That’s a really interesting article on Reddit. 19th century nationalists did project current beliefs back into the past (eg the notion of pure, manly Germans locked in centuries of struggle against degenerate Latins).
Of course, plenty of modern historians do something similar, projecting modern concerns about race, gender, sexuality, and class conflict into past societies in ways that are anachronistic.
I don’t think one could draw much of a distinction between Danes and Anglo-Saxons, in the 8th and 9th centuries, save at the religious level, which was all-important, back then. Back in the 6th or 7th centuries, I think tribal identity would have been most important.
But, this is no more than informed speculation.
I do think Anglo-Saxon remains a useful shorthand, even if ethnicity was viewed very differently back then to the way we view it.
Useful for what is a salient question.
Perhaps for considering a moderately cohesive cultural grouping ?
We must secure the existence of our people and a future for our moderately cohesive cultural grouping
What should worry Sunak is soaring inflation and mortgages. Are these the sunlit uplands that this fool and other deluded fools promised us? The sooner the Tory filth are ejected from power, the better!
You really think Sunak and Reeves are going to magically slash inflation and mortgage rates better than Sunak and Hunt?
Anything would be better than the past 13 years of economic mismanagement and self-harm.
The Tories inherited 8% unemployment, even if they lose they will leave that halved and a massive deficit from the Labour government of 2010
Tories ran the deficit up to 11.5% of GPD, Labour's worst year was 4.51%.
The average Labour deficit through 1997 - 2009 was 0.91% The average Tory deficit through 2010 - 2022 was 3.93%
Labour ran a budget surplus in 4 years out of 13; Tories have run a surplus (just) in 1 year out of 13.
Labour's manifesto of 2010 promised more austerity than the coalition actually delivered. Austerity was both necessary and inevitable. I think the difference is *what* was cut and *how*.
The true scandal about austerity isn't that budgets needed to be reined in for a few years, its that they were done so cackhandedly that we're still having to pay for the damage this has inflicted.
They use the same argument that US Republicans do. Huge deficits pay for themselves. So, a government can borrow 11% of GDP forever, because the resulting economic growth will cover the cost of servicing the debt.
The words “Ponzi scheme” come to mind.
Have you forgotten the Tory PM that was in power less than a year ago? The one who crashed the economy?
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
The Anglo Saxon cultural identity disappeared sometime around the fourteenth century along with the language.
HYUFD's misdirection has been successful in shifting this from a claim about ethnicity -- which is uncontroversially true -- to one about the existence of a cultural group.
If someone claims there is no meaningful way you can talk about a distinct Anglo-Saxon ethnicity, they are right. But the deliberate warping of that to "they're saying the Anglo-Saxons didn't exist!!!ONE!!" to provoke the stupider Telegraph readership is quite different.
It's pretty hard to reconstruct the actual lives of most people from so long ago with any certainty at all. But big things - like a language going from fairly widespread use to being virtually incomprehensible in a bit over two centuries - aren't disputed.
The widespread availability of cheap genetic sequencing has exploded a lot of old ideas about populations, but it's still a relatively new field of study, and no doubt there will be some more surprises along the way.
Even the evolution of language needs to be handled with care. There's much that can be done regarding reconstruction from extant sources but extant sources are scarce from some periods and represent a very narrow section of society. Making inferences on the evolution of the language used by the peasants in the fields (that is, the great majority of the population) from the scattered and fragmentary writings of church scribes is a narrow and perilous path.
Agreed - which is why I said it's only possible to be fairly sure about the big stuff, and why the lives of most people from that time are simply unknowable in any detail. We don't know exactly when Anglo Saxon (or something like it) disappeared completely (and of course part of that story was one of Tolkein's academic pursuits), but that it existed, and disappeared, is pretty well beyond dispute.
They use the same argument that US Republicans do. Huge deficits pay for themselves. So, a government can borrow 11% of GDP forever, because the resulting economic growth will cover the cost of servicing the debt.
The words “Ponzi scheme” come to mind.
Have you forgotten the Tory PM that was in power less than a year ago? The one who crashed the economy?
She was a Liberal Democrat if you recall.
This is the political equivalent of "Andy Murray is Scottish when he loses", yes?
What should worry Sunak is soaring inflation and mortgages. Are these the sunlit uplands that this fool and other deluded fools promised us? The sooner the Tory filth are ejected from power, the better!
You really think Sunak and Reeves are going to magically slash inflation and mortgage rates better than Sunak and Hunt?
Anything would be better than the past 13 years of economic mismanagement and self-harm.
The Tories inherited 8% unemployment, even if they lose they will leave that halved and a massive deficit from the Labour government of 2010
Tories ran the deficit up to 11.5% of GPD, Labour's worst year was 4.51%.
The average Labour deficit through 1997 - 2009 was 0.91% The average Tory deficit through 2010 - 2022 was 3.93%
Labour ran a budget surplus in 4 years out of 13; Tories have run a surplus (just) in 1 year out of 13.
What should worry Sunak is soaring inflation and mortgages. Are these the sunlit uplands that this fool and other deluded fools promised us? The sooner the Tory filth are ejected from power, the better!
You really think Sunak and Reeves are going to magically slash inflation and mortgage rates better than Sunak and Hunt?
Anything would be better than the past 13 years of economic mismanagement and self-harm.
The Tories inherited 8% unemployment, even if they lose they will leave that halved and a massive deficit from the Labour government of 2010
Tories ran the deficit up to 11.5% of GPD, Labour's worst year was 4.51%.
The average Labour deficit through 1997 - 2009 was 0.91% The average Tory deficit through 2010 - 2022 was 3.93%
Labour ran a budget surplus in 4 years out of 13; Tories have run a surplus (just) in 1 year out of 13.
Labour's manifesto of 2010 promised more austerity than the coalition actually delivered. Austerity was both necessary and inevitable. I think the difference is *what* was cut and *how*.
The true scandal about austerity isn't that budgets needed to be reined in for a few years, its that they were done so cackhandedly that we're still having to pay for the damage this has inflicted.
That’s a much better point. Some cuts (eg criminal justice) yielded negligible savings, yet caused real harm.
Keynes would have said that if you have high unemployment then that is wasted development potential just sitting around doing nothing when it could be doing something constructive. In his view (this is obviously a simplification of it) it was the government’s job to step in and give those people something worthwhile to do during periods when the private sector was unable to do so.
It seems to me that a period of time when interest rates where at 0% and pension funds were throwing money at government bonds for the lack of anything better to invest in was the perfect time for the government to have taken that money & gone on an infrastructure building spree.
But I’m not a professional economist, so what do I know?
They use the same argument that US Republicans do. Huge deficits pay for themselves. So, a government can borrow 11% of GDP forever, because the resulting economic growth will cover the cost of servicing the debt.
The words “Ponzi scheme” come to mind.
Have you forgotten the Tory PM that was in power less than a year ago? The one who crashed the economy?
She was a Liberal Democrat if you recall.
And she governed more as a libertarian Liberal Democrat than a traditional Tory too
That’s a really interesting article on Reddit. 19th century nationalists did project current beliefs back into the past (eg the notion of pure, manly Germans locked in centuries of struggle against degenerate Latins).
Of course, plenty of modern historians do something similar, projecting modern concerns about race, gender, sexuality, and class conflict into past societies in ways that are anachronistic.
I don’t think one could draw much of a distinction between Danes and Anglo-Saxons, in the 8th and 9th centuries, save at the religious level, which was all-important, back then. Back in the 6th or 7th centuries, I think tribal identity would have been most important.
But, this is no more than informed speculation.
I do think Anglo-Saxon remains a useful shorthand, even if ethnicity was viewed very differently back then to the way we view it.
Useful for what is a salient question.
Perhaps for considering a moderately cohesive cultural grouping ?
We must secure the existence of our people and a future for our moderately cohesive cultural grouping
What should worry Sunak is soaring inflation and mortgages. Are these the sunlit uplands that this fool and other deluded fools promised us? The sooner the Tory filth are ejected from power, the better!
You really think Sunak and Reeves are going to magically slash inflation and mortgage rates better than Sunak and Hunt?
Anything would be better than the past 13 years of economic mismanagement and self-harm.
The Tories inherited 8% unemployment, even if they lose they will leave that halved and a massive deficit from the Labour government of 2010
Tories ran the deficit up to 11.5% of GPD, Labour's worst year was 4.51%.
