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Mortgage payments increasingly becoming a big issue – politicalbetting.com

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  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,663
    Leon said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    There are iconic moments of cheating/gamesmanship

    In cricket:

    Bodyline
    THIS

    We get it. You went to a cricket match, a rare occurrence, and got all het up with the rest of the boozed up punters there and you enjoyed the camaraderie which is not a usual experience for you and out of a sense of loyalty to those people (you'll never see them again, obvs), and to keep that feeling going, you continue to fight the good fight on here.

    Perfectly understandable and of course the actual rights or wrongs of the situation are immaterial.
    I WAS THERE

    They will talk about this game for years, maybe decades. For the iconic "cheating" and the best Test innings ever scored on English soil - all on the same day

    Amd OMFG I was there. I am sorry you weren't - but there you go

    You always have the recompense of having the most up-to-date Shazam list of an averagely lonely, tragic, slightly snobbish upper middle class man in his mid 50s who has nothing else to talk about but sports of which he knows nothing, because he doesn't like sport, really, despite his tortured isolated, sporty public school upbringing
    Sorry, where were you? I must've missed that.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277

    Leon said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    There are iconic moments of cheating/gamesmanship

    In cricket:

    Bodyline
    THIS

    We get it. You went to a cricket match, a rare occurrence, and got all het up with the rest of the boozed up punters there and you enjoyed the camaraderie which is not a usual experience for you and out of a sense of loyalty to those people (you'll never see them again, obvs), and to keep that feeling going, you continue to fight the good fight on here.

    Perfectly understandable and of course the actual rights or wrongs of the situation are immaterial.
    I WAS THERE

    They will talk about this game for years, maybe decades. For the iconic "cheating" and the best Test innings ever scored on English soil - all on the same day

    Amd OMFG I was there. I am sorry you weren't - but there you go

    You always have the recompense of having the most up-to-date Shazam list of an averagely lonely, tragic, slightly snobbish upper middle class man in his mid 50s who has nothing else to talk about but sports of which he knows nothing, because he doesn't like sport, really, despite his tortured isolated, sporty public school upbringing
    Sorry, where were you? I must've missed that.
    I promised not to gloat, so I'm keeping it very much "under wraps"
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,663

    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Virginia Woolf classic joins growing list with ‘ludicrous’ trigger warnings
    To the Lighthouse from 1927 now carries warning that the book ‘reflects the attitudes of its time’"

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/01/virginia-woolf-to-the-lighthouse-trigger-warning-vintage/

    How stupid would you have to be to read a book from 1927 and not expect it to reflect the attitudes of the time?

    My personal view is that it should have a trigger warnings for being drivelling crap.

    I really, REALLY detest Virginia Woolf. All the more so because I went through a phase in my thirties of convincing myself it could not be as bad as I thought and it must just be the particular books I was reading. So I tried reading as much as possible to prove myself wrong. I failed and that is many weeks of reading time I will never get back.
    You are almost completely right. She is absolute shite in her modernist guise. To The Lighthouse etc. All I could think was: JUST GO TO THE FUCKING LIGHTHOUSE, BITCH

    So dull

    She is - in this medium - James Joyce but with 3% of his linguistic skill. And she knew this, deep down, hence her loathing and fear of him. She publicly reviled Ulysses even tho it was absolutely clear that Joyce had achieved, with majestic elan, what she had tentatively and falteringly nudged at

    HOWEVER she is still is still a great writer. Try "Orlando" - she wrote it in a few brisk weeks yet it is brilliant and witty and very prescient about changing gender roles, it is her true masterpiece. She wrote it in six weeks and therefore, I think, dismissed it. She was wrong

    She was also great on the subject of creativity and writing in general. "A Room of One's Own" is full of insights for the ages, especially for any artist

    Her problem is that she is revered for rather dire modernist failures, yet her genuine spleandour goes unappreciated

    I did wonder if I was simply too unintelligent to appreciate the stream of consciousness stuff. At least as she wrote it. After all that was part of the Bloomsbury Set ethos - that art should be elitist and difficult because the proles should not be able to understand it. Maybe I am just a prole.

    And yet. I can list dozens of writers, poets and artists far better whose work is not always easy but it rewards effort. Stefan Zweig, EE Cummings, Umberto Eco and Lawrence Durrell to start with. You have to work at all of them but if you make the effort then the result is wondrous. With Woolf the only feeling I am left with is pointlessness.
    I quite enjoyed Mrs Dalloway, just saying.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,401
    edited July 2023
    Leon said:

    THIS is genuinely shocking

    The state of falling birth rates around the world


    https://twitter.com/BirthGauge/status/1674906307000762370

    Macao is essentially saying Fuck it, we've had enough of this living and reproducing thing

    If you've ever visited Macao you can have great sympathy with such intention.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,663
    edited July 2023
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    There are iconic moments of cheating/gamesmanship

    In cricket:

    Bodyline
    THIS

    We get it. You went to a cricket match, a rare occurrence, and got all het up with the rest of the boozed up punters there and you enjoyed the camaraderie which is not a usual experience for you and out of a sense of loyalty to those people (you'll never see them again, obvs), and to keep that feeling going, you continue to fight the good fight on here.

