Off topic, but of interest to those thinking about racial problems in the US: In a poll published in the Washington Post, most black Americans were happy with how they were treated at work: "In their own workplaces, 82 percent of Black employees say the environment is “excellent” or “good” when it comes to being welcoming. Large majorities rate their workplaces positively for stopping racial discrimination (76 percent) and paying Black and White workers equally (74 percent). A smaller majority, 65 percent, gives their workplace positive marks for promoting Black workers."
And are more positive about how they are treated outside of work, than they were in 2006: "Fewer Black Americans say they are often treated poorly in day-to-day life across a variety of measures than in 2006"
(Despite their personal experiences, many, perhaps most, have doubts about the nation as a whole. And, like most other Americans, have doubts about the economy, despite our low unemployment, and declining inflation.)
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
Nah. On every measure - safety, comfort, time keeping, rolling stock, investment and choice the system got better as a result of privatisation.
Much of it as a result of proghrammes initiated by BR. Hatfield and the ensuing crisis was very much down to privatisation, a huge systemic disaster.
I was there, and the service went downhill. It did pick up eventually, but only becauyse of the natural trajectory of technology.
I was there too and using the railways continuously. They were shit prior to privatisation and git better very rapidly. And the numbers on safety speak for themselves. Accidents and associated deaths all drop rapidly in the years following privatisation.
Why might that have been so? Could it be that the behemoth was a law to itself without liability or scrutiny? A bit like the Post Office and the sub-postmasters?
Yes, very much so. Aka Producer Interest.
There was also the enshrined belief that the nationalised industries were part of the state and so could use the power of the state to protect themselves.
I remember when, under Fatcher, they rolled back use of Sovereign Immunity to great outcry. This had been used in the NHS and elsewhere to give virtual legal immunity.
Crown indemnity means that individual practitioners are covered by compulsory insurance from the Trust they work for. That insurance pays out if an individual is successfully sued for NHS work. It does not mean they are immune legally or professionally. They can be and are disciplined if found to be negligent.
Resolution is the NHS organisation and pays out vast sums annually, and Trust premiums vary by how risky they are perceived to be.
I never said I wanted BT to be re-nationalised, as usual certain people didn't actually read the post.
You started this whole argument with the comment that:
"Privatisation of utility monopolies has been disastrous."
So it has been disastrous but you don't want to renationalise? Another pointless argument from you then.
Just because something is a disaster doesn't mean the solution is to undo it. I then went onto talk about how regulation was the solution for BT and had worked. I knew you hadn't read what I posted because of the drivel you responded.
I was there too and using the railways continuously. They were shit prior to privatisation and git better very rapidly. And the numbers on safety speak for themselves. Accidents and associated deaths all drop rapidly in the years following privatisation.
You're ideologically blind Richard. I am now starting to understand why you backed Brexit.
And yet you are unable to counter any of facts and data I have used. I begin to understand why you backed Remain. And lost.
You never responded to any of the points I made - and I made them first. Mate.
As I said, your points were pointless. Much like everything else you post on here.
West Virginia is rather beautiful and quite noticeably poor
This is where I bought my Sam Adams lager
It’s brilliant. I love the lost backwoods of America. The garage also sold “Amish snacks”. And there are people living here in actual shacks
The Trump vote is not hard to understand out here
Only if you swallow the lie that Trump would actually make a positive difference for these people.
I’m not buying Trump’s nonsense but I am saying if you lived out here you would likely despise the democrat woke elites on the coast - and trump would be your only alternative
West Virginia is easily amongst the ten poorest states in the US; it also has a long tradition of rebellious defiance
But look at this river (inside America’s newest national park btw)
Gorgeous
Factoids:
*West Virginia is the second poorest state in the Union by per capita GDP, after Mississippi *West Virginia's per capita GDP is also higher than that of all but fifteen of the world's sovereign states *It's above ours, and greatly in excess of that of any individual UK region except London *I am, nonetheless, reasonably confident that the average inhabitant of the Home Counties has a better standard of living than the average West Virginian. Statistics only tell you so much
Yes that’s a classic example of where GDP per capita can be totally misleading
do it on a PPP (purchasing power parity) basis and you might be less misled
True, but I think that's only part of it. There are a number of other factors that explain why we shouldn't fixate so much on why American GDP/head is rather higher (say 50%) than ours:
- knock off about 16% of the difference (i.e. eight percentage points) for wasteful health spending. America spends about 18% of its GDP on health, compared with 10% here, but has considerably lower life expectancy - knock off another 30% of that difference because Americans work more than 10% longer hours than we do, 47 per week rather than 42 - discount another 15-20% of the difference because America's income distribution is more skewed towards the wealthy than ours - finally, another 30% is accounted for by the strength of the dollar since 2015.
In addition, as Bob Gordon has argued, the cost of living in some ways is much higher there, even allowing for exchange rates. You are much more likely to need a car, and most houses need air conditioning as well as heating, which is a huge extra expense for families.
So, really American living standards for the vast majority probably aren't that different from here.
Otoh, and this is a huge factor, houses are generally bigger for the same amount of money - a massive self-inflicted wound on our part, I'm afraid.
I’d say all of these are valid points, with the possible exception of the exchange rate.
Nevertheless it feels like the average “middle” American has significantly more spending money than than the average “middle” Brit.
I think a lot of it is simply cheaper housing, cheaper gas, and cheaper electricity.
Currently watching a really gòod programme on PBS America on the ethnic cleansings of Germans from Eastern Euope in tge qftermath of WW2. I didn't even know I had PBS America. It's fascinating.
Currently watching a really gòod programme on PBS America on the ethnic cleansings of Germans from Eastern Euope in tge qftermath of WW2. I didn't even know I had PBS America. It's fascinating.
I have a neighbour just a few doors down who started life in this way.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
Nah. On every measure - safety, comfort, time keeping, rolling stock, investment and choice the system got better as a result of privatisation.
Much of it as a result of proghrammes initiated by BR. Hatfield and the ensuing crisis was very much down to privatisation, a huge systemic disaster.
I was there, and the service went downhill. It did pick up eventually, but only becauyse of the natural trajectory of technology.
I was there too and using the railways continuously. They were shit prior to privatisation and git better very rapidly. And the numbers on safety speak for themselves. Accidents and associated deaths all drop rapidly in the years following privatisation.
Why might that have been so? Could it be that the behemoth was a law to itself without liability or scrutiny? A bit like the Post Office and the sub-postmasters?
Yes, very much so. Aka Producer Interest.
There was also the enshrined belief that the nationalised industries were part of the state and so could use the power of the state to protect themselves.
I remember when, under Fatcher, they rolled back use of Sovereign Immunity to great outcry. This had been used in the NHS and elsewhere to give virtual legal immunity.
Crown indemnity means that individual practitioners are covered by compulsory insurance from the Trust they work for. That insurance pays out if an individual is successfully sued for NHS work. It does not mean they are immune legally or professionally. They can be and are disciplined if found to be negligent.
Resolution is the NHS organisation and pays out vast sums annually, and Trust premiums vary by how risky they are perceived to be.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
Nah. On every measure - safety, comfort, time keeping, rolling stock, investment and choice the system got better as a result of privatisation.
Much of it as a result of proghrammes initiated by BR. Hatfield and the ensuing crisis was very much down to privatisation, a huge systemic disaster.
I was there, and the service went downhill. It did pick up eventually, but only becauyse of the natural trajectory of technology.
I was there too and using the railways continuously. They were shit prior to privatisation and git better very rapidly. And the numbers on safety speak for themselves. Accidents and associated deaths all drop rapidly in the years following privatisation.
Why might that have been so? Could it be that the behemoth was a law to itself without liability or scrutiny? A bit like the Post Office and the sub-postmasters?
Yes, very much so. Aka Producer Interest.
There was also the enshrined belief that the nationalised industries were part of the state and so could use the power of the state to protect themselves.
I remember when, under Fatcher, they rolled back use of Sovereign Immunity to great outcry. This had been used in the NHS and elsewhere to give virtual legal immunity.
Crown indemnity means that individual practitioners are covered by compulsory insurance from the Trust they work for. That insurance pays out if an individual is successfully sued for NHS work. It does not mean they are immune legally or professionally. They can be and are disciplined if found to be negligent.
Resolution is the NHS organisation and pays out vast sums annually, and Trust premiums vary by how risky they are perceived to be.
So far as I can tell, it has always been possible to sue the NHS for negligence, though obviously case law has evolved.
I’d have to dig, but it was definitely used to shield organisations and individuals. IIRC the way it worked was far from uniform - being based on some very archaic laws.
The reforms to remove it were attacked as allowing “American style” litigation into the country.
West Virginia is rather beautiful and quite noticeably poor
This is where I bought my Sam Adams lager
It’s brilliant. I love the lost backwoods of America. The garage also sold “Amish snacks”. And there are people living here in actual shacks
The Trump vote is not hard to understand out here
There’s an American Alan partridge who walks to that service station every day, hangs out, and then walks back to his hotel. Don’t knock shitty service stations.
Not knocking it at all! I genuinely love little places like this. Not another generic Exxon outlet
It sold homemade “sweet Allegheny West Virginia mustard” next to the root beer and condoms and I bought a jar. $4. Might be brilliant might be hideous. Adore stuff like that. You don’t get it in Shell gas stations
You bought mustard and condoms?
Leon DID tell us that he's occasionally into B/D-S/M.
Currently watching a really gòod programme on PBS America on the ethnic cleansings of Germans from Eastern Euope in tge qftermath of WW2. I didn't even know I had PBS America. It's fascinating.
The expulsion of the "Volksdeutsche" from Eastern Europe is one of the least known of the many atrocities of the second world war in Europe. It was ethnic cleansing on an industrial scale - the expulsion of Germans from areas where they had lived for centuries.
It meant the end of "East Prussia" as a region - the area was conquered by the Red Army ending ending in the storming of Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad) on 12th April 1945 (the day before the fall of Vienna I believe). Thousands were evacuated via the Baltic right up to and indeed after the end of hostilities. In other parts such as Czechosolovakia, the ethnic Germans were expelled by the Red Army having forcibly signed off their land to Czech or Slovak land owners.
Similar happened in Hungary and parts of Yugoslavia.
So far as I can tell, it has always been possible to sue the NHS for negligence, though obviously case law has evolved.
Friern Hospital Management Committee was not an NHS institution, although it would become one under the subsequent NHS reorganisations (whereby hospital property was transferred to the Secretary of State)
"Crown immunity was first substantially undermined —if that is the right word—by the Crown Proceedings Act introduced by the Labour Government in 1947. It was felt necessary to move with the times and at least give individuals the opportunity and right to sue the Crown for damages. However, the Crown Proceedings Act does not permit criminal proceedings against the Crown or any of the agencies presently covered by Crown immunity. As a result, many laws do not apply to Crown property or to Crown institutions.
We find ourselves in the strange position that a health authority can be sued by an injured individual in the civil courts, possibly over being poisoned as a result of something going wrong in a kitchen, but the health authority cannot be prosecuted under the criminal aspects of the food hygiene regulations that the authority was breaking. It is not simply the food hygiene regulations that do not apply to hospitals and Health Service property. The general health and safety legislation does not apply. Recently, the Secretary of State for Social Services made it clear that the Rent Acts do not apply to Crown property, at least as far as the National Health Service is concerned. Who benefits from the existence of Crown immunity? The answer seems to be literally no one, because the existence of Crown immunity leaves hospital more dangerous than they could be and should be for both patients and staff.
If Crown immunity has lasted since time immemorial, should it be kept for that reason alone? We might argue for that in relation to the armed forces or for one or two aspects of Crown activity that have gone on since time immemorial, but in the case of the National Health Service and hospitals, Crown immunity arrived with time immemorialness on 5 July 1948. When hospitals were owned by private charities or municipalities, Crown immunity did not apply. Crown immunity is not even hallowed by time. It is certainly not hallowed by any sense of justice, logic or common sense."
Has anyone seen the new Indiana Jones film? I wanted to see it but reviews look a bit ropey.
The initial reviews are out. It seems that the rumours may be correct - Fleabag's involvement is self-serving, the de-aging is a bit ropey and the plot involves time travel. Reading between the lines, the ending may be a Timeless-Child sized shitshow. So I'm not hopeful.
West Virginia is rather beautiful and quite noticeably poor
This is where I bought my Sam Adams lager
It’s brilliant. I love the lost backwoods of America. The garage also sold “Amish snacks”. And there are people living here in actual shacks
The Trump vote is not hard to understand out here
Only if you swallow the lie that Trump would actually make a positive difference for these people.
I’m not buying Trump’s nonsense but I am saying if you lived out here you would likely despise the democrat woke elites on the coast - and trump would be your only alternative
West Virginia is easily amongst the ten poorest states in the US; it also has a long tradition of rebellious defiance
But look at this river (inside America’s newest national park btw)
Gorgeous
Factoids:
*West Virginia is the second poorest state in the Union by per capita GDP, after Mississippi *West Virginia's per capita GDP is also higher than that of all but fifteen of the world's sovereign states *It's above ours, and greatly in excess of that of any individual UK region except London *I am, nonetheless, reasonably confident that the average inhabitant of the Home Counties has a better standard of living than the average West Virginian. Statistics only tell you so much
Average house price in WV though just is $154,979.
Americans may earn more than almost everywhere in the UK on average but Brits often still have more wealth once you include the value of their house
What good does that do them though? If they earn more AND house prices are lower they have far more disposable income. Wealth does you no good if you can't spend it.
