunning. But, it is largely affluent. It's not the case for places like Aldershot, or some wards of Portsmouth and Southampton.
But, I've travelled a lot and - outside some unfortunate inner cities - the UK does scrub up well compared to most other countries. We have good planning standards and protection of rural and green areas, and fairly good civic attitudes to tidiness.
Greece and Thailand have appalling littering and development control, the US seemingly has none, and Ireland lets itself down by some random unsightly development in rural areas along its main roads. And I've seen some proper shitholes in France.
Switzerland is probably the tidiest I've seen.
In my experience weather and the season makes a huge difference to how bits of the UK appear. You can go to the same place in an undistinguished city or town and in February when it's overcast and wet it will look grim, but three months later the tress are in leaf, the sky is blue, it's warm, there are flowers blooming, and the place is livelier and you think "this isn't as bad as people say".
The other issue in England is the growth of car use since around 2010 and the trend for SUV style cars, leading to congestion, potholes, air pollution, parking problems etc. It is making places less and less liveable.
It's not just the SUV-style cars that are bad. The people who drive them are even worse.
'SUPPORT for the royal family is at an “all time low”, Professor John Curtice has said.
The polling expert’s assessment comes just one week ahead of King Charles’s coronation, which hit the headlines on Sunday after a call was put out for millions to give a “great cry” of allegiance during the ceremony.
Speaking to GB News, Curtice said that the data was increasingly suggesting that younger generations were moving away from supporting the royals.
“Support for them is now at an all time low and frankly it declined during the Queen Elizabeth era,” Curtice said.'
Hmm. I don't think demands for a loyalty oath will help.
Wokery.
It's deeply fashionable now to be against Britain and any symbols of Britain on the basis that they represent "colonialism", "racism" and "slavery".
Of course, this sentiment will be funded, advocated and encouraged by our enemies in China and Russia; they are hoping that if we lose enough self-confidence we might bring it all down on top of us ourselves.
They might be right.
Russia, and Russian propaganda being well known for ‘wokery’. Strange universe you sometimes inhabit.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Grant you the Lizzie Line, but sometimes that just throws the creeping mediocrity of everything else into relief. How could it not be, when we've spent a decade or so not spending enough on maintenance?
And an awful lot of town centres have an awful lot of empty or last resort shops in them.
Yes. London and most of our other large cities are in pretty good shape. And the villages are okay. It's the towns in between, small and large, that are often shabby, with decaying centres, miserable cloned high streets, and desolate estates where there's nothing to do, especially for the young.
What we need is some levelling-up.
I live in Hampshire, much of which is simply stunning. But, it is largely affluent. It's not the case for places like Aldershot, or some wards of Portsmouth and Southampton.
But, I've travelled a lot and - outside some unfortunate inner cities - the UK does scrub up well compared to most other countries. We have good planning standards and protection of rural and green areas, and fairly good civic attitudes to tidiness.
Greece and Thailand have appalling littering and development control, the US seemingly has none, and Ireland lets itself down by some random unsightly development in rural areas along its main roads. And I've seen some proper shitholes in France.
Switzerland is probably the tidiest I've seen.
Weirdly, I find the US countryside (upstate NY and New England) very tidy.
I can’t quite figure out why, since in the towns it’s wall to wall strip malls and Dunkin’ Donuts, and Americans don’t recycle like Europe does.
But it’s definitely a thing.
My recollection is unrestrained garish and bold adverts for McDonalds, Motols and Diners all along the highway, even in areas of outstanding natural beauty, together utilitarian business units and transmission wires, in a way that would simply never be permitted in the UK.
I probably discount it all because the US is the US. It has it's own culture.
I live in Hampshire, much of which is simply stunning. But, it is largely affluent. It's not the case for places like Aldershot, or some wards of Portsmouth and Southampton.
But, I've travelled a lot and - outside some unfortunate inner cities - the UK does scrub up well compared to most other countries. We have good planning standards and protection of rural and green areas, and fairly good civic attitudes to tidiness.
Greece and Thailand have appalling littering and development control, the US seemingly has none, and Ireland lets itself down by some random unsightly development in rural areas along its main roads. And I've seen some proper shitholes in France.
Switzerland is probably the tidiest I've seen.
In my experience weather and the season makes a huge difference to how bits of the UK appear. You can go to the same place in an undistinguished city or town and in February when it's overcast and wet it will look grim, but three months later the tress are in leaf, the sky is blue, it's warm, there are flowers blooming, and the place is livelier and you think "this isn't as bad as people say".
Everywhere looks better with the sun out. Which has been noticeable by its absence in England this spring.
'SUPPORT for the royal family is at an “all time low”, Professor John Curtice has said.
The polling expert’s assessment comes just one week ahead of King Charles’s coronation, which hit the headlines on Sunday after a call was put out for millions to give a “great cry” of allegiance during the ceremony.
Speaking to GB News, Curtice said that the data was increasingly suggesting that younger generations were moving away from supporting the royals.
“Support for them is now at an all time low and frankly it declined during the Queen Elizabeth era,” Curtice said.'
Hmm. I don't think demands for a loyalty oath will help.
Wokery.
It's deeply fashionable now to be against Britain and any symbols of Britain on the basis that they represent "colonialism", "racism" and "slavery".
Of course, this sentiment will be funded, advocated and encouraged by our enemies in China and Russia; they are hoping that if we lose enough self-confidence we might bring it all down on top of us ourselves.
They might be right.
Russia, and Russian propaganda being well known for ‘wokery’. Strange universe you sometimes inhabit.
Actually he has a point. Russia is willing to fund any movement that looks like it can disrupt UK stability. That has certainly included Scottish independence in recent times, but also Brexit.
They are equal opportunity disrupters.
Indeed - but that was hardly the thrust of his post.
The point of my post was that Russia will fund and encourage any useful idiot who is looking to undermine unity and confidence in the British state.
They are agnostic as to who or why. And it has no bearing on the consistency of what they do back home themselves.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.e
There are important debates around the cost of social care, but I think blaming social care for cuts in local authority spending is misleading.
Central (Conservative) Government chose to impose austerity, but sought to avoid the consequences by pushing so many of the cuts on to local authorities.