    Perfectly understandable and of course the actual rights or wrongs of the situation are immaterial.
    I WAS THERE

    They will talk about this game for years, maybe decades. For the iconic "cheating" and the best Test innings ever scored on English soil - all on the same day

    Amd OMFG I was there. I am sorry you weren't - but there you go

    You always have the recompense of having the most up-to-date Shazam list of an averagely lonely, tragic, slightly snobbish upper middle class man in his mid 50s who has nothing else to talk about but sports of which he knows nothing, because he doesn't like sport, really, despite his tortured isolated, sporty public school upbringing
    Sorry, where were you? I must've missed that.
    I promised not to gloat, so I'm keeping it very much "under wraps"
    Believe it or not, I am actually genuinely pleased for you. It could so easily have been a non-playing day.

    Mind you, had England won... you'd have been one of the half a million or so of us who were there that day.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    edited July 2023
    That is quite an extraordinary fall in the Albanian birthrate, 15% in one year. Look at the Baltics as well. Eastern Europe may boast that it is catching up with the UK in "GDP per capita" but one of the main reasons is that there's only about six people left in Estonia, Slovakia, etc

    It's not hard to be wealthy per capita when your entire GDP is divided between two people. Both elderly
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,663
    edited July 2023
    Leon said:

    That is quite an extraordinary fall in the Albanian birthrate, 15% in one year. Look at the Baltics as well. Eastern Europe may boast that it is catching up with the UK in "GDP per capita" but one of the main reasons is that there's only about six people left in Estonia, Slovakia, etc

    It's not hard to be wealthy per capita when your entire GDP is divided between two people. Both elderly

    Maybe it's just our alien overlords' way of resolving global warming?

    Either that or all those cellphone radio waves are frying our sperm.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    dixiedean said:

    Leon said:

    THIS is genuinely shocking

    The state of falling birth rates around the world


    https://twitter.com/BirthGauge/status/1674906307000762370

    Macao is essentially saying Fuck it, we've had enough of this living and reproducing thing

    If you've ever visited Macao you can have great sympathy with such intention.
    Yes, it's crowded. But so vivacious! Or it was. Easy for me to say as a tourist

    But the headlong collapse in birthrates around the world is pretty mind-blowing. Germany had half the births of France in one year, despite being much bigger in absolute population. And France itself saw a precipitous decline

    Children of Men, indeed
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,553
    Leon said:

    That is quite an extraordinary fall in the Albanian birthrate, 15% in one year. Look at the Baltics as well. Eastern Europe may boast that it is catching up with the UK in "GDP per capita" but one of the main reasons is that there's only about six people left in Estonia, Slovakia, etc

    It's not hard to be wealthy per capita when your entire GDP is divided between two people. Both elderly

    A surprisingly high percentage of young Albanian men are currently in the UK.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,553

    With the cricket thing, envisioning what would have happened if the umpire had said it wasn't out, would there have been a great outrage in the other direction? I don't think there would have been. I think the Australians would have shrugged and thought 'worth a try' and got on with it. I am not sure whether that tells us what the umpire should have done, but it does tell us something.

    I can't see how it tells us anything myself.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,485
    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    The Redfield & Wilton and Deltapoll numbers don't show a lot of movement from last week.

    The England sub sample from R&W has Labour on 48%, Conservatives on 28%, Liberal Democrats on 12%, Greens on 6%, Reform on 5%.

    The swing from Conservative to Labour in England is 16.5% while the swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat is 9.5%.

    As for Deltapoll, the lead remains at 23 points - 15 points among men and 31 points among women. The Conservatives lead 43-30 among 65+ voters (this was a group they won 64-17 in 2019 so that's a 17% swing in that key demographic).

    These subsamples aren’t weighted - ergo meaningless. It beggars belief that you routinely extract such long posts from such scant material.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    edited July 2023
    Andy_JS said:

    Leon said:

    That is quite an extraordinary fall in the Albanian birthrate, 15% in one year. Look at the Baltics as well. Eastern Europe may boast that it is catching up with the UK in "GDP per capita" but one of the main reasons is that there's only about six people left in Estonia, Slovakia, etc

    It's not hard to be wealthy per capita when your entire GDP is divided between two people. Both elderly

    A surprisingly high percentage of young Albanian men are currently in the UK.
    it ain't gonna help. All this shit about Eastern Europe "catching up with the UK" must be seen in this light. Eastern Europe is rapidly depopulating. The young are leaving and those that are left don't want kids. This is true around the world but in Eastern Europe they face particularly severe problems of emigration (thanks, in part, to the EU and Free Movement)

    Funny that Remoaners never talk about this. How EU integration is essentially hollowing out poorer Easterm Europe



  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083
    Apparently Saturn now has 140+ moons. Turns out there is an awful lot of floating rocks and ice out there.

    https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230703-why-saturns-moons-have-remained-hidden-from-view
    Leon said:

    That is quite an extraordinary fall in the Albanian birthrate, 15% in one year. Look at the Baltics as well. Eastern Europe may boast that it is catching up with the UK in "GDP per capita" but one of the main reasons is that there's only about six people left in Estonia, Slovakia, etc

    It's not hard to be wealthy per capita when your entire GDP is divided between two people. Both elderly

    Population decline looks like it will be quite a dramatic process in the next century. We already know how Russia has decided to tackle its demogrpahic problem of course (whilst Ukraine was already in trouble before, er, recent events).
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    Leon said:

    dixiedean said:

    Leon said:

    THIS is genuinely shocking

    The state of falling birth rates around the world


    https://twitter.com/BirthGauge/status/1674906307000762370

    Macao is essentially saying Fuck it, we've had enough of this living and reproducing thing