If only more Brits thought that maybe they'd be less obsessed with house prices and we wouldn't have government by boomer nimbyism.
Has anyone seen the new Indiana Jones film? I wanted to see it but reviews look a bit ropey.
The initial reviews are out. It seems that the rumours may be correct - Fleabag's involvement is self-serving, the de-aging is a bit ropey and the plot involves time travel. Reading between the lines, the ending may be a Timeless-Child sized shitshow. So I'm not hopeful.
Sounds promising to me, as at least expectations won't be as high and I can be pleasantly surprised. Even bad stuff is usually not as bad as we fear.
Fortunately there's been several films I've seen this year where the trailers really didn't sell me on it, so I ended up liking them quite a bit more than expected. Surprisingly bad films can hit like a punch to the gut though.
West Virginia is rather beautiful and quite noticeably poor
This is where I bought my Sam Adams lager
It’s brilliant. I love the lost backwoods of America. The garage also sold “Amish snacks”. And there are people living here in actual shacks
The Trump vote is not hard to understand out here
Only if you swallow the lie that Trump would actually make a positive difference for these people.
I’m not buying Trump’s nonsense but I am saying if you lived out here you would likely despise the democrat woke elites on the coast - and trump would be your only alternative
West Virginia is easily amongst the ten poorest states in the US; it also has a long tradition of rebellious defiance
But look at this river (inside America’s newest national park btw)
Gorgeous
Factoids:
*West Virginia is the second poorest state in the Union by per capita GDP, after Mississippi *West Virginia's per capita GDP is also higher than that of all but fifteen of the world's sovereign states *It's above ours, and greatly in excess of that of any individual UK region except London *I am, nonetheless, reasonably confident that the average inhabitant of the Home Counties has a better standard of living than the average West Virginian. Statistics only tell you so much
Average house price in WV though just is $154,979.
Has anyone seen the new Indiana Jones film? I wanted to see it but reviews look a bit ropey.
The initial reviews are out. It seems that the rumours may be correct - Fleabag's involvement is self-serving, the de-aging is a bit ropey and the plot involves time travel. Reading between the lines, the ending may be a Timeless-Child sized shitshow. So I'm not hopeful.
Sounds promising to me, as at least expectations won't be as high and I can be pleasantly surprised. Even bad stuff is usually not as bad as we fear.
Fortunately there's been several films I've seen this year where the trailers really didn't sell me on it, so I ended up liking them quite a bit more than expected. Surprisingly bad films can hit like a punch to the gut though.
The two I am really looking forward to are Asteroid City and Oppenheimer.
Without wishing to pour petrol on the perfectly good fire of the privatisation debate - the problem isn't the privatisation process at the beginning as it does improve the customer experience by providing real choice.
However, over time, as we've discovered with the utility suppliers, a public monopoly becomes a private cartel as the big players squeeze out the smaller firms who often provide the best value for the customer.
There is still choice but it's often illusory as the cartel works against genuine competition.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
Nah. On every measure - safety, comfort, time keeping, rolling stock, investment and choice the system got better as a result of privatisation.
Much of it as a result of proghrammes initiated by BR. Hatfield and the ensuing crisis was very much down to privatisation, a huge systemic disaster.
I was there, and the service went downhill. It did pick up eventually, but only becauyse of the natural trajectory of technology.
I was there too and using the railways continuously. They were shit prior to privatisation and git better very rapidly. And the numbers on safety speak for themselves. Accidents and associated deaths all drop rapidly in the years following privatisation.
Why might that have been so? Could it be that the behemoth was a law to itself without liability or scrutiny? A bit like the Post Office and the sub-postmasters?
Yes, very much so. Aka Producer Interest.
There was also the enshrined belief that the nationalised industries were part of the state and so could use the power of the state to protect themselves.
I remember when, under Fatcher, they rolled back use of Crown Immunity to great outcry. This had been used in the various government organisations to give virtual immunity to prosecution
You think private monopolies, or quasi monopolies aren’t also ruled by producer interest ? (For example the water companies.) That was also the case for BT long after privatisation, improvements over its previous incarnation notwithstanding.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
Nah. On every measure - safety, comfort, time keeping, rolling stock, investment and choice the system got better as a result of privatisation.
Much of it as a result of proghrammes initiated by BR. Hatfield and the ensuing crisis was very much down to privatisation, a huge systemic disaster.
I was there, and the service went downhill. It did pick up eventually, but only becauyse of the natural trajectory of technology.
I was there too and using the railways continuously. They were shit prior to privatisation and git better very rapidly. And the numbers on safety speak for themselves. Accidents and associated deaths all drop rapidly in the years following privatisation.
Why might that have been so? Could it be that the behemoth was a law to itself without liability or scrutiny? A bit like the Post Office and the sub-postmasters?
Yes, very much so. Aka Producer Interest.
There was also the enshrined belief that the nationalised industries were part of the state and so could use the power of the state to protect themselves.
I remember when, under Fatcher, they rolled back use of Sovereign Immunity to great outcry. This had been used in the NHS and elsewhere to give virtual legal immunity.
Crown indemnity means that individual practitioners are covered by compulsory insurance from the Trust they work for. That insurance pays out if an individual is successfully sued for NHS work. It does not mean they are immune legally or professionally. They can be and are disciplined if found to be negligent.
Resolution is the NHS organisation and pays out vast sums annually, and Trust premiums vary by how risky they are perceived to be.
So far as I can tell, it has always been possible to sue the NHS for negligence, though obviously case law has evolved.
I’d have to dig, but it was definitely used to shield organisations and individuals. IIRC the way it worked was far from uniform - being based on some very archaic laws.
The reforms to remove it were attacked as allowing “American style” litigation into the country.
Certainly medico-legal process varies a lot between USA and UK, and indeed greatly between US States too.
The law concerning negligence in civil cases dates to 1932 and the infamous case of a snail in a ginger beer bottle, so not that long before the NHS started.
Crown immunity for medical staff came in in the nineties. Prior to that NHS doctors had to have their own negligence insurance, and still need to for private work. The driving force was because premiums in high risk specialities such as obstetrics had reached the point that they were no longer affordable on an NHS salary. It is for similar reasons that obstetric care is so expensive in California.
Has anyone seen the new Indiana Jones film? I wanted to see it but reviews look a bit ropey.
The initial reviews are out. It seems that the rumours may be correct - Fleabag's involvement is self-serving, the de-aging is a bit ropey and the plot involves time travel. Reading between the lines, the ending may be a Timeless-Child sized shitshow. So I'm not hopeful.
Sounds promising to me, as at least expectations won't be as high and I can be pleasantly surprised. Even bad stuff is usually not as bad as we fear.
Fortunately there's been several films I've seen this year where the trailers really didn't sell me on it, so I ended up liking them quite a bit more than expected. Surprisingly bad films can hit like a punch to the gut though.
The two I am really looking forward to are Asteroid City and Oppenheimer.
Nah, Meg 2: The Trench. That's right.
Though I just saw this kids one pop up - full marks for grabbing my attention.
So far as I can tell, it has always been possible to sue the NHS for negligence, though obviously case law has evolved.
Friern Hospital Management Committee was not an NHS institution, although it would become one under the subsequent NHS reorganisations (whereby hospital property was transferred to the Secretary of State)
"Crown immunity was first substantially undermined —if that is the right word—by the Crown Proceedings Act introduced by the Labour Government in 1947. It was felt necessary to move with the times and at least give individuals the opportunity and right to sue the Crown for damages. However, the Crown Proceedings Act does not permit criminal proceedings against the Crown or any of the agencies presently covered by Crown immunity. As a result, many laws do not apply to Crown property or to Crown institutions.
We find ourselves in the strange position that a health authority can be sued by an injured individual in the civil courts, possibly over being poisoned as a result of something going wrong in a kitchen, but the health authority cannot be prosecuted under the criminal aspects of the food hygiene regulations that the authority was breaking. It is not simply the food hygiene regulations that do not apply to hospitals and Health Service property. The general health and safety legislation does not apply. Recently, the Secretary of State for Social Services made it clear that the Rent Acts do not apply to Crown property, at least as far as the National Health Service is concerned. Who benefits from the existence of Crown immunity? The answer seems to be literally no one, because the existence of Crown immunity leaves hospital more dangerous than they could be and should be for both patients and staff.
If Crown immunity has lasted since time immemorial, should it be kept for that reason alone? We might argue for that in relation to the armed forces or for one or two aspects of Crown activity that have gone on since time immemorial, but in the case of the National Health Service and hospitals, Crown immunity arrived with time immemorialness on 5 July 1948. When hospitals were owned by private charities or municipalities, Crown immunity did not apply. Crown immunity is not even hallowed by time. It is certainly not hallowed by any sense of justice, logic or common sense."
So far as I can tell, it has always been possible to sue the NHS for negligence, though obviously case law has evolved.
Friern Hospital Management Committee was not an NHS institution, although it would become one under the subsequent NHS reorganisations (whereby hospital property was transferred to the Secretary of State)
"Crown immunity was first substantially undermined —if that is the right word—by the Crown Proceedings Act introduced by the Labour Government in 1947. It was felt necessary to move with the times and at least give individuals the opportunity and right to sue the Crown for damages. However, the Crown Proceedings Act does not permit criminal proceedings against the Crown or any of the agencies presently covered by Crown immunity. As a result, many laws do not apply to Crown property or to Crown institutions.
We find ourselves in the strange position that a health authority can be sued by an injured individual in the civil courts, possibly over being poisoned as a result of something going wrong in a kitchen, but the health authority cannot be prosecuted under the criminal aspects of the food hygiene regulations that the authority was breaking. It is not simply the food hygiene regulations that do not apply to hospitals and Health Service property. The general health and safety legislation does not apply. Recently, the Secretary of State for Social Services made it clear that the Rent Acts do not apply to Crown property, at least as far as the National Health Service is concerned. Who benefits from the existence of Crown immunity? The answer seems to be literally no one, because the existence of Crown immunity leaves hospital more dangerous than they could be and should be for both patients and staff.
If Crown immunity has lasted since time immemorial, should it be kept for that reason alone? We might argue for that in relation to the armed forces or for one or two aspects of Crown activity that have gone on since time immemorial, but in the case of the National Health Service and hospitals, Crown immunity arrived with time immemorialness on 5 July 1948. When hospitals were owned by private charities or municipalities, Crown immunity did not apply. Crown immunity is not even hallowed by time. It is certainly not hallowed by any sense of justice, logic or common sense."
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
Nah. On every measure - safety, comfort, time keeping, rolling stock, investment and choice the system got better as a result of privatisation.
Much of it as a result of proghrammes initiated by BR. Hatfield and the ensuing crisis was very much down to privatisation, a huge systemic disaster.
I was there, and the service went downhill. It did pick up eventually, but only becauyse of the natural trajectory of technology.
I was there too and using the railways continuously. They were shit prior to privatisation and git better very rapidly. And the numbers on safety speak for themselves. Accidents and associated deaths all drop rapidly in the years following privatisation.
Why might that have been so? Could it be that the behemoth was a law to itself without liability or scrutiny? A bit like the Post Office and the sub-postmasters?
Yes, very much so. Aka Producer Interest.
There was also the enshrined belief that the nationalised industries were part of the state and so could use the power of the state to protect themselves.
I remember when, under Fatcher, they rolled back use of Sovereign Immunity to great outcry. This had been used in the NHS and elsewhere to give virtual legal immunity.
Crown indemnity means that individual practitioners are covered by compulsory insurance from the Trust they work for. That insurance pays out if an individual is successfully sued for NHS work. It does not mean they are immune legally or professionally. They can be and are disciplined if found to be negligent.
Resolution is the NHS organisation and pays out vast sums annually, and Trust premiums vary by how risky they are perceived to be.
So far as I can tell, it has always been possible to sue the NHS for negligence, though obviously case law has evolved.
I’d have to dig, but it was definitely used to shield organisations and individuals. IIRC the way it worked was far from uniform - being based on some very archaic laws.
The reforms to remove it were attacked as allowing “American style” litigation into the country.
Certainly medico-legal process varies a lot between USA and UK, and indeed greatly between US States too.
The law concerning negligence in civil cases dates to 1932 and the infamous case of a snail in a ginger beer bottle, so not that long before the NHS started.
Crown immunity for medical staff came in in the nineties. Prior to that NHS doctors had to have their own negligence insurance, and still need to for private work. The driving force was because premiums in high risk specialities such as obstetrics had reached the point that they were no longer affordable on an NHS salary. It is for similar reasons that obstetric care is so expensive in California.
Did I hear correctly, that US doctors face annual bills in the $200k-$300k range for PI insurance?
Currently watching a really gòod programme on PBS America on the ethnic cleansings of Germans from Eastern Euope in tge qftermath of WW2. I didn't even know I had PBS America. It's fascinating.
The expulsion of the "Volksdeutsche" from Eastern Europe is one of the least known of the many atrocities of the second world war in Europe. It was ethnic cleansing on an industrial scale - the expulsion of Germans from areas where they had lived for centuries.
It meant the end of "East Prussia" as a region - the area was conquered by the Red Army ending ending in the storming of Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad) on 12th April 1945 (the day before the fall of Vienna I believe). Thousands were evacuated via the Baltic right up to and indeed after the end of hostilities. In other parts such as Czechosolovakia, the ethnic Germans were expelled by the Red Army having forcibly signed off their land to Czech or Slovak land owners.
Similar happened in Hungary and parts of Yugoslavia.