The average Labour deficit through 1997 - 2009 was 0.91% The average Tory deficit through 2010 - 2022 was 3.93%
Labour ran a budget surplus in 4 years out of 13; Tories have run a surplus (just) in 1 year out of 13.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
It's complete nonsense as applied to the modern world.
We are talking historians studying the 8th century
If I recall correctly you were originally talking about an Anglo Saxon identity in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Yes which is also correct as I pointed out earlier as those nations also have English Anglo Saxon heritage and the US English and German Anglo Saxon heritage
There's definitely no such thing as 'German Anglo Saxon heritage' in any universe.
There is, most of them voted for Boris and Trump (Trump has German ancestry)! Indeed Trump was originally Drumpf from the German Palatinate
Keynes would have said that if you have high unemployment then that is wasted development potential just sitting around doing nothing when it could be doing something constructive. In his view (this is obviously a simplification of it) it was the government’s job to step in and give those people something worthwhile to do during periods when the private sector was unable to do so.
It seems to me that a period of time when interest rates where at 0% and pension funds were throwing money at government bonds for the lack of anything better to invest in was the perfect time for the government to have taken that money & gone on an infrastructure building spree.
But I’m not a professional economist, so what do I know?
Compare also with the £3bn plus per year we're paying to house migrants in enforced inactivity.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Wrong. Many Celts stayed put. They changed culturally but intermarried with incoming groups. The people of England became very quickly a mix of Celtic and Saxon, genetically.
True dat. This is what population genetics overwhelmingly shows. People stay put.
My take on this debate: The Telegraph is an increasingly daft newspaper, and I say this as someone broadly sympathetic to its worldview. (Sample headline from the past week 'why the working from home cult will permanently lower house prices.') There is a lot for someone of a right-ish disposition to be grumpy about in the modern world, but that doesn't mean we should actively go searching for it when it isn't there (though of course there is, as someone has noted above, a commercial case for doing so.) Instinctively, I'd suppose Cambridge University to be in the wrong about most things, but I'm not sure this is the case here.
Anyway, my view (and there is so much here that we cannot know, and I am no professional historian so my understanding is drawn entirely from second hand sources) is that the 400-800 period saw more of a cultural replacement than a population replacement - though it is clear there was SOME migration across the North Sea. What is something of a mystery is why England, unlike other parts of the Roman Empire which were subsequently overrun by Germanic tribes like France and Spain ended up with a Germanic culture rather than a Latin one (or indeed a pre-Latin one). Possibly this implies a catastrophic population collapse in post-Roman Britain (we know the plague was about then). I am also interested by the theory I have seen proposed that pre-Roman Britain was actually much more Germanic (in the east, at least) than is popularly supposed.
I guess France and Spain were an integrated part of the ancient Mediterranean economy, and the Roman Empire was an iteration of that from E.g. the Greek, the Punic etc. with vulgar Latin becoming a more established tongue, and with a more romanised population. So while yer Visigoths and whatnot took over at the top, they adapted to a society that was deeply Latinised, supported by the Latin infrastructure of the established religion.
Britain was at the extreme of Empire, never entirely held or taken, and held for a shorter time - but also crucially was distant enough from the Med that the culture didn’t take root (indeed didn’t share the roots, beyond a bit of tin trading), having not had as long and having been less culturally and linguistically colonised.
I think that's probably right - although the Romans were here for, what, 400 years or so; it wasn't really a brief occupation, and (AIUI) the elite was thoroughly Romanised (as was the church). Possibly it's related to the church, in fact? Which was, of course, the main medium of literacy. In medieval England, Christianity sort of died away in a way it possibly didn't on the continent. Perhaps.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Most Celts were not Romano-British, most Romano-British tended to be wealthier for starters.
Offa was King of Mercia NOT England, his influence at most only ever extended to the Midlands and Southern England NOT Northumbria and the North.
Only Aethelstan could proclaim himself King of the English after he defeated the Vikings, who had overrun the North, at York (albeit the Vikings took it back when he died).
A Chinese assessment posted in Feb. 25, 2022, predicting Russia’s victory against #Ukraine within 48 hours and tying lessons learned to a planed blitzkrieg against #Taiwan, predicting PRC victory in 72 hrs. I’m curious what Chines analysts would say today. https://twitter.com/andrewmichta/status/1665573794428203009
What should worry Sunak is soaring inflation and mortgages. Are these the sunlit uplands that this fool and other deluded fools promised us? The sooner the Tory filth are ejected from power, the better!
You really think Sunak and Reeves are going to magically slash inflation and mortgage rates better than Sunak and Hunt?
Anything would be better than the past 13 years of economic mismanagement and self-harm.
The Tories inherited 8% unemployment, even if they lose they will leave that halved and a massive deficit from the Labour government of 2010
Tories ran the deficit up to 11.5% of GPD, Labour's worst year was 4.51%.
The average Labour deficit through 1997 - 2009 was 0.91% The average Tory deficit through 2010 - 2022 was 3.93%
Labour ran a budget surplus in 4 years out of 13; Tories have run a surplus (just) in 1 year out of 13.
Facts yes, but without context. Pretty sure the UK government ran up deficits in 1939-45 too. Covid was a war that needed paying for.
COVID didn't start until 2020. So what went wrong in all but one of the previous ten years?
Really? Did you forget 2008? And 'there's no money left'?
Time for a change yes, but context for data is important too.
My favourite lefties are the ones who criticise Osborne for ‘austerity’ and all criticise him for not cutting the deficit faster.
They use the same argument that US Republicans do. Huge deficits pay for themselves. So, a government can borrow 11% of GDP forever, because the resulting economic growth will cover the cost of servicing the debt.
The words “Ponzi scheme” come to mind.
I am hoping for a return to some form of liberal capitalism in the future, and escaping the Ponzi schemes and leveraged buyout flipping that characterises western economies in the 21st century. It's an engine for disaster.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Most Celts were not Romano-British, most Romano-British tended to be wealthier for starters.
Offa was King of Mercia NOT England, his influence at most only ever extended to the Midlands and Southern England NOT Northumbria and the North.
Only Athelstan could proclaim himself King of the English after he defeated the Vikings, who had overrun the North, at York (albeit the Vikings took it back when he died)
Delays, obfuscation, repeated changes in tack, not being across the detail, a disregard for the formal processes of good governance, a regulatory ignorance, a lack of understanding about how the internal market works, a disrespect for the limitations of devolution, a willful lack of clarity on how other DRS schemes work across the world, and the complete intransigence of Slater to accept blame or adopt humility have all contributed to the slow death knell of this current policy.
Under her watch, the Scottish DRS has become a metaphor for how messed up things really are: virtue signalling with tokenistic policies that are ill-thought out, have catastrophic unintended consequences, are largely unworkable, potentially illegal, and that have major consequences for the real lives of Scots.
The Tories need to STFU about Labour receiving donations from Dale Vince .
The cesspit party should then return all their Russian blood money ! You may disagree with Just Stop Oils actions but protesting to save the planet is at least a noble endeavour.
Every protester thinks their protest is a noble endeavour.
Not all of them are able to give a bung to a major political party who then, by a happy coincidence, announces a policy in line with their aims.
It is probably coincidental but it’s not a great look.
What should worry Sunak is soaring inflation and mortgages. Are these the sunlit uplands that this fool and other deluded fools promised us? The sooner the Tory filth are ejected from power, the better!
You really think Sunak and Reeves are going to magically slash inflation and mortgage rates better than Sunak and Hunt?
Anything would be better than the past 13 years of economic mismanagement and self-harm.
The Tories inherited 8% unemployment, even if they lose they will leave that halved and a massive deficit from the Labour government of 2010
Tories ran the deficit up to 11.5% of GPD, Labour's worst year was 4.51%.
The average Labour deficit through 1997 - 2009 was 0.91% The average Tory deficit through 2010 - 2022 was 3.93%
Labour ran a budget surplus in 4 years out of 13; Tories have run a surplus (just) in 1 year out of 13.
Facts yes, but without context. Pretty sure the UK government ran up deficits in 1939-45 too. Covid was a war that needed paying for.
COVID didn't start until 2020. So what went wrong in all but one of the previous ten years?
Really? Did you forget 2008? And 'there's no money left'?
Time for a change yes, but context for data is important too.