    If you've ever visited Macao you can have great sympathy with such intention.
    Yes, it's crowded. But so vivacious! Or it was. Easy for me to say as a tourist

    But the headlong collapse in birthrates around the world is pretty mind-blowing. Germany had half the births of France in one year, despite being much bigger in absolute population. And France itself saw a precipitous decline

    Children of Men, indeed
    Egypt 2.71 Total fertility rate, Israel 2.91, Mongolia 2.58, Kazakhstan 3.05, Uzbekistan 3.31 and Kyrgyzstan 2.88 buck the trend in that chart however
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    edited July 2023
    House of Lords votes against Government's migrants proposals fresh from the Court of Appeal's ruling against its plans for deportations to Rwanda.

    'The House of Lords has voted against government plans to weaken detention limits for children and pregnant women in its migration bill.

    The legislation would scrap existing legal caps on how long they can be held ahead of being removed from the UK for arriving illegally.

    But peers voted to preserve the current protections in a series of amendments.

    They also voted to ban the deportation of LGBT migrants to nations including Rwanda.

    The proposed changes are among 11 defeats suffered by ministers on the Illegal Migration Bill in votes on Monday evening.

    They can be overturned when the bill goes back to the House of Commons, where - unlike in the Lords - the government has a majority.'
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66089663
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083
    edited July 2023
    HYUFD said:

    House of Lords votes against Government's migrants proposals.

    'The House of Lords has voted against government plans to weaken detention limits for children and pregnant women in its migration bill.

    The legislation would scrap existing legal caps on how long they can be held ahead of being removed from the UK for arriving illegally.

    But peers voted to preserve the current protections in a series of amendments.

    They also voted to ban the deportation of LGBT migrants to nations including Rwanda.

    The proposed changes are among 11 defeats suffered by ministers on the Illegal Migration Bill in votes on Monday evening.

    They can be overturned when the bill goes back to the House of Commons, where - unlike in the Lords - the government has a majority.'
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66089663

    Why does the government want to weaken detention limits for children and pregnant women? Isn't it hordes of young Albanian men they are worried about?
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,497

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    The Redfield & Wilton and Deltapoll numbers don't show a lot of movement from last week.

    The England sub sample from R&W has Labour on 48%, Conservatives on 28%, Liberal Democrats on 12%, Greens on 6%, Reform on 5%.

    The swing from Conservative to Labour in England is 16.5% while the swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat is 9.5%.

    As for Deltapoll, the lead remains at 23 points - 15 points among men and 31 points among women. The Conservatives lead 43-30 among 65+ voters (this was a group they won 64-17 in 2019 so that's a 17% swing in that key demographic).

    These subsamples aren’t weighted - ergo meaningless. It beggars belief that you routinely extract such long posts from such scant material.
    Ignore that snobbery Stodge. So many of us love your posts.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,821
    Foxy said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Foxy said:

    Nothing like it. The batsman wasn't injured, just not paying attention.

    If he had stayed in his crease he would not have been out.

    The Australians didn't force him to go walkabout.
    I preferred Jenny Agutter's Walkabout.
    Great film. She was though forced into going walkabout.

    Crocodile Dundee almost went Walkabout in the US, until Sue confessed her true feelings for him in the Subway station :)
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    dixiedean said:

    Leon said:

    THIS is genuinely shocking

    The state of falling birth rates around the world


    https://twitter.com/BirthGauge/status/1674906307000762370

    Macao is essentially saying Fuck it, we've had enough of this living and reproducing thing

    If you've ever visited Macao you can have great sympathy with such intention.
    Yes, it's crowded. But so vivacious! Or it was. Easy for me to say as a tourist

    But the headlong collapse in birthrates around the world is pretty mind-blowing. Germany had half the births of France in one year, despite being much bigger in absolute population. And France itself saw a precipitous decline

    Children of Men, indeed
    Egypt 2.71 Total fertility rate, Israel 2.91, Mongolia 2.58, Kazakhstan 3.05, Uzbekistan 3.31 and Kyrgyzstan 2.88 buck the trend in that chart however
    More interesting is Portugal. Virtually alone in Europe in seeing a surge in births. Why? I honestly have no firm idea

    The stats for Eastern and, to an extent, Southern, Northern and Western Europe are appalling. We are literally disappearing

    England is a rare exception with only a modest fall in births but that is surely due to unprecedented immigration

    And yet it is still worse in East Asia, where they could all be gone in 2-3 generations
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,497
    Bairstow went walkabout. It was momentary brain fade. If he had glanced behind himself to where the ball was, as he should have done, he would have seen it hurtling towards his stumps. The calling Aussies cheats all went a bit far in my opinion, considering we mustn’t overlook England actually lost this match in the first two days - benefit of toss and then pretty sloppy in the field, solid foundation in their first innings, but far too many batsman giving their wickets away.