The cuts have got even worse since 2018 and have also been skewed since 2010. More grant has been cut from those areas which are already the lousiest, which are also more dependent than others on that grant funding in the first place.
I live in Hampshire, much of which is simply stunning. But, it is largely affluent. It's not the case for places like Aldershot, or some wards of Portsmouth and Southampton.
But, I've travelled a lot and - outside some unfortunate inner cities - the UK does scrub up well compared to most other countries. We have good planning standards and protection of rural and green areas, and fairly good civic attitudes to tidiness.
Greece and Thailand have appalling littering and development control, the US seemingly has none, and Ireland lets itself down by some random unsightly development in rural areas along its main roads. And I've seen some proper shitholes in France.
Switzerland is probably the tidiest I've seen.
In my experience weather and the season makes a huge difference to how bits of the UK appear. You can go to the same place in an undistinguished city or town and in February when it's overcast and wet it will look grim, but three months later the tress are in leaf, the sky is blue, it's warm, there are flowers blooming, and the place is livelier and you think "this isn't as bad as people say".
Everywhere looks better with the sun out. Which has been noticeable by its absence in England this spring.
The sun has done a @Gardenwalker on England; it's packed up its bags and left in a strop.
'SUPPORT for the royal family is at an “all time low”, Professor John Curtice has said.
The polling expert’s assessment comes just one week ahead of King Charles’s coronation, which hit the headlines on Sunday after a call was put out for millions to give a “great cry” of allegiance during the ceremony.
Speaking to GB News, Curtice said that the data was increasingly suggesting that younger generations were moving away from supporting the royals.
“Support for them is now at an all time low and frankly it declined during the Queen Elizabeth era,” Curtice said.'
Hmm. I don't think demands for a loyalty oath will help.
Wokery.
It's deeply fashionable now to be against Britain and any symbols of Britain on the basis that they represent "colonialism", "racism" and "slavery".
Of course, this sentiment will be funded, advocated and encouraged by our enemies in China and Russia; they are hoping that if we lose enough self-confidence we might bring it all down on top of us ourselves.
They might be right.
Russia, and Russian propaganda being well known for ‘wokery’. Strange universe you sometimes inhabit.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Grant you the Lizzie Line, but sometimes that just throws the creeping mediocrity of everything else into relief. How could it not be, when we've spent a decade or so not spending enough on maintenance?
And an awful lot of town centres have an awful lot of empty or last resort shops in them.
Yes. London and most of our other large cities are in pretty good shape. And the villages are okay. It's the towns in between, small and large, that are often shabby, with decaying centres, miserable cloned high streets, and desolate estates where there's nothing to do, especially for the young.
What we need is some levelling-up.
I live in Hampshire, much of which is simply stunning. But, it is largely affluent. It's not the case for places like Aldershot, or some wards of Portsmouth and Southampton.
But, I've travelled a lot and - outside some unfortunate inner cities - the UK does scrub up well compared to most other countries. We have good planning standards and protection of rural and green areas, and fairly good civic attitudes to tidiness.
Greece and Thailand have appalling littering and development control, the US seemingly has none, and Ireland lets itself down by some random unsightly development in rural areas along its main roads. And I've seen some proper shitholes in France.
Switzerland is probably the tidiest I've seen.
Fair enough, but I wasn't just thinking about tidiness and cleanliness. To give an example, we spent a day in Chichester recently. Pretty affluent, nice cathedral, reasonably neat and tidy. But so, so boring and anodyne. The high street(s) had no independent retailers at all that we could find, and were just full of the usual chain shops, coffee bars and restaurants: Claire's Accessories, Costa, Pizza Express and so on. No individuality or charm; you could have been in any town centre. In poorer towns, the chains are largely charity shops. Mrs Al was distinctly unimpressed, as she hoped to find some vintage boutiques. Very depressing; we will never go back.
I'm surprised to hear that.
Did you go off the High Street?
Alresford, Romsey and Winchester all have lots of independents. Even Alton, which isn't exactly the road to riches, has some.
Yes, we did go off the high street - spent 3 hours walking around all the town centre to find some interesting shops and places to eat, to no avail. We also noticed a shortage of food outlets - no butchers, grocers, bakers or delis. I guess the locals all just shop at the huge Tesco on the edge of Chichester. Depressing.
'SUPPORT for the royal family is at an “all time low”, Professor John Curtice has said.
The polling expert’s assessment comes just one week ahead of King Charles’s coronation, which hit the headlines on Sunday after a call was put out for millions to give a “great cry” of allegiance during the ceremony.
Speaking to GB News, Curtice said that the data was increasingly suggesting that younger generations were moving away from supporting the royals.
“Support for them is now at an all time low and frankly it declined during the Queen Elizabeth era,” Curtice said.'
Hmm. I don't think demands for a loyalty oath will help.
Wokery.
It's deeply fashionable now to be against Britain and any symbols of Britain on the basis that they represent "colonialism", "racism" and "slavery".
Of course, this sentiment will be funded, advocated and encouraged by our enemies in China and Russia; they are hoping that if we lose enough self-confidence we might bring it all down on top of us ourselves.
'SUPPORT for the royal family is at an “all time low”, Professor John Curtice has said.
The polling expert’s assessment comes just one week ahead of King Charles’s coronation, which hit the headlines on Sunday after a call was put out for millions to give a “great cry” of allegiance during the ceremony.
Speaking to GB News, Curtice said that the data was increasingly suggesting that younger generations were moving away from supporting the royals.
“Support for them is now at an all time low and frankly it declined during the Queen Elizabeth era,” Curtice said.'
Hmm. I don't think demands for a loyalty oath will help.
Wokery.
It's deeply fashionable now to be against Britain and any symbols of Britain on the basis that they represent "colonialism", "racism" and "slavery".
Of course, this sentiment will be funded, advocated and encouraged by our enemies in China and Russia; they are hoping that if we lose enough self-confidence we might bring it all down on top of us ourselves.
They might be right.
Russia, and Russian propaganda being well known for ‘wokery’. Strange universe you sometimes inhabit.
Actually he has a point. Russia is willing to fund any movement that looks like it can disrupt UK stability. That has certainly included Scottish independence in recent times, but also Brexit.