My favourite lefties are the ones who criticise Osborne for ‘austerity’ and all criticise him for not cutting the deficit faster.
They use the same argument that US Republicans do. Huge deficits pay for themselves. So, a government can borrow 11% of GDP forever, because the resulting economic growth will cover the cost of servicing the debt.
The words “Ponzi scheme” come to mind.
I am hoping for a return to some form of liberal capitalism in the future, and escaping the Ponzi schemes and leveraged buyout flipping that characterises western economies in the 21st century. It's an engine for disaster.
The tax and economic system is setup to favour pumping debt up.
It was quite telling - when my relative was building his business, his rejection of a loan (at horrendous terms) was greeted by the business advisor at the bank with something like “what good are you to us then?”
Which is why some regard the actually cash mountains of certain corporations as almost evil.
The idea that selling your buildings and renting them back (for example) is a good idea is quite strange if you look at it.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Most Celts were not Romano-British, most Romano-British tended to be wealthier for starters.
Offa was King of Mercia NOT England...
Richard didn't say that: "Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan.."
Why are you having an argument with a king dead over a thousand years ago ?
What should worry Sunak is soaring inflation and mortgages. Are these the sunlit uplands that this fool and other deluded fools promised us? The sooner the Tory filth are ejected from power, the better!
You really think Sunak and Reeves are going to magically slash inflation and mortgage rates better than Sunak and Hunt?
Anything would be better than the past 13 years of economic mismanagement and self-harm.
The Tories inherited 8% unemployment, even if they lose they will leave that halved and a massive deficit from the Labour government of 2010
Tories ran the deficit up to 11.5% of GPD, Labour's worst year was 4.51%.
The average Labour deficit through 1997 - 2009 was 0.91% The average Tory deficit through 2010 - 2022 was 3.93%
Labour ran a budget surplus in 4 years out of 13; Tories have run a surplus (just) in 1 year out of 13.
Facts yes, but without context. Pretty sure the UK government ran up deficits in 1939-45 too. Covid was a war that needed paying for.
COVID didn't start until 2020. So what went wrong in all but one of the previous ten years?
Really? Did you forget 2008? And 'there's no money left'?
Time for a change yes, but context for data is important too.
My favourite lefties are the ones who criticise Osborne for ‘austerity’ and all criticise him for not cutting the deficit faster.
They use the same argument that US Republicans do. Huge deficits pay for themselves. So, a government can borrow 11% of GDP forever, because the resulting economic growth will cover the cost of servicing the debt.
The words “Ponzi scheme” come to mind.
I am hoping for a return to some form of liberal capitalism in the future, and escaping the Ponzi schemes and leveraged buyout flipping that characterises western economies in the 21st century. It's an engine for disaster.
It feels like we made a mistake somewhere, maybe in setting the balance of corporate debt vs capital raised from shareholders? Somewhere along the way we enabled financial shenanigans at the expense of actually building things that people believe to be worthwhile.
I don’t have a good answer, no magic bullet to hand, but just the feeling that we set up the system wrong somewhere & have incentivised the wrong things.
UK is the sick man of Europe again? Our PPI for April was 5.4% according to Trading Economics. Trending down, but a long way from EU levels.
According to that release, the producer price index in the EU is 152.6 (Eurozone 149.5) compared with the the UK's 136.40, so no. The EU is falling from a higher level.
What should worry Sunak is soaring inflation and mortgages. Are these the sunlit uplands that this fool and other deluded fools promised us? The sooner the Tory filth are ejected from power, the better!
You really think Sunak and Reeves are going to magically slash inflation and mortgage rates better than Sunak and Hunt?
Anything would be better than the past 13 years of economic mismanagement and self-harm.
The Tories inherited 8% unemployment, even if they lose they will leave that halved and a massive deficit from the Labour government of 2010
Tories ran the deficit up to 11.5% of GPD, Labour's worst year was 4.51%.
The average Labour deficit through 1997 - 2009 was 0.91% The average Tory deficit through 2010 - 2022 was 3.93%
Labour ran a budget surplus in 4 years out of 13; Tories have run a surplus (just) in 1 year out of 13.
Facts yes, but without context. Pretty sure the UK government ran up deficits in 1939-45 too. Covid was a war that needed paying for.
COVID didn't start until 2020. So what went wrong in all but one of the previous ten years?
Really? Did you forget 2008? And 'there's no money left'?
Time for a change yes, but context for data is important too.
My favourite lefties are the ones who criticise Osborne for ‘austerity’ and all criticise him for not cutting the deficit faster.
They use the same argument that US Republicans do. Huge deficits pay for themselves. So, a government can borrow 11% of GDP forever, because the resulting economic growth will cover the cost of servicing the debt.
The words “Ponzi scheme” come to mind.
I am hoping for a return to some form of liberal capitalism in the future, and escaping the Ponzi schemes and leveraged buyout flipping that characterises western economies in the 21st century. It's an engine for disaster.
The tax and economic system is setup to favour pumping debt up.
It was quite telling - when my relative was building his business, his rejection of a loan (at horrendous terms) was greeted by the business advisor at the bank with something like “what good are you to us then?”
Which is why some regard the actually cash mountains of certain corporations as almost evil.
The idea that selling your buildings and renting them back (for example) is a good idea is quite strange if you look at it.
Banks make money from loans. Everything else is marketing.
It is /slightly/ weird that we base the functionality of the rest of our economic system on the marketing budget of the banking sector.
Much excitement in the junior Cyclefree household in London last night. House next door - empty as being done up by builders for new owners - was burgled. Group of men in balaclavas loading stuff into van. Son challenged them. Got license plate number and has told police. Also wrote down everything he could remember and sent it to me.
We shall see what the police do about this. They have some evidence to go on at least.
Poor owners are in shock. It's not what you want to hear on a Monday morning.
What should worry Sunak is soaring inflation and mortgages. Are these the sunlit uplands that this fool and other deluded fools promised us? The sooner the Tory filth are ejected from power, the better!
You really think Sunak and Reeves are going to magically slash inflation and mortgage rates better than Sunak and Hunt?
Anything would be better than the past 13 years of economic mismanagement and self-harm.
Really? Look at North Sea Oil. Sunak and Hunt wreck development with taxes and perverse incentives - Starmer will ban it completely. It's the same agenda, and on virtually every economical issue you are to name, Starmer's Government would be worse.
Britain badly needs a credible third party to oppose the batshit crazy Davos agenda - either to disrupt the duopoly or pull one or both of the other parties to their senses. It's an open goal.
Much excitement in the junior Cyclefree household in London last night. House next door - empty as being done up by builders for new owners - was burgled. Group of men in balaclavas loading stuff into van. Son challenged them. Got license plate number and has told police. Also wrote down everything he could remember and sent it to me.
We shall see what the police do about this. They have some evidence to go on at least.
Poor owners are in shock. It's not what you want to hear on a Monday morning.
Yikes - fair play for challenging them but tbh I don’t recommend taking on groups of men with balaclavas on. Hopefully that’s at least enough for the coppers to be going on with. Burglary is a nasty crime.
Delays, obfuscation, repeated changes in tack, not being across the detail, a disregard for the formal processes of good governance, a regulatory ignorance, a lack of understanding about how the internal market works, a disrespect for the limitations of devolution, a willful lack of clarity on how other DRS schemes work across the world, and the complete intransigence of Slater to accept blame or adopt humility have all contributed to the slow death knell of this current policy.
Under her watch, the Scottish DRS has become a metaphor for how messed up things really are: virtue signalling with tokenistic policies that are ill-thought out, have catastrophic unintended consequences, are largely unworkable, potentially illegal, and that have major consequences for the real lives of Scots.
But why is the Scottish government interfering in how F1 cars drive?*
I love how some TLA's** stand in for so many different things. Example - I work in nuclear magnetic resonance - NMR. My sister used to work for the National Milk Register, or NMR for short...
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Most Celts were not Romano-British, most Romano-British tended to be wealthier for starters.
Offa was King of Mercia NOT England...
Richard didn't say that: "Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan.."
Why are you having an argument with a king dead over a thousand years ago ?
Because he can't answer back. meaning you get the last word?
UK is the sick man of Europe again? Our PPI for April was 5.4% according to Trading Economics. Trending down, but a long way from EU levels.