    I actually think England are competing well, considering this is an historically strong Australian side. The Aussie bowling is decent, but their batting is excellent - Neser for Hazelwood and the depth would be irresistible.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    dixiedean said:

    Leon said:

    THIS is genuinely shocking

    The state of falling birth rates around the world


    https://twitter.com/BirthGauge/status/1674906307000762370

    Macao is essentially saying Fuck it, we've had enough of this living and reproducing thing

    If you've ever visited Macao you can have great sympathy with such intention.
    Yes, it's crowded. But so vivacious! Or it was. Easy for me to say as a tourist

    But the headlong collapse in birthrates around the world is pretty mind-blowing. Germany had half the births of France in one year, despite being much bigger in absolute population. And France itself saw a precipitous decline

    Children of Men, indeed
    Egypt 2.71 Total fertility rate, Israel 2.91, Mongolia 2.58, Kazakhstan 3.05, Uzbekistan 3.31 and Kyrgyzstan 2.88 buck the trend in that chart however
    More interesting is Portugal. Virtually alone in Europe in seeing a surge in births. Why? I honestly have no firm idea

    The stats for Eastern and, to an extent, Southern, Northern and Western Europe are appalling. We are literally disappearing

    England is a rare exception with only a modest fall in births but that is surely due to unprecedented immigration

    And yet it is still worse in East Asia, where they could all be gone in 2-3 generations
    Globally Africa and South Asia is where the population growth is, the rest of the world is heading for population decline. That also means more trying to emigrate from the former to the latter
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,485
    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    Watched it again on iPlayer. It is actually worse on reflection. You can tell by their smirking Aussie response (which later turned to pained and bashful awkwardness as they got rightly barracked)

    Cheating Aussie fucks

    Ben Stokes got it exactly right. It WAS technically out. But would any captain want to win that way? Absolutely not. And nor, I suspect, do the Aussies, not after the ball tampering debacle

    I believe the short version of "technically out" is "out".

    The batsman shouldn't have left his crease until the ball was out of play. Its like when football defenders give up and appeal for offside. Play to the whistle.
    What whistle would this be? There is no whistle. The ball is ‘dead’ by a Heath-Robinson combination of assumption, group behaviour and gentleman’s agreement.

    Probably the laws need looking at… but thousands of games happen worldwide every day without the keeper stumping a batsman who has scratched his crease after the ball has gone through to the gloves.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,485
    Baffling the reaction of our Scottish contingent to yesterday’s egregious display of poor sportsmanship by Australia. I’d say the same if we did it against the Scottish cricket team, or if any other team did it. Cummins should have withdrawn his appeal.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,357
    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    dixiedean said:

    Leon said:

    THIS is genuinely shocking

    The state of falling birth rates around the world


    https://twitter.com/BirthGauge/status/1674906307000762370

    Macao is essentially saying Fuck it, we've had enough of this living and reproducing thing

    If you've ever visited Macao you can have great sympathy with such intention.
    Yes, it's crowded. But so vivacious! Or it was. Easy for me to say as a tourist

    But the headlong collapse in birthrates around the world is pretty mind-blowing. Germany had half the births of France in one year, despite being much bigger in absolute population. And France itself saw a precipitous decline

    Children of Men, indeed
    Egypt 2.71 Total fertility rate, Israel 2.91, Mongolia 2.58, Kazakhstan 3.05, Uzbekistan 3.31 and Kyrgyzstan 2.88 buck the trend in that chart however
    No. Only Uzbekistan bucks the trend as it's the only one of those countries where the total fertility rate is increasing. Although a country like Egypt still has a TFR above 2, the trend is down.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,485

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    The Redfield & Wilton and Deltapoll numbers don't show a lot of movement from last week.

    The England sub sample from R&W has Labour on 48%, Conservatives on 28%, Liberal Democrats on 12%, Greens on 6%, Reform on 5%.

    The swing from Conservative to Labour in England is 16.5% while the swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat is 9.5%.

    As for Deltapoll, the lead remains at 23 points - 15 points among men and 31 points among women. The Conservatives lead 43-30 among 65+ voters (this was a group they won 64-17 in 2019 so that's a 17% swing in that key demographic).

    These subsamples aren’t weighted - ergo meaningless. It beggars belief that you routinely extract such long posts from such scant material.
    Ignore that snobbery Stodge. So many of us love your posts.
    Simple logic, nothing to do with snobbery.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,497

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    The Redfield & Wilton and Deltapoll numbers don't show a lot of movement from last week.

    The England sub sample from R&W has Labour on 48%, Conservatives on 28%, Liberal Democrats on 12%, Greens on 6%, Reform on 5%.

    The swing from Conservative to Labour in England is 16.5% while the swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat is 9.5%.

    As for Deltapoll, the lead remains at 23 points - 15 points among men and 31 points among women. The Conservatives lead 43-30 among 65+ voters (this was a group they won 64-17 in 2019 so that's a 17% swing in that key demographic).

    These subsamples aren’t weighted - ergo meaningless. It beggars belief that you routinely extract such long posts from such scant material.
    Ignore that snobbery Stodge. So many of us love your posts.
    In my opinion there’s a bit too much getting excited about Margin of Error details in polling at the moment, the “i” were guilty of ramping their BMG today as worrying for Labour and “alarm bells in their HQ.” It’s not shown up on the wiki graph yet.



    Yes. The Tories slipped back to February levels against backdrop of appearing to be arguing amongst themselves. Maybe some of the rip off Britain, Greedinflation is making voters cross with the government right now. But this weeks poll movement have been a bit MOE.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,485
    Farooq said:

    Baffling the reaction of our Scottish contingent to yesterday’s egregious display of poor sportsmanship by Australia. I’d say the same if we did it against the Scottish cricket team, or if any other team did it. Cummins should have withdrawn his appeal.