I don’t think there’s a single European state ruled by Stalin which didn’t see mass deportations postwar (alongside mass imprisonment in the gulags) ? He was very keen on creating what he regarded as ethnic homogeneity in the pursuit of Soviet control.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
Nah. On every measure - safety, comfort, time keeping, rolling stock, investment and choice the system got better as a result of privatisation.
Much of it as a result of proghrammes initiated by BR. Hatfield and the ensuing crisis was very much down to privatisation, a huge systemic disaster.
I was there, and the service went downhill. It did pick up eventually, but only becauyse of the natural trajectory of technology.
I was there too and using the railways continuously. They were shit prior to privatisation and git better very rapidly. And the numbers on safety speak for themselves. Accidents and associated deaths all drop rapidly in the years following privatisation.
Why might that have been so? Could it be that the behemoth was a law to itself without liability or scrutiny? A bit like the Post Office and the sub-postmasters?
Yes, very much so. Aka Producer Interest.
There was also the enshrined belief that the nationalised industries were part of the state and so could use the power of the state to protect themselves.
I remember when, under Fatcher, they rolled back use of Sovereign Immunity to great outcry. This had been used in the NHS and elsewhere to give virtual legal immunity.
Crown indemnity means that individual practitioners are covered by compulsory insurance from the Trust they work for. That insurance pays out if an individual is successfully sued for NHS work. It does not mean they are immune legally or professionally. They can be and are disciplined if found to be negligent.
Resolution is the NHS organisation and pays out vast sums annually, and Trust premiums vary by how risky they are perceived to be.
So far as I can tell, it has always been possible to sue the NHS for negligence, though obviously case law has evolved.
I’d have to dig, but it was definitely used to shield organisations and individuals. IIRC the way it worked was far from uniform - being based on some very archaic laws.
The reforms to remove it were attacked as allowing “American style” litigation into the country.
Certainly medico-legal process varies a lot between USA and UK, and indeed greatly between US States too.
The law concerning negligence in civil cases dates to 1932 and the infamous case of a snail in a ginger beer bottle, so not that long before the NHS started.
Crown immunity for medical staff came in in the nineties. Prior to that NHS doctors had to have their own negligence insurance, and still need to for private work. The driving force was because premiums in high risk specialities such as obstetrics had reached the point that they were no longer affordable on an NHS salary. It is for similar reasons that obstetric care is so expensive in California.
Did I hear correctly, that US doctors face annual bills in the $200k-$300k range for PI insurance?
Certainly so, in some states and specialities.
It is one reason there is virtually no private practice in obstetrics in the UK. The cost of insurance makes it untenable.
15% of my private fees goes on indemnity insurance, even though I have never had a case awarded against me or gone to court in 30 years of medical practice.
As Leon is now visiting/infesting the New River Gorge - the oldest river in North America, was there BEFORE the Appalachians began to rise up, let alone erode to current status - here is the West Virginia shibboleth:
Kanawha - as in Kanawha River, Kanawha Valley, Kanawha County, etc.
Pronounced "Kan-AW-uh" the more you run syllables together the better.
The Kanawha River begins where the New River is joined by the Gauley River, at Gauley Bridge. Upstream the New is a scenic wonder; downstream the Kanawha is an industrial waterway.
With the industry being overwhelming coal-based chemical, with plants upriver and downriver from Charleston, the state capital, whose main attraction for the traveler is the magnificent golden dome of the West Virginia Capitol, easy viewed while zipping down the interstate.
One evidence of early 20th-century industrialization is the town of Nitro - named when the US government built a massive explosives manufacturing plant there during World War One.
Past Charleston, the Kanawha River follows though relatively flat (for WVa anyway) mostly agricultural land, until it flows into the Ohio River at Point Pleasant. Where, as any West Virginian will tell you, the REAL first battle of the American Revolution was fought, between revolting Virginia frontiersmen and Native Americans led (and led on) by British officers and agents.
Currently watching a really gòod programme on PBS America on the ethnic cleansings of Germans from Eastern Euope in tge qftermath of WW2. I didn't even know I had PBS America. It's fascinating.
The expulsion of the "Volksdeutsche" from Eastern Europe is one of the least known of the many atrocities of the second world war in Europe. It was ethnic cleansing on an industrial scale - the expulsion of Germans from areas where they had lived for centuries.
It meant the end of "East Prussia" as a region - the area was conquered by the Red Army ending ending in the storming of Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad) on 12th April 1945 (the day before the fall of Vienna I believe). Thousands were evacuated via the Baltic right up to and indeed after the end of hostilities. In other parts such as Czechosolovakia, the ethnic Germans were expelled by the Red Army having forcibly signed off their land to Czech or Slovak land owners.
Similar happened in Hungary and parts of Yugoslavia.
I don’t think there’s a single European state ruled by Stalin which didn’t see mass deportations postwar (alongside mass imprisonment in the gulags) ? He was very keen on creating what he regarded as ethnic homogeneity in the pursuit of Soviet control.
After the war the Czech and Polish governments didn't want a repeat of the Sudentanland crisis of 1938 or Polish corridor of 1939, and there was little sympathy for the Volksdeutsch.
A lot of former German territory was repopulated by Poland with Poles deported from what is now Ukraine or Belarus, leapfrogging central Poland.
As Leon is now visiting/infesting the New River Gorge - the oldest river in North America, was there BEFORE the Appalachians began to rise up, let alone erode to current status - here is the West Virginia shibboleth:
Kanawha - as in Kanawha River, Kanawha Valley, Kanawha County, etc.
Pronounced "Kan-AW-uh" the more you run syllables together the better.
The Kanawha River begins where the New River is joined by the Gauley River, at Gauley Bridge. Upstream the New is a scenic wonder; downstream the Kanawha is an industrial waterway.
With the industry being overwhelming coal-based chemical, with plants upriver and downriver from Charleston, the state capital, whose main attraction for the traveler is the magnificent golden dome of the West Virginia Capitol, easy viewed while zipping down the interstate.
One evidence of early 20th-century industrialization is the town of Nitro - named when the US government built a massive explosives manufacturing plant there during World War One.
Past Charleston, the Kanawha River follows though relatively flat (for WVa anyway) mostly agricultural land, until it flows into the Ohio River at Point Pleasant. Where, as any West Virginian will tell you, the REAL first battle of the American Revolution was fought, between revolting Virginia frontiersmen and Native Americans led (and led on) by British officers and agents.
The Americans won, or at least didn't lose!
I can report that Charleston is a total shit hole and you are right to zip straight past it on the interstate.
All the countryside surrounding is lush and impressive however, and sometimes spectacular
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
Nah. On every measure - safety, comfort, time keeping, rolling stock, investment and choice the system got better as a result of privatisation.
Much of it as a result of proghrammes initiated by BR. Hatfield and the ensuing crisis was very much down to privatisation, a huge systemic disaster.
I was there, and the service went downhill. It did pick up eventually, but only becauyse of the natural trajectory of technology.
I was there too and using the railways continuously. They were shit prior to privatisation and git better very rapidly. And the numbers on safety speak for themselves. Accidents and associated deaths all drop rapidly in the years following privatisation.
Why might that have been so? Could it be that the behemoth was a law to itself without liability or scrutiny? A bit like the Post Office and the sub-postmasters?
Yes, very much so. Aka Producer Interest.
There was also the enshrined belief that the nationalised industries were part of the state and so could use the power of the state to protect themselves.
I remember when, under Fatcher, they rolled back use of Sovereign Immunity to great outcry. This had been used in the NHS and elsewhere to give virtual legal immunity.
Crown indemnity means that individual practitioners are covered by compulsory insurance from the Trust they work for. That insurance pays out if an individual is successfully sued for NHS work. It does not mean they are immune legally or professionally. They can be and are disciplined if found to be negligent.
Resolution is the NHS organisation and pays out vast sums annually, and Trust premiums vary by how risky they are perceived to be.
So far as I can tell, it has always been possible to sue the NHS for negligence, though obviously case law has evolved.
I’d have to dig, but it was definitely used to shield organisations and individuals. IIRC the way it worked was far from uniform - being based on some very archaic laws.
The reforms to remove it were attacked as allowing “American style” litigation into the country.
Certainly medico-legal process varies a lot between USA and UK, and indeed greatly between US States too.
The law concerning negligence in civil cases dates to 1932 and the infamous case of a snail in a ginger beer bottle, so not that long before the NHS started.
Crown immunity for medical staff came in in the nineties. Prior to that NHS doctors had to have their own negligence insurance, and still need to for private work. The driving force was because premiums in high risk specialities such as obstetrics had reached the point that they were no longer affordable on an NHS salary. It is for similar reasons that obstetric care is so expensive in California.
Did I hear correctly, that US doctors face annual bills in the $200k-$300k range for PI insurance?
Certainly so, in some states and specialities.
It is one reason there is virtually no private practice in obstetrics in the UK. The cost of insurance makes it untenable.
15% of my private fees goes on indemnity insurance, even though I have never had a case awarded against me or gone to court in 30 years of medical practice.
Currently watching a really gòod programme on PBS America on the ethnic cleansings of Germans from Eastern Euope in tge qftermath of WW2. I didn't even know I had PBS America. It's fascinating.
The expulsion of the "Volksdeutsche" from Eastern Europe is one of the least known of the many atrocities of the second world war in Europe. It was ethnic cleansing on an industrial scale - the expulsion of Germans from areas where they had lived for centuries.
It meant the end of "East Prussia" as a region - the area was conquered by the Red Army ending ending in the storming of Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad) on 12th April 1945 (the day before the fall of Vienna I believe). Thousands were evacuated via the Baltic right up to and indeed after the end of hostilities. In other parts such as Czechosolovakia, the ethnic Germans were expelled by the Red Army having forcibly signed off their land to Czech or Slovak land owners.
Similar happened in Hungary and parts of Yugoslavia.
I don’t think there’s a single European state ruled by Stalin which didn’t see mass deportations postwar (alongside mass imprisonment in the gulags) ? He was very keen on creating what he regarded as ethnic homogeneity in the pursuit of Soviet control.
After the war the Czech and Polish governments didn't want a repeat of the Sudentanland crisis of 1938 or Polish corridor of 1939, and there was little sympathy for the Volksdeutsch.
A lot of former German territory was repopulated by Poland with Poles deported from what is now Ukraine or Belarus, leapfrogging central Poland.
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
Nah. On every measure - safety, comfort, time keeping, rolling stock, investment and choice the system got better as a result of privatisation.
Much of it as a result of proghrammes initiated by BR. Hatfield and the ensuing crisis was very much down to privatisation, a huge systemic disaster.
I was there, and the service went downhill. It did pick up eventually, but only becauyse of the natural trajectory of technology.
I was there too and using the railways continuously. They were shit prior to privatisation and git better very rapidly. And the numbers on safety speak for themselves. Accidents and associated deaths all drop rapidly in the years following privatisation.
Why might that have been so? Could it be that the behemoth was a law to itself without liability or scrutiny? A bit like the Post Office and the sub-postmasters?
Yes, very much so. Aka Producer Interest.
There was also the enshrined belief that the nationalised industries were part of the state and so could use the power of the state to protect themselves.
I remember when, under Fatcher, they rolled back use of Sovereign Immunity to great outcry. This had been used in the NHS and elsewhere to give virtual legal immunity.
Crown indemnity means that individual practitioners are covered by compulsory insurance from the Trust they work for. That insurance pays out if an individual is successfully sued for NHS work. It does not mean they are immune legally or professionally. They can be and are disciplined if found to be negligent.
Resolution is the NHS organisation and pays out vast sums annually, and Trust premiums vary by how risky they are perceived to be.
So far as I can tell, it has always been possible to sue the NHS for negligence, though obviously case law has evolved.
I’d have to dig, but it was definitely used to shield organisations and individuals. IIRC the way it worked was far from uniform - being based on some very archaic laws.
The reforms to remove it were attacked as allowing “American style” litigation into the country.
Certainly medico-legal process varies a lot between USA and UK, and indeed greatly between US States too.
The law concerning negligence in civil cases dates to 1932 and the infamous case of a snail in a ginger beer bottle, so not that long before the NHS started.
Crown immunity for medical staff came in in the nineties. Prior to that NHS doctors had to have their own negligence insurance, and still need to for private work. The driving force was because premiums in high risk specialities such as obstetrics had reached the point that they were no longer affordable on an NHS salary. It is for similar reasons that obstetric care is so expensive in California.
Did I hear correctly, that US doctors face annual bills in the $200k-$300k range for PI insurance?
Certainly so, in some states and specialities.
It is one reason there is virtually no private practice in obstetrics in the UK. The cost of insurance makes it untenable.
15% of my private fees goes on indemnity insurance, even though I have never had a case awarded against me or gone to court in 30 years of medical practice.
That’s mad, but then I guess so is American litigation, with courts awarding eight and nine figure sums in medical negligence cases. If it costs a doctor $1,500 per day in insurance, that goes some way to explaining what look like made up telephone number bills in US hospitals.
In IT, we pay a few hundred pounds a year for £2m of PI cover, when self-employed. I guess you lot get sued more often than we do!
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
Nah. On every measure - safety, comfort, time keeping, rolling stock, investment and choice the system got better as a result of privatisation.
Much of it as a result of proghrammes initiated by BR. Hatfield and the ensuing crisis was very much down to privatisation, a huge systemic disaster.
I was there, and the service went downhill. It did pick up eventually, but only becauyse of the natural trajectory of technology.
I was there too and using the railways continuously. They were shit prior to privatisation and git better very rapidly. And the numbers on safety speak for themselves. Accidents and associated deaths all drop rapidly in the years following privatisation.