They are equal opportunity disrupters.
Indeed - but that was hardly the thrust of his post.
The point of my post was that Russia will fund and encourage any useful idiot who is looking to undermine unity and confidence in the British state.
They are agnostic as to who or why. And it has no bearing on the consistency of what they do back home themselves.
Fair enough, but I wasn't just thinking about tidiness and cleanliness. To give an example, we spent a day in Chichester recently. Pretty affluent, nice cathedral, reasonably neat and tidy. But so, so boring and anodyne. The high street(s) had no independent retailers at all that we could find, and were just full of the usual chain shops, coffee bars and restaurants: Claire's Accessories, Costa, Pizza Express and so on. No individuality or charm; you could have been in any town centre. In poorer towns, the chains are largely charity shops. Mrs Al was distinctly unimpressed, as she hoped to find some vintage boutiques. Very depressing; we will never go back.
I'm surprised you say that because I always though Chichester was good for such things, though you might have to wander to the end of North Street or East Street, nearer the Cross you get more of the chains. Certainly back in the day it was a great place for shopping if you had the cash to spare.
Village chipper has some sad looking union flag pennants hanging from the ceiling. I do wonder if half-arsed will be *the* look this coronation.
Seriously though, the notion that we all sit patriotically around the telly and chant a pledge of fealty at the correct time is the most absurd thing I have heard in ages.
North Hertfordshire, OTOH, does look as though it will be celebrating. There's loads of bunting in the villages.
Same in Hampshire.
To the broader point on public attitudes to the coronation I expect a very decent level of participation.
It's very British to whinge about class and privilege when actually all people want is a little piece of it themselves.
No most people want money. They dont want to be the aristocracy.
I sort of disagree. The National Trust is very popular, as our costume dramas, because people like to fantasise what it would be like, and people love getting ceremonial titles, uniforms, dressing up and reenacting.
We like to cos-play our history and its roles for real, not just read about them.
We've got nothing on South Korea when it comes to cos playing history. Half the Korean shows on Netflix appear to be set in the Joseon era about 500 years ago, also known as the stupid hats era.
Village chipper has some sad looking union flag pennants hanging from the ceiling. I do wonder if half-arsed will be *the* look this coronation.
Seriously though, the notion that we all sit patriotically around the telly and chant a pledge of fealty at the correct time is the most absurd thing I have heard in ages.
North Hertfordshire, OTOH, does look as though it will be celebrating. There's loads of bunting in the villages.
Same in Hampshire.
To the broader point on public attitudes to the coronation I expect a very decent level of participation.
It's very British to whinge about class and privilege when actually all people want is a little piece of it themselves.
No most people want money. They dont want to be the aristocracy.
They would if they could.
Is there actually anything in law to prevent people from giving themselves titles, so long as they don't pretend to be the monarch?
I think you're allowed to call yourself what you like so long as theres no intent to mislead, but calling yourself Lord so and so on a bank loan would be suspicious.
Disney just dug its heels. I mean, they basically said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “Fuck you, we don’t need you.” I don’t know whether the Disney guys were just arrogant or confident, but from the very beginning, they gave not an inch. Maybe it’s a profile in courage. Maybe it’s just pragmatism. I don’t know what was in their minds. I never got to talk to Katzenberg. I did speak briefly to Eisner at a book event, but he wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.
The Baptists quickly learned that there was no real alternative in terms of popular culture for young children other than Disney. So, they were talking about sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is one thing if they’re asking adults to make it. Disney parks had by that time become a cultural imperative. Which is to say, if you wanted to be a good parent or a good grandparent, taking your children or grandchildren to one of the Disney parks became a cultural imperative. That’s one of the things—one of the boxes you had to tick. And they were a little bit queasy with trying to tell a 7-year-old that we’re not going to Disneyland or Disney World because we think they’re not as friendly to evangelicals as Walt was 30 years ago…
… I don’t think he realized that Disney punches back, and they may punch back better than he punches. He shouldn’t set himself up to stand or fall on whether he can get Disney to capitulate, because he will never get Disney to capitulate. It will not happen. It didn’t happen in the ’90s, and for sure it’s not going to happen now. And if you had to bet, would you bet on an ambitious Florida governor, or would you bet on a multibillion-dollar corporation that knows what its audience wants?
'SUPPORT for the royal family is at an “all time low”, Professor John Curtice has said.
The polling expert’s assessment comes just one week ahead of King Charles’s coronation, which hit the headlines on Sunday after a call was put out for millions to give a “great cry” of allegiance during the ceremony.
Speaking to GB News, Curtice said that the data was increasingly suggesting that younger generations were moving away from supporting the royals.
“Support for them is now at an all time low and frankly it declined during the Queen Elizabeth era,” Curtice said.'
Hmm. I don't think demands for a loyalty oath will help.
Wokery.
It's deeply fashionable now to be against Britain and any symbols of Britain on the basis that they represent "colonialism", "racism" and "slavery".
Of course, this sentiment will be funded, advocated and encouraged by our enemies in China and Russia; they are hoping that if we lose enough self-confidence we might bring it all down on top of us ourselves.
They might be right.
Russia, and Russian propaganda being well known for ‘wokery’. Strange universe you sometimes inhabit.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Grant you the Lizzie Line, but sometimes that just throws the creeping mediocrity of everything else into relief. How could it not be, when we've spent a decade or so not spending enough on maintenance?
And an awful lot of town centres have an awful lot of empty or last resort shops in them.
Yes. London and most of our other large cities are in pretty good shape. And the villages are okay. It's the towns in between, small and large, that are often shabby, with decaying centres, miserable cloned high streets, and desolate estates where there's nothing to do, especially for the young.
What we need is some levelling-up.
I live in Hampshire, much of which is simply stunning. But, it is largely affluent. It's not the case for places like Aldershot, or some wards of Portsmouth and Southampton.
But, I've travelled a lot and - outside some unfortunate inner cities - the UK does scrub up well compared to most other countries. We have good planning standards and protection of rural and green areas, and fairly good civic attitudes to tidiness.