    Hahaha, you're so wrong. This is competitive professional sport, not sports day in the primary school. It's meant to be edgy and competitive.
    Indeed it is, hence why taking wickets via sporting contest rather than a pathetic piece of pedantry is preferred.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,497

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    The Redfield & Wilton and Deltapoll numbers don't show a lot of movement from last week.

    The England sub sample from R&W has Labour on 48%, Conservatives on 28%, Liberal Democrats on 12%, Greens on 6%, Reform on 5%.

    The swing from Conservative to Labour in England is 16.5% while the swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat is 9.5%.

    As for Deltapoll, the lead remains at 23 points - 15 points among men and 31 points among women. The Conservatives lead 43-30 among 65+ voters (this was a group they won 64-17 in 2019 so that's a 17% swing in that key demographic).

    These subsamples aren’t weighted - ergo meaningless. It beggars belief that you routinely extract such long posts from such scant material.
    Ignore that snobbery Stodge. So many of us love your posts.
    Simple logic, nothing to do with snobbery.
    Some of us love subsamples as much as we love Mrs Dalloway in her favourite lighthouse.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 6,652
    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Virginia Woolf classic joins growing list with ‘ludicrous’ trigger warnings
    To the Lighthouse from 1927 now carries warning that the book ‘reflects the attitudes of its time’"

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/01/virginia-woolf-to-the-lighthouse-trigger-warning-vintage/

    How stupid would you have to be to read a book from 1927 and not expect it to reflect the attitudes of the time?

    My personal view is that it should have a trigger warnings for being drivelling crap.

    I really, REALLY detest Virginia Woolf. All the more so because I went through a phase in my thirties of convincing myself it could not be as bad as I thought and it must just be the particular books I was reading. So I tried reading as much as possible to prove myself wrong. I failed and that is many weeks of reading time I will never get back.
    You are almost completely right. She is absolute shite in her modernist guise. To The Lighthouse etc. All I could think was: JUST GO TO THE FUCKING LIGHTHOUSE, BITCH

    So dull

    She is - in this medium - James Joyce but with 3% of his linguistic skill. And she knew this, deep down, hence her loathing and fear of him. She publicly reviled Ulysses even tho it was absolutely clear that Joyce had achieved, with majestic elan, what she had tentatively and falteringly nudged at

    HOWEVER she is still is still a great writer. Try "Orlando" - she wrote it in a few brisk weeks yet it is brilliant and witty and very prescient about changing gender roles, it is her true masterpiece. She wrote it in six weeks and therefore, I think, dismissed it. She was wrong

    She was also great on the subject of creativity and writing in general. "A Room of One's Own" is full of insights for the ages, especially for any artist

    Her problem is that she is revered for rather dire modernist failures, yet her genuine spleandour goes unappreciated

    I read Ulysses. All of it.

    I want to find a strand of Joyce's hair, clone him, and punch his fucking lights out.
    Have you tried Finnegan's Wake? Will make you appreciate Ulysses all the more!
    Gotta confess, I draw the line at Finnegan's Wake. TBF so did Joyce himself. I believe he wrote a letter aliong the lines of "possibly I have gone too far". Well, yes, It's like Michelangelo went from sculpting La Pieta to obsessing about different ways he could present Christ's dying penis in multiple forms of coloured Travertine

    Er, no

    It is one of literature's huge Unknowns. Joyce was at the peak of his powers when he finished Ulysses. What might he have written if he had reined it in a bit - and thought about plot and character and readability, along with his own revolutionary genius? We lost ten years of one of the finest writers who ever lived, to a work that fails entirely, and is unreadable even for his fans

    The best comparison is if Picasso stopped at Cubism, and then obsessively doodled eerily distorted manginas for the rest of his career. No Guernica, no The Weeping Woman, no La Reve, and so on
    You might be right that Joyce's greatest moment was finishing Ulysses. He missed an even greater moment by not setting fire to the manuscript and pitching himself into the Liffey. But at least he did stop.

    I don't think I've read a single modernist novel and not regretted it. It's like glimpsing madness and not even in a fun way. It's all bleak, shattered misery. It just seems like a literary form designed to depress and frustrate. Like Morrissey trying to explain Gödel's incompleteness theorem to the terminally ill.
    You thought Ulysses was bleak, shattered misery?

    It's actually quite funny.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,497

    Farooq said:

    Baffling the reaction of our Scottish contingent to yesterday’s egregious display of poor sportsmanship by Australia. I’d say the same if we did it against the Scottish cricket team, or if any other team did it. Cummins should have withdrawn his appeal.

    Hahaha, you're so wrong. This is competitive professional sport, not sports day in the primary school. It's meant to be edgy and competitive.
    Indeed it is, hence why taking wickets via sporting contest rather than a pathetic piece of pedantry is preferred.
    In the same sense, both sides reverting to bodyline for long periods was ugly and unsporting too. Not least how it was so slow to score off the monotonous short stuff, and crap for fans, ugly and boring and a million miles from the bazball versus best side in world brochures we had been sold.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,553

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    The Redfield & Wilton and Deltapoll numbers don't show a lot of movement from last week.

    The England sub sample from R&W has Labour on 48%, Conservatives on 28%, Liberal Democrats on 12%, Greens on 6%, Reform on 5%.

    The swing from Conservative to Labour in England is 16.5% while the swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat is 9.5%.