Why might that have been so? Could it be that the behemoth was a law to itself without liability or scrutiny? A bit like the Post Office and the sub-postmasters?
Yes, very much so. Aka Producer Interest.
There was also the enshrined belief that the nationalised industries were part of the state and so could use the power of the state to protect themselves.
I remember when, under Fatcher, they rolled back use of Sovereign Immunity to great outcry. This had been used in the NHS and elsewhere to give virtual legal immunity.
Crown indemnity means that individual practitioners are covered by compulsory insurance from the Trust they work for. That insurance pays out if an individual is successfully sued for NHS work. It does not mean they are immune legally or professionally. They can be and are disciplined if found to be negligent.
Resolution is the NHS organisation and pays out vast sums annually, and Trust premiums vary by how risky they are perceived to be.
So far as I can tell, it has always been possible to sue the NHS for negligence, though obviously case law has evolved.
I’d have to dig, but it was definitely used to shield organisations and individuals. IIRC the way it worked was far from uniform - being based on some very archaic laws.
The reforms to remove it were attacked as allowing “American style” litigation into the country.
Certainly medico-legal process varies a lot between USA and UK, and indeed greatly between US States too.
The law concerning negligence in civil cases dates to 1932 and the infamous case of a snail in a ginger beer bottle, so not that long before the NHS started.
Crown immunity for medical staff came in in the nineties. Prior to that NHS doctors had to have their own negligence insurance, and still need to for private work. The driving force was because premiums in high risk specialities such as obstetrics had reached the point that they were no longer affordable on an NHS salary. It is for similar reasons that obstetric care is so expensive in California.
Did I hear correctly, that US doctors face annual bills in the $200k-$300k range for PI insurance?
Certainly so, in some states and specialities.
It is one reason there is virtually no private practice in obstetrics in the UK. The cost of insurance makes it untenable.
15% of my private fees goes on indemnity insurance, even though I have never had a case awarded against me or gone to court in 30 years of medical practice.
Yet.
Sure, which is why I have to have it. The cumulative premiums must be well over 6 figures. Still, it is a tax deductible business expense, so more than 40% of the lost income is a loss to the taxpayer.
Charleston makes Cincinnati look glamorous and bustling
Travel another 30 miles down the coast to Savannah. (Although that's a college town, and college is now done for the summer, so that'll probably be a bit quiet too.)
Charleston makes Cincinnati look glamorous and bustling
Travel another 30 miles down the coast to Savannah. (Although that's a college town, and college is now done for the summer, so that'll probably be a bit quiet too.)
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
Nah. On every measure - safety, comfort, time keeping, rolling stock, investment and choice the system got better as a result of privatisation.
Much of it as a result of proghrammes initiated by BR. Hatfield and the ensuing crisis was very much down to privatisation, a huge systemic disaster.
I was there, and the service went downhill. It did pick up eventually, but only becauyse of the natural trajectory of technology.
I was there too and using the railways continuously. They were shit prior to privatisation and git better very rapidly. And the numbers on safety speak for themselves. Accidents and associated deaths all drop rapidly in the years following privatisation.
Why might that have been so? Could it be that the behemoth was a law to itself without liability or scrutiny? A bit like the Post Office and the sub-postmasters?
Yes, very much so. Aka Producer Interest.
There was also the enshrined belief that the nationalised industries were part of the state and so could use the power of the state to protect themselves.
I remember when, under Fatcher, they rolled back use of Sovereign Immunity to great outcry. This had been used in the NHS and elsewhere to give virtual legal immunity.
Crown indemnity means that individual practitioners are covered by compulsory insurance from the Trust they work for. That insurance pays out if an individual is successfully sued for NHS work. It does not mean they are immune legally or professionally. They can be and are disciplined if found to be negligent.
Resolution is the NHS organisation and pays out vast sums annually, and Trust premiums vary by how risky they are perceived to be.
So far as I can tell, it has always been possible to sue the NHS for negligence, though obviously case law has evolved.
I’d have to dig, but it was definitely used to shield organisations and individuals. IIRC the way it worked was far from uniform - being based on some very archaic laws.
The reforms to remove it were attacked as allowing “American style” litigation into the country.
Certainly medico-legal process varies a lot between USA and UK, and indeed greatly between US States too.
The law concerning negligence in civil cases dates to 1932 and the infamous case of a snail in a ginger beer bottle, so not that long before the NHS started.
Crown immunity for medical staff came in in the nineties. Prior to that NHS doctors had to have their own negligence insurance, and still need to for private work. The driving force was because premiums in high risk specialities such as obstetrics had reached the point that they were no longer affordable on an NHS salary. It is for similar reasons that obstetric care is so expensive in California.
Did I hear correctly, that US doctors face annual bills in the $200k-$300k range for PI insurance?
Of course: it only takes one case a decade to blow through all those premiums.
Charleston makes Cincinnati look glamorous and bustling
Travel another 30 miles down the coast to Savannah. (Although that's a college town, and college is now done for the summer, so that'll probably be a bit quiet too.)
Personally as a patriotic Brit who loves this country, I am proud of the innovations we've made and some of the companies and institutions we created.
Were they perfect, heck no. But the Tories are only interested in selling them off to the lowest bidder and damaging our legacies.
The country that invented the train can't run one on time. The country that pioneered the sewage system has yearly droughts. The country that invented much of the mobile technology system can't even get a train to have a reliable phone signal.
We are on our arses, it is time we did something different. Let's figure out what works and what doesn't. This country is broken.
If only the Romans had thought of having a sewage system. If we weren’t “on our arses” so much then it would at least give the sewerage system some time to regroup however.
The Indus Valley civilisation had a very good sewage system more than a millennium before the Romans and two millennia before us.
Were you alive then? It would explain most of your very out of date views.
Well we know you weren't around to suffer the shit show that was the GPO or the nationalised rail network.
I can tell you that the shittiness coefficent rapidly increased on privatisation!
Nah. On every measure - safety, comfort, time keeping, rolling stock, investment and choice the system got better as a result of privatisation.
Much of it as a result of proghrammes initiated by BR. Hatfield and the ensuing crisis was very much down to privatisation, a huge systemic disaster.
I was there, and the service went downhill. It did pick up eventually, but only becauyse of the natural trajectory of technology.
I was there too and using the railways continuously. They were shit prior to privatisation and git better very rapidly. And the numbers on safety speak for themselves. Accidents and associated deaths all drop rapidly in the years following privatisation.
Why might that have been so? Could it be that the behemoth was a law to itself without liability or scrutiny? A bit like the Post Office and the sub-postmasters?
Yes, very much so. Aka Producer Interest.
There was also the enshrined belief that the nationalised industries were part of the state and so could use the power of the state to protect themselves.
I remember when, under Fatcher, they rolled back use of Sovereign Immunity to great outcry. This had been used in the NHS and elsewhere to give virtual legal immunity.
Crown indemnity means that individual practitioners are covered by compulsory insurance from the Trust they work for. That insurance pays out if an individual is successfully sued for NHS work. It does not mean they are immune legally or professionally. They can be and are disciplined if found to be negligent.
Resolution is the NHS organisation and pays out vast sums annually, and Trust premiums vary by how risky they are perceived to be.
So far as I can tell, it has always been possible to sue the NHS for negligence, though obviously case law has evolved.
I’d have to dig, but it was definitely used to shield organisations and individuals. IIRC the way it worked was far from uniform - being based on some very archaic laws.
The reforms to remove it were attacked as allowing “American style” litigation into the country.
Certainly medico-legal process varies a lot between USA and UK, and indeed greatly between US States too.
The law concerning negligence in civil cases dates to 1932 and the infamous case of a snail in a ginger beer bottle, so not that long before the NHS started.
Crown immunity for medical staff came in in the nineties. Prior to that NHS doctors had to have their own negligence insurance, and still need to for private work. The driving force was because premiums in high risk specialities such as obstetrics had reached the point that they were no longer affordable on an NHS salary. It is for similar reasons that obstetric care is so expensive in California.
Did I hear correctly, that US doctors face annual bills in the $200k-$300k range for PI insurance?
Certainly so, in some states and specialities.
It is one reason there is virtually no private practice in obstetrics in the UK. The cost of insurance makes it untenable.
15% of my private fees goes on indemnity insurance, even though I have never had a case awarded against me or gone to court in 30 years of medical practice.
That’s mad, but then I guess so is American litigation, with courts awarding eight and nine figure sums in medical negligence cases. If it costs a doctor $1,500 per day in insurance, that goes some way to explaining what look like made up telephone number bills in US hospitals.
In IT, we pay a few hundred pounds a year for £2m of PI cover, when self-employed. I guess you lot get sued more often than we do!
Awards in obstetrics and neonatology for negligence can reach into several million pounds. Permanent disability awards are far higher than death because of ongoing costs of care etc.
West Virginia was one of only 10 states to vote for the Democrats at the 1988 election, and one of 6 in 1980.
West Virginia broke away from Virginia in 1863 over the slavery question. Virginia was part of the Confederacy.
Yes. Slavery never really happened here. Not the right land for big plantations. The settlers were poor, determined individualists. It is very very different to Virginia
And now, onwards to the capital. To Charleston!
Basically, yes. However, bit more complicated that that.
First, while slavery was THE issue of Civil War, note that:
> slavery was legal in today's WV until 13th amendment, and while the number of slaves was small, they were found in most places, in particular in areas with good farmland (such as some river bottoms) and early quasi-industrial settings.
> impetus in pre-war western Virginia was strongest in the area nearest to Pittsburgh, and along Ohio River, which had strongest commercial AND demographic ties to the North, whereas communications and contacts with eastern VA were difficult and limited.
> the southern and central parts of what's now West Virginia were much more attached to the rest of the Old Dominion; communications were also difficult, but cultural affinities stronger - despite area having few slaves outside of Charleston.
> when push came to shove after Fort Sumter, the Unionists of northwestern area formed a loyal Provisional state government of Virginia - but it's writ never ran very far farther south.
> in fact, there were likely more West Virginians who enlisted in the Confederate Army than the Union Army.
> the decision by Lincoln and Congress to create new state of West Virginia was inspired by desire to ensure that the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad linking Washington DC to Pittsburgh and point west via northern (W)Va remained secure.
> PLUS a new state meant two more Union (Republican) senators and several Representative in Congress - AND their equivalent Electoral College votes - which might prove handy in 1864.
Charleston makes Cincinnati look glamorous and bustling
Travel another 30 miles down the coast to Savannah. (Although that's a college town, and college is now done for the summer, so that'll probably be a bit quiet too.)
You are far from the first - or the last - to make THIS mistake!
Charleston makes Cincinnati look glamorous and bustling
Travel another 30 miles down the coast to Savannah. (Although that's a college town, and college is now done for the summer, so that'll probably be a bit quiet too.)
Different Charleston.
Ahhh.
Sorry.
Yeah
I’m in Charleston. State capital of West Virginny
However I have just been told there is “one nice bit by the river”. 10 mins walk. I’m gonna go see. Need a g&t
As Leon is now visiting/infesting the New River Gorge - the oldest river in North America, was there BEFORE the Appalachians began to rise up, let alone erode to current status - here is the West Virginia shibboleth:
Kanawha - as in Kanawha River, Kanawha Valley, Kanawha County, etc.
Pronounced "Kan-AW-uh" the more you run syllables together the better.
The Kanawha River begins where the New River is joined by the Gauley River, at Gauley Bridge. Upstream the New is a scenic wonder; downstream the Kanawha is an industrial waterway.
With the industry being overwhelming coal-based chemical, with plants upriver and downriver from Charleston, the state capital, whose main attraction for the traveler is the magnificent golden dome of the West Virginia Capitol, easy viewed while zipping down the interstate.
One evidence of early 20th-century industrialization is the town of Nitro - named when the US government built a massive explosives manufacturing plant there during World War One.
Past Charleston, the Kanawha River follows though relatively flat (for WVa anyway) mostly agricultural land, until it flows into the Ohio River at Point Pleasant. Where, as any West Virginian will tell you, the REAL first battle of the American Revolution was fought, between revolting Virginia frontiersmen and Native Americans led (and led on) by British officers and agents.
The Americans won, or at least didn't lose!
I can report that Charleston is a total shit hole and you are right to zip straight past it on the interstate.
All the countryside surrounding is lush and impressive however, and sometimes spectacular
But the city. Ouch
Like I told you, check out the Golden Dome as you buzz by.
Leon, IF you are cruising on to Huntington and then Kentucky, if possible wait until after dark to cross the state line, just past Kenova at the interstate bridge over the Big Sandy River.
The after-dark light show give off by the massive chemical plant there is truly spectacular!
'The Church of England has appointed its first transgender Archdeacon in a move hailed by LGBT+ campaigners as “a beacon of light and hope”.
Revd Canon Dr Rachel Mann has been appointed Archdeacon of Bolton and Salford, and is now believed to be the most senior trans member of the clergy within the Church.
Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Pt 1: July 12, 2023 Barbie: July 21, 2023 Oppenheimer: July 21, 2023 Killers of the Flower Moon: October 20, 2023 Dune: Part Two: November 3, 2023 Napoleon: November 22, 2023 Legally Blonde 3: TBD
In Charleston WV, the area right around State Capitol is (or was) sorta nice in muted way.
Always liked visiting the WV State Museum right night door.
Been a LONG time since I was in Charleston OR in Huntington, which is west on I-64 on Ohio River near where WV, Ohio and Kentucky converge. Huntington has much flatter locale, and is home of Marshall University, for what that's worth.