Greece and Thailand have appalling littering and development control, the US seemingly has none, and Ireland lets itself down by some random unsightly development in rural areas along its main roads. And I've seen some proper shitholes in France.
Switzerland is probably the tidiest I've seen.
Weirdly, I find the US countryside (upstate NY and New England) very tidy.
I can’t quite figure out why, since in the towns it’s wall to wall strip malls and Dunkin’ Donuts, and Americans don’t recycle like Europe does.
But it’s definitely a thing.
My recollection is unrestrained garish and bold adverts for McDonalds, Motols and Diners all along the highway, even in areas of outstanding natural beauty, together utilitarian business units and transmission wires, in a way that would simply never be permitted in the UK.
I probably discount it all because the US is the US. It has it's own culture.
USA has a LOT of highway. Where did your travels take you?
Disney just dug its heels. I mean, they basically said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “Fuck you, we don’t need you.” I don’t know whether the Disney guys were just arrogant or confident, but from the very beginning, they gave not an inch. Maybe it’s a profile in courage. Maybe it’s just pragmatism. I don’t know what was in their minds. I never got to talk to Katzenberg. I did speak briefly to Eisner at a book event, but he wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.
The Baptists quickly learned that there was no real alternative in terms of popular culture for young children other than Disney. So, they were talking about sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is one thing if they’re asking adults to make it. Disney parks had by that time become a cultural imperative. Which is to say, if you wanted to be a good parent or a good grandparent, taking your children or grandchildren to one of the Disney parks became a cultural imperative. That’s one of the things—one of the boxes you had to tick. And they were a little bit queasy with trying to tell a 7-year-old that we’re not going to Disneyland or Disney World because we think they’re not as friendly to evangelicals as Walt was 30 years ago…
… I don’t think he realized that Disney punches back, and they may punch back better than he punches. He shouldn’t set himself up to stand or fall on whether he can get Disney to capitulate, because he will never get Disney to capitulate. It will not happen. It didn’t happen in the ’90s, and for sure it’s not going to happen now. And if you had to bet, would you bet on an ambitious Florida governor, or would you bet on a multibillion-dollar corporation that knows what its audience wants?
Hes taken it too far. Yes he can bash woke Disney but they have every incentive to drag it through the coursts and is he really looking tough even if he wins?
Disney know what makes them more money, they dont seen randomly activist like smaller companies.
Was in Glastonbury today. Never felt so conservative and square as when wandering round new age healing and book shops and seeing the cost of crystals. About the only subculture more expensive must be warhammer 40k.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Round here, the roads are in shite order (pot holes like bomb craters!) footpaths and verges are overgrown and fly tipping is out of control. I drove down the A46 last week from my village to the M1 and was appalled at how the embankments were festooned with litter, packaging, takeaway cartons and bits of car. Chaz should just have a quiet knees up with his family and bung my local council some cash to pay for a clean up!
TFS, they need to start making litter louts and criminals wear orange suits and prowl the highways of the UK picking up litter as a punishment
I'd vote for any party that advocated the death penalty for fly tippers. I genuinely hate people who do that, and I don't like to hate anyone.
They are positively encouraged in Gloucestershire.
If you want to take rubbish to your local Council dump you have to make an appointment.
Was genuinely amazed when I found out this was required at the municipal tip in Edinburgh, when we were chucking stuff out before leaving the country.
Britain, a country where the local council employs a man to check that cars entering the tip have an appointment for doing so. Because that needs doing.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.
Multi-generational households are fine for very rich people, where granny or grandad can have a self-contained annexe or a barn conversion next to the main house, and where said elder is in reasonable health. Expecting the average family, with Mum and Dad both working full time to make ends meet, noisy kids bouncing off the walls, and already living on top of one another in a rabbit hutch house, to accommodate any older relative - still less one with disabilities and/or dementia - is a complete non-starter. Retirement villages, sheltered housing and residential care homes all exist for good reasons.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
Village chipper has some sad looking union flag pennants hanging from the ceiling. I do wonder if half-arsed will be *the* look this coronation.
Seriously though, the notion that we all sit patriotically around the telly and chant a pledge of fealty at the correct time is the most absurd thing I have heard in ages.
North Hertfordshire, OTOH, does look as though it will be celebrating. There's loads of bunting in the villages.
Same in Hampshire.
To the broader point on public attitudes to the coronation I expect a very decent level of participation.
It's very British to whinge about class and privilege when actually all people want is a little piece of it themselves.
No most people want money. They dont want to be the aristocracy.
I sort of disagree. The National Trust is very popular, as our costume dramas, because people like to fantasise what it would be like, and people love getting ceremonial titles, uniforms, dressing up and reenacting.
We like to cos-play our history and its roles for real, not just read about them.
We've got nothing on South Korea when it comes to cos playing history. Half the Korean shows on Netflix appear to be set in the Joseon era about 500 years ago, also known as the stupid hats era.
The Joseon era ended in 1897; it lasted about 500 years. As did, largely, the silly hats.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
The clowns never went to a Wetherspoons then. Assume the dumb clucks were in London getting ripped off.
London and Herefordshire apparently. It’s true that I doubt they went to Wetherspoons.
Personally, I used to be a big fan of the Spoon, but I boycotted them since 2016 and won’t go back.
They are hard to beat for a good pint , lots of choice , great prices but tend to be big barns most of time. Whole UK is in doldrums but I suspect most of USA is the same apart from the elite
I've had guests from Scandinavian countries over the years and always take them to wetherspoons. Every time they are absolutely shocked at how it is possible to buy a meal and a beer for less than £5 in (what seems like) a perfectly well to do pub/restaurant; and that you could sit there all day without being bothered. It is hard to convey just how impossible this situation would be in many other countries. Although I too got irritated with the Brexit stuff they are an incredible operation, and based on everything I have seen, they have a positive impact when they open up in new locations. Notably it is one of the few pubs where you see young people.
They differ in quality/atmosphere from town to town in my experience - the nearest one to me shut down last year.
'SUPPORT for the royal family is at an “all time low”, Professor John Curtice has said.
The polling expert’s assessment comes just one week ahead of King Charles’s coronation, which hit the headlines on Sunday after a call was put out for millions to give a “great cry” of allegiance during the ceremony.