According to that release, the producer price index in the EU is 152.6 (Eurozone 149.5) compared with the the UK's 136.40, so no. The EU is falling from a higher level.
EU trend is firmly down though, unlike the UK PPI. We’ll have to see how it plays out.
Much excitement in the junior Cyclefree household in London last night. House next door - empty as being done up by builders for new owners - was burgled. Group of men in balaclavas loading stuff into van. Son challenged them. Got license plate number and has told police. Also wrote down everything he could remember and sent it to me.
We shall see what the police do about this. They have some evidence to go on at least.
Poor owners are in shock. It's not what you want to hear on a Monday morning.
License plate number? It's normally AI contributions to PB that employ such Americanisms, or at least that is the rule for the drinking game I play. And buy him a security camera.
UK is the sick man of Europe again? Our PPI for April was 5.4% according to Trading Economics. Trending down, but a long way from EU levels.
According to that release, the producer price index in the EU is 152.6 (Eurozone 149.5) compared with the the UK's 136.40, so no. The EU is falling from a higher level.
EU trend is firmly down though, unlike the UK PPI. We’ll have to see how it plays out.
Germany and Ireland are in recession. We'll have to see how it plays out but I don't think you can say that the UK is the sick man of Europe at the moment.
Much excitement in the junior Cyclefree household in London last night. House next door - empty as being done up by builders for new owners - was burgled. Group of men in balaclavas loading stuff into van. Son challenged them. Got license plate number and has told police. Also wrote down everything he could remember and sent it to me.
We shall see what the police do about this. They have some evidence to go on at least.
Poor owners are in shock. It's not what you want to hear on a Monday morning.
Yikes - fair play for challenging them but tbh I don’t recommend taking on groups of men with balaclavas on. Hopefully that’s at least enough for the coppers to be going on with. Burglary is a nasty crime.
Bet they were after the contents of the site lockers the builders use. Some serious resale value for some tools.
UK is the sick man of Europe again? Our PPI for April was 5.4% according to Trading Economics. Trending down, but a long way from EU levels.
According to that release, the producer price index in the EU is 152.6 (Eurozone 149.5) compared with the the UK's 136.40, so no. The EU is falling from a higher level.
EU trend is firmly down though, unlike the UK PPI. We’ll have to see how it plays out.
Germany and Ireland are in recession. We'll have to see how it plays out but I don't think you can say that the UK is the sick man of Europe at the moment.
That is arguably where George Osborne went wrong. His Plan A austerity in one country might have worked if Europe were not also in the same boat (thanks, Germany). We cannot gloat if our export markets are in recession.
Much excitement in the junior Cyclefree household in London last night. House next door - empty as being done up by builders for new owners - was burgled. Group of men in balaclavas loading stuff into van. Son challenged them. Got license plate number and has told police. Also wrote down everything he could remember and sent it to me.
We shall see what the police do about this. They have some evidence to go on at least.
Poor owners are in shock. It's not what you want to hear on a Monday morning.
Yikes - fair play for challenging them but tbh I don’t recommend taking on groups of men with balaclavas on. Hopefully that’s at least enough for the coppers to be going on with. Burglary is a nasty crime.
I know. My heart skipped a beat when he told me that. But his reactions - to record / get registration numbers etc - were all spot on so am proud of him.
UK is the sick man of Europe again? Our PPI for April was 5.4% according to Trading Economics. Trending down, but a long way from EU levels.
According to that release, the producer price index in the EU is 152.6 (Eurozone 149.5) compared with the the UK's 136.40, so no. The EU is falling from a higher level.
EU trend is firmly down though, unlike the UK PPI. We’ll have to see how it plays out.
Well seeing as the UK tends to lead/follow the USA/Europe, better they have low numbers even if ours are a little high.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Most Celts were not Romano-British, most Romano-British tended to be wealthier for starters.
Offa was King of Mercia NOT England...
Richard didn't say that: "Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan.."
Why are you having an argument with a king dead over a thousand years ago ?
Who else is going to hold these woke Marxist eighth-century kings to account?
Much excitement in the junior Cyclefree household in London last night. House next door - empty as being done up by builders for new owners - was burgled. Group of men in balaclavas loading stuff into van. Son challenged them. Got license plate number and has told police. Also wrote down everything he could remember and sent it to me.
We shall see what the police do about this. They have some evidence to go on at least.
Poor owners are in shock. It's not what you want to hear on a Monday morning.
Yikes - fair play for challenging them but tbh I don’t recommend taking on groups of men with balaclavas on. Hopefully that’s at least enough for the coppers to be going on with. Burglary is a nasty crime.
Bet they were after the contents of the site lockers the builders use. Some serious resale value for some tools.
They were taking out white goods according to him. Microwave, dishwasher etc.,. The house has been gutted so there's not a lot else inside.
Much excitement in the junior Cyclefree household in London last night. House next door - empty as being done up by builders for new owners - was burgled. Group of men in balaclavas loading stuff into van. Son challenged them. Got license plate number and has told police. Also wrote down everything he could remember and sent it to me.
We shall see what the police do about this. They have some evidence to go on at least.
Poor owners are in shock. It's not what you want to hear on a Monday morning.
Yikes - fair play for challenging them but tbh I don’t recommend taking on groups of men with balaclavas on. Hopefully that’s at least enough for the coppers to be going on with. Burglary is a nasty crime.
I know. My heart skipped a beat when he told me that. But his reactions - to record / get registration numbers etc - were all spot on so am proud of him.
Calling the police should have been his first action, not challenging the bad guys. No point turning an insurance claim into a funeral.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
It's complete nonsense as applied to the modern world.
We are talking historians studying the 8th century
If I recall correctly you were originally talking about an Anglo Saxon identity in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Yes which is also correct as I pointed out earlier as those nations also have English Anglo Saxon heritage and the US English and German Anglo Saxon heritage
There's definitely no such thing as 'German Anglo Saxon heritage' in any universe.
There is, most of them voted for Boris and Trump (Trump has German ancestry)! Indeed Trump was originally Drumpf from the German Palatinate
Yes I was wrong - WASP is sometimes used in the US to include other 'white protestant' background people. The Telegraph should get upset about this as it is clearly a perversion of the use of the term 'Anglo-Saxon'!
Your link about Trump doesn't seem to mention 'anglo-saxon' at all, so not sure what the relevance is? I'm pretty sure his German ancestors would never have thought of themselves as 'Anglo-Saxon'. Also not sure which people of 'German Anglo Saxon heritage' voted for Johnson, the term doesn't seem to have any meaning in the British context.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
It's complete nonsense as applied to the modern world.
We are talking historians studying the 8th century
If I recall correctly you were originally talking about an Anglo Saxon identity in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Yes which is also correct as I pointed out earlier as those nations also have English Anglo Saxon heritage and the US English and German Anglo Saxon heritage
There's definitely no such thing as 'German Anglo Saxon heritage' in any universe.
There is, most of them voted for Boris and Trump (Trump has German ancestry)! Indeed Trump was originally Drumpf from the German Palatinate
Yes I was wrong - WASP is sometimes used in the US to include other 'white protestant' background people. The Telegraph should get upset about this as it is clearly a perversion of the use of the term 'Anglo-Saxon'!
Your link about Trump doesn't seem to mention 'anglo-saxon' at all, so not sure what the relevance is? I'm pretty sure his German ancestors would never have thought of themselves as 'Anglo-Saxon'. Also not sure which people of 'German Anglo Saxon heritage' voted for Johnson, the term doesn't seem to have any meaning in the British context.
So far as Mr Trump has UK ancestry, I believe it is primarily Gaelic - i.e. very much not Angles or Saxons or Danes or Normans.
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
Perhaps it couldn't have been made in March 2020. But surely by June that year some effort should have been made to weigh costs and benefits against each other.
I can forgive the initial panicked lockdown in response to unknown circumstances. I can't really forgive keeping it there, to a greater or lesser extent, for the next 16 months. Nor the silencing of anyone who called for less lockdown.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
I love the Anglo-Saxons. My brother in laws used to be young, dumb and racist. One especially would prattle on about supporting the BNP as there were too many outsiders and that we should only have "pure-bred Anglo-Saxons".
Once I had pointed out that "Angle" and "Saxon" were separate tribal groups and not remotely "pure-bred" I then enquired as to which country they envisaged their preferred BNP government deporting them to.