BTW, the interstate between Charleston and Huntington takes the route of geologically-interesting Teays Valley, part of the pre-glacial Teays River system, a
"major preglacial river that drained much of the present Ohio River watershed, but took a more northerly downstream course. Traces of the Teays across northern Ohio and Indiana are represented by a network of river valleys. The largest still existing contributor to the former Teays River is the Kanawha River in West Virginia, which is itself an extension of the New River. The name "Teays," from the much smaller Teays Valley still extant above the surface, has been associated with the river and the remainder of its related buried valley since 1910."
Actually maybe I’m being a bit harsh. Just turned a corner in the city centre and it’s starting to feel more elegant. Mixture of maybe Verona and a fine English cathedral city
Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Pt 1: July 12, 2023 Barbie: July 21, 2023 Oppenheimer: July 21, 2023 Killers of the Flower Moon: October 20, 2023 Dune: Part Two: November 3, 2023 Napoleon: November 22, 2023 Legally Blonde 3: TBD
I'm very excited by two of those.
And will - I'm sure - enjoy watching another three or four. But I may pass on the Barbie movie.
Actually maybe I’m being a bit harsh. Just turned a corner in the city centre and it’s starting to feel more elegant. Mixture of maybe Verona and a fine English cathedral city
Actually maybe I’m being a bit harsh. Just turned a corner in the city centre and it’s starting to feel more elegant. Mixture of maybe Verona and a fine English cathedral city
You're in West Virginia, for goddsake, what did you expect?
Also there’s not just loads of parking, there’s loads of different KINDS of parking, so it’s really easy to drive straight into Downtown, park up, look around, and then immediately think WHAT THE FUCK and emigrate
'The Church of England has appointed its first transgender Archdeacon in a move hailed by LGBT+ campaigners as “a beacon of light and hope”.
Revd Canon Dr Rachel Mann has been appointed Archdeacon of Bolton and Salford, and is now believed to be the most senior trans member of the clergy within the Church.
Actually maybe I’m being a bit harsh. Just turned a corner in the city centre and it’s starting to feel more elegant. Mixture of maybe Verona and a fine English cathedral city
Am guessing that you're not tooooo far from a Gino's Pizza, small local Italo-Hillbilly chain.
Used to love their Italian sandwiches.
ADDENDUM - of course THE state culinary specialty of West Virginia is . . . the Hot Dog.
Just about every small town has it's own preferred hot dog condiments, with chile being frequent but again, seek local information!
Also there’s not just loads of parking, there’s loads of different KINDS of parking, so it’s really easy to drive straight into Downtown, park up, look around, and then immediately think WHAT THE FUCK and emigrate
OTOH The Sheriff's office and courthouse up the road look in great nick.
Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Pt 1: July 12, 2023 Barbie: July 21, 2023 Oppenheimer: July 21, 2023 Killers of the Flower Moon: October 20, 2023 Dune: Part Two: November 3, 2023 Napoleon: November 22, 2023 Legally Blonde 3: TBD
I'm very excited by two of those.
And will - I'm sure - enjoy watching another three or four. But I may pass on the Barbie movie.
Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Pt 1: July 12, 2023 Barbie: July 21, 2023 Oppenheimer: July 21, 2023 Killers of the Flower Moon: October 20, 2023 Dune: Part Two: November 3, 2023 Napoleon: November 22, 2023 Legally Blonde 3: TBD
Actually maybe I’m being a bit harsh. Just turned a corner in the city centre and it’s starting to feel more elegant. Mixture of maybe Verona and a fine English cathedral city
You're in West Virginia, for goddsake, what did you expect?
Leon's scenic shots of - and at - Charleston, WV are NOT signs of 21st-century urban American decay.
Place was a dump when I first laid eyes on it over half-century ago. And appears it's still a dump.
About the only WV city that is NOT a dump, is Morgantown. And it ain't no Paris!
West Virginia is rather beautiful and quite noticeably poor
This is where I bought my Sam Adams lager
It’s brilliant. I love the lost backwoods of America. The garage also sold “Amish snacks”. And there are people living here in actual shacks
The Trump vote is not hard to understand out here
Only if you swallow the lie that Trump would actually make a positive difference for these people.
I’m not buying Trump’s nonsense but I am saying if you lived out here you would likely despise the democrat woke elites on the coast - and trump would be your only alternative
West Virginia is easily amongst the ten poorest states in the US; it also has a long tradition of rebellious defiance
But look at this river (inside America’s newest national park btw)
Gorgeous
I wouldn't vote for a wannabe fascist no matter how poor I was. And I have been really fucking poor at points in my life.
i don't buy your characterisation of the democrats as woke coastal elites. Some of them are. And they are the ones who get the attention of people who wants to paint them all the same colour. But it's not really a true picture, is it?
What is your point?
If you follow American media this is the picture being given to west Virginians. The democrats are obsessive woke weirdos who care more about Pride marches and trans topless freaks getting to dance on the White House lawn - and also Ukrainians - than they do about the very real poverty and problems here in WV
Meanwhile rural republicans can see the absolute mess of democrat run cities. The implosion of San Francisco. The crime in Chicago and NYC. They can also see the democrats tearing down statues. None lf it looks good from the perspective of Meadow Bridge WV
Is that a fair perception of the democrats? Yes and no. But that is the perception and it leads to a trump victory in this state
I’m not judging either party here
The parallels between somewhere like WV and the poorer rural bits of brexitland are obvious
Is that a fair perception of the democrats? No, not really. It's the caricature portrayed by the right, a familiar one to those of us who gaze upon right wing media, but not a fair one.
The "implosion" of cities is an obsession of yours (didn't someone call you "monothematic" the other day?), but not something in the everyday experience of people who live in rural areas. I mean, basically by definition.
Which brings me to my point. The poverty you allude to -- people living in shacks -- isn't really the driver of GOP voting, is it? It's the fear of something outside of the lived experience that drives many people to that, not the actual lived experience. There's a way you can tell. If these cities were really so terrible, and the terribleness was so obviously the fault of the democratic reps and senators and governors, the people there would certainly vote someone else into power. That cities persist in being Democratic in political direction tells you a lot more about the reality of city life than you standing by a gas station pointing at a shack could.
The homicide rate in West Virginia is twice that in New York City. So maybe they need to look at crime in Republican rural areas.
West Virginia was one of only 10 states to vote for the Democrats at the 1988 election, and one of 6 in 1980.
West Virginia broke away from Virginia in 1863 over the slavery question. Virginia was part of the Confederacy.
Yes. Slavery never really happened here. Not the right land for big plantations. The settlers were poor, determined individualists. It is very very different to Virginia
And now, onwards to the capital. To Charleston!
Basically, yes. However, bit more complicated that that.
First, while slavery was THE issue of Civil War, note that:
> slavery was legal in today's WV until 13th amendment, and while the number of slaves was small, they were found in most places, in particular in areas with good farmland (such as some river bottoms) and early quasi-industrial settings.
> impetus in pre-war western Virginia was strongest in the area nearest to Pittsburgh, and along Ohio River, which had strongest commercial AND demographic ties to the North, whereas communications and contacts with eastern VA were difficult and limited.
> the southern and central parts of what's now West Virginia were much more attached to the rest of the Old Dominion; communications were also difficult, but cultural affinities stronger - despite area having few slaves outside of Charleston.
> when push came to shove after Fort Sumter, the Unionists of northwestern area formed a loyal Provisional state government of Virginia - but it's writ never ran very far farther south.
> in fact, there were likely more West Virginians who enlisted in the Confederate Army than the Union Army.
> the decision by Lincoln and Congress to create new state of West Virginia was inspired by desire to ensure that the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad linking Washington DC to Pittsburgh and point west via northern (W)Va remained secure.
> PLUS a new state meant two more Union (Republican) senators and several Representative in Congress - AND their equivalent Electoral College votes - which might prove handy in 1864.
Like I said, complicated.
West Virginia separated from Virginia out of disgust for Virginia's treason and backing of slavery. Now it flies confederate flags and backs Donald Trump, traitor to the United States.
Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Pt 1: July 12, 2023 Barbie: July 21, 2023 Oppenheimer: July 21, 2023 Killers of the Flower Moon: October 20, 2023 Dune: Part Two: November 3, 2023 Napoleon: November 22, 2023 Legally Blonde 3: TBD
Is Dune Part Two related to the David Lynch film?
No. The David Lynch Dune with Kyle Maclachlan was 1983. The Denis Villeneuve Dune pts 1 and 2 with Timothee Chalomet is 2022/3
Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Pt 1: July 12, 2023 Barbie: July 21, 2023 Oppenheimer: July 21, 2023 Killers of the Flower Moon: October 20, 2023 Dune: Part Two: November 3, 2023 Napoleon: November 22, 2023 Legally Blonde 3: TBD
Is Dune Part Two related to the David Lynch film?
No. The David Lynch Dune with Kyle Maclachlan was 1983. The Denis Villeneuve Dune pts 1 and 2 with Timothee Chalomet is 2022/3
Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Pt 1: July 12, 2023 Barbie: July 21, 2023 Oppenheimer: July 21, 2023 Killers of the Flower Moon: October 20, 2023 Dune: Part Two: November 3, 2023 Napoleon: November 22, 2023 Legally Blonde 3: TBD
Is Dune Part Two related to the David Lynch film?
No. The David Lynch Dune with Kyle Maclachlan was 1983. The Denis Villeneuve Dune pts 1 and 2 with Timothee Chalomet is 2022/3
West Virginia is rather beautiful and quite noticeably poor
This is where I bought my Sam Adams lager
It’s brilliant. I love the lost backwoods of America. The garage also sold “Amish snacks”. And there are people living here in actual shacks
The Trump vote is not hard to understand out here
Only if you swallow the lie that Trump would actually make a positive difference for these people.
I’m not buying Trump’s nonsense but I am saying if you lived out here you would likely despise the democrat woke elites on the coast - and trump would be your only alternative
West Virginia is easily amongst the ten poorest states in the US; it also has a long tradition of rebellious defiance
But look at this river (inside America’s newest national park btw)
Gorgeous
I wouldn't vote for a wannabe fascist no matter how poor I was. And I have been really fucking poor at points in my life.
i don't buy your characterisation of the democrats as woke coastal elites. Some of them are. And they are the ones who get the attention of people who wants to paint them all the same colour. But it's not really a true picture, is it?
What is your point?
If you follow American media this is the picture being given to west Virginians. The democrats are obsessive woke weirdos who care more about Pride marches and trans topless freaks getting to dance on the White House lawn - and also Ukrainians - than they do about the very real poverty and problems here in WV
Meanwhile rural republicans can see the absolute mess of democrat run cities. The implosion of San Francisco. The crime in Chicago and NYC. They can also see the democrats tearing down statues. None lf it looks good from the perspective of Meadow Bridge WV
Is that a fair perception of the democrats? Yes and no. But that is the perception and it leads to a trump victory in this state
I’m not judging either party here
The parallels between somewhere like WV and the poorer rural bits of brexitland are obvious
Is that a fair perception of the democrats? No, not really. It's the caricature portrayed by the right, a familiar one to those of us who gaze upon right wing media, but not a fair one.
The "implosion" of cities is an obsession of yours (didn't someone call you "monothematic" the other day?), but not something in the everyday experience of people who live in rural areas. I mean, basically by definition.
Which brings me to my point. The poverty you allude to -- people living in shacks -- isn't really the driver of GOP voting, is it? It's the fear of something outside of the lived experience that drives many people to that, not the actual lived experience. There's a way you can tell. If these cities were really so terrible, and the terribleness was so obviously the fault of the democratic reps and senators and governors, the people there would certainly vote someone else into power. That cities persist in being Democratic in political direction tells you a lot more about the reality of city life than you standing by a gas station pointing at a shack could.
The homicide rate in West Virginia is twice that in New York City. So maybe they need to look at crime in Republican rural areas.
West Virginia was one of only 10 states to vote for the Democrats at the 1988 election, and one of 6 in 1980.
West Virginia broke away from Virginia in 1863 over the slavery question. Virginia was part of the Confederacy.
Yes. Slavery never really happened here. Not the right land for big plantations. The settlers were poor, determined individualists. It is very very different to Virginia
And now, onwards to the capital. To Charleston!
Basically, yes. However, bit more complicated that that.
First, while slavery was THE issue of Civil War, note that:
> slavery was legal in today's WV until 13th amendment, and while the number of slaves was small, they were found in most places, in particular in areas with good farmland (such as some river bottoms) and early quasi-industrial settings.
> impetus in pre-war western Virginia was strongest in the area nearest to Pittsburgh, and along Ohio River, which had strongest commercial AND demographic ties to the North, whereas communications and contacts with eastern VA were difficult and limited.
> the southern and central parts of what's now West Virginia were much more attached to the rest of the Old Dominion; communications were also difficult, but cultural affinities stronger - despite area having few slaves outside of Charleston.
> when push came to shove after Fort Sumter, the Unionists of northwestern area formed a loyal Provisional state government of Virginia - but it's writ never ran very far farther south.
> in fact, there were likely more West Virginians who enlisted in the Confederate Army than the Union Army.
> the decision by Lincoln and Congress to create new state of West Virginia was inspired by desire to ensure that the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad linking Washington DC to Pittsburgh and point west via northern (W)Va remained secure.
> PLUS a new state meant two more Union (Republican) senators and several Representative in Congress - AND their equivalent Electoral College votes - which might prove handy in 1864.
Like I said, complicated.