Speaking to GB News, Curtice said that the data was increasingly suggesting that younger generations were moving away from supporting the royals.
“Support for them is now at an all time low and frankly it declined during the Queen Elizabeth era,” Curtice said.'
Hmm. I don't think demands for a loyalty oath will help.
Wokery.
It's deeply fashionable now to be against Britain and any symbols of Britain on the basis that they represent "colonialism", "racism" and "slavery".
Of course, this sentiment will be funded, advocated and encouraged by our enemies in China and Russia; they are hoping that if we lose enough self-confidence we might bring it all down on top of us ourselves.
They might be right.
Russia, and Russian propaganda being well known for ‘wokery’. Strange universe you sometimes inhabit.
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Grant you the Lizzie Line, but sometimes that just throws the creeping mediocrity of everything else into relief. How could it not be, when we've spent a decade or so not spending enough on maintenance?
And an awful lot of town centres have an awful lot of empty or last resort shops in them.
Yes. London and most of our other large cities are in pretty good shape. And the villages are okay. It's the towns in between, small and large, that are often shabby, with decaying centres, miserable cloned high streets, and desolate estates where there's nothing to do, especially for the young.
What we need is some levelling-up.
I live in Hampshire, much of which is simply stunning. But, it is largely affluent. It's not the case for places like Aldershot, or some wards of Portsmouth and Southampton.
But, I've travelled a lot and - outside some unfortunate inner cities - the UK does scrub up well compared to most other countries. We have good planning standards and protection of rural and green areas, and fairly good civic attitudes to tidiness.
Greece and Thailand have appalling littering and development control, the US seemingly has none, and Ireland lets itself down by some random unsightly development in rural areas along its main roads. And I've seen some proper shitholes in France.
Switzerland is probably the tidiest I've seen.
Weirdly, I find the US countryside (upstate NY and New England) very tidy.
I can’t quite figure out why, since in the towns it’s wall to wall strip malls and Dunkin’ Donuts, and Americans don’t recycle like Europe does.
But it’s definitely a thing.
My recollection is unrestrained garish and bold adverts for McDonalds, Motols and Diners all along the highway, even in areas of outstanding natural beauty, together utilitarian business units and transmission wires, in a way that would simply never be permitted in the UK.
I probably discount it all because the US is the US. It has it's own culture.
USA has a LOT of highway. Where did your travels take you?
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Round here, the roads are in shite order (pot holes like bomb craters!) footpaths and verges are overgrown and fly tipping is out of control. I drove down the A46 last week from my village to the M1 and was appalled at how the embankments were festooned with litter, packaging, takeaway cartons and bits of car. Chaz should just have a quiet knees up with his family and bung my local council some cash to pay for a clean up!
TFS, they need to start making litter louts and criminals wear orange suits and prowl the highways of the UK picking up litter as a punishment
I'd vote for any party that advocated the death penalty for fly tippers. I genuinely hate people who do that, and I don't like to hate anyone.
They are positively encouraged in Gloucestershire.
If you want to take rubbish to your local Council dump you have to make an appointment.
Was genuinely amazed when I found out this was required at the municipal tip in Edinburgh, when we were chucking stuff out before leaving the country.
Britain, a country where the local council employs a man to check that cars entering the tip have an appointment for doing so. Because that needs doing.
We started having to make appointments at the tip during the pandemic, to keep people apart, and the council clearly liked it so much they’ve kept it going, along with the man sitting there ticking off the registration numbers. To be fair, booking is quite easy and you then sail in and out of a fairly empty tip, compared to the scrum and sometimes queues of cars to get in that were a regular feature before.
But there must be a lot of stuff that used to come to the tip that is now going somewhere else….
Village chipper has some sad looking union flag pennants hanging from the ceiling. I do wonder if half-arsed will be *the* look this coronation.
Seriously though, the notion that we all sit patriotically around the telly and chant a pledge of fealty at the correct time is the most absurd thing I have heard in ages.
North Hertfordshire, OTOH, does look as though it will be celebrating. There's loads of bunting in the villages.
Same in Hampshire.
To the broader point on public attitudes to the coronation I expect a very decent level of participation.
It's very British to whinge about class and privilege when actually all people want is a little piece of it themselves.
No most people want money. They dont want to be the aristocracy.
I sort of disagree. The National Trust is very popular, as our costume dramas, because people like to fantasise what it would be like, and people love getting ceremonial titles, uniforms, dressing up and reenacting.
We like to cos-play our history and its roles for real, not just read about them.
We've got nothing on South Korea when it comes to cos playing history. Half the Korean shows on Netflix appear to be set in the Joseon era about 500 years ago, also known as the stupid hats era.
The Joseon era ended in 1897; it lasted about 500 years. As did, largely, the silly hats.
Thats better then. Its like star wars, every era in those shows looks the same.
Was in Glastonbury today. Never felt so conservative and square as when wandering round new age healing and book shops and seeing the cost of crystals. About the only subculture more expensive must be warhammer 40k.
It's a seriously weird place. I assume that's what you get when all those lay-lines cross.
Disney just dug its heels. I mean, they basically said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “Fuck you, we don’t need you.” I don’t know whether the Disney guys were just arrogant or confident, but from the very beginning, they gave not an inch. Maybe it’s a profile in courage. Maybe it’s just pragmatism. I don’t know what was in their minds. I never got to talk to Katzenberg. I did speak briefly to Eisner at a book event, but he wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.
The Baptists quickly learned that there was no real alternative in terms of popular culture for young children other than Disney. So, they were talking about sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is one thing if they’re asking adults to make it. Disney parks had by that time become a cultural imperative. Which is to say, if you wanted to be a good parent or a good grandparent, taking your children or grandchildren to one of the Disney parks became a cultural imperative. That’s one of the things—one of the boxes you had to tick. And they were a little bit queasy with trying to tell a 7-year-old that we’re not going to Disneyland or Disney World because we think they’re not as friendly to evangelicals as Walt was 30 years ago…
… I don’t think he realized that Disney punches back, and they may punch back better than he punches. He shouldn’t set himself up to stand or fall on whether he can get Disney to capitulate, because he will never get Disney to capitulate. It will not happen. It didn’t happen in the ’90s, and for sure it’s not going to happen now. And if you had to bet, would you bet on an ambitious Florida governor, or would you bet on a multibillion-dollar corporation that knows what its audience wants?