Because as they were second generation migrants (half Spanish quarter Irish) they were up for deportation as not "pure-bred Anglo-Saxon" enough.
Their error was in conflating their whiteness as being native. Something that happily had been corrected by most xenophobes voting for Brexit where they were quite happy to other various white Christian nationalities such as Romanians.
Much excitement in the junior Cyclefree household in London last night. House next door - empty as being done up by builders for new owners - was burgled. Group of men in balaclavas loading stuff into van. Son challenged them. Got license plate number and has told police. Also wrote down everything he could remember and sent it to me.
We shall see what the police do about this. They have some evidence to go on at least.
Poor owners are in shock. It's not what you want to hear on a Monday morning.
Way back in the 1980s I had a very expensive aftermarket Pioneer CD player stolen from my new car. Window smashed and wires cut with a pair of pliers, I was gutted. All was not lost, the bandits left their pliers. I carefully collected the pliers in my sunglasses case to avoid contaminating the item for when fingerprinting was progressed. On handing the pair of pliers over to the duty Sergeant at Roath nick, still in my sunglasses case, I hopefully questioned "what happens next". Quick as a flash the Sergeant replied "if nobody claims the pliers in 3 months, they're yours!"
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
And also, as I have said already, the point of holding the Inquiry is to answer these questions, so can everybody please wait until the evidence is laid out and the Inquiry reports?
I don't like Labour getting multi million pound donations any more than the Tories.
And it doesn't indicate that Labour have broader support, it indicates that business owners expect Labour to win, and therefore donate to them, and will donate less to the Tories. Not for influence of course, not at all.
My favourite lefties are the ones who criticise Osborne for ‘austerity’ and all criticise him for not cutting the deficit faster.
Austerity doesn't work. As the UK has proved.
There was no austerity. It was a myth originally put out by Tories who wanted to look sensible after the spending splurges of Labour, but then further perpetrated by public sector workers who thought they could demand higher and higher salaries and pensions while the private sector pulled their collective belts in.
Starmer will probably be brought down in his first term by ridiculous pay claims from the public sector who want more and more for doing less and less.
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
Perhaps it couldn't have been made in March 2020. But surely by June that year some effort should have been made to weigh costs and benefits against each other.
I can forgive the initial panicked lockdown in response to unknown circumstances. I can't really forgive keeping it there, to a greater or lesser extent, for the next 16 months. Nor the silencing of anyone who called for less lockdown.
We didn't know much more by June 2020 than we did in March. And when they started to let us out of our padded cells to mingle, we had catastrofuck policies like Eat Out to Help Out which then drove another surge of deaths and hospitals teetering on the verge of collapse.
Even if we had had the spectacle of Bunter first injected with Covid on live TV and then his funeral, with no real restrictions, people would have self-restricted themselves. When people are falling seriously ill and dead in such vast numbers, you're not likely to fancy going out for a nice meal or to the football. No matter how hard right wing zealots demand that the plebs do so.
Much excitement in the junior Cyclefree household in London last night. House next door - empty as being done up by builders for new owners - was burgled. Group of men in balaclavas loading stuff into van. Son challenged them. Got license plate number and has told police. Also wrote down everything he could remember and sent it to me.
We shall see what the police do about this. They have some evidence to go on at least.
Poor owners are in shock. It's not what you want to hear on a Monday morning.
Yikes - fair play for challenging them but tbh I don’t recommend taking on groups of men with balaclavas on. Hopefully that’s at least enough for the coppers to be going on with. Burglary is a nasty crime.
I know. My heart skipped a beat when he told me that. But his reactions - to record / get registration numbers etc - were all spot on so am proud of him.
Calling the police should have been his first action, not challenging the bad guys. No point turning an insurance claim into a funeral.
Thanks.
He was trying to do the right thing. He has some useful evidence to help the police. He thought, bizarre as this might seem, that they might be builders. They are in and out of the house all the time and we have been pretty friendly with them. It was precisely because they did not look like the guys we knew etc that he realised something was wrong and in the minutes it took for them to get into the van and drive off he got the registration number which is probably the most helpful piece of information of all.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Most Celts were not Romano-British, most Romano-British tended to be wealthier for starters.
Offa was King of Mercia NOT England...
Richard didn't say that: "Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan.."
Why are you having an argument with a king dead over a thousand years ago ?
Because he can't answer back. meaning you get the last word?
I always thought he was a pretty shit King myself. A total and utter loser.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Weren't generally offered free lodging back in the day though.
Interesting to see that the BBC is marking the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive with a live news feed ... about today's developments on the Phillip Schofield front!
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Not at all. And in much the same way, the 'invasions' were a myth in the Early Medieval Period just as much as they are now.
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
It's also by the same trio who came up with the "meta analysis" that "proved" both lockdowns and border closures had practically zero effect. Apparently.
(When one of them was asked how New Zealand and Australia escaped the initial waves, the answer was that they didn't know and it was probably just luck)
That particular study had a brief revew from Nassim Nicholas Taleb (author of Black Swans): “This study has the rigor of lower grade marshmallow left out in the torching tropical sun.”
They skilfully boiled down 18,000 studies and excluded or downweighted any epidemiological studies from epidemiologists, on the grounds they wouldn't know anything about epidemiology. They got down to six and then weighted one (an obscure one from a pay-journal) so overwhelmingly highly that it basically repackaged that one.
Unfortunately, it still said the opposite of what they wanted it to say, so they reversed it (on the grounds that the study authors didn't know anything about their own study) to make it say that all NPIs did nothing.
(And yes, they defined "lockdown" as any NPI - including masking or a requirement for ill people to quarantine).
It was, of course, trumpeted by the Toby Youngites and the Telegraph as proof (PROOF!) that NPIs did nothing. Which did, at least, indicate something about those repeating it (that they either never bothered looking at the specifics of a claim they liked, or that they did and were so statistically or logically illiterate that they actually believed it was meaningful, or they did look at it and understand it but chose to amplify claims they knew were bollocks).
I don't like Labour getting multi million pound donations any more than the Tories.
And it doesn't indicate that Labour have broader support, it indicates that business owners expect Labour to win, and therefore donate to them, and will donate less to the Tories. Not for influence of course, not at all.
You are suggesting that the ex-CEO of Autoglass is not being transparent?
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
It is fascinating that the client journalists of the right-wing lockdown naysayers are putting a value on lives saved. I suspect if one of those lives saved from lockdowns was theirs or their loved ones, they might have an alternative view on the relative success of Government action.
Or were shape-shifting lizards immune from the effects of COVID?
Interesting to see that the BBC is marking the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive with a live news feed ... about today's developments on the Phillip Schofield front!
From what I can gather, Schofield's tearful interview attack has been largely repulsed by a tearful live counter-attack from Holly, though the BBC hasn't yet been able to verify the claims independently.
I don't like Labour getting multi million pound donations any more than the Tories.
And it doesn't indicate that Labour have broader support, it indicates that business owners expect Labour to win, and therefore donate to them, and will donate less to the Tories. Not for influence of course, not at all.
You are suggesting that the ex-CEO of Autoglass is not being transparent?
I don't like Labour getting multi million pound donations any more than the Tories.
And it doesn't indicate that Labour have broader support, it indicates that business owners expect Labour to win, and therefore donate to them, and will donate less to the Tories. Not for influence of course, not at all.
You are suggesting that the ex-CEO of Autoglass is not being transparent?
That particular study had a brief revew from Nassim Nicholas Taleb (author of Black Swans): “This study has the rigor of lower grade marshmallow left out in the torching tropical sun.”
Taleb can always be relied on for a hilariously withering takedown.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Not at all. And in much the same way, the 'invasions' were a myth in the Early Medieval Period just as much as they are now.
A good narrative will always trump the work of a dozen academics.
The whole notion of a handful of Roman aristocrats trying to keep the last embers of civilisation alive, in the face of invasion by overwhelming numbers of barbarians is romantic, and the basis of some really good novels and poems.
But, it's almost completely wrong.
In the popular imagination about the Roman Empire, Gibbon reigns supreme, even though academics have long since ceased to seriously criticise or defend Gibbon. Everyone who studies the subject knows that Gibbon's judgements were seriously wrong.
Interesting to see that the BBC is marking the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive with a live news feed ... about today's developments on the Phillip Schofield front!