West Virginia separated from Virginia out of disgust for Virginia's treason and backing of slavery. Now it flies confederate flags and backs Donald Trump, traitor to the United States.
There have been people flying confederate flags in West Virginia WAY before Donald Trump went into media, let alone politics.
And that was back when the state was reliably Democratic. And plenty who wouldn't fly a confederate flag, nevertheless have ancestors who fought for and supported Virginia and the confederacy.
Not everything can be shoved into neat - or even messy - pigeon holes.
'The Church of England has appointed its first transgender Archdeacon in a move hailed by LGBT+ campaigners as “a beacon of light and hope”.
Revd Canon Dr Rachel Mann has been appointed Archdeacon of Bolton and Salford, and is now believed to be the most senior trans member of the clergy within the Church.
Actually maybe I’m being a bit harsh. Just turned a corner in the city centre and it’s starting to feel more elegant. Mixture of maybe Verona and a fine English cathedral city
You're in West Virginia, for goddsake, what did you expect?
Leon's scenic shots of - and at - Charleston, WV are NOT signs of 21st-century urban American decay.
Place was a dump when I first laid eyes on it over half-century ago. And appears it's still a dump.
About the only WV city that is NOT a dump, is Morgantown. And it ain't no Paris!
You keep saying this, wherever I go. “”Oh Cincy is a rustbelt city it was always shit”, “Oh Charleston was always a dump”, “Oh these small MidWest towns have always been fucked”
In the last two years I have been to these states: California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Florida, New York, Louisiana, Ohio, Virginia and now West Virginia. And DC
In the majority of towns and cities I have seen signs of urban decay above and beyond what I normally expect in America. I know that America has had problems with deserted downtowns and over-reliance on the car for decades, but this sense of real descent is new. And I haven’t even been to (what I am told are) the worst places: San Francisco etc
And this is not surprising, urban America is experiencing a new wave of problems that are all coinciding and reinforcing each other: opioids, homelessness, resurgent crime, racial tension, the abandonment of cities because Covid and WFH. The appalling life expectancy stats are not an anomaly
The ONLY town/city I have been on this particular road trip where I have felt: Ah, this place is doing totally fine, I could be in Switzerland or Austria, is Alexandria VA
One place. One!
Despite all this I have had a brilliant time. American road trips are great. Americans are funny, kind, generous, hospitable people. America remains mighty and vast. You guys will surely bounce back, as you always do. And the beer is now as good as the museums in DC
West Virginia was one of only 10 states to vote for the Democrats at the 1988 election, and one of 6 in 1980.
West Virginia broke away from Virginia in 1863 over the slavery question. Virginia was part of the Confederacy.
Yes. Slavery never really happened here. Not the right land for big plantations. The settlers were poor, determined individualists. It is very very different to Virginia
And now, onwards to the capital. To Charleston!
Basically, yes. However, bit more complicated that that.
First, while slavery was THE issue of Civil War, note that:
> slavery was legal in today's WV until 13th amendment, and while the number of slaves was small, they were found in most places, in particular in areas with good farmland (such as some river bottoms) and early quasi-industrial settings.
> impetus in pre-war western Virginia was strongest in the area nearest to Pittsburgh, and along Ohio River, which had strongest commercial AND demographic ties to the North, whereas communications and contacts with eastern VA were difficult and limited.
> the southern and central parts of what's now West Virginia were much more attached to the rest of the Old Dominion; communications were also difficult, but cultural affinities stronger - despite area having few slaves outside of Charleston.
> when push came to shove after Fort Sumter, the Unionists of northwestern area formed a loyal Provisional state government of Virginia - but it's writ never ran very far farther south.
> in fact, there were likely more West Virginians who enlisted in the Confederate Army than the Union Army.
> the decision by Lincoln and Congress to create new state of West Virginia was inspired by desire to ensure that the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad linking Washington DC to Pittsburgh and point west via northern (W)Va remained secure.
> PLUS a new state meant two more Union (Republican) senators and several Representative in Congress - AND their equivalent Electoral College votes - which might prove handy in 1864.
Like I said, complicated.
West Virginia separated from Virginia out of disgust for Virginia's treason and backing of slavery. Now it flies confederate flags and backs Donald Trump, traitor to the United States.
There have been people flying confederate flags in West Virginia WAY before Donald Trump went into media, let alone politics.
And that was back when the state was reliably Democratic. And plenty who wouldn't fly a confederate flag, nevertheless have ancestors who fought for and supported Virginia and the confederacy.
Not everything can be shoved into neat - or even messy - pigeon holes.
Yes, And I’ve seen Confederate flags all over America. In recent months I’ve seen them in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Colorado - all ostensibly with Democrat governors
And that messiness, as you say, has been the case for generations
Actually maybe I’m being a bit harsh. Just turned a corner in the city centre and it’s starting to feel more elegant. Mixture of maybe Verona and a fine English cathedral city
You're in West Virginia, for goddsake, what did you expect?
Leon's scenic shots of - and at - Charleston, WV are NOT signs of 21st-century urban American decay.
Place was a dump when I first laid eyes on it over half-century ago. And appears it's still a dump.
About the only WV city that is NOT a dump, is Morgantown. And it ain't no Paris!
You keep saying this, wherever I go. “”Oh Cincy is a rustbelt city it was always shit”, “Oh Charleston was always a dump”, “Oh these small MidWest towns have always been fucked”
In the last two years I have been to these states: California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Florida, New York, Louisiana, Ohio, Virginia and now West Virginia. And DC
In the majority of towns and cities I have seen signs of urban decay above and beyond what I normally expect in America. I know that America has had problems with deserted downtowns and over-reliance on the car for decades, but this sense of real descent is new. And I haven’t even been to (what I am told are) the worst places: San Francisco etc
And this is not surprising, urban America is experiencing a new wave of problems that are all coinciding and reinforcing each other: opioids, homelessness, resurgent crime, racial tension, the abandonment of cities because Covid and WFH. The appalling life expectancy stats are not an anomaly
The ONLY town/city I have been on this particular road trip where I have felt: Ah, this place is doing totally fine, I could be in Switzerland or Austria, is Alexandria VA
One place. One!
Despite all this I have had a brilliant time. American road trips are great. Americans are funny, kind, generous, hospitable people. America remains mighty and vast. You guys will surely bounce back, as you always do. And the beer is now as good as the museums in DC
But, yeah, I’m not lying. I see what I see
You have a good argument - to a point - about many US urban areas.
But the ones you've visited and highlighted on this trip - Cincinnati, DC, Charleston WV - have been in serious trouble since before I was a boy.
Cincy peaked about 1850, and Charleston about 1950. DC is in some ways a special case, designed by congressional committee for Christ's sake.
But then I'm a Reformed (or is it Deformed) No-Heller partial to the Whig Theory of History.
Actually maybe I’m being a bit harsh. Just turned a corner in the city centre and it’s starting to feel more elegant. Mixture of maybe Verona and a fine English cathedral city
You're in West Virginia, for goddsake, what did you expect?
Leon's scenic shots of - and at - Charleston, WV are NOT signs of 21st-century urban American decay.
Place was a dump when I first laid eyes on it over half-century ago. And appears it's still a dump.
About the only WV city that is NOT a dump, is Morgantown. And it ain't no Paris!
You keep saying this, wherever I go. “”Oh Cincy is a rustbelt city it was always shit”, “Oh Charleston was always a dump”, “Oh these small MidWest towns have always been fucked”
In the last two years I have been to these states: California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Florida, New York, Louisiana, Ohio, Virginia and now West Virginia. And DC
In the majority of towns and cities I have seen signs of urban decay above and beyond what I normally expect in America. I know that America has had problems with deserted downtowns and over-reliance on the car for decades, but this sense of real descent is new. And I haven’t even been to (what I am told are) the worst places: San Francisco etc
And this is not surprising, urban America is experiencing a new wave of problems that are all coinciding and reinforcing each other: opioids, homelessness, resurgent crime, racial tension, the abandonment of cities because Covid and WFH. The appalling life expectancy stats are not an anomaly
The ONLY town/city I have been on this particular road trip where I have felt: Ah, this place is doing totally fine, I could be in Switzerland or Austria, is Alexandria VA
One place. One!
Despite all this I have had a brilliant time. American road trips are great. Americans are funny, kind, generous, hospitable people. America remains mighty and vast. You guys will surely bounce back, as you always do. And the beer is now as good as the museums in DC
But, yeah, I’m not lying. I see what I see
You have a good argument - to a point - about many US urban areas.
But the ones you've visited and highlighted on this trip - Cincinnati, DC, Charleston WV - have been in serious trouble since before I was a boy.
Cincy peaked about 1850, and Charleston about 1950. DC is in some ways a special case, designed by congressional committee for Christ's sake.
But then I'm a Reformed (or is it Deformed) No-Heller partial to the Whig Theory of History.
Fair enough, i have enjoyed our jousts and you have given me good advice on my travels - so thankyou
I’m gonna try and check out that nighttime state line crossing, if i can, sounds spectacular. Also gonna visit that battlefield. Point Thingy. It’s on my route
West Virginia was one of only 10 states to vote for the Democrats at the 1988 election, and one of 6 in 1980.
West Virginia broke away from Virginia in 1863 over the slavery question. Virginia was part of the Confederacy.
Yes. Slavery never really happened here. Not the right land for big plantations. The settlers were poor, determined individualists. It is very very different to Virginia
And now, onwards to the capital. To Charleston!
Basically, yes. However, bit more complicated that that.
First, while slavery was THE issue of Civil War, note that:
> slavery was legal in today's WV until 13th amendment, and while the number of slaves was small, they were found in most places, in particular in areas with good farmland (such as some river bottoms) and early quasi-industrial settings.
> impetus in pre-war western Virginia was strongest in the area nearest to Pittsburgh, and along Ohio River, which had strongest commercial AND demographic ties to the North, whereas communications and contacts with eastern VA were difficult and limited.
> the southern and central parts of what's now West Virginia were much more attached to the rest of the Old Dominion; communications were also difficult, but cultural affinities stronger - despite area having few slaves outside of Charleston.
> when push came to shove after Fort Sumter, the Unionists of northwestern area formed a loyal Provisional state government of Virginia - but it's writ never ran very far farther south.
> in fact, there were likely more West Virginians who enlisted in the Confederate Army than the Union Army.
> the decision by Lincoln and Congress to create new state of West Virginia was inspired by desire to ensure that the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad linking Washington DC to Pittsburgh and point west via northern (W)Va remained secure.
> PLUS a new state meant two more Union (Republican) senators and several Representative in Congress - AND their equivalent Electoral College votes - which might prove handy in 1864.
Like I said, complicated.
West Virginia separated from Virginia out of disgust for Virginia's treason and backing of slavery. Now it flies confederate flags and backs Donald Trump, traitor to the United States.
There have been people flying confederate flags in West Virginia WAY before Donald Trump went into media, let alone politics.
And that was back when the state was reliably Democratic. And plenty who wouldn't fly a confederate flag, nevertheless have ancestors who fought for and supported Virginia and the confederacy.
Not everything can be shoved into neat - or even messy - pigeon holes.
That was when Democrats in such states were still racist Dixiecrats. Now the Republicans have fully captured the neo-confederate tendency.
West Virginia is rather beautiful and quite noticeably poor
This is where I bought my Sam Adams lager
It’s brilliant. I love the lost backwoods of America. The garage also sold “Amish snacks”. And there are people living here in actual shacks
The Trump vote is not hard to understand out here
Only if you swallow the lie that Trump would actually make a positive difference for these people.
I’m not buying Trump’s nonsense but I am saying if you lived out here you would likely despise the democrat woke elites on the coast - and trump would be your only alternative
West Virginia is easily amongst the ten poorest states in the US; it also has a long tradition of rebellious defiance
But look at this river (inside America’s newest national park btw)
Gorgeous
I wouldn't vote for a wannabe fascist no matter how poor I was. And I have been really fucking poor at points in my life.
i don't buy your characterisation of the democrats as woke coastal elites. Some of them are. And they are the ones who get the attention of people who wants to paint them all the same colour. But it's not really a true picture, is it?
What is your point?
If you follow American media this is the picture being given to west Virginians. The democrats are obsessive woke weirdos who care more about Pride marches and trans topless freaks getting to dance on the White House lawn - and also Ukrainians - than they do about the very real poverty and problems here in WV
Meanwhile rural republicans can see the absolute mess of democrat run cities. The implosion of San Francisco. The crime in Chicago and NYC. They can also see the democrats tearing down statues. None lf it looks good from the perspective of Meadow Bridge WV
Is that a fair perception of the democrats? Yes and no. But that is the perception and it leads to a trump victory in this state
I’m not judging either party here
The parallels between somewhere like WV and the poorer rural bits of brexitland are obvious
Is that a fair perception of the democrats? No, not really. It's the caricature portrayed by the right, a familiar one to those of us who gaze upon right wing media, but not a fair one.
The "implosion" of cities is an obsession of yours (didn't someone call you "monothematic" the other day?), but not something in the everyday experience of people who live in rural areas. I mean, basically by definition.
Which brings me to my point. The poverty you allude to -- people living in shacks -- isn't really the driver of GOP voting, is it? It's the fear of something outside of the lived experience that drives many people to that, not the actual lived experience. There's a way you can tell. If these cities were really so terrible, and the terribleness was so obviously the fault of the democratic reps and senators and governors, the people there would certainly vote someone else into power. That cities persist in being Democratic in political direction tells you a lot more about the reality of city life than you standing by a gas station pointing at a shack could.