    As for Deltapoll, the lead remains at 23 points - 15 points among men and 31 points among women. The Conservatives lead 43-30 among 65+ voters (this was a group they won 64-17 in 2019 so that's a 17% swing in that key demographic).

    These subsamples aren’t weighted - ergo meaningless. It beggars belief that you routinely extract such long posts from such scant material.
    Ignore that snobbery Stodge. So many of us love your posts.
    Simple logic, nothing to do with snobbery.
    Correct. What on earth has pointing out the fact that subsamples are useless information got to do with snobbery?
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,497
    Andy_JS said:

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    The Redfield & Wilton and Deltapoll numbers don't show a lot of movement from last week.

    The England sub sample from R&W has Labour on 48%, Conservatives on 28%, Liberal Democrats on 12%, Greens on 6%, Reform on 5%.

    The swing from Conservative to Labour in England is 16.5% while the swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat is 9.5%.

    As for Deltapoll, the lead remains at 23 points - 15 points among men and 31 points among women. The Conservatives lead 43-30 among 65+ voters (this was a group they won 64-17 in 2019 so that's a 17% swing in that key demographic).

    These subsamples aren’t weighted - ergo meaningless. It beggars belief that you routinely extract such long posts from such scant material.
    Ignore that snobbery Stodge. So many of us love your posts.
    Simple logic, nothing to do with snobbery.
    Correct. What on earth has pointing out the fact that subsamples are useless information got to do with snobbery?
    Because they are not useless information. Therefore anyone who calls them useless information is a clear snob.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    Australian PM Albanese hits back at Rishi

    '@AlboMP
    I’m proud of our men’s and women’s cricket teams, who have both won their opening two #Ashes matches against England.

    Same old Aussies – always winning!

    Australia is right behind
    @ahealy77
    ,
    @patcummins30
    and their teams and look forward to welcoming them home victorious'
    https://twitter.com/AlboMP/status/1676004264454541312?s=20
  • Jonny Bairstow needed to learn about the dead ball rules

    Such a shame that he couldn’t have have had that lesson some time in the preceding quarter of a century

    I think he understands it now
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,497
    Farooq said:

    Andy_JS said:

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    The Redfield & Wilton and Deltapoll numbers don't show a lot of movement from last week.

    The England sub sample from R&W has Labour on 48%, Conservatives on 28%, Liberal Democrats on 12%, Greens on 6%, Reform on 5%.

    The swing from Conservative to Labour in England is 16.5% while the swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat is 9.5%.

    As for Deltapoll, the lead remains at 23 points - 15 points among men and 31 points among women. The Conservatives lead 43-30 among 65+ voters (this was a group they won 64-17 in 2019 so that's a 17% swing in that key demographic).

    These subsamples aren’t weighted - ergo meaningless. It beggars belief that you routinely extract such long posts from such scant material.
    Ignore that snobbery Stodge. So many of us love your posts.
    Simple logic, nothing to do with snobbery.
    Correct. What on earth has pointing out the fact that subsamples are useless information got to do with snobbery?
    Because they are not useless information. Therefore anyone who calls them useless information is a clear snob.
    Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed your holiday. You're wrong.
    The devil of every poll is in such detail as the sub samples.

    new_subsample <- subset( full_sample , some_demographic_group == TRUE )

    Or as an example, take the Ashcroft poll showing Boris home and hosed if there was Uxbridge recall. As TSE explained to us in a header (and Stodge in a long sub sample post) out of 50 young people they found eyebrow raising amount of this little sample who loved Boris, this possible sampling error was then extrapolated upwards so it looked out of kilter with what many of other polls thought of Tories in the subs of samples.

    TSE, Stodge and myself are not wrong are we.

    PS Went to the med for a month. Me and dear GF had Gozo villa to ourselves for a week, you should see our perfect all over tans. And then my daddy took me to Italy.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 6,652
    rcs1000 said:

    Re Peak Oil:

    I wrote a piece on oil for the Mecca of the Peak Oil fetishists (The Oil Drum) back in 2007: http://theoildrum.com/node/2899

    It is worth reading the comments under my article to see just how nutty peak oil adherents were.

    A real blast from the past. Somewhere between the Ron Paul people / Goldbugs (we were yet to have peak Paul of course!) and contemporary fatalistic / depressed children of the social media age.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    edited July 2023
    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Australian PM Albanese hits back at Rishi

    '@AlboMP
    I’m proud of our men’s and women’s cricket teams, who have both won their opening two #Ashes matches against England.

    Same old Aussies – always winning!

    Australia is right behind
    @ahealy77
    ,
    @patcummins30
    and their teams and look forward to welcoming them home victorious'
    https://twitter.com/AlboMP/status/1676004264454541312?s=20

    WAR
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3BO6GP9NMY
    Albanese is of course also a Labor PM too whose sister party is Starmer's UK Labour party.

    Sunak is a conservative Tory whose sister parties are the Liberal and National Coalition in Australia
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,497

    Jonny Bairstow needed to learn about the dead ball rules

    Such a shame that he couldn’t have have had that lesson some time in the preceding quarter of a century

    I think he understands it now

    A little harsh focussing on Bairstow for one momentary brain fade in just one innings of his career, there are so many other reasons why England were deserved losers, they had the toss, Aussies had to bat in most of the matches worst weather, and lost Lyon to injury early on, England played with a poor focus bowling day 1 and during their collapse day 2. The match was lost mentally.