Like I pointed out yesterday, Ron DiSantis of Florida attacking Disney now, is similar to the way that Huey Long of Louisiana made Standard Oil is political punching bag back in HIS day.
Except that the King Fish was WAY more savvy than Ronnie Rat.
For one thing, except for the immediate payroll vote, most voters in Louisiana - and across America - in 1920s & 1930s had a NEGATIVE view of Standard Oil.
Which is NOT the case a century later with Disney, in Florida OR in the rest of USA.
Certainly Huey did NOT have to worry about hordes of eager youngsters agitating to take the family car to the nearest Esso (now Exxon) station for a fill-up, ASAP!
Disney just dug its heels. I mean, they basically said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “Fuck you, we don’t need you.” I don’t know whether the Disney guys were just arrogant or confident, but from the very beginning, they gave not an inch. Maybe it’s a profile in courage. Maybe it’s just pragmatism. I don’t know what was in their minds. I never got to talk to Katzenberg. I did speak briefly to Eisner at a book event, but he wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.
The Baptists quickly learned that there was no real alternative in terms of popular culture for young children other than Disney. So, they were talking about sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is one thing if they’re asking adults to make it. Disney parks had by that time become a cultural imperative. Which is to say, if you wanted to be a good parent or a good grandparent, taking your children or grandchildren to one of the Disney parks became a cultural imperative. That’s one of the things—one of the boxes you had to tick. And they were a little bit queasy with trying to tell a 7-year-old that we’re not going to Disneyland or Disney World because we think they’re not as friendly to evangelicals as Walt was 30 years ago…
… I don’t think he realized that Disney punches back, and they may punch back better than he punches. He shouldn’t set himself up to stand or fall on whether he can get Disney to capitulate, because he will never get Disney to capitulate. It will not happen. It didn’t happen in the ’90s, and for sure it’s not going to happen now. And if you had to bet, would you bet on an ambitious Florida governor, or would you bet on a multibillion-dollar corporation that knows what its audience wants?
Hes taken it too far. Yes he can bash woke Disney but they have every incentive to drag it through the coursts and is he really looking tough even if he wins?
Disney know what makes them more money, they dont seen randomly activist like smaller companies.
Wouldn't it be better if both sides calmed down and moderated their positions, recognising that at some level the other might perhaps have a point?
Just met some American friends who have returned from a trip to Britain, the first in a long while.
Apparently the country is now “notably shabby”, and “falling to bits”, and “beer prices now rival New York”.
I disagree with their assessment. Britain is less shabby than it's been for a long time, especially in London, with the Elizabeth Line, etc.
Round here, the roads are in shite order (pot holes like bomb craters!) footpaths and verges are overgrown and fly tipping is out of control. I drove down the A46 last week from my village to the M1 and was appalled at how the embankments were festooned with litter, packaging, takeaway cartons and bits of car. Chaz should just have a quiet knees up with his family and bung my local council some cash to pay for a clean up!
TFS, they need to start making litter louts and criminals wear orange suits and prowl the highways of the UK picking up litter as a punishment
I'd vote for any party that advocated the death penalty for fly tippers. I genuinely hate people who do that, and I don't like to hate anyone.
They are positively encouraged in Gloucestershire.
If you want to take rubbish to your local Council dump you have to make an appointment.
Was genuinely amazed when I found out this was required at the municipal tip in Edinburgh, when we were chucking stuff out before leaving the country.
Britain, a country where the local council employs a man to check that cars entering the tip have an appointment for doing so. Because that needs doing.
We started having to make appointments at the tip during the pandemic, to keep people apart, and the council clearly liked it so much they’ve kept it going, along with the man sitting there ticking off the registration numbers. To be fair, booking is quite easy and you then sail in and out of a fairly empty tip, compared to the scrum and sometimes queues of cars to get in that were a regular feature before.
But there must be a lot of stuff that used to come to the tip that is now going somewhere else….
South Cambridgeshire did that during the pandemic, but dropped the requirement sometime mid last year.
The apparent 'decline' of Britain - ie in terms of how it looks - I would say, is to do with local authority budgets. There isn't enough money due to budget cuts so that discretionary services, ie landscaping, public toilets, fixing potholes, parks and gardens just get cut. Even things like enforcement of planning regulations gets cut right back to the point where, in one town of 100,000 people I am familiar with, has 2000 unresolved breaches of planning control that it knows about, and only two inexperienced officers (ie with less than one years experience) dealing with it. Much of this is all just trivial amounts of money that are not being spent with disproportionate consequences that are not immediately obvious. By contrast municipalities in other countries don't let things get so bad even when economic times are objectively far, far worse; because they aren't dealing with the legacy of thatcherism and the harm it did to central/local government relations.
The money is going on social care. In other words, very elderly people.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.
Multi-generational households are fine for very rich people, where granny or grandad can have a self-contained annexe or a barn conversion next to the main house, and where said elder is in reasonable health. Expecting the average family, with Mum and Dad both working full time to make ends meet, noisy kids bouncing off the walls, and already living on top of one another in a rabbit hutch house, to accommodate any older relative - still less one with disabilities and/or dementia - is a complete non-starter. Retirement villages, sheltered housing and residential care homes all exist for good reasons.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
Not really. My wife's family is from Bulgaria, which is a poor country, and everyone does it there, regardless of how little they have.
They consider what we do to be cruel. Like shunting off a 3-year to boarding school, just the other way round.
'SUPPORT for the royal family is at an “all time low”, Professor John Curtice has said.
The polling expert’s assessment comes just one week ahead of King Charles’s coronation, which hit the headlines on Sunday after a call was put out for millions to give a “great cry” of allegiance during the ceremony.
Speaking to GB News, Curtice said that the data was increasingly suggesting that younger generations were moving away from supporting the royals.
“Support for them is now at an all time low and frankly it declined during the Queen Elizabeth era,” Curtice said.'
Hmm. I don't think demands for a loyalty oath will help.
Wokery.