The homicide rate in West Virginia is twice that in New York City. So maybe they need to look at crime in Republican rural areas.
Yes but Fox News isn't going to say that
Anyone that believes Fox News is an idiot. It is just so obviously propaganda to anyone with an IQ above 90.
West Virginia was one of only 10 states to vote for the Democrats at the 1988 election, and one of 6 in 1980.
West Virginia broke away from Virginia in 1863 over the slavery question. Virginia was part of the Confederacy.
Yes. Slavery never really happened here. Not the right land for big plantations. The settlers were poor, determined individualists. It is very very different to Virginia
And now, onwards to the capital. To Charleston!
Basically, yes. However, bit more complicated that that.
First, while slavery was THE issue of Civil War, note that:
> slavery was legal in today's WV until 13th amendment, and while the number of slaves was small, they were found in most places, in particular in areas with good farmland (such as some river bottoms) and early quasi-industrial settings.
> impetus in pre-war western Virginia was strongest in the area nearest to Pittsburgh, and along Ohio River, which had strongest commercial AND demographic ties to the North, whereas communications and contacts with eastern VA were difficult and limited.
> the southern and central parts of what's now West Virginia were much more attached to the rest of the Old Dominion; communications were also difficult, but cultural affinities stronger - despite area having few slaves outside of Charleston.
> when push came to shove after Fort Sumter, the Unionists of northwestern area formed a loyal Provisional state government of Virginia - but it's writ never ran very far farther south.
> in fact, there were likely more West Virginians who enlisted in the Confederate Army than the Union Army.
> the decision by Lincoln and Congress to create new state of West Virginia was inspired by desire to ensure that the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad linking Washington DC to Pittsburgh and point west via northern (W)Va remained secure.
> PLUS a new state meant two more Union (Republican) senators and several Representative in Congress - AND their equivalent Electoral College votes - which might prove handy in 1864.
Like I said, complicated.
West Virginia separated from Virginia out of disgust for Virginia's treason and backing of slavery. Now it flies confederate flags and backs Donald Trump, traitor to the United States.
There have been people flying confederate flags in West Virginia WAY before Donald Trump went into media, let alone politics.
And that was back when the state was reliably Democratic. And plenty who wouldn't fly a confederate flag, nevertheless have ancestors who fought for and supported Virginia and the confederacy.
Not everything can be shoved into neat - or even messy - pigeon holes.
That was when Democrats in such states were still racist Dixiecrats. Now the Republicans have fully captured the neo-confederate tendency.
You mean ALL the Democrats in West Virginia were racist Dixiecrats?
You don't know what you're fucking talking about. I was there - you obviously weren't.
'The Church of England has appointed its first transgender Archdeacon in a move hailed by LGBT+ campaigners as “a beacon of light and hope”.
Revd Canon Dr Rachel Mann has been appointed Archdeacon of Bolton and Salford, and is now believed to be the most senior trans member of the clergy within the Church.
West Virginia was one of only 10 states to vote for the Democrats at the 1988 election, and one of 6 in 1980.
West Virginia broke away from Virginia in 1863 over the slavery question. Virginia was part of the Confederacy.
Yes. Slavery never really happened here. Not the right land for big plantations. The settlers were poor, determined individualists. It is very very different to Virginia
And now, onwards to the capital. To Charleston!
Basically, yes. However, bit more complicated that that.
First, while slavery was THE issue of Civil War, note that:
> slavery was legal in today's WV until 13th amendment, and while the number of slaves was small, they were found in most places, in particular in areas with good farmland (such as some river bottoms) and early quasi-industrial settings.
> impetus in pre-war western Virginia was strongest in the area nearest to Pittsburgh, and along Ohio River, which had strongest commercial AND demographic ties to the North, whereas communications and contacts with eastern VA were difficult and limited.
> the southern and central parts of what's now West Virginia were much more attached to the rest of the Old Dominion; communications were also difficult, but cultural affinities stronger - despite area having few slaves outside of Charleston.
> when push came to shove after Fort Sumter, the Unionists of northwestern area formed a loyal Provisional state government of Virginia - but it's writ never ran very far farther south.
> in fact, there were likely more West Virginians who enlisted in the Confederate Army than the Union Army.
> the decision by Lincoln and Congress to create new state of West Virginia was inspired by desire to ensure that the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad linking Washington DC to Pittsburgh and point west via northern (W)Va remained secure.
> PLUS a new state meant two more Union (Republican) senators and several Representative in Congress - AND their equivalent Electoral College votes - which might prove handy in 1864.
Like I said, complicated.
West Virginia separated from Virginia out of disgust for Virginia's treason and backing of slavery. Now it flies confederate flags and backs Donald Trump, traitor to the United States.
There have been people flying confederate flags in West Virginia WAY before Donald Trump went into media, let alone politics.
And that was back when the state was reliably Democratic. And plenty who wouldn't fly a confederate flag, nevertheless have ancestors who fought for and supported Virginia and the confederacy.
Not everything can be shoved into neat - or even messy - pigeon holes.
That was when Democrats in such states were still racist Dixiecrats. Now the Republicans have fully captured the neo-confederate tendency.
You mean ALL the Democrats in West Virginia were racist Dixiecrats?
You don't know what you're fucking talking about. I was there - you obviously weren't.
I never said all. If I say Spurs players are shit it doesn't mean to a man. But the general trend was certainly racism. It is why they love Trump so much now.
Actually maybe I’m being a bit harsh. Just turned a corner in the city centre and it’s starting to feel more elegant. Mixture of maybe Verona and a fine English cathedral city
You're in West Virginia, for goddsake, what did you expect?
Leon's scenic shots of - and at - Charleston, WV are NOT signs of 21st-century urban American decay.
Place was a dump when I first laid eyes on it over half-century ago. And appears it's still a dump.
About the only WV city that is NOT a dump, is Morgantown. And it ain't no Paris!
You keep saying this, wherever I go. “”Oh Cincy is a rustbelt city it was always shit”, “Oh Charleston was always a dump”, “Oh these small MidWest towns have always been fucked”
In the last two years I have been to these states: California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Florida, New York, Louisiana, Ohio, Virginia and now West Virginia. And DC
In the majority of towns and cities I have seen signs of urban decay above and beyond what I normally expect in America. I know that America has had problems with deserted downtowns and over-reliance on the car for decades, but this sense of real descent is new. And I haven’t even been to (what I am told are) the worst places: San Francisco etc
And this is not surprising, urban America is experiencing a new wave of problems that are all coinciding and reinforcing each other: opioids, homelessness, resurgent crime, racial tension, the abandonment of cities because Covid and WFH. The appalling life expectancy stats are not an anomaly
The ONLY town/city I have been on this particular road trip where I have felt: Ah, this place is doing totally fine, I could be in Switzerland or Austria, is Alexandria VA
One place. One!
Despite all this I have had a brilliant time. American road trips are great. Americans are funny, kind, generous, hospitable people. America remains mighty and vast. You guys will surely bounce back, as you always do. And the beer is now as good as the museums in DC
But, yeah, I’m not lying. I see what I see
You have a good argument - to a point - about many US urban areas.
But the ones you've visited and highlighted on this trip - Cincinnati, DC, Charleston WV - have been in serious trouble since before I was a boy.
Cincy peaked about 1850, and Charleston about 1950. DC is in some ways a special case, designed by congressional committee for Christ's sake.
But then I'm a Reformed (or is it Deformed) No-Heller partial to the Whig Theory of History.
Fair enough, i have enjoyed our jousts and you have given me good advice on my travels - so thankyou
I’m gonna try and check out that nighttime state line crossing, if i can, sounds spectacular. Also gonna visit that battlefield. Point Thingy. It’s on my route
Was trying to google something about the lights on KY side of I-64 bridge over Big Sandy.
As for Point Pleasant, it is NOT all that spectacular, more like mildly interesting.
BTW, just across the Ohio River from PP, is Gallipolis ("Gahl-a-po-LEESE" or alternatively "Gahl-a-po-LIS") which was founded by French emigres who got ripped off by shady American land speculators-pirates. Zero signs of French ambiance these days!
State roads on either side of Ohio there are pretty nice for rural riding. And not far from Gallipolis is wide spot in road called Rio Grande ("Rye-OH-grand") home of THE original Bob Evans Farm and Restaurant. IF you love sausage, do NOT pass it by.
I actually think a proper US state of the nation / road trip type book by Leon would be v interesting.
But you’d need to do about a year there (here).
I have spent about 3 months in the USA these last two years, in total - and been to a dozen states, constantly moving
So, no, not enough for a book or a real state-of-the-nation, but definitely enough to get a sense. Especially as I can compare to so many other countries I have visited at the same time
As I have said before on here, there are very few countries on earth that are not having a rocky time, Britain very much included. The problems just differ from nation to nation, and Covid in particular has been disastrous for countries in weirdly different ways: eg in the UK it’s left us with appalling and crippling debt, in America it’s dealt an almighty blow to already-struggling cities and city centres, in east Asia half the people are still wearing masks (and fuck knows what that’s doing to their psyches)
I’m vaguely hoping to get to Ukraine this summer for an assignment so that will certainly provide some extreme and startling context!
"Two sources told LabourList McGovern won selection contest for the seat on Merseyside, north-west England, by more than 250 votes to 186. Proposed boundary changes are due to see McGovern’s seat of Wirral South scrapped, reducing the number of seats on the Wirral peninsula from four to three. The plans would see part of her constituency merged into the existing Birkenhead seat, which Whitley has represented since 2019. Most of the new seat is Whitley’s current seat, however."
West Virginia was one of only 10 states to vote for the Democrats at the 1988 election, and one of 6 in 1980.
West Virginia broke away from Virginia in 1863 over the slavery question. Virginia was part of the Confederacy.
Yes. Slavery never really happened here. Not the right land for big plantations. The settlers were poor, determined individualists. It is very very different to Virginia
And now, onwards to the capital. To Charleston!
Basically, yes. However, bit more complicated that that.
First, while slavery was THE issue of Civil War, note that:
> slavery was legal in today's WV until 13th amendment, and while the number of slaves was small, they were found in most places, in particular in areas with good farmland (such as some river bottoms) and early quasi-industrial settings.
> impetus in pre-war western Virginia was strongest in the area nearest to Pittsburgh, and along Ohio River, which had strongest commercial AND demographic ties to the North, whereas communications and contacts with eastern VA were difficult and limited.
> the southern and central parts of what's now West Virginia were much more attached to the rest of the Old Dominion; communications were also difficult, but cultural affinities stronger - despite area having few slaves outside of Charleston.
> when push came to shove after Fort Sumter, the Unionists of northwestern area formed a loyal Provisional state government of Virginia - but it's writ never ran very far farther south.
> in fact, there were likely more West Virginians who enlisted in the Confederate Army than the Union Army.
> the decision by Lincoln and Congress to create new state of West Virginia was inspired by desire to ensure that the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad linking Washington DC to Pittsburgh and point west via northern (W)Va remained secure.
> PLUS a new state meant two more Union (Republican) senators and several Representative in Congress - AND their equivalent Electoral College votes - which might prove handy in 1864.
Like I said, complicated.
West Virginia separated from Virginia out of disgust for Virginia's treason and backing of slavery. Now it flies confederate flags and backs Donald Trump, traitor to the United States.
There have been people flying confederate flags in West Virginia WAY before Donald Trump went into media, let alone politics.
And that was back when the state was reliably Democratic. And plenty who wouldn't fly a confederate flag, nevertheless have ancestors who fought for and supported Virginia and the confederacy.
Not everything can be shoved into neat - or even messy - pigeon holes.
Yes, And I’ve seen Confederate flags all over America. In recent months I’ve seen them in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Colorado - all ostensibly with Democrat governors
And that messiness, as you say, has been the case for generations
There’s a giant confed flag as you come down from the NC hills into Asheville. Doubtless out there to wind up the Democrats holed up in town.
US towns aren’t its strong point; on the east coast you occasionally find an attractive historic centre, but otherwise, and universally around the edges, the buildings are unattractive, there are miles of functional single storey strip malls mostly in what you might call the McDonalds architectural style, wires and cables and other street crap just runs and sits where it needs to be without thought to how anything looks, and the whole place is covered by advertising, much of it up in the air on giant hoardings all trying to be bigger and taller than the next one like some modern-day San Gimignano, with much of the advertising being for dodgy lawyers or dodgy doctors or dodgy treatments for medical conditions.
Comments
"In their own workplaces, 82 percent of Black employees say the environment is “excellent” or “good” when it comes to being welcoming. Large majorities rate their workplaces positively for stopping racial discrimination (76 percent) and paying Black and White workers equally (74 percent). A smaller majority, 65 percent, gives their workplace positive marks for promoting Black workers."
And are more positive about how they are treated outside of work, than they were in 2006:
"Fewer Black Americans say they are often treated poorly in day-to-day life across a variety of measures than in 2006"
(Despite their personal experiences, many, perhaps most, have doubts about the nation as a whole. And, like most other Americans, have doubts about the economy, despite our low unemployment, and declining inflation.)
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/06/16/black-americans-racism-poll/
The idea that the NHS could be sued for criminal negligence was controversial then.
@Steven_Swinford
EXCLUSIVE:
Boris Johnson’s 25 notebooks from time in office are being withheld from him by the govt after review found pages of sensitive material
Officials advised sensitive passages should only be viewed by people with highest level of clearance
https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1669811983305113601
Nevertheless it feels like the average “middle” American has significantly more spending money than than the average “middle” Brit.