    Tensions obviously high at a disappointing 0.2 down when hopes had been high, but the Aussies, by historical measure a very strong outfit right now, have deserved to edge both games overall. Key moment of series for me was Stokes drop in first test when a testing amount was still needed.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,191
    Andy_JS said:

    Just seen this on Twitter. I agree completely.

    "JWExTheSpa
    @SpaJw
    Starc made a stupid mistake so Duckett wasn’t out. Bairstow made a stupid mistake and so was out. The right decisions were made both times. The idea of the spirit of cricket is cringeworthy, sanctimonious, nostalgic, humbug. Respect the umpires. Nothing else is needed.
    6:37 AM · Jul 3, 2023"

    https://twitter.com/SpaJw/status/1675740409018843137

    The thing is, Carey took the ball and then released back to the stumps in one motion. If you watch the replay with Bairstow on its own, it seems like Carey has waited till Bairstow has left his crease and then released the ball. There is a Foakes ODI dismissal against Ire where this very much WAS the case. But it simply was not with Carey. The ball was thrown into the stumps whilst 1. Barstow was in his ground. 2. Was in a continuous motion after he received the ball.
    It really isn't a controversial dismissal at all, or well a lot less controversial than people are making it out to be tbh.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,191

    Leon said:

    There are iconic moments of cheating/gamesmanship

    In cricket:

    Bodyline
    THIS

    Aren't you forgetting all these?:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sporting_scandals#Cricket_scandals
    Very surprised that Bodyline is not included in that list.
    Sharp application of the rules as opposed to cheating tbf. Underarm bowling incident listed fits that category mind
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,553
    O/T

    "A surf-lover’s guide to Cornwall
    Founder of outdoor clothing label Finisterre Tom Kay on the best big swells and beach cafés"

    https://www.ft.com/content/24dea835-d119-4dd5-b8eb-47d806c43925
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,191
    Leon said:

    THIS is genuinely shocking

    The state of falling birth rates around the world


    https://twitter.com/BirthGauge/status/1674906307000762370

    Macao is essentially saying Fuck it, we've had enough of this living and reproducing thing

    Immigration and rising life expectancy really heavily masks this for the UK I think
  • PeckPeck Posts: 517
    edited July 2023
    Long-time lurker here. I was wondering today how English Tories might attempt to facilitate their preferred option out of the top two available in Scotland, which is to say an SNP bounce rather than a Labour landslide. And then I saw this photo... Never saw the Union Jack wrapped like that before. Must have taken some effort to make it look like the flag of St George with a little bit of decoration around the edge. Then another option for English Tories popped into mind: let Scotland go hang, and either push for English independence or else take such a big dump on Scotland that support for independence there rises to over 50% AND manifests as such in BritGE2024 somehow - meaning not necessarily with an SNP bounce but more likely with growing support among ScotLab voters and members. Just leak a phone call where Sunak makes a kilt or sporran joke or summat. Then bring in Penny and maybe someone who's posh and doesn't sound like JRM and they can say together that yes they bloody well are English and do think that England has its own interests... Aka selling Scotland down the river... And the Tories would never do that. Right?

    image
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,553
    edited July 2023
    Cricket trivia question. There has only been one full day's play in a test match in England where no wickets have fallen in the history of test cricket. When was it and which teams were involved?

    Answer here. https://www.espncricinfo.com/records/no-wickets-in-a-full-day-s-play-283079
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,821

    Farooq said:

    Andy_JS said:

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    The Redfield & Wilton and Deltapoll numbers don't show a lot of movement from last week.

    The England sub sample from R&W has Labour on 48%, Conservatives on 28%, Liberal Democrats on 12%, Greens on 6%, Reform on 5%.

    The swing from Conservative to Labour in England is 16.5% while the swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat is 9.5%.

    As for Deltapoll, the lead remains at 23 points - 15 points among men and 31 points among women. The Conservatives lead 43-30 among 65+ voters (this was a group they won 64-17 in 2019 so that's a 17% swing in that key demographic).

    These subsamples aren’t weighted - ergo meaningless. It beggars belief that you routinely extract such long posts from such scant material.
    Ignore that snobbery Stodge. So many of us love your posts.
    Simple logic, nothing to do with snobbery.
    Correct. What on earth has pointing out the fact that subsamples are useless information got to do with snobbery?
    Because they are not useless information. Therefore anyone who calls them useless information is a clear snob.
    Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed your holiday. You're wrong.
    The devil of every poll is in such detail as the sub samples.

    new_subsample - subset( full_sample , some_demographic_group == TRUE )

    Or as an example, take the Ashcroft poll showing Boris home and hosed if there was Uxbridge recall. As TSE explained to us in a header (and Stodge in a long sub sample post) out of 50 young people they found eyebrow raising amount of this little sample who loved Boris, this possible sampling error was then extrapolated upwards so it looked out of kilter with what many of other polls thought of Tories in the subs of samples.

    TSE, Stodge and myself are not wrong are we.

    PS Went to the med for a month. Me and dear GF had Gozo villa to ourselves for a week, you should see our perfect all over tans. And then my daddy took me to Italy.
    -"MoonRabbit, where have you been?"

    -"Where haven't I been?"