Yes, BBC rolling news reporting live from Television Centre the seminal news that Holly Willoughby has arrived for work.
Interesting to see that the BBC is marking the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive with a live news feed ... about today's developments on the Phillip Schofield front!
Yes, BBC rolling news reporting live from Television Centre the important news that Holly Willoughby has arrived for work.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Not at all. And in much the same way, the 'invasions' were a myth in the Early Medieval Period just as much as they are now.
I was always supportive of the "there was no large scale migration" theory. And I still am.
However, my confidence was somewhat shaken by this paper from the Max Planck Institute last Autumn.
(That said, I'm prepared to consider bias in the data such as the kind of genetic material that has survived over-sampling higher status individuals etc. Anything to hang on to my personal pet theory!)
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Most Celts were not Romano-British, most Romano-British tended to be wealthier for starters.
Offa was King of Mercia NOT England, his influence at most only ever extended to the Midlands and Southern England NOT Northumbria and the North.
Only Aethelstan could proclaim himself King of the English after he defeated the Vikings, who had overrun the North, at York (albeit the Vikings took it back when he died).
Your understanding of late Roman and early medieval history is infantile.
Romano-British is not a term differentiating classes or groupings within Southern Britain. It refers to everyone who lived in the Roman occupied province of Britannia irrespective of their ethnicity or social standing. It is done this way because it is pretty much impossible to differentiate archaeologically between the Romans, the Romanised Britons and the non Romanised. Their material cultures are bascially identical across ethnic boundaries. It is only with the arrival of foedorati from other fringes of the Roman Empire that we are able to make any differentiation and even then they are subsumed to large extent into the RB culture, both taking from it and adding to it.
If you are really interested in this I talk about it with Dan Jones on the Walking Britain's Roman Roads TV programme that was shown a couple of years ago.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
What do we call them? Early English? What fricking difference is there between that and Anglo-Saxon in effect?
This is piffling Woke nonsense disguised as serious history
I don't like Labour getting multi million pound donations any more than the Tories.
And it doesn't indicate that Labour have broader support, it indicates that business owners expect Labour to win, and therefore donate to them, and will donate less to the Tories. Not for influence of course, not at all.
Could be no desire to influence policy, simply a straightforward investment decision: £100m on Lab majority at Befair at around evens; £5m 'donation' to ensure the win
Interesting to see that the BBC is marking the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive with a live news feed ... about today's developments on the Phillip Schofield front!
Yes, BBC rolling news reporting live from Television Centre the important news that Holly Willoughby has arrived for work.
She has been so brave. I mean, what she has had to go through! The shock of realising that a colleague didn't feel the need to share intimate details of his private life, the cad. It must be terrible for the poor thing. Give her a Nobel Prize.
Interesting to see that the BBC is marking the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive with a live news feed ... about today's developments on the Phillip Schofield front!
From what I can gather, Schofield's tearful interview attack has been largely repulsed by a tearful live counter-attack from Holly, though the BBC hasn't yet been able to verify the claims independently.
Over the weekend (3-4 Jun 2023), the fighters of the Schofield "proactive PR" Grouping stopped several attempts by Willoughby formations to reach the islands of Broadcasting House and This Morning studios, as well as to penetrate the left bank of Eamonn Holmes.
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
It is fascinating that the client journalists of the right-wing lockdown naysayers are putting a value on lives saved. I suspect if one of those lives saved from lockdowns was theirs or their loved ones, they might have an alternative view on the relative success of Government action.
Or were shape-shifting lizards immune from the effects of COVID?
NICE put values on lives saved all the time.
If you object to it, you can do it the other way if you like: how much money does it take to prolong a life by a year? If you quantify the financial impacts of lockdown by how much we could have spent on the NHS, you can take money out of the equation entirely: how many life years could we have had in future if we hadn't locked down?
The argument 'you can't put a price on saving a life' is nonsense.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
Interesting to see that the BBC is marking the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive with a live news feed ... about today's developments on the Phillip Schofield front!
Yes, BBC rolling news reporting live from Television Centre the important news that Holly Willoughby has arrived for work.
Interesting to see that the BBC is marking the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive with a live news feed ... about today's developments on the Phillip Schofield front!
Yes, BBC rolling news reporting live from Television Centre the seminal news that Holly Willoughby has arrived for work.
It is just pathetic and sad the way the media obsess about celebrity
No sooner has Willoughby made a tearful statement (not that I have seen it, indeed I have never watched the programme anyway) along comes Harry for the media to obsess about this week
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
Perhaps it couldn't have been made in March 2020. But surely by June that year some effort should have been made to weigh costs and benefits against each other.
I can forgive the initial panicked lockdown in response to unknown circumstances. I can't really forgive keeping it there, to a greater or lesser extent, for the next 16 months. Nor the silencing of anyone who called for less lockdown.
You weigh up your own cost and benefits mate!
Lockdowns worked for me and I can prove it by the fact that I am still walking and talking.
My cost benefit analysis for late lockdowns in September 20 and December 20 can be counted in the fatality statistics for Autumn 2020 and Winter 2020/21.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Not at all. And in much the same way, the 'invasions' were a myth in the Early Medieval Period just as much as they are now.
I was always supportive of the "there was no large scale migration" theory. And I still am.
However, my confidence was somewhat shaken by this paper from the Max Planck Institute last Autumn.
The migrations were not a myth. The idea that they were an 'invasion' or a conquest is a myth - in my view.
We know that there were large scale migrations. What is changing is our view of the nature of those migrations.
Even so, look at a site like West Heslerton in Yorkshire. The cemetery there which dates to the migration period contained over 200 burials in the classical 'Anglian' style. And yet when they were tested using Oxygen and Strontium isotope testing of the teeth, only one was found to have grown up outside the British Isles.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
What do we call them? Early English? What fricking difference is there between that and Anglo-Saxon in effect?
This is piffling Woke nonsense disguised as serious history
Other way round. It is serious history disguised as piffling woke nonsense.
Much excitement in the junior Cyclefree household in London last night. House next door - empty as being done up by builders for new owners - was burgled. Group of men in balaclavas loading stuff into van. Son challenged them. Got license plate number and has told police. Also wrote down everything he could remember and sent it to me.
We shall see what the police do about this. They have some evidence to go on at least.
Poor owners are in shock. It's not what you want to hear on a Monday morning.
Yikes - fair play for challenging them but tbh I don’t recommend taking on groups of men with balaclavas on. Hopefully that’s at least enough for the coppers to be going on with. Burglary is a nasty crime.
Bet they were after the contents of the site lockers the builders use. Some serious resale value for some tools.
They were taking out white goods according to him. Microwave, dishwasher etc.,. The house has been gutted so there's not a lot else inside.
White goods seem rather odd things to nick, being heavy, bulky and not worth that much as second hand items. Still, I hope the police catch them and your lad's neighbours manage to sort things out.
What should worry Sunak is soaring inflation and mortgages. Are these the sunlit uplands that this fool and other deluded fools promised us? The sooner the Tory filth are ejected from power, the better!
You really think Sunak and Reeves are going to magically slash inflation and mortgage rates better than Sunak and Hunt?
Anything would be better than the past 13 years of economic mismanagement and self-harm.
The Tories inherited 8% unemployment, even if they lose they will leave that halved and a massive deficit from the Labour government of 2010
Tories ran the deficit up to 11.5% of GPD, Labour's worst year was 4.51%.
The average Labour deficit through 1997 - 2009 was 0.91% The average Tory deficit through 2010 - 2022 was 3.93%
Labour ran a budget surplus in 4 years out of 13; Tories have run a surplus (just) in 1 year out of 13.
I am not here to defend Darling so much as condemn Osborne. @eek makes a compelling case that austerity was the mother and father of Brexit.
I think it more plausible that Blair's decision to let millions from Eastern Europe in unchecked was much more influential. Certainly that's what Farage thinks fwiw.
Interesting to see that the BBC is marking the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive with a live news feed ... about today's developments on the Phillip Schofield front!
Yes, BBC rolling news reporting live from Television Centre the important news that Holly Willoughby has arrived for work.
Interesting to see that the BBC is marking the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive with a live news feed ... about today's developments on the Phillip Schofield front!
From what I can gather, Schofield's tearful interview attack has been largely repulsed by a tearful live counter-attack from Holly, though the BBC hasn't yet been able to verify the claims independently.