I think a lot of it is simply cheaper housing, cheaper gas, and cheaper electricity.
She's spoken about it once in 20 years.
Certainly the amount of litigation has grown over the years but for example the seminal Bolam case was 1957, when the NHS was not even a decade old.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolam_v_Friern_Hospital_Management_Committee
So far as I can tell, it has always been possible to sue the NHS for negligence, though obviously case law has evolved.
The reforms to remove it were attacked as allowing “American style” litigation into the country.
It meant the end of "East Prussia" as a region - the area was conquered by the Red Army ending ending in the storming of Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad) on 12th April 1945 (the day before the fall of Vienna I believe). Thousands were evacuated via the Baltic right up to and indeed after the end of hostilities. In other parts such as Czechosolovakia, the ethnic Germans were expelled by the Red Army having forcibly signed off their land to Czech or Slovak land owners.
Similar happened in Hungary and parts of Yugoslavia.
"Crown immunity was first substantially undermined —if that is the right word—by the Crown Proceedings Act introduced by the Labour Government in 1947. It was felt necessary to move with the times and at least give individuals the opportunity and right to sue the Crown for damages. However, the Crown Proceedings Act does not permit criminal proceedings against the Crown or any of the agencies presently covered by Crown immunity. As a result, many laws do not apply to Crown property or to Crown institutions.
We find ourselves in the strange position that a health authority can be sued by an injured individual in the civil courts, possibly over being poisoned as a result of something going wrong in a kitchen, but the health authority cannot be prosecuted under the criminal aspects of the food hygiene regulations that the authority was breaking. It is not simply the food hygiene regulations that do not apply to hospitals and Health Service property. The general health and safety legislation does not apply. Recently, the Secretary of State for Social Services made it clear that the Rent Acts do not apply to Crown property, at least as far as the National Health Service is concerned. Who benefits from the existence of Crown immunity? The answer seems to be literally no one, because the existence of Crown immunity leaves hospital more dangerous than they could be and should be for both patients and staff.
If Crown immunity has lasted since time immemorial, should it be kept for that reason alone? We might argue for that in relation to the armed forces or for one or two aspects of Crown activity that have gone on since time immemorial, but in the case of the National Health Service and hospitals, Crown immunity arrived with time immemorialness on 5 July 1948. When hospitals were owned by private charities or municipalities, Crown immunity did not apply. Crown immunity is not even hallowed by time. It is certainly not hallowed by any sense of justice, logic or common sense."
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1986/jun/09/lifting-of-all-crown-immunity
Chris Stuckmann's spoiler-free review is out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEFqcfEFXVs
Fortunately there's been several films I've seen this year where the trailers really didn't sell me on it, so I ended up liking them quite a bit more than expected. Surprisingly bad films can hit like a punch to the gut though.
However, over time, as we've discovered with the utility suppliers, a public monopoly becomes a private cartel as the big players squeeze out the smaller firms who often provide the best value for the customer.
There is still choice but it's often illusory as the cartel works against genuine competition.
That was also the case for BT long after privatisation, improvements over its previous incarnation notwithstanding.
The law concerning negligence in civil cases dates to 1932 and the infamous case of a snail in a ginger beer bottle, so not that long before the NHS started.
Crown immunity for medical staff came in in the nineties. Prior to that NHS doctors had to have their own negligence insurance, and still need to for private work. The driving force was because premiums in high risk specialities such as obstetrics had reached the point that they were no longer affordable on an NHS salary. It is for similar reasons that obstetric care is so expensive in California.
Though I just saw this kids one pop up - full marks for grabbing my attention.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14799576/?ref_=rlm
Story of anxious Peter (12) and his sister Verity (9), taken underground by a garrison of armoured pangolin.
He was very keen on creating what he regarded as ethnic homogeneity in the pursuit of Soviet control.
It is one reason there is virtually no private practice in obstetrics in the UK. The cost of insurance makes it untenable.
15% of my private fees goes on indemnity insurance, even though I have never had a case awarded against me or gone to court in 30 years of medical practice.
Kanawha - as in Kanawha River, Kanawha Valley, Kanawha County, etc.
Pronounced "Kan-AW-uh" the more you run syllables together the better.
The Kanawha River begins where the New River is joined by the Gauley River, at Gauley Bridge. Upstream the New is a scenic wonder; downstream the Kanawha is an industrial waterway.
With the industry being overwhelming coal-based chemical, with plants upriver and downriver from Charleston, the state capital, whose main attraction for the traveler is the magnificent golden dome of the West Virginia Capitol, easy viewed while zipping down the interstate.
One evidence of early 20th-century industrialization is the town of Nitro - named when the US government built a massive explosives manufacturing plant there during World War One.
Past Charleston, the Kanawha River follows though relatively flat (for WVa anyway) mostly agricultural land, until it flows into the Ohio River at Point Pleasant. Where, as any West Virginian will tell you, the REAL first battle of the American Revolution was fought, between revolting Virginia frontiersmen and Native Americans led (and led on) by British officers and agents.
The Americans won, or at least didn't lose!
A lot of former German territory was repopulated by Poland with Poles deported from what is now Ukraine or Belarus, leapfrogging central Poland.
All the countryside surrounding is lush and impressive however, and sometimes spectacular
But the city. Ouch
In IT, we pay a few hundred pounds a year for £2m of PI cover, when self-employed. I guess you lot get sued more often than we do!
Sorry.
First, while slavery was THE issue of Civil War, note that:
> slavery was legal in today's WV until 13th amendment, and while the number of slaves was small, they were found in most places, in particular in areas with good farmland (such as some river bottoms) and early quasi-industrial settings.
> impetus in pre-war western Virginia was strongest in the area nearest to Pittsburgh, and along Ohio River, which had strongest commercial AND demographic ties to the North, whereas communications and contacts with eastern VA were difficult and limited.
> the southern and central parts of what's now West Virginia were much more attached to the rest of the Old Dominion; communications were also difficult, but cultural affinities stronger - despite area having few slaves outside of Charleston.
> when push came to shove after Fort Sumter, the Unionists of northwestern area formed a loyal Provisional state government of Virginia - but it's writ never ran very far farther south.
> in fact, there were likely more West Virginians who enlisted in the Confederate Army than the Union Army.
> the decision by Lincoln and Congress to create new state of West Virginia was inspired by desire to ensure that the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad linking Washington DC to Pittsburgh and point west via northern (W)Va remained secure.
> PLUS a new state meant two more Union (Republican) senators and several Representative in Congress - AND their equivalent Electoral College votes - which might prove handy in 1864.
Like I said, complicated.
I’m in Charleston. State capital of West Virginny
However I have just been told there is “one nice bit by the river”. 10 mins walk. I’m gonna go see. Need a g&t
The after-dark light show give off by the massive chemical plant there is truly spectacular!
Believe Speilberg used it in one of his movies?
Revd Canon Dr Rachel Mann has been appointed Archdeacon of Bolton and Salford, and is now believed to be the most senior trans member of the clergy within the Church.
She said that she is “humbled and excited” to take on the new role and asked for prayers as she takes on this “demanding and hope-filled role”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/16/church-england-transgender-archdeacon-appointed-rachel-mann/
Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Pt 1: July 12, 2023
Barbie: July 21, 2023
Oppenheimer: July 21, 2023
Killers of the Flower Moon: October 20, 2023
Dune: Part Two: November 3, 2023
Napoleon: November 22, 2023
Legally Blonde 3: TBD
Always liked visiting the WV State Museum right night door.
Been a LONG time since I was in Charleston OR in Huntington, which is west on I-64 on Ohio River near where WV, Ohio and Kentucky converge. Huntington has much flatter locale, and is home of Marshall University, for what that's worth.
BTW, the interstate between Charleston and Huntington takes the route of geologically-interesting Teays Valley, part of the pre-glacial Teays River system, a
"major preglacial river that drained much of the present Ohio River watershed, but took a more northerly downstream course. Traces of the Teays across northern Ohio and Indiana are represented by a network of river valleys. The largest still existing contributor to the former Teays River is the Kanawha River in West Virginia, which is itself an extension of the New River. The name "Teays," from the much smaller Teays Valley still extant above the surface, has been associated with the river and the remainder of its related buried valley since 1910."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teays_River
And will - I'm sure - enjoy watching another three or four. But I may pass on the Barbie movie.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/06/16/boris-johnson-julius-caesar-comparison-daily-mail-column/
Used to love their Italian sandwiches.
ADDENDUM - of course THE state culinary specialty of West Virginia is . . . the Hot Dog.
Just about every small town has it's own preferred hot dog condiments, with chile being frequent but again, seek local information!
https://youtu.be/oRzCR5YKWUk
Do they think Caesar was a fictional character?
Place was a dump when I first laid eyes on it over half-century ago. And appears it's still a dump.
About the only WV city that is NOT a dump, is Morgantown. And it ain't no Paris!
Here is a flavor of the latter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DEYvH9zh_g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_TuEO6Mttw
[edit: but they were both based on the Frank Herbert book of the same name. Which may have been the question you were actually asking
And that was back when the state was reliably Democratic. And plenty who wouldn't fly a confederate flag, nevertheless have ancestors who fought for and supported Virginia and the confederacy.
Not everything can be shoved into neat - or even messy - pigeon holes.
In the last two years I have been to these states: California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Florida, New York, Louisiana, Ohio, Virginia and now West Virginia. And DC
In the majority of towns and cities I have seen signs of urban decay above and beyond what I normally expect in America. I know that America has had problems with deserted downtowns and over-reliance on the car for decades, but this sense of real descent is new. And I haven’t even been to (what I am told are) the worst places: San Francisco etc
And this is not surprising, urban America is experiencing a new wave of problems that are all coinciding and reinforcing each other: opioids, homelessness, resurgent crime, racial tension, the abandonment of cities because Covid and WFH. The appalling life expectancy stats are not an anomaly
The ONLY town/city I have been on this particular road trip where I have felt: Ah, this place is doing totally fine, I could be in Switzerland or Austria, is Alexandria VA
One place. One!
Despite all this I have had a brilliant time. American road trips are great. Americans are funny, kind, generous, hospitable people. America remains mighty and vast. You guys will surely bounce back, as you always do. And the beer is now as good as the museums in DC
But, yeah, I’m not lying. I see what I see
And that messiness, as you say, has been the case for generations
But the ones you've visited and highlighted on this trip - Cincinnati, DC, Charleston WV - have been in serious trouble since before I was a boy.
Cincy peaked about 1850, and Charleston about 1950. DC is in some ways a special case, designed by congressional committee for Christ's sake.
But then I'm a Reformed (or is it Deformed) No-Heller partial to the Whig Theory of History.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w38t-NhrADM
I’m gonna try and check out that nighttime state line crossing, if i can, sounds spectacular. Also gonna visit that battlefield. Point Thingy. It’s on my route
You don't know what you're fucking talking about. I was there - you obviously weren't.
But you’d need to do about a year there (here).
Presume he is quoting Johnny Rotten.
https://twitter.com/antoguerrera/status/1669841631489544194?s=46&t=L9g_woCIqbo1MTuBFCK0xg
As for Point Pleasant, it is NOT all that spectacular, more like mildly interesting.
BTW, just across the Ohio River from PP, is Gallipolis ("Gahl-a-po-LEESE" or alternatively "Gahl-a-po-LIS") which was founded by French emigres who got ripped off by shady American land speculators-pirates. Zero signs of French ambiance these days!
State roads on either side of Ohio there are pretty nice for rural riding. And not far from Gallipolis is wide spot in road called Rio Grande ("Rye-OH-grand") home of THE original Bob Evans Farm and Restaurant. IF you love sausage, do NOT pass it by.
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/night-time-shots-of-marathon-petroleum-corps-news-footage/617540018
So, no, not enough for a book or a real state-of-the-nation, but definitely enough to get a sense. Especially as I can compare to so many other countries I have visited at the same time
As I have said before on here, there are very few countries on earth that are not having a rocky time, Britain very much included. The problems just differ from nation to nation, and Covid in particular has been disastrous for countries in weirdly different ways: eg in the UK it’s left us with appalling and crippling debt, in America it’s dealt an almighty blow to already-struggling cities and city centres, in east Asia half the people are still wearing masks (and fuck knows what that’s doing to their psyches)
I’m vaguely hoping to get to Ukraine this summer for an assignment so that will certainly provide some extreme and startling context!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creator_(2023_film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalopolis_(film)
https://labourlist.org/2023/06/alison-mcgovern-selection-birkenhead-mick-whitley-wirral/
"Two sources told LabourList McGovern won selection contest for the seat on Merseyside, north-west England, by more than 250 votes to 186.
Proposed boundary changes are due to see McGovern’s seat of Wirral South scrapped, reducing the number of seats on the Wirral peninsula from four to three. The plans would see part of her constituency merged into the existing Birkenhead seat, which Whitley has represented since 2019. Most of the new seat is Whitley’s current seat, however."
F1/Football: https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2023/06/canada-pre-qualifying-2023-and-epl.html
US towns aren’t its strong point; on the east coast you occasionally find an attractive historic centre, but otherwise, and universally around the edges, the buildings are unattractive, there are miles of functional single storey strip malls mostly in what you might call the McDonalds architectural style, wires and cables and other street crap just runs and sits where it needs to be without thought to how anything looks, and the whole place is covered by advertising, much of it up in the air on giant hoardings all trying to be bigger and taller than the next one like some modern-day San Gimignano, with much of the advertising being for dodgy lawyers or dodgy doctors or dodgy treatments for medical conditions.