    :)
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,191
    edited July 2023

    Jonny Bairstow needed to learn about the dead ball rules

    Such a shame that he couldn’t have have had that lesson some time in the preceding quarter of a century

    I think he understands it now

    A little harsh focussing on Bairstow for one momentary brain fade in just one innings of his career, there are so many other reasons why England were deserved losers, they had the toss, Aussies had to bat in most of the matches worst weather, and lost Lyon to injury early on, England played with a poor focus bowling day 1 and during their collapse day 2. The match was lost mentally.

    Tensions obviously high at a disappointing 0.2 down when hopes had been high, but the Aussies, by historical measure a very strong outfit right now, have deserved to edge both games overall. Key moment of series for me was Stokes drop in first test when a testing amount was still needed.
    I don't think their batting is particularly strong this series. Top combined xi

    Duckett
    Khawaja
    Smith
    Root
    Stokes
    Head
    Carey
    Cummins (Captaincy)

    The bowlers ex Cummins are trickier to pick. Aus bowlers are having better strike rates but England are averaging lower.
    Tongue and Jimmy are definitely missing out though, I'd probably pick Starc, Lyons (He's injured but if he wasn't he'd be straight in as spinner and Robinson. Who has been very tight. You could easily justify Hazelwood or Broad though.

    Warner, Labuschagne, Green have all underperformed tbh
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,553
    Geoff Boycott not impressed by Australia's attitude wrt Bairstow.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T98tyidUq2U
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559
    Peck said:

    Long-time lurker here. I was wondering today how English Tories might attempt to facilitate their preferred option out of the top two available in Scotland, which is to say an SNP bounce rather than a Labour landslide. And then I saw this photo... Never saw the Union Jack wrapped like that before. Must have taken some effort to make it look like the flag of St George with a little bit of decoration around the edge. Then another option for English Tories popped into mind: let Scotland go hang, and either push for English independence or else take such a big dump on Scotland that support for independence there rises to over 50% AND manifests as such in BritGE2024 somehow - meaning not necessarily with an SNP bounce but more likely with growing support among ScotLab voters and members. Just leak a phone call where Sunak makes a kilt or sporran joke or summat. Then bring in Penny and maybe someone who's posh and doesn't sound like JRM and they can say together that yes they bloody well are English and do think that England has its own interests... Aka selling Scotland down the river... And the Tories would never do that. Right?

    image

    Hello, you may be on to something. Please post this on next (or subsequent) thread so PBers will see.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    Peck said:

    Long-time lurker here. I was wondering today how English Tories might attempt to facilitate their preferred option out of the top two available in Scotland, which is to say an SNP bounce rather than a Labour landslide. And then I saw this photo... Never saw the Union Jack wrapped like that before. Must have taken some effort to make it look like the flag of St George with a little bit of decoration around the edge. Then another option for English Tories popped into mind: let Scotland go hang, and either push for English independence or else take such a big dump on Scotland that support for independence there rises to over 50% AND manifests as such in BritGE2024 somehow - meaning not necessarily with an SNP bounce but more likely with growing support among ScotLab voters and members. Just leak a phone call where Sunak makes a kilt or sporran joke or summat. Then bring in Penny and maybe someone who's posh and doesn't sound like JRM and they can say together that yes they bloody well are English and do think that England has its own interests... Aka selling Scotland down the river... And the Tories would never do that. Right?

    image

    Absolutely not, we are the Conservative and Unionist Party for a reason.

    An English Parliament or restoration of EVEL would be helpful though as at the moment if the Tories won a majority in England yet Labour won a UK wide majority then Labour MPs could still decide English domestic policy
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,497

    Farooq said:

    Andy_JS said:

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    The Redfield & Wilton and Deltapoll numbers don't show a lot of movement from last week.

    The England sub sample from R&W has Labour on 48%, Conservatives on 28%, Liberal Democrats on 12%, Greens on 6%, Reform on 5%.

    The swing from Conservative to Labour in England is 16.5% while the swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat is 9.5%.

    As for Deltapoll, the lead remains at 23 points - 15 points among men and 31 points among women. The Conservatives lead 43-30 among 65+ voters (this was a group they won 64-17 in 2019 so that's a 17% swing in that key demographic).

    These subsamples aren’t weighted - ergo meaningless. It beggars belief that you routinely extract such long posts from such scant material.
    Ignore that snobbery Stodge. So many of us love your posts.
    Simple logic, nothing to do with snobbery.
    Correct. What on earth has pointing out the fact that subsamples are useless information got to do with snobbery?
    Because they are not useless information. Therefore anyone who calls them useless information is a clear snob.
    Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed your holiday. You're wrong.
    The devil of every poll is in such detail as the sub samples.

    new_subsample - subset( full_sample , some_demographic_group == TRUE )

    Or as an example, take the Ashcroft poll showing Boris home and hosed if there was Uxbridge recall. As TSE explained to us in a header (and Stodge in a long sub sample post) out of 50 young people they found eyebrow raising amount of this little sample who loved Boris, this possible sampling error was then extrapolated upwards so it looked out of kilter with what many of other polls thought of Tories in the subs of samples.

    TSE, Stodge and myself are not wrong are we.

    PS Went to the med for a month. Me and dear GF had Gozo villa to ourselves for a week, you should see our perfect all over tans. And then my daddy took me to Italy.
    -"MoonRabbit, where have you been?"

    -"Where haven't I been?"

    :)
    Malta, Italy, Malta, Yorkshire

    I did look at PB a couple of times, but you were all pretty much behaving and didn’t need sorting out. 😎
This discussion has been closed.