Over the weekend (3-4 Jun 2023), the fighters of the Schofield "proactive PR" Grouping stopped several attempts by Willoughby formations to reach the islands of Broadcasting House and This Morning studios, as well as to penetrate the left bank of Eamonn Holmes.
But until we have strangely punctuated posts from short-lived posters here on Saturday mornings, we'll know Schofield isn't taking this seriously enough.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Not at all. And in much the same way, the 'invasions' were a myth in the Early Medieval Period just as much as they are now.
I was always supportive of the "there was no large scale migration" theory. And I still am.
However, my confidence was somewhat shaken by this paper from the Max Planck Institute last Autumn.
The migrations were not a myth. The idea that they were an 'invasion' or a conquest is a myth - in my view.
We know that there were large scale migrations. What is changing is our view of the nature of those migrations.
Even so, look at a site like West Heslerton in Yorkshire. The cemetery there which dates to the migration period contained over 200 burials in the classical 'Anglian' style. And yet when they were tested using Oxygen and Strontium isotope testing of the teeth, only one was found to have grown up outside the British Isles.
Oh, sure - sorry. I did mistake that completely! Yes; I completely agree with this perspective. The only nuance is in what you mean by "large scale".
Large enough to become the dominant cultural influence - certainly. What surprises me is that it seems that it was large enough to become the dominant genetic heritage, very rapidly.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Most Celts were not Romano-British, most Romano-British tended to be wealthier for starters.
Offa was King of Mercia NOT England...
Richard didn't say that: "Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan.."
Why are you having an argument with a king dead over a thousand years ago ?
He never conquered Northumbria so on no definition was Offa ever King of England
Interesting to see that the BBC is marking the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive with a live news feed ... about today's developments on the Phillip Schofield front!
From what I can gather, Schofield's tearful interview attack has been largely repulsed by a tearful live counter-attack from Holly, though the BBC hasn't yet been able to verify the claims independently.
Over the weekend (3-4 Jun 2023), the fighters of the Schofield "proactive PR" Grouping stopped several attempts by Willoughby formations to reach the islands of Broadcasting House and This Morning studios, as well as to penetrate the left bank of Eamonn Holmes.
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
Perhaps it couldn't have been made in March 2020. But surely by June that year some effort should have been made to weigh costs and benefits against each other.
I can forgive the initial panicked lockdown in response to unknown circumstances. I can't really forgive keeping it there, to a greater or lesser extent, for the next 16 months. Nor the silencing of anyone who called for less lockdown.
We didn't know much more by June 2020 than we did in March. And when they started to let us out of our padded cells to mingle, we had catastrofuck policies like Eat Out to Help Out which then drove another surge of deaths and hospitals teetering on the verge of collapse.
Even if we had had the spectacle of Bunter first injected with Covid on live TV and then his funeral, with no real restrictions, people would have self-restricted themselves. When people are falling seriously ill and dead in such vast numbers, you're not likely to fancy going out for a nice meal or to the football. No matter how hard right wing zealots demand that the plebs do so.
No-one HAS to go out. But I might have quite fancied my kids going to school though. Just that one aspect of lockdown alone has been catastrophic for a generation.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Not at all. And in much the same way, the 'invasions' were a myth in the Early Medieval Period just as much as they are now.
Such a myth Italy has elected a hard right government to turn back the boats and Spain is about too and much of the current government is pushing back hard about the need to get control of the boats crossing the Channel as is Macron given the rise of Le Pen.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Most Celts were not Romano-British, most Romano-British tended to be wealthier for starters.
Offa was King of Mercia NOT England, his influence at most only ever extended to the Midlands and Southern England NOT Northumbria and the North.
Only Aethelstan could proclaim himself King of the English after he defeated the Vikings, who had overrun the North, at York (albeit the Vikings took it back when he died).
Your understanding of late Roman and early medieval history is infantile.
Romano-British is not a term differentiating classes or groupings within Southern Britain. It refers to everyone who lived in the Roman occupied province of Britannia irrespective of their ethnicity or social standing. It is done this way because it is pretty much impossible to differentiate archaeologically between the Romans, the Romanised Britons and the non Romanised. Their material cultures are bascially identical across ethnic boundaries. It is only with the arrival of foedorati from other fringes of the Roman Empire that we are able to make any differentiation and even then they are subsumed to large extent into the RB culture, both taking from it and adding to it.
If you are really interested in this I talk about it with Dan Jones on the Walking Britain's Roman Roads TV programme that was shown a couple of years ago.
Your understanding of when England came into being is infantile
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
What do we call them? Early English? What fricking difference is there between that and Anglo-Saxon in effect?
This is piffling Woke nonsense disguised as serious history
They've banned 'Chr*stm*s' too!!!! Apparently illegal to use the word any more!!!!!!!! Political Correctness gone mad!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank God Leon is there to provide us with some serious history, risking imprisonment to do so, the brave man!
What should worry Sunak is soaring inflation and mortgages. Are these the sunlit uplands that this fool and other deluded fools promised us? The sooner the Tory filth are ejected from power, the better!
You really think Sunak and Reeves are going to magically slash inflation and mortgage rates better than Sunak and Hunt?
Anything would be better than the past 13 years of economic mismanagement and self-harm.
The Tories inherited 8% unemployment, even if they lose they will leave that halved and a massive deficit from the Labour government of 2010
Tories ran the deficit up to 11.5% of GPD, Labour's worst year was 4.51%.
The average Labour deficit through 1997 - 2009 was 0.91% The average Tory deficit through 2010 - 2022 was 3.93%
Labour ran a budget surplus in 4 years out of 13; Tories have run a surplus (just) in 1 year out of 13.
I am not here to defend Darling so much as condemn Osborne. @eek makes a compelling case that austerity was the mother and father of Brexit.
I think it more plausible that Blair's decision to let millions from Eastern Europe in unchecked was much more influential. Certainly that's what Farage thinks fwiw.
Unlikely, I'd have thought. The previous non-voters who turned out to vote for Brexit were generally not directly impacted by immigration but were hit by long-term economic decline with austerity the cherry on top. Now, they might have blamed immigration (wrongly) but that is a subtly different thing.
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The true scandal about austerity isn't that budgets needed to be reined in for a few years, its that they were done so cackhandedly that we're still having to pay for the damage this has inflicted.
We don't know exactly when Anglo Saxon (or something like it) disappeared completely (and of course part of that story was one of Tolkein's academic pursuits), but that it existed, and disappeared, is pretty well beyond dispute.
It seems to me that a period of time when interest rates where at 0% and pension funds were throwing money at government bonds for the lack of anything better to invest in was the perfect time for the government to have taken that money & gone on an infrastructure building spree.
But I’m not a professional economist, so what do I know?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_of_Donald_Trump#:~:text=According to biographer Gwenda Blair,of the early 17th century.
Possibly it's related to the church, in fact? Which was, of course, the main medium of literacy. In medieval England, Christianity sort of died away in a way it possibly didn't on the continent. Perhaps.
Offa was King of Mercia NOT England, his influence at most only ever extended to the Midlands and Southern England NOT Northumbria and the North.
Only Aethelstan could proclaim himself King of the English after he defeated the Vikings, who had overrun the North, at York (albeit the Vikings took it back when he died).
https://twitter.com/andrewmichta/status/1665573794428203009
UK is the sick man of Europe again? Our PPI for April was 5.4% according to Trading Economics. Trending down, but a long way from EU levels.
Delays, obfuscation, repeated changes in tack, not being across the detail, a disregard for the formal processes of good governance, a regulatory ignorance, a lack of understanding about how the internal market works, a disrespect for the limitations of devolution, a willful lack of clarity on how other DRS schemes work across the world, and the complete intransigence of Slater to accept blame or adopt humility have all contributed to the slow death knell of this current policy.
Under her watch, the Scottish DRS has become a metaphor for how messed up things really are: virtue signalling with tokenistic policies that are ill-thought out, have catastrophic unintended consequences, are largely unworkable, potentially illegal, and that have major consequences for the real lives of Scots.
https://www.holyrood.com/editors-column/view,the-deposit-return-scheme-is-another-example-of-a-government-better-at-virtue-signalling-than-delivering
Not all of them are able to give a bung to a major political party who then, by a happy coincidence, announces a policy in line with their aims.
It is probably coincidental but it’s not a great look.
It was quite telling - when my relative was building his business, his rejection of a loan (at horrendous terms) was greeted by the business advisor at the bank with something like “what good are you to us then?”
Which is why some regard the actually cash mountains of certain corporations as almost evil.
The idea that selling your buildings and renting them back (for example) is a good idea is quite strange if you look at it.
Why are you having an argument with a king dead over a thousand years ago ?
I don’t have a good answer, no magic bullet to hand, but just the feeling that we set up the system wrong somewhere & have incentivised the wrong things.
It is /slightly/ weird that we base the functionality of the rest of our economic system on the marketing budget of the banking sector.
We shall see what the police do about this. They have some evidence to go on at least.
Poor owners are in shock. It's not what you want to hear on a Monday morning.
Britain badly needs a credible third party to oppose the batshit crazy Davos agenda - either to disrupt the duopoly or pull one or both of the other parties to their senses. It's an open goal.
I love how some TLA's** stand in for so many different things. Example - I work in nuclear magnetic resonance - NMR. My sister used to work for the National Milk Register, or NMR for short...
**Three letter acronyms.
The Singapore Turf Club will cease operations in October 2024, potentially bringing to an end 180 years of the sport in the jurisdiction.
It is understood the government wants to repurpose the land the Kranji racecourse sits on by 2027.
https://www.racingpost.com/news/international/racing-in-singapore-set-to-come-to-an-end-in-october-2024-aTxBR9c4EWbk/
Sometimes it is government, not protestors.
It all looks rather tragic and sad , like a fading starlet now playing to empty concert halls !
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
Your link about Trump doesn't seem to mention 'anglo-saxon' at all, so not sure what the relevance is? I'm pretty sure his German ancestors would never have thought of themselves as 'Anglo-Saxon'. Also not sure which people of 'German Anglo Saxon heritage' voted for Johnson, the term doesn't seem to have any meaning in the British context.
Perhaps one of the Scottish parties with reference to the SNP ferries thing.
Has anyone gone with "bop the stoats" yet?
But surely by June that year some effort should have been made to weigh costs and benefits against each other.
I can forgive the initial panicked lockdown in response to unknown circumstances. I can't really forgive keeping it there, to a greater or lesser extent, for the next 16 months. Nor the silencing of anyone who called for less lockdown.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Once I had pointed out that "Angle" and "Saxon" were separate tribal groups and not remotely "pure-bred" I then enquired as to which country they envisaged their preferred BNP government deporting them to.
Because as they were second generation migrants (half Spanish quarter Irish) they were up for deportation as not "pure-bred Anglo-Saxon" enough.
Their error was in conflating their whiteness as being native. Something that happily had been corrected by most xenophobes voting for Brexit where they were quite happy to other various white Christian nationalities such as Romanians.
And it doesn't indicate that Labour have broader support, it indicates that business owners expect Labour to win, and therefore donate to them, and will donate less to the Tories. Not for influence of course, not at all.
Starmer will probably be brought down in his first term by ridiculous pay claims from the public sector who want more and more for doing less and less.
Even if we had had the spectacle of Bunter first injected with Covid on live TV and then his funeral, with no real restrictions, people would have self-restricted themselves. When people are falling seriously ill and dead in such vast numbers, you're not likely to fancy going out for a nice meal or to the football. No matter how hard right wing zealots demand that the plebs do so.
He was trying to do the right thing. He has some useful evidence to help the police. He thought, bizarre as this might seem, that they might be builders. They are in and out of the house all the time and we have been pretty friendly with them. It was precisely because they did not look like the guys we knew etc that he realised something was wrong and in the minutes it took for them to get into the van and drive off he got the registration number which is probably the most helpful piece of information of all.
(When one of them was asked how New Zealand and Australia escaped the initial waves, the answer was that they didn't know and it was probably just luck)
That particular study had a brief revew from Nassim Nicholas Taleb (author of Black Swans): “This study has the rigor of lower grade marshmallow left out in the torching tropical sun.”
They skilfully boiled down 18,000 studies and excluded or downweighted any epidemiological studies from epidemiologists, on the grounds they wouldn't know anything about epidemiology. They got down to six and then weighted one (an obscure one from a pay-journal) so overwhelmingly highly that it basically repackaged that one.
Unfortunately, it still said the opposite of what they wanted it to say, so they reversed it (on the grounds that the study authors didn't know anything about their own study) to make it say that all NPIs did nothing.
(And yes, they defined "lockdown" as any NPI - including masking or a requirement for ill people to quarantine).
It was, of course, trumpeted by the Toby Youngites and the Telegraph as proof (PROOF!) that NPIs did nothing. Which did, at least, indicate something about those repeating it (that they either never bothered looking at the specifics of a claim they liked, or that they did and were so statistically or logically illiterate that they actually believed it was meaningful, or they did look at it and understand it but chose to amplify claims they knew were bollocks).
Or were shape-shifting lizards immune from the effects of COVID?
The whole notion of a handful of Roman aristocrats trying to keep the last embers of civilisation alive, in the face of invasion by overwhelming numbers of barbarians is romantic, and the basis of some really good novels and poems.
But, it's almost completely wrong.
In the popular imagination about the Roman Empire, Gibbon reigns supreme, even though academics have long since ceased to seriously criticise or defend Gibbon. Everyone who studies the subject knows that Gibbon's judgements were seriously wrong.
Tuesday 6 June 2023
Worth considering.
https://twitter.com/thismorning/status/1665645393890222086
However, my confidence was somewhat shaken by this paper from the Max Planck Institute last Autumn.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05247-2
(That said, I'm prepared to consider bias in the data such as the kind of genetic material that has survived over-sampling higher status individuals etc. Anything to hang on to my personal pet theory!)
Romano-British is not a term differentiating classes or groupings within Southern Britain. It refers to everyone who lived in the Roman occupied province of Britannia irrespective of their ethnicity or social standing. It is done this way because it is pretty much impossible to differentiate archaeologically between the Romans, the Romanised Britons and the non Romanised. Their material cultures are bascially identical across ethnic boundaries. It is only with the arrival of foedorati from other fringes of the Roman Empire that we are able to make any differentiation and even then they are subsumed to large extent into the RB culture, both taking from it and adding to it.
If you are really interested in this I talk about it with Dan Jones on the Walking Britain's Roman Roads TV programme that was shown a couple of years ago.
Half a million march in Warsaw against Poland’s ruling party
Massive rally was called by Donald Tusk, whose Civic Platform party is bidding to unseat the ruling Law and Justice party.
https://www.politico.eu/article/anti-government-protest-warsaw-poland-against-pis-party/
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
What do we call them? Early English? What fricking difference is there between that and Anglo-Saxon in effect?
This is piffling Woke nonsense disguised as serious history
If you object to it, you can do it the other way if you like: how much money does it take to prolong a life by a year? If you quantify the financial impacts of lockdown by how much we could have spent on the NHS, you can take money out of the equation entirely: how many life years could we have had in future if we hadn't locked down?
The argument 'you can't put a price on saving a life' is nonsense.
D Day doesn’t have the same resonance in Russia/Ukraine.
For example can you tell me when the siege of Leningrad ended without looking it up.
No sooner has Willoughby made a tearful statement (not that I have seen it, indeed I have never watched the programme anyway) along comes Harry for the media to obsess about this week
Lockdowns worked for me and I can prove it by the fact that I am still walking and talking.
My cost benefit analysis for late lockdowns in September 20 and December 20 can be counted in the fatality statistics for Autumn 2020 and Winter 2020/21.
The migrations were not a myth. The idea that they were an 'invasion' or a conquest is a myth - in my view.
We know that there were large scale migrations. What is changing is our view of the nature of those migrations.
Even so, look at a site like West Heslerton in Yorkshire. The cemetery there which dates to the migration period contained over 200 burials in the classical 'Anglian' style. And yet when they were tested using Oxygen and Strontium isotope testing of the teeth, only one was found to have grown up outside the British Isles.
Large enough to become the dominant cultural influence - certainly. What surprises me is that it seems that it was large enough to become the dominant genetic heritage, very rapidly.
Thanks.
But I might have quite fancied my kids going to school though. Just that one aspect of lockdown alone has been catastrophic for a generation.
Thank God Leon is there to provide us with some serious history, risking imprisonment to do so, the brave man!