It's deeply fashionable now to be against Britain and any symbols of Britain on the basis that they represent "colonialism", "racism" and "slavery".
Of course, this sentiment will be funded, advocated and encouraged by our enemies in China and Russia; they are hoping that if we lose enough self-confidence we might bring it all down on top of us ourselves.
They might be right.
Russia, and Russian propaganda being well known for ‘wokery’. Strange universe you sometimes inhabit.
Actually he has a point. Russia is willing to fund any movement that looks like it can disrupt UK stability. That has certainly included Scottish independence in recent times, but also Brexit.
They are equal opportunity disrupters.
Indeed - but that was hardly the thrust of his post.
The point of my post was that Russia will fund and encourage any useful idiot who is looking to undermine unity and confidence in the British state.
They are agnostic as to who or why. And it has no bearing on the consistency of what they do back home themselves.
To be fair the british state is doing a great job in undermining confidence in itself. It doesnt need the russians help.
What we're seeing is how confused and unstable a polity becomes when it ceases to be the undisputed top dog. There are various reactions to that, both on the Left and the Right.
Russia, and China, sense that - and are egging it on.
Disney just dug its heels. I mean, they basically said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “Fuck you, we don’t need you.” I don’t know whether the Disney guys were just arrogant or confident, but from the very beginning, they gave not an inch. Maybe it’s a profile in courage. Maybe it’s just pragmatism. I don’t know what was in their minds. I never got to talk to Katzenberg. I did speak briefly to Eisner at a book event, but he wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.
The Baptists quickly learned that there was no real alternative in terms of popular culture for young children other than Disney. So, they were talking about sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is one thing if they’re asking adults to make it. Disney parks had by that time become a cultural imperative. Which is to say, if you wanted to be a good parent or a good grandparent, taking your children or grandchildren to one of the Disney parks became a cultural imperative. That’s one of the things—one of the boxes you had to tick. And they were a little bit queasy with trying to tell a 7-year-old that we’re not going to Disneyland or Disney World because we think they’re not as friendly to evangelicals as Walt was 30 years ago…
… I don’t think he realized that Disney punches back, and they may punch back better than he punches. He shouldn’t set himself up to stand or fall on whether he can get Disney to capitulate, because he will never get Disney to capitulate. It will not happen. It didn’t happen in the ’90s, and for sure it’s not going to happen now. And if you had to bet, would you bet on an ambitious Florida governor, or would you bet on a multibillion-dollar corporation that knows what its audience wants?
Hes taken it too far. Yes he can bash woke Disney but they have every incentive to drag it through the coursts and is he really looking tough even if he wins?
Disney know what makes them more money, they dont seen randomly activist like smaller companies.
Wouldn't it be better if both sides calmed down and moderated their positions, recognising that at some level the other might perhaps have a point?
Free speech innit?
And Disney had such a sweet deal on their district its probably worth a protracted legal fight about it.
Comments
"Local election benchmarks
Conservative seats losses:
>1000 losses: a bad night
750 losses: better than current polls
500 losses: just "mid term blues"
<300 losses: opposition fails to prosper"
https://twitter.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1652610737414500353
If you want to take rubbish to your local Council dump you have to make an appointment.
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/04/28/sweden-is-building-the-worlds-first-permanent-electrified-road-for-evs-to-charge-while-dri
Retail local politics in the good old days focused on things like fly tipping, and pot holes. Now it’s all just don’t build this don’t build that nimbyism.
That low bar for Tory success will be challenged, it’s identical to Conservative Central Office own assessment. 😆
To the broader point on public attitudes to the coronation I expect a very decent level of participation.
It's very British to whinge about class and privilege when actually all people want is a little piece of it themselves.
“expels the merchants and consumers from the temple” How many followers did Jesus take to achieve this? so Guards feared a riot if they intervened? One account says 340. If Jesus followers had breast plates as reported they likely had arms too. Knocked over tables probably undersells the size and intent of the actual flash mob protest.
There’s a strong underlying point to the demo, Rich ripping off the poor, but it was also to show growing strength - popularity and public support for protest and change and its charismatic leader.
Is this the only part of The Passion According to MoonRabbit you have a problem with?
But, I've travelled a lot and - outside some unfortunate inner cities - the UK does scrub up well compared to most other countries. We have good planning standards and protection of rural and green areas, and fairly good civic attitudes to tidiness.
Greece and Thailand have appalling littering and development control, the US seemingly has none, and Ireland lets itself down by some random unsightly development in rural areas along its main roads. And I've seen some proper shitholes in France.
Switzerland is probably the tidiest I've seen.
So re: "shabby" doubt it was re: the Elizabeth line.
I can’t quite figure out why, since in the towns it’s wall to wall strip malls and Dunkin’ Donuts, and Americans don’t recycle like Europe does.
But it’s definitely a thing.
It doesn’t actually matter who you vote for in these coming council elections; the sector has basically been totally fucked by austerity (and changes with stretch back much further), and everyone has to live with the consequences.
Always just a hop and skip down to the platforms and the stations are so close you can sometimes see the lights of the next one through the tunnel.
As for piss, that’s more of a New York problem. They pump the Paris Metro with a scent, ‘Madeleine’, which I personally quite like.
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1652592385845608448
They are asking - why not train Scottish terrorists to attack the UK?
The inaccessibility on the Metro is ridiculous in the modern world - lots of small flights of steps up and then down.
The rolling stock is ancient and needs some updating.
I don't want to seem callous but we really do need to have a conversation about how much of our national wealth we want to, publicly, spend very expensively on keeping people alive for as long as possible who aren't particularly well and aren't particularly enjoying it.
In other countries, families take them in and look after them - with some visitors/outside help occasionally. I'd argue that's more humane. The trouble is it's also more hassle.e
We like to cos-play our history and its roles for real, not just read about them.
On the assumption that Ladbrokes rules are based on a simple count of seats, with no account taken on mayoral casting votes, I think that the 1/6 odds on the Conservatives to retain Walsall are far too tight.
YouGov have it as "too close to call". The Conservatives currently have 38 seats out of 60 and are defending 14, so need to win 7 out of 20 to retain their majority. Looking at the margins in the individual seats in 2022 I doubt whether the local Conservatives consider more than 4 or at most 5 of their 14 as safe, even though they won 13 of the 20 in 2022.
It's worth noting that electorally Walsall has been an underperforming basket case for Labour for several decades now, with Walsall and neighbouring Wolverhampton going in completely opposite directions electorally since the 1990s, despite the two boroughs remaining quite similar demographically. Parts of Walsall have also seen huge swings to the Conservatives in recent years - between 2015 and 2019 for example there was a 19% swing to the Conservatives in Walsall North which is big even allowing for change of incumbency kicking in. Basically the electorate had been very volatile in the Conservative direction. So I wonder whether it's time for a significant correction. Eddie Hughes the Walsall North MP is standing down at the next GE, despite a huge majority on the old boundaries, and that may be a straw in the wind for a volatile electorate as he's citing boundary changes as the cause.
I'm not saying that the Conservatives should be favourite to lose control of Walsall, but the chances of them doing so seem higher than the probabilities imputed by Ladbrokes' odds. I suggest a value bet on NOC at 9/2 plus a much smaller amount on a Labour majority at 14/1, weighted to turn it into a vanilla bet on the Conservatives losing control one way or the other.
There are significant regional differences from sea to shining sea when it comes to tidiness.
With much of rural New England tending to one end of the spectrum, contrasted with much of the South leaning (sometimes literally) toward the other.
My own impression, based on traveling by bus, car, train throughout both UK and USA, is that when averaged out, they are about on a par in the tidy dept.
Did you go off the High Street?
Alresford, Romsey and Winchester all have lots of independents. Even Alton, which isn't exactly the road to riches, has some.
“On average, grants from central to local government have reduced by 49.1% in real-terms over the period 2010- 2018, translating into a reduction in real spending power of close to 30%.” https://pec.ac.uk/blog/the-austerity-decade-local-government-spending-on-culture
Central (Conservative) Government chose to impose austerity, but sought to avoid the consequences by pushing so many of the cuts on to local authorities.
On their return, they are shocked that the remaining Jews in Israel had intermarriage and had children with gentiles. Ezra, backed by both the exiles wealth and the power of the Persian state organised mass divorces and expulsion from Israel of the gentile wives and children.
"10 And Ezra the priest stood up, and said unto them, Ye have transgressed, and have taken strange wives, to increase the trespass of Israel.
11 Now therefore make confession unto the Lord God of your fathers, and do his pleasure: and separate yourselves from the people of the land, and from the strange wives.
12 Then all the congregation answered and said with a loud voice, As thou hast said, so must we do."
The Paris Metro is full of tramps and beggars, and stinks of piss.
They even sleep on top of the air vents at street level at night.
At times, Paris reminds me of a European San Francisco.
I probably discount it all because the US is the US. It has it's own culture.
They are agnostic as to who or why. And it has no bearing on the consistency of what they do back home themselves.
Election Maps UK
@ElectionMapsUK
·
10h
Nowcast Model + Interactive Map (30/04):
LAB: 390 (+206) - 43.8%: CON: 170 (-195) - 28.7%:SNP: 32 (-16) - 3.5%:LDM: 33 (+22) - 10.1%
LAB Majority of 130.
Changes w/ GE2019.:
We do love you. Never change.
“It’s Like DeSantis Is Holding a Knife to His Own Throat”
The Florida governor seems to forget a little something about Disney.
https://slate.com/culture/2023/04/disney-ron-desantis-lawsuit-florida-boycott-history.html
… Did the boycott ultimately succeed in hurting Disney?
Disney just dug its heels. I mean, they basically said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “Fuck you, we don’t need you.” I don’t know whether the Disney guys were just arrogant or confident, but from the very beginning, they gave not an inch. Maybe it’s a profile in courage. Maybe it’s just pragmatism. I don’t know what was in their minds. I never got to talk to Katzenberg. I did speak briefly to Eisner at a book event, but he wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.
The Baptists quickly learned that there was no real alternative in terms of popular culture for young children other than Disney. So, they were talking about sacrifice. And I think sacrifice is one thing if they’re asking adults to make it. Disney parks had by that time become a cultural imperative. Which is to say, if you wanted to be a good parent or a good grandparent, taking your children or grandchildren to one of the Disney parks became a cultural imperative. That’s one of the things—one of the boxes you had to tick. And they were a little bit queasy with trying to tell a 7-year-old that we’re not going to Disneyland or Disney World because we think they’re not as friendly to evangelicals as Walt was 30 years ago…
… I don’t think he realized that Disney punches back, and they may punch back better than he punches. He shouldn’t set himself up to stand or fall on whether he can get Disney to capitulate, because he will never get Disney to capitulate. It will not happen. It didn’t happen in the ’90s, and for sure it’s not going to happen now. And if you had to bet, would you bet on an ambitious Florida governor, or would you bet on a multibillion-dollar corporation that knows what its audience wants?
Disney know what makes them more money, they dont seen randomly activist like smaller companies.
Britain, a country where the local council employs a man to check that cars entering the tip have an appointment for doing so. Because that needs doing.
The real issue isn't the expenditure of all that cash - not least because, if we make serious efforts to cut and ration it, then how are we going to decide which older people are worth cherishing, and who gets left to starve to death sitting in their own shit or humanely destroyed when they're past it like the family cat? It's who keeps getting taken to the cleaners over and over again for all the extra funding that's the real problem here.
As did, largely, the silly hats.
But there must be a lot of stuff that used to come to the tip that is now going somewhere else….
Except that the King Fish was WAY more savvy than Ronnie Rat.
For one thing, except for the immediate payroll vote, most voters in Louisiana - and across America - in 1920s & 1930s had a NEGATIVE view of Standard Oil.
Which is NOT the case a century later with Disney, in Florida OR in the rest of USA.
Certainly Huey did NOT have to worry about hordes of eager youngsters agitating to take the family car to the nearest Esso (now Exxon) station for a fill-up, ASAP!
They consider what we do to be cruel. Like shunting off a 3-year to boarding school, just the other way round.
Russia, and China, sense that - and are egging it on.
And Disney had such a sweet deal on their district its probably worth a protracted legal fight